The Telling (8 page)

IT WAS ONE OF those bright windy days you sometimes get even in late May, the kind that make you feel more awake than usual; a good drying day.

I went straight from my morning’s work to help with the washing, passing home and Agnes’s house to go down the wash-house lane, my clogs clattering over the loose round stones as I went. The clotheslines, looped from post to post across the slope, were almost full; the white linen was brilliant against the green grass and blue sky; dark britches and jackets danced like drunkards. The breeze made sheets billow, shirts fill and flap, made chemises belly out like sails. At a glance, it looked like
the Naval Fleet had run aground on our patch of green, and the village was having a party in its honour.

Aunty Sue and Aunty Edith were outside the wash-house, at the mangles. They dipped and rose with the handles’ turn, muscles proud on their bare arms, sweat patching their bodices. Sue glanced up and saw me.

“Your mam’s in there, she’ll know what’s most needed.”

It was steamy and hot inside, full of the sour smells of soap and sweat and the bitter tang of lye. Mam was tired and flushed, standing at a tub and pounding something dark with her paddle. When she saw me she rested the paddle against the side of the tub, stepped down, wiped her face, and went outside, without saying a word. I got up onto the step, took up the hand-polished haft and stirred the clothes through the murky water, swirling them around and slapping at them, pressing them down and mashing them against the bottom. Considering them done, I heaved them out with tongs and slopped them into a basket, hefted the dripping basket up and carried it outside. My mam was sitting on the stone bench by the door flapping at her face, her top buttons undone and her shift stuck to her skin.

“That’s the last of the washing,” she said. “You’ll need to get the dry things down.”

So I took an empty basket on my hip and made my way up the slope towards the lines. The drying laundry stirred in the breeze. I walked the billowing halls between the lines, and felt hidden from everything, and alone. I could see nothing but white linen, green grass below, blue sky above. I lifted shifts to touch the seams to my cheek for dampness, scooped up the trailing ends of sheets to test their coolness, breathed in the cold sweet smell of linen on the
line. I unpinned what was dry, put the pins in my apron pocket, bundled up the washing and laid it in my basket. My hands felt dry and papery from the clean cold linen. I moved on through the white corridors, and into the dark, where britches and dresses danced around me, still wet from the tubs.

Someone began to sing. Aunty Edith: I could hear her, faint but clear, a lovely voice, sweet and full. It was a song from a new ballad sheet that had been doing the rounds lately.

In Liverpool town is my delight,

and in that lives many beauties bright
,

The other women joined her, swelling the sound.

but the one I loved did me disdain,

so I fixed my mind on the raging main
.

I’d reached the top of the slope, the last clothesline. My basket was heaped and overflowing with linen, and the clothes pegged out up here were still sodden. I hitched the basket more tightly onto my hip, turned and climbed the lane for home, feeling the press of the slope in my calves and thighs. I opened the gate one-handed, eased myself and my basket through the gap, and fastened the latch behind me. The women’s voices were still ringing out from the bottom of the hill.

I left my ma, I left my pa
,

I turned my eye to the fixed star
,

’Neath sun and moon, through howling gale
,

Then I noticed the cart. It was standing outside our house. The tailgate was down and the carter was trying to unload a box. He’d got hold of a strap, and was tugging at it, pulling it towards him; the box lurched heavily. I tucked the basket tight into my waist, and strode across the street towards him.

“That’s not for us,” I said. “You’ve got the wrong house.”

The carter dragged the box off the cart and into his arms. He peered around the side of it to look at me. He was a small man, I’d seen him every so often bringing parcels for the Wolfendens or the Forsters.

“I was told to deliver this here.”

His face was all red with the strain and the weight of the box.

“We’re not expecting anything; you’ve got the wrong house.”

He took a couple of staggering steps backwards, turned, and dumped the box down on our front wall.

“Well,” he said, “you’re in luck, then.”

“Don’t you dare,” I said.

He brushed his hands together, shook his head, smiled. “Too late.”

The box crushed the little creeping thyme plant that grows in the wall; I could smell its fragrance.

“We are not going to pay you for that, you know.”

He tugged his jacket straight. “It’s paid for in advance.”

Dad. What had he done? “Listen,” I said, “whatever he told you, we can’t afford—”

The carter spoke over me, his complacency infuriating: “It’s no fault of mine if your husband doesn’t reckon up every expense with you.”

He heaved himself up onto the seat, and flicked the reins.
The horse took a step forward, and the slack went out of the harnessing; the wheels began to turn, and I was left standing there, mystified, watching as the cart pulled away up the village street, looking at the back of the carter’s greasy hat and his narrow shoulders in mouse-coloured fustian. Then I noticed the words scrawled across the top of the box in wide chalk letters.
Robert Moore, Esquire
.

I felt a sudden flush of self-consciousness. The words of that conversation were like moths around my head.
Us
. I’d said.
We
. The carter had said
husband
. Mr. Moore. I was back in that half-sleeping dream of the dark room; I was standing over him, bending to him; his arm was curling around me, drawing me down towards him. The dark warmth.

My hand had risen to my lips; I snatched it away. I looked at the box on our front wall, scrawled with Mr. Moore’s name. This must have been what the Reverend meant, when he asked me to be watchful, and tell him what I saw.

I’d bring the box up to his room.

I couldn’t carry everything at once. I ran in with my basket, shook out the shirts and shifts and sheets and pillowslips and draped them on the clothes horse, the dolly and the chairs, to let them air; three families’ stuff all muddled together; we’d sort it out afterwards. The carter had been struggling with the box, but he was a slight little person; it shouldn’t be too difficult to shift. I was straightening up and pushing my loose hair back, and turning to go out again, and there, at the foot of the stairs, in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, his shirt open at the neck so that I could see a dip where throat and chest met, was Robert Moore.

“It’s you,” I said.

He bowed his head in acquiescence.

“I didn’t think there was anybody home.”

“A half-day’s holiday,” he said.

“There’s a package for you; it’s outside. I was going to bring it in.”

I turned towards the door. My other shift, worn shamefully thin, looking grey as cobwebs to me now, was hanging over the back of a chair. My face began to heat. I lifted the latch and stepped out into the sunshine. He followed me out and down the steps. My clogs were hard on the stone slabs: he went quietly, leather-shod. I was very conscious of him, of his bodily presence, his warmth and his breathing; if I turned, he’d be just two steps away, two steps above; my face would be level with the middle button of his shirt.

And then I realized. He’d been sitting up in my old room, waiting for his package, waiting for the carter to arrive. He’d have sat on the bed, with his back against the wall, and kept his eye on the street through the front window. You could see a good way up the village from there. You can also see the top of the wash-house lane. It was a favourite spot of mine, when it was my room; I’d sit with a book in my lap, looking out whenever movement caught my attention. If the casement is open, you can hear every word that passes in the street. I glanced back, up; the casement was open.

He’d seen everything. He’d heard everything. He’d watched me daydream afterwards.

I reached the foot of the steps; I couldn’t face him; I just kept walking. I crossed the street and unlatched the gate, slipped through and fastened it again and did not so much as glance over
to where he stood. If I could but have looked up then, and waved, and called out my farewells, it would have been smoothed over, but I was mortified. I ducked back down the track, the breeze cool on my hot cheeks, the sun making the grass shine silkily, past the white linen snapping in the breeze, towards the women’s figures dark at the bottom of the hill, and my only thought was that he must think me such a fool.

The voices were ringing out like bells from another parish, now clear and bright, now interrupted by the wind.

And where’er—

—Afric to Americay—

—I’d rather—–

—my love, my love—

They hadn’t even finished the song. When I came to the foot of the track, my mam lifted her head from the mangling.

“Where’s your basket, honey?”

I pressed my hands to my cheeks, shook my head. I’d left it back at the house.

“You’re a mooncalf,” she said, but not unkindly. “A right mooncalf.”

When he came into the room, my stomach swooped as if I were falling, but he just nodded and said good evening to us all, the whole family. He took his seat, and Mam gave him his tea. I took my plate and cup and went over to the windowsill. I perched there, looking out at the garden, at a blackbird hopping
through the herb patch, turning the earth with his yellow beak.

He set his empty cup down on the hearth; I heard the chink of china on slate, and my gaze flicked across to watch his dark hand retreat from the white china and return to the arm of the chair. Mam noticed he was done, and called across to him to ask him if he would take another cup.

“Thank you,” he said. “I will.”

“Lizzy, give us a hand here.”

I left my place at the window to fetch the pot. It was heavy and hot; it took two hands to carry it, one cupping the belly with a folded cloth, the other grasping the handle. I was aware of the sound of my skirts rustling at my legs, the press of garters against my thighs, the way the blood rose to my face as I stood in front of him. He was looking at me. His eyes were dark flowers, pitchblack at the centre, the irises traced with peat-coloured petals. He lifted his cup and I poured the tea. There was a fan of creases across the ball of his thumb, and a scar ran down the back of it. I found myself looking at the scar, at its precise whiteness. I forgot my awkwardness, forgot myself, studying the narrow white line, its dip into the flesh, the way the skin puckered at the edges. Afterwards it was in this way that I remembered him, these little details; the darkness of skin, the way it creased, that scar, his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said.

The cup was over full, the tea was welling to the brim. I dipped the pot back quickly, splashing tea onto the floor, and onto my hand, scalding; I shook it off without thinking and drops flicked onto his shirt. I watched the brown liquid seep into the weave of the cloth.

“I’m sorry—”

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“But are you hurt?” He set down his cup and stretched out his hand. “Show me.”

I shook my head, trying to manage the pot, to right its balance. “It’s fine. My skin’s like leather.”

He took the pot from my hands. Mam was speaking at the same time, saying that she didn’t know what was wrong with me lately, I’d lost any sense that I’d been born with, what was I thinking, getting clothes mucky on a washday. He set the pot down on the hearth, and took hold of my wrist, and drew my hand towards him, making me take a little awkward step closer to him. He looked at my hand; at the calluses from housework; at the scratches, scars and scabs from basket-making, the stains from preparing vegetables, cleaning copper pans, blacking boots and fireplaces. He turned it over, examined the cracks between the fingers, where the flesh is geranium-pink, that come from the cold, from scullery and laundry work. His fingers pressed strong and warm into my flesh. Then he let go.

“No harm done,” he said.

Mam ducked in between us with a rag and dabbed at Mr. Moore’s shirt. I went back to the table. I stood with my sister. I lifted my spoon and pushed the pudding around on the plate. My mam was still leaning over him, dabbing, talking. He said little, and calmly. I could feel my cheeks burning. Sally looked strangely at me. For once, I did not give a tinker’s damn what she might notice, or what she would find to say about it.

He went upstairs not long after and we tidied away the things.
The boys went out and Dad took himself to a corner with a newspaper, a half worn-out rag of a thing that must have done the rounds of a dozen households already. Mam had me stoke up the stove, and get the irons out of the cupboard. I stirred myself and set the irons to heat.

We dragged the chairs and stools out of the way, brought the table across to the fireside. We sorted the linen. Sally took her unfinished basket and sat herself down on the far side of the kitchen, at a distance from the heat. There’s not enough room or irons for more than two of us to work at once. Mam lifted an iron from the hearth and spat onto its polished base. The spittle sizzled and was gone. She nodded at me. I picked up another iron and we began to work.

The room grew hot and damp, the windows misting; there was no sound but the crumble of wood as it burned, the creak and tap of the basket-making, the hush of irons on linen. From time to time my dad turned a page, shook the paper straight. My hair fell in tangles around my face, my shoulders ached, my nose itched. I rubbed at it with the back of a hand.

“Would you read to us, Dad?”

He glanced up at me, frowned thoughtfully, and went back to his silent reading.