The Telling

beyond swept up towards the pale blue sky. The grass was long and heavy-headed; the wind moved it in silky ripples. A breath of outside air came in, sweet, smelling of grass and earth. I found myself thinking of the temple in Lyell’s book, the water at the base of the rocks, the water rising to eat at the temple’s pillars, the water retreating to lap again at the rocks. The lives lived in that duration. The ignorant change and continuity of the material world.
    The Reverend turned from the window, and crossed the room to his seat, looking like a crow in his black clothes. He sat down and folded his hands over his stomach.
    ‘Child?’
    I bobbed a clumsy little curtsey, and said nothing. My head was like a jar of flies; I didn’t dare open my mouth.
    ‘You were absent from communion on Sunday.’
    I forced myself to speak. ‘I was poorly, Reverend: my mother will have told you.’
    ‘And yet you are well enough to work today.’
    ‘I must work, sir; the money is needed.’
    ‘And you must worship! It is folly to put material needs before the spiritual. Consider the life beyond! Consider the lily of the field, consider the story of Martha, if you will, did she not find that –’
    I looked down at my slippered feet pressed into the thick velvety plush of the carpet; my eyes followed the methodical, intricate patterning of red and ivory and green. I didn’t need to hear the story of Martha again. I was waiting for the words to form themselves in my head, words that could explain Mr Moore and not at the same time condemn him, words that would secure assistance for me in my confusion and yet not harm him further in the Reverend’s sight. I was glad, at least, that the worry of anticipation was over; while the Reverend talked, the clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the moments of the interview, and I was glad of that too, since the longer the Reverend talked, the less I would be required to: he could not keep me there for ever.
    Mr Moore had said that there was no such thing as for ever. He carried the scent of oak about with him, and that made me think of oak apples that are not fruit at all, but galls, perfectly round and smooth; grown by a little creature out of the flesh of the tree, to be its comfort and retreat. I was thinking of what Mr Moore had said, his articles of faith, and that he didn’t care if I never agreed with him. I was thinking of Eve in the garden, expressly forbidden to taste the fruit, and created with all her faults by the same God who caused the tree to grow there, within her easy reach. I felt as though some time ago, I had been handed something exquisite, and dangerous, and prone to harm, and that I had not noticed it, not really, not recognized its true value till that moment.
    I raised my eyes and looked at Reverend Wolfenden. He sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded on the dark bulge of his waistcoat. His mouth was moving, his lips forming the words of the story, but I still didn’t listen, I watched instead the way the flesh of his throat folded over his collar and wobbled as he spoke, and I was thinking, I did a good job on that collar, coming to me all grimed and shiny with dirt, and there it is now, white as the proverbial lily of the field. And the other clothes, the underthings, coming to us sweat-patched and soiled, to be scraped and rubbed and soaked in lye and hung out for the night air to bleach, to make clean enough for a gentleman to wear, though it was a gentleman that dirtied them in the first place. And the chamberpot I whisked out from under his bed every morning, and what swam in it that I tried not to look at and not to catch the smell of as I carried it out to the privy and slopped it down into the pit. Easy to be fresh as the lily, easy to sit there in spotless white linen and tell a story about the sinfulness of letting work distract you from spiritual matters, easy to devote yourself to cleanliness and Godliness when there’s always someone else to do the dirty work, to do your cleaning, to slop out your dung for you.
    The sing-song tone of his voice shifted; the story must be ending. I gathered my attention and fixed it on his words.
    ‘Because whatever you may know, it is your duty to inform me. You understand that, don’t you, child, that as your pastor, as the man charged with your spiritual security, you must tell me whatever you know, however slight, that might represent a threat to your wellbeing, your family’s, and that of the