The Telling

reading room,’ he said. ‘With your father’s permission, of course; he adds a little to my lodgings bill for the increased wear and tear and inconvenience. I have my books and papers to lend, and others bring theirs to exchange. Sometimes I talk on a subject. Others will take their turn later; we will have talks on natural science, history, geography, when the men feel easy with the idea.’ He paused again. ‘No one told you?’
    ‘No.’
    He nodded. ‘You must resent me.’
    ‘No –’
    ‘I didn’t fully understand the nature of the arrangement when I agreed it with your father. I think of you at night, sometimes; sleeping on the floor. I mean, are you sufficiently comfortable?’
    I glanced up at him; his gaze was turned towards his book, as if he were half reading a line there.
    ‘Perfectly.’
    ‘You are young, I suppose. You sleep soundly.’
    ‘I’m nineteen,’ I said, my cheeks burning.
    He nodded, though I had not meant it in agreement. There was a silence, and it seemed strangely coloured, as if the situation had rendered the words unpredictably powerful. I retraced our steps, looking for a moment that I could return to, a point before words became slippery and stronger than they’d seemed.
    ‘Everyone that comes, they must bring books to exchange?’ I asked. I knew my father didn’t; I suspected that Thomas couldn’t, unless he borrowed them off someone else beforehand.
    ‘Many of them do,’ Mr Moore said, his voice sounding deliberately lighter. ‘There are some books that everybody has, that are not worth exchanging, such as the Progress . We have put together a subscription for the Penny Cyclopaedia. ’
    I’d walked that road with Christian so many times, and I’d always thought it was a solitary journey, but there’d been a horde of us, all the old farmers and cowmen and ostlers that came to the meetings: everyone had the Pilgrim’s Progress.
    ‘Can I come?’ I asked. I knew even as I spoke what his answer would be.
    ‘If a woman were to arrange something – to find a place – it’s not for me to do; there would be complaints, inquiries, noise; I am trying to avoid noise.’
    He closed his book over, pushed it to one side. His hands lay loosely curled on the tabletop. I could see that fine white scar down the back of his thumb.
    ‘There is no one to do it.’
    ‘Any woman who came to our meetings would be –’
    ‘I would come.’
    His hand lay a finger’s breadth from mine; I could just lift a finger, and touch his skin.
    ‘Do you want this, then? Do you really want it so much?’
    I looked up at his face, his eyes shadowed, his skin warm in the candlelight.
    ‘I’d give anything,’ I said, not knowing that the words were there until I’d said them.
    He smiled. ‘That won’t be necessary.’

 
     
     
     
    I lifted the coffee cup and took a mouthful. The coffee was cold, greasy, more smell than taste. I could feel there was something else, something soft but solid; it brushed the roof of my mouth. I opened my lips and let the liquid fall back into the cup. A brown ring of coffee-residue stained the cup, a faint scum edged the liquid. A disc of grey-green mould floated on the surface. My stomach heaved and I pushed the cup away.
    I was sitting at the dressing table. Outside, the sky was grey with evening. It had been raining. The garden looked sodden and dejected. A brown bird hopped through the ragged grass, jabbed at something, then flew away. The fields beyond were deepening green as the light faded.
    The room was dim and chill. The bookcase loomed nearby. She was there. My skin, my entire body, bristled into goose pimples. There was a breath, light as a moth, on my neck.
    I was on my feet, swinging around to look behind me. The chair toppled, crashed on to the floor. The air flinched, the shadows took a step back. I searched the room, the hair standing on the nape of my neck. The bed was rumpled with my sleep. The bookcase was stuffed with shadows. The bathroom door stood ajar and the bathroom window was open on birdsong. A hint of breeze; it had touched my neck.
    For a moment, I had no idea of who I was.
    *
     
    ‘I’ve been calling and calling.’
    ‘I’m sorry, really; I’ve just been up to my eyes in it. I lost track.’
    My hands were shaking and I was sweating. The peeled man, and those little blue lozenge-shaped pills that taste sweet and faintly chalky on the tongue, that melt into the veins and make you warm with the faith that