H. J? Hester had a middle name: Josephine.
What else will you want to know? Who looked after the cat? Well, Shadow came to live with me at the bookshop. He sits on the shelves, anywhere he can find a space between the books, and when customers come across him there, he returns their stares with placid equanimity. From time to time he will sit in the window, but not for long. He is baffled by the street, by the vehicles, the passers-by, the buildings opposite. I have shown him the shortcut via the alley to the river, but he scorns to use it.
‘What do you expect?’ my father says. ‘A river is no use to a Yorkshire cat. It is the moors he is looking for.’
I think he is right. Full of expectation Shadow jumps up to the window, looks out, then turns on me a long, disappointed stare.
I don’t like to think that he is homesick.
Doctor Clifton came to my father’s shop – he happened to be visiting the town, he said, and remembering that my father had a bookshop here, he thought it worthwhile to call in, though it was something of a long shot, to see whether we had a particular volume on eighteenth-century medicine he was interested in. As it happened, we did have one, and he and my father chatted amiably about it at length, until well after closing time. To make up for keeping us so late he invited us out for a meal. It was very pleasant, and since he was still in town for another night, my father invited him the next evening for a meal with the family. In the kitchen my mother told me he was ‘A very nice man, Margaret. Very nice.’ The next afternoon was his last. We went for a walk by the river, but this time it was just the two of us, Father being too busy writing letters to be able to accompany us. I told him the story of the ghost of Angelfield. He listened closely and when I had finished we continued to walk, slowly and in silence.
‘I remember seeing that treasure box,’ he said eventually. ‘How did it come to escape the fire?’
I stopped in my tracks, wondering. ‘You know, I never thought to ask.’
‘You’ll never know now, will you?’
He took my arm and we walked on.
Anyway, returning to my subject, which is Shadow and his homesickness, when Doctor Clifton visited my father’s shop and saw the cat’s sadness he proposed to give Shadow a home with him. Shadow would be very happy back in Yorkshire, I have no doubt. But this offer, kind as it is, has plunged me into a state of painful perplexity. For I am not sure I can bear to be parted from him. He, I am sure, would bear my absence with the same composure with which he accepts Miss Winter’s disappearance, for he is a cat; but being human, I have grown fond of him, and would prefer if at all possible to keep him near me.
In a letter I betrayed something of these thoughts to Doctor Clifton; he replies that perhaps we might both go and stay, Shadow and I, for a holiday. He invites us for a month, in the spring. Anything, he says, may happen in a month, and by the end of it he thinks it possible that we may have thought of some way out of the dilemma that suits us all. I cannot help but think Shadow will get his happy ending yet.
And that is all.
Post Scriptum
Or nearly all. One thinks something is finished, and then suddenly it isn’t, quite.
I have had a visitor.
It was Shadow who was first to notice. I was humming as I packed for our holiday, suitcase open on the bed. Shadow was stepping in and out of it, toying with the idea of making himself a nest on my socks and cardigans, when suddenly he stopped, all intent, and stared towards the door behind me.
She came not as a golden angel, nor as the cloaked spectre of death. She was like me: a tallish, thin, brown-haired woman you would not notice if she passed you in the street.
There were a hundred, a thousand things I thought I would want to ask her, but I was so overcome I could hardly even speak her name. She stepped towards me, put her arms around me and pressed me to her side.
‘Moira,’ I managed to whisper, ‘I was beginning to think you weren’t real.’
But she was real. Her cheek against mine, her arm across my shoulders, my hand at her waist. Scar to scar we touched, and all my questions faded as I felt her blood flow with mine, her heart beat with mine. It was a moment of wonderment, great and calm; and I knew that I remembered this feeling. It had been locked in me, closed away, and now she had come and released it. This blissful circuitry. This oneness that had once been ordinary, and was today, now that I had recovered it, miraculous.
She came and we were together.
I understood that she had come to say goodbye. That next time we met it would be me who went to her. But that this next meeting wouldn’t be for a very long time. There was no rush. She could wait and so could I.
I felt the touch of her fingers on my face as I brushed her tears away, then, in joy, our fingers found each other and entwined. Her breath on my cheek, her face in my hair, I buried my nose in the crook of her neck and inhaled her sweetness.
Such joy.
No matter that she could not stay. She had come. She had come.
I’m not sure how or when she left. I simply realized that she was no longer there. I sat on the bed, quite calm, quite happy. I felt the curious sensation of my blood rerouting itself, of my heart recalibrating its beat for me alone. Touching my scar she had brought it alive; now, gradually, it cooled until it felt no different from the rest of my body.
She had come and she had gone. I would not see her again this side of the grave. My life was my own.
In the suitcase Shadow was asleep. I put out my hand to stroke him. He opened a cool, green eye, regarded me for a moment, then closed it again.
Copyright © 2006 Diane Setterfield
Anchor edition 2007
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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Setterfield, Diane
The thirteenth tale / Diane Setterfield.—Anchor Canada ed.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37193-5
I. Title.
PR6119.E88T48 2007 823'.92 C2007-903364-4
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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