The Luminaries

began to pound again. ‘That’s enough,’ he said aloud, and immediately felt foolish. He stood and tossed the folded paper aside. In any case, he thought, the daylight was fading, and he disliked reading in the dusk.
    Quitting his room, he returned downstairs. He found the maid sequestered in the alcove beneath the stairs, scrubbing at a pair of riding boots with blacking, and inquired of her if there was a parlour in which he might spend the evening. His voyage had wrought considerable strain in him, and he was in sore need of a glass of brandy and a quiet place to rest his eyes.
    The maid was more obliging now—her sixpences must be few and far between, Moody thought, which could be useful later, if he needed her. She explained that the parlour of the Crown had been reserved that night for a private party—‘The Catholic Friendlies,’ she clarified, grinning again—but she might conduct him instead, if he wished it, to the smoking room.
    Moody returned to the present with a jolt, and saw that Thomas Balfour was still looking at him, with an expression of intrigued expectation upon his face.
    ‘I beg your pardon,’ Moody said, in confusion. ‘I believe I must have drifted off into my own thoughts—for a moment—’
    ‘What were you thinking of?’ said Balfour.
    What had he been thinking of? Only the cravat, the silver hand, that name, gasped out of the darkness. The scene was like a small world, Moody thought, possessed of its own dimensions. Any amount of ordinary time could pass, when his mind was straying there. There was this large world of rolling time and shifting spaces, and that small, stilled world of horror and unease; they fit inside each other, a sphere within a sphere. How strange, that Balfour hadbeen watching him; that real time had been passing—revolving around him, all the while—
    ‘I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular,’ he said. ‘I have endured a difficult journey, that is all, and I am very tired.’
    Behind him one of the billiard players made a shot: a doubled crack, a velvet plop, a ripple of appreciation from the other players. The clergyman shook out his paper noisily; another man coughed; another struck the dust from his shirtsleeve, and shifted in his chair.
    ‘I was asking about your quarrel,’ Balfour said.
    ‘The quarrel—’ Moody began, and then stopped. He suddenly felt too exhausted even to speak.
    ‘The dispute,’ prompted Balfour. ‘Between you and your father.’
    ‘I am sorry,’ Moody said. ‘The particulars are delicate.’
    ‘A matter of money! Do I hit upon it?’
    ‘Forgive me: you do not.’ Moody ran his hand over his face.
    ‘Not of money! Then—a matter of love! You are in love … but your father will not approve the girl of your choosing …’
    ‘No, sir,’ Moody said. ‘I am not in love.’
    ‘A great shame,’ Balfour said. ‘Well! I conclude: you are already married!’
    ‘I am unmarried.’
    ‘You are a young widower, perhaps!’
    ‘I have never been married, sir.’
    Balfour burst out laughing and threw up both his hands, to signal that he considered Moody’s reticence cheerfully exasperating, and quite absurd.
    While he was laughing Moody raised himself up on his wrists and swivelled to look over the high back of his armchair at the room behind him. He had the intention of drawing others into their conversation somehow, and perhaps thus diverting the other man from his purpose. But nobody looked up to meet his gaze; they seemed, Moody thought, to be actively avoiding him. This was odd. But his posture was awkward and he was being rude, and so he reluctantly resumed his former position and crossed his legs again.
    ‘I do not mean to disappoint you,’ he said, when Balfour’s laughter subsided.
    ‘Disappoint—no!’ Balfour cried. ‘No, no. You will have your secrets!’
    ‘You mistake me,’ Moody said. ‘My aim is not concealment. The subject is personally distressing to me, that is all.’
    ‘Oh,’ Balfour said, ‘but it is always so, Mr. Moody, when one is young—to be distressed by one’s own history, you know—wishing to keep it back—and never to share it—I mean, with other men.’
    ‘That is a wise observation.’
    ‘Wise! And nothing else?’
    ‘I do not understand you, Mr. Balfour.’
    ‘You are determined to thwart my curiosity!’
    ‘I confess I am a little startled by it.’
    ‘This is a gold town, sir!’ Balfour said. ‘One must be sure of his fellows—one must trust in