The Telling

on the water meadow to walk among the stalls and games and wait the start of the sports.
    When Mr Aitken announced that the wrestling was to begin, the men crowded close to the roped-off circle, almost screening it from view; Martha and I climbed the bank to watch from a suitable distance with the other women. A Gressingham man won the first bout. Then Thomas was in the ring, stripped to the waist, being slapped on the back, having his hand shaken, looking very ill at ease. I glanced over at Martha: she smiled at me. Thomas looked disastrously vulnerable; his blue-white skin, the dark scattering of hair across his chest, the pink-brown darkness of his face and neck and hands. He looked somehow more than naked: he looked as if he’d been skinned. His opponent pushed in through the crowds. I recognized him as one of the Huddlestones from Cawood: a big square meaty man in his middle years; I didn’t see his face. Mr Aitken dropped his arm, and the bout began. I glanced at Martha again: her smile was uneasy. I had been brought here, to be shown this.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Excuse me.’
    I turned away, and picked my way down the bank, passing through the crowds; I walked along the hedgerows, looking at the speedwell, the stitchwort and lady’s mantle, and trying not to think of Martha’s look, so full of anticipation and anxiety, and not about the fight. I stayed away till the noise and shouting had died down.
    Thomas found me later. There was blood on his neck; his ear had been torn. It made me shudder to look at it. He brought me to the tea tent, and sat me down at a quieter end of one of the long benches, and fetched me a cup of tea. It was noisy in there, and airless. He had to shout to speak to me: he’d won his bout, he was going to be in the second round. I could smell the sourness of his body. He was red with awkward pride. I said I was pleased for him, and that I was tired, and was thinking about going home soon. He seemed to falter a moment, and there was a look about him again, almost angry, not sure if he’d been given cause to be. Then he gathered himself, and said that he would walk back with me.
    ‘There’s no need,’ I said. ‘You’ll miss the bout.’
    ‘Doesn’t matter.’
    I looked down at my hands resting on the white tablecloth. Two dozen different conversations were continuing loudly and close by, competing with the rattle and hiss of tea making, the sounds of eating and drinking. The air was full of steam and sweat and the smell of boiled ham and teacakes and canvas and crushed grass. Pinpricks of light sheered in where the canvas had been holed, like stars; I remember thinking, stars are holes in the sky, where the light of heaven breaks through. I remember thinking of Thomas’s red-brown face and hands, the blue-white of his body, that scatter of dark hair. Mr Aitken leaned in through the open flap of the doorway, and called out that the second round of wrestling would be starting shortly, and I looked up and gave Thomas a quick smile.
    ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Good luck.’
    ‘Lizzy,’ he said.
    ‘I’m just so tired,’ I shook my head, and the way he looked at me made me begin to hope that he understood me more fully than I was able to say. I got up, and he sat there still at the trestle-table, and let me go. I slipped out of the tent and away from the crowds, the noise. I left the water meadow, and passed through the gate into the hay meadow. The ground was dry and hard, the evening air whisked with swallows. I could hear the shouts of the men behind me as the wrestling began again, and the calls of the birds in the hedgerows, the rustling of small creatures. I climbed up the wash-house lane, my face cooling in the evening air.
    I slipped off my clogs and bonnet in the dark empty kitchen. I remember the feeling; it was as if all sensation was suspended. I remember thinking, I’ll not worry about this now; I’ll worry about it afterwards. There had been a light burning in the upstairs room; a light to read by as the daylight faded. I picked up my chapbook, my Pilgrim’s Progress, and I climbed the stairs.
    The door stood ajar. My fingers pressed against the pale wood. The door swung softly open. I saw the bookcase. He had already shelved his books, stacked newspapers and journals on a low shelf. I crossed the room and rested my hand on the wood. Soft-napped , with a cool iron hardness underneath, it seemed like something formed by nature, not by man. I lifted my hand