The Telling

fresh-dug earth. As I crossed the stable yard the grey mare flared her nostrils at me and huffed. Perhaps the Reverend would not call for me again that day. Perhaps no one would have noticed I was gone. If I told him some urgent order of Mrs Briggs’s, some kitchen emergency had detained me at the vicarage, then he would be obliged to send me again. And I would be deeper in the deception. Was it worth it, for an hour’s holiday, another chance to read?
    I reached the kitchen yard, the scullery door. Maggie had left the family’s boots in the hallway for me to clean. I sat on the stone bench underneath the scullery window, and polished the boots till they shone, setting them in neat pairs on the ground at my feet. I turned over possibilities in my mind, but could think of no contrivance that would not readily be discovered. The church clock chimed two. I had been gone from the kitchen nearly three hours. It could not escape Mrs Briggs’s notice.
    I carried in the boots, and left them for Maggie to take up, and changed back into my slippers. I went into the kitchen without washing, hands smudged with bootblack, to give the air of time spent busily at outdoor tasks. As it happened, Mrs Briggs was occupied with the roast, and didn’t pay me any heed. I spent the remaining hours of my working day labouring furiously at whatever I was set to, jumping at shadows, alert to every jangle of the bells. Mrs Briggs didn’t speak to me until much later, when dinner had been served and eaten and she had a moment’s pause. I was scouring roasting pans, and she came to smoke a pipe at the scullery door.
    ‘He got his fire, then?’ Her cheeks were red as rhubarb, her face shiny from the long day’s cooking.
    ‘I laid it for him, but then he changed his mind.’
    She nodded, the pipe-stem clamped between her teeth. ‘Funny that.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Funny.’
    Everything was changed since that morning. I had lied, and read, and slept, and dreamed, and lied again, and everything was different because of it.
    *
     
    They had been setting up the games for days. Sheep had wandered among the booths and stalls, scratched their heads on the posts of the wrestling ring. That evening, work done, women walked down with baskets of refreshments, tea services, urns. I could hear people passing; their voices, their clogs clattering on the stones. The house was empty. I was in a fireside chair, with my Pilgrim’s Progress.
    I had read that book a hundred times; the title page was as familiar as the gate across the way: I’d slip past it every day without even considering it. Now, as I looked at it, I saw it as if for the first time, as something fresh, and unknown: I saw the words as what they were, and not as an opening, a gateway to something else.
    THE
PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
from this world to that
Which is to come delivered under the similitude of a dream.
     
    Similitude: I had read the book a hundred times, and I had never noticed that; but now I worried at it as a dog worries at a rat. Delivered under the similitude of a dream. I turned the page, to the Author’s Apology For His Book. I’d tried reading it before, but had found it dull, and had given up, and turned forwards to the story, and since then I had always started where the story itself began, with Christian. But now I read the apology word by word, carefully. It made me uneasy.
    Read my fancies, I read. They will stick like burs.
    Similitude. Fancies. I was beginning to see the book in a new light; the experience was uncomfortable, and vexing to the eyes.
    The front door opened, a pillow of evening air touched my face, and Mr Moore was coming in backwards, his jacket off, in waistcoat and shirtsleeves. A slow blush rose up my throat. Mr Moore cradled the end of a sheaf of planking, holding it low. He backed into the room, hoisting the weight up to his hip, as someone outside lifted the other end high, on to a shoulder, to clear the steps.
    His arms were bare, the hair there caught the sunlight, and was gold. I stood up. He noticed me and nodded.
    ‘Good evening,’ I said.
    He turned his attention back to the work. I set my book down on the windowsill, but did not know whether to stay or leave, stand or sit. The wood moved back into the room, bringing Sammy Tate, the lad from Storrs Farm, up the steps and into the house, shifting his end of the wood down from shoulder to hip. Dad followed after, came and stood in front of the fireplace, his hands pressed into the