The Telling (7 page)

My mam was nodding with sleep. Sally was leaning heavily against me; I thought she was drowsing too; there was no sound from her of work. I set down my basket and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, smelling the willow on my skin.

“I am sick to death of this green wood,” Sally said, making me jump.

Mam’s head sprang up. “What?”

Then Sally said the same thing again, and they got to talking, and there was no hope of hearing anything distinct from above. At ten o’clock the men came down, and Thomas brought the chairs with him, and he stood there while we swallowed yawns and rubbed at our faces. He made some comment about things being very interesting, and making a person think, and he was dying for me to ask him about what had taken place upstairs, but I wouldn’t. I wanted rid of him, of them all. I just needed to sleep. Sally yawned; a big natural unsmothered yawn, like a dog, not caring who saw. Thomas finally noticed that he was keeping us from rest and said goodnight.

Sally and I made our bed up on the rug, and lay down. She fell instantly and deeply asleep, and began to snore.

A light continued on upstairs; it filtered down between the floorboards. I lay awake, looking up at it, my eyes gritty with fatigue. Dad knew, and Mam knew, and Sally knew, and Thomas knew, and everybody knew what was going on, everybody but me. It was not a pleasant feeling, to be alone in the dark.

I turned on my side, drew the blankets up to my chin. Mr. Moore could not stay forever. The work would finish, and he would go on somewhere else, and we would have our room again.

I must have drifted through work that morning, half asleep; I don’t remember much of it, but then hardly any of it requires me
to think, and so is easily forgotten. I was polishing the copper pans in the kitchen, watching the image of my face spilling back and forth over the curve of the milk pan like grain tipped from palm to palm, when I realized Mrs. Briggs was speaking to me. I looked over at her. She was frowning, her hands on her hips. Her hands were white with flour; scraps of dough were stuck to them and peeling off onto the flags, as though she were suffering from some awful malaise of the skin. She seemed more puzzled than cross.

“Don’t you hear me talking to you? You’re wanted in the morning room. Wash your hands before you go.”

The door into the morning room stood open. Soft southern light fell through high windows, so that the room seemed full of misty sunshine. Mrs. Wolfenden had had this room fitted out for her particular use. Papered walls, delicate furnishings; a sofa in a golden brocade, a carpet in a creamy shade that just sucks in the dirt; all seemed to gather up and hold the morning light, as if in a golden cup. Mrs. Wolfenden sat on the sofa with her sewing. Wearing a yellowish poplin, her fair hair scorched into ringlets, it seemed as though she had dressed herself to suit the room, or that the room had been dressed to complement her beauty. Both might, now I came to think of it, indeed have been the case.

I came in softly in my slippers. Reverend Wolfenden was standing with his back to me and his hands clasped behind him. He was gazing out of the high windows across the lawns, towards the orchard. Mrs. Wolfenden looked up and saw me. She smiled faintly, and glanced at her husband.

Mrs. Briggs had reported me, I knew it. I’d been tired and stupid
these past weeks, having had insufficient and shallow sleep. I would have explained to her, I would have tried harder, if she’d but spoken to me first. Now, I stood to have my wages docked and a black mark set against my name. I’d seen others lose their positions for not much more than that. Nothing was forgotten or forgiven here.

Noticing some movement, or sensing his wife’s glance, Reverend Wolfenden turned around. He moved stiffly, buttoned up in his waistcoat, his chin held high over his starched collar. I bobbed an awkward curtsey to him.

“Ah,” he said, “Lizzy.”

“Sir.”

“You have a lodger at your house,” he said.

Surprise made my look sharpen; I remember noticing that his skin was raw from the razor, and already bloomed with blue. “Yes, sir.”

The Reverend tilted his head to one side. “One Mr. Moore,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I believe he is a joiner in Oversby’s employ.”

“I understand that is the case, sir.”

I felt a strange uneasiness of spirits. The Reverend continued looking at me thoughtfully, and didn’t speak. He pinched his lower lip between his forefinger and his thumb, squeezing it into a damp red bulge, then let it go.

“He has been holding meetings in your home.”

My unease deepened. Was this blameworthy? The Reverend’s expression gave no hint.

“Just one meeting,” I said. “Last night, in fact, and that’s all. I didn’t know anything about it.”

Reverend Wolfenden looked at his wife, and she put her work aside, and stood up and came over to me. Her hair caught the light, looked golden as angels’ hair. She took my hand in her ungloved hand.

“We have always been good to you, Lizzy.”

Her hand was cool and soft, and mine felt hard and dry and sore, and I couldn’t catch her meaning. I had done the work, I had worn the slippers they insisted on so that I went about quietly, and I had curtseyed as required, and they had paid me, and I had never thought that there could be more to it than that. They gave me a half-day on a Friday once a month so I could help my mam with the washing, but I’d never felt particularly grateful for that. Mrs. Wolfenden didn’t say anything more, but just looked at me, her pale eyes earnest and on a level with mine. This was far worse, far more unsettling than any scolding could have been. At the same time, I felt flattered by the cool touch of her hand, and by the Reverend’s keen attention; I had never felt so noticed, so taken account of before.

They were waiting for me to reply; there was just the clock ticking on the mantel, and the sound of their breath, hers light and shallow over her stays, his heaving in and out through his nostrils. I said, though I wasn’t really sure that I meant it, and by that point wasn’t even sure what question I was replying to: “Yes, madam.”

“Well then, you will not mind if Mr. Wolfenden asks something of you in return.”

I looked up from her soft young face, her light curls, and back to him tall and red-cheeked by the window.

“No,” I said.

Reverend Wolfenden nodded. “Good girl. It is just this, and it is not too much to ask a good Christian girl. Be watchful. Be watchful of Mr. Moore, and tell me what you see.”

Mrs. Davies gestured me
into the sitting room, and left me there, while she went out to the kitchen. I could hear the rush of water into the kettle and the clatter of crockery. I sat down gingerly in a sunken armchair, which, with its twin and a beige sofa, formed a corral around a big old box of a TV. I found myself looking at the crocheted doily draped over the top of the box, the way it hung down over the screen like a fringe. A glass vase stood on it, holding a single fake rose. Plastic dewdrops caught the light and refracted it. I sat there, aware of the rumble of the kettle, the clink of china, the soft murmur of the old woman talking to herself as she made the tea, and I watched the chip of light in the plastic dewdrop, its pink and green facets,
and I felt as though I was going slowly out of focus; as if, when she came back into the room, she would find me fading, faint, dispersing into the surrounding air.

She came in with a tray, placed it on top of the nest of tables, and began extracting the smallest table from underneath. She was solid and awkward and flustered, and I was half rising to help her, but was too slow, and sank back as she shuffled out the table and whisked it over to my side. She handed me a cup and saucer with a smile. The cup was patterned with poppies and wheat-ears. The tea was grey and milky and a clot of milk-fat floated on the top. I wanted to be back in the Reading Room. It was almost panic: if I was going to disappear, it had to be there, where I could lose myself completely and no one would even notice I was gone. I glanced up at the window, but the lower half was shrouded in creamy net curtains, and I couldn’t see out.

She sat down with an old-person’s huff of breath, fidgeted with cardigan buttons and then with the metal watch strap that was pinching her skin. She glanced up and offered me a smile.

“How are your mum and dad?” she asked.

Her skin had the soft translucency of age; her lips smudged and bluing, her cheeks traced with broken capillaries. She knew something was up; I could tell she’d noticed there was something wrong with me. It has a smell, I think: like diabetes, kidney disease, or cancer. I found myself suddenly aware of another scent in the air, raw and cool and dusty-sweet: icing. She’d been icing a cake.

“You must have been wondering,” I ventured. “The place standing empty so long.”

“I saw you pottering around.” Her voice was biscuity and soft. “I thought you were your mum. I was going to come over and say hello.”

There was a pause. She sipped her tea, gently expectant.

“She got ill,” I said.

“Oh.”

She set down her teacup.

“Not long after they bought the cottage. They came back a couple of times, after the diagnosis, but I guess she didn’t have the energy to do much.”

She didn’t ask. She shifted forward on her seat, stretched out a hand.

“It’s over a year ago now, since she died.” I spoke quickly, knowing whatever I said the words were bubbles, fragile, weightless, bursting in midair between us. “Dad’s not been back. He couldn’t face it. I’m packing up and putting it on the market for him.”

“Oh, my poor love,” she said, and shuffled forward again, her thin hand extended towards me. I didn’t take it. I smiled, my eyes open wide to accommodate the wet.

“It seems lovely around here—I haven’t seen much, but what I have is really beautiful.”

“It is.” She retreated, put her cup down on the table and looked away. “Really. Some lovely walks. But it’s awfully quiet nowadays. A dormitory, really.”

“It’s so quiet I can hear the electricity in the house. Do you get that over here, a kind of humming sound, you can barely hear it? I was thinking it must be the substation.”

“No,” she said. “Or at least, not so I’ve noticed. I don’t recall
Margaret mentioning it either. Perhaps there’s a fault in your wiring. You should have it checked.”

“Margaret?”

“Margaret Hutton. She lived there before your parents bought it.”

She smiled, revealing her neat ceramic caps. There was a pause. She looked down at her hands, lifted her right hand, turned it over and ran a fingertip from wrist to knuckle. The silence stretched like chewing gum. I was reminded of myself, just a short while earlier, studying my hands like that.

“It’d been a labourer’s cottage before they bought it; part of the Storrs Estate. It’ll say on your deeds.” I noticed then the colour of her eyes, a soft clear tea-brown. The lower lids fell loose and looked sore and pink. “I just hope I can afford to go to as good a place as she did.”

I thought she was joking. I thought this was a camel-through-the-eye-of-the-needle reference. I thought of the old lady whose slippers had worn the tracks into the carpet, whose Sunday dinners still lingered in those rooms; there was nothing ghostly about her presence: it was all very real.

“I thought the less money you had the better?”

“It certainly doesn’t help, it seems. Her boy Jack had to sell up just to pay the fees.”

“Fees?”

“It’s a good place, but it’s not cheap. The home.”

“Ah.”

“She’s been in the home four years now. Up at Storrs. You’ll have seen it, the old hall, the big house with the tower. Jack’s her eldest, he runs the farm now; his wife Sandra told me that when he goes to visit his mum she doesn’t even know who he is.”

“That’s really sad,” I said.

She looked at me in a precise, thoughtful way. Then she told me what had happened.

It was about six years ago. It was windy, February, the middle of the night, and she was woken by someone shouting in the street outside. It sounded like a woman’s voice, calling for someone, calling out a name, but she couldn’t be sure whose name it was, it was too windy to hear properly. She had woken her husband Edward, and they’d gone out to see what was going on. It was Margaret Hutton out in the street, in her nightdress, blue with cold, the wind whipping her hair across her face. They asked her what she was doing, and she said Charlie had gone out earlier to pick the blackcurrants, and he hadn’t come back. She was barefoot; her feet cold and muddy on the dark wet tarmac. She said she’d looked all over the garden, but she couldn’t find him, she was still looking, could they help her. And that was how it began.

“How what began?”

“Well, her decline, really.”

“She didn’t find him?”

“Picking blackcurrants in February?” she shook her head. “And anyway Charlie, well, he’d been gone a while by then. She was a widow, had been for the best part of a decade.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”

“Me and Edward, we said to ourselves that she’d just been dreaming, sleepwalking or what have you, but I think we already knew that there was more to it than that. She seemed to come around somehow, and had a bit of a cry, and we sat with her a while, and then I put her to bed. It was just the start of it, really.
It’s a cruel illness; what it does to you is cruel. We’d just find her, I don’t know, straying. She’d be talking about people and we’d have no idea what she was on about. Names we’d never heard; even Jack could make no sense of it. It got so she couldn’t really be left alone. She just kept on drifting off into her own little world, and couldn’t cope with this one anymore.”

I felt the words come out clumsy, overladen: “She must have been quite elderly by this time?”

She smiled. “These things are relative! She was only in her mid-sixties, when she went into the home. But she’d been ill for years and years. People get good at hiding it, apparently. They can hide it for years.”

The words seemed to fall slowly, as through water, catching and reflecting gleams of light.
They can hide it for years
. I could feel the hairs on my arms rise up and press against the inside of my sleeves.

“It seems callous even to admit it, but it scared me. To lose all sense of yourself, like that.” She shook her head, smiled. It was an unhappy smile. I watched the intricacies of the shifts in her skin, the neat ceramic teeth and the gold towards the back, the retreating gums. “You’re right; it’s really sad.”

She sipped her tea. I lifted my cup in thoughtless echo, sipped, swallowed hard to get past the catch in my throat. I watched her hand set the cup on its saucer; I watched the press of the handle into the skin, the bulge of flesh around her wedding ring. Mum’s hands were frail and white, translucent, like the bones of fishes, bunched to lift off the loosened rings, to set them down on Dad’s broad palm for safekeeping. Her lips pale, her eyes big as saucers and bulging as a newborn’s.

She was looking at me with a friendly, faintly puzzled expression. I cleared my throat and blinked.

“The cottage. Mum loved it. I got some local history books, but I can’t find out anything about it. The Reading Room, I mean. Who lived there back then.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know anything, I’m afraid. I’m a relative newcomer: only been here twenty years! If anyone knows, Margaret will. Born and bred in the village. You should see if you can talk to her.”

“But I thought—”

“When she’s having a good day, she can be as lucid as you or me.”

For a half-second I was tempted to make a joke. I could have dragged the fear out into the open, mocked it, made it ridiculous, made it shrink. I just nodded.

“If not, then there’s always Pauline; Pauline Boyd. She’s a newcomer like me, but local history is a bit of a hobby for her. She’d be happy to meet up and talk, I’m sure.”

“I’ll do that, if I have the time.” The words made me glance at my wrist. It was bare still. I had no idea what I’d done with my watch.

Mrs. Davies glanced at her narrow gold watch. “It’s a quarter past four,” she said.

“Thank you.”

But I didn’t know what day of the week it was. I wanted to talk to Mark, urgently; the fear was like a grey worm in my chest; I could feel it moving, mouthing blindly; but I had to do normal, do cheerful for Mark. I knew what he would say if he caught a whiff of this. I should come home straight away. I
should go and see the peeled man. And I couldn’t do that. Not again, not now.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for the tea.”

“Drop in again anytime. And I’ll mention you to Pauline.”

I heaved myself out of my seat, leaving my tea half-drunk.

Back in the cottage, I grabbed my phone off the breakfast bar and turned it over in my hands. Could I call him? Could I get away with it? I saw the screen; it was blank: the phone was dead. Decision made, for the time being. I took it upstairs to where I’d left the charger, in the dressing-table drawer. I plugged it in at the socket between the dresser and the bookcase, and left it on a low shelf to charge.