The Telling

would be your thoughts on that, Reverend? On Isaiah’s teachings ?’
    The silence was melting, people began to mutter. Dad raised his voice over the noise.
    ‘And then there’s the rulers who make unrighteous decrees and turn aside the needy from justice, and take away the rights from the poor; they were damned too, according to Isaiah. There was a time we had rights. A bit of land to farm. Cattle and fowl on the common. Hogs in the woods. Them rights were taken away, and property was added to property.’
    ‘Shut up,’ someone said, low and urgent.
    ‘God’s sake man, sit down,’ someone else called out. ‘We’ll be here all day.’
    Dad was moving up the aisle towards the pulpit. His words rang out through all the church, strange and heavy-sounding.
    ‘You’re very ready to tell us how it’s all God’s will, that this is God’s will, and that is God’s will, but what I really want to know is if it really is God’s will, his own Holy Decree, that you eat meat every day, that you have a house big enough to be home to a hundred men, that your wife wears those pretty frocks of hers, all those silks and satins and what have you. And if it is,’ he said, ‘I want to know how you got to be such a great favourite with Our Lord, and what I ever did to annoy him, so that I have to get by on a crust and a paring, and what the poor souls must have done so that He’d arrange a wage-cut just to watch them starve. Maybe you could share the secret of it, Reverend? Maybe you could tell us how you managed to persuade the Lord that you deserve better than the rest of us?’
    My father’s voice had grown, was strong and harsh and demanding. The Reverend opened his mouth. There was a moment’s pause; he gathered breath. His face was greyish-white. A line of spittle joined his upper lip with the lower one.
    My dad said, ‘And while we’re at it, d’y’happen to know the Lord’s opinion on the fashions, Mrs Wolfenden? Is He fond of lace?’
    Mrs Wolfenden shrank in her pew.
    ‘See, I only want to know what the Lord is up to, I can only ask them as’d know, them He’s set above us to govern and guide us ignorant folk. If I’m assured my tithes are being spent as He would have it, if He’s keen on you getting your satin and sirloin and coals, if He’s all for luxury and sloth for some and famine and drudgery for others, then good for you, I say. Good for you. Well done. You must be very holy folks indeed.’
    My father moved up to the chancel step, and stepped up on to it, and then he turned to the congregation.
    ‘Time we did summat, don’t y’think?’
    Looking at him standing there, scruffy even in his Sunday best, his face shining with a passion that I had not seen before, I felt the whole frail structure of my happiness crack and splinter; the mist of half-read stories burn and shrink away. This was the end; I knew it was the end. This was exactly what the Reverend had been anticipating. Dad would be locked up; Mr Moore would have to leave. He would take his books and go.
    The Reverend’s expression had narrowed. ‘Mr Aitken,’ he said, ‘would you be so kind as to support my wife, and see her safely home?’
    Mr Aitken stood up and left his pew, and went to the vicarage pew, and offered Mrs Wolfenden his arm, and she reached up and took it, and it looked as if she were being hoisted out of a hole, and Mrs Aitken joined them both, and took her husband’s other arm, and he supported them down the aisle and out of the church, and Mrs Wolfenden’s plump and pretty face looked pale as death; I thought she might be about to faint, and part of me thought I should go after her, assist her, but I knew my attentions would not be welcome. I watched as Mr Forster stood and gave his wife his arm, and offered Sally the other, and, crushed close together, they made their way down the aisle. Sally passed us, and kept her eyes fixed on the floor, but I could see that she was blushing like a beet, and there was, I thought, a hint of satisfaction in her face, to find herself treated as a lady, as something fragile and prone to harm.
    Dad swayed on the chancel step. His face was blurring with the drink. Beside him and above, up in the pulpit, the Reverend still stood, like a schoolmaster, waiting.
    ‘Sit down, man,’ someone called out. ‘Sit down. You’ll ruin everything.’
    ‘They’s nothing but a parcel of leeches, they suck us dry; they took the land that had been ours by right since God gave it to