The Telling

small of his back, his elbows wide, and said that it was a fine bit of timber that Mr Moore had there, and that it must be worth a good deal, and that Mr Moore would make a grand job of it no doubt. Dad was in the way; I could see that he was in the way; Sammy would have to pass too close to him, if Mr Moore was to get his end of the timber past the kitchen table, but Dad didn’t seem to notice it himself. He just kept on nodding sagely, talking, and it was only when Sammy moved around right in front of him that he finally shifted himself to go across the room and stand at the foot of the stairs, taking up station there to admire and comment. He didn’t seem to notice the brevity of Mr Moore’s answers, or the obstacle he formed as they edged the wood up into the stairwell.
    ‘Dad –’
    He swung around to look at me, his expression blank. My book was lying on the windowsill. I moved in front of it.
    ‘What?’
    I could think of nothing to say. All of them were looking at me.
    ‘What?’ He looked at me a moment more, and I remembered a time when I was very young, when he had carried me in his arms through the big barley field, up above the hay meadow, where Mr Oversby now keeps his sheep, and the barley was as green as anything could be, and seemed to stretch endlessly, and the sky was wide and blue above, and at my cheek my dad’s shirt was soft red wool. I remembered the green barley, the blue sky, the red shirt, and feeling safe and happy and proud. He’d said, Your father’s barley is the finest barley in the whole field.
    ‘Sitting idle,’ he said. ‘Can’t you do something useful, for once in your life?’
    My eyes turned to Mr Moore; he was watching me. It can’t have been more than a moment; I was vividly conscious of every inch of my frame, from the sore patch on the back of my left heel where my clog rubs, to the pull of my hair at the nape of my neck where it’s twisted into a braid, and the sheen on my nose, and the dry soreness of my hands. I put my hands in my apron pocket. My cheeks burned.
    Then Mr Moore said, ‘Come on, Sam, let’s be at it. You go at the top.’
    They moved with brisk purposefulness. They swapped places. Sam went backwards up the stairs, guiding the planks, and Mr Moore took the weight, and directed his attention upwards.
    My dad followed Mr Moore upstairs. I heard shuffling and scraping and the brief, low sounds of Mr Moore’s instructions, the ongoing roll of my dad’s talk. I sat down and lifted my book again. Up above, they were sorting and arranging the wood. Then there was silence as chalk marks were made, plumb lines tried. The certain sound of wood on wood: a chisel struck with a mallet. Another patch of scuffling movement. A few gentle taps; pegs being hammered home, perhaps. I knew what he was doing; I didn’t need to be told. He was making bookshelves; bookshelves for his books.
    When the three of them came down to swallow a cup of tea and eat some bread and cheese, he brought the smell of carpentry; of wood, beeswax, and linseed oil. Mr Moore went back to his work; Sammy Tate went home. Dad stayed downstairs and shook out a ragged paper. I dithered about, tidying things away. Then Thomas called for me.
    He stood on the top step, his face red, his eyes flickering from the step to my face and then beyond me into the house, then back to the step again. His sister Martha smiled up encouragingly from the street. She had her arm linked through her husband Gerard’s arm; he was gazing down the village street, his mind on the shot-put or the wrestling. Thomas cleared his throat.
    ‘Would you like to come to the sports with us?’ he said.
    My dad yelled from his seat to know what was going on, so I told him Thomas was there, and Thomas called past me to my dad and said he wanted to take me down to the sports. Dad told me I was to go and get my bonnet on. It was easier to go than to argue with all that.
    I walked down to the water meadow with Thomas and his sister and her husband, trying not to care what it might look like. I talked to Martha. Thomas walked silently at my side in his Sunday coat. I noticed the way his long legs swung his clogs out ahead of him, like plumb lines. His trousers were too short for him, and showed the cuff of his clogs, an inch of worsted wool sock.
    They came from all directions; along the riverside paths from Newton and Hornby, down the hill from Docker and Storrs, wading through the ford from Melling and Wrayton, gathering