The Giver of Stars

3

… and best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wander where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Two purple bruises on her knees, one on her left ankle and blisters in places she didn’t know blisters could exist, a cluster of infected bites behind her right ear, four broken nails (slightly grubby, she had to admit) and sunburn on her neck and nose. A two-inch-long graze on her right shoulder from being scraped against a tree, and a mark on her left elbow where Spirit had bitten her when she’d tried to slap a horsefly. Alice peered at her grimy face in the mirror, wondering what people back in England would make of the scabby cowgirl staring back at her.

It had been more than a fortnight and nobody had mentioned that Isabelle Brady had still not arrived to join the little team of packhorse librarians, so Alice didn’t feel able to ask. Frederick didn’t say much other than to offer her coffee and help her with Spirit, Beth – the middle child of eight brothers – would march in and out with a brisk boyish energy, nodding a cheerful hello, dumping her saddle on the floor, exclaiming when she couldn’t find her goddamn saddlebags, and Isabelle’s name simply failed to appear on the little cards on the wall with which they signed themselves in and out of shifts. Occasionally a large dark green motor-car would sweep by with Mrs Brady in the front, and Margery would nod, but no words passed between them. Alice began to think that putting her daughter’s name out there had been a way for Mrs Brady to encourage other young women to come forward.

So, it was something of a surprise when the motor-car pulled up on Thursday afternoon, its huge wheels sending a spray of sand and grit up the steps as it stopped. Mrs Brady was an enthusiastic, if easily distracted driver, prone to sending locals scattering as she turned her head to wave at some passer-by, or swerved extravagantly to avoid a cat in the road.

‘Who is that?’ Margery didn’t look up. She was working her way through two piles of returned books, trying to decide which were too damaged to go out again. There was little point sending out a book in which the last page was missing, as had already happened once. Waste of my time, had been the response from the sharecropper who had been given The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I won’t be reading a book again.

‘Think it might be Mrs Brady.’ Alice, who had been treating a blister on her heel, peered out of the window, trying to remain inconspicuous. She watched as Mrs Brady closed the driver’s door and paused to wave at somebody across the street. And then she saw a younger woman emerge from the passenger side, red hair pulled back and pinned into neat curls. Isabelle Brady.

‘It’s both of them,’ Alice said quietly. She tugged her sock back on, wincing.

‘I’m surprised.’

‘Why?’ said Alice.

Isabelle made her way around the side of the car until she was level with her mother. It was then that Alice saw she walked with a pronounced limp, and that her lower left leg was encased in a leather and metal brace, the shoe at the end built up so that it resembled a small black brick. She didn’t use a stick, but rolled slightly as she moved, and concentration – or possibly discomfort – was writ large on her freckled features.

Alice pulled back, not wanting to be seen to be watching as they made their way slowly up the steps. She heard a murmured conversation and then the door opened.

‘Miss O’Hare!’

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Brady, Isabelle.’

‘I’m so sorry for the delay in getting Izzy started. She had … some things to attend to first.’

‘Just glad to have you. We’re about ready to send Mrs Van Cleve out on her own, so the more the merrier. I’ll have to get you sorted out with a horse, though, Miss Brady. I wasn’t sure when you were coming.’

‘I’m no good at riding,’ said Izzy, quietly.

‘Wondered as much. Never seen you on a horse. So Mr Guisler is going to lend you his old companion horse, Patch. He’s a little heavy but sweet as anything, won’t scare you none. He knows what he’s doing and he’ll go at your pace.’

‘I can’t ride,’ Izzy said, an edge to her voice. She looked mutinously at her mother.

‘That’s only because you won’t try, dear,’ her mother said, not looking at her. She clasped her hands together. ‘So what time shall we come by tomorrow? Izzy, we’ll have to take you to Lexington to get you some new breeches. You’ve eaten your way right out of your old ones.’

‘Well, Alice here saddles up at seven, so why don’t you come then? We may start a little earlier as we divide up our routes.’

‘You’re not listening to me –’ Izzy began.

‘We’ll see you tomorrow.’ Mrs Brady looked around her at the little cabin. ‘It’s good to see what a start you’ve made already. I hear from Pastor Willoughby that the McArthur girls read their way through their Bible samplers without so much as a prompt from him last Sunday, thanks to the books you’ve brought them. Wonderful. Good afternoon, Mrs Van Cleve, Miss O’Hare. I’m much obliged to the pair of you.’

Mrs Brady nodded and the two women turned and made their way out of the library. They heard the roar of the car’s engine as it started up, then a skidding sound and a startled shout as Mrs Brady pulled out onto the road.

Alice looked at Margery, who shrugged. They sat in silence until the sound of the engine died away.

‘Bennett.’ Alice skipped up to the stoop, where her husband was sitting with a glass of iced tea. She glanced at the rocker, which was unusually empty. ‘Where’s your father?’

‘Having dinner with the Lowes.’

‘Is that the one who never stops talking? Goodness, he’ll be there all night. I’m amazed Mrs Lowe can draw breath long enough to eat!’ She pushed her hair back from her brow. ‘Oh, I have had the most extraordinary day. We went to a house in the middle of absolutely nowhere and I swear this man wanted to shoot us. He didn’t, of course –’

She slowed, noting the way his eyes had dropped to her dirty boots. Alice looked down at them and the mud on her breeches. ‘Oh. That. Yes. Misjudged where I should have been going through a creek and my horse stumbled and threw me straight over her head. It was actually very funny. I thought at one point Margery was going to pass out from laughing. Luckily I dried off in a wink, although just wait until you see my bruises. I am positively purple.’ She jogged up the steps to him and stooped to kiss him but he turned his face away.

‘You smell awfully of horse, these days,’ he said. ‘Maybe you should wash that off. It does tend to … linger.’

She was sure he hadn’t meant it to sting, but it did. She sniffed at her shoulder. ‘You’re right,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘I smell like a cowboy! I tell you what, how about I freshen up and put on something pretty and then perhaps we could take a drive to the river. I could make us a little picnic of nice things. Didn’t Annie leave some of that molasses cake? And I know we still have the side of ham. Say yes, darling. Just you and me. We haven’t had a proper outing together for weeks.’

Bennett rose from his chair. ‘Actually, I’m – uh – going to meet some of the fellas for a game. I was just waiting for you to come home so I could tell you.’ He stood in front of her and she realized he was wearing the white trousers he used for sport. ‘We’re headed to the playing field over at Johnson.’

‘Oh. Fine, then. I’ll come and watch. I promise I won’t take a minute to scrub up.’

He rubbed his palm over the top of his head. ‘It’s kind of a guy thing. The wives don’t really come.’

‘I wouldn’t say anything, Bennett darling, or bother you.’

‘That’s not really the point –’

‘I just would love to see you play. You look so … joyful when you play.’

The way his gaze flickered towards her and away told her she had said too much. They stood in silence for a moment.

‘Like I said. It’s a guy thing.’

Alice swallowed. ‘I see. Another time, then.’

‘Sure!’ Released, he looked suddenly happy. ‘A picnic would be great. Maybe we can get some of the other fellows to come too. Pete Schrager? You liked his wife, didn’t you? Patsy’s fun. You and she will become real friends, I know it.’

‘Oh. Yes. I suppose so.’

They stood awkwardly in front of each other for a moment longer. Then Bennett reached out a hand, and leaned forward as if to kiss her. But this time it was Alice who stepped back. ‘It’s okay, you really don’t have to. Goodness, I do reek! Awful! How can you bear it?’

She backed away, then turned and ran up the steps two at a time so that he couldn’t see her eyes had filled with tears.

Alice’s days had settled into something of a routine since she had started work. She would rise at 5.30 a.m., wash and dress in the little bathroom along the hall (she was grateful for it, as she had swiftly become aware that half the homes in Baileyville still had ‘outhouses’ – or worse). Bennett slept like someone dead, barely stirring as she pulled on her boots, and she would lean over and kiss his cheek lightly, then tiptoe downstairs. In the kitchen she would retrieve the sandwiches she had made the evening before, grab a couple of the ‘biscuits’ that Annie left out on the sideboard, wrap them in a napkin, and eat them as she walked the half-mile to the library. Some of the faces she passed on her walk had become familiar: farmers on their horse-drawn buggies, lumber lorries making their way towards the huge yards, and the odd miner who had overslept, his lunch pail in his hand. She had begun to nod to the people she recognized – people in Kentucky were so much more civil than they were in England, where you were likely to be viewed with suspicion if you greeted a stranger in too friendly a manner. A couple had started to call out across the road to her: How’s that library going? And she would respond: Oh, quite well, thank you. They always smiled, though sometimes she suspected they spoke to her because they were amused by her accent. Either way it was nice to feel she was becoming part of something.

Occasionally she would pass Annie walking briskly, head down, on her way to the house – to her shame, she wasn’t sure where the housekeeper lived – and she would wave cheerily, but Annie would simply nod, unsmiling, as if Alice had transgressed some unspoken rule in the employer-employee handbook. Bennett, she knew, would rise only after Annie arrived at the house, woken with coffee on a tray, Annie having already taken the same to Mr Van Cleve. By the time the two men were dressed, the bacon, eggs and grits would be waiting for them on the dining table, the cutlery set just so. At a quarter to eight they would head off in Mr Van Cleve’s burgundy Ford convertible sedan, to Hoffman Mining.

Alice tried not to think too hard about the previous evening. She had once been told by her favourite aunt that the best way to get through life was not to dwell on things so she packed those events into a suitcase, and shoved it to the back of a mental cupboard, just as she had done with numerous suitcases before. There was no point lingering on the fact that Bennett had plainly gone drinking long after his baseball game had ended, returning to pass out on the daybed in the dressing room, from where she heard his convulsive snores until dawn. There was no point thinking too hard about the fact that it had now been more than six months, long enough for her to have to acknowledge that this might not be normal newlywed behaviour. Like there was no point in thinking too hard that it was obvious neither of them had a clue how to discuss what was going on. Especially as she wasn’t even sure what was going on. Nothing in her life up to now had given her the vocabulary or the experience. And there was nobody in whom she could confide. Her mother thought conversation about any bodily matters – even the filing of nails – was vulgar.

Alice took a breath. No. Better to focus on the road ahead, the long, arduous day, with its books and its ledger entries, its horses and its lush green forests. Better not to think too hard about anything, but to ride long and hard, to focus diligently on her new task, on memorizing routes, jotting down addresses and names and sorting books so that by the time she returned home it was all she could do to stay awake long enough to eat dinner, take a long soak in the tub and, finally, fall fast asleep.

It was a routine, she acknowledged, that seemed to suit them both.

‘She’s here,’ said Frederick Guisler, passing her on her way in. He tipped his hat, his eyes crinkling.

‘Who?’ She put down her lunch pail, and peered towards the window at the back.

‘Miss Isabelle.’ He picked up his jacket and headed for the door. ‘Lord knows, I doubt she’ll be riding the Kentucky Derby any time soon. There’s coffee brewing out back, Mrs Van Cleve. I brought you some cream, given that’s how you seem to prefer it.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Mr Guisler. I have to say I can’t drink it stewed black, like Margery. She can pretty much stand a spoon in hers.’

‘Call me Fred. And, well, Margery does things her own way, as you know.’ He nodded as he closed the door.

Alice tied a handkerchief around her neck to protect it from the sun and poured a mug of coffee, then walked around to the back where the horses were tethered in a small paddock. There she could see Margery bent double, holding Isabelle Brady’s knee as the younger girl clutched the saddle of a solid-looking bay horse. He stood immobile, his jaw working in a leisurely manner around a clump of grass, as if he had been there for some time.

‘You’ve got to spring a little, Miss Isabelle,’ Margery was saying, through gritted teeth. ‘If you can’t put your shoe in the stirrup then you’re going to have to bounce your way up. Just one, two, three, and hup!’

Nothing moved.

‘Bounce!’

‘I don’t bounce,’ said Isabelle, crossly. ‘I’m not made of India rubber.’

‘Just lean into me, then one, two, three, and spring your leg over. Come on. I’ve got you.’

Margery had a firm grip on Isabelle’s braced leg. But the girl seemed incapable of springing. Margery glanced up and noticed Alice. Her expression was deliberately blank.

‘It’s no good,’ the girl said, straightening. ‘I can’t do it. And it’s pointless to keep trying.’

‘Well, it’s a heck of a long walk up those mountains, so you’re gonna have to work out how to get on him somehow.’ Surreptitiously, Margery rubbed at the small of her back.

‘I told Mother this was a bad idea. But she wouldn’t listen.’ Isabelle saw Alice and that seemed to make her even crosser. She flushed, and the horse shifted. She yelped as it nearly stood on her foot, and stumbled in her effort to get out of the way. ‘Oh, you stupid animal!’

‘Well, that’s a little rude,’ Margery said. ‘Don’t listen, Patch.’

‘I can’t get up. I don’t have the strength. This whole thing is ridiculous. I don’t know why my mother won’t listen to me. Why can’t I just stay in the cabin?’

‘Because we need you out there delivering books.’

It was then that Alice noticed the tears in the corners of Isabelle Brady’s eyes, as if this were not just a tantrum but something that sprang from real anguish. The girl turned away, brushing at her face with a pale hand. Margery had seen them too – they exchanged a brief, awkward look. Margery rubbed at her elbows to get the dust from her shirt. Alice sipped her coffee. The sound of Patch’s chewing, regular and oblivious, was the only thing that broke the silence.

‘Isabelle? Can I ask you a question?’ said Alice, after a moment. ‘If you’re sitting, or only walking short distances, do you need to wear the brace?’

There was a sudden silence, as if the word had been verboten.

‘What do you mean?’

Oh, I’ve done it again, thought Alice. But she was too far in now. ‘That leg brace. I mean, if we took it off, and your boots, you could wear – um – normal riding boots. You could mount on the other side of Patch here, using the other leg. And maybe just drop the books by the gates instead of climbing on and off, like we do. Or maybe if the walk isn’t too far it wouldn’t matter?’

Isabelle frowned. ‘But I – I don’t take off the brace. I’m supposed to wear it all day.’

Margery frowned, thinking. ‘You ain’t gonna be standing, though, right?’

‘Well. No,’ Isabelle said.

‘You want me to see if we got some other boots?’ Margery asked.

‘You want me to wear another person’s boots?’ said Isabelle, dubiously.

‘Only till your ma buys you a fancy pair from Lexington.’

‘What size are you? I have a spare pair,’ said Alice.

‘But even if I get on, my … Well, one leg is … It’s shorter. I won’t be balanced,’ said Isabelle.

Margery grinned. ‘That’s why we got adjustable stirrup leathers. Most people round here ride half crooked anyway, drunk or no.’

Perhaps it was because Alice was British and had addressed Isabelle in the same clipped tones that she addressed the Van Cleves when she wanted something, or perhaps it was the novelty of being told she didn’t have to wear a brace, but an hour later Isabelle Brady sat astride Patch, her knuckles white as she gripped the reins, her body rigid with fear. ‘You’re not going to go fast, are you?’ she said, her voice tremulous. ‘I really don’t want to go fast.’

‘You coming, Alice? Reckon this is a good day for us to head round the town, schoolhouse and all. Long as we can keep Patch here from falling asleep we’ll have a fine day. You okay, girls? Off we go.’

Isabelle said almost nothing for the first hour of their ride. Alice, who rode behind her, heard the occasional squeal as Patch coughed, or moved his head. Margery would lean back in her saddle and call something encouraging. But it took a good four miles before Alice could see that Isabelle had allowed herself to breathe normally, and even then she looked furious and unhappy, her eyes glittering with tears, even though they barely broke out of a slumberous walk.

For all they had achieved in getting her onto a horse, Alice could not see how on earth this was going to work. The girl didn’t want to be there. She couldn’t walk without a brace. She clearly didn’t like horses. For all they knew she didn’t even like books. Alice wondered whether she would turn up the following day, and when she occasionally met Margery’s eye, she knew she was wondering the same. She missed the way they normally rode together, the easy silences, the way she felt as if she were learning something with Margery’s every casual utterance. She missed the exhilarating gallops up the flatter tracks, yelling encouragement at each other on wheeling horses as they worked out ways to traverse rivers, fences, and the satisfaction as they jumped a flint-strewn gap. Perhaps it would be easier if the girl weren’t so sullen: her mood seemed to cast a pall over the morning, and even the glorious sunshine and soft breeze couldn’t alleviate it. In all likelihood we’ll be back to normal tomorrow, Alice told herself, and was reassured by the thought.

It was almost nine thirty by the time they stopped at the school, a small weather-boarded one-room building not unlike the library. Outside there was a small grassy area worn half bare from constant use, and a bench underneath a tree. Some children sat outside cross-legged, bent over slates, while inside others were repeating times tables in a frayed chorus.

‘I’ll wait out here,’ Isabelle said.

‘No, you won’t,’ Margery said. ‘You come on into the yard. You don’t have to get off the horse if you don’t want to. Mrs Beidecker? You in there?’

A woman appeared at the open door, followed by a clamour of children.

As Isabelle, her face mutinous, followed them into the yard, Margery dismounted and introduced the two of them to the schoolteacher, a young woman with neatly coiled blonde hair and a German accent, who, Margery explained afterwards, was the daughter of one of the overseers at the mine. ‘They got people from all over the world up there,’ she said. ‘Every tongue you can imagine. Mrs Beidecker here speaks four languages.’

The teacher, who professed herself delighted to see them, brought the entire class of forty-odd children out to say hello to the women, pet the horses and ask questions. Margery pulled from her saddlebag a selection of children’s books that had arrived earlier that week, explaining the plot of each as she handed them out. The children jostled for them, their heads bent low as they sat to examine them in groups on the grass. One, apparently unafraid of the mule, stepped into Margery’s stirrup and peered into her empty bag in case she might have missed one.

‘Miss? Miss? Do you have more of the books?’ A gap-toothed girl, her hair in twin plaits, gazed up at Alice.

‘Not this week,’ she said. ‘But I promise we’ll bring more next week.’

‘Can you bring me a comic book? My sister read a comic book and it was awful good. It had pirates and a princess and everything.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ said Alice.

‘You talk like a princess,’ the girl said shyly.

‘Well, you look like a princess,’ said Alice, and the girl giggled and ran away.

Two boys, around eight years old, sauntered past Alice to Isabelle, who was waiting near the gate. They asked her name, which she gave them, unsmiling, in a one-word answer.

‘He your horse, Miss?’

‘No,’ said Isabelle.

‘You got a horse?’

‘No. I don’t much care for them.’ She scowled, but the boys didn’t appear to notice.

‘What’s his name?’

Isabelle hesitated. ‘Patch,’ she said eventually, casting a glance behind her as if bracing herself to be told she was wrong.

One boy told the other animatedly about his uncle’s horse that could apparently leap a fire truck without breaking a sweat, and the other said he had once ridden a real-life unicorn at the County Fair, and it had had a horn and everything. Then, having stroked Patch’s whiskery nose for a few minutes, they appeared to lose interest, and with a wave at Isabelle, they wandered off to where their classmates were looking at books.

‘Isn’t this lovely, children?’ Mrs Beidecker called. ‘These fine ladies will be bringing us new books every week! So we have to make sure we look after them, don’t bend the spines and, William Bryant, that we do not throw them at our sisters. Even if they do poke us in the eye. We will see you next week, ladies! Much obliged to you!’

The children waved cheerfully, their voices rising in a crescendo of goodbyes, and when Alice looked back some minutes later, there were still a few pale faces peering out, waving enthusiastically through the windows. Alice watched as Isabelle gazed after them and noted that the girl was half smiling; it was a slow, wistful thing, and hardly joyful, but it was a smile nonetheless.

They rode away in silence, into the mountains, following the narrow trails that bordered the creek and staying in single file, Margery deliberately keeping the pace steady in front. Occasionally she would call and point at landmarks, perhaps in the hope that Isabelle would be distracted or finally express some enthusiasm.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Isabelle, dismissively. ‘That’s Handmaiden’s Rock. I know.’

Margery twisted in her saddle. ‘You know Handmaiden’s Rock?’

‘Father used to make me walk with him in the mountains when I first recovered from the polio. Hours every day. He reckoned that if I used my legs enough I would level up.’

They stopped in a clearing. Margery dismounted, pulling a water bottle and some apples from her saddle pack, passing them out, then taking a swig from the bottle. ‘It didn’t work then,’ she said, nodding towards Isabelle’s leg. ‘The walking thing.’

Isabelle’s eyes widened. ‘Nothing is going to work,’ she said. ‘I’m a cripple.’

‘Nah. You ain’t.’ Margery rubbed an apple on her jacket. ‘If you were, you couldn’t walk and you couldn’t ride. You can clearly do both, even if you are a little one-ways.’ Margery offered the water to Alice, who drank thirstily, then passed it to Isabelle, who shook her head.

‘You must be thirsty,’ Alice protested.

Isabelle’s mouth tightened. Margery regarded her steadily. Finally, she reached out with a handkerchief, rubbed the neck of the water bottle, then handed it to Isabelle, with only the faintest eye-roll at Alice.

Isabelle raised it to her lips, closing her eyes as she drank. She handed back the bottle, pulled a small lace handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her forehead. ‘It is awfully warm today,’ she conceded.

‘Yup. And no place on earth better than the cool of the mountains.’ Margery strode down to the creek and refilled her bottle, screwing the lid back on tightly. ‘Give me and Patch two weeks, Miss Brady, and I promise you, legs or no, you won’t want to be anywhere else in Kentucky.’

Isabelle looked unconvinced. The women ate their apples in silence, fed the horses and Charley the cores, then mounted again. This time, Alice noted, Isabelle scrambled up by herself without complaint. She rode behind her for a while, watching.

‘You liked the children.’ Alice rode up next to her as they started on the track to the side of a long green field. Margery was some distance ahead, singing to herself, or perhaps to the mule – it was often hard to tell.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You looked happier. At the school.’ Alice smiled tentatively. ‘I thought you might have enjoyed that part of today.’

Isabelle’s face clouded. She gathered up her reins and half turned away.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Brady,’ said Alice, after a moment. ‘My husband tells me I speak without thinking. I’ve obviously done it again. I didn’t mean to be … intrusive or rude. Forgive me.’

She pulled her horse back so that she was once again behind Isabelle Brady. She cursed herself silently, wondering whether she would ever be able to find the right balance with these people. Isabelle plainly didn’t want to communicate at all. She thought of Peggy’s clique of young women, most of whom she only recognized in town because they scowled at her. She thought of Annie, who, half the time, looked at her as if she’d stolen something. Margery was the only one who didn’t make her feel like an alien. And she, to be fair, was a little odd herself.

They had gone another half-mile when Isabelle turned her head so that she was looking over her shoulder. ‘It’s Izzy,’ she said.

‘Izzy?’

‘My name. People I like call me Izzy.’

Alice barely had time to digest this when the girl spoke again. ‘And I smiled because … it was the first time.’

Alice leaned forward, trying to make out the words. The girl spoke so quietly.

‘First time for what? Riding in the mountains?’

‘No.’ Izzy straightened up a little. ‘The first time I’ve been in a school and nobody was laughing at me for my leg.’

‘You think she’ll come back?’

Margery and Alice sat on the top step of the stoop, batting away flies and watching heat rise off the shimmering road. The horses had been washed and set loose in the pasture and the two women were drinking coffee, stretching creaking limbs and trying to summon the energy to check and enter the days’ books in the ledger.

‘Hard to say. She don’t seem to like it much.’

Alice had to admit she was probably right. She watched as a panting dog walked along the road, then lowered itself wearily into the shade of a nearby log store.

‘Not like you.’

Alice looked up at her. ‘Me?’

‘You’re like a prisoner sprung from jail most mornings.’ Margery sipped her coffee and gazed out at the road. ‘I sometimes think you love these mountains as much as I do.’

Alice kicked at a pebble with her heel. ‘I think I might like them better than anywhere on earth. I just feel … more myself up here.’

Margery glanced at her and smiled conspiratorially. ‘This is what people don’t see, wrapped up in their cities, with the noise and the smoke, and their tiny boxes for houses. Up there you can breathe. You can’t hear the town talking and talking. No eyes on you, ’cept God’s. It’s just you and the trees and the birds and the river and the sky and freedom … Out there, it’s good for the soul.’

A prisoner sprung from jail. Sometimes Alice wondered if Margery knew more about her life with the Van Cleves than she let on. She was dragged from her thoughts by a blaring horn. Bennett was driving his father’s motor-car towards the library. He shuddered to an abrupt halt, so that the dog leaped up, its tail between its legs. He was waving at her, his smile wide and uncomplicated. She couldn’t help but smile back: he was as handsome as a movie star on a cigarette card.

‘Alice! … Miss O’Hare,’ he said, catching sight of her.

‘Mr Van Cleve,’ Margery answered.

‘Came to fetch you home. Thought we might take that picnic you were talking about.’

Alice blinked. ‘Really?’

‘Got a couple of problems with the coal tipple that won’t be fixed until tomorrow and Pa’s in the office trying to sort it out. So I flew home and got Annie to do us a picnic. Thought I’d race you back in the car and you can get changed and we’ll head straight out while it’s still light. Pa says we can have this old girl all evening.’

Alice stood up, delighted. Then her face fell. ‘Oh, Bennett, I can’t. We haven’t entered the books or sorted them and we’re so behind. We’ve only just finished the horses.’

‘You go,’ said Margery.

‘But that’s not fair on you. Not with Beth gone and Izzy disappearing as soon as we got back.’

Margery waved a hand.

‘But –’

‘Go on now. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Alice glanced at her to check that she meant it, then gathered up her things and whooped as she raced down the steps. ‘I probably smell like a cowboy again,’ she warned, as she climbed into the passenger side and kissed her husband’s cheek.

He grinned. ‘Why do you think I’ve got the top open?’ He reversed into a speedy three-point turn, causing the dust to fly up in the road, and Alice squealed as they roared towards home.

He was not a mule prone to exaggerated shows of temper or high emotion, but Margery rode Charley home at a slow walk. He had worked hard and she was in no hurry. She sighed, thinking of the day. A flighty Englishwoman who knew nothing of the area, whom the mountain people might not trust, and would probably be pulled away by that braying blowhard Mr Van Cleve, and a girl who could barely walk, couldn’t ride and didn’t want to be there. Beth worked when she could but her family would need her for the harvest during much of September. Hardly the most auspicious start to a travelling library. She wasn’t sure how long any of them would last.

They reached the broken-down barn where the trail split and she dropped her reins onto his narrow neck, knowing the mule would find his own way home. As she did, her dog, a young blue-eyed speckled hound, bolted towards her, his tail clamped between his legs and his tongue lolling in his delight to see her. ‘What in heck are you doing out here, Bluey boy? Huh? Why aren’t you in the yard?’

She reached the small paddock gate and dismounted, noting that the ache in her lower back and shoulders probably owed more to hoisting Izzy Brady on and off a horse than any real distance she had travelled. The dog bounded around her, only settling when she ruffled his neck between her hands and confirmed that yes, he was a good boy, yes, he was, at which point he raced back into the house. She released the mule, watching as Charley dropped to the ground, folding his knees under him, then rocking backwards and forwards in the dirt with a satisfied groan.

She didn’t blame him: her own feet were heavy as she made her way up the steps. She reached for the door, then stopped. The latch was off. She stared at it for a moment, thinking, then walked quietly to the empty barrel at the side of the barn where she kept her spare rifle under a piece of sacking. Alert now, she lifted the safety catch and raised it to her shoulder. Then she tiptoed back up the steps, took a breath, and quietly hooked the door open with the toe of her boot.

‘Who’s there?’

Directly across the room, Sven Gustavsson sat on her rocker, his feet up on the low table and a copy of Robinson Crusoe in his hands. He didn’t flinch, but waited a moment for her to lower the gun. He put the book carefully on the table, and rose to his feet slowly, placing his hands with almost exaggerated courtesy behind his back. She stared at him for a moment, then propped her gun against the table. ‘I wondered why the dog didn’t bark.’

‘Yeah, well. Me and him. You know how it is.’

Bluey, that squirming traitor, was nestling under Sven’s arm now, pushing at him with his long nose, begging to be petted.

Margery took off her hat and hung it on the hook, then pushed the sweaty hair from her forehead. ‘Wasn’t expecting to see you.’

‘You weren’t looking.’

Without meeting his eye, she moved past him to the table, where she pulled the lace cover from a jug of water and poured herself a cup.

‘You not going to offer me some?’

‘Never knew you to drink water before.’

‘And you won’t offer me anything stronger?’

She put the cup down. ‘What are you doing here, Sven?’

He looked at her steadily. He was wearing a clean checked shirt and he gave off a smell of coal-tar soap and something uniquely his, something that spoke of the sulphurous smell of the mine and smoke and maleness. ‘I missed you.’

She felt something give a little in her, and brought the cup to her lips to hide it. She swallowed. ‘Seems to me you’re doing just fine without me.’

‘You and I both know I can do just fine without you. But here’s the thing: I don’t want to.’

‘We’ve been through this.’

‘And I still don’t get it. I told you if we marry I won’t try to pin you down. I won’t control you. I’ll let you live exactly as you live now except you and I –’

‘You’ll let me, will you?’

‘Goddamn it, Marge, you know what I mean.’ His jaw tightened. ‘I’ll let you be. We can be exactly as we are now.’

‘Then what’s the point in us going through with a wedding?’

‘The point is that we’ll be married in the eyes of God, not sneaking around like a pair of goddamn kids. You think I like this? You think I want to hide from my own brother, from the rest of the town, the fact that I love the bones of you?’

‘I won’t marry you, Sven. I always told you I wouldn’t marry anybody. And every time you go on about it I swear my head feels like it’s going to explode just like the dynamite in one of your tunnels. I won’t talk to you if you’re just going to keep coming here and going over the same thing again and again.’

‘You won’t talk to me anyways. So what in hell am I supposed to do?’

‘Leave me alone. Like we decided.’

‘Like you decided.’

She turned away from him and walked to the bowl in the corner, where she had covered some beans she had picked early that morning. She began stringing them, one by one, snapping off the ends and throwing them into a pan, waiting for the blood to stop thumping in her ears.

She felt him before she saw him. He walked quietly across the room and stood directly behind her so that she could feel his breath on her bare neck. She knew without looking that her skin flushed where it touched her.

‘I’m not like your father, Margery,’ he murmured. ‘If you don’t know that about me by now then there’s no telling you.’

She kept her hands busy. Snap. Snap. Snap. Keep the beans. Discard the string. The floorboards creaked under her feet.

‘Tell me you don’t miss me.’

Ten gone. Strip off that leaf. Snap. And another. He was so close now that she could feel his chest against her as he spoke.

His voice lowered. ‘Tell me you don’t miss me and I’ll head out of here right now. I won’t bother you again. I promise.’

She closed her eyes. She let the knife fall, and put her hands on the work surface, palms down, her head dipping. He waited a moment, then placed his own over them gently, so that hers were entirely covered. She opened her eyes and regarded them: strong hands, knuckles covered with raised burn scars. Hands she had loved for the best part of a decade.

‘Tell me,’ he said quietly, into her ear.

She turned then, swiftly taking his face between her hands and kissing him, hard. Oh, but she had missed the feel of his lips on hers, his skin against hers. Heat rose between them, her breath quickened, and everything she had told herself, the logic, the arguments she had rehearsed in her head in the long dark hours, melted away as his arm slid around her, pulling her into him. She kissed him and she kissed him and she kissed him, his body familiar and newly unfamiliar to her, reason leaching away with the aches and pains and frustrations of the day. She heard a clatter as the bowl fell to the floor, then it was only his breath, his lips, his skin upon hers and Margery O’Hare, who would be owned by nobody, and told by nobody, let herself soften and give, her body lowering inch by inch until it was pinned against the wooden sideboard by the weight of his own.

‘What kind of bird is that? Look at the colour of it. It’s so beautiful.’

Bennett lay on his back on the rug as Alice pointed above them to the branches of the tree. Around them sat the remains of their picnic.

‘Darling? Do you know what bird that is? I’ve never seen anything as red as that. Look! Even its beak is red.’

‘I’m not much for reading up on birds and such, sweetheart.’ She saw that Bennett’s eyes were closed. He slapped at a bug on the side of his cheek, and held out his hand for another ginger beer.

Margery knew all the different birds, Alice thought, as she reached across to the hamper. She resolved to ask her the following morning. As they rode, Margery talked to Alice of milkweed and goldenrod, pointing out Jack-in-the-pulpit and the tiny fragile flowers of touch-me-nots, so that once where Alice had just seen a sea of green, she had pulled back a veil to reveal a whole new dimension.

Below them the creek trickled peacefully; the same creek, Margery had warned her, that would become a destructive torrent during the spring. It seemed so unlikely. For now the earth was dry, the grass a soft thatch under their heads, the crickets a steady hum across the meadow. Alice handed her husband the bottle and waited as he lifted himself on one elbow to take a swig from it, half hoping that he would just lean over her and scoop her up. When he lowered himself down she tucked herself into his arm and placed her hand on his shirt.

‘Well, I could just stay like this all day,’ he said peaceably.

She reached her arm across him. Her husband smelt better than any man she’d ever met. It was as if he carried the sweetness of the Kentucky grass with him. Other men sweated and grew sour and grubby. Bennett always returned from the mine settlement as if he had just walked out of a magazine advertisement. She gazed at his face, at the strong contours of his chin, the way his honey-coloured hair was clipped short just around his ears.

‘Do you think I’m pretty, Bennett?’

‘You know I think you’re pretty.’ His voice was sleepy.

‘Are you happy we got married?’

‘Of course I am.’

Alice trailed a finger around his shirt button. ‘Then why –’

‘Let’s not get all serious, Alice, huh? No need to go on about things, is there? Can’t we just have a nice time?’

Alice lifted her hand from his shirt. She twisted and lowered herself down onto the rug so that only their shoulders were touching. ‘Sure.’

They lay in the grass, side by side, looking up at the sky, in silence. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. ‘Alice?’

She glanced at him. She swallowed, her heart thumping against her ribcage. She placed her hand on his, trying to convey to him her tacit encouragement, to tell him without words that she would be a support, that it would be okay, whatever he said. She was his wife, after all.

She waited a moment. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s a cardinal,’ he said. ‘The red one. I’m pretty sure it’s a cardinal.’