The Telling

been through the West Country,’ he went on, ‘lived for a time in a town called Sherborne; dead really, and its deadness near did for me. I’ve spent time in Cheltenham, Northampton, Leeds, Bolton, Birmingham, Sunderland, Aberdeen and Edinburgh and Glasgow and Dumfries.’
    The names as he spoke them were like a litany to me, beautiful , conjuring inexplicit wonders. I’d never been beyond the boundaries of the valley; had only been as far as Lancaster in one direction, Kirkby Lonsdale in the other.
    ‘And you didn’t settle anywhere? What made you keep on moving?’
    ‘Circumstance,’ he said.
    I nodded, as if I understood exactly what he meant by that. ‘And the Enclosures are happening everywhere?’
    ‘The whole country will be enclosed eventually, since there’s profit in it.’
    ‘I barely remember, but Mam says it broke his heart, he used to work so hard on his strips, he had the best crops of anyone.’
    ‘Your father isn’t alone; there was a great deal lost when the commons were enclosed. Independence, and mutual aid, and community. Many people were heartbroken.’
    ‘Dad’s found consolation, though.’
    ‘The drink, you mean?’
    ‘That, and complaint. Between them they seem to offer him some comfort.’
    Mr Moore laughed. It made me feel somehow satisfied. I went on.
    ‘I think sometimes it does better to just get on with what you have, rather than dwell on what you’ve lost. Perhaps it’s hard to believe that change happens, that it can and will happen, and is happening all around us, all the time. I mean, not like the seasons, which always come around again the same, maybe worse or better but much the same, but bigger than that.’
    I looked down at my hands, folded there on the table, and I started to tell him something I had never told anyone before, not because I kept it purposefully secret, but because I hadn’t had anyone to tell it to.
    ‘A while back, the cat caught a shrew. The boys were watching her toss it about out behind the house; you know what cats are like, and boys. I got it off them, but didn’t know what to do with it: there was no helping it, there was only stopping further cruelty. The fur was brushed the wrong way and there was a seep of blood at its throat. I stood there out the back of the house with it lying in my hand, so absolutely tiny, alive, weighing nothing. It was last summer; I remember the ground was packed hard beneath my feet; the midden had that summer-stink, I was trying to think where I could leave it and neither the cat nor the boys would get at it again, and its heart was hammering away, tiny and fast, and it was hot as a coal in my hand, and there was this shift, and I saw myself differently ; I was a giant, all sluggish and vast and cold, and this creature was hot and vital and more alive, even in those moments of its death, than I would ever be. Shrews live just a few short months; what seems but a season to us is to them their whole existence. I just thought, how wonderful must be the sun’s warmth, the scent of pollen, the colours of a beetle’s shell, how every moment must extend to a day’s duration, and every part of that moment be filled with experience we are unable even to notice. It seemed to me that we drag ourselves through years and years and years, and never feel anything as minutely, as exquisitely as that.’
    The church bell tolled out. A single bell, sounding the same whether it begins or ends a service, whether it is ushering in a new Christian to the congregation, or ushering out the dead. The sound seemed to make the air itself shudder.
    ‘And yet,’ I said, ‘and yet, now I know about the stone, it’s as if we flicker into life, and out again, like candle flames.’
    There was a moment’s silence. I was still caught up in my thoughts.
    ‘You’re nineteen,’ he said. ‘You told me the other night.’
    I shook my head to clear it. ‘Yes. Nineteen.’
    ‘And only had a church-school education.’
    I nodded and looked down at Lyell’s book. The deep slow movement of stone; its accretions and abrasions, its sudden shudders . The shallow sea full of drifting creatures. The images seemed to cluster, to press against some invisible barrier. The bell tolled again, and though the sound dispersed, it felt like the air still quivered in the room, as if the lime-washed limestone walls contained and amplified the effect. The barrier cracked, splintered ; meaning flooded through the gaps. I understood.
    ‘Where