Sadly she shook her head. "Anyone who might have known the answer to those questions is dead, Margaret."

"Can't you remember?"

"I am human. Like all humans, I do not remember my birth. By the time we wake up to ourselves, we are little children, and our advent is something that happened an eternity ago, at the beginning of time. We live like latecomers at the theater; we must catch up as best we can, divining the beginning from the shape of later events. How many times have I gone back to the border of memory and peered into the darkness beyond? But it is not only memories that hover on the border. There are all sorts of phantasmagoria that inhabit that realm. The nightmares of a lonely child. Fairy tales appropriated by a mind hungry for story. The fantasies of an imaginative little girl anxious to explain to herself the inexplicable. Whatever story I may have discovered on the frontier of forgetting, I do not pretend to myself that it is the truth."

"All childrenmythologi^e their birth."

"Quite. The only thing I can be sure of is what John-the-dig told me."

"And what did he tell you?"

"That I appeared like a weed between two strawberries."

She told me the story.

Someone was getting at the strawberries. Not birds, because they pecked and left pitted berries. And not the twins, because they trampled the plants and left footprints all over the plot. No, some light-footed thief was taking a berry here and a berry there. Neatly, without disturbing a thing. Another gardener wouldn't even have noticed. The same day John noticed a pool of water under his garden tap. The tap was dripping. He gave it a turn, tightened it up. He scratched his head, and went about his business. But he kept an eye out.

The next day he saw a figure in the strawberries. A little scarecrow, barely knee-high, in an overlarge hat that drooped down over its face. It ran off when it saw him. But the day after it was so determined to get its fruit that he had to yell and wave his arms to chase it off. Afterward he thought he couldn't put a name to it. Who in the village had a mite that size, small and underfed? Who around here would let their child go stealing fruit from other people's gardens? He was stumped for an answer.

And someone had been in the potting shed. He hadn't left the old newspapers in that state, had he? And those crates-they'd been put away tidy; he knew they had.

For once he put on the padlock before he went home.

Passing by the garden tap, he noticed it dripping again. Gave it a firm half turn without even thinking about it. Then, putting his weight into it, another quarter turn. That should do it.

In the night he awoke, uneasy in his mind for reasons he couldn't account for. Where would you sleep, he found himself wondering, if you couldn't get into the potting shed and make yourself a bed with newspapers in a crate? And where would you get water if the tap was turned off so tight you couldn't move it? Chiding himself for his midnight foolishness, he opened the window to feel the temperature. Too late for frosts. Cool for the time of year, though. And how much colder if you were hungry? And how much darker if you were a child?

He shook his head and closed the window. No one would abandona child in his garden, would they? Of course they wouldn't. Nevertheless, before five he was up and out of bed. He took his walk around the garden early, surveying his vegetables, the topiary garden, planning his work for the day. All morning he kept an eye out for a floppy hat in the fruit bushes. But there was nothing to be seen.

"What's the matter with you?" said the Missus when he sat in silence at her kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee.

"Nothing," he said.

He drained his cup and went back to the garden. He stood and scanned the fruit bushes with anxious eyes. Nothing. At lunchtime he ate half a sandwich, discovered he had no appetite and left the other half on an upturned flowerpot by the garden tap. Telling himself he was a fool, he put a biscuit next to it. He turned the tap on. It took quite an effort even for him. He let the water fall, noisily, into a tin watering can, emptied it into the nearest bed and refilled it. The thunder of splashing water resounded around the vegetable garden. He took care not to look up and around.

Then he took himself a little way off, knelt on the grass, his back to the tap, and started brushing off some old pots. It was an important job; it had to be done; you could spread disease if you didn't clean your pots properly between planting.

Behind him, the squeak of the tap.

He didn't turn instantly. He finished the pot he was doing, brush, brush, brush.

Then he was quick. On his feet, over to the tap, faster than a fox.

But there was no need for such haste.

The child, frightened, tried to flee but stumbled. Picking itself up, it limped on a few more steps, then stumbled again. John caught it up, lifted it-the weight of a cat, no more-turned it to face him, and the hat fell off.

Little chap was a bag of bones. Starving. Eyes gone crusty, hair black with dirt, and smelly. Two hot red spots for cheeks. He put a hand to the child's forehead and it was burning up. Back in the potting shed he saw its feet. No shoes, scabby and swollen, pus oozing through the dirt. A thorn or something, deep inside. The child trembled. Fever, pain, starvation, fear. If he found an animal in that state, John thought, he 'd get his gun and put it out of its misery.

He locked it in the shed and went to fetch the Missus. She came. She peered, right up close, got a whiff and stepped back. "No, no, I don't know whose he is. Perhaps if we cleaned him up a bit?"

"Dunk him in the water butt, you mean?"

"Water butt indeed! I'll go and fill the tub in the kitchen."

They peeled the stinking rags away from the child. "They're for the bonfire," the Missus said, and tossed them out into the yard. The dirt went all the way down to the skin; the child was encrusted. The first tub of water turned instantly black. In order to empty and refill the tub, they lifted the child out, and it stood, wavering, on its better foot. Naked and dripping, streaked with rivulets of gray-brown water, all ribs and elbows.

They looked at the child; at each other; at the child again. "John, I may be poor of sight, but tell me, are you not seeing what I'm not seeing?"

Aye.

"Little chap indeed! It's a little maid."

They boiled kettle after kettle, scrubbed at skin and hair with soap, brushed hardened dirt out from under the nails. Once she was clean they sterilized tweezers, pulled the thorn from the foot-she flinched but didn't cry out-and they dressed and bandaged the wound. They gently rubbed warmed castor oil into the crust around the eyes. They put calamine lotion onto the flea bites, petroleum jelly onto the chapped, split lips. They combed tangles out of long, matted hair. They pressed cool flannels against her forehead and her burning cheeks. At last they wrapped her in a clean towel and sat her at the kitchen table, where the Missus spooned soup into her mouth and John peeled her an apple.

Gulping down the soup, grabbing at the apple slices, she couldn't get it down fast enough. The Missus cut a slice of bread and spread it with butter. The child ate it ravenously.

They watched her. The eyes, cleared of their crust, were slivers of emerald green. The hair was drying to a bright red-gold. The cheek bones jutted wide and sharp in the hungry face.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" said John.

"Aye."

"Will we tell him?"

"No."

"But she does belong here."

"Aye."

They thought for a moment or two.

"What about a doctor?"

The pink spots in the child's face were not so bright. The Missus put a hand to the forehead. Still hot, but better. "We'll see how she goes tonight. Get the doctor in the morning."