The Telling

lose himself in reading, or in his writing, in something that would give him peace and satisfaction. I went back down, and made my bed, and tried to sleep, but my mind would not be calmed; it raced through everything, revisiting every moment from his arrival back in Lent to the meeting of our eyes across the church this morning. I flinched at the recollection of scolding him about religion when his faith had had so many challenges , and mine had had almost none. I’d asked him about his travels, when he had been transported . I remembered the way he’d looked at me under the oak that day, when I had left him to go to Thomas simply because it was easier than staying and risking being seen. He should wear a sign, I thought; a paper pinned to his lapel, listing his wounds, the damage done, the raw places that must not be touched. It was the only way to give fair warning. I wished I had been kinder to him.

 
     
     
     
    E vening. The light dim in the Reading Room. The give of the mattress and quilt beneath my weight. The dry smell of dust and the quiet of the street beyond. Eyes unfocused, head bent, I was aware of blurred floorboards, the peripheral pulse of blood. I was looking at nothing, concentrating on nothing. I had this feeling that what happened here was like a puzzle-picture, meaningless dots until someone lost focus, stopped looking directly, and the image swam into clarity.
    Perhaps it took me being there to make this happen. To catalyze the air into a fizz, to elicit shapes from the shadows. The house didn’t have a reputation. Mum and Dad had noticed nothing odd. In all their excited talk about the place, there wasn’t a shade, not even a moment of unease. There had been no mention of the air’s electric charge, voices, unaccountable scents. And Margaret; she’d lived a life here; it was only when things began to spiral apart into dementia that she started to notice the scents of wet linen, wood shavings, liquorice. So us being here made this happen. Me and Margaret. Each of us with our own particular condition. Our blank spaces. Our lapses.
    I lifted my head, mentally addressed the empty room: does our absence somehow allow you to be present? Do you slip into the gap we leave when we depart?
    My ears strained for sound. There was no noise from outside: not a bird, not a sheep, not distant traffic. Indoors, the faintest suggestion of a hum, which might just have been the sea-shell sound of the inner ear.
    Charlie died, and Margaret went looking for him in her nightdress . Mum died, and I saw her in the bookshop. I saw her in Cate’s concentrating frown. I saw my hands becoming her hands. I caught myself laughing with her laugh.
    My vision clicked sharp on the bookcase, a knot in the back panel. The room was still, its breath held. The bookcase stood tall and dark; the knot stared back at me.
    Loss. It had stopped both of us in our tracks. The world continued, the clock ticked on; snowdrops broke the soil, daffodil blooms burst from their paper-casing and shivered in the wind; roses budded, unfurled, and dropped their petals to the ground. But we were caught in the moment before change, unable to move forward with the clock’s tick; still waiting, still expecting a return.
    The hum built; I could feel it gathering in the air.
    This room. The name of the cottage. The bookcase. Is that what happened here? Is she caught in that moment, in this place, in that year, still waiting, still expecting someone to come back?
    ‘Who was it, Elizabeth?’ I asked out loud. ‘Who did you lose?’
    I got up from the bed and crossed over to the bookcase. I rested my hand on an empty shelf. The electricity prickled my arms, made the faint hair on the nape of my neck stand on end. I could have sworn that she was there, just out of sight, just beyond the edge of my vision. I didn’t look.
    ‘I lost my mum,’ I said. ‘She was fifty-seven.’ My voice sounded strange and dusty in the silent, attentive room. I hadn’t expected to speak.
    ‘They never had much money, but when her mum died they sold her little house in Clapham and had enough to buy this place. They were here a couple of times, but they didn’t live here, they never got the chance.’
    My nose was prickling. I rubbed at it with the back of a hand.
    ‘She found out that she had cancer. I found out that I was pregnant just after she got the news. For a while, after the first operation, we were hopeful, and I was going to tell her about the baby,