The Thirteenth Tale

With Charlie’s disappearance, it is more difficult to run the house. John-the-dig has taken over nearly all the household duties, and he worries about how they will access the family money. He also feels that there is no need to inform anyone about Charlie’s disappearance. John also does not want any outsiders, like the doctor, interfering in the household, as the results were so disastrous the previous time. In addition, he knows that if he informs Mr. Lomax, the solicitor, everything will change again, and the household will be further scrutinized. He worries that the Missus might be taken away, as her mind has grown increasingly unreliable. Because they have just received the household quarterly allowance, they will be able to continue for a while as usual, and so he decides to say nothing.

Vida, however, knows what happened to Charlie. After his disappearance, she visits a cottage in the woods where Charlie and Isabelle used to go, and where Charlie had still gone after Isabelle was taken away. She finds Charlie’s body inside, near a gun, and it is clear that Charlie has died by suicide. She runs away and finds comfort looking through the window of a cottage where a kindly-looking older woman is knitting. Then she returns to Angelfield, but never tells anyone about Charlie’s death.

Margaret notices that Vida’s doctor is visiting daily now. Judith, one day, tells her that Vida has suggested that she take a holiday. Margaret is suspicious, as Vida has been reluctant to give her any time off, and Judith is clearly hiding something. In the end, she packs a bag, and Dr. Clifton takes her to the train station.

Margaret returns to Angelfield, expecting to see demolition activity, but the area is quiet and deserted. She is supposed to meet Aurelius at the house, but the mist is so thick that she cannot see anything. They call to each other, and Aurelius talks so that she can find him. She thinks she sees a shape in the mist, but it is not him. Finally, they find each other, and walk in the garden to talk. Aurelius tells her that he was born at Angelfield, but he does not know his birthday, except that it was most likely in January or February. He was abandoned as a baby, and Mrs. Love found him. He has no proof he was born at Angelfield, but he knows. He was left on her doorstep the night of the Angelfield fire, and Mrs. Love smelled smoke on him when she picked him up. Although he does not know his own birthday, he asks Margaret what hers is, and writes it down.

It begins to rain, and so Margaret and Aurelius run into the nearby church. Aurelius does not know much about his story, but he does have what he calls an inheritance. They decide that, after the rain, they will go to his house and he can show her his inheritance. In the meantime, he tells her his story—but he tells it in Mrs. Love’s voice, as she had told it to him.

Mrs. Love is knitting by the fire one night, when she notices that she has turned the heel of the sock she is knitting twice. She immediately begins pulling it out. She has turned a heel twice two other times in her life. The first time she had done it, she had found out immediately after that her boyfriend had been shot and killed in a hunting accident. The second time, her sister, who had recently moved in with her after losing her husband, died peacefully sitting next to her in front of the fire. So when it happens on this night, the third time, Mrs. Love assumes, because she has no one left to lose, that it will be her own life lost. She begins unraveling the heel, but also begins preparing to die. While she is doing so, she hears a noise outside, in the rain. When she opens her door, she finds a baby, and immediately takes it in and begins caring for it.

Aurelius finishes Mrs. Love’s story, and makes the point that it is her story, not his, really. In his story, in order for him to be found by Mrs. Love, he first must have been left on the doorstep. His mother must have abandoned him.

On the way to Aurelius’s house, he and Margaret see a local woman, Karen, and her two children, and then go on to Aurelius’s small stone cottage. He shows Margaret his inheritance: the bag he was found in, a baby’s dress, a page from Jane Eyre, a feather, a scrap of paper on which A and S are visible, and a silver spoon with an A engraved. These are the only things from his past, but he has not been able to decipher any meaning from them. He wishes that someone would tell him the truth.

After Margaret leaves Aurelius’s house, she has a feeling that there is some connection that she is missing but decides that it will surface in time. She goes back to Angelfield and is preparing to take some photos of it when she sees Karen’s children playing nearby. One of the children has found a construction hard hat near the house and puts it on his head. Margaret takes a picture of him with Angelfield in the background.

Margaret returns to Vida’s house but is never told why she was asked to leave. Instead of meeting at nine o’clock every morning, they now meet when Vida knocks at Margaret’s door. In between meetings, Margaret works on the story, and time begins to slip past her. Margaret reports that this period is mostly uneventful, but there are a few incidents which she finds significant.

The first is when she goes to the library to look for a copy of Jane Eyre and finds an entire row of different editions of the novel. Vida then poses a philosophical question to Margaret: the great books of the world, including Jane Eyre, are on a conveyer belt to a furnace, which a person is about to turn on. Margaret can stop the destruction by shooting the person. Vida asks Margaret if she would shoot the person to stop the destruction. Margaret does not answer as Vida describes the destruction of the books, including Jane Eyre. Vida is disappointed in Margaret for not stopping the conveyer belt, or rather for not being honest, for Margaret admits to herself that she would have shot the person to stop the destruction. Before Margaret leaves the library, she finds an edition of Jane Eyre that looks like the page from Aurelius’s inheritance. The book is intact, with no page torn out, so she knows that the page did not come from Vida’s library.

The next incident Margaret relates involves the photographs from the day she went to Angelfield, which her father had developed and sent to her. When she meets with Vida, she has the photo and Vida asks about them. Vida looks through all of them, and one catches her attention, but when she returns the photos, she confuses their order, so that Margaret cannot tell which photo captured her attention. The only photo that is really interesting or any good is the one she took of the child in the construction hat, but she does not know why it would interest Vida.

Beyond that, nothing interesting happens during this time, but Margaret notes that Shadow, the cat, became her companion and helps her to stay focused and in the present time, instead of losing herself in the story.

Vida continues with her story. Angelfield is seriously deteriorating, and one night the ceiling falls in and almost kills the Missus. The hole, when they look up, extends upwards through all the floors and they can see the night sky through the hole. They put the Missus to bed, but when they return to wake her in the morning, she is dead. John-the-dig sinks into grief, and Vida realizes that she needs to step in and take charge. She sheds her old self and begins to take care of Angelfield and its inhabitants.