The Giver of Stars

11

Fair Oaks was built about 1845 by Dr Guildford D. Runyon, a Shaker, who renounced his vow of celibacy and erected the house in anticipation of his marriage to Miss Kate Ferrel, who died before the house was completed. Dr Runyon remained a bachelor until his death in 1873.

WPA, Guide to Kentucky

There were fifteen dolls on the dresser. They sat shoulder to shoulder, like a mismatched family, their porcelain faces pale and rosy and their real hair (where had it come from? Alice shuddered) curled into immaculate glossy ringlets. They were the first thing Alice saw when she woke up in the morning on the little daybed, their blank faces watching her impassively, their cherry-coloured lips curled into faint, disdainful smiles, frothy white pantalettes peeking out from under full Victorian skirts. Mrs Van Cleve had loved her dolls. Like she had loved her little stuffed bears and her tiny china ornaments and her porcelain snuff boxes and her carefully embroidered psalms that hung around the house, each the result of hours of intricate needlecraft.

Every day Alice was reminded of a life that had been almost solely focused on the inside of these walls, on tiny, meaningless tasks, tasks Alice felt increasingly strongly that no adult woman should view as the sum total of her day’s activities: dolls, embroidery, the dusting and precise rearranging of totems that no man noticed anyway. Until she had gone, after which they had become a shrine to a woman they now insisted they idolized.

She hated those dolls. Like she hated the heavy silence in the air, the endless stasis of a house in which nothing could move forward and nothing could change. She might as well be one of those dolls, she thought, as she walked through to the bedroom. Smiling, immobile, decorative and silent.

She glanced down at the picture of Dolores Van Cleve that sat in a large gilt frame on Bennett’s bedside table. The woman held a small wooden cross between two plump hands and an expression of pained disapproval, which to Alice seemed to settle on the two of them whenever they were alone together. ‘Perhaps we could move your mother a little further away? Just … at night?’ she had ventured when she had first been shown their room. But Bennett had frowned, as disbelieving as if she had cheerfully suggested digging up his mother’s grave.

She snapped out of her thoughts, gasping quietly as she splashed the icy water on her face and hurried into her many layers. The librarians were riding a half-day today, to allow them all some time for Christmas shopping, and a small part of her had to fight her disappointment at the prospect of time away from her routes.

She would see Jim Horner’s girls this morning. That helped. The way they would wait at the window for the sight of Spirit making her way up the track, then bolt through the wooden door, bouncing on tiptoe until she climbed off the horse, their voices bubbling over each other as they clamoured to find out what she had with her, where she had been, whether she would stay for a little while longer than the last time. The way they would hang casually around her neck while she read to them, little fingers stroking her hair or planting kisses on her cheeks as if, despite the slow recovery of the little family, they were both desperate for feminine contact in some way they could barely understand. And Jim, his expression no longer hard and suspicious, would place a mug of coffee at her side, then use the time she was there to chop wood or sometimes, now, just sit and watch, as if he took pleasure in the sight of his girls’ happiness as they showed off what they had learned to read that week (and they were smart; their reading was way ahead of other children’s, thanks to lessons with Mrs Beidecker). No, the Horner girls were consolation indeed. It was just a shame that girls like them would have so little in the way of Christmas gifts.

Alice wrapped her scarf around her neck and pulled on her riding gloves, wondering briefly whether to put on an extra pair of socks for the ride up the mountain. All the librarians had chilblains now, their toes pink and swollen from the cold, their fingers frequently corpse-white from lack of blood. She looked out of the window at the chill grey sky. She no longer checked her reflection in the mirror.

She pulled the envelope from the side, where it had sat since the previous day, and tucked it into her bag. She would read it later, once she’d done her rounds. No point getting worked up when you had two silent hours on a horse facing you.

She looked at the dresser as she made to leave. The dolls were still staring at her.

‘What?’ she said.

But this time they seemed to be saying something quite different.

‘For us?’ Millie’s mouth had dropped so far open Alice could almost hear Sophia warning that bugs would fly straight in.

She handed the other doll to Mae, its petticoats rustling as it was pulled swiftly into the child’s lap. ‘One each. We had a little chat this morning and they told me in confidence that they’d be much happier here with you than where they’ve been living.’

The two girls gawped at the angelic porcelain faces, and then, in unison, their heads turned towards their father. Jim Horner’s own expression was unreadable.

‘They’re not new, Mr Horner,’ Alice said carefully. ‘But where they come from has no real use for them. It’s … a house of men. It didn’t seem right to have them sitting there.’

She could see his indecision, the I don’t know … forming on his lips. The air in the cabin seemed to still as the girls held their breath.

‘Please, Pa?’ Mae’s voice emerged as a whisper. They sat cross-legged, and Millie’s hand absently stroked the shiny chestnut curls, letting each one spring back into place, her gaze flickering from the painted face to her father’s. The dolls, having for months seemed sinister, rebuking, were suddenly benign, joyful things. Because they were in the place they were meant to be.

‘They’re awful fancy,’ he said finally.

‘Well, I believe all girls deserve something a little fancy in their lives, Mr Horner.’

He rubbed a rough hand over the top of his head and looked away. Mae’s face lengthened, fearful of what he was about to say. He motioned towards the door. ‘Would you mind stepping outside with me a moment, Mrs Van Cleve?’

She heard sighs of dismay from the girls as she followed him to the back of the cabin, her arms wrapped around her to keep out the cold, mentally running over the various arguments she would employ to try to change his mind.

All little girls need a doll.

They would likely be thrown away if the girls didn’t take them.

Oh, for goodness’ sake, why must your wretched pride get in the way of a –

‘What do you think?’

Alice stopped in her tracks. Jim Horner lifted a piece of hessian sacking to reveal the head of a large, somewhat threadbare stag, its antlers thrusting into the air three feet to each side of it, its ears stitched haphazardly to its head. It was mounted on a roughly carved oak base, which had been painted with pitch.

She stifled the strangled noise that emerged unbidden from her throat.

‘Shot him over at Rivett’s Creek two months ago. Stuffed and mounted him myself. Got Mae to help me send off for them glass eyes on the mail order. They’re pretty lifelike, don’t you think?’

Alice gaped at the deer’s glassy, overlarge eyes, the left of which had a definite squint. The stag looked faintly demented and sinister, a nightmare beast, conjured in fever dreams. ‘It’s … very … imposing.’

‘It’s my first go. Figured I might set up a trade in them. Do one every few weeks and sell them in town. Help keep us going through the winter months.’

‘That’s an idea. Maybe you could do some smaller creatures too. A rabbit, or a ground squirrel.’

He mulled this over, then nodded. ‘So. You’ll take it?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘For the dolls. A trade.’

Alice lifted her palms. ‘Oh, Mr Horner, you really don’t need to –’

‘Can’t take ’em for nothing.’ He folded his arms firmly across his chest, and waited.

‘What the heck is that?’ said Beth, as Alice dismounted wearily, pulling bits of foliage from the deer’s antlers. It had caught on every second tree the whole way down the mountain, causing her almost to fall off several times, and now looked even more bedraggled and wonky than it had on the ridge, strung with a variety of stray twigs and leaves. She walked up the steps and placed it carefully against the wall, reminding herself, as she had now done a hundred times, of the joy on the girls’ faces as they learned the dolls were truly theirs, the way they cradled and sang to them, their endless thanks and kisses. The softening of the planes on Jim Horner’s face as he looked on.

‘It’s our new mascot.’

‘Our what?’

‘Touch a hair on its head and I’ll stuff you worse than Mr Horner stuffed that deer.’

‘Shoot,’ said Beth to Izzy, as Alice strode back out to her horse. ‘Remember when Alice made out like she was a lady?’

Lunch service had nearly finished at the White Horse Hotel, Lexington, and the restaurant had started to thin out, leaving tables scattered with the detritus of napkins and empty glasses as, fortified, the guests wrapped themselves in scarves and hats. They were braced to venture back out onto sidewalks teeming with last-minute Christmas shoppers. Mr Van Cleve, who had eaten well on a sirloin steak and fried potatoes, leaned back in his chair and stroked his stomach with both hands, a gesture that conveyed a satisfaction he seemed to feel less and less in other areas of his life.

The girl was giving him indigestion. In any other town, such misdemeanours might eventually be forgotten, but in Baileyville a grudge could last a century and still nurture a head of steam. The people of Baileyville were descended from Celts, from Scots and Irish families, who could hold on to resentment until it was dried out like beef jerky, and bearing no resemblance to its original self. And Mr Van Cleve, although he was about as Celtic as the Cherokee sign on the outside of the gas station, had absorbed this trait thoroughly. More than that, he had his daddy’s habit of fixing on one person, then training on them his grievances and blaming them for all that ailed him. That person was Margery O’Hare. He rose with a curse for her on his lips, and he went to sleep with images of her taunting him.

Beside him Bennett tapped intermittently on the side of the table with his fingers. He could tell the boy wanted to be elsewhere; in truth, he didn’t seem to have the focus needed for business. The other day he had caught a gang of miners mimicking his obsession with cleanliness, pretending to rub at their blackened overalls as he passed. They straightened when they saw him watching, but the sight of his son being mocked pained him. At first he had been almost proud of Bennett’s determination to marry the English girl. He had seemed to know his own mind, finally! Dolores had cosseted the boy so, fussing over him as if he were a girl. He had stood a little taller when he informed Van Cleve that he and Alice were to be married and, well, it was a shame about Peggy but that was just too bad. It was good to see him hold a firm opinion for once. Now he watched the boy gradually emasculated by the English girl and her sharp tongue, her odd ways, and he regretted the day he had ever been convinced to take that damn European tour. No good ever came from mixing. Not with coloureds and, it turned out, not with Europeans neither.

‘You’ve left crumbs here, boy.’ He stabbed a fat finger on the table so that the waiter apologized and hurriedly combed them off onto a plate. ‘A bourbon, Governor Hatch? To round things off?’

‘Well, if you’re going to twist my arm, Geoff …’

‘Bennett?’

‘Not for me, Pa.’

‘Get me a couple of Boone County bourbons. Straight up. No ice.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Bennett. You want to head over to the tailor while the governor and I talk business? Ask him if he’s got any more of those dress shirts, will you? I’ll be there shortly.’

He waited for his son to disappear from his table before he leaned forward and spoke again. ‘Now, Governor, I was hoping to discuss a matter of a certain sensitivity with you.’

‘Not more problems at the mine, Mr Van Cleve? I hope you’re not dealing with the same mess they’re having down there in Harlan. You know they’ve got state troopers lined up to head in if they can’t sort themselves out. There’s machine-guns and all sorts heading back and forth across state lines.’

‘Oh, you know we work hard to keep a lid on that kind of thing at Hoffman. No good can come of the unions; we know that. We’ve been sure to take measures to protect our mine at the very whisper of trouble.’

‘Glad to hear it. Glad to hear it. So … uh … what seems to be the problem?’

Mr Van Cleve leaned forward over the table. ‘It’s this … library business.’

The governor frowned.

‘The women’s library. Mrs Roosevelt’s initiative. These women taking books to rural families and the like.’

‘Ah, yes. Part of the WPA, I believe.’

‘The very one. Now, while I’m usually a great supporter of such enterprises, and I absolutely agree with our president and the First Lady that we should be doing what we can to educate our populace, I have to say that the women – well, certain women – in our county are causing problems.’

‘Problems?’

‘This travelling library is fomenting unrest. It’s encouraging all sorts of irregular behaviour. For instance – Hoffman Mining was planning to explore new areas on the North Ridge. The kind of thing we’ve been doing entirely legitimately for decades. Now, I believe these librarians have been spreading rumours and falsehoods about it, because the next thing we’ve been hit with is a series of legal orders forbidding us our usual mining rights in the area. Not just one family but a great number of them have signed up to block our path.’

‘That’s unfortunate.’ The governor lit a cigarette, offering Mr Van Cleve the packet, which he refused.

‘Indeed. If they do this with other families, we’ll end up with nowhere to mine. And then what are we supposed to do? We are a major employer in this part of Kentucky. We provide a vital resource to our great nation.’

‘Well, Geoff, you know it doesn’t take a lot to get folk up in arms about mining, these days. Do you have proof it was these librarians stirring things up?’

‘Well, here’s the thing. Half the families now blocking us through the courts couldn’t read a word last year. Where would they have got information on legal matters if it wasn’t for these library books?’

The bourbons arrived. The waiter lifted them from a silver tray and placed each one reverently in front of the two men.

‘I don’t know. From what I understand it’s just a bunch of girls on horses taking recipe cards here and there. What harm are they really going to do? I think you may just have to chalk this one up to misfortune, Geoff. The amount of trouble we have around the mines just now, why, it could have been anyone.’

Mr Van Cleve felt the governor’s attention starting to slide. ‘It’s not just the mines. They are changing the very dynamics of our society. They are fixing to alter the laws of nature.’

‘The laws of nature?’

When the governor looked disbelieving, he added: ‘There are reports of our women engaging in unnatural practices.’

Now he had his attention. The governor leaned forward.

‘My son, God bless him, my wife and I raised him according to godly principles, so I admit he is not entirely worldly in conjugal matters. But he tells me that his young bride – who has taken up work at this library – mentioned to him a book the women are passing among them. A book of sexual content.’

‘Sexual content!’

‘Quite!’

The governor took a gulp of his drink. ‘And – uh – what would this “sexual content” comprise exactly?’

‘Well, I don’t want to shock you, Governor. I won’t go into details –’

‘Oh, I can take it, Geoff. Go into all the – uh – details you like.’

Mr Van Cleve glanced behind him and lowered his voice. ‘He said his bride – who was, by all accounts, brought up like a princess – from a very good family, you understand – well, she was suggesting she do things to him in the bedroom that one might expect at a French whorehouse.’

‘A French whorehouse.’ The governor swallowed hard.

‘At first I thought this was maybe an English thing. Due to their proximity to the European ways, you know. But Bennett told me she said it was definitely from the library. Spreading filth. Suggestions that would make a grown man blush. I mean, where will it end?’

‘That’s the, uh, pretty blonde? The one I met last year at dinner.’

‘The very one. Alice. Finer than frog hair. The shock of hearing salaciousness proposed by a girl like that … Well …’

The governor took another very long sip of his drink. His eyes had gone a little glassy. ‘Did he give, uh, details of the exact activities she was proposing? Just so, you know, I can be clear on the full picture.’

Mr Van Cleve shook his head. ‘Poor Bennett was so shook up it took him weeks even to confide in me. Hasn’t felt able to lay a finger on her since. I mean it ain’t right, Governor. Not for decent God-fearing wives to be suggesting such deviance.’

The governor appeared to be deep in thought.

‘Governor?’

‘Filth … Right. Sorry, yes … I mean, no.’

‘Anyway. I would appreciate knowing whether other counties are having the same issues with their women and these so-called libraries. I can’t believe this is a good thing, for our workforce or Christian families. My inclination would be to shut the scheme down altogether. Likewise with this mining-permissions business.’

Mr Van Cleve folded his napkin and laid it on the table. The governor was still apparently considering this very carefully.

‘Or perhaps you think the best way forward would be just … to deal with the matter in whichever way we thought fit.’

He wasn’t sure, he told Bennett afterwards, whether the governor’s drink had actually gone to his head. He seemed markedly distracted towards the end of lunch.

‘So what did he say?’ said Bennett, who had cheered up with the purchase of some new corduroys and a striped sweater.

‘I told him maybe I should deal with all these matters how I liked and he just said, “hmm, yes, quite,” and then said he had to leave.’

Dear Alice

I am sorry married life is not as you expected. I’m not sure what you think marriage should be about, and you have not given us details of what it is you find so dispiriting, but Daddy and I wonder if we haven’t given you false expectations. You have a handsome husband, financially secure and able to offer you a good future. You have married into a decent family with significant resources. I think you need to learn to count your chickens.

Life is not always about happiness. It is about duty, and taking satisfaction from doing the right thing. We were hoping you had learned to be less impulsive; well, you’ve made your bed, and you’re just going to have to learn to stick things out. Perhaps if you have a baby it will give you a focus, so you don’t dwell on things so.

If you do choose to return without your husband, I have to inform you that you will not be welcome to stay here.

Your loving mother

Alice had held off opening the letter, perhaps because she had known the words she was going to find within it. She felt her jaw tighten, then folded it carefully and placed it back in her bag, noting once more as she did so that her fingernails, once highly polished and filed, were now ragged or cut down to the quick, and some small part of her wondered, as she did daily, whether that was the reason he didn’t want to touch her?

‘Okay,’ said Margery, appearing at her shoulder. ‘I ordered two new girths and a saddle cloth from Crompton’s and I thought maybe this for Fred as a thank-you. Think he’ll like it?’ She held up a dark green scarf. The department-store assistant, transfixed by Margery’s beaten-up leather hat and breeches (she couldn’t see the point in dressing up to come to Lexington, she had told Alice, as she’d only have to get changed again when she got back), had needed a second to remember to take it from her, ready to wrap in tissue. ‘We’ll have to hide it from Fred on the ride back.’

‘Sure.’

Margery squinted at her. ‘Did you even look at it? … What’s going on, Alice?’

‘Look at what? … Oh, Lord – Bennett. I have to find something for Bennett.’ Alice’s hands flew to her face as she realized she no longer knew what her husband liked, let alone his collar size. She reached for a set of boxed handkerchiefs on the shelf, decorated with a sprig of holly. Were handkerchiefs too impersonal a gift for one’s husband? How intimate could a gift be when you hadn’t seen more than an inch of his bare skin for the best part of six weeks?

She startled as Margery took her arm, steering her towards a quiet part of the men’s department. ‘Alice, are you okay? ’Cause you got a face on you most days like blinked milk.’

‘There are no complaints, are there?’ Alice glanced down at the handkerchiefs. Would it be better if she had his initials embroidered on them? She tried to imagine Bennett opening them on Christmas morning. Somehow she couldn’t picture him smiling. She couldn’t imagine him smiling at anything she did any more. ‘Anyway,’ she said, her tone defensive, ‘you’re a fine one to talk. You’ve barely said a word the last couple of days.’

Margery seemed a little taken aback, and gave a shake of her head. ‘Just … just had a little upset on one of my rounds.’ She swallowed. ‘Rattled me a bit.’

Alice thought of Kathleen Bligh, the way that the young widow’s grief would cast a pall over her own day. ‘I understand. It’s a tougher job than you think, sometimes, isn’t it? Not really about delivering books at all. I’m sorry if I’ve been miserable. I’ll pull myself together.’

The truth was that the prospect of Christmas made Alice want to weep. The idea of sitting at that tense table, Mr Van Cleve glowering across from her, Bennett silent and simmering at whatever she had supposedly done wrong now. The watchful Annie, who seemed to delight in the worsening atmosphere.

Derailed by this thought, it took Alice a minute to realize that Margery was regarding her closely.

‘I’m not getting at you, Alice. I’m …’ Margery shrugged, as if the words were unfamiliar to her. ‘I’m asking as a friend.’

A friend.

‘You know me. Been content my whole life to be on my own. But this last few months? I’ve … well, I’ve grown to enjoy your company. I like your sense of humour. You treat people with kindness and respect. So I’d like to think we’re friends. All of us at the library, but you and I most of all. And you looking this sad every day is just about breaking my heart.’

If they had been anywhere else Alice might have smiled. It was quite an admission from Margery, after all. But something had closed over these last months, and she didn’t seem to feel things in the way she used to.

‘You want to get a drink?’ Margery said finally.

‘You don’t drink.’

‘Well, I won’t tell no one if you don’t.’ She held out an arm, and after a moment, Alice took it, and they headed out of the department store towards the nearest bar.

‘Bennett and I …’ Alice said, over the noise of the music and the two men yelling at each other in the corner ‘… we have nothing in common. We don’t understand each other. We don’t talk to each other. We don’t seem to make each other laugh, or long for each other, or count the hours when we’re apart –’

‘Sounds like marriage from where I’m sitting,’ Margery observed.

‘And, of course, there is … the other thing.’ Alice looked awkward even saying the words.

‘Still? Well, now, that is a problem.’ Margery recalled the comfort of Sven’s body wrapped around hers just that morning. She felt stupid now for how afraid she’d been, asking him to stay, trembling like one of Fred’s spooked Thoroughbreds. McCullough hadn’t shown up. Sounded like he had been so drunk he couldn’t hit the ground with his hat, Sven pointed out. He most likely wouldn’t even remember what he’d done.

‘I read that book. The one you recommended.’

‘You did?’

‘But it … it only seemed to make things worse.’ Alice threw her hands up. ‘Oh, what is there to say? I hate being married. I hate living in that house – I’m not sure which of us is more miserable. But he’s all I have. I’m not going to have a baby, which might have made everyone happier, because … Well, you know why. And I’m not even sure I want one because then I wouldn’t be able to ride out any more. Which is the only thing that brings me any happiness at all. So, I’m trapped.’

Margery frowned. ‘You’re not trapped.’

‘Easy for you to say. You have a house. You know how to get by on your own.’

‘You don’t have to play by their rules, Alice. You don’t have to play by anyone’s rules. Hell, if you wanted to you could pack up today and head home to England.’

‘I can’t.’ Alice reached into her bag and pulled out the letter.

‘Well, hello there, pretty ladies.’

A man in a wide-shouldered suit, his moustache slick with wax, his eyes wrinkling with practised bonhomie, planted himself against the bar plumb between the two of them. ‘You looked so deep in conversation I almost didn’t want to disturb you. But then I thought, Henry boy, those pretty ladies look like they could do with a drink. And I could not forgive myself if I let you sit there thirsty. So what’ll it be, huh?’

He slid an arm around Alice’s shoulders, his eyes flickering over her chest.

‘Let me guess your name, beautiful. It’s one of my skills. One of my many special skills. Mary Beth. You look pretty enough to be a Mary Beth. Am I right?’

Alice stuttered a no. Margery stared at the two short inches between his fingers and Alice’s breast, the proprietorial nature of his grip.

‘No. That don’t do you justice. Laura. No, Loretta. I once knew a very beautiful girl called Loretta. That must be it.’ He leaned in to Alice who turned her head, her smile uncertain as if she didn’t want to offend him. ‘You gonna tell me I’m right? I’m right, ain’t I?’

‘Actually, I –’

‘Henry, is it?’ said Margery.

‘Yes, it is. And you would be a … Let me guess!’

‘Henry, can I tell you something?’ Margery smiled sweetly.

‘You can tell me anything, darling.’ He raised an eyebrow, his smile knowing. ‘Anything you like.’

Margery leaned forward so that she was whispering in his ear. ‘The hand that’s in my pocket? It’s resting on my gun. And if you don’t take your hands off my friend here by the time I’m done talking, I’m going to close my fingers around the trigger and blow your oily head halfway across this bar.’ She smiled sweetly, and then moved her lips closer to his ear. ‘And, Henry? I’m a real good shot …’

The man stumbled over the feet of the stool she was sitting on. He didn’t say a word but walked briskly back to the other end of the bar, shooting glances behind him as he went.

‘Oh, and it’s real kind of you, but we’re just fine for drinks!’ Margery called, more loudly. ‘Thank you, though!’

‘Whoa,’ said Alice, adjusting her blouse as she watched him go. ‘What did you say to him?’

‘Just that … kind as his offer was, I didn’t think it was gentlemanly to lay his hands on a lady without an invitation.’

‘That’s a very good way of putting it,’ said Alice. ‘I can never think of the right words to say when I need them.’

‘Yeah. Well …’ Margery took a slug of her drink ‘… I’ve had some practice lately.’

They sat for a moment and let the bar chatter rise and fall around them. Margery asked the bartender for another bourbon, then changed her mind and cancelled it. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘With what you were saying.’

‘Oh. Just that I can’t go home. That’s what the letter said. My parents don’t want me back.’

‘What? But why? You’re their only daughter.’

‘I don’t fit. I’ve always been something of an embarrassment to them. It’s like … I don’t know. How things look is more important to them than anything else. It’s like … it’s like we speak different languages. I honestly thought Bennett was the one person who just liked me as I was.’ She sighed. ‘And now I’m trapped.’

They sat in silence for a moment. Henry was leaving, casting furious, anxious glances at them as he hauled at the door.

‘I’m going to tell you one thing, Alice,’ said Margery, as the door closed behind him. She took Alice’s arm and gripped it, uncharacteristically tightly. ‘There is always a way out of a situation. Might be ugly. Might leave you feeling like the earth has gone and shifted under your feet. But you are never trapped, Alice. You hear me? There is always a way around.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘What?’ Bennett was examining the creases in his new trousers. Mr Van Cleve, who had been standing with his arms outstretched, being pinned for a new waistcoat, gestured abruptly towards the door, so that a pin caught him in his armpit and made him curse. ‘Goddamn it! Out there, Bennett!’

Bennett looked up and through the tailor’s shop window. To his astonishment, there was Alice, arm in arm with Margery O’Hare, walking out of Todd’s Bar, a spit and sawdust establishment that advertised ‘BUCKEYE BEER ON SALE HERE’ on a rusty sign outside the door. They had their heads tilted together and were laughing fit to bust.

‘O’Hare,’ said Van Cleve, shaking his head.

‘She said she wanted to do some shopping, Pop,’ Bennett said wearily.

‘Does that look like Christmas shopping to you? She’s being corrupted by the O’Hare girl! Didn’t I tell you she was made of the same stuff as her no-good daddy? Goodness knows what she’s encouraging Alice to get up to. Take the pins out, Arthur. We’ll fetch her home.’

‘No,’ said Bennett.

Van Cleve’s head swivelled. ‘What? Your wife’s been drinking in a goddamn honky-tonk! You have to start taking control of the situation, son!’

‘Just leave her.’

‘Has that girl ripped the damn balls off you?’ Van Cleve bellowed into the silent shop.

Bennett flashed a look at the tailor, whose expression betrayed the kind of nothing that would be discussed feverishly among his colleagues afterwards. ‘I’ll talk to her. Let’s just … go home.’

‘That girl is causing chaos. You think it does this family’s standing any good for her to be dragging your wife into a low-life bar? She needs sorting out, and if you won’t do it, Bennett, I will.’

Alice lay on the daybed in the dressing room, staring up at the ceiling, as Annie prepared the evening meal downstairs. She had long since given up offering to help, as whatever she had done – peeling, chopping, frying – had been met with barely concealed disapproval, and she was weary of Annie’s sly comments.

Alice no longer cared that Annie knew she was sleeping in the dressing room and had no doubt told half of Baileyville, too. She no longer cared that it was obvious she still had her monthlies. What was the point in trying to pretend? Outside the library there were few people she cared about impressing anyway. She heard the sound of the men returning, the exuberant roar of Mr Van Cleve’s Ford as it ground to a halt in the gravel drive, the slamming of the screen door that he plainly felt unable to close quietly, and she let out a quiet sigh. She closed her eyes for a moment. Then she raised herself, and walked into the bathroom ready to make herself look nice for the evening meal.

They were already seated when Alice came downstairs, the two men opposite each other at the dining table, their plates and cutlery laid neatly in front of them. Small bursts of steam escaped through the swinging door, and inside the kitchen Annie’s clattering pan lids suggested the imminence of food. Both men looked up as Alice entered the room, and the thought occurred to her that it might be because she had made a little extra effort: she was wearing the same dress she had worn when Bennett had proposed to her, her hair neatly brushed and pinned back. But their expressions were unfriendly.

‘Is it true?’

‘Is what true?’ Her mind raced with all the things she might have got wrong today. Drinking in bars. Talking to strange men. Discussing the Married Love book with Margery O’Hare. Writing to her mother to ask if she might come home.

‘Where is Miss Christina?’

She blinked. ‘Miss who?’

‘Miss Christina!’

She looked at Bennett and back again at his father. ‘I – I have no idea what you are talking about.’

Mr Van Cleve shook his head, as if she were mentally deficient. ‘Miss Christina. And Miss Evangeline. My wife’s dolls. Annie says they’re missing.’

Alice relaxed. She pulled out a seat, as nobody else was going to, and sat down at the table. ‘Oh. Those. I … took them.’

‘What do you mean you “took” them? Where’d you take them?’

‘There are two sweet little girls on my rounds who lost their mother not long back. They didn’t have any gifts coming at Christmas and I knew that passing them on would make them happier than you can imagine.’

‘Passing them on?’ Van Cleve’s eyes bulged. ‘You gave away my dolls? To … hillbillies?’

Alice laid the napkin neatly on her lap. She glanced at Bennett, who was staring at his plate. ‘Only two. I didn’t think anyone would mind. They were just sitting there doing nothing and there are plenty of dolls left. I didn’t think you’d even notice, to be honest.’ She tried to raise a smile. ‘You are grown men after all.’

‘They were Dolores’s dolls! My darling Dolores! She’d had Miss Christina since she was a child!’

‘Then I’m sorry. I really didn’t think it would matter.’

‘What has gotten into you, Alice?’

Alice let her gaze fix on a point of the tablecloth just past her spoon. Her voice, when it emerged, was tight. ‘I was being charitable. Like you always tell me Mrs Van Cleve was. What were you going to do with two dolls, Mr Van Cleve? You’re a man. You don’t care about dolls any more than you care about half the trinkets in this place. They’re dead things! Meaningless!’

‘They were heirlooms! They were for Bennett’s children!’

Her mouth opened before she could stop it. ‘Well, Bennett isn’t having any children, is he?’

She looked up and saw Annie in the doorway, her eyes wide with delight at this turn of events.

‘What did you just say?’

‘Bennett isn’t going to have any wretched children. Because … we are not involved in that way.’

‘If you’re not involved in that way, girl, it’s because of your disgusting notions.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Annie began to put the plates down. Her ears had gone quite pink.

Van Cleve leaned forward over the table, his jaw jutting. ‘Bennett told me.’

‘Pa –’ Bennett’s voice held a warning.

‘Oh, yes. He’s told me about your filthy book and the depraved things you tried to do to him.’

Annie’s plate dropped in front of Alice with a clatter. She skittered back to the kitchen.

Alice blanched. She turned to look at Bennett. ‘You talked to your father about what goes on in our bed?’

Bennett rubbed at his cheek. ‘You … I didn’t know what to do, Alice. You … kinda shocked me.’

Mr Van Cleve threw his chair back from the table and stomped round to where Alice was sitting. She flinched involuntarily as he towered over her, spraying saliva as he spoke. ‘Oh, yes, I know all about that book and your so-called library. You know that book has been banned in this country? That’s how degraded it is!’

‘Yes, and I know that a federal judge overturned that same ban. I know just as much as you do, Mr Van Cleve. I read the facts.’

‘You are a snake! You have been corrupted by Margery O’Hare and now you are trying to corrupt my son!’

‘I was trying to be a wife to him! And there’s more to being a wife than arranging dolls and stupid china birds!’

Annie peered around the doorway with the last plate, immobile.

‘Don’t you dare criticize my Dolores’s precious things, you ungrateful wretch! You aren’t fit to touch the heel of that woman’s shoes! And tomorrow morning you’re going to go up those mountains and fetch my dolls back.’

‘I will not. I’m not taking those dolls away from two motherless children.’

Van Cleve raised a stubby finger and jabbed it at her face. ‘Then you’re banned from that damned library from now on, you hear me?’

‘No.’ She didn’t blink.

‘What do you mean, no?’

‘I told you before. I’m a grown woman. You don’t get to ban me from anything.’

Afterwards she remembered thinking distantly that old man Van Cleve’s face had grown so crimson that she feared his heart might give out. But instead he lifted his arm, and before she realized what was happening a white-hot pain exploded at the side of her head, and she collapsed against the table, her knees buckling under her.

Everything went black. Her hands gripped the tablecloth, the plates collapsing towards her as her fingers closed around the white damask, pulling it down until her knees hit the floor.

‘Pa!’

‘I’m doing what you should have done a long time ago! Knocking some sense into this wife of yours!’ Van Cleve roared, his fat fist banging down on the tablecloth so that everything in the room seemed to shudder. Then, before she could gather her thoughts, her hair was pulled back sharply, and another blow, this time her temple, so that her head bounced off the edge of the table, and as the room spun, she was dimly aware of movement, shouting, the clatter of plates hitting the floor. Alice lifted an arm, tried to shield herself, braced for the next. But from the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Bennett in front of his father, an exchange of voices she could barely make out over the ringing in her ears.

She climbed heavily to her feet, pain clouding her thoughts, and staggered. As the room bucked around her she was dimly aware of Annie’s shocked face at the kitchen door. The taste of iron flooded the back of her throat.

She heard distant shouting, Bennett’s ‘No … No, Pa!’ Alice realized that her napkin was still balled in her fist. She looked down. It was spattered with blood. She stared at it, blinking, trying to register what she was seeing. She straightened up, took a moment for the room to stop spinning, then placed it neatly on the table.

And then, without stopping to pick up her coat, Alice walked unsteadily past the two men into the hallway, opened the front door, and continued walking all the way up the snow-covered drive.

An hour and twenty-five minutes later, Margery opened the door a crack, her eyes narrowed in the dark, and found not McCullough or one of his clan, but the thin figure of Alice Van Cleve, shivering in a pale blue dress, her stockings ripped and her shoes crusted with snow. Her teeth chattered and the side of her head was bloodied, her left eye pursed into a livid purple bruise. Blood leached rust and scarlet into the neckline of her dress, and what looked like gravy spattered her lap. They stared at each other as Bluey barked furiously at the window.

Alice’s voice, when it came, was thick, as though her tongue was swollen. ‘You … said we were friends?’

Margery un-cocked her rifle and placed it against the doorframe. She opened the door and took her friend’s elbow. ‘Come on in. You come on in.’ She glanced around at the darkened mountainside, then closed and bolted the door behind her.