The Seventh Miss Hatfield (4 page)

‘Rebecca woke up one night thinking enough was enough. She would only visit the town as a passing stranger and check up on her family. It wouldn’t do any harm. Curiosity gnawed at her bones, and she felt compelled to make the visit.

‘The next day she rose early and began the walk to town. By the time she got there, the path’s dust and dirt cloaked her form so entirely that she believed she wouldn’t have to hide her face. She was treated respectfully as a weary traveller, and when she asked for directions was told the way to her own house.

‘Though she thought she knew the town as well as she knew her own son, she found the place completely changed; it had morphed into something more. The old buildings had been extended, making them look bigger and grander. The dirt paths were beaten out and smoothed, so as not to trip the children who ran along them. When she arrived at the home the stranger had told her was where the Hatfields lived, it looked nothing like the house she remembered. She thought the stranger was probably mistaken, or possibly had directed her to her son’s house, since his family would also be Hatfields. Just to make sure, she decided to knock on the door for good measure.’

Miss Hatfield smoothed out the wrinkles in her dress, and I found myself growing impatient, wanting her to continue this strange tale. She finally began again. ‘When the door opened, a woman with a baby at her hip peeked her head out and frowned. Rebecca told her she was looking for John, since she believed the woman was probably his wife and might be startled at the sight of such a dusty female traveller knocking on her door for no apparent reason. The woman looked at her in confusion, saying no John lived there. Thinking she had the wrong house, Rebecca then asked her where she might find the Hatfield residence. The woman looked even more confused, and replied that she was Sarah Hatfield and the residence was indeed that house. Rebecca, refusing to believe her, asked to see her husband, who soon came to the door. He introduced himself as Richard Hatfield, and when asked where John was, he too was confused at first. He scratched his head for a moment, until a certain light of recognition dawned in his eyes. “Are you doing some type of family history research, ma’am? My great-grandfather’s name was John.” He clearly thought all of this strange, to say the least, and stared at her, waiting for an answer …

‘Rebecca finally realized what must have happened but, needing further proof, she asked Richard, “What year is it, please?”

‘ “Why, it’s the year of our Lord 1713, of course,” was his reply. At this, Rebecca was visibly shaken. It’s said she asked him where the nearest river was, and then walked there, all the way muttering, “1713,” to herself.’

‘And what happened to her after that?’ I asked.

‘She found a rope somewhere on her way to the river. Once she got there, she tied one end of the rope around her waist and the other end around a heavy rock, and then waded into the river with it cradled in her arms. A child from the town saw her do it and ran to get help.’

‘And then?’ I couldn’t help myself. I had to know what happened to Rebecca, and why Miss Hatfield was named after her.

‘She was never seen again,’ she said. ‘Her body was never found. It probably sank with the rock and never surfaced.’

‘And why were you named after her?’

‘Named after?’ She smiled. ‘I’ve never thought of it that way.’ She was almost mumbling now. ‘I wasn’t always Rebecca Hatfield. I had a different name, once. I … just don’t remember it.’

‘You don’t remember your given name?’ I was astonished that someone could so easily forget something as important as that.

‘I used to remember it,’ she said, more to herself than me. ‘I used to whisper it to myself at night, so I wouldn’t forget it. But it appears I finally have.’ Her voice was remorseful and tinged with sadness. I had the strangest urge to comfort her, but I instinctively knew this was one thing I couldn’t help her with.

‘I was born almost one and a half centuries ago, in 1832.’ She’d obviously started her own story now. It was a ridiculous statement, but I had no choice other than to go along with her fantasy for the moment, and besides, it was no stranger than the fact that my appearance had changed completely overnight. ‘My childhood wasn’t perfect, but it was happy enough. My parents were of the upper class, so I didn’t have to worry about my future. It was all laid out for me; I just had to continue living according to their plans.’ She glanced at me and saw that I was now thoroughly drawn into her tale. ‘This isn’t a story. Those were days strung together with a beginning, but no middle or end.’

‘How are you still alive now?’ I couldn’t help but ask her.

‘It all happened in a few hours,’ she said. ‘A lady was pushing a pram around the same park where I took my morning stroll. I wasn’t alone, of course – it was improper back in those days for a young woman to be in public unaccompanied. My older brother was chaperoning me, but he was talking to an old friend from his university days, and his back was turned.

‘I don’t quite know what possessed me, but I said to the woman with the pram, “Excuse me, madam. Your baby looks so adorable. May I hold him?” I’d only glimpsed the dear baby’s face and a lock of his golden hair, but his dimples made me smile and think of my little sister’s dimples when she was that age.

‘ “Why, of course.” The woman smiled warmly and reached into the pram. She placed him gently into my arms which suddenly registered the unexpected shock of weightlessness. When I looked down, glassy eyes stared back, and I almost dropped the baby.

‘Upon a closer look, I found that it wasn’t a baby at all, merely a doll that resembled one. Its hair was stiff and coarse, and I wondered how I could have mistaken it for my sister’s soft, golden tresses. I remembered her lying perfectly still in her last earthly bed. Her eyes were closed, but I recall how the wind had tousled her locks. I was the last one to touch her; I smoothed her hair as gently as I could with trembling fingers. I watched as two men shovelled dirt upon her coffin, scoop after scoop, until she was buried deep below our feet. And yet I couldn’t erase her face from my memory. How could I, when even though she was with us for such a short while, I loved her so dearly?

‘ “How could you?” My words came out harsher and deadlier than I expected. It was a cruel joke this woman had played, especially when she must know of the loss my family and I had suffered this November past. How could she be so insensitive, when she and everyone else in the town knew of our pain? It had been plastered all over the newspaper for everyone to see. But although we received flowers by the bundle and condolence letters by the stack, how could anyone have truly understood how we felt?

‘Perhaps I was being unfair. I didn’t recognize her – maybe she didn’t know what had happened to us. “I–I’m sorry,” I said to her quietly. She couldn’t possibly understand what my family had gone through; there was no reason for her to. I had no right to talk to her in that way. I handed the doll back and turned away from her, tears streaming down my cheeks as I walked back to my brother.

‘ “You think I don’t understand, but I know.” I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder, which caused me to look back. “I miss my darling boy,” the woman said, not meeting my eyes. “I miss him so much that sometimes I feel as though I’m breaking from the inside out. The only thing holding me together is the thought that he wouldn’t want that, and neither would your sister.”

‘ “Your boy,” I asked. “What happened to him?” In a way, I didn’t want to hear the answer, but for some reason I knew I had to ask the question.

‘ “Walter didn’t wake up, just like your sister,” she said, and I saw how wrong I was to have judged her as I did everyone else.

‘She introduced herself to me as Miss Rebecca Hatfield, and asked if I would like to see a photo of her son she kept at home. Knowing it might help her cope with her loss, I agreed without thinking twice about letting my brother know, for he was still engaged in conversation with his friend. Besides, I thought I wouldn’t be gone long.

‘Miss Hatfield led me along block after block. It felt strange without a family member accompanying me. I was used to being watched over, and this felt like freedom to me.

‘The house we came to wasn’t stately in the least, although I’ve done it up over the years and now I’m quite fond of it, especially this room. But back then its gable was crooked and its colours drab. The shingles were falling off the roof and there was no porch to speak of. I was surprised she could have afforded a photograph of her son. Once she led me inside, however, I found the tidiness and warmth that permeated the house made it much more welcoming than my own. There was none of the polished-yet-cold atmosphere I found in the way my mother kept her house; similarly, Miss Hatfield turned out to be much less distant than my mother.

‘Miss Hatfield brought out a cake she’d baked, along with – of course – some tea, which I later learned had a drop of the lake’s waters in it. I remember we talked for at least an hour. What of, I don’t rightly recall, but I suppose I told her of my life, just as she disclosed parts of hers. I say parts, because though I failed to notice it then, she was keeping portions of the truth from me and twisting her story to suit herself and her objectives. She introduced me to the idea of immortality through the same stories I told you, and some more we haven’t got to yet. She explained to me the simultaneous gift and curse it was to live for ever. At the time I thought she was merely delusional, and that she was making those stories up. I still wish she had been.

‘She told me that now I was just like her, and there was no turning back. She said I was destined to become her and that we would live out our endless lives together. At one point I became so scared that I asked her to stop. I accused her of things I dare not repeat even now. I begged and pleaded with her, but to no avail. Miss Hatfield said I needed to know the truth, now that I couldn’t go back. And so I grabbed the nearest thing to me, which was the knife she’d cut the cake with, and held it up at her with a shaking hand.

‘ “Stop!” I remember crying out. “Please stop. I can’t bear it.” My words tumbled out through my sobs. But Miss Hatfield only laughed.

‘ “This is for your own good. Do you think I’d be doing this if it weren’t?” There was a dark glint in her eyes. “Go ahead, kill me,” she dared. “I’d rather die than keep living this way.” She put her hands around mine, which were shakily grasping the knife’s handle, and brought the tip of the blade closer to her chest. “Go ahead.”

‘ “Just stop it,” I remember begging. “Please.”

‘Her hands still around mine, she jerked the blade away from her. All in an instant I felt relief, and then that, too, was shattered when she plunged the knife into her chest. I can still hear her little gasp in my ear when I close my eyes. I remember crying out, but hearing no sound save for her final utterance: “Walter.”

‘Death appeared glad to be able to finally reclaim her after all those years. He’d been waiting for her; watching until he found his moment. The fifth Miss Hatfield turned to dust before my eyes. There was nothing left of her existence save for the thin sheen of blood on the cake knife.’

‘And that’s when you knew the stories she told you were true,’ I said.

Miss Hatfield nodded and I found myself understanding how she felt.

‘But why did you take her name?’

‘It was one of the things she explained to me, before … it happened. She told me that we become each other, since we were the only people we could trust. We need a life to turn to when we lose our own, and by taking on the name, we take on a history and another life.’

‘So now … Who am I?’

‘You are me and I am you. We’re exceptions in time.’

‘And I’m now Rebecca Hatfield.’ I meant to ask it as a question, but my remark came out sounding more like a statement, much more certain than I was.

‘You’re the seventh Miss Hatfield.’

‘This still doesn’t explain who I am … what I am.’ I gestured to my face. ‘If I’m immortal now, why am I in someone else’s body?’

‘You’re not in someone else’s body,’ Miss Hatfield said in a matter-of-fact manner. ‘You’re still in your own.’

‘But this person is … older.’

‘It’s your older self, and that has nothing to do with immortality or the lake’s waters. That has to do with the clock and is a different matter entirely.’

‘The clock? What does the clock have to do with anything?’

‘I used the clock to move time forward. You weren’t immortal yet, since I had not yet given you the water. This aged you, while I, being immortal, did not age. After I gave you the water and turned you immortal, I again moved the clock, but you and your body had already entered an immortal state and therefore did not age.’

She paused as if collecting her thoughts and continued. ‘The clock … It gives us a place in time,’ she responded cryptically. ‘Immortality displaces us from time as you used to know it. We’re visitors in every time and don’t have one of our own, so when others become so suspicious of our true nature that we must relocate, we use the clock to do so.’

‘You mean time travel?’

‘You might call it that. But travel indicates a journey with a beginning and an end, and we have neither.’

‘We?’ I asked. ‘The Miss Hatfields collectively?’

She shook her head. ‘No, just you and me.’

‘But what of the others? Don’t they live by the same rules and in the same way?’

‘They used to,’ was her answer, until I pressed for more.

‘How do they live now?’

‘They don’t,’ she said coarsely, in a way that quite differed from the kind of person I thought she was. ‘The fifth Miss Hatfield left me all alone with no instructions other than to destroy any trail that might lead to us. The others are also deceased.’

‘But they were immortal—’

‘Immortality from the waters of the lake can only protect you from illness and death by natural causes. You can still die in an accident.’

‘And that was how they all died? In accidents?’ I pronounced the word carefully, in spite of the fact it tasted bitter in my mouth.

‘Yes, accidents,’ she said. ‘I told you the story of the first Miss Hatfield, who drowned herself, but that wasn’t the end of the misfortunes faced by women of our name. The second Miss Hatfield died in a fire aboard a ship heading to Wales. The third was tried in a town court and found guilty of witchcraft because people noticed she wasn’t ageing. Missing children and failing crops were blamed on her, and her death marked the beginning of the Salem Witch Trials. The fourth Miss Hatfield died in an asylum because she asked her fiancé to accept her for what she’d become, and still find it within himself to love her for who she was now. Needless to say, he thought she carried bad blood and helped them lock her away. It’s not clear exactly how she died, but it was probably the torture they put her through which ultimately did her in. And the fifth Miss Hatfield, of course … Well, I’ve told you about her end.’

‘If time has no meaning for us, can’t you go back and save the other Miss Hatfields from their deaths?’ I asked.

‘If only it worked like that.’ I heard Miss Hatfield draw a soft sigh. ‘But unfortunately, it doesn’t. Or at least no one’s figured out how to do it yet. It’s probably phys- ically impossible. Once you become immortal, you don’t have a place in time. You or I can save a mortal from an untimely death, but death always has his way; he soon finds another means to claim what’s his,’ she said. ‘I can’t even go back to stop the fifth Miss Hatfield from slipping the lake’s water into my tea.’

‘But if a mortal goes back in time—’

She cut me off coldly, simply saying, ‘They can’t.’

I felt myself frown, trying to understand. ‘They can’t? What do you mean?’

‘Mortals can’t physically go backwards or forwards in time past the limits of their own lifespan. They can’t move from their places in time since they belong there, and nowhere else. They’re tied down.’ Miss Hatfield noticed my brow furrow deeper and tried to explain the idea to me more clearly. ‘Time isn’t a river, as most people think. It’s more like a lake or a pond, in which multiple times exist simultaneously. One time doesn’t just begin and end suddenly. They all coexist as parts of a whole. One person belongs to a series of times in their lifetime. They leave a part of them behind in each, but each part is slightly different from all the others, even though they belong to the same person.’

I was still a bit confused, but thought I was beginning to grasp what she was saying. ‘Which is why people change gradually over time?’ I asked.

‘Precisely. To a mortal, it looks as though people change slowly over the course of their lives, but the reality is that people leave a different version of themselves behind in each moment of time. Mortals can’t see the whole human or perceive these different versions of each person.’ Gradually her words began to make more sense in my mind as they painted a very different world from the one I’d thought I existed in. I was beginning to get a glimpse behind the fa
Ç
ade of time that we all had created for ourselves.

‘We immortals disappear from other times, even from the times during which we were alive. We only have one version of ourselves. If you went back to your time, to your house, you wouldn’t find yourself there. Your mother and father think you’ve gone missing. They wouldn’t even recognize you as the little girl they’re looking for.’

I shuddered and tried to wrap my head around what she was saying.

‘And the clock? You still haven’t explained how it works,’ I pressed her. ‘When and how did you receive such a thing?’

Miss Hatfield tried to hide her grin with the back of her hand. ‘Please excuse me for being amused, but you must realize that the word “when” has little meaning to me now.’ She actually laughed slightly, and I saw what she meant.

In the life – if you could even call it that – she lived in, of which I was now a part, I had to remind myself, there was no past or future, not even a present except her current location in time.

‘Finish your cup of tea and come downstairs. I’ll show you how it works.’

I’d completely forgotten where I was, much less that I was holding a cup in my hands. I downed the tea, now cold as water, in a few gulps. I trained my eyes on Miss Hatfield, desperate for more knowledge about who I currently was. Her story made a strange kind of sense – it felt right – but I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe it all.

I helped Miss Hatfield gather our cups onto her tray and followed her back down through the house the way she’d come, into the kitchen. Setting the tray on the table, I paused in front of the clock, which I realized held much more meaning to me now than it had when it last caught my gaze.

‘It’s a simple contraption, really.’ I turned to see Miss Hatfield behind me, staring as intently at the golden clock as I must have been until she spoke. ‘The twelve hours on the face of the clock signify the months in a year; there are thirty-one minutes, indicating the days in a month. But of course, the clock deals with months that don’t have thirty-one days and it deals with leap years as well—’

‘But what are those increments marked on the very edge of the clock’s face, beyond the minutes?’ I asked.

‘The seconds.’

‘And they stand for the years?’ I guessed.

‘Yes. They start right above the twelfth hour at 1527, the year the clock itself was made. The time beyond that is untouchable even for us,’ she said. ‘There are ten years between every hour, forwards or backwards.’

‘Then surely there’s a limit to how far forward you can go – what’s that mark to the left of 1527?’

‘When the second hand passes over that mark, a new cycle begins, overlapping the one just completed. Just as there’s no end to time, there’s no end to the clock. Therefore, 1527 is also 1647, 1767, 1887, 2007, and so on.’

‘Where did the clock come from?’ I was dumbfounded at the idea that this simple-looking object could somehow control time.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know the history of the clock itself,’ she said. ‘I think one of the earlier Miss Hatfields found it and just passed it along with the rest of this stuff.’

‘So everything in this house belonged to the former Miss Hatfields?’

She nodded. ‘Even the house itself is a living relic, modified and arranged to each Rebecca’s tastes. It’s changed in so many little ways over the years, but its foundations remain the same, and stay strong because of that. There’s something about the house that comforts me. Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s seen all of this before – the frightening moment when you finally realize what you’ve become, and that you won’t be going home ever again; the silent hours when you feel lost in time and in life, but also the odd instant when you look back on your life and immortality and realize you’ve come to terms with it all.’ Miss Hatfield had a faint, faraway smile on her lips. I’d have described it as sad and lonely, but nonetheless it was a smile – the only glimmer of hope I’d seen so far on her otherwise dull and emotionless face. ‘I do hope you decide to keep the house and add to it the things you valued most in your former life. As an immortal, you’ll find yourself looking back on it and wishing you had more of it to live. Collecting things from our long-gone lives is one way we keep our sanity in a world that changes before our eyes. People die, technology improves, objects are replaced … It can be difficult to keep up, but in this house, everything’s the way you want it. You don’t have to maintain appearances here, and you can surround yourself with familiar things.’ Miss Hatfield picked up a painted miniature of a girl walking her dog from the tabletop. Her eyes were focused on the miniature, but I could tell she wasn’t really seeing it. Her eyes looked right through it, to something else entirely. She set it down. ‘For a few minutes, you can almost pretend that none of this ever happened.’

‘Of course I’ll keep the house. I don’t think I have anywhere else to go except here,’ I reminded her. I was still angry with her, but I was becoming resigned to my fate. There was no alternative that I could see. ‘Besides, you’re now the only person from whom I don’t have to hide a portion of myself. I’ll need you – and you’ll be here waiting for me, won’t you?’

‘I can’t be sure about that,’ she said, catching me off guard. I knew I couldn’t leave her, since I was bound to her now, but it hadn’t crossed my mind that she might leave me.

‘Wh–what do you mean?’

‘Don’t you think it strange that each Miss Hatfield dies in an “accident” soon after she finds the next one? Are they really just accidents, or is it time trying to protect its secrets?’

‘You’re not saying that you’ll leave me, are you?’

‘Not willingly, but I can’t control destiny.’ Her gaze was downcast. She refused to look me in the eye for a few moments, but then suddenly her head snapped up. ‘I’ll do whatever I can to prepare you for what’s ahead.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, for I didn’t know what else to say.

‘It’s your right. I owe you at least that much. But first there’s a little job I need you to do for me. For us.’