The Telling (25 page)

Mam exclaimed warmly at this, then asked, “Who’s Mrs. Millard?”

Sally took up a fold of cloth and rubbed it between her finger and thumb, pouting. My cheeks burned. She glanced up at me.

“You can borrow my second set of stays, if you need them.”

“Is your box left up at the public house?” Mam asked. “Shall I send the lads for it?”

Sally shook her head. “The Forsters had their man collect my valise. Mrs. Forster has been kind enough to ask me to stay with her.”

The glow sank from Mam’s face. She smiled, said, “Oh.”

“Well, I can hardly sleep on the floor here, can I?”

Sally took herself over to the fireside chairs, arranged her skirts carefully and sat down. “I am parched for a cup of tea.”

Mam rushed to set the kettle on. I returned to the work. My mam had had a notion that if we could squeeze the pattern into
small enough a space, she could make herself a new bonnet-liner out of the remainder. I unpinned the front panel of the bodice, teased it down a little less than a hand-span, slid the yoke in and stabbed it into place with a pin.

Mam was asking Sally about the milliner’s shop as she made the tea, and about Mrs. Millard who was, it turned out, one of the better sort of customers. Sally told Mam about her extraordinary progress, how she had been given silk to work with, how she had feathers such as you wouldn’t dream, that came off great big birds from half a world away, and cost more than the silk; and weight for weight cost more, almost certainly, than gold. I took up the scissors and snipped into the cloth. She got up, and smoothed herself down again, and came over to watch me, distractingly. I glanced up at her.

“You’re going wrong there,” she said.

I looked back down. I had. I retreated with the scissors, then set them down. “Only a snip.”

“So, you and Thomas are finally courting.”

“We’re not courting.” There was a faint darkness under her eyes, I noticed, as if she were fatigued, or somehow troubled, but her manner gave nothing away.

“He’s been pining after you long enough,” she said.

“We are
not
courting.”

“What do you think this is, then?” She nodded at the fabric. The pattern was laid and pinned out, and I had already begun to cut the cloth that he had given me. There was, after all, no disputing what she said.

The Reverend leaned on the pulpit’s edge, his hands gripped around the rim, his knuckles white. He was speaking, his voice level, setting out the argument of his sermon as if he were laying paving stones. I was watching the whiteness of his knuckles, the way the veins stood out on the back of his hands.

I sat between Thomas and my mam. My dad was sat on the far side of her, at the end of the tight-packed pew. All the free-seats were full, the air heavy with the press of warm bodies, the smell of clothes, goose fat and lavender water and bad teeth; a whiff of drink here and there, including off my dad. Michaelmas daisies and marigolds were brilliant on the windowsills; their faint scent was the scent of funerals and did little to sweeten the air. I kept my eyes on the pulpit.

The Reverend’s surplice was spotless as the Lamb; spotless as all the linen that we laundered for him. It hung in folds, as if carved out of wood and whitewashed. I watched as his face filled with blood; noticed that his voice was getting shrill, and there was spittle at the corner of his mouth. The words were coming from his lips like ash-flakes lifting from the fire. It was as though I didn’t so much hear them, as watch them rise.

To presume too much, seeking to rise above the station allotted, tempted by Satan to presumption, it is folly, folly, folly of the most abject kind, to look to the things of this life, and so lose the Life to come
.

I could hear Thomas breathing, too close. I felt my mam’s shoulder press against my own, too close. I could smell the breakfast egg on her breath.

The wise man seeks rather an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away. A Crown of Glory, Life Everlasting, garments that shine like the sun. The Righteous Man will heed the word of God, and not the word of Man, or the word of the Devil from man’s lips. The Righteous Man knows that to do otherwise is to fall into sin and folly; he knows that there is no wisdom greater than that of the Pure Heart and the Innocent Mind, that there is no worldly consolation for the troubled soul
.

I could see the back of Sally’s head, the bare nape of her neck underneath her fancy feathered bonnet. She was sitting between Mr. and Mrs. Forster in their pew. And as Reverend Wolfenden said
A Crown of Glory
she reached up, and touched the curl that had escaped on the nape of her neck, and I loved her for it. Dad said something. I didn’t quite hear it; he spoke under his breath, and was at the far end of the pew. I saw Mam shushing him; he shook his head, and fell silent.

For the Lord has ordered our estate, and set every man in his situation, from the highest in the land, to the most wretched pauper at his door—

Dad rose from his seat, making me gasp, sending off rustles of movement across the church as people turned to stare. He was standing now, one hand clutching the back of the pew in front, the other clenched in a fist at his side.

“Damn fine luck for some,” he said.

Silence filled the whole of the chancel; it was as if the nave,
from flags to roof-beams, had been turned into one solid block of ice. Mam scrabbled at his arm, but he pushed her hand away. He stepped out into the aisle, and I lunged across Mam, trying to grab his coat-tails.

“Dad,” I said, “please, Dad, don’t—” But it was too late, I couldn’t catch hold of him, and I doubt it would have done much good if I had.

“Isaiah,” he said, far too loud, his voice ringing around the chancel roof like the Reverend’s. “The prophet Isaiah. He said you were damned if you took more land than you needed to feed yourself and your family, that you were damned if you added property to property and left nowhere for ordinary men to live. Isaiah said that was devilry, and you’d be damned for it. What would be your thoughts on that, Reverend? On Isaiah’s teachings?”

The silence was melting, people began to mutter. Dad raised his voice over the noise.

“And then there’s the rulers who make unrighteous decrees and turn aside the needy from justice, and take away the rights from the poor; they were damned too, according to Isaiah. There was a time we had rights. A bit of land to farm. Cattle and fowl on the common. Hogs in the woods. Them rights were taken away, and property was added to property.”

“Shut up,” someone said, low and urgent.

“God’s sake man, sit down,” someone else called out. “We’ll be here all day.”

Dad was moving up the aisle towards the pulpit. His words rang out through all the church, strange and heavy-sounding.

“You’re very ready to tell us how it’s all God’s will, that this is
God’s will, and that is God’s will, but what I really want to know is if it really is God’s will, his own Holy Decree, that you eat meat every day, that you have a house big enough to be home to a hundred men, that your wife wears those pretty frocks of hers, all those silks and satins and what have you. And if it is,” he said, “I want to know how you got to be such a great favourite with Our Lord, and what I ever did to annoy him, so that I have to get by on a crust and a paring, and what the poor souls must have done so that He’d arrange a wage-cut just to watch them starve. Maybe you could share the secret of it, Reverend? Maybe you could tell us how you managed to persuade the Lord that you deserve better than the rest of us?”

My father’s voice had grown, was strong and harsh and demanding. The Reverend opened his mouth. There was a moment’s pause; he gathered breath. His face was greyish-white. A line of spittle joined his upper lip with the lower one.

My dad said, “And while we’re at it, d’y’happen to know the Lord’s opinion on the fashions, Mrs. Wolfenden? Is He fond of lace?”

Mrs. Wolfenden shrank in her pew.

“See, I only want to know what the Lord is up to, I can only ask them as’d know, them He’s set above us to govern and guide us ignorant folk. If I’m assured my tithes are being spent as He would have it, if He’s keen on you getting your satin and sirloin and coals, if He’s all for luxury and sloth for some and famine and drudgery for others, then good for you, I say. Good for you. Well done. You must be very holy folks indeed.”

My father moved up to the chancel step, and stepped up onto it, and then he turned to the congregation.

“Time we did summat, don’t y’think?”

Looking at him standing there, scruffy even in his Sunday best, his face shining with a passion that I had not seen before, I felt the whole frail structure of my happiness crack and splinter; the mist of half-read stories burn and shrink away. This was the end; I knew it was the end. This was exactly what the Reverend had been anticipating. Dad would be locked up; Mr. Moore would have to leave. He would take his books and go.

The Reverend’s expression had narrowed. “Mr. Aitken,” he said, “would you be so kind as to support my wife, and see her safely home?”

Mr. Aitken stood up and left his pew, and went to the vicarage pew, and offered Mrs. Wolfenden his arm, and she reached up and took it, and it looked as if she were being hoisted out of a hole, and Mrs. Aitken joined them both, and took her husband’s other arm, and he supported them down the aisle and out of the church, and Mrs. Wolfenden’s plump and pretty face looked pale as death; I thought she might be about to faint, and part of me thought I should go after her, assist her, but I knew my attentions would not be welcome. I watched as Mr. Forster stood and gave his wife his arm, and offered Sally the other, and, crushed close together, they made their way down the aisle. Sally passed us, and kept her eyes fixed on the floor, but I could see that she was blushing like a beet, and there was, I thought, a hint of satisfaction in her face, to find herself treated as a lady, as something fragile and prone to harm.

Dad swayed on the chancel step. His face was blurring with the drink. Beside him and above, up in the pulpit, the Reverend still stood, like a schoolmaster, waiting.

“Sit down, man,” someone called out. “Sit down. You’ll ruin everything.”

“They’s nothing but a parcel of leeches, they suck us dry; they took the land that had been ours by right since God gave it to Adam, they took it from us, and they lie to us about what it means, they lie and say God wills it, and who are we to know better?”

Mr. Aitken and Mr. Forster came in, and stood just inside the church door. To be back so soon, they must have left all the ladies at the vicarage; it was the nearest suitable dwelling.

“We must join together, we must arm ourselves!” my father cried. “We must take back the land.”

No one moved. The church was filled with a strange tension, as if this were somehow familiar to some of those assembled there. Thomas’s eyes were narrowed on my father; he half shook his head. The movement seemed involuntary.

“What is this? What is he playing at?” I whispered at him. “Do you know anything about it?”

He glanced at me, and when he replied, his voice was low, distinct and careful, and it did not sound like him.

“Your father is a drunkard and a fool.”

I sat back. I looked at Thomas differently.

“Ya bunch of worthless layabouts,” Dad spat. “Spineless bastards.”

“Idiot,” someone muttered.

“Sit down, Frank.”

Someone coughed. My mam was slumped and shrunken beside me, her hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes.

Mr. Wolfenden spoke: it seemed as if it were for the first time
in an age. “Jack Gorst, Joe Stott, bring this man to the Old Hall, and have him locked in the strongroom there.”

Someone coughed again, self-consciously. Nobody shifted. My father staggered off the chancel step, cursed, and came back down the aisle.

“Anyone, any man, you are on your honour,” the Reverend asserted, his face pinkening.

No one stirred. Not a finger was lifted.

“On our honour be damned,” Joe Stott said.

The impact of the words made Reverend Wolfenden flinch. When he spoke again, his tone was different, colder.

“The man is clearly intoxicated. He is threatening violence, and has terrified the ladies. Any honest man. Stand up.”

No one moved. Someone mumbled something; it sounded very like
do it yourseln
. There was anxious laughter, quickly stifled. Dad was making his way down the aisle still; he passed us without acknowledgement. I twisted around to follow his progress to the back of the church, where Mr. Aitken and Mr. Forster still stood guarding the door. He came to a halt there, facing them, drawn up as tall as he could manage, which wasn’t particularly tall. No one spoke. Everyone in the church must have heard as he gathered the rheum in his throat, as he hoiked the phlegm from his chest, as he spat it onto the floor at the two men’s feet. The silence was terrible. My dad grabbed the handle, swung the door open, and was gone before the men could act. The door slammed shut behind him; the noise echoed through the church.

“I’m sure you know yourselves who is on the cleaning rota for this week. Would you be so good, gentlemen,” the Reverend
addressed Mr. Aitken and Mr. Forster, “would you be so kind as to summon Mr. Moore?”

They left. The door clanged hollow behind them. Its echo faded, and the silence afterwards seemed threatening. It seemed to throb with my blood. I was very conscious how close Thomas and my mam were to me; I could not let them see that this affected me.

The Reverend stood in the pulpit. He did not speak. His expression was closed and cool. After a while, he shifted on his feet. Someone in the congregation muttered something behind me and to the left; someone gave a reply, and there was a low, restrained laugh. Someone else spoke, and then there was another voice, and soon the congregation was boiling with conversation. I could hear the two men behind me; I didn’t turn to look but I knew from earlier that it was George Horsfall and Matthew Williams, Thomas’s cousin. George was saying that Frank could never be trusted, the big meeting was only next Sunday, could he not have waited another week? Just another week and then they would have begun to see things done. Frank always had been a fool when he had drink in him, Matthew replied, but then fools sometimes did wise things; all the meetings in the world would have changed nothing. And all the while the Reverend Wolfenden stood there, gripping the railing of the pulpit, his knuckles getting whiter and whiter, and his face becoming more and more flushed, and then his face cracked into pained lines, and he opened his mouth, and he roared: