The Telling

my breastbone, and it was being tugged, pulled tight like corset strings. He came down and crossed back to his seat.
    He had a traveller’s writing desk with him; a fold-out gentleman’s set in rosewood; the Reverend had one not unlike it. He carried a book too; a wide cloth-bound ledger, red in colour, the kind that accounts are kept in. He held it clamped against the bottom of the writing set. A box of books, a writing set: I hadn’t been so misled when I curtseyed to him. He settled back down in his chair, arranged his things, and began to fold paper for a letter. The desk lay open on his lap; his long legs stretched out across the rag rug. Though the writing desk was good, well made and expensive-looking, the ink bottle was a clay one, roughly made, and the glaze was blemished with thumbprint smears and unsmoothed edges. It occurred to me that he had most probably acquired the writing desk second-hand, it being brought within his means by the loss of its glass or china bottle. After such an expense, a clay ink bottle must have seemed perfectly sufficient, and was probably all he could afford.
    There was better light, more space and solitude upstairs: why would he bring his things down here to write?
    He took up his pen, examined it, trimmed it, examined it again. He dipped it, eased the excess ink off against the ink-pot’s rim, and began to write. I observed his craft closely while my hands were at their own work on the basket. I shifted it around in my lap, bent the withy to the curve of the frame, levered it in and out through the uprights, tamped it down to fit snug against the layer before, all the time watching the strange progress of his hand across the page. The pen’s plume wove and wobbled, his hand shifted a fraction further, traced another pattern, shunted on again. He paused to dip the pen. Mr Moore’s face was in shadow; he leaned back from the writing slope, peered down at the page.
    I wanted to tell him that he might have my place at the window, where he might see what he was doing. He finished the letter with a flourish. I opened my lips and he glanced up at me. His dark eyes caught the firelight. I lost my nerve, looked down at the basket and didn’t speak.
    He lifted the shaker, scattered sand on to his page, then leaned the sheet towards the hearth. The grains showered into the flame, making it spark and sputter. He folded the paper, smoothed it flat, and bent to light a spill at the fire. I watched him light his sealing wax, watched the wax drip on to the white folded page, and pool there, like blood. My hands had fallen still.
    ‘Would you like to see the stamp?’ he asked.
    The way he was sitting, his eyes were shadowed, his face half-lit by embers, half-lit by the evening window. The moment, with the redness and flickering shadows, and the pale blue light from outside, had an unearthly quality to it; it did not seem to belong to this world. His fingertips were stained black with ink.
    ‘I’ve seen stamps,’ I said. ‘The Reverend has stamps. I take the family’s letters to the post if Mr Fowler’s occupied.’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    He put the letter to one side, and took up the ledger from where he’d left it on the floor. I pressed my lips together, looking away and feeling foolish. He was writing in the ledger, leaning back, peering down at the words as he formed them, seeming to be utterly occupied by the movement of his pen. I could have said yes. I could have just said yes. If I had, then instead of sitting in silence while he wrote and thought me discourteous and cold, I would be standing at his side, bending my head to look at the dainty image in his hand; I could have reached out to draw it nearer, and our hands might have touched again. I turned the basket in my lap and tugged sharply at the withy, wrenching it through the stakes. The wood creaked and splintered on the curve. I muttered inwardly, undid the last few weaves, my cheeks burning. I cut the withy short, behind the splintering, and wove the stray end in. I started it off again.
    We continued without speaking. His feet were stretched out on the rug: the leather soles of his boots were patched, well mended, and the mends themselves were worn and needing repair. How far must he have come, to wear his boots into such holes, to wear the patches thin? He was leaning back still further than before, putting more distance between himself and the work as the light faded. He peered down at his hand, at the pen as