The Telling (2 page)

I brushed my hands down my arms, rubbed at them.

The wiring must be dodgy. Or someone was vacuuming in a nearby house. Or it was internal; post-motorway tinnitus. It could be anything, really. The fridge clicked into gear; it hummed a slightly different note, as if in confirmation.

The fire had crumbled down to glowing coals. I dropped on another log and put the fireguard on. I left the lower floor in darkness.
It felt quieter up in the Reading Room. Gentler somehow, more welcoming.

I wasn’t really asleep. I was conscious of the space beside me on the mattress, the dint in the flocking where my ankle pressed, the give of the springs beneath left hip and shoulder. I was listening to the darkness. Amazing, just the distance of it. Here and there, a splash of sound. A fox’s bark—I recognized that—and a bird’s cry, and the sheep in the field behind the house calling back and forth across the dark. And then just as I was drifting off to sleep, there was a screech so loud and sudden that it startled me bolt awake, and I was staring around the room in darkness, my heart going like a train. I reached for the bedside lamp, but it wasn’t there, of course; it was back at the flat. I lay in the bed just looking into the black, and there was nothing: no movement, no further sound, and my heart began to slow and settle. I got up out of bed and went to switch on the light. The bookcase stood solid and dark and stacked full of shadows.

An owl, perhaps; or something killed by an owl, up in the fields behind the house.

Daylight. There was a sense of weight beside me in the bed; if I just reached out a hand, Mark would be there. Cate down the corridor in her little room: a mutter; she’s about to wake. The day teetering on its brink, ticking towards the shriek of the alarm. The race of it all ahead of me; a battle with breakfast and with the pushchair and bus, and Cate’s clinging at the childminder’s,
and then work; and the books dragged home from work, and lugging Cate onto the bus and she’d be tired and starting a cold, and holding me responsible. Feeding her, and bathing her, and putting her to bed, and feeding us, and getting on with the marking or reports or lesson plans, and an exhausted slump in front of the TV, watching the news with the sound turned down, ice shearing into the waves, blood in the dust. Hurtling, unstoppable change. Night, and bleached sleeplessness. Hours staring into the dark.

There was no alarm clock. The space in the bed was cool and empty. The house was silent. I didn’t have to be awake, not yet.

I spent the morning wiping dead flies from windowsills and fingerprints from doors. I dragged the old upright vacuum out of the kitchen broom-cupboard and did all the carpets. I found a rusting cylinder of Vim under the sink and scoured the baked-on meat juices from the inside of the cooker. I cleaned the bathroom. I opened all the windows. The house smelt clean; of vacuuming and Vim and wet spring air. It needed doing, it all needed doing. I wasn’t wasting time.

There was no means of making coffee in the house. No cafetière, no percolator, not even one of those filter efforts you balance on top of a jug. So I made coffee in the teapot and brought it, with a cup and a tea-strainer, back upstairs. I was going to go into the box room. I was going to go in with my cup of coffee and start sorting through the stuff, unfurling packages, assessing their contents, putting them in one of three piles, destined for home, Oxfam, or the bin. But instead, I found myself
standing at the Reading Room window, looking out at the garden, at the nodding daffodils, the bare branches of a tree trembling in the wind. At the end of the garden stood an electricity substation; it was surrounded with green chain-link fence. On its pebbledashed wall was a sign showing, in silhouette, a man falling over backwards, a lightning bolt embedded in his chest. Beyond it was a farm, though it didn’t look as if it was still in use; there was no sign of animals. The outbuildings were all painted pastel blue.

All I could think was: this is an ending. The beginning was lost; the first peeling of the helix from its twin, the first bulge and split of cells: there is no way back to that from here.

THE DAFFODILS WERE BRIGHT yellow and the damson tree was in milky blossom. It was a fresh spring day and the sky was tumbling with clouds. I’d sat at the window in my Sunday dress, staring out across at Agnes’s house, nothing moving, till it seemed like everything—flowers, tree, Agnes’s four windows and brown front door—were all painted on the glass, and not real at all. It was like looking at the windows in the church, of St. Hilda and St. John, too deeply coloured, too neat, too calm to be anything like real.

My work lay beside me on the flags, a book was neglected in my lap. I had my shawl wrapped tightly around me; it was cold away from the fire. No one came, and no one left, and I shivered
in the draught, and Mam scolded me for mooning about and wasting the day. The light began to fade.

She left for the evening milking, and the boys were playing out somewhere, and Sally was at the Forsters’ for her tea, and the house was empty.

I had wanted to stay with Agnes, but they wouldn’t let me. I’d asked her mam to let me know when it was over, and she had said she would send me word the first chance that she got. What good did I think I’d do anyway, my mam wanted to know. Hanging about, getting in the way? I’d only scare myself, and be put off ever marrying, and end up an old maid. But it seemed to me that it would be better to be with her, to know how things went with her, however badly they were going, than remain in ignorance for so long.

Dad would be back soon. Once he was back, and given his tea, I would just slip across the street and gently knock, and if someone answered I’d ask after Agnes, and if no one answered then I would just come home, and no one need know I’d been, and I’d be no worse off than I was now.

I had the kettle hot on the stove, the teapot standing with the tea spooned in, the canister with its picture of a Chinaman and a lion put back on the dresser. The bread and the cheese were cut, and a clean cloth laid over them. There was nothing more to do. I leaned against the table, chewed a fingernail. Of my mam’s confinements that I could remember, none had taken as long as this.

My father’s cap came bobbing slowly along the far side of the garden wall. I poked up the fire, got the kettle steaming. He scraped his way up the steps, and came in. His cheeks were flushed: he brought a pool of cool spring air with him, and the
smell of his work, of horse and tobacco and beer. He was in one of those slow, philosophical moods that he gets into when he’s had a drink or two. He saw the steaming kettle and the tea things set out on the table, and shook his head, as if it were some fancy of mine to make him his tea, but he was prepared to humour me and play along with it. Then he saw my book lying on the windowsill, saw the work half done and lying on the floor, and his mood turned sharply.

“If you’re going to waste your time reading that old nonsense again,” he said, his breath sweet with malt.

“It’s Sunday, and it’s
Pilgrim’s Progress
, which is a fine book for Sunday,” I said quickly. “And it’s better than many ways of spending the Lord’s Day.”

He gave me a look, sat down in his chair, and kept himself bolt upright in a poor imitation of sobriety. I made the tea and I gave him his bread and cheese. I left him to pour his own cup and slipped out to stand on our top step, and look over to Agnes’s house. No candles lit there, as yet.

It was a lovely soft evening, a little way off dark. The sheep were calling up in the back field, and someone was chopping logs up at Goss House. A curlew flew overhead, giving its shrill repeating cry. I went down the front steps, crossed the road, the loose stones crunching loud underfoot. I peered through the front window, but couldn’t see anyone. I rested my ear to the front door. I heard nothing but the beat of my own heart. I thought that she had died. That she lay cold and dead upstairs. That they could not bring themselves to tell me. I lifted the latch; the door creaked open, and I stepped inside, onto Agnes’s clean-sanded kitchen floor.

The room was stuffy; I could smell something sweet and rich and spiced. There were figures slumped at the kitchen table. I moved closer in the gloom and saw that it was Mrs. Skelton and Agnes’s mam, and that they were sleeping, their heads resting on folded arms. In the middle of the table was a half-eaten batch-cake, the crumbs scattered like grain, whole raisins lying plump on the scrubbed deal tabletop; the scent sweetened the air. Agnes had made the cake for eating after the baby came, moving slowly, bending red-faced at the stove, with her belly vast and in the way. Between then and now was last night, and the walking up her garden, as far as the apple tree, and back. She had paused when the pains came, her eyes screwing tight, and her mouth opening. She whispered to me, so that the women wouldn’t hear, “I can’t do this, I can’t do this,” and I hissed back to her, “Yes you can, of course you can, it will be all right,” because I was thinking, everybody that walks the earth is born, it happens every day. Then her breathing changed, and her eyes went distant and glossy, as if she were looking inward; she did not look like Agnes anymore, and the women had brought her upstairs and sent me home, and I began to be afraid for her. But it was over now, because there were cake crumbs and tea-stained cups. This was not a scene of mourning, these women sleeping with their heads on their arms, the smell of spice, the huff and whistle of their breath: she had lived through it. They had been too tired, too exhausted by their labours, to think of telling me.

I slipped past them and went up to Agnes’s room; the room she has had since she was married. Agnes was lying in the bed, sleeping, the covers pulled tight over her. Her face had the same pulled-tight quality as the sheets. Her hair lay in a thick dark braid over
her shoulder and down over the quilt. The room smelt of blood, but there was no blood to be seen. She looked so completely done-in, so pale and wan. I came closer and saw the baby; it was tucked in the crook of her arm. It was red, dry-looking, its eyes pinched shut. Its head was a strange shape, bulged and squashed. It didn’t look like her.

I wanted to touch her, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I heard the stairs creak and lifted my sleeve to my face to blot away the wet. Her mam appeared and came over to me, moving quietly in stockinged feet. She stood beside me. Her face was a maze of wrinkles; she smelt of tobacco and bad teeth.

“A boy,” she said. “We’re calling him William Stephen, same as his father.”

The words whistled through the gaps in her teeth. She went on talking, the sound hissing and wet, and there was a constriction in my throat, and my nose felt raw inside.

“I said to her last night, it’s taking that long it’s bound to be a boy,” she said. “Girls are that much easier, God grant her a girl next time.”

“I’d best go.”

I turned to shift past her, and she was in front of me a moment, her hair combed into a dry white parting, her shawl greasy and threadbare, her skin creasing happily. She’d seen it all before, of course, seen how much worse it can be. She had ten children that I knew of, and she had delivered all her six daughters’ babies. She turned to leave, and I followed her out towards the landing.

There was a pail tucked out of the way behind the door. I’d passed it unnoticed on the way in. It was full of blood-soaked
rags. The blood was crimson. On the floor next to it was a folded blanket: it had been folded to hide the worst, but I could see the corner of what must have been a huge bloodstain. I looked back at Agnes lying white against the white sheets. I could hear the stroke of the older woman’s stockinged feet on the stair treads. I turned again and went after her, the weave of her grey plaits pinned up like a rush basket on the back of her head. Halfway down the stairs she stopped, and looked up at me as if out of a hole.

“If you’ve got any old linen spare, can you bring it over, and any lye you’ve got made up?”

I nodded, my face feeling cold and numb. Agnes and I had shredded old sheets and shifts and shirts until we were covered in thread and lint and Agnes had laughed and said it looked like it had snowed indoors.

I managed to speak. “Is it often this bad?”

Agnes’s mam shrugged. “Every time is different.”

She turned to go on down the stairs, as if this was my question answered. I stood there, feeling cold. I had said that it would be all right.

I could hear the women moving around in the kitchen, and low voices: Mrs. Skelton was awake and they were talking softly. I heard the clunk of stove-iron and clink of china as they made tea. I went down the stairs and straight outdoors. I needed air.

Outside a fine soft rain was falling. I pushed my hair back, tucked my shawl over my head and lifted my face to the clouded sky. I tried to pray. I tried to thank God for her safe delivery, but my prayers melted in the rain. I leaned there against the doorjamb and I cried selfish tears. I couldn’t do without her.

I heard the racket of clogs on the wash-house lane, voices; it could be my mam back with the other hands from Storrs Farm. I wiped my palms across my cheeks and ran for home.

I came in and started talking brightly to Dad, saying how Agnes had had a boy, that they were calling it William Stephen and what was the point giving a child the exact same name as its dad, he’d only get pet names all his life so you might as well think of something new to start with. I had my shawl off and was marching over to the fire to get the kettle on again so that it was hot for when Mam came in, and then I saw him.

He’d been sitting in Mam’s chair. He was getting to his feet. He was dark-clothed and tall; a good span taller than my father. Tall as the Reverend, though lean, and his clothes seemed more like a working man’s. I don’t know what it was about his features—the dark eyes, the strong nose and heavy brows, the clean-shaven lip and chin—but something just kept me looking at him. As if his face were a puzzle, and I couldn’t work it out.

Then I realized what it was. I’d never seen him before. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d come across someone that I had never seen before.

“Ah, Lizzy,” my father said, “this is Mr. Moore.”

I nodded. “Good evening.”

He dipped his head, returned the greeting. His voice was strangely accented; he was not a local man. I reached up to smooth my hair and became suddenly conscious of my hands, of how chapped and rough they were, calloused as an old hedger’s. I tucked them behind my back. I’d never, not until that moment, thought of my hands as anything but cold or sore or deft or fumbling. I don’t think I’d ever thought about my hair at all. I couldn’t
think what to say. My father leaned back in his seat, grinning. Mr. Moore didn’t say anything, just looked at me, and didn’t smile. The silence continued. I began to think he was expecting something from me. He was in working clothes, but his stature and carriage were that of a gentleman. Was he waiting for me to curtsey? I glanced back at Dad. He nodded at me, his lips pursed. I turned to Mr. Moore, looked him in the eye, and curtseyed. He held my gaze, watching as I bent one knee, wobbled, scraped my clog toe along the flags and dipped my head stiffly. I have never made a graceful curtsey in my life. For a moment, his face was sober, his brows knotted. Then he laughed, his face breaking up into creases.

“You mistake me,” he said.

I felt my cheeks colour. “So it seems.”

He stopped laughing then. My face burned.

Dad made a clumsy joke about the refinements of the establishment, and I turned away, and went to tidy up my work, and clear the leftovers of his tea, and all the time I was blushing, fiercely conscious of myself, of how ungainly and uncouth I must seem. I slipped upstairs, and washed my face in yesterday’s water. I loosened my hair, gave it forty strokes, plaited it and pinned it up again. I looked at my hands, the yellowed calluses on the palms, the nails stained dark and rough. I soaked them in the water and scrubbed at them. I heard Mam come in downstairs. I heard her greeting. She called Mr. Moore by name, which was a surprise to me. I looked at my hands. Pinker, a little softer, still badly stained, the nails worn dull with work. I went downstairs to help Mam get the supper.

Mam and I were at the table. She was spooning tea from the
canister. One for each of us. One for the pot. One for Mr. Moore. So he was staying for supper. Over at the fireside, Dad was talking to him. Mam was telling me what else needed to be done that evening and what was to be done tomorrow when I rose. I nodded, trying to keep my attention on her, and not let it drift towards the fireside. Every so often, Mr. Moore glanced over. I kept my attention on the loaf and the neat portioning of slices. One for each of us. One for him.

Then Mr. Moore spoke, and Mam’s words faded out of my thoughts, and all I could do was listen to him. Dad must have asked him about the towns and cities to the south, because he was giving an account of them. Leeds, he said, was like a midden, filthy, all of a fester, a summer’s heat would suffice to make it burst into flames. Manchester was a tinderbox: any reckless hand might strike the spark. People were arming themselves, he said; in towns and villages all over the country, he’d seen arms hanging over the fireplaces in the poorest houses.

His voice, his manner and what he said: it reminded me of something, but I couldn’t quite remember what.

“Everybody’s spirits are down,” Dad said. “The bad seasons and these unchristian taxes. People don’t like going hungry.”

Mr. Moore half shook his head. “When an employer says there is a slump in trade, and makes a reduction in wages, a man who already works every hour he can to watch his wife and children starve must feel the injustice of his circumstances as keenly as he feels brute hunger. What can he do? He can’t take his labour elsewhere, since if one employer makes a reduction, the others follow. They are reducing wages now, all across the region. And if there is a slump, then by God but the mill-owners are doing well
out of it. Oversby’s building his new Hall on the strength of the current crisis.”

I realized that I was staring at him. His words and the manner of his speaking made me stare.

“They do well, the Oversbys,” my father said, seeming to think they were in complete agreement. “That’s a fine new house they’re building up at Storrs. A man needs a little land, a little seed-money, if he’s to make anything of himself.”