The Telling

Wolfendens do.’
    ‘Are you children?’
    ‘They give charity. They have wealth so that they can give charity.’
    ‘So you are given treats for being good. Is this any way for grown men and women to live?’
    ‘But he’s –’ I said.
    Mr Moore finished my thought, ‘A gentleman?’ We were looking at each other. He made a comical face, his eyebrows raised, his lips pressed together, as if the phrase were meant to explain and answer everything, and that we both knew that it was entirely inadequate. I smiled. I couldn’t help it.
    ‘That book. The one that you’re writing, what kind of a book is it? Is it like Crusoe , where everything happened but happened differently to someone else, or is it…’ I was going to say Gospel Truth, but didn’t.
    ‘It really happened. Everything in that book; it really happened , and to me, or in my presence. I was just trying to get it down as coolly as I could.’
    ‘Why did you come here?’
    ‘I thought it would be quiet. Oversby had not heard of me, but perhaps, by now, he will have: Wolfenden must have spoken to him.’ He thought a moment, tilted his head: ‘It would explain the way Greaves has been working me lately.’
    He lifted the bottle and drank. I watched the roll of his Adam’s apple, the sheen of his sweated skin.
    ‘I’ve never met anyone like you,’ I said.
    He spluttered, coughed, and beer ran down his chin. He wiped it away. ‘You really have seen nothing of the world. I’m common as a sparrow. There’s a meeting next month, on Caton Moor. We expect at least five hundred there.’
    Something caught my notice, some movement in the water meadow, over in the far corner. On his way home from the willow holts, with that long-legged lope that you would know a mile off. He crossed the stubble in full sun, his head low, a bundle of green willow on his back: Thomas.
    ‘The meeting is just a step. A show of strength and purpose. Today, we’re kept like children, and so, like children, we can only sulk and refuse to do our chores, and be beaten for our disobedience. But when the Charter becomes Law, there’ll be a vote for every man. We’ll all have a hand in the making of all other laws, in the establishment of taxes, in the conferring of rights and obligations on our fellow men, and we will be treated as children no longer. And then you will see what a fine world we make of this.’
    I stood up, lifting my shawl. Mr Moore raised himself on a hand to let it slip out from beneath him.
    ‘So I will have a vote?’
    I shook out the shawl.
    ‘Your husband will.’
    There was silence. I folded the shawl and drew it around me. I saw Mr Moore’s gaze catch on the figure of Thomas.
    ‘Are you going to him?’ he asked.
    ‘I have to,’ I said, meaning that he might have seen us, or might soon, if I didn’t leave. Mr Moore nodded and looked down, watching his forefinger picking at a crumb of loose bark.
    ‘Goodbye,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
    He glanced up, shook his head, not understanding.
    ‘For explaining,’ I said. ‘For taking the time.’
    He smiled, his face breaking out into a map of lines, making me smile back at him.
    ‘Pleasure,’ he said. ‘A genuine pleasure.’
    I went out into the sun’s glare, and down the path towards the wash-house where the ways meet, and waited there, leaning against the gatepost, my heart hammering against the stone. Thomas approached across the water meadow. Mr Moore came down the hill, and crossed the beck; I glanced up to watch him pass. He had his hat on; it shaded his eyes.
    He touched his hat, and passed me without speaking. He climbed the hill towards the village, leaving me there.

 
     
     
     
    I walked there, through the fields. I went down the track to the point where the ways part, then climbed up past the oak standing in its own quiet shadow. Storrs Hall stood clear among the trees. I climbed up the open hillside to a narrow wooden garden gate; beyond, the path was squeezed between laurels and rhododendrons. The hinges were stiff, the wood soft and damp; it left algae on my hand.
    I should have been going home. I should have done what Mark said I should do. Got a good night’s sleep and packed my stuff into the car and come straight home and gone and got the pills and forgotten all of this, forgotten everything. The wine had switched me off, but only temporarily. When I woke my hand was throbbing under the plaster, and my head was sore and there was the sourness of a hangover in my