‘Don’t tell mother,’ I warned him, ‘but Miss Winter and her sister are twins.’
He was silent. Then he just said, ‘You will take care, won’t you Margaret?’
A quarter of an hour later I had settled into my seat next to the window and was taking Hester’s diary out of my pocket.
I should like to understand a great deal more about optics. Sitting with Mrs Dunne in the drawing room going over meal plans for the week, I caught sight of a sudden movement in the mirror. ‘Emmeline!’ I exclaimed, irritated, for she was not supposed to be in the house at all, but outside, getting her daily exercise and fresh air. It was my own mistake, of course, for I had only to look out of the window to see that she was outside, and her sister too, playing nicely for once. What I had seen – caught a misleading glimpse of to be precise – must have been a flash of sunlight come in the window and reflected in the mirror.
On reflection (On reflection! An unintended drollery!), it is the psychology of seeing that caused my misapprehension, as much as any strangeness in the workings of the optical world. For being used to seeing the twins wandering about the house in places I would not expect them to be, and at times when I would expect them to be elsewhere, one falls into the habit of interpreting every movement out of the corner of one’s eye as evidence of their presence. Hence a flash of sunlight reflected in a mirror presents itself in a very convincing manner to the mind as a girl in a white dress. To guard against errors such as this, one would have to teach oneself to view everything without preconception, to abandon all habitual modes of thought. There is much to be said in favour of such an attitude in principle. The freshness of mind! The virginal response to the world! So much science has at its root the ability to see afresh what has been seen and thought to be understood for centuries. However, in ordinary life, one cannot live by such principles. Imagine the time it would take if every aspect of experience had to be scrutinized afresh every minute of every day. No; in order to free ourselves from the mundane it is essential that we delegate much of our interpretation of the world to that lower area of the mind that deals with the presumed, the assumed, the probable. Even though it sometimes leads us astray and causes us to misinterpret a flash of sunlight as a girl in a white dress, when these two things are as unlike as two things can be.
Mrs Dunne’s mind does wander sometimes. I fear she took in very little of our conversation about meal plans, and we shall have to go over the whole thing again tomorrow.
I have a little plan regarding my activities here and the doctor.
I have told him at great length of my belief that Adeline demonstrates a type of mental disturbance that I have neither encountered nor read about before. I mentioned the papers I have been reading about twins and the associated developmental problems, and I saw his face approve my reading. I think he has a clearer understanding now of my abilities and talent. One book I spoke of, he did not know and I was able to give him a resume of the arguments and evidence in the book. I went on to point out the few significant inconsistencies that I had noticed in it, and to suggest how, if it were my book, I would have altered my conclusions and recommendations.
The doctor smiled at me at the end of my speech, and said, lightly, ‘Perhaps you should write your own book.’ This gave me exactly the opportunity I have been seeking for some time.
I pointed out to him that the perfect case study for such a book was at hand, here in Angelfield House. That I could devote a few hours every day to working on writing up my observations. I sketched out a number of trials and experiments that could be undertaken to test my hypothesis. And I touched briefly on the value that the finished book would have in the eyes of the medical establishment. After this I lamented the fact that for all my experience, my formal qualifications are not grand enough to tempt a publisher, and finally I confessed that, as a woman, I was not entirely confident of being able to bring such an ambitious project off. A man, if only there were a man, intelligent and resourceful, sensitive and scientific, having access to my experience and my case study, would be sure to make a better job of it.
Thus I sowed in his mind the seed of an idea, the result of which is exactly as I intended: we are to work together.
I fear Mrs Dunne is not well. I lock doors and she opens them. I open curtains and she closes them. And still my books will not stay in their place! She tries to avoid responsibility for her actions by maintaining that the house is haunted.
Quite by chance, her talk of ghosts comes on the very day the book I am in the middle of reading has completely disappeared, only to be replaced by a novella by Henry James. I hardly suspect Mrs Dunne of the substitution. She scarcely knows how to read herself, and is not given to practical jokes. Obviously it was one of the girls. What makes it noteworthy is that a striking coincidence has made it a cleverer trick than they can have known. For the book is a rather silly story about a governess and two haunted children. I am afraid that in it Mr James exposes the extent of his ignorance. He knows little about children and nothing at all about governesses.
It is done. The experiment has begun.
The separation was painful, and if I did not know the good that is to come of it, I should have thought myself cruel for inflicting it upon them. Emmeline sobs fit to break her heart. How is it for Adeline? For she is the one who is to be the most altered by the experience of independent life. I shall know tomorrow when we have our first meeting.
There is no time for anything but research, but I have managed to do one additional useful thing. I fell into conversation today with the school-teacher outside the post office. I told her that I had spoken to John about the truant, and that she should come to me if the boy is absent again without reason. She says she is used to teaching half a class at harvest time when the children go spud-hucking with their parents in the fields. But it is not harvest time, and the child was weeding the parterres, I told her. She asked me which child it was, and I felt foolish at not being able to tell her. The distinctive hat is no help at all in identifying him, since children do not wear hats in class. I could go back to John, but doubt he will give me more information than last time.
I am not writing my diary much lately. I find that after the writing, late at night, of the reports I prepare every day about Emmeline’s progress, I am frequently too tired to keep up with my own record of my activities. And I do want to keep a record of these days and weeks, for I am engaged, with the doctor, on very important research, and in years to come, when I have gone away and left this place, I may wish to look back and remember. Perhaps my efforts with the doctor will open some door for me into further work of this kind, for I find the scientific and intellectual work more engrossing and more satisfying than anything I have ever done. This morning for instance, Doctor Maudsley and I had the most stimulating conversation on the subject of Emmeline’s use of pronouns. She is showing an ever-greater inclination to speak to me, and her ability to communicate improves every day. Yet the one aspect of her speech that is resistant to development is the persistence of the first person plural. ‘We went to the woods,’ she will say, and always I correct her: ‘I went to the woods.’ Like a little parrot she will repeat ‘I’ after me, but in the very next sentence, ‘We saw a kitten in the garden,’ or some such thing.
The doctor and I are much intrigued by this peculiarity. Is it simply an ingrained habit of speech carried over from her twin language into English, a habit that will in time right itself? Or does the twinness go so deep in her that even in her language she is resistant to the idea of having a separate identity from that of her sister? I told the doctor about imaginary friends that so many disturbed children invent, and together we explored the implications of this. What if the child’s dependence on her twin is so great that the separation causes a mental trauma such that the damaged mind provides solace by the creation of an imaginary twin, a fantasy companion? We arrived at no satisfactory conclusion, but parted with the satisfaction of having located another area of future study: linguistics.
&nb
sp; What with Emmeline, and the research, and the general housekeeping that needs to be done, I find I am sleeping too little, and despite my reserves of energy, which I maintain by healthy diet and exercise, I can distinguish the symptoms of sleep deprivation. I irritate myself by putting things down and forgetting where I have left them. And when I pick up my book at night, my bookmark tells me that the previous night I must have turned the pages blindly, for I have no recollection at all of the events on the page or the one before. These small annoyances and my constant tiredness are the price I pay for the luxury of working alongside the doctor on our project.
However, that is not what I wanted to write about. I meant to write about our work. Not our findings, which are documented thoroughly in our papers, but the pattern of our minds, the fluency with which we understand each other, the way in which our instant understanding permits us almost to do without words. When we are both engaged in plotting the changes in sleep patterns of our separate subjects for instance, he may want to draw my attention to something, and he does not need to speak, for I can feel his eyes on me, his mind calling to me, and I raise my head from my work, quite ready for him to point out whatever it is.
Sceptics might consider this pure coincidence, or suspect me of magnifying a chance incidence into a habitual occurrence by imagination, but I have come to see that when two people work closely together on a joint project – two intelligent people, I mean to say – a bond of communication develops between them that can enhance their work. All the while they are jointly engaged on a task, they are aware of, acutely sensitive to, each other’s tiniest movements, and can interpret them accordingly. This, even without seeing the infinitesimal movements. And it is no distraction from the work. On the contrary, it enhances it, for our speed of understanding is quickened. Let me add one simple example, small in itself, but standing in for countless others. This morning, I was intent upon some notes, trying to see a pattern of behaviour emerging from his jottings on Adeline. Reaching for a pencil to make an annotation in the margin, I felt the doctor’s hand brush mine and he passed the pencil I sought into it. I looked up to thank him, but he was deeply engrossed in his own papers, quite unconscious of what had happened. In such a way we work together: minds, hands, always in conjunction, always anticipating the other’s needs and thoughts. And when we are apart, which we are for most of the day, we are always thinking of small details relating to the project, or else observations about the broader aspects of life and science, and even this shows how well suited we are for this joint undertaking.
But I am sleepy, and though I could write at length of the joys of co-authoring a research paper, it is really time to go to bed.
I have not written for nearly a week, and do not offer my usual excuses. My diary disappeared.
I spoke to Emmeline about it – kindly, severely, with offers of chocolate and threats of punishment (and yes, my methods have broken down, but frankly losing a diary touches one most personally) – but she continues to deny everything. Her denials were consistent and showed many signs of good faith. Anyone not knowing the circumstances would have believed her. Knowing her as I do, I found the theft unexpected myself, and find it hard to explain it within the general progress she has made. She cannot read and has no interest in other people’s thoughts and inner lives, other than so far as they affect her directly. Why should she want it? Presumably it is the shine of the lock that tempted her – her passion for shiny things is undiminished, and I do not try to reduce it; it is usually harmless enough. But I am disappointed in her.
If I were to judge by her denials and her character alone, I would conclude that she was innocent of the theft. But the fact remains that it cannot have been anyone else.
John? Mrs Dunne? Even supposing that the servants should have wanted to steal my diary, which I don’t believe for a minute, I remember clearly that they were busy elsewhere in the house when it went missing. In case I was wrong about this, I brought the conversation round to their activities, and John confirms that Mrs Dunne was in the kitchen all morning (‘making a right racket too’ he told me). She confirms that John was at the coach house mending the car (‘noisy old job’). It cannot have been either of them.
And so, having eliminated all the other suspects I am obliged to believe that it was Emmeline.
And yet I cannot shake off my misgivings. Even now I can picture her face – so innocent in appearance, so distressed at being accused – and I am forced to wonder, is there some additional factor at play here that I have failed to take into account? When I view the matter in this light it gives rise to an uneasiness in me: I am suddenly overwhelmed by the presentiment that none of my plans are destined to come to fruition. Something has been against me ever since I came to this house! Something that wants to thwart me and frustrate me in every project I undertake! I have checked and rechecked my thinking, retraced every step in my logic; I can find no flaw, yet still I find myself beset by doubt…What is it that I am failing to see?
Reading over this last paragraph I am struck by the most uncharacteristic lack of confidence in my tone. It is surely only tiredness that makes me think thus. An unrested mind is prone to wander into unfruitful avenues; it is nothing that a good night’s sleep cannot cure.
Besides, it is all over now. Here I am, writing in the missing diary. I locked Emmeline in her room for four hours, the next day for six, and she knew the day after it would be eight. On the second day, shortly after I came down from unlocking her door I found the diary on my desk in the schoolroom. She must have slipped down very quietly to put it there, I did not see her go past the library door to the schoolroom even though I left the door open deliberately. But it was returned. So there is no room for doubt, is there?
I am so tired and yet I cannot sleep. I hear steps in the night, but when I go to my door and look into the corridor there is no one there.
I confess it made me uneasy – makes me uneasy still – to think that this little book was out of my possession even for two days. The thought of another person reading my words is most discomforting. I cannot help but think how another person would interpret certain things I have written, for when I write for myself only, and know perfectly well the truth of what I write, I am perhaps less careful of my expression, and writing at speed, may sometimes express myself in a way that could be misinterpreted by another, who would not have my insight into what I really mean. Thinking over some of the things I have written (the doctor and the pencil – such an insignificant event – hardly worth writing about at all really) I can see that they might appear to a stranger in a light rather different from what I intended, and I wonder whether I should tear these pages out and destroy them. Only I do not want to, for these are the pages that I most want to keep, to read later, when I am old and gone from here, and think back to the happiness of my work and the challenge of our great project.
Why should a scientific friendship not be a source of joy? It is no less scientific for that, is it?
But perhaps the answer is to stop writing altogether, for when I do write, even now as I write this very sentence, this very word, I am aware of a ghost reader who leans over my shoulder watching my pen, who twists my words and perverts my meaning, and makes me uncomfortable in the privacy of my own thoughts.
It is very aggravating to be presented to oneself in a light so different from the familiar one, even when it is clearly a false light.
I will not write any more.
Endings
The Ghost in the Tale
Thoughtfully I lifted my eyes from the final page of Hester’s diary. A number of things had struck my attention as I had been reading it, and now that I had finished, I had the leisure to consider them more methodically.
Oh, I thought.
Oh.
And then, OH!
How to describe my eureka? It began as a stray what if, a wild conjecture, an implausible notion. It was – well, not impossible perhaps, but absurd! For a start—
About to begin
marshalling the sensible counter-arguments I stopped dead in my tracks. For my mind, racing ahead of itself in a momentous act of premonition, had already submitted to this revised version of events. In a single moment, a moment of vertiginous, kaleidoscopic bedazzlement, the story Miss Winter had told me unmade and remade itself, in every event identical, in every detail the same – yet entirely, profoundly different. Like those images that reveal a young bride if you hold the page one way, and an old crone if you hold it the other. Like the sheets of random dots that disguise teapots or clown faces or Rouen cathedral if you can only learn to see them. The truth had been there all along – only now had I seen it.
There followed a long hour of musing. One element at a time, taking all the different angles separately, I reviewed everything I knew. Everything I had been told, and everything I had discovered. Yes, I thought. And yes, again. That, and that, and that too. My new knowledge blew life into the story. It began to breathe. And as it did so, it began to mend. The jagged edges smoothed themselves. The gaps filled themselves in. The missing parts were regenerated. Puzzles explained themselves and mysteries were mysteries no longer.
At last, after all the tale-telling and all the yarn-spinning, after the smoke screens and the trick mirrors and the double bluffs, I knew.
I knew what Hester saw that day she thought she saw a ghost.
I knew the identity of the boy in the garden.
I knew who attacked Mrs Maudsley with a violin.
I knew who killed John-the-dig.
I knew who Emmeline was looking for underground.