the Thirteenth Tale (2006) by Diane Setterfield

Author:Diane Setterfield [Setterfield, Diane]
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-12-19T00:41:44.343000+00:00

AFTER CHARLIE

Miss Winter did not comment on my communications with her solicitor, though I am certain she was informed, just as I am certain the documents I requested would never have been sent to me without her consent. I wondered whether she might consider it cheating, whether this was the "jumping about in the story" she so disapproved of, but on the day I received the set of letters from Mr. Lomax and sent my request for help to the genealogist, she said not a word but only picked up her story where she had left it, as though none of these postal exchanges of information were happening.

Charlie was the second loss. The third if you count Isabelle, though to all practical purposes we had lost her two years before, and so she hardly counts.

John was more affected by Charlie's disappearance than by Hester's. Charlie might have been a recluse, an eccentric, a hermit, but he was the master of the house. Four times a year, at the sixth or seventh time of asking, he would scrawl his mark on a paper and the bank would release funds to keep the household ticking over. And now he was gone. What would become of the household? What would they do for money?

John had a few dreadful days. He insisted on cleaning up the nursery quarters-"It'll make us all ill otherwise"-and when he could bear the smell no longer, he sat on the steps outside, drawing in the clean air like a man saved from drowning. In the evening he took long baths, using up a whole bar of soap, scrubbing his skin till it glowed pink. He even soaped the inside of his nostrils.

And he cooked. We'd noticed how the Missus lost track of herself halfway through preparing a meal. The vegetables would boil to a mush, then burn on the bottom of the pan. The house was never without the smell of carbonized food. Then one day we found John in the kitchen. The hands that we knew dirty, pulling potatoes from the ground, were now rinsing the yellow-skinned vegetables in water, peeling them, rattling pan lids at the stove. We ate good meat or fish with plenty of vegetables, drank strong, hot tea. The Missus sat in her chair in the corner of the kitchen, with no apparent sense that these used to be her tasks. After the washing up, when night fell, the two of them sat talking over the kitchen table. His concerns were always the same. What would they do? How could they survive? What would become of us all?

`Don't worry, he'll come out," the Missus said.

Come out? John sighed and shook his head. He'd heard this before. "He's not there, Missus. He's gone, have you forgotten already?"

`Gone!" She shook her head and laughed as if he'd made a joke.

At the moment she first learned the fact of Charlie's departure, it had brushed her consciousness momentarily but had not found a place to settle there. The

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