The Telling

hurtling to damnation; and us, all of us, falling along with her, as unstoppable as rain; because the crime is in the thought that comes before the act, the crime is in the need that comes before the thought, the crime is in the nature of the being and so must be in her maker, who creates her knowing she must fall, and damns her for being as he made her.
    I could not help myself, no more than she. I was made like this.
    The church bell was tolling for the morning service; its heavy impatient clang shuddered up the village street, swelling the house with hurry, vexing the spirit. Mam was hooked into her best dress, her bonnet on; she had John by the collar and was brushing at his hair. Dad was already in the street in his dark Sunday jacket, and Sally was halfway down the steps towards him; he swiped his arm through the air at her, hurrying her down. Hair combed and braided, dress neat, shawl pinned, bonnet on, I leaned against the windowsill, and kept quiet.
    Mam released John; he bolted for the door. She set the brush down on the dresser, turned to speak to me, to gather me up into the general flurry and fluster. I let my eyelids sink. I frowned slightly, raised a hand to my brow.
    ‘Oh Good Lord, no.’ She hurried over, pressed a hand to my forehead. ‘What feels wrong?’
    ‘My head.’
    ‘Are you hot?’
    ‘A little.’
    ‘Do you feel sick?’
    I nodded.
    ‘Sit down.’
    She fetched liquorice root from the pantry. I slipped it into the side of my mouth and crushed it between my back teeth. The sap oozed on to the side of my tongue, strong and numbing.
    ‘Keep warm,’ she said. ‘We’ll be back after communion. Will you be all right?’
    I nodded feebly and swallowed liquorice juice. The church bell tolled. She strode over to the door, Sunday-skirts swishing, then glanced back at me. Her expression, so concerned and tender, made me blink guiltily. She smiled, making her cheeks plump up; she looked pretty. Usually we skim past each other, going from paid-work through housework to piecework, barely glancing at each other, our attention demanded by the boys, by Sally, by Dad’s needs, by meals and baking and laundry and cleaning up afterwards. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d looked each other in the eye, not for more than the briefest of moments; I couldn’t remember the last time we’d spoken of anything other than immediate concerns. I smiled back at her, the liquorice root a bulge of pulped fibres in my cheek. She closed the door behind them; I listened to their voices and footsteps retreat. Then I got up and spat the liquorice into the fire.
    *
     
    The room was full of sunlight, smelling of wood and ink. He had his pen in his hand, and the red-bound ledger was splayed out in front of him on the desk; he was reading over something he had written, his brow furrowed with thought or poor eyesight. His waistcoat was unbuttoned. He wore no collar, even though it was a Sunday. I tapped gently on the doorjamb. He saw me.
    ‘Come in,’ he said, and started to button up his waistcoat. The church bell tolled. The air quivered with its sound. I came in.
    ‘No church today?’ he asked.
    ‘I was hoping I might read.’
    ‘Help yourself.’
    He gestured towards the bookcase with an ink-stained hand, his attention already returning to his work. I went over to the shelves. I was looking for Robinson Crusoe , and at the same time I was thinking I shouldn’t waste my time on Robinson Crusoe , since there were so many others there to try, and time was short, and who knew when another chance would present itself again, and then the thought occurred to me for the first time, that he must know that I had been in his room, uninvited, and that I had read his Robinson Crusoe without permission. The titles and names blurred: I couldn’t distinguish the books beyond their bindings, the leather and board and cloth. In my mind I was playing out again the conversation of the other night, from his taking Pilgrim’s Progress , to our hands lying on the table a finger’s breadth apart, and him saying that I may come back when I could, and choose any book I wished. All that time, he had known what I had done.
    His chair scraped back on the boards; he came over to join me at the bookcase, his shoulder just level with my cheek, his arm at my side. He reached out and rested his fingertips on the spine of a large blue book. His arm was dark, his sleeve rolled back. The bell tolled out again, fainter still.
    ‘I