The Telling

among the buttercups and wild carrot and long grass, and listened to the preacher’s great strong voice, his passionate words. We scared ourselves witless with what we heard about the Elect and Grace and the Second Coming and the End of Days. I felt it again, the same blend of fear and guilt, a sense of the coming apocalypse; and with it a new feeling that I couldn’t name. I was vexed at being laughed at, but there was more to it than that. The kettle began to rattle and boil, and I remembered the tea. I had to go to the stove, right between Mr Moore and my dad, and bend to get the kettle. They paused in their talk a moment, and I was all too conscious of myself and of the way my cheeks flushed in the heat from the fire.
    Ted and John bundled in, red-cheeked and full of buttoned-down laughter. Mam sent me to the larder for preserves, though it was Lent, and there were only a half-dozen stone jars left on the shelves. Then Sally came in, looking prim and pretty. She had been up at the schoolhouse sewing with Mrs Forster. The younger ones took their supper to their stools and sat to eat, and I kept company with Mam, standing at the table to eat our bread and apple-jelly, while the men sat by the fire and ate theirs. Sally wanted to know about the baby and wanted to tell me about the dress Mrs Forster was making, but I didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to listen to her, didn’t want to think about the blood and the baby, and all the time she talked I couldn’t hear what Mr Moore was saying. My mam was now too tired for conversation, she just leaned against the table, and sipped at her tea, and ate her bread and jelly as if it were almost too much of a bother for her to do it. We cleaned up the plates and put them away, and still Mr Moore lingered there, listening to my father, who now was talking about the Enclosure. I didn’t like it when Dad got talking about the Enclosure. It seemed so long ago now, and there was nothing to be done about it, and it made him nasty to reflect on it, and I could not imagine what kept Mr Moore there listening to him, when he could have been off home hours before. He couldn’t have known the trouble he was courting.
    I’d go up to my room and read and get myself out of the way. There was a little light left: I could get a few pages read at least before Sally came up and started wittering about bonnet trimmings or the baby. It didn’t cross my mind that I’d be remarked on, either in my going or my being gone. I had my hand on the stair-rail, my foot on the first tread, and my new chapbook about Robinson Crusoe under my arm, when Dad called out after me, asking where I was off to.
    I turned and went back to him, bent to give him a kiss on his cheek, and said goodnight. The hem of my skirt brushed against Mr Moore’s booted feet, and I caught his scent for the first time: the smell of cut wood. There was wood dust in his hair.
    ‘You’re not up there any more,’ Dad said.
    I looked at him, not comprehending.
    ‘You’re down here. You and Sally. You’ll be good and warm with the fire.’
    ‘You mean sleeping?’ I asked.
    ‘Of course I mean sleeping.’
    ‘But –’
    Ted laughed. Only then did it dawn on me what was going on. Mr Moore was lodging with us. He was to have our room; mine and Sally’s room, and we were to sleep downstairs. There’d been talk of a lodger for a while, but nothing had been done, and I’d thought the idea had been forgotten. I looked down at the floor, the rag rug, the ash on the hearthstone. I will sleep like Cinderella tonight, I thought, and every night until he’s gone, and I will not have a moment’s peace or solitude until he goes. In the corner of my eye, I could see Mr Moore looking down at his hands, his right index finger bent and pressed down hard with the thumb of the same hand, so that the fingertip nearly touched his palm. The knuckle cracked, he looked up, and our eyes met. His eyes were brown and clear as peat-water. He looked a little ill at ease.
    ‘Go and get what you need down from your room, and put it in the chest,’ Mam said, ‘and then Mr Moore can go up when he wants to.’
    My eyes left his. I turned away. I went up to our room, and fetched bedding and clothes and brought them down and put them in the chest, and then went back for the books I had up there, and rearranged the crocks on the dresser to make space for them, and moved aside the Bible and the prayer book, and pushed my Pilgrim’s Progress and my