Year of Wonders. Geraldine Brooks

and prune the dead-wood – yet it would not be her garden. We would lack her eye. What made it her garden was the way she could look at a handful of tiny seeds in the bareness of winter and imagine how they would be, months later, sunlit and in flower. It was as if she painted with blooms.’

      When I straightened, he had turned and was staring at me. The shock of it went through me once again.

      ‘You knew her!’ He said it as if it had only just come to him.

      To cover my confusion, I blurted out what I had hoped to convey with care. ‘Miss Bradford is in the parlour. The family is returned to the Hall. She says she needs to speak with you urgently.’

      What happened next astonished me so much that I almost dropped the tray. He laughed. A rich, amused laugh the like of which I hadn’t heard for so long I’d forgotten the sound of it.

      ‘I know. I saw her. Banging on my door like a siege engine. Truly, I thought she meant to break it down.’

      ‘What answer should I give her, Rector?’

      ‘Tell her to go to Hell.’

      When he saw my face, he laughed again. My eyes must have been wide as chargers. Wiping a tear of mirth from his own, he struggled for composure. ‘No, I see. You can barely be expected to carry such a message. Put it into whatever words you like, but convey to Miss Bradford that I will not see her, and get her from this house.’

      It was as if there were two of me, walking down those stairs. One of them was the timid girl who had worked for the Bradfords in a state of dread, fearing their hard looks and harsh words. The other was Anna Frith, a woman who had faced more terrors than many warriors. Elizabeth Bradford was a coward. She was the daughter of cowards. As I entered the parlour and faced her thunderous countenance, I knew I had nothing more to fear from her.

      ‘I am sorry, Miss Bradford, but the rector is unable to see you at present.’ I kept my voice as level as I could, but as her jaw worked in that angry face, I found myself thinking of my cow worrying at her cud, and I felt the contagion of Mr. Mompellion’s strange fit of mirth. It was all I could do then to keep my composure and continue. ‘He is, as I said, not currently performing any pastoral duties, nor does he go into society or receive any person.’

      ‘How dare you smirk at me, you insolent slattern!’ she cried. ‘He will not refuse me, he dare not. Out of my way!’ She moved for the door, but I was quicker, blocking her path like a collie facing down an unruly tup. We stared at each other for a long moment. ‘Oh, very well,’ she said, picking up her gloves from the mantel as if purposing to leave. I stood aside then, meaning to show her to the front door, but instead, she pushed past me and was upon the steps to Mr. Mompellion’s room when the rector himself appeared on the landing.

      ‘Miss Bradford,’ he said, ‘do me the kindness of remaining where you are.’ His voice was low but its jussive tone stopped her. He had shed the hunched posture of the past months and stood tall and straight. He had lost flesh, but now, as he stood there, animated at last, I could see that gauntness had not ravaged him but rather given his face a kind of distinction. There had been a time when, if you looked at him when he was not speaking, you might have called his a plain face, save for the deep-set grey eyes that were striking, always, for their expressiveness. Now, the hollowness of his cheeks called attention to those eyes, so that you could not take your gaze from them.

      ‘I would be obliged if you would refrain from insulting members of my household whilst they are carrying out my instructions,’ he said. ‘Please be good enough to allow Mrs. Frith to show you to the door.’

      ‘You can’t do this!’ Miss Bradford replied, but this time in the tone of a very young child who has been thwarted in its pursuit of a plaything. The rector was standing half a flight of stairs above her, so that she had to gaze up at him like a supplicant. ‘My mother has need of you…’

      ‘My dear Miss Bradford,’ he interrupted coldly. ‘There were many people here with needs this past year, needs that you and your family were in a position to have satisfied. And yet you were not…here. Kindly ask your mother to do me the honour of advancing the same tolerance for my absence now that your family arrogated for so long in regard to its own.’

      She was flushed now, her face a blotchy patchwork. Suddenly, surprisingly, she began to cry. ‘My father is not any longer…my father does not…It is my mother. My mother is very ill. She fears…she believes she will die of it. The Oxford surgeon swore it was a tumour but there is no question now…Please, Reverend Mompellion, her mind is much disordered; she will take no rest and speaks of nothing but seeing you. That is why we are come back here, that you may console her and help her face her death.’

      He was silent for a long moment, and I felt sure that his next words would be a request to me to look out his coat and hat so that he could go to the Hall. His face, when he spoke, was sad, as I had so often seen it. But his voice was strange and rough.

      ‘If your mother seeks me out to give her absolution like a Papist, then she has made a long and uncomfortable journey to no end. Let her speak direct to God to ask forgiveness for her conduct. But I fear she may find Him a poor listener, as many of us here have done.’ And with that he turned his back and climbed the stairs to his room, closing the door behind him.

      Elizabeth Bradford threw out a hand to steady herself and gripped the banister until bone of her knuckles showed through the skin. She was trembling, her shoulders shaking with sobs that she struggled to suppress. Instinctively, I went to her. Despite my years of aversion for her, and hers of contempt for me, she folded up into my arms like a child. I had meant to help her to the door, but she was in such a state that I could not bring myself to shove her out, though it was clearly the rector’s wish that she be gone. Instead, I found myself shepherding her to the kitchen and easing her down upon the bucket bench. There, she gave herself up so completely to sobbing that the little piece of lace she used as a handkin was soaked through. I held out a dishclout, and to my astonishment she took it and blew her nose as indelicately and unselfconsciously as an urchin. I offered her a mug of water and she drank it thirstily. ‘I said the family was back, but in truth it is just my mother and me and our own servants. I do not know how I can help her, she grieves so. My father will have none of her ever since he learned the truth of her condition. My mother has no tumour. But what she has, at her age, may surely kill her just the same. And my father says he cares not. He has ever been cruel to her, but now he excels himself in his wretchedness. He is saying the most terrible things…He has called his own wife whore…’ And there she finally stopped herself. She had said more than she intended. Far more than she should. Rising from the bench as if it had suddenly turned to a hob that was blistering her noble backside, she squared her shoulders and handed me the soiled dishclout and the empty mug without a thank you. ‘I can find my own way out,’ she said, brushing past me without a glance. I did not follow her, but I knew she was gone by the slam of the great oaken door.

      It was only with her going that I gave myself pause to be astonished by what Mr. Mompellion had said to her. His mind had become even darker than I had thought. I was concerned for him. I did not know what I could do to bring him comfort. Nevertheless, I climbed the stairs to his room as quietly as I could and listened outside his door. Inside there was silence. I knocked gently, and when he did not answer I opened the door. He was seated with his head in his hands. The Bible, as always, was beside him, unopened. I had a sudden, keen memory of him, sitting just so, at the end of one of the darkest days of the past winter. The difference was that Elinor had been seated beside him, her gentle voice reading from the Psalms. It was as if I heard it still, a low hum, so soothing, broken only by the soft rustle as she turned the pages. Without asking his leave, I picked up the Bible and turned to a passage I knew well:

      ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul;

      And forget not all his benefits, Who forgives all your iniquity, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from the Pit…’

      He rose from his chair and took the book from my hand. His voice was low, but brittle. ‘Very well read, Anna. I see my Elinor may add a credential as a fine teacher to her catalogue of excellent qualities. But why did you not choose this one?’