The Telling

couldn’t catch the words. I came through, drying my hands on my apron. Mrs Briggs, Mr Fowler, Clem Taylor and Alice were all sitting at their places, their dinner steaming in front of them; there were two places vacant, one for Maggie, who was standing on the kitchen steps and telling her tale, her hands on her hips in delighted scandal, and one for me. Maggie saw me come in, and her mouth snapped shut like a snuffbox. Mrs Briggs glanced around, her raised eyebrows pushing her forehead into sweaty creases. Maggie pitched her voice at me as a child might pitch a ball: ‘Madam says, you’re to go back, and do it properly this time.’
    Mr Fowler took out his handkerchief and blew his nose.
    ‘There’s not a dust-mote left,’ I protested.
    ‘That’s not what Madam said.’
    ‘But it’s as clean as a whistle.’
    ‘It doesn’t do to defend yourself, lass,’ said Mrs Briggs. ‘Madam wouldn’t complain for her own amusement, and if there’s fault to be found then it’s your fault. Get your things and go and do it again.’
    I went back to the scullery for clean cloths, troubled and confused. I left them in the kitchen eating their dinner, with mine cooling on the table. I dusted the morning room again; every inch, every single thing, and I couldn’t find any fault with what I’d done before. Afterwards, I ate alone, standing with my plate and fork in a corner by the door, out of Mrs Briggs’s way. The stew had gone cold, and clots of fat had gathered in the gravy.
    That afternoon, I swept the bedrooms. The rooms were still and sun-warmed, as if sealed like jars. From Madam’s dressing-room window, I could see the first reapers up on the high meadow; Blacows’ land. They moved together, each body turning in one strong movement, like a salmon’s leap, to swing the scythe, each one for safety’s sake keeping pace with and distance from his fellows, so that they passed in a steady line across the field. The stubble lay dark and blunt behind them, heaped with glossy mounds of fallen grass. Haytime. I flung open the sash, let the sweet breeze come in. The air was full of the scent of cut grass, linden blossoms, lilac. The sweet smell of high summer.
    Haytime meant reprieve.
    Only Mrs Briggs stayed at the vicarage during those weeks. School was suspended; home life paused; no clogs were made, no roofs repaired, no baskets woven. Everyone who was fit for it turned their hand to the hay. It must be cut, and dried, and stored, before the rain could come and ruin the crop. Nothing else mattered, for a time.
    It was a holiday feeling, at least at first; the sky wide and blue above, the country stretching wide and softly green around us. For that short space, there would be no scrutiny. Not of mother, father, master, mistress. In the fields, all were equal in the pursuit of the common goal; the bringing in of the hay.
    Tossing the grasses into the air, watching their silken rustling fall, heaving the pitchfork under the heaped stems again, lifting the lower levels into the sun, I felt such a pleasure in the warm sun on my cheeks, the fresh open space, in the satin hand-smoothed feel of the pitchfork’s shaft. There was the simple, almost animal satisfaction in the work of my body, in its strength, its staying power. At dinnertime, we sat in the shade of the hedgerow, and drank tea from our bottles, ate our bread and cheese and onions, and I was happy, mute with the sky’s dazzle, my body slack, my palms hot with wear. I closed my eyes. The red glow was patterned with the shadow of stirring branches.
    You can work as hard as you like at other work, but nothing can prepare you for haytiming. My palms blistered, and the blisters broke, and the loose skin wore into rags and peeled off. I rolled seed-heads between my palms; they leave behind a soft purple dust that’s good for drying haytiming sores.
    *
     
    The stars were out; it was a beautiful clear night. We were walking up from the water meadow along the wash-house lane. My shoulders burned with fatigue, my brow and cheeks were hot and tight from the long day’s sun. When we got home, Mam and Dad and the boys would all stream off to their beds like mice into their holes. I could just lay down on my blankets, and drop into the deep dark hole of haytiming sleep. The trudge up the hill was only bearable for this, that at the end of it, I could lie down, and I could sleep, and not have to think about anything, not have to think at all.
    We reached the gate and