The Telling
her fair hair scorched into ringlets, it seemed as though she had dressed herself to suit the room, or that the room had been dressed to complement her beauty. Both might, now I came to think of it, indeed have been the case.
I came in softly in my slippers. Reverend Wolfenden was standing with his back to me and his hands clasped behind him. He was gazing out of the high windows across the lawns, towards the orchard. Mrs Wolfenden looked up and saw me. She smiled faintly, and glanced at her husband.
Mrs Briggs had reported me, I knew it. I’d been tired and stupid these past weeks, having had insufficient and shallow sleep. I would have explained to her, I would have tried harder, if she’d but spoken to me first. Now, I stood to have my wages docked and a black mark set against my name. I’d seen others lose their positions for not much more than that. Nothing was forgotten or forgiven here.
Noticing some movement, or sensing his wife’s glance, Reverend Wolfenden turned around. He moved stiffly, buttoned up in his waistcoat, his chin held high over his starched collar. I bobbed an awkward curtsey to him.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Lizzy.’
‘Sir.’
‘You have a lodger at your house,’ he said.
Surprise made my look sharpen; I remember noticing that his skin was raw from the razor, and already bloomed with blue. ‘Yes, sir.’
The Reverend tilted his head to one side. ‘One Mr Moore,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I believe he is a joiner in Oversby’s employ.’
‘I understand that is the case, sir.’
I felt a strange uneasiness of spirits. The Reverend continued looking at me thoughtfully, and didn’t speak. He pinched his lower lip between his forefinger and his thumb, squeezing it into a damp red bulge, then let it go.
‘He has been holding meetings in your home.’
My unease deepened. Was this blameworthy? The Reverend’s expression gave no hint.
‘Just one meeting,’ I said. ‘Last night, in fact, and that’s all. I didn’t know anything about it.’
Reverend Wolfenden looked at his wife, and she put her work aside, and stood up and came over to me. Her hair caught the light, looked golden as angels’ hair. She took my hand in her ungloved hand.
‘We have always been good to you, Lizzy.’
Her hand was cool and soft, and mine felt hard and dry and sore, and I couldn’t catch her meaning. I had done the work, I had worn the slippers they insisted on so that I went about quietly, and I had curtseyed as required, and they had paid me, and I had never thought that there could be more to it than that. They gave me a half-day on a Friday once a month so I could help my mam with the washing, but I’d never felt particularly grateful for that. Mrs Wolfenden didn’t say anything more, but just looked at me, her pale eyes earnest and on a level with mine. This was far worse, far more unsettling than any scolding could have been. At the same time, I felt flattered by the cool touch of her hand, and by the Reverend’s keen attention; I had never felt so noticed, so taken account of before.
They were waiting for me to reply; there was just the clock ticking on the mantel, and the sound of their breath, hers light and shallow over her stays, his heaving in and out through his nostrils. I said, though I wasn’t really sure that I meant it, and by that point wasn’t even sure what question I was replying to: ‘Yes, madam.’
‘Well then, you will not mind if Mr Wolfenden asks something of you in return.’
I looked up from her soft young face, her light curls, and back to him tall and red-cheeked by the window.
‘No,’ I said.
Reverend Wolfenden nodded. ‘Good girl. It is just this, and it is not too much to ask a good Christian girl. Be watchful. Be watchful of Mr Moore, and tell me what you see.’
M rs Davies gestured me into the sitting room, and left me there, while she went out to the kitchen. I could hear the rush of water into the kettle and the clatter of crockery. I sat down gingerly in a sunken armchair, which, with its twin and a beige sofa, formed a corral around a big old box of a TV. I found myself looking at the crocheted doily draped over the top of the box, the way it hung down over the screen like a fringe. A glass vase stood on it, holding a single fake rose. Plastic dewdrops caught the light and refracted it. I sat there, aware of the rumble of the kettle, the clink of china, the soft murmur of the old woman talking to herself as she
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher