The Book of Fires. Jane Borodale

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       Five

      IN THE MORNING I TRY TO SWALLOW BREAD to quell my sickness, and when the bell rings at eight I take my bundle outside and join the carrier. The passengers have swelled in number, and I find I have to squeeze my way up on to the bench at the back of the waggon. When we leave the town the morning light shows a countryside choppy with hills, dotted with brightly golden copses and small farms and hamlets. Spiders’ webs catch at the damp between the stems of dead hemlock and milk-parsley. Plumes of smoke climb into the air from abundant chimneys and we see many people working the fields and driving goats and oxen. We stop for carts more frequently, even at this hour. The land seems teeming with its population.

      One of the new passengers sits very upright on the bench. There is a glossiness about her. She has a fine, fancy patterned shawl over her shoulders, and her mantua is made of silk bearing woven sprigs of flowers and birds. She seems tall and narrow, with a head of brown curling hair under her bonnet. Her face is pale as a china cup. High on the cheekbones two luscious spots of blush are painted on like raspberries. She is fresh and bright. I cannot stop watching her, until her eye catches mine and she smiles directly at me. I look away hastily, my own cheeks flushing in ordinary patches on my face.

      Her hands are long and bony, which she knocks together through her white kid gloves from time to time as though she were eager to reach her destination, or as if she were filled with an impatient kind of song or energy that must escape by any means. Under her boots is a small leather case. I have a feeling that her eyes are on me, but then she turns and begins to listen to the fat woman talking to the unpleasant woman with the daughter. I fold my arms carefully across my stomach and do not hear them. I pray no one will speak to me. I am bad, spoilt, I think. I am best not spoken to; I am like an apple rotting slowly away once the worms have got in. A rotten apple touching the skin of a good one in the store will taint the others till they fester together.

      The day is milder than the day before.

      There is no sunshine, but the clouds are high and pale, and the air has about it the nameless sweetness that earth gives off before the great frosts begin.

      After some time the woman pulls off a glove and eats some fruit with her bare hand, swallowing quickly and not letting juice drip on her dress. I am startled when she leans across to me, her long fingers reaching out to offer me a plum. I take it gratefully and bite. It is late in the season for such a good one, sour and pleasant at once. The bloom on it is like a mildew on its perfect skin. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ I say.

      She pulls on her glove.

      ‘My name is Lettice Talbot,’ the woman says, as if to set up conversation. The voice she has is light and coaxing, like a child’s. ‘Some people call me Letty.’ I spit out the stone of the plum and throw it on to the road.

      ‘What an uncommon name,’ I answer, out of manners.

      ‘I like it very much,’ the woman replies, which is a strange answer, and makes me think somehow that she has chosen it herself.

      I cannot think of any other thing to say to her. A curious smell comes away from Lettice Talbot’s clothing when she moves about; as sweet as beeswax, or the dusty odour of roses that have been kept to dry inside a cupboard, or something else I cannot place. It is a good, intriguing smell that makes me want to sit a little closer to her.

      At noon we roll over White Down Hill and descend into the village of Leatherhead. The inn is adjacent to the blacksmith’s, and as we pass I look into the darkness of his shop and see white-hot coals flaring and dulling with the roar of the bellows. From the yard of the inn we can still hear the regular metallic clang and ring of a hammer on hot iron against an anvil. In the silence that follows I know well the hiss of a horseshoe going into cold liquid, and the smell of a scorched hoof as the warm shoe is nailed on.

      The jolting slows and stops.

      ‘We can take something to eat here.’ Lettice Talbot gets down immediately over the tailgate and calls up to me, brushing dirt from her palms. The harnesses clink as the ostlers unbuckle the horses. The horses are sweating and breathing heavily.

      ‘How stiff we become on the back of this cart, our legs stuck out over the road like a crate of dead fowls!’ She looks doubtfully towards the pullets at the front of the waggon, and then laughs, as though something wicked had occurred to her. A dog barks.

      ‘Are you not hungry?’ she asks. I suppose I must eat. ‘I’ll bet your last fair meal was another life ago. Am I right, sweetheart?’ She beckons me to descend.

      ‘There is abundant time for an inn-dinner at the Rose and Crown,’ she reassures me, as if she travelled frequently this way, and the sun breaks through the clouds as we cross the yard.

      Inside, my eyes accustom to the darkness. There is a fire blazing in a broad hearth, and a savoury smell of wood-smoke and ale. Two men glance up at us and then back to some papers spread out on a table. The girl drawing ale from a barrel at the hatch directs us to a bench. We have our backs to the sunlight which falls through the leaded window, blue with smoke from the fire. The brick floor is swept. The miserable man wearing the great-coat takes a solitary seat on the far side of the room, opening his mouth to order something made with beef, then rubs his belly. He keeps his coat on. There is loud laughter from the porch and then the room seems filled with stir and levity.

      How has my life has changed so quickly? I think. I feel small away from home. I feel dizzy with it.

      ‘What shall we have?’ Lettice Talbot says brightly. ‘Why not oysters!’ The girl wipes a cloth over the table and brings some for us, with hard sallow cheese, and bread. There is a lot of greasy red hair escaping from her cap. She looks at me as she puts them down, then goes away. The food is salty and good, and we eat hungrily without conversation. The girl comes back to remove the dish of empty shells, and Lettice Talbot claps her hands.

      ‘Brandy!’ she suggests.

      ‘Brandy?’ I say doubtfully. I don’t mention that I have never tasted it. The girl brings a jug and pours out one glass. The liquid is a bright brown as it catches the sunlight. ‘Drink up,’ Lettice Talbot coaxes, pushing the glass towards me and smiling kindly.

      ‘But СКАЧАТЬ