The Telling

the smith nor the cordwainer could be considered gentry, much less clergy; but I doubted the boys would care for such nice distinctions.
    Mr Moore stayed alone upstairs all morning; I could hear him moving around. He only came down a little after dinnertime, though we hadn’t actually thought to prepare a meal. He went straight over to the dresser and took the book and replaced it with another. Until then, the books had appeared and disappeared mysteriously, covertly. To see him do this, quite openly, made me feel even more uneasy. Things were different now; some things that had seemed to matter no longer mattered at all. There was no time to waste. The way he did it also seemed so simple; as artlessly thoughtful as the lighting of a candle to save my eyes. It made my throat ache.
    He drank tea with my mam and me, and he tried to talk of ordinary things, but Mam was stiff with him, and I was awkward and over-full of feeling. I tidied away the tea things, and glanced towards the new book, but I had to sit back down to my sewing. Mam acted as if neither of us were really there; she barely spoke, barely looked at either of us. She mentioned Sally’s absence as if it were an inexplicable thing. I heard horses approach, and looked up to see the Wolfendens’ carriage pass the front window. I glimpsed Mrs Wolfenden’s face, pale; she was staring bolt ahead.
    Around four, my father banged into the house, a paper clamped in his fist, and I saw it was a Northern Star .
    ‘So much for shoddy workmanship,’ he yelled at Mr Moore. ‘So much for hastiness. There are strikes all over the region, in Colne, and Preston, and Skipton, and Lancaster. You should have stood with us, you should have stood with us. This is the dawn of a new age, a better one.’
    ‘I hope you’re right.’ He gave my father a thin smile.
    I knew that none of it was news to him, and that it didn’t change a thing.
    The new book that he had left me was another of those Greek ones; it ended badly, with a deal of blood. I lay reading it in the firelight after everyone had gone to bed. I left it on the dresser when I went up to speak to him.
    He stood in the doorway, in his shirt and britches, and did not offer me to come in. His eyes were tired, and there were deep creases in his brow. We spoke in whispers.
    ‘How long before the troops arrive, do you think?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Go. Pack up tonight and go.’
    ‘I am an old man –’ he seemed about to say something more, but shook his head. ‘Go downstairs, and go to sleep.’
    He closed the door on me, and my throat felt thick, and I was clumsy and stupid. I made my way blindly down the stairs, and lay down in my blankets, and could not sleep. I could hear the noise from the public house, all the way from the top of the village. Shouting and calling, and then music, and the jollity of it made me feel even more miserable, made me feel sick.
    The next day I learned that the Reverend Wolfenden had been seen out on horseback, heading away from the village towards Storrs; it seemed no one had spoken to him. Mrs Briggs, who was from outside the village and lived in, and Mr Fowler, were the only servants kept on at the house. The other servants had said that they were striking; I think many of them had been dismissed as I had, because of their families’ connections to the trouble; they just didn’t like to own it. Thomas told me all this, passing on the news in the cool of the morning, as he stood on our bottom step and leaned against the handrail.
    ‘I don’t mean to be peddling scandal,’ he said, ‘just to let you know how the wind blows, so that you needn’t feel so bad about your own circumstances.’ He smiled at me. I was grateful to him for the kindness.
    The Harvest Dance was to take place that evening. There was a strange holiday air about the village. The women had been out putting up decorations, pinning corn dollies and wreaths of autumn flowers, of fern and bay and ribbons to their doors. It seemed there was no getting out of it.
    ‘Did you finish your dress?’ Thomas asked.
    I lied and said I had. He nodded, looking satisfied. I leaned there, on the handrail, a couple of steps up from him. Mr Gorst passed on his strait-cart; it was tied with streamers, a rosette nodded on Poppy’s forelock. Agnes came out of her front door with the baby at her shoulder; I waved to her and she crossed the street to join us. That so much had happened, so much had changed, and that I