‘You sound quite near, though.“
Aurelius opened a little blue notebook divided into months.
We strolled on to the end of the path, then into a space where there seemed to be nothing but mist. When we came to a wall of yew twice as high as Aurelius himself, we followed it. I noticed a sparkling in the grass and on the leaves: The sun had come out. The moisture in the air began to evaporate and the circle of visibility grew wider by the minute. Our wall of yew had led us full circle around an empty space; we had arrived back at the same walkway we had entered by.
I turned back to Aurelius, but I had lost my nerve. The moment for confidences was gone.
He followed my gaze to the topiary pyramids and beyond. “See what? No, I didn’t see anything.”
‘Sometime in January, probably. Possibly February. Possibly the end of December, even. Sixty years ago, roughly. I’m afraid I don’t know any more than that.“
‘Yes.“
When my question seemed so lost in time that I was not even sure I had asked it, Aurelius answered. “I was born here.”
With the slow and heavy steps of invalids, we resumed our walking. The mist was almost gone. The magical shapes of the topiary had lost their charm and looked like the unkempt bushes and hedges they were.
Unthinking, I insisted, “Yes, but when?”
‘Aurelius!“ I took hold of the sleeve of his greatcoat. ”Is it true? Were you really born here?“
I nodded, and Aurelius went on.
I pictured Aurelius staring into the mist looking for a landmark.
‘I’m next to a tree.“ The words were muffled.
‘Yes. That is the word for what I am. A foundling.“
‘The nineteenth,“ I told him, and he wrote it down with a pencil so small it looked like a toothpick in his huge hand.
‘Sometimes you can know things. Things about yourself. Things from before you can remember. I can’t explain it.“
‘Did you see that, Aurelius?“
‘And your parents…“
‘I believe it,“ I said.
‘It’s just notes at the moment. Interviews with Miss Winter. And research.“
I frowned, remembered what he had told me before about Mrs. Love and not having a mother. But in what circumstances would an adopted child know so little about his original circumstances that he does not even know his own birthday?
With his last words, Aurelius had let the lightness slip, allowed a fervor to creep in. He cleared his throat. “Obviously I don’t expect anyone to believe it. I’ve no evidence as such. Only a coincidence of dates, and Mrs. Love’s vague memory of a smell of smoke—and my own conviction.”
‘No idea.“
His voice was in quite the wrong direction. What had I seen? It was not Aurelius. It must have been an effect of the mist. Afraid of what I might yet see if I waited, I stood still, staring into the aqueous air, willing the figure to appear again.
‘But you know it was here? In this house?“
‘I’ll make a note of it, shall I?“ he said brightly. ”Then I can send you a card.“
‘I believe you,“ I repeated, my tongue thick with all the waiting words. ”I’ve had that feeling, too. Knowing things you can’t know. From before you can remember.“
‘Of course I am.“
And so Aurelius thought aloud, while I stepped into a cloud and followed the thread of his voice in the air.
‘Yes?“
‘When?“
My mind map was accurate: I came to the garden exactly when I expected to. The dark shapes of the yew stood like a hazily painted stage set, flattened into two dimensions by the blank background. Like ethereal bowler hats, a pair of domed formsfloated on the cloudlike mist, the trunks that supported them fading into the whiteness beneath. Sixty years had left them overgrown and out of shape, but it was easy today to suppose that it was the mist that was softening the geometry of the forms, that when it lifted, it would reveal the garden as it was then, in all its mathematical perfection, set in the grounds not of a demolition site, nor of a ruin, but of a house intact.
‘Do you really?“
‘I just want to take some photographs. I don’t think the weather is on my side, though.“
I called out “Hello!” and a man’s voice was carried back to me.
It had gone. Or else it had never been there at all.
The day before, on the train, I had imagined activity and noise: shouted instructions and arms sending messages in urgent semaphore; cranes, plangent and slow; stone crashing on stone. Instead, as I arrived at the lodge gates and looked toward the demolition site, everything was silent and still.
‘Do you mean to tell me, Aurelius, that you are a foundling?“
‘One does get used to it, I suppose,“ he said, and I regretted that he had to comfort me for his own loss.
‘Today is research, is it?“
And there it was again! A sudden movement in the corner of my eye, there and gone in the same instant.
‘You’ll get to see it properly within the hour. This mist won’t last long.“
We walked together in the garden. In his overcoat, Aurelius seemed even taller and broader than he really was. Beside him, in my mist-gray raincoat, I felt insubstantial.
‘What do you need to know?“
‘Right you are! An excellent plan! Though I shall have to think of something to say, won’t I? How hard it is to speak to order, when it seems so easy the rest of the time… What dismal weather we’re having. Never known murkiness like it.“
I brought my wrist close to my face and read the time. I had arranged to meet Aurelius, but how to find him in this mist? I could wander forever without seeing him, even if he passed within arm’s reach.
‘So am I,“ I called back. ”I don’t think yours is the same tree as mine. You sound too far away.“
‘Anyway, the minute I got here I knew. This is home, I said to myself. This is where I come from. There was no doubt about it. I knew.“
‘… found me. Yes.“
There was nothing to see; the mist that hung in the air made everything invisible that was more than a short distance away. Even the path was indistinct. My feet were there one moment, gone the next. Lifting my head, I walked blindly, tracing the path as I remembered it from my last visit, as I remembered it from Miss Winter’s descriptions.
‘Why do you come here, Aurelius?“
We came to a kind of walkway, lined on each side with cones grown so wide that they almost made a hedge.
‘Aha! There you are!“ boomed a great voice behind me. Aurelius. He clasped my shoulders in his mittened hands as I turned to face him. ”Goodness gracious, Margaret, you’re as white as a sheet. Anyone would think you’d seen a ghost!“
He considered me with a curious expression, no doubt wondering how much to tell me. “No, actually,” he said.
All my unsaid words went back to wherever they had been all these years.
‘Aurelius?“ My voice sounded shaky to my own ears.
‘So it was Mrs. Love who…“ I began.
‘Do I? Why don’t you stay where you are and keep talking, and I’ll find you!“
‘Yes.“
Impossible to tell whether he was distant or close by. “Where are you?”
‘Yes. I’ve got a birthday.“
I was lost for words.
Aurelius bit his lip and sent me a wary sideways look.
His confidences, this mist, had led us unexpectedly onto a peninsula of intimacy, and I found myself on the brink of telling what I had never told anyone before. The words flew ready-formed into my head, organized themselves instantly into sentences, long strings of sentences, bursting with impatience to fly from my tongue. As if they had spent years planning for this moment.
Half a century, as insubstantial as the water suspended in this air, was ready to evaporate with the first ray of winter sun.
‘How is your book going?“
‘Hello!“
‘The night I was found there was a big fire here. Mrs. Love told me so, when I was nine. She thought she should, because of the smell of smoke on my clothes when she found me. Later I came over to have a look. And I’ve been coming ever since. Later I looked it up in the archives of the local paper. Anyway—“
I feigned a smile. “It’s coming up soon, actually. ”
‘Are you still there?“
That is when I saw it. A shadow that glided past me, pale in the watery light. I think I knew it was not Aurelius. I was suddenly conscious of the beating of my heart, and I stretched out my hand, half fearful, half hopeful. The figure eluded me and swam out of view.
‘Have you got a birthday?“ Aurelius asked.
His voice had the unmistakable lightness of someone telling something extremely important. A story so cherished it had to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.
He gave a strange, sad smile. “On my birthday.”
I stopped abruptly. Aurelius wandered on, unaware of the effect his words had had on me. I half ran a few paces to catch up with him.
Aurelius shoved his hands into the depths of his pockets. His shoulders tightened. “I wouldn’t expect other people to understand. I haven’t got any proof. But I do know.” He sent me a quick glance, and I encouraged him, with my eyes, to continue.
