The Telling

to the Eternal City. All I could think was, Agnes is gone from me. It was right, and proper, and it made me feel that I would choke.
    I let the book fall closed, and held it at the flyleaf. I looked at my name written there in Mr Forster’s hand, my name, my prize for Scripture, the date of my leaving school. I’d been an idiot all this time. Since I first heard that there was going to be a baby, I’d thought somehow that it would be just like a doll that we could play with when we wished, and leave aside when we chose to.
    I wanted more than anything just to lay my head down and close my eyes and be alone, but there was Dad there, snoring out drink fumes, and there would be others home before long; the house was always either full or threatening to be full. Sally had had the right idea, to go and be prenticed. At nineteen, I was too old, and I didn’t need to ask to know that there wasn’t money for it, with the boys sent out, and Sally to be indentured now. To get away meant to go as a live-in servant in another village or in one of the towns, it meant millwork in the city, or it meant getting married.
    The clock struck ten. The rush-light was burning low, sputtering. I licked my fingertips and pinched out the light. I levered off my clogs and carried them upstairs. I was going to lie down on the boys’ bed. I would stay there till they got home and turned me out.
    On the landing, light slipped out under Mr Moore’s door, pooling on the bare boards. I could smell the honey-scent of beeswax . A chair creaked. There was a breath, like a sigh. He moved: I heard the scrape of the chair on the floor. I shrank back into the darkness, but then the light was gone, pinched out. I heard the rustle of tugged covers, the creak of the bed. I leaned against the wall, pressing my head back into the rough stone and let a breath go shakily.
    He had my room, he had my bed, he had beeswax candles and I had stinking rush-lights and was begrudged them. He passed me in the house as if I were a ghost. He was the stranger, but he had made me a stranger here.
    I crept into the boys’ dark, untidy bedroom and lay down in my clothes. The pillow was musty and sour. My old bed was just a single course of stones away. Mr Moore lay, so to speak, within arm’s reach of me. I turned and curled around, tugging the covers close, then twisted back again. My thoughts softened, started to drift, and in the darkness I was in my old room, and Mr Moore was in my bed, and I was standing over him, watching him sleep, and his eyes flicked open, and he looked up at me.
    Ted woke me in the cold dark, shaking me by the shoulder. I heaved myself out of bed. The landing was dark and Mr Moore’s door shut. The house was silent as I went downstairs. Dad had gone and Sally was asleep on the rug. I lay down beside her, and listened to her breathe. I couldn’t sleep. The images of my dream would not be shaken clear: Mr Moore lying in my bed, looking up at me.
    I must have drifted off eventually, because the five o’clock bell woke me cold and sore on the hearthrug. I washed my face and hands and neck, struggled into my clothes and clogs, drank some cold tea, ate some bread, and left the house as the sun was rising. The sky was salmon-pink with little wisps of golden cloud. I turned my back to it, headed down the village street, towards the vicarage.
    I have never liked the way the vicarage looks at me, its big sash windows somehow blank, whatever the weather, whatever the light. Crunching up the gravel drive, through the dark yew trees and underneath the willows, I could feel the dim glass blink at me through the gaps in the shrubbery, making me feel guilty, making me feel ashamed, as if it were wrong for me to walk the same drive that was crushed by horses’ hooves and carriage wheels, by the slender soles of ladies’ shoes. I ducked around the side of the house, and in through the servants’ entrance. The smell of mice in the scullery was terrible; as usual there was no sign of the cat; Petra was too well-fed to consider catching vermin. I undid my clogs and put on my work slippers. My apron fastened in a careful bow, I straightened my cap in the vague coppery reflection of a milk pan.
    We beat the bedroom carpets that day: it’s a nasty job. When they’re rolled up, carpets slip out of your grip, they slump and loll and are a trial on the stairs, and there is nothing to get hold of. Maggie was at the top end, staggering and sweating by the time she