The Telling Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 chapbooks in beside them, and all the while the pair of them were sitting there at the fire, my father smiling and watching me as I made the arrangements. Mr. Moore didn’t look around at me, which was good, because I could not have easily met his eye.
    It was pitch dark by the time Sally and I had got the bedding spread out and undressed and laid ourselves down to sleep. The fire was a low smoulder. I was beginning to drift into sleep, thinking that another night, when I was not so tired, I’d stir up the flames a bit, put a few sticks on, and I’d be able to read in the firelight, and it wouldn’t be so bad. It was good just to be lyingdown, and I didn’t really feel the hardness of the floor, and my eyes were closing, and I was thinking how Agnes hadn’t seen the new chapbook yet, that I’d take it over and read to her in bed tomorrow evening, and when she was well enough, she’d sit in her kitchen, and I’d do her cleaning or some baking for her.
    “Are you never going to get married?”
    I opened my eyes. “What?”
    “You were nineteen last birthday,” Sally said.
    “I know how old I am.”
    She took a noisy breath. “I was thinking what with Agnes having the baby now, you would be thinking of it, you could marry Thomas and move out and have babies of your own.”
    “You’ll wear yourself out, thinking like that.”
    She rolled onto her side, pulling the blankets with her. “You could have your own room then too, though I suppose you’d have to share it with Thomas.”
    “Leave off, will you?”
    She sniffed indignantly. “It isn’t just me.”
    I leaned up on an elbow, looked over at her. “What do you mean?”
    “Oh nothing.”
    I prodded her. She yelped in protest. I said, “Tell me; you’ll have no rest till you do.”
    She rolled back over and looked me in the eye. I remember her eyes, dark and glossy, catching the firelight, and her smooth young skin glowing pale. “Our mam was saying that we’re too crowded here, I heard her say it. And Dad agreed.”
    “They should have thought about that before they invited that man in. There’s just him taking up a whole room to himself whileus two have to sleep down here, and that’s just daft, it makes no sense at all.”
    Sally shrugged and heaved herself over again; “He could hardly have the boys’ room, it’s too small, and you wouldn’t wish this on our mam at her age.”
    Just as I was about to ask whether she knew if he’d be stopping long, she said, her back still turned to me, “I’m to be apprenticed soon, you know, Mrs. Forster is arranging it for me.”
    “Who to?”
    “Mrs. Forster’s milliner at Settle; one of the girls is leaving to set up for herself, and when she does, I’m to be indentured in her place.”
    I rolled onto my back, lay there with the blanket pulled up to my chin. “What did our mam say?”
    “It’s clean work, and I’ll be mixing with a better sort of people. She’s glad.”
    Time passed in silence, and the church clock chimed ten.
    “Good for you,” I said.
    Sally muttered something, but her breath was coming softer, and I knew that she was almost asleep. The blanket scratched against my chin. I turned, tugged at the covers, and saw that there was light overhead, sieved by the boards, slipping down between them, hair-thin, golden. He was awake up there, up in our old room. He had a candle burning. He sat in light.

It was barely a
town at all. Just a motorway exit, a railway station, a grimy, busy crossroads with traffic thundering through. Dirty great