The Telling

explain it all, that will make this yawning darkness close up again and everything seem safe again: God will be reaffirmed in His heaven and all will still be all right with the world. His hand will rest warm upon my arm again, and we will be reconciled ; we will be friends, because we were, I thought, beginning to be friends. But he didn’t stop me. I was already at the door, a hand to the latch, before he spoke again.
    ‘What then,’ he said, ‘what then if I suggested that God, and Eden and the Testaments new and old, were all stories, were ways of understanding the world, but not like philosophy or history or science, but like the stories we tell children at bedtime, to reassure them in the dark.’
    I paused at the threshold and turned to look at him. He was leaning away from the table, his chair balanced on its back legs. He was frowning slightly, but seemed to be in perfect good humour.
    ‘ Stories ?’
    ‘You know the kind of thing: the baby was found under the gooseberry bush, your grandmother was very tired and went to sleep. Stories you tell children so as to keep them from the fear and blood and pain and the realization that some things are unknown and unknowable, and that we are all going to die.’
    ‘You are saying that the Word of God is an old wives’ tale?’
    ‘I just think we need to grow up. Mankind will never be adult, be responsible, while we still expect our Father to come and dispense justice, to punish the naughty children and hand out peppermints to the good.’
    His words bruised my soul. ‘But Jesus said –’
    ‘How do you know? Did he tell you? Did he write it down? Hand me the Bible from the shelf. Let’s see the Gospel According to Jesus, shall we?’
    ‘I can’t defend my faith as I would like; I haven’t the education . But I’ll pray for you.’
    He put his hands behind his head and grinned.
    ‘You said at school they taught you to read the Gospels as gospel truth. So no one ever taught you to think; they just taught you to accept. And yet there you were the other night, marching into my room with your forehead like a thundercloud, thinking away. And here you are again, battling with it, furious with me, so cross at what I’ve said. I don’t care if you never agree with me; I really don’t. Nineteen and a housemaid.’ He shook his head.
    I wanted to go over to him and shove him; to send his chair flying over backwards. It’d do him good, I thought, to fall. And with the fury, there was an ache deep in my chest, almost like grief. My mother and father would be walking up the village street, arms linked, united for the walk home. The boys would have raced off ahead with their pals. Sally would be trailing along with Ruth, Sunday frocks swishing around their feet, Sunday bonnets concealing their whispered confidences. This was over.
    ‘Tell me this,’ I said. ‘I need to know. Do you believe in anything?’
    ‘Of course,’ he said.
    ‘What, then?’
    ‘That there is nothing else but this, the material world in which we live. That we must love one another. That we must die.’
    My skin stood up in goose flesh, and the air seemed to hum again, as if after a bell, but the bell had ceased chiming some time ago, and my people would be at the door at any moment. Mr Moore held my gaze, his brown eyes steady, honest, but a little wet, as if he had brought himself close to tears.
    ‘God bless you,’ I said.
    He inclined his head.
    I left him. I made my way down the stairs, clutching tightly to the rail. I sank down into Mam’s chair. It was as though all my life I had been looking down into a safe and familiar pool, and now a sudden shift had shown me that it was not a pool but limitless, and I was looking not down, but up, into vast blue sky, into space dizzying in its emptiness.
    They were home; I could hear them outside, on the steps. Mam was saying something to John, and John was whining back at her; and then Dad shouted at him, and probably raised a hand; the door opened, John dodged in, around the table, and darted upstairs. Dad followed, bellowing after him, then Mam and Ted, and Sally trailed in last of all.
    Everything seemed to shrink into the distance. I leaned my head back against the chair, closed my eyes. I would be sick; I knew I would be sick. My mam’s cool calloused palm was on my forehead.
    ‘Poor love.’
    I swallowed, didn’t speak.
    ‘Go and lie down.’
    I opened my eyes; her spider’s-web cheeks, the weather-dark skin, the creases