The Telling

looked up as he approached the gate, he saw me, and I saw his face change from the closed-off look of animal thoughtlessness, to an expression of concern and uneasy pleasure. I opened the gate for him, then fastened it after, turning and walking at his side, back towards the village, and a soft rain began to fall, wetting the air, wetting the long grass, so my skirt grew heavy with it, and it stood out in droplets on the fibres of his jacket. I drew my shawl over my head and held it pinched at my chin. I searched for words. He seemed content to walk in silence. We came to the brow of the hill, and I knew I would be in sight of the vicarage again in a moment.
    ‘Thomas.’
    He stopped. The rain fell on to my face as I looked up at him, catching on my lashes, wetting my skin, so that I could see the drops glittering in the corners of my sight.
    ‘The Reverend might want to talk to you sometime soon.’
    ‘Why d’you say that?’
    I felt cool and calm as I said it. ‘He was asking me about the meetings, and since I don’t know anything about them, I told him to ask you.’
    Thomas let the weight fall from his shoulder, set the bundle down on the ground. His face showed his feelings: surprise, pleasure, uncertainty. Just as I had felt when Mr Moore had spoken my name, when he’d said that I’d like London, Thomas was unsettled to find that he’d been thought of.
    ‘I never talked to you about what goes on there, Lizzy.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘You never asked me about it.’
    ‘It didn’t seem my place.’
    ‘You hardly talk to me at all unless you have to.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    I wiped the rain from my face. He nodded, as if there were some new understanding between us. I looked away, out across the long grass laced with raindrops.
    ‘What do you talk about?’
    ‘There’s plenty that just goes right over my head.’
    ‘Then what makes you keep going back?’
    ‘I want to learn.’ He blinked then, and looked away. ‘Then it won’t go over my head any more.’
    ‘So you need him. You need Mr Moore.’
    Our eyes met. He didn’t say anything. At the time I took the look in his eyes to be one of assent; I am not so certain now.
    ‘We need him too,’ I said, feeling the press of a toe against a too-tight clog, the thin-worn rub of old darning at a heel; with each breath my belly and ribs pushed against the constraint of my stays. My skirts hung heavy with the rain. A raindrop hung blurred on an eyelash. ‘We need the money he brings in.’
    Thomas didn’t reply. Words floated in the silence between us like moths; words that could be said, words of affection, words about money, about its relative scarcity and plenty, and arrangements that could be made to balance this out. Nothing was said. He let out a breath, and he bent down and picked up his bundle. He shouldered it.
    ‘All right, then,’ he said. I felt that I could trust him.
    *
     
    When I got home, Sally had gone. I’d known that she would go, but I had not thought that it would be so soon, and had not realized how complete would be her removal. Her Sunday clothes were gone from the press, and she had taken two chapbooks and a ballad that weren’t really hers, even her cup was gone from the dresser. I should have been there to help her pack, to tell her she was welcome to the books, to carry her parcels for her up to the crossroads, and wait with her for the coach. I had occupied myself otherwise, and not well, and had not said goodbye to a much-loved only sister.
    I found her doll that night, lying limp and grimy, one button-eye hanging on a thread, when I opened the press to get out my bedding. It had been mine before it was hers; now she had given it back to me. It seemed like a message; at twelve years old she was a woman grown up and gone out into the world, and I was still a child at home. It may not have been meant as such; she couldn’t have brought it with her, not to her work, and perhaps she had just not known what else to do with it, had not thought it good enough to pass on to another child, or thought it mine to dispense with, to throw on the midden or the fire. She might have thought our mam was not the kind to keep a daughter’s doll, but Mam is soft enough, if circumstances allow.
    That night, for the first time since Sally was an infant, since she was weaned and put into my bed, I lay down alone. I missed her. I slept shallowly, troubled by dreams. I dreamed I was wading through a shallow sea, and the sea stretched for