The Telling

proper-like.’
    Mr Moore moved through to the front. He climbed the steps; his expression was resolved, but he was pale. I offered Mam my arm again, and this time she took it. She was glancing around her, scanning the faces of the women. She turned to me and whispered , ‘Where’s our Sally?’
    ‘She went with the Forsters, remember?’
    Mam nodded at this, her chin dimpling as she pressed her lips together.
    ‘For the best,’ she said. ‘She’ll be all right.’
    Mr Moore spoke. His voice was faint from where we stood.
    ‘Haste is the hallmark of the shoddy workman; everyone knows that. To overcome that impatience is the first lesson of a youth’s apprenticeship. This wood will not work unseasoned; it will crack and splinter. When it is ready, it will be stronger than iron, but we must give it time. We must be patient.’
    There was silence for a moment, then a blackbird sang in the horse chestnut tree.
    ‘We should each of us go to our homes,’ Mr Moore said. ‘We must each of us go to our homes, and weather out this storm, and hope that it passes over without harm, perhaps leaving us even a little better seasoned for the work.’
    He came down the steps; a hand was placed on his arm; he was instantly folded into the debate.
    Some men were already trailing away and women were skittering off to catch up with their husbands. A crowd remained on the street, locked in argument. Mrs Bibby approached her husband, put her hand on his arm, and was shrugged off. Her failure was conspicuous. Women started to drift home alone. Men remained.
    We couldn’t get indoors without passing through the crowd. My father was among them, his arms raised in angry gestures. Mr Moore was talking to him in low, placatory tones. My mam and I pressed through the throng, my mam’s face as pale as china clay.
    Inside, she fell into a chair. I bustled about to make her tea; she sat there mute as a fish. The quietness in the house made me feel sick and empty. The commotion in the street was awful. Mr Moore came in a little later. There was still noise outside. His skin was grey, his face haggard-looking. He took the teacup I offered him.
    ‘Thank you, Elizabeth,’ he said, and sank down in my father’s chair, and drank the tea, and did not speak.
    My brothers did not come home, nor did my father. There was no talk of a meal. Work was not even picked up. Books stood unread on the shelf. The street fell silent as it grew late, and dark. At about nine o’clock, Mam got up and fetched a batch-cake from the pantry and cut lumps off it, and told me to get the kettle on again.
    She addressed Mr Moore with more than usual carefulness. She blamed him, it was clear to me she did.
    ‘What will come of it?’ she asked.
    Mr Moore glanced first at me, then at her. ‘Let us hope that nothing comes of it at all.’
    Mam looked at him narrowly. ‘Hope isn’t good enough.’
    Mr Moore nodded. ‘I agree.’
    The boys tumbled over the threshold around quarter-to-ten: they were flushed and happy, smelling of outdoors and woodsmoke: they must have had a bonfire, as if it were a holiday. They were hardly in the room before Mam started scolding. They dived on to the remainder of the batch-cake, broke it in half and started stuffing it into their mouths; Mam went for her wooden spoon. They hammered up the stairs, giggling and choking and spraying crumbs, and she went after them. There was laughter and shouting from up there, and then talk, and then silence; she can’t have beaten them. When I went up later, she was lying between them on their bed, their fair heads resting close to hers, and they were sleeping, all three of them, cuddled together, stuck with cake crumbs, worn out by the strangeness of the day.
    So I was left alone with Mr Moore. He was sat by the dimly glowing hearth, still as a monument, his face turned from me. No one had thought to light a candle or to tend the fire. I was leaning against the kitchen table, chewing on a thumbnail, not looking at anything, feeling sick and hungry and impatient, as if there were, somehow, something I could do, could I but think what.
    ‘I am so sorry, Elizabeth.’
    My name again on his lips; I took my hand from my mouth, looked around at him; in the dim light I could not make his expression out.
    ‘It’s not your fault,’ I said.
    ‘If I hadn’t… your father…’
    ‘He’s been spoiling for a fight for years.’
    I think I caught the ghost of a smile, but it didn’t linger.
    ‘They