The Telling (10 page)

I took up my basketwork, and sat by the window for the light. He stayed in his seat by the low smoulder of the kitchen fire. It was quiet, just the creak and tap of my work, the soft sounds of our breathing, the turning of his page. Once he gave a little huff of laughter, making me start and look at him, at the dark curls on his bent head; he was so lost in his reading that he did not seem to have noticed that he’d made any sound. I wanted to ask him what it was; I wanted to ask him about
Robinson Crusoe
; I wanted to
confess what Reverend Wolfenden had asked me to do, and laugh with him about the strangeness of it all. I kept glancing up at him, my lips opening on the words, but not daring to speak. The willow creaked as I wove it. He turned a page, let a breath go. There was no other noise.

The bell struck for the quarter hour. Shortly after that, he closed the book and heaved himself out of the seat. I watched him stand, watched the creases in his dark woollen waistcoat unfold; I watched him pass, the unknown book still clamped in his hand. His movements were fatigued and stiff. My hands fell still, the basket a palisade of sticks in my lap; I listened to every creak of the stairs, every footfall overhead, thinking I’d seen the last of him for the evening, and regretting it.

The footsteps went on; he had not settled to anything. I heard him moving about, as if traversing the room from the bed to box and back again. Then the footsteps crossed the room briskly, the door was opened, and he was out on the landing again, crossing it, coming back downstairs. My chest seemed somehow to compress, as if there was a knot at my breastbone, and it was being tugged, pulled tight like corset strings. He came down and crossed back to his seat.

He had a traveller’s writing desk with him; a fold-out gentleman’s set in rosewood; the Reverend had one not unlike it. He carried a book too; a wide cloth-bound ledger, red in colour, the kind that accounts are kept in. He held it clamped against the bottom of the writing set. A box of books, a writing set: I hadn’t been so misled when I curtseyed to him. He settled back down in his chair, arranged his things, and began to fold paper for a letter. The desk lay open on his lap; his long legs stretched out across
the rag rug. Though the writing desk was good, well made and expensive-looking, the ink bottle was a clay one, roughly made, and the glaze was blemished with thumbprint smears and unsmoothed edges. It occurred to me that he had most probably acquired the writing desk second-hand, it being brought within his means by the loss of its glass or china bottle. After such an expense, a clay ink bottle must have seemed perfectly sufficient, and was probably all he could afford.

There was better light, more space and solitude upstairs: why would he bring his things down here to write?

He took up his pen, examined it, trimmed it, examined it again. He dipped it, eased the excess ink off against the ink-pot’s rim, and began to write. I observed his craft closely while my hands were at their own work on the basket. I shifted it around in my lap, bent the withy to the curve of the frame, levered it in and out through the uprights, tamped it down to fit snug against the layer before, all the time watching the strange progress of his hand across the page. The pen’s plume wove and wobbled, his hand shifted a fraction further, traced another pattern, shunted on again. He paused to dip the pen. Mr. Moore’s face was in shadow; he leaned back from the writing slope, peered down at the page.

I wanted to tell him that he might have my place at the window, where he might see what he was doing. He finished the letter with a flourish. I opened my lips and he glanced up at me. His dark eyes caught the firelight. I lost my nerve, looked down at the basket and didn’t speak.

He lifted the shaker, scattered sand onto his page, then leaned the sheet towards the hearth. The grains showered into the flame,
making it spark and sputter. He folded the paper, smoothed it flat, and bent to light a spill at the fire. I watched him light his sealing wax, watched the wax drip onto the white folded page, and pool there, like blood. My hands had fallen still.

“Would you like to see the stamp?” he asked.

The way he was sitting, his eyes were shadowed, his face half-lit by embers, half-lit by the evening window. The moment, with the redness and flickering shadows, and the pale blue light from outside, had an unearthly quality to it; it did not seem to belong to this world. His fingertips were stained black with ink.

“I’ve seen stamps,” I said. “The Reverend has stamps. I take the family’s letters to the post if Mr. Fowler’s occupied.”

“Yes, of course.”

He put the letter to one side, and took up the ledger from where he’d left it on the floor. I pressed my lips together, looking away and feeling foolish. He was writing in the ledger, leaning back, peering down at the words as he formed them, seeming to be utterly occupied by the movement of his pen. I could have said yes. I could have just said yes. If I had, then instead of sitting in silence while he wrote and thought me discourteous and cold, I would be standing at his side, bending my head to look at the dainty image in his hand; I could have reached out to draw it nearer, and our hands might have touched again. I turned the basket in my lap and tugged sharply at the withy, wrenching it through the stakes. The wood creaked and splintered on the curve. I muttered inwardly, undid the last few weaves, my cheeks burning. I cut the withy short, behind the splintering, and wove the stray end in. I started it off again.

We continued without speaking. His feet were stretched out on
the rug: the leather soles of his boots were patched, well mended, and the mends themselves were worn and needing repair. How far must he have come, to wear his boots into such holes, to wear the patches thin? He was leaning back still further than before, putting more distance between himself and the work as the light faded. He peered down at his hand, at the pen as it moved in its pattern of tiny shiverings, forward shifts.

“Isn’t it driving you out of your wits?” I said.

He looked up. His brow was creased into a headache frown.

“I mean, not having enough light to see what you’re about.”

“My eyes aren’t what they were.”

“You’d be better here.”

I dropped my tools into the half-made basket, gathering it to me as I rose. He shook his head and gestured with an inky hand for me to sit back down.

“I don’t need the light,” I said. “If someone but thought to put the tools into my hands, I’d be making baskets in my sleep.”

I didn’t know what devil had got into me. I lifted the basket; I remember particularly the green sappy smell of willow, and the cool smooth feel of the exposed split surface of the withies, the bulk and slight weight of the basket in my arms. I went over to him, waited for him to rise.

He stood up. He lifted the writing set with him. The pen was clutched against the board, the ledger and letter and loose papers sliding against each other.

“It’s very kind of you,” he said.

He carried his things over to the windowsill, and took my seat, and said nothing more. The evening light brought out the blue of the stone floor, the iron sheen of his dark hair. It had only been a
tone, an inflection to the voice, but it filled me with indignation. He was mocking me, I knew it. There was a sufficiency of irritations and vexations in my life, without him mocking me.

I sat down where he’d been sitting, my feet on the rag rug where his had been. The wooden rungs of the high-back chair were smooth; they held me upright, supporting me, so that I could lean back and feel some relief from my stays. I felt somehow taller, sitting there in my mam’s chair; less of a child.

He was setting his writing slope to rights. He wiped and dipped his pen, touching the nib against the rounded rim of the ink pot.

“You’re a joiner, on the new house up at Storrs,” I said.

He looked up, nodded. It was only afterwards that I learned that he was Master Carpenter, and was in charge of seven men, and saw the grandness of the house that was built, and the staircase that flowed like a stream, like birdsong, and realized the meanness of Reverend Wolfenden’s mind in calling him a joiner. The ledger lay open on the windowsill while he arranged his writing things. I could see that the left-hand page was half-full, covered with densely written words; not dotted with numbers, dashes, single words, the rows and columns of income and expense, as one would expect. His eye caught the direction of my sight. He slid the ledger off the windowsill, drew it onto his writing slope, so that it was inclined towards him, away from me, and I could no longer see it.

“You’re a domestic, I believe,” he said.

“At the vicarage.”

Could I say that I had been cleaning in his room, that
Robinson Crusoe
had fallen open when I was dusting; I had not meant
to pry, there had been no intention at all, just accident? But then why would I need to dust the contents of a newly delivered box?

“There are books about the house. Whose are they?” He glanced across towards the dresser: Fox’s
Martyrs
,
Pilgrim’s Progress
,
Saints’ Rest
, the family Bible.

“I like to read.”

“Of course you do.”

He smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes. He closed the ledger and set it down upon the floor. He wiped the last drops of ink from his pen, stoppered the ink pot and closed the writing set. He put it down on top of the ledger.

“So the abridged
Robinson Crusoe
, that’s yours, and the ballad sheet, and the tale of Jack the Giant Killer? They belong to you?”

My chapbooks. His air was calm, but I knew he must hold them in contempt. A man with books like that, with so many; of course he must hold my few slight things in contempt.

“There are others,” I said, “but they’re lent out, and the
Pilgrim’s Progress
was my school prize. Fox’s
Martyrs
and
Saints’ Rest
were my grandfather’s, but he’s dead.”

Mr. Moore nodded, but didn’t comment.

“No doubt you think them foolish,” I said.

“Of course not, no.”

“Then why are you smiling?”

It was a faint flicker of a smile; it plucked the flesh up at one corner of his lips. It irritated me.

“It’s strong meat, all those martyrs and saints and pilgrims, that’s all. And the chapbooks; well, you may as well eat sugar straight from the bowl.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that I fear such a diet would upset even the soundest of constitutions.”

“I suppose you’d tell me I have no constitution at all for reading?”

“Indeed no, I wouldn’t dream of saying such a thing.”

I was conscious that my hands were motionless, the fingers curling into fists, the knuckles pressing in at the sides of the basket. I was angry, like a child whose toy is snatched away in the middle of a game. If he understood the difficulty of acquiring the few books that I possessed; if he knew how hard I had to beg my mam to get a few pennies back from my wages; if he could see the magic-lantern-show I saw when I began to read; if he could have understood what a rich treasure it seemed to me, that box of books lying upstairs, overflowing with mysteries; if he could have glimpsed a fraction of how much this meant to me, then he would not have chosen the company of men like Thomas and my father over me, and he would not mock me now.

“I don’t like being laughed at,” I said.

“No, of course not.” There was a pause. My face was hot. “Did you think that I was laughing at you?”

I shook my head. He regarded me with a level gaze, and I did my best to return it.

“It wasn’t my intention—” he went on; and he drew a breath as if to say something more. After a moment, he nodded. “I’ll leave you in peace,” he said.

He bent to gather his things. He stood up. I wanted to say something, to protest, but the words would not come. He ducked
his head to pass under the low lintel, and climbed the stairs. I was left alone. My work lay neglected a long while.

The library bell jangled, but it was not my duty to answer the library bell. I had a rag and sand and was scouring burned sugar and fruit off a baking pan; Mrs. Briggs would have been more careful if she’d had to clean her pans herself. I was thinking of Mr. Crusoe, I was thinking of Mr. Moore; I was muttering to myself, chagrined, at the memory of our parting. There was someone at the scullery door. I glanced over my shoulder. Mrs. Briggs leaned against the doorjamb, her round face creased and red with the heat of the kitchen. There were damp patches on her frock. She looked at me suspiciously for a moment, her lips bunched.

“You’re to lay a fire in the library.”

I nodded, set down the pan and rag.

“You, in particular, he asked for. Maggie went up, but he sent her back to ask for you.”

I wiped my hands on my apron. “I’m good at it,” I lied. “The way I lay a fire, it lights easy, straight away, every time.”

“But it’s roasting out.”

I shrugged. “It’s easy to get chilled, if all you do is sit.”

I carried up a coalscuttle and kindling, and knocked on the library door.

The Reverend was sitting in his wing-backed leather chair, a closed book in his hand, his thumb stuck in and squeezed between the pages to mark his place. The same binding as all the other ones; they arrived like that from his bookseller. I bobbed a curtsey to him, then knelt to lay the fire, and he sat and watched
me, and let me work, until I had set the last of the coals upon the wood.

“Don’t light it,” he said.

I sat back on my heels.

“Well, my child?”

I looked around at him. I don’t quite know what it was that did it, whether it was the dirt on my hard hands while his hands, holding his book, were soft and white as Mrs. Briggs’s dough; or if it was that I was kneeling on the floor while he sat in comfort in a leather chair; or if it was because he’d set me about a pointless task, or that he’d used a contrivance to get me there which would not fool a child and would only serve to set the women downstairs against me; I don’t know if it was one of these, or all; but whatever caused it, the feeling was new and unexpected: I wouldn’t have thought it possible to feel angry like that towards a clergyman.