The Telling

blinking and new born, confronted by man and God, a snake always at her heel.
    Mr Moore must have intended this. He must have known what I would do.
    *
     
    The next Friday was a washing day. It was all so precariously balanced; work, home, Thomas; at any moment a slight shift could cause all to fall down around me. I kept my thoughts averted. If Mr Moore was home, I would ask him straight out: can I borrow the Paradise Lost ? If he was not there, I would borrow it anyway. I had been given permission, after all; and it had not been withdrawn.
    The house had that dim cool feel of emptiness: Mam would be down at the wash-house, expecting me. I kicked off my clogs and climbed the stairs, knocking on his door confident that there would be no reply. Silence from within: I pushed the door and it swung open. The room was empty. The bookcase stood solid and huge; it seemed familiar to the room, as though it had softened into place.
    I would find the book. I would take it downstairs, hide it in the press, and then go down to the bleaching-fields and help get in the linen. He might notice the book’s absence, or he might notice its presence in my hands that evening, when I sat to read. What could he say? What could he do? He was as deep in this as I was; deeper, even: he couldn’t accuse me of anything.
    I found the Reverend Milton’s book; its slim blue spine was pressed between two bulkier volumes. I teased it out and dropped it into my apron pocket. At the end of a shelf was the stack of newspapers that Mr Moore collected in packages from the mail coach: The Northern Star . I picked the top one up out of curiosity, and was just going to glance at the first page; but when I lifted it, I saw, underneath, the red buckram cover of the ledger. It lay amongst the papers, as if hidden hastily there, as if tucked quickly out of sight.
    There would be dry linen on the lines, and the wet linen needing pegging out, and the women already muttering at my tardiness. I should take the book I’d come for and just go. The house was silent. The air was dry and warm and still carried the scent of oak. I heard a curlew’s cry from up the back field. There was the deep call of a grown lamb, the deeper reply of the ewe. Mr Moore wasn’t there. I knew he wasn’t there. He wouldn’t catch me. He would never know.
    I lifted the ledger down and replaced the paper on top of the stack. It was a big unwieldy thing. Resting the top edge of the ledger on the shelf, I held the bottom edge in my hands; if I heard someone coming I could push it back in amongst the papers in an instant. I peered at his writing. The letters were small and densely packed. They filled the page like the weft of a dark cloth.
    Slavery has numerous phases, but every system which tends to place the labour, life and destinies of man at the disposal of another, deserves to be classed under that odious name. Since the great betrayal, when our hopes were so utterly dashed, every interest has been represented in Legislature save the interest of the People. The Church, the Bar, the landed and moneyed interests, all these flourish, and the People are worse than undefended. We have arrived at a situation where the wolf legislates for the lamb. What the wolf desires is not the lamb’s welfare, but his own dinner.
The exclusionists said that the People were incapable of choosing proper representation; the melancholy truth was that at the time, in many parts, men were receding in knowledge. If they were not fit then, they have worsened since; but to set up the People’s ignorance as a barrier to their suffrage is a great injustice. Ignorance is considered a barrier in no other part of the Legislature; the rich and propertied may be as ignorant as they like and still keep their vote. No one seeks to remain ignorant; it is simply that the remedy for it is kept under lock and key by the very class of men who accuse us of ignorance and deny us the vote. I think that we must shift for ourselves, since they are not about to stir themselves on our behalf. We must educate ourselves, we must arm ourselves with knowledge, so when the time comes round again, and we present our demands, supported by our petition with its thousands upon thousands of signatures, the justice and intelligence of our arguments will be unassailable.
     
    I felt as if I had been struggling with a tangled thread for months, teasing at this loop and then that, and then suddenly with one tug in the right place, the whole