THE FRIENDLY GIANT

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    I ran. I jumped over the holes in the floorboards, leaped dowairs three at a time, lost my footing and lu the handrail for support. I grasped at a handful of ivy, stumbled, saved myself and lurched fain. The library? No. The other way. Through an archway. Branches of elder and buddleia caught at my clothes, and I half fell several times as my feet scrabbled through the detritus of the broken house.

    At last, iably, I crashed to the ground, and a wild cry escaped my lips.

    ‘Oh dear, oh dear. Did I startle you? Oh dear.“

    I stared back through the archway.

    Leaning over the gallery landing was not the skeleton or monster of my imaginings, but a giant. He moved smoothly dowairs, stepped daintily and unedly through the debris on the floor and came to stand over me with an expression of the utmost  on his face.

    ‘Oh my goodness.“

    He must have been six-foot-four<tt></tt> or -five, and was broad, so broad that the house seemed to shrink around him.

    ‘I never meant… You see, I only thought… Because you’d been there some time, and… But that doesn’t matter now, because the thing is, my dear, are you hurt?“

    I felt reduced to the size of a child. But for all his great dimensions, this man, too, had something of a child about him. Too plump for wrinkles, he had a round, cherubic face, and a halo of silver-blond curls sat ly around his balding head. His eyes were round like the frames of his spectacles. They were kind and had a blue transparency.

    I must have been looking dazed, and pale, too, perhaps. He k by my side and took my wrist.

    ‘My, my, that was quite a tumble you took. If only I’d… I should never have… Pulse a bit high. Hmm.“

    My shin was stinging. I reached to iigate a tear in the knee of my trousers, and my fingers came away bloodied.

    ‘Dear, oh dear. It’s the leg, is it? Is it broken?  you move it?“ I wriggled my foot, and the man’s face icture of relief.

    ‘Thank goodness. I should never have fiven myself. Now, you stay there while I… I’ll just get the… Ba a minute.“ And off he went. His feet danced delicately in and out of the jagged edges of wood, then skipped swiftly up the stairs, while the upper half of his body sailed serenely above, as if unected to the elaborate fooing on below.

    I took a deep breath and waited.

    ‘I’ve put the kettle on,“ he announced as he returned. It roper first-aid kit he had with him, white with a red cross on it, aook out an aic lotion and some gauze.

    ‘I always said, someone will get hurt in that old plae of these days. I’ve had the kit for years. Better safe than sorry, eh? Oh dear, oh dear!“ He winced with empathy as he pressed the stinging pad against my cut shin. ”Let’s be brave, shall we?“

    ‘Do you have electricity here?“ I asked. I was feeling bewildered.

    ‘Electricity? But it’s a ruin.“ He stared at me, astonished by my question, as though I might have suffered a cussion in the fall and lost my reason.

    ‘It’s just that I thought you said you’d put the kettle on.“

    ‘Oh, I see! No! I have a camping stove. I used to have a Thermos flask, but“—he turned his nose up—”tea from a Thermos is not very nice, is it? Now, does it sting very badly?“

    ‘Only a bit.“

    ‘Good girl. Quite a tumble that was. Now tea—lemon and sugar all right? No milk, I’m afraid. Ne.“

    ‘Lemon will be lovely.“

    ‘Right. Well, let’s make you fortable. The rain has stopped, so tea outdoors?“ He went to the grand old double door at the front of the house and unlatched it. With a creak smaller than one expected, the doors swung open, and I began to get to my feet.

    ‘Don’t move!“

    The giant danced back toward me, bent doicked me up. I felt myself being raised into the air and carried smoothly outside. He sat me sideways on the back of one of the black cats I had admired an hour earlier.

    ‘You wait there, and when I e back, you and I will have a lovely tea!“ and he went bato the house. His huge back glided up the stairs and disappeared into the entrance of the corridor and the third room.

    ‘fy?“

    I nodded.

    ‘Marvelous.“ He smiled as though it were indeed marvelous. ”Now, let us introduce ourselves. My name is Love. Aurelius Alphonse Love. Do call me Aurelius.“ He looked at me expetly.

    ‘Margaret Lea.“

    ‘Margaret.“ He beamed. ”Splendid. Quite splendid. Now, eat.“

    Between the ears of the big black cat he had unfolded a napkin, er by er. Inside was a dark and sticky slice of cake, cut generously. I bit into it. It was the perfect cake for a cold day: spiced with ginger, sweet but hot. The straraihe tea into dainty a cups. He offered me a bowl of sugar lumps, then took a blue velvet pouch from his breast pocket, which he opened. Resting on the velvet was a silver spoon with an elongated A in the form of a stylized angel oring the handle. I took it, stirred my tea and passed it ba.

    While I ate and drank, my host sat on the sed cat, which took on an ued kittenish appearance beh his great girth. He ate in sileneatly and with tratioched me eat, too, anxious that I should appreciate the food.

    ‘That was lovely,“ I said. ”Homemade, I think?“

    The gap betweewo cats was about te, and to verse we had to raise our voices slightly, giving the versation a somewhat theatrical air, as though it were some performance. And indeed we had an audience. In the rain-washed light, close to the edge of the woods, a deer, stock-still, regarded us curiously. Unblinking, alert, nostrils twitg. Seeing I had spotted it, it made no attempt to run but decided, on the trary, not to be afraid.

    My panion wiped his fingers on his napkin, then shook it out and folded it into four. “You liked it then? The recipe was given to me by Mrs. Love. I’ve been making this cake since I was a child. Mrs. Love was a wonderful cook. A marvelous woman all round. Of course, she is departed now. A good age. Though one might have hoped— But it was not to be.”

    ‘I see.“ Though I wasn’t sure I did see. Was Mrs. Love his wife? Though he’d said he’d been making her cake since he was a child. Surely he couldn’t mean his mother? Why would he call his mother Mrs. Love? Two things were clear, though: He had loved her and she was dead. ”I’m sorry,“ I said.

    He accepted my dolences with a sad expression, then brightened. “But it’s a fitting memorial, don’t you think? The cake, I mean?”

    ‘Certainly. Was it long ago? That you lost her?“

    He thought. “Nearly twenty years. Though it seems more. Or less. Depending on how one looks at it.”

    I nodded. I was he wiser.

    For a few moments we sat in silence. I looked out to the deer park. At the cusp of the wood, more deer were emerging. They moved with the sunlight across the grassy park.

    The stinging in my leg had diminished. I was feelier.

    ‘Tell me…“ the stranger began, and I suspected he had o pluck up the ce to ask his question. ”Do you have a mother?“

    I felt a start of surprise. People hardly ever notice me for long enough to ask me personal questions.

    ‘Do you mind? Five me for asking, but— How  I put it? Families are a matter of… of… But if you’d rather not— I am sorry.“

    ‘It’s all right,“ I said slowly. ”I don’t mind.“ And actually I didn’t. Perhaps it was the series of shocks I’d had, or else the influence of this queer setting, but it seemed that anything I might say about myself here, to this man, would remain forever in this place, with him, and have no currenywhere else in the world. Whatever I said to him would have no sequences. So I answered his question. ”Yes, I do have a mother.“

    ‘A mother! How— Oh, how—“ A curiously intense expression came into his eyes, a sadness or a longing. ”What could be pleasahan to have a mother!“ he finally exclaimed. It was clearly an invitation to say more.

    ‘You don’t have a mother, then?“ I asked.

    Aurelius’s face twisted momentarily. “Sadly—I have always wanted— Or a father, e to that. Even brothers or sisters. Anyone who actually beloo me. As a child I used to pretend. I made up aire family. Geions of it! You’d have laughed!” There was nothing to laugh at in his face as he spoke. “But as to an actual mother… a ”actual, known mother… Of course, everybody has a mother, don’t hey? I know that. It’s a question of knowing who that mother is. And I lave always hoped that one day— For it’s not out of the question, is it? And so I have never given up hope.“

    ‘Ah.“

    ‘It’s a very sorry thing.“ He gave a shrug that he wao be casual, but wasn’t. ”I should have liked to have a mother.“

    ‘Mr. Love—“

    ‘Aurelius, please.“

    ‘Aurelius. You know, with mothers, things aren’t always as pleasant as you might suppose.“

    ‘Ah?“ It seemed to have the force of a great revelation to him. He peered closely at me. ”Squabbles?“

    ‘ly.“

    He frowned. “Misuandings?”

    I shook my head.

    ‘Worse?“ He was stupefied. He sought what the problem might be in the sky, in the woods and finally, in my eyes.

    ‘Secrets,“ I told him.

    ‘Secrets!“ His eyes wideo perfect circles. Baffled, he shook his head, making an impossible attempt to fathom my meaning. ”Five me,“ he said at last. ”I don’t know how to help. I know so very little about families. My ignorance is vaster than the sea. I’m sorry about the secrets. I’m sure you are right to feel as you do.“

    passion warmed his eyes and he handed me a ly folded white handkerchief.

    ‘I’m sorry,“ I said. ”It must be delayed shock.“

    ‘I expect so.“

    While I dried my eyes he looked away from me toward the deer park. The sky was darkening by slow degrees. Now I followed his gaze to see a shimmer of white: the pale coat of the deer as it leaped lightly into the cover of the trees.

    ‘I thought you were a ghost,“ I told him. ”When I felt the door handle move. Or a skeleton.“

    ‘A skeleton! Me! A skeleton!“ He chuckled, delighted, and his entire body seemed to shake with mirth.

    ‘But you turned out to be a giant.“

    ‘Quite so! A giant.“ He wiped the laughter from his eyes and said, ”There is a ghost, you know—or so they say.“

    I know, I almost said, I saw her, but of course it wasn’t my ghost he was talking about.

    ‘Have you seen the ghost?“

    ‘No,“ he sighed. ”Not even the shadow of a ghost.“

    We sat in silence for a moment, each of us plating ghosts of our own.

    ‘It’s getting chilly,“ I remarked.

    ‘Leg feeling all right?“

    ‘I think so.“ I slid off the cat’s bad tried my weight on it. ”Yes. It’s much better now.“

    ‘Wonderful. Wonderful.“

    Our voices were murmurs in the softening light.

    ‘Who exactly was Mrs. Love?“

    ‘The lady who took me in. She gave me her name. She gave me her recipe book. She gave me everything, really.“

    I nodded.

    Then I picked up my camera. “I think I should be going, actually. I ought to try for some photos at the church before the light quite disappears. Thank you so much for the tea.”

    ‘I must be off in a few minutes myself. It has been so o meet you, Margaret. Will you e again?“

    ‘You don’t actually live here, do you?“ I asked doubtfully.

    He laughed. It was a dark, rich sweetness, like the cake.

    ‘Bless me, no. I have a house over there.“ He gestured toward the woods. ”I just e here iernoons. For, well, let’s say for plation, shall we?“

    ‘They’re knog it down soon. I suppose you know?“

    ‘I know.“ He stroked the cat, absently, fondly. ”It’s a shame, isn’t it? I shall miss the old place. Actually I thought you were one of their people when I heard you. A surveyor or something. But you’re not.“

    ‘No, I’m not a surveyor. I’m writing a book about someone who used to live here.“

    ‘The Angelfield girls?“

    ‘Yes.“

    Aurelius nodded ruminatively. “They were twins, you know. Imagihat.” For a moment his eyes were far away.

    ‘Will you e again, Margaret?“ he asked as I picked up my bag.

    ‘I’m bound to.“

    He reached into his pocket and drew out a card. Aurelius Love, Traditional English Catering for Weddings, Christenings and Parties. He poio the address and telephone number. “Do telephone me when you e again. You must e to the cottage and I’ll make you a proper tea.”

    Before we parted, Aurelius took my hand and patted it in an easy, old-fashioned mahen his massive frame glided gracefully up the wide sweep of steps and he closed the heavy doors behind him.

    Slowly I walked down the drive to the church, my mind full of the stranger I had just met—met and befriended. It was most unlike me. And as I passed through the lych-gate, I reflected that perhaps I was the stranger. Was it just my imagination, or since meeting Miss Winter was I not quite myself?

    GRAVESI had left it too late for the light, and photographs were out of the question. So I took my notebook out for my walk in the churchyard. Angelfield was an old unity but a small one, and there were not so very many graves. I found John Digence, Gathered to the Garden of the Lord, and a woman, Martha Dunne, Loyal Servant of our Lord, whose dates corresponded closely enough with what I expected for the Missus. I copied the names, dates and inscriptions into my notebook. One of the graves had fresh flowers on it, a gay bunch e chrysanthemums, and I went closer to see who it as remembered so warmly. It was Joan Mary Love, Never Fotten.

    Though I looked, I could not see the Angelfield name anywhere. But it did not puzzle me for more than a mihe family of the house would not have ordinary graves in the churchyard. Their tombs would be grander affairs, marked by effigies and with long histories carved into their marble slabs. And they would be inside, in the chapel. The church was gloomy. The a windows, narrow pieces of greenish glass held in a thick stone framework of arches, let in a sepulchral light that weakly illumihe pale stone arches and ns, the whitened vaults between the black roof timbers and the smooth polished wood of the pews. When my eyes had adjusted, I peered at the memorial stones and mos iiny chapel. Angelfields dead for turies all had their epitaphs here, lier loquacious line of en, expensively carved into costly marble. Another day I would e back to decipher the engravings of these earlier geions; for today it was only a handful of names I was looking for.

    With the death of Gee Angelfield, the family’s loquacity came to an end. Charlie and Isabelle—for presumably it was they who decided—

    seemed not to have goo any great lengths in summing up their father’s life ah feions to e. Released from earthly sorrows, he is with his Savior now, was the stone’s laic message. Isabelle’s role in this world and her departure from it were summed up in the most ventional terms: Much loved mother and sister, she is goo a better place. But I copied it into my notebook all the same and did a quick calculation. Youhan me! Not sically young as her husband, but still, not ao die.

    I almost missed Charlie’s. Having eliminated every other stone in the chapel, I was about to give up, when my eye finally made out a small, dark stone. So small was it, and so black, that it seemed designed for invisibility, or at least insignifice. There was no gold leaf to give relief to the letters so, uo make them out by eye, I raised my hand ahe carving, Braille style, with my fiips, one word at a time.

    CHARLIE ANGELFIELDHE IS GOO THE DARK NIGHT.

    WE SHALL NEVER SEE HIM MORE.

    There were no dates.

    I felt a sudden chill. Who had selected these words, I wondered? Was it Vida Winter? And what was the mood behind them? It seemed to me that there was room for a certain ambiguity in the expression. Was it the sorrow of bereavement? Or the triumphant farewell of the survivors to a bad lot?

    Leaving the churd walking slowly down the gravel drive to the lodge gates, I felt a light, almost weightless scrutiny on my back. Aurelius was gone, so what was it? The Angelfield ghost, perhaps? Or the burned-out eyes of the house itself? Most probably it was just a deer, watg me invisibly from the shadow of the woods.

    ‘It’s a shame,“ said my father in the shop that evening, ”that you ’t e home for a few hours.“

    ‘I am home,“ I protested, feigning ignorance. But I k was my mother he was talking about. The truth was that I couldn’t bear her tinny brightness, nor the pristine paleness of her house. I lived in shadows, had made friends with my grief, but in my mother’s house I knew my sorrow was unwele. She might have loved a cheerful, chatty daughter, whose brightness would have helped banish her own fears. As it was, she was afraid of my silences. I preferred to stay away. ”I have so little time,“ I explained. ”Miss Winter is anxious that we should press on with the work. And it’s only a few weeks till Christmas, after all. I’ll be back again then.“

    ‘Yes,“ he said. ”It will be Christmas soon.“

    He seemed sad and worried. I knew I was the cause, and I was sorry I couldn’t do anything about it.

    ‘I’ve packed a few books to take baiss Winter’s with me. I’ve put a note on the cards in the index.“

    ‘That’s fine. No problem.“

    That night, drawi of sleep, a pressure on the edge of my bed. The angularity of bone pressing against my flesh through the bedclothes.

    It is her! e for me at last!

    All I have to do is open my eyes and look at her. But fear paralyzes me. What will she be like? Like me? Tall and thin with dark eyes? Or— it is this I fear—has she e direct from the grave? What terrible thing is it that I am about to join myself—rejoin myself—to?

    The fear dissolves.

    I have woken up.

    The pressure through the blas is gone, a figment of sleep. I do not know whether I am relieved or disappointed.

    I got up, repacked my things, and in the bleakness of the winter dawn walked to the station for the first train north.

    Middles

    HESTER ARRIVES

    ‘When I left Yorkshire, November was going strong; by the time I retur was in its dying days, about to tilt into December.

    December gives me headaches and diminishes my already small appetite. It makes me restless in my reading. It keeps me awake at night with its damp, chilly darkness. There is a closide me that starts to ti the first of December, measuring the days, the hours and the minutes, ting down to a certain day, the anniversary of the day my life was made and then unmade: my birthday. I do not like December.

    This year the sense of foreboding was made worse by the weather. A heavy sky hovered repressively over the house, casting us into aernal dim twilight. I arrived back to find Judith scurrying from room to room, colleg desk lamps and standard lamps and reading lamps from guest rooms that were never used, and arranging them in the library, the drawing room, my own rooms. Anything to keep at bay the murky grayhat lurked in every er, under every chair, in the folds of the curtains and the pleats of the upholstery.

    Miss Winter asked no questions about my absenor did she tell me anything about the progression of her illness, but even after so short an absence, her dee was clear to see. The cashmere s fell in apparently empty folds around her diminished frame, and on her fihe rubies and emeralds seemed to have expanded, so thin had her hands bee. The fine white lihat had been visible in her parting before I left had broadened; it crept along each hair, diluting the metallies to a weaker shade e. But despite her physical frailty, she seemed full of some force, some energy, that overrode both illness and age and made her powerful. As soon as I presented myself in the room, almost before I had sat down and taken out my notebook, she began to speak, pig up the story where she had left off, as though it were brimful in her and could not be tained a moment longer.

    With Isabelle go was felt in the village that something should be done for the children. They were thirteen; it was not ao be left unattehey needed a woman’s influence. Should they not be sent to school somewhere? Though what school would accept children such as these? When a school was found to be out of the question, it was decided that a governess should be employed.

    A governess was found. Her name was Hester. Hester Barrow. It was not a pretty name, but then she was not a pretty girl.

    Dr. Maudsley a all. Charlie, locked in his grief, was scarcely aware of what was going on, and John-the-dig and the Missus, mere servants in the house, were not sulted. The doctor approached Mr. Lomax, the family solicitor, aweewo of them and with a hand from the bank manager, all the arras were made. Then it was done.

    Helpless, passive, we all shared iicipation, each with our particular mix of emotion. The Missus was divided. She felt an instinctive suspi of this stranger who was to e into her domain, and ected with this suspi was the fear of being found wanting—for she had been in charge for years and knew her limitations. She also felt hope. Hope that the new arrival would instill a sense of discipline in the children aore manners and sanity to the house. In fact, so great was her desire for a settled and well-run domestic life that in the advent of the governess’s arrival she took to issuing orders, as though we were the sort of children who might ply. Needless to say, we took no notice.

    John-the-dig’s feelings were less divided, were in fatirely hostile. He would not be drawn into the Missus’s long ws about how things would be, and refused by stony sileo ence the optimism that was ready to take root in her heart. “If she’s the right kind of person…” she would say, or “There’s no knowing how much better things could be…” but he stared out of the kit window and would not be drawn. When the dgested that he take the brougham to meet the governess at the station he was dht rude. “I’ve not got the time to be traipsing across the ty after damned sistresses,” he replied, and the doctor was obliged to make arras to collect her himself. Sihe i with the tarden, John had not been the same, and now, with the ing of this new ge, he spent hours alone, brooding over his own fears and s for the future. This iner meant a fresh pair of eyes, a fresh pair of ears, in a house where no one had looked or listened properly for years. John-the-dig, habituated to secrecy, foresaw trouble.

    In our separate ways we all felt daunted. All except Charlie, that is. When the day came, only Charlie was his usual self. Though he was locked away and out of sight, his presence was heless made known by the thundering and clattering that shook the house from time to time, a din to which we’d all bee so aced that we scarcely even noticed. In his vigil for Isabelle, the man had no notion of day or time, and the arrival of a governess meant nothing to him.

    We were idling that m in one of the front rooms on the first floor. A bedroom, you’d have called it, if the bed had been visible uhe pile of junk that had accumulated there the way junk does over the decades. Emmeline was w away with her nails at the silver embroidery threads that ran through the pattern of the curtains. When she succeeded in freeing one, she surreptitiously put it in her pocket, ready to add later to the magpie stash under her bed. But her tration was broken. Someone was ing, and whether she knew what that meant or not, she had been inated by the sense of expectation that hung about the house.

    It was Emmeline who first heard the brougham. From the windoatched the new arrival alight, brush the creases out of her skirt with two brisk strokes of her palms and look about her. She looked at the front door, to her left, tht, and then—I leaped back—up. Perhaps she took us for a trick of the light or a windoe lifted by the breeze from a broken windowpane. Whatever she saw, it ’t have been us.

    But we saw her. Through Emmeline’s new hole in the curtaiared. We didn’t know what to think. Hester was of average height. Average build. She had hair that was her yellow nor brown. Skin the same color. Coat, shoes, dress, hat: all in the same indistinct tint. Her face was devoid of any distinguishiure. A we stared. We stared at her until our eyes ached. Every pore in her plain little face was illuminated. Something shone in her clothes and in her hair. Something radiated from her luggage. Something cast a glow around her person, like a lightbulb. Something made her exotic.

    We had no idea what it was. We’d never imagihe like of it before.

    We found out later, though.

    Hester was . Scrubbed and soaped and rinsed and buffed and polished all over.

    You  imagine what she thought of Angelfield.

    When she’d been in the house about a quarter of an hour she had the Missus call us. We ig and waited to see what happened . We waited. And waited. Nothing happehat was where she wrong-footed us for the first time, had we only known it. All our expertise in hiding was useless if she wasn’t going to e looking for us. And <dfn></dfn>she did not e. We hung about in the room, growing bored, then vexed by the curiosity that seeded itself in us despite our resistance. We became atteo the sounds from downstairs: John-the-dig’s voice, the dragging of furniture, some banging and knog. Then it fell quiet. At lunchtime we were called and did not go. At six the Missus called us again, “e and have supper with your new governess, children.” We stayed on in the room. No one came. There was the beginning of a sehat the newer was a force to be reed with.

    Later came the sound of the household getting ready for bed. Footsteps oairs, the Missus, saying, “I hope you’ll be fortable, Miss,” and the voice of the governess, steel i, “I’m sure I will, Mrs. Duhank you for all your trouble.”

    ‘About the girls, Miss Barrow-—“

    ‘Don’t you worry about them, Mrs. Duhey’ll be all right. Good night.“

    And after the sound of the Missus’s feet shuffling cautiously dowairs, all was quiet.

    Night fell and the house slept. Except us. The Missus’s attempts to teach us that nighttime was for sleeping had failed as all her lessons had failed, and we had no fear of the dark. Outside the governess’s door we listened and heard nothing but the faint scratch scratch of a mouse uhe boards, so we went on downstairs, to the larder.

    The door would not open. The lock had never been used in our lifetime, but tonight it betrayed itself with a trace of fresh oil.

    Emmeline waited patiently, blankly, for the door to open, as she had always waited before. fident that in a moment there would be bread and butter and jam for the taking.

    But there was o panic. The Missus’s apron pocket. That’s where the key would be. That’s where the keys always were: a ring of rusted keys, unused, for doors and locks and cupboards all over the house, and any amount of fiddling to know which key matched which lock.

    The pocket was empty.

    Emmeliirred, wondered distantly at the delay.

    The governess was shaping up into a real challenge. But she wouldn’t catch us that way. We would go out. You could always get into one of the cottages for a snack.

    The handle of the kit door turhen stopped. No amount of tugging and jiggling could free it. It adlocked.

    The broken window in the drawing room had been boarded up, and the shutters secured in the dining room. There was only oher ce. To the hall and the great double doors we went. Emmeline, bewildered, padded along behind. She was hungry. Why all this fuss with doors and windows? How long before she could fill her tummy with food? A shaft of moonlight, tinted blue by the class in the hall windows, was enough to highlight the huge bolts, heavy and out of reach, that had been oiled and slid into place at the top of the double doors.

    We were imprisoned.

    Emmeline spoke. “Yum yum,” she said. She was hungry. And when Emmeline was hungry, Emmeline had to be fed. It was as simple as that. We were in a fix. It was a long time ing, but eventually Emmeline’s poor little brain realized that the food she longed for could not be had. A look of bewilderment came into her eyes, and she opened her mouth and wailed.

    The sound of her cry carried up the stoaircase, turned into the corridor to the left, rose up another flight of stairs and slipped uhe door of the new governess’s bedroom.

    Soon another noise was added to it. Not the blind shuffle of the Missus, but the smart, metronomic step of Hester Barrow’s feet. A brisk, unhurried click, click, click. Down a set of stairs, along a corridor, to the gallery.

    I te in the folds of the long curtains just before she emerged onto the galleried landing. It was midnight. At the top of the stairs she stood, a pact little figure, her fat nor thi on a sturdy pair of legs, the whole topped by that calm aermined tenance. In her firmly belted blue dressing gown and with her hair ly brushed, she looked for all the world as though she slept sitting up and ready for m. Her hair was thin and stuck flat to her head, her face was lumpen and her nose udgy. She lain, if not worse than plain, but plainness oer had not remotely the same effect that it might on any other woman. She drew the eye.

    Emmeli the foot of the stairs, had been sobbing with hunger a moment ago, yet the instaer appeared in all her glory, she stopped g and stared, apparently placated, as though it were a cakestand piled high with cake that had appeared before her.

    ‘How o see you,“ said Hester, ing dowairs. ”Now, who are you? Adeline or Emmeline?“

    Emmeline, openmouthed, was silent.

    ‘No matter,“ the governess said. ”Would you like some supper? And where is your sister? Would she like some, too?“

    ‘Yum,“ said Emmeline, and I didn’t know if it was the word supper or Hester herself who had provoked it.

    Hester looked around, seeking the other twin. The curtain appeared to her as just a curtain, for after a curslance she turned all her attention to Emmeline. “e with me.” She smiled. She drew a key out of her blue pocket. It was a  blue-silver, buffed to a high shine, and it gliantalizingly in the blue light.

    It did the trick. “Shiny,” Emmeline pronounced and, without knowing what it was or the magic it could work, she followed the key—aer with it—back through the cold corridors to the kit.

    In the folds of the curtain my hunger pangs gave way to anger. Hester and her key! Emmeli was like the perambulator all ain. It was love.

    That was the first night and it was Hester’s victory.

    The grubbiness of the house did not traself to our pristine goverhe way one might have expected. Instead it was the other way around. The few rays of light, drained and dusty, that mao pee the uned windows and the heavy curtains seemed always to fall oer. She gathered them to herself and reflected them bato the gloom, refreshed and vitalized by their tact with her. Little by little the gleam extended f藏书网rom Hester herself to the house. On the first full day it was just her own room that was affected. She took the curtains doluhem into a tub of soapy water. She pegged them on the line where the sun and wind woke up the unsuspected pattern of pink and yellow roses. While they were drying, she ed the window with neer and vinegar to let the light in, and when she could see what she was doing, she scrubbed the room from floor to ceiling. By nightfall she had created a little haven of liness within those four walls. And that was just the beginning.

    With soap and with bleach, with energy and with determination, she imposed hygiene on that house. Where feions the inhabitants had lumbered half-seeing and purposeless, cirg after nothing but their own squalid obsessions, Hester came as a spring-ing miracle. For thirty years the pace of life indoors had been measured by the slow movement of the motes of dust caught in an occasional ray of weary sunlight. Now Hester’s little feet paced out the minutes and the seds, and with a vigorous swish of a duster, the motes were gone.

    After liness came order, and the house was first to feel the ges. Our new governess did a very thh tour. She went from bottom to top, tutting and frowning on every floor. There was not a single cupboard or alcove that escaped her attention; with pencil and notebook in hand, she scrutinized every room, noting damp patches and rattling windows, testing doors and floorboards for squeaks, trying old keys in old locks, and labeling them. She left doors locked behihough it was only a first “going over,” a preparatory stage to the maioratioheless she made a ge in every room she entered: a pile of blas in a er folded aidily on a chair; a book picked up and tucked under her arm to be returned later to the library; the line of a curtairaight. All this doh noticeable haste but without the slightest impression of hurry. It seemed she had only to cast her eye about a room for the darkness in it to recede, for the chaos to begin shamefacedly to put itself in order, for the ghosts to beat a retreat. In this manner, every room was Hestered.

    The attic, it is true, did stop her iracks. Her jaw dropped and she looked aghast at the state of the roof cavity. But even in this chaos she was invincible. She gathered herself together, tightening her lips, and scratched and scribbled away at her page with eveer vigor. The very  day, a builder came. We knew him from the village—an unhurried man with a strolling pace. In speech he stretched out his vowel sounds to give his mouth a rest before the  sonant. He kept six or seven jobs going at ond rarely finished any of them; he spent his w days smoking cigarettes and eyeing the job in hand with a fatalistic shake of the head. He climbed our stairs in his typical lazy fashion, but after he’d been five minutes with Hester we heard his hammer going een to the dozen. She had galvanized him.

    Within a few days there were mealtimes, bedtimes, getting-up times. A few days more and there were  shoes for indoors,  boots for out. Not only that, but the silk dresses were ed, mended, made to fit and hung away for some mythical “best,” and new dresses in navy and green cotton poplin with white sashes and collars appeared for everyday.

    Emmelihrived uhe new regime. She was well fed at regular hours, allowed to play—unde<u>..</u>r tight supervision—with Hester’s shiny keys. She even developed a passion for baths. She struggled at first, yelled and kicked as Hester and the Missus stripped her and lowered her into the tub, but when she saw herself in the mirror afterward, saw herself  and with her hair ly braided and tied with a green bow, her mouth opened and she fell into another of her trances. She liked being shiny. Whenever Emmeline was ier’s presence she used to study her fa the sly, on the lookout for a smile. Wheer did smile—it was not infrequent—Emmeline gazed at her fa delight. Before long she learo smile back.

    Other members of the household f<bdo>?９９ｌｉb.</bdo>lourished, too. The Missus had her eyes examined by the doctor, and with muplaining was taken to a specialist. On her return she could see again. The Missus was so pleased at seeing the house in its ate of lihat all the years she’d lived in a state of grayness fell away from her, and she was rejuvenated suffitly to joier in this brave new world. Even John-the-dig, who obeyed Hester’s orders morosely a his dark eyes always firmly averted from her bright, all-seeing ones, could not resist the positive effect of her energy in the household. Without a word to anyone, he took up his shears aered the tarden for the first time sihe catastrophe. There he joined his efforts to those already being made by nature to mend the violence of the past.

    Charlie was less directly influenced. He kept out of her way and that suited both of them. She had no desire to do anything other than her job, and her job was us. Our minds, our bodies and our souls, yes, but uardian was outside her jurisdi, and so she left him alone. She was no Jane Eyre and he was no Mr. Rochester. In the face of her spruergy he retreated to the old nursery rooms on the sed floor behind a firmly locked door, where he and his memories festered together in squalor. For him the Hester effect was limited to an improvement in his diet and a firmer hand over his finances, which, uhe ho but flimsy trol of the Missus, had been plundered by unscrupulous traders and businesspeople. her of these ges for the good did he notice, and if he had noticed them I doubt he would have cared.

    But Hester did keep the children under trol and out of sight, and had he given it any thought he would have been grateful for this. Under Hester’s reign there was no cause for hostile neighbors to e plaining about the twins, no imperative to visit the kit and have a sandwich made by the Missus, above all, o leave, even for a mihat realm of the imagination that he inhabited with Isabelle, only with Isabelle, always with Isabelle. What he gave up iory, he gained in freedom. He never heard Hester; he never saw her; the thought of her never oered his head. She was entirely satisfactory.

    Hester had triumphed. She might have looked like a potato, but there was nothing that girl couldn’t do, once she put her mind to it.

    Miss Winter paused, her eyes set fixedly on the er of the room, where her past preseself to her with more reality than the present a the ers of her mouth and eyes flickered half-expressions of sorrow and distress. Aware of the thinness of the thread that ected her to her past, I was anxious not to break it, but equally anxious for her not to stop her story.

    The pause lengthened.

    ‘And you?“ I prompted softly. ”What about you?“

    ‘Me?“ She blinked vaguely. ”Oh, I liked her. That was the trouble.“

    ‘Trouble?“

    She blinked again, shuffled in her seat and looked at me with a new, sharp gaze. She had cut the thread.

    ‘I think that’s enough for today. You  go now.“

    THE BOX OF LIVESWith the story of Hester, I fell quickly bato my routine. In the ms I listeo Miss Wiell me her story, hardly b now with my notebook. Later in my room, with my reams of paper, my twelve red pencils and my trusty sharpener, I transcribed what I had memorized. As the words flowed from the point of my pencil onto the page, they jured up Miss Winter’s voi my ear; later, when I read aloud what I had written, I felt my face rearranging itself into her expressions. My left hand rose and fell in mimicry of her emphatic gestures, while my right lay, as though maimed, in my lap. The words turo pictures in my head. Hester,  a and surrounded by a silvery gleam, an all-body halo that grew broader all the time, enpassing first her room, then the house, then its inhabitants. The Missus transformed from a slow-moving figure in darko one whose eyes darted about, bright with seeing. And Emmeline, uhe spell of Hester’s shiny aura, allowing herself to be ged from a dirty, malnourished vagabond into a , affeate and plump little girl. Hester cast her light even into the tarden, where it shoo the ravaged branches of the yews and brought forth fresh green growth. There was Charlie, of course, lumbering in the darkness outside the circle, heard but not seen. And John-the-dig, the strangely named gardener, brooding on its perimeter, relut to be drawn into the light. And Adelihe mysterious and dark-hearted Adeline.

    For all my biographical projects I have kept a box of lives. A box of index cards taining the details—name, occupation, dates, place of residend any other piece of information that seems relevant—of all the signifit people in the life of my subject. I never quite know what to make of my boxes of lives. Depending on my mood they either strike me as a memorial to gladden the dead (“Look!” I imagihem saying as they peer through the glass at me. “She’s writing us down on her cards! And to think we’ve beewo hundred years!”) or, when the glass is very dark and I feel quite stranded and alohis side of it, they seem like little cardboard tombstones, inanimate and cold, and the box itself is as dead as the cemetery. Miss Winter’s cast of characters was very small, and as I shuffled them in my hands their sparse flimsiness dismayed me. I was being given a story, but as far as informatio, I was still far short of what I needed.

    I took a blank card and began to write.

    Hester BarrowGovernessAngelfield HouseBorn: ?

    Died: ?

    I stopped. Thought. Did a few sums on my fingers. The girls had been only thirteen. Aer was not old. With all that verve she couldn’t be. Had she been thirty? What if she were only twenty-five? A mere twelve years older than the girls themselves… Was it possible? I wondered. Miss Winter, in her seventies, was dying. But that didn’t necessarily mean a person older than her would be dead. What were the ces?

    There was only ohing to do.

    I added another o the card and underli.

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