The Telling

opportunity.’
    ‘Then why did you not return to your work?’
    ‘I thought it best to wait, in case he left.’ It was as though I stood outside my body, and watched myself there, kneeling by the unlit fire, lying like a heathen. ‘I didn’t want to disappoint you.’
    ‘Good girl.’
    All he had to do to discover my deceit, was to enquire of Mr Greaves, the Oversbys’ overseer, what work Mr Moore had done that day. I was too far in the lie to retreat from it now; the practicalities concerned me, not the stain on my soul. I didn’t even blush. I shifted the coalscuttle to one side.
    ‘I’ll leave that for you should you need it, sir, and matches,’ I said, as if it were all the same to me, setting unnecessary fires, spying on the lodger; all just services performed to ensure the Reverend’s comfort.
    ‘Very well,’ he said distractedly. ‘Very well.’
    He set his book down on the desk, and steepled his fingers against his upper lip.
    I stood up from the fireside. I tucked my coal-dirtied hands beneath my apron.
    ‘Do you wish me to go again today?’
    He glanced at me, preoccupied. He meshed his hands together, and held them against his upper lip a moment, as if praying. Then his hands fell to his lap, and lay there, soft and white against the black cloth of his britches.
    ‘I do not think I ask too much of you,’ he said, ‘but before I ask more, you should know what you are dealing with, what manner of viper it is that has crept into your nest. I am informed of Mr Moore.’ He took a breath, sucking it in through parted teeth. ‘He is an agitator, a democrat, a Chartist. That much is known, and I hope soon to know more; but if you were to discover anything, anything at all –’ his voice had grown passionate; he was leaning forwards from his seat. He stopped, and seemed to correct and calm himself, leaning back, reaching up a hand to touch the linen at his throat. ‘You will have noticed that he does not attend church. I have it from Mr Brakes that he is not part of the Wesleyan congregation either. As a good Christian girl,’ he said, ‘it is your duty to watch him, with all modesty and discretion, and to report your discoveries to me.’
    I could say it. I could defend him with just a few words. Whatever his faith, whatever Chartist or an agitator or democrat might mean, I could reveal Mr Moore to be a decent and educated man, a man whose interest in books was not very far divergent from the Reverend’s own.
    ‘You will do this for me, yes?’ the Reverend asked.
    ‘Of course, sir.’
    ‘If he is there, come straight back. Don’t waste your time waiting.’
    *
     
    I took Robinson Crusoe , and I lay down on the bed, my head on the pillow, my body stretched out in the dip left there by his body, my stockinged feet on the heaped bedding at the foot; the pillow smelt of wood dust. As I lay there reading, a sweet comfort descended upon me; the book grew too heavy for my hands, and my eyelids too heavy to keep open. I kept blinking; the weight of the book made it teeter towards my face. I thought I’d just close my eyes for a few minutes. I laid the book down on the bed beside me and curled around on one side. The pillow was cool beneath my cheek, the scent was pleasant. I closed my eyes; I must have slept, or nearly slept; I dreamed. It seemed to me that Mr Moore was there, in the room with me, his jacket off, shirtsleeves rolled, his collar unbuttoned, and that there was nothing wrong or strange or frightening about it, that I was dozing in the bed, and he was half undressed, and we were alone together. He sat down on the edge of the bed. He said something.
    The church clock: a quarter bell; what hour I didn’t know. The words of the dream slipped away like smoke. The room was empty, glaring with sun, and I was sick and foggy with untimely sleep. I heaved myself out of bed, shoved the book back with the others.
    I ran out the back way, through the stinks of midden and the pigsty and the privy and out the field gate. I cut through the fields, hoping to go unnoticed. There was a breeze; the long grass whispered. My mind was elsewhere, caught in the dream: the hint of words, the ghost of a touch. I was angry at myself, at what I’d wasted: my last chance.
    I reached the back wall of the vicarage garden and unhooked the gate. I waded up through the long grass of the orchard. The kitchen garden was thick with greens: asparagus, pea and beanstalks; the air full of the scent of growth and