The Telling

reached the house. I wanted to tell him if I had the choice I wouldn’t, but that would only lengthen the dispute, so I just said goodnight then ran up the front steps, and in through the door, slamming it behind me, scrabbling at my bonnet strings.
    *
     
    Mr Moore had left a book there for me on the shelf. Plum-coloured leather, fresh as a new glove. It was a collection of plays that a gentleman had translated from another language, from the Greek. The Greeks were heathens, I knew; the Reverend had some books in Greek in his library, filled back to front with a strange, impenetrable script. Now, coming upon the stories in plain English, clear enough for even me to read, I could see why the Reverend preferred to keep them locked up in those mysterious symbols. These were bloody tales, the people passionate and unwavering and cruel. I might have thought them unfit for a girl like me to read, if I had paused to consider the matter, and not rushed headlong into them. And if my thoughts had not begun to shift and alter, and become other than they had been.

    *
     
    The Thursday evening, Hornby Market-day, Thomas came to our house with red cheeks and the smell of river from the walk home. He was carrying a parcel tied up in brown paper. He’d made good money on his baskets, he told my mam; he said our dad should take ours to Hornby too; there’d been a lack of them further down the valley, with the building work at Storrs taking up so many. I was sitting at the window, with another of Mr Moore’s books in my lap. The Odyssey , it was called; Odysseus’s men had been turned to swine; I didn’t want to leave the story, but I was worried by the sight of the soft parcel crushed in Thomas’s thick fingers. Had he formed no impression, had he taken no hint from the other evening? He was already right in front of me, and was laying his slight burden down on top of my open book. It was light and soft inside its wrapping. I glanced up at Thomas; he seemed at once gleeful and buttoned-down, like a child who knows he has been especially good, but must continue to be good, if he’s to get his treat.
    ‘I brought you a present,’ he said.
    Mam bent eagerly to see what I’d been given.
    ‘Go on, Lizzy.’
    I knew what it was, and I knew what it was for. I picked at the knot and loosened the paper. The fabric was pretty. It was tea-dyed cotton, sprigged, with matching ribbons and braiding and thread.
    He said, ‘You’re to make yourself a new dress for the dance.’
    The cotton smelt of the warehouse and of camphor-wood and spice. My face felt numb and cold. My mam was saying what a good boy he was, bringing me such a beautiful present, and that I’d need to ask Mrs Wolfenden for a pattern to copy, and I would look lovely in something like the high-waister with the bell-shaped sleeves that Mrs Wolfenden had worn last spring, and all the time I sat there, frozen, looking down at the beautiful rich colour, the wonderful soft folds of the fresh new fabric, hearing my mam’s voice as if through a blanket, and I wanted to fling the parcel away from me, the fabric, ribbons, braid and thread flying out like a fountain of spilled tea, and push past them and get out of the house and just run. Mam was chattering on about Mrs Wolfenden’s old dresses and her generosity with patterns and such, and Thomas was nodding and agreeing as if familiar with the subject. My mouth was dry; I had to lick my lips before I could speak.
    ‘There’s no need for this.’ I said. ‘My Sunday dress will do quite well enough for the dance.’
    ‘Nonsense,’ Mam said. ‘What are you thinking? With this beautiful bit of cloth Thomas has so kindly got for you –’
    She fingered a fold, and lifted a corner so that the bundle tumbled undone, and she lifted the fabric up to the light, so that tiny squares of sunlight shone through it, and it glowed. She and Thomas exchanged a glance, a little smile, and I was conscious of a fierce and sudden flush across my face and through my whole body. They were not conspirators, I remember thinking; the need for conspiracy was over. They were victors.
    *
     
    I didn’t ask Mrs Wolfenden; not for weeks. I couldn’t. Not the way things were at the vicarage. Every day when I got home after polishing the hall floor twice, or being scolded for invisible dust, or having fresh linen returned to me for re-laundering, my mam would look me over, seeking out the neat little parcel of patterns that she daily expected,