The Telling (16 page)

“Circumstance,” he said.

I nodded, as if I understood exactly what he meant by that. “And the Enclosures are happening everywhere?”

“The whole country will be enclosed eventually, since there’s profit in it.”

“I barely remember, but Mam says it broke his heart, he used to work so hard on his strips, he had the best crops of anyone.”

“Your father isn’t alone; there was a great deal lost when the commons were enclosed. Independence, and mutual aid, and community. Many people were heartbroken.”

“Dad’s found consolation, though.”

“The drink, you mean?”

“That, and complaint. Between them they seem to offer him some comfort.”

Mr. Moore laughed. It made me feel somehow satisfied. I went on.

“I think sometimes it does better to just get on with what you have, rather than dwell on what you’ve lost. Perhaps it’s hard to believe that change happens, that it can and will happen, and is happening all around us, all the time. I mean, not like the seasons, which always come around again the same, maybe worse or better but much the same, but bigger than that.”

I looked down at my hands, folded there on the table, and I started to tell him something I had never told anyone before, not because I kept it purposefully secret, but because I hadn’t had anyone to tell it to.

“A while back, the cat caught a shrew. The boys were watching her toss it about out behind the house; you know what cats are like, and boys. I got it off them, but didn’t know what to do with it: there was no helping it, there was only stopping further cruelty. The fur was brushed the wrong way and there was a seep of blood at its throat. I stood there out the back of the house with it lying in my hand, so absolutely tiny, alive, weighing nothing. It was last summer; I remember the ground was packed hard beneath my feet; the midden had that summer-stink, I was trying to think where I could leave it and neither the cat nor the boys would get at it again, and its heart was hammering away, tiny and fast, and it was hot as a coal in my hand, and there was this shift, and I saw myself differently; I was a giant, all sluggish and vast and cold, and this creature was hot and vital and more alive, even in those moments of its death, than I would ever be. Shrews live just a few short months; what seems but a season to us is to them their whole existence. I just thought, how wonderful must be the sun’s warmth, the scent
of pollen, the colours of a beetle’s shell, how every moment must extend to a day’s duration, and every part of that moment be filled with experience we are unable even to notice. It seemed to me that we drag ourselves through years and years and years, and never feel anything as minutely, as exquisitely as that.”

The church bell tolled out. A single bell, sounding the same whether it begins or ends a service, whether it is ushering in a new Christian to the congregation, or ushering out the dead. The sound seemed to make the air itself shudder.

“And yet,” I said, “and yet, now I know about the stone, it’s as if we flicker into life, and out again, like candle flames.”

There was a moment’s silence. I was still caught up in my thoughts.

“You’re nineteen,” he said. “You told me the other night.”

I shook my head to clear it. “Yes. Nineteen.”

“And only had a church-school education.”

I nodded and looked down at Lyell’s book. The deep slow movement of stone; its accretions and abrasions, its sudden shudders. The shallow sea full of drifting creatures. The images seemed to cluster, to press against some invisible barrier. The bell tolled again, and though the sound dispersed, it felt like the air still quivered in the room, as if the lime-washed limestone walls contained and amplified the effect. The barrier cracked, splintered; meaning flooded through the gaps. I understood.

“Where did you get the book?” I asked.

“I bought it from a dealer.”

Reverend Wolfenden would be stalking down the aisle to the church door.

“And where did the dealer get it from?”

“It belonged to some gentleman’s library that was broken up after he died; see the initials?” He reached over, closed the book, shifted it around to show me the spine. “D.F.C.? They’re his.”

The bell tolled again; the air in the room seemed almost to hum with resonance. The congregation would be on its feet, shuffling into the aisles. The Reverend would stand at the open doorway, ready to shake a hand, to nod, to give a word of caution or approval. The cold waters of knowledge stifled me; I found it hard to breathe.

“I shouldn’t have read it. You knew what was in it; you shouldn’t have let me.”

He leaned back, looked at me a long moment.

“You should take this in no way as an insult,” he said, “but you’re talking bobbins. Think about what you’ve just said. It’s no business of mine to dictate to you what you can and cannot read. What are books
for
?”

The bell tolled out again; the room was full of it, my head was full of it. My thoughts had slipped their moorings and were dragged away. The congregation would be gathering at the church door; there would be polite Sunday talk. My mother would be approaching the Reverend’s station, dropping him a curtsey. He, his hands clasped in front of him, twisting his neck above his starched white collar, would crane his head down to her and say, Where is your elder daughter? Where is Lizzy?

“What were you reading, when I came in?” I asked.

He glanced down at the open ledger. “It’s something I am writing.”

“May I read it?”

“I don’t think so. It’s my own account—unfinished, private—”

He began to smile, realizing what he said.

“You dictate that it’s not for me to read, then,” I said.

“Because it’s not very good, because I’d be ashamed to show you, not—”

The bell tolled out once more. With the Reverend leaning so close, Mam would have to take a half-step backwards before she began to explain, her face reddening as if at a guilty conscience, as if she had known all along that I was skiving. In the conflict and muddle of my thoughts, one thing was clear and still: however much I might want it—the books, the peace, the conversation, the man in this room—I couldn’t have it.

“This book,” I said, pushing it across the table towards him. “Lyell’s book, it’s wrong.”

He folded his arms, leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.”

“Wrong factually, or wrong morally?” He held up a palm to stop me. “Bear in mind you’ve only got the first volume there; don’t judge too hastily, you can’t be sure what else he had to say.”

“I regret reading even this.”

“I certainly didn’t recommend it—”

“It’s heresy.”

“That’s a bit strong.” He leaned back in his seat, folded his arms. He seemed to be enjoying himself considerably. It made me furious.

“It doesn’t fit with the Good Book, with the Creation,” I snapped.

The church bell tolled again; the distance between one ring and the next had grown; the sexton would be letting the rope slip between his palms; letting the bell rock itself back to stillness.

“Forgive me, it’s been a long time since I read Lyell, but as I recall, he shies away from the more radical implications of his theories. He never claims that the Bible is actually in
error
.”

“There is no call to laugh at me, Mr. Moore.”

He leaned forward, regarded me with what seemed like honesty. “I assure you, I am not laughing.”

“Anyway. There is no need for him to make such a claim. His argument is there throughout, running through everything like a bad thread. There is no place for Eden in this book.”

Mr. Moore inclined his head, seemed about to speak, but didn’t. It seemed to me that his calm demeanour barely covered a profound amusement.

“What if you are to God as that shrew was to you,” he said. “What seems countless aeons to us might seem just seven days to Him? So Genesis is not contradicted, just considered on a different scale. Would that work?”

I stood up, my chair scraping back; “The Lord is not a housemaid, sir, and I am not a shrew.”

He laughed outright; he shook his head and laughed. I thought, he’ll stop me, he’ll stop me leaving. He’ll say something that will explain it all, that will make this yawning darkness close up again and everything seem safe again: God will be reaffirmed in His heaven and all will still be all right with the world. His hand will rest warm upon my arm again, and we will be reconciled; we will be friends, because we were, I thought, beginning to be friends. But he didn’t stop me. I was already at the door, a hand to the latch, before he spoke again.

“What then,” he said, “what then if I suggested that God, and Eden and the Testaments new and old, were all stories, were ways
of understanding the world, but not like philosophy or history or science, but like the stories we tell children at bedtime, to reassure them in the dark.”

I paused at the threshold and turned to look at him. He was leaning away from the table, his chair balanced on its back legs. He was frowning slightly, but seemed to be in perfect good humour.

“
Stories
?”

“You know the kind of thing: the baby was found under the gooseberry bush, your grandmother was very tired and went to sleep. Stories you tell children so as to keep them from the fear and blood and pain and the realization that some things are unknown and unknowable, and that we are all going to die.”

“You are saying that the Word of God is an old wives’ tale?”

“I just think we need to grow up. Mankind will never be adult, be responsible, while we still expect our Father to come and dispense justice, to punish the naughty children and hand out peppermints to the good.”

His words bruised my soul. “But Jesus said—”

“How do you know? Did he tell you? Did he write it down? Hand me the Bible from the shelf. Let’s see the Gospel According to Jesus, shall we?”

“I can’t defend my faith as I would like; I haven’t the education. But I’ll pray for you.”

He put his hands behind his head and grinned.

“You said at school they taught you to read the Gospels as gospel truth. So no one ever taught you to think; they just taught you to accept. And yet there you were the other night, marching
into my room with your forehead like a thundercloud, thinking away. And here you are again, battling with it, furious with me, so cross at what I’ve said. I don’t care if you never agree with me; I really don’t. Nineteen and a housemaid.” He shook his head.

I wanted to go over to him and shove him; to send his chair flying over backwards. It’d do him good, I thought, to fall. And with the fury, there was an ache deep in my chest, almost like grief. My mother and father would be walking up the village street, arms linked, united for the walk home. The boys would have raced off ahead with their pals. Sally would be trailing along with Ruth, Sunday frocks swishing around their feet, Sunday bonnets concealing their whispered confidences. This was over.

“Tell me this,” I said. “I need to know. Do you believe in anything?”

“Of course,” he said.

“What, then?”

“That there is nothing else but this, the material world in which we live. That we must love one another. That we must die.”

My skin stood up in goose flesh, and the air seemed to hum again, as if after a bell, but the bell had ceased chiming some time ago, and my people would be at the door at any moment. Mr. Moore held my gaze, his brown eyes steady, honest, but a little wet, as if he had brought himself close to tears.

“God bless you,” I said.

He inclined his head.

I left him. I made my way down the stairs, clutching tightly to the rail. I sank down into Mam’s chair. It was as though all
my life I had been looking down into a safe and familiar pool, and now a sudden shift had shown me that it was not a pool but limitless, and I was looking not down, but up, into vast blue sky, into space dizzying in its emptiness.

They were home; I could hear them outside, on the steps. Mam was saying something to John, and John was whining back at her; and then Dad shouted at him, and probably raised a hand; the door opened, John dodged in, around the table, and darted upstairs. Dad followed, bellowing after him, then Mam and Ted, and Sally trailed in last of all.

Everything seemed to shrink into the distance. I leaned my head back against the chair, closed my eyes. I would be sick; I knew I would be sick. My mam’s cool calloused palm was on my forehead.

“Poor love.”

I swallowed, didn’t speak.

“Go and lie down.”

I opened my eyes; her spider’s-web cheeks, the weather-dark skin, the creases at her eyes and lips, all caught up in concern. I loved her for this gentleness.

“Our bed,” she said, and made to hook an arm under my arm. “Come on.”

I shook my head and pressed my eyes tightly shut. For once, the last thing that I wanted was to be alone with my thoughts. She let me stay there, in her chair, and busied herself with the dinner. After a while, she brought me a cup of mint tea, soothing to the nerves.

He came down for his dinner. I could not look at him.

Mam excused me, saying I was poorly, and I could feel his eyes
on me a long moment. I would not look at him. He retired to his room after dinner; he did not come down again.

In the beginning God created the Heavens, and the Earth
.

And the Earth was without form, and void, and Darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters
.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light
.

Light spilled down through the gaps in the ceiling. I crooked my arm over my eyes, and listened to Sally breathe. The Spirit of God moved upon the waters. Warm shallow waters full of tiny drifting creatures, swimming with fishes and the rocks crusting with mussels and caddises. Water that ground and pounded at the rock seabed, and crumbled it to sand.

No; it was lifeless water, dark water, empty water, until verses twenty and twenty-one.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly about the earth in the open firmament of heaven
.

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good
.