The Giver of Stars

12

The woman of the mountains leads a difficult life, while the man is lord of the household. Whether he works, visits, or roams through the woods with dog and gun is nobody’s business but his own … He is entirely unable to understand any interference in his affairs by society; if he turns his corn into ‘likker’, he is dealing with what is his.

WPA, Guide to Kentucky

There were certain unspoken rules of society in Baileyville, and one lasting tenet was that you didn’t interfere in the private business of a man and his wife. There were many who might have been aware of beatings in their holler, man to woman, and, occasionally, the other way around, but few inhabitants would have dreamed of intervening, unless it directly infringed upon their own lives in lost sleep or disturbed routines. It was just the way things were. Words were shouted, blows were delivered, and occasionally apologies were given, or not, bruises and cuts healed and things returned to normal.

Luckily for Alice, Margery had never paid much heed to how other people did things. She cleaned the blood from Alice’s face and applied a comfrey paste to the bruises. She asked nothing, and Alice volunteered nothing, except to wince and tighten her jaw at the worst of it. Then, when the girl finally went to bed, Margery spoke discreetly to Sven and they agreed to take it in turns to sit downstairs in the small hours before dawn so that should Van Cleve come by he would find that there were circumstances in which a man might not simply drag his wife – or his daughter-in-law – home again, no matter what public embarrassment that might apparently entail for him.

Predictably, for a man used to getting his own way, Van Cleve did come by shortly before dawn, though Alice would never know that, sleeping the sleep of the profoundly shocked in Margery’s spare room. Margery’s cabin was not accessible by road, and he was obliged to walk the last half-mile so that he arrived florid and sweaty despite the snow, a torch held up in front of him.

‘O’Hare?’ he roared. And then when no answer came: ‘O’HARE!’

‘You going to answer him?’ Sven, who was making coffee, lifted his head.

The dog barked furiously at the window, earning a muttered curse from outside. In the stables Charley kicked at his bucket.

‘Don’t really see why I should answer a man who won’t give me the courtesy of a title, do you?’

‘No, I don’t believe you should,’ said Sven, calmly. He had sat playing solitaire for half the night, one eye on the door, a river of dark thoughts running through his head about men who beat women.

‘Margery O’Hare!’

‘Oh, Lord. You know he’ll wake her if he carries on this loud.’

Wordlessly, Sven handed Margery his gun and she walked to the screen door and opened it, the rifle held loosely in her left hand as she stepped out onto the stoop, making sure Van Cleve could see it. ‘Can I help you, Mr Van Cleve?’

‘Fetch Alice. I know she’s in there.’

‘And how would you know that?’

‘This has gone far enough. You bring her out and we’ll say no more about it.’

Margery stared at her boot, considering this. ‘I don’t think so, Mr Van Cleve. Good morning.’

She turned to walk back in and his voice lifted. ‘What? Wait, you don’t shut a door on me!’

Margery turned slowly until she was facing him. ‘And you don’t beat up on a girl who answers you back. Not a second time.’

‘Alice did a foolish thing yesterday. I admit tempers were running high. She needs to come on home now so we can sort things out. In the family.’ He ran a hand over his face and his voice softened. ‘Be reasonable, Miss O’Hare. Alice is married. She can’t stay here with you.’

‘The way I see it, she can do what she likes, Mr Van Cleve. She’s a grown woman. Not a dog, or a … a doll.’

His eyes hardened.

‘I’ll ask her what she wants to do when she wakes. Now I have work to get to. So I’d be obliged if you’d leave me to wash up my breakfast dishes. Thank you.’

He stared at her for a moment, his voice lowering. ‘You think you’re mighty clever, don’t you, girl? You think I don’t know what you did with them letters over at North Ridge? You think I don’t know about your filthy books and your immoral girls trying to steer good women into the path of sin?’

For a few seconds the air seemed to disappear around them. Even the dog fell quiet.

His voice, when he spoke again, was thick with menace. ‘You watch your back, Margery O’Hare.’

‘You have a nice day now, Mr Van Cleve.’

Margery turned and walked back inside the cabin. Her voice was calm and her gait steady, but she stopped by the curtain and watched from the side of the window until she was sure Van Cleve had disappeared.

‘Where the heck is Little Women? I swear I’ve been searching for that book for ages. Last time I saw it checked out was for old Peg down at the store, but she says she returned it and it’s been signed off in the book.’

Izzy was scanning the shelves, her finger tracing the spines of the books as she shook her head in frustration. ‘Albert, Alder, Allemagne … Did somebody steal it?’

‘Maybe it got ripped and Sophia’s fixing it.’

‘I asked. She says she ain’t seen it. It’s bugging me because I got two families asking and nobody seems to know where it’s gone. And you know how ornery Sophia gets when books go missing.’ She adjusted her stick under her arm and moved to her right, peering closely at the titles.

The voices quieted as Margery walked through the back door, closely followed by Alice.

‘You got Little Women tucked away in your bag somewhere, Margery? Izzy’s bitching fit to bust and – whoo-hoo. Looks like someone took a beating.’

‘Fell off her horse,’ said Margery, in a tone of voice that brooked no discussion. Beth stared at Alice’s swollen face, then her gaze slid to Izzy, who looked down at her feet.

There was a brief silence.

‘Hope you – uh – didn’t hurt yourself too bad, Alice,’ said Izzy, quietly.

‘Is she wearing your breeches?’ said Beth.

‘You think I’ve got the only pair of leather breeches in the state of Kentucky, Beth Pinker? I’ve never known you so fixated on someone’s appearance before. Anyone would think you’d got nothing better to do.’ Margery walked up to the ledger on the desk and began to flick through it.

Beth took the rebuke cheerfully. ‘Reckon they look better on her than you anyway. Lord, it’s colder than a well-digger’s backside out there. Anyone seen my gloves?’

Margery scanned the pages. ‘Now, Alice is a little sore so, Beth, you take the two routes over at Blue Stone Creek. Miss Eleanor is staying with her sister so she won’t need new books this time round. And, Izzy, if you could take the MacArthurs? Would that work? You can cut across that forty-acre field to tie in with your usual routes. The one with the falling-down barn.’

They agreed without complaint, sneaking glances at Alice, who said nothing, her attention fixed on some unidentified point three feet from her toes, her cheeks burning. As Izzy left she put out her hand and squeezed Alice’s shoulder gently. Alice waited until they had packed their bags and mounted their horses, and then she sat, gingerly, on Sophia’s chair.

‘You all right?’

Alice nodded. They sat and listened to the sound of hoofs fading up the road.

‘You know the worst thing about a man hitting you?’ Margery said finally. ‘Ain’t the hurt. It’s that in that instant you realize the truth of what it is to be a woman. That it don’t matter how smart you are, how much better at arguing, how much better than them, period. It’s when you realize they can always just shut you up with a fist. Just like that.’

Alice remembered how Margery’s demeanour had changed when the man in the bar had placed himself between them, how her gaze had landed hard where the man touched Alice’s shoulder.

Margery pulled the coffee pot from its stand and cursed as she discovered it was empty. She mulled over it for a moment, then straightened up, and flashed Alice a tight smile. ‘Course, you know that only happens till you learn to hit back harder.’

Despite the daylight hours being now so short, the day ran lengthy and strange, the little library filled with a vague sense of suspense, as if Alice were not quite sure whether she should be waiting for someone or for something to happen. The blows hadn’t hurt too much the night before. Now she grasped that was her body’s reaction to shock. As the hours crept by, various parts of her had begun to swell and stiffen, a dull throb pushing at the parts of her head where it had made contact with Van Cleve’s meaty fist or the unforgiving table-top.

Margery left, after Alice assured her that, yes, she was fine, and, no, she didn’t want any more people missing out on their books, promising to bolt the door all the time she was gone. In truth, she needed time alone, time where she didn’t have to worry about everybody else’s reactions to her, as well as everything else.

And so, for a couple of hours, it was just Alice in the library, alone with her thoughts. Her head ached too much to read, and she didn’t know what to look at anyway. Her thoughts were muddied, tangled. She found it hard to focus, while the questions of her future – where she would live, what to do, whether even to try to return to England – seemed so huge and intractable that eventually it seemed easier simply to concentrate on the small tasks. Tidy some books. Make some coffee. Step outside to use the outhouse, then return swiftly to bolt the door again.

At lunchtime there was a knock on the door and she froze. But it was Fred’s voice that called, ‘It’s only me, Alice,’ and she raised herself from the chair and slid back the bolt, stepping behind it as he came in.

‘Brought you some soup,’ he said, placing a bowl with a cloth draped over its rim on the desk. ‘Thought you might be getting hungry.’

It was then that he saw her face. She registered the shock, suppressed as quickly as it flared, to be supplanted by something darker, and angrier. He walked to the end of the room and stood there for a minute, his back to her, and it was as if he were suddenly made of something harder, as if his frame had turned to iron.

‘Bennett Van Cleve is a fool,’ he said, and his jaw barely moved, as if he were having trouble containing himself.

‘It wasn’t Bennett.’

It took him a moment to absorb this. ‘Well, damn.’ He walked back and stopped in front of her. She turned her head away from him, colour rising in her cheeks, as if it were she who had done something to be ashamed of. ‘Please,’ she said, and she wasn’t sure what she was asking of him.

‘Let me see.’ He stood before her and lifted his fingertips to her face, studying it with a frown. She closed her eyes as they traced the line of her jaw, his fingers gentle. He was so close she could smell the warmth of his skin, the faint scent of horse he carried on his clothes. ‘You seen a doctor?’

She shook her head.

‘Can you open your mouth?’

She obliged. Then closed it again with a wince. ‘Brushed my teeth this morning. Think a couple of them may have rattled a bit.’

He didn’t laugh. His fingertips moved up the sides of her face, so gently that she barely felt them, even across the cuts and bruises, the same way they moved softly across a young horse’s spine, checking for misalignments. He frowned as they crossed her cheekbones and met at her forehead where he hesitated, then pushed aside a lock of hair. ‘I don’t think anything’s broken.’ His voice was a low murmur. ‘Doesn’t make me want to hurt him any less, though.’

It was always the kindness that would kill you. She felt a tear slide slowly down her cheek, and hoped he didn’t see it.

He turned away. She could hear he was now by the desk, clattering a spoon onto it. ‘It’s tomato. Make it myself with herbs and a little cream. Figured you wouldn’t have brought anything. And it – uh – doesn’t require chewing.’

‘I don’t know many men who cook.’ Her voice emerged in a little sob.

‘Yeah. Well. Would’ve gone pretty hungry by now if I didn’t.’

She opened her eyes and he was placing the spoon to the side of her bowl, laying a folded gingham napkin neatly beside it. For a moment she had a flashback of the place setting the previous evening, but shoved it down. This was Fred, not Van Cleve. And she was surprised to find that she was hungry.

Fred sat while she ate, his feet up in a chair as he read a book of poetry, apparently content to let her be.

She ate almost all the soup, wincing every time she opened her mouth, her tongue occasionally working back towards the two loose teeth. She didn’t speak, because she didn’t know what to say. A strange and unexpected sense of humiliation hung over her, as if she had somehow brought this on herself, as if the bruises on her face were emblematic of her failure. She found herself replaying and replaying the night’s events. Should she have kept quiet? Should she simply have agreed? And yet to do those things would have left her – what? No better than one of those damned dolls.

Fred’s voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘When I found out my wife was carrying on, I reckon every second man from here to Hoffman asked me why I hadn’t given her a good hiding and brought her home again.’

Alice moved her head stiffly to look at him, but he was studying his book, as if he were reading from the words within it.

‘They said I should teach her a lesson. I never got it, not even in the first flush of anger, when I thought she had pretty much stomped all over my heart. You beat a horse and you can break it all right. You can make it submit. But it’ll never forget. And it sure as hell won’t care for you. So if I wouldn’t do it to a horse, I could never work out why I should do it to a human.’

Alice pushed the bowl away slowly as he continued.

‘Selena wasn’t happy with me. I knew it, though I didn’t want to think about it. She wasn’t made for out here, with the dust and the horses and the cold. She was a city girl, and I probably paid that too little mind. I was trying to build the business after my daddy died. Guess I thought she’d be like my ma, happy to forge her own path. Three years of it and no babies, I should have known the first sweet-talking salesman to promise her something different would turn her head. But, no, I never laid a hand on her. Not even when she was standing in front of me, suitcase in hand, telling me all the ways I had failed to be a man to her. And I reckon half this town still thinks I’m less of a man because of it.’

Not me, she wanted to tell him, but the words somehow wouldn’t emerge from her mouth.

They sat in silence a while longer, alone with their thoughts. Finally he stood and poured her some coffee, set it before her and walked to the door with the empty bowl. ‘I’ll be working with Frank Neilsen’s young colt at the near paddock this afternoon. He’s a little unbalanced and prefers the level ground. Anything you’re worried about, you just bang on that window. Okay?’

She didn’t speak.

‘I’ll be right here, Alice.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘She’s my wife. I got a right to talk to her.’

‘You think I give a Sam Hill what you –’

Fred got to him first. She had been dozing in the chair – she felt exhausted to her bones – and woke to the sound of voices.

‘It’s okay, Fred,’ she called out. ‘Let him in.’

She drew back the bolt and opened the door a sliver.

‘Well, then, I’m coming in, too.’ Fred walked in behind Bennett so that the two men stood there for a moment, shaking snow from their boots and patting themselves down.

Bennett flinched when he saw her. She hadn’t dared look at her face, but his expression told her much of what she needed to know. He took a breath and rubbed his palm over the back of his head. ‘You need to come home, Alice,’ he said, adding: ‘He won’t do it again.’

‘Since when did you have any say over what your father does, Bennett?’ she said.

‘He’s promised. He didn’t mean to hit you that hard.’

‘Just the little bit. Oh, that’s fine, then,’ said Fred.

Bennett shot him a look. ‘Tempers were high. Pa just … Well, he’s not used to a woman sassing him.’

‘So what’s he going to do next time Alice opens her mouth?’

Bennett turned and squared up to Fred. ‘Hey, Guisler, you want to butt out of this? Because, far as I can see, this ain’t no business of yours.’

‘It’s my business when I see a defenceless woman get beat to a pulp.’

‘And you’d be the expert on how to manage a wife, huh? Because we all know what happened to your wife –’

‘That’s enough,’ said Alice. She stood slowly – sudden movements made her head throb – and turned to Fred. ‘Can you leave us a moment, Fred? … Please?’

His gaze darted from her to Bennett and back again. ‘I’ll be right outside,’ he muttered.

They stared at their feet until the door closed. She looked up first, at the man she had married just over a year ago, a man, she now realized, who had symbolized an escape route rather than any genuine meeting of minds or souls. What had they really known about each other, after all? They had been exotic to one another, a suggestion of a different world to two people who were each trapped, in their own way, by the expectations of those around them. And then, slowly, her difference had become repugnant to him.

‘You coming on home, then?’ he said.

Not I’m sorry. We can fix this, talk it out. I love you and I’ve spent the whole night worrying about you.

‘Alice?’

Not We’ll go somewhere by ourselves. We’ll start again. I missed you, Alice.

‘No, Bennett, I’m not coming back.’

It took him a moment to register what she had said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m not coming back.’

‘Well … where will you go?’

‘I’m not sure yet.’

‘You – you can’t just leave. It doesn’t work like that.’

‘Says who? Bennett – you don’t love me. And I can’t … I can’t be the wife you need me to be. We are making each other desperately unhappy and there’s nothing … nothing to suggest that is going to change. So, no. There’s no point in me coming back.’

‘This is Margery O’Hare’s influence. Pa was right. That woman –’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. I know my own mind.’

‘But we’re married.’

She straightened up. ‘I’m not coming back to that house. And if you and your father drag me out of here a hundred times, I will just keep on leaving.’

Bennett rubbed the back of his neck. He shook his head and turned a quarter away from her. ‘You know he won’t accept this.’

‘He won’t.’

She watched his face, across which several emotions seemed to be competing with each other, and felt briefly overwhelmed by the sadness of it all, at the admission that this really was it, the end. But there was something else in there: something she hoped he could detect too. Relief.

‘Alice?’ he said.

And there it was again, this bizarre hope, irrepressible as a spring bud, that even at this late hour he might take her in his arms, swear that he couldn’t live without her, that this was all a hideous mistake and that they would be together, like he had promised. The belief, engraved deep within her, that every love story held, at its heart, the potential for a happy ending.

She shook her head.

And, without another word, he left.

Christmas was a muted affair. Margery didn’t celebrate Christmas traditionally, it being associated with not one good memory for her, but Sven insisted and bought a small turkey that he stuffed and cooked, and made cinnamon cookies from his mother’s Swedish recipe. Margery had many skills, he told her, shaking his head, but if he relied on her to cook, he’d be the width of that broom handle.

They invited Fred, which for some reason made Alice self-conscious, and every time he looked across the table at her he managed to time it to the exact second she glanced up at him so that she blushed. He brought with him a Dundee cake, baked to his mother’s recipe, and a bottle of French red wine, left in his cellar from before his father died, and they drank it and pronounced it interesting, although Sven and Fred agreed that you couldn’t beat a cold beer. They didn’t sing carols or play games, but there was something restful about the easy companionship of four people who felt warmly towards each other and were just grateful for good food and a day or two off work.

That being said, all day Alice feared the knock on the door, the inevitable confrontation. Mr Van Cleve was a man used to getting his own way, after all, and there were few occasions more guaranteed to heat the blood than Christmas. And, indeed, the knock did come – though not as she had expected. Alice leaped up, peering out of the window, fighting for space with a giddy and frantically barking Bluey, but it was Annie who appeared on the stoop, as cross-looking as ever, though, given it was a holiday, Alice couldn’t really blame her.

‘Mr Van Cleve asked me to bring this,’ she said, the words popping from her lips, like angry bubbles. She thrust an envelope at her.

Alice held onto Bluey, who wriggled to be free and jump up to greet this new visitor. He was the most hopeless of guard dogs, Margery would say fondly, all sound and no fury. The runt of the litter. Always stupidly glad to let everyone know how happy he was just to be alive.

Annie kept one wary eye on him as Alice took the envelope. ‘And he said to wish you a merry Christmas.’

‘Couldn’t get up from the table to say it himself, though, huh?’ called Sven, through the doorway. Annie scowled at him and Margery scolded him quietly.

‘Annie, you’d be most welcome to stop for a bite to eat before you head out,’ she called. ‘It’s a cold afternoon and we’d be happy to share.’

‘Thank you. But I have to get back.’ She seemed reluctant to stand close to Alice, as if by mere proximity she risked being infected by her predilection for deviant sexual practices.

‘Well, thank you anyway for coming all the way out here,’ said Alice. Annie looked at her suspiciously, as if she were making fun at her expense. She turned away and increased her pace back down the hill.

Alice closed the door and released the dog, who immediately leaped up and started barking at the window, as if he had completely forgotten whom he had just seen. Alice stared at the envelope.

‘What d’you get then?’

Margery sat down at the table. Alice caught the glance that passed between her and Fred as she opened the card, an elaborate fixing of glitter and bows.

‘He’ll be trying to win her back,’ said Sven, leaning back in his chair. ‘That’s a fancy romantic thing. Bennett’s trying to impress her.’

But the card was not from Bennett. She read the words.

Alice, we need you back in the house. Enough’s enough and my boy is pining. I know I did you a wrong and I’m prepared to make amends. Here’s a little something for you to buy yourself some fineries in Lexington and sent with the hope that it improves your feelings about your swift return home. This was always a fruitful measure with my dear late Dolores and I trust you will view it equally favourably.

We can all let bygones be bygones.

Your father,

Geoffrey Van Cleve

She looked at the card, from which a crisp fifty-dollar bill slid onto the tablecloth. She stared at it where it lay.

‘That what I think it is?’ said Sven, leaning forward to examine it.

‘He wants me to go out and buy a nice dress. And then come home.’ She placed the card on the table.

There was a long silence.

‘You’re not going,’ said Margery.

Alice lifted her head. ‘I wouldn’t go if he paid me a thousand dollars.’ She swallowed, and stuffed the money back into the envelope. ‘I will try to find somewhere else to stay, though. I don’t want to get under your feet.’

‘Are you kidding? You stay as long as you like. You’re no trouble, Alice. Besides, Bluey’s so taken with you it’s nice not to have to fight the dog for Sven’s attention.’

Only Margery noticed Fred’s sigh of relief.

‘Right!’ said Margery. ‘That’s settled. Alice stays. Why don’t I clear up? Then we can fetch Sven’s cinnamon cookies. If we can’t eat them, we can use them for target practice.’

27 December 1937

Dear Mr Van Cleve

You have made quite clear on more than one occasion that you think I am a whore. But, unlike a whore, I can’t be bought.

I am therefore returning your money via Annie’s safekeeping.

Please could you arrange to have my things sent to Margery O’Hare’s home for the time being.

Sincerely

Alice

Van Cleve banged the letter down on his desk. Bennett glanced up from across the office and slumped a little, as if he had already guessed the contents.

‘That’s it,’ Van Cleve said, and screwed the letter into a ball. ‘That O’Hare girl has crossed the line.’

Ten days later the flyers went round. Izzy spotted one first, blowing across the road down by the schoolhouse. She dismounted and picked it up, brushing the snow from it so she could read it better.

Good citizens of Baileyville – please be

aware of the moral danger

posed by the Packhorse Library.

All right-minded citizens are

advised to decline its use.

Meeting hall, Tuesday 6 p.m.

OUR TOWN’S MORAL RECTITUDE

IS AT STAKE.

‘Moral rectitude. From a man who smashed a girl’s face halfway across his dining table.’ Margery shook her head.

‘What are we going to do?’

‘Go to the meeting, I guess. We’re right-minded citizens after all.’ Margery looked sanguine. But Alice noted the way her hand closed around the leaflet, and a tendon ran tight along her neck. ‘And I’m not letting that old –’

The door flew open. It was Bryn, his cheeks pink and his breath heavy from running.

‘Miss O’Hare? Miss O’Hare? Beth’s took a fall on some ice and broke her arm up real bad.’

They bolted from the library and followed him up the snow-covered road, where they were met by the bulky figure of Dan Meakins, the local blacksmith, carrying a whey-faced Beth across his chest. She was clutching her arm and there were vivid dark shadows under each eye, as if she hadn’t slept for a week.

‘Horse went down on a patch of ice just by the gravel pit,’ Dan Meakins said. ‘Checked him over and I think he’s okay. But it looks like her arm took the full force of it.’

Margery stepped closer to peer at Beth’s arm and her heart sank. It was already swollen and dark red three inches above the wrist.

‘You’re making a fuss,’ said Beth, through clenched teeth.

‘Alice, fetch Fred. We need to get her to the doctor at Chalk Ridge.’

An hour later the three of them stood in the little treatment room at Dr Garnett’s as he carefully set the injured arm between two splints, humming quietly as he bound it. Beth sat with her eyes closed and her jaw tight, determined not to let the pain show, consistent with her upbringing as the sole girl in a family of brothers.

‘I can still ride, though, right?’ said Beth, when the doctor had finished. She held her arm in front of her as he looped the sling around her neck and tied it carefully.

‘Absolutely not. Young lady, you need to spend at least six weeks resting it. No riding, no lifting things, no banging it against anything.’

‘But I have to ride. How else am I supposed to get the books out?’

‘I don’t know if you heard about our little library, Doctor –’ Margery began.

‘Oh, we’ve all heard about your library.’ He allowed himself a wry smile. ‘Miss Pinker, at the moment the fracture appears clean, and I’m confident it should mend well. But I cannot stress enough how important it is to protect it from further injury. If an infection were to set in, then we could face having to amputate.’

‘Amputate?’

Alice felt something wash over her, revulsion or fear, she wasn’t sure. Beth was suddenly wide-eyed, her previous composure evaporated.

‘We’ll manage, Beth.’ Margery sounded more convincing than she felt. ‘You just listen to the doctor.’

Fred drove as swiftly as he could but by the time they arrived back the meeting had already been going almost half an hour. Alice and Margery crept in at the back of the meeting hall, Alice tipping her hat low over her brow and pulling her hair loose around her face to try to hide the worst of the bruises. Fred followed just behind her, as he had done the whole day, like some kind of guard. The door closed softly behind them. Van Cleve was in such full flow that nobody even stopped to look when they entered.

‘Don’t get me wrong. I am all for books and learning. My own son Bennett here was valedictorian at the school, as some of you may remember. But there are good books and there are books that plant the wrong kinds of ideas, books that spread untruths and impure thoughts. Books that can, if left unmonitored, cause divisions in society. And I fear we may have been lax in letting such books loose in our community without applying sufficient vigilance to protect our young and most vulnerable minds.’

Margery scanned the assembled heads, noting who was there, and who was nodding along. It was hard to tell from behind.

Van Cleve walked along the row of chairs at the front, shaking his head, as if the information he had to impart made him truly sorrowful. ‘Sometimes, neighbours, good neighbours, I wonder if the only book we should really be reading is the Good Book itself. Doesn’t that have all the facts and learning we need?’

‘So what are you proposing, Geoff?’

‘Well, ain’t it obvious? We have to shut this thing down.’

Faces in the crowd met each other, some shocked and concerned, others nodding their approval.

‘I appreciate that there has been some good work done with sharing recipes and teaching the kiddies to read and all. And I thank you for that, Mrs Brady. But enough’s enough. We need to take back control of our town. And we start with closing this so-called library. I will be putting this to our governor at the earliest opportunity, and I hope that as many of you as are right-minded citizens out here will be supporting me.’

The crowd drained away half an hour later, uncharacteristically muted and hard to read, whispering to each other, a few casting curious glances at the women who stood together at the back. Van Cleve walked out deep in conversation with Pastor McIntosh and either failed to notice them, or had simply decided not to acknowledge that they were there.

But Mrs Brady saw them. Still in the heavy fur hat she wore outside, she scanned the back of the crowd until she spied Margery and motioned to her to meet her over by the small stage. ‘Is it true? About the Married Love book?’

Margery held her gaze. ‘Yes.’

Mrs Brady exclaimed softly under her breath. ‘Do you realize what you’ve done, Margery O’Hare?’

‘It’s just facts, Mrs Brady. Facts, to help women take control of their own bodies, their own lives. Nothing sinful about it. Hell, even our own federal court approved that book.’

‘Federal courts.’ Mrs Brady sniffed. ‘You know as well as I do that down here we’re a long way from federal courts, or indeed anyone who cares a lick about what they decide. You know our little corner of the world is highly conservative, especially when it comes to matters of the flesh.’ She folded her arms across her chest, and her words suddenly exploded out of her. ‘Darn it, Margery, I trusted you not to create a stir! You know how sensitive this project is. Now the whole town is alive with rumours about the kind of material you’re distributing. And that old fool is stirring fit to bust to make sure he gets his own way and shuts us down.’

‘All I’ve done is be straight with people.’

‘Well, a wiser woman than you would have realized that sometimes you have to play a politician’s game to get what you want. By doing what you’ve done, you’ve given him the very ammunition he was hoping for.’

Margery shifted awkwardly. ‘Ah, come on, Mrs Brady. Nobody pays any heed to Mr Van Cleve.’

‘You think? Well, Izzy’s father, for one, has put his foot down.’

‘What?’

‘Mr Brady has tonight insisted Izzy withdraw from the programme.’

Margery’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘I most certainly am not. This library relies on the goodwill of locals. It relies on the notion of the public good. Whatever it is you’re doing, you have created a controversy and Mr Brady does not want his only child dragged into it.’

She raised a hand suddenly to her cheek. ‘Oh, my. Mrs Nofcier will not be happy when she hears about this. She will not be happy at all.’

‘But – but Beth Pinker just broke her arm. We’re already one librarian down. If we lose Izzy, too, the library won’t be able to continue.’

‘Well, perhaps you should have thought about that before you started mixing things up with your … radical literature.’ It was then that she noticed Alice’s face. She blinked hard, frowned at her, then shook her head as if this, too, were evidence of something going deeply wrong down at the Packhorse Library. Then she swept out, Izzy throwing a despairing glance their way as she was pulled along by her sleeve towards the door.

‘Well, that’s torn it.’

Margery and Alice stood on the stoop of the now empty meeting hall as the last of the buggies and murmuring couples disappeared. For the first time Margery seemed truly at a loss. She was still holding a crumpled leaflet in her fist and now threw it down, grinding it under her heel into the snow on the step.

‘I’ll ride tomorrow,’ said Alice. Her voice still emerged muffled from her swollen mouth, as if she were speaking through a pillow.

‘You can’t. You’d spook the horses, let alone the families.’ Margery rubbed at her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I’ll take what extra routes I can. But Lord knows the snow has pushed everything back already.’

‘He wants to destroy us, doesn’t he?’ said Alice, dully.

‘Yes, he does.’

‘It’s me. I told him where to put his fifty dollars. He’s so mad he’ll do anything to punish me.’

‘Alice, if you hadn’t told him where to put his fifty dollars, I would have done it and in capital letters. Van Cleve’s the kind of man can’t bear to see a woman take any kind of place in the world. You can’t go blaming yourself for a man like him.’

Alice shoved her hands deep into her pockets. ‘Maybe Beth’s arm will heal quicker than the doctor said.’

Margery gave her a sideways look.

‘You’ll work something out,’ Alice added, as if she were confirming it to herself. ‘You always do.’

Margery sighed. ‘C’mon. Let’s head back.’

Alice took two steps down and pulled Margery’s jacket tight around her. She wondered whether Fred would come with her to pick up the last of her belongings. She was afraid of going by herself.

Then a voice broke into the silence. ‘Miss O’Hare?’

Kathleen Bligh appeared around the corner of the meeting hall, holding an oil lamp in front of her with one hand and the reins of a horse in the other. ‘Mrs Van Cleve.’

‘Hey, Kathleen. How are you doing?’

‘I was at the meeting.’ Her face was drawn under the harsh light. ‘I heard what your man there was saying about y’all.’

‘Yes. Well. Everyone has an opinion in this town. You don’t want to believe everything you –’

‘I’ll ride for you.’

Margery tilted her head, as if she wasn’t sure she was hearing right.

‘I’ll ride. I heard what you was saying to Mrs Brady. Garrett’s ma will mind the babies for me. I’ll ride with you. Until your girl’s arm is mended.’

When neither Margery nor Alice responded, she said: ‘I know my way around every holler for twenty miles yonder. Can ride a horse as well as anyone. Your library kept me going and I won’t see some old fool shut it down.’

The women stared at each other.

‘So what time do I come by tomorrow?’

It was the first time Alice had seen Margery truly lost for words. She stuttered a little before she spoke again. ‘A little after five would be good. We got a lot of ground to cover. Course, if that’s too difficult because of your bab –’

‘Five it is. Got my own horse.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Garrett’s horse.’

‘Then I’m obliged to you.’

Kathleen nodded at them both, then mounted the big black horse, steered him round, and was lost in the darkness.

When she looked back afterwards, Alice would remember January as the darkest of months. It wasn’t just that the days were short and frozen, and that much of their riding was now done in the pitch black, collars high around their necks and their bodies swaddled in as many clothes as they could wear and still move. The families they visited were often blue with cold themselves, children and old people tucked up together in beds, some coughing or rheumy-eyed, huddled around half-hearted fires and all still desperate for the diversion and hope that a good story could bring. Getting books to them had become infinitely harder: routes were often impassable, the horses staggering through deep snow or sliding on ice on steep paths so that Alice would dismount and walk, haunted by the image of Beth’s red and swollen arm.

True to her word, Kathleen would turn up at 5 a.m. four mornings a week on her husband’s rangy black horse, collect two bags of books, and ride off wordlessly into the mountains. She rarely needed to double-check the routes, and the families she served met her with open doors, and expressions of pleasure and respect. Alice observed that leaving the house was good for Kathleen, despite the travails of the job and the long hours away from her children. Within weeks she carried a new air of, if not happiness, then quiet accomplishment, and even those families swayed by Mr Van Cleve’s emphatic takedown of the library were persuaded to stay with it, given Kathleen’s insistence that the library was a good thing, and she and Garrett had honest reasons for believing so.

But it was hard all the same. Something like a quarter of the mountain families had dropped out, and a good number in the town, and the rumour mill had gone into overdrive so that those who had previously welcomed them now viewed them with wary eyes.

Mr Leland says one of your librarians is with child out of wedlock after becoming crazed with lust from a romance novel.

I heard all five sisters over at Split Willow are refusing to help their parents in the house after having their heads turned by political texts slipped into their recipe books. One of them has grown hair on the back of her hands.

Is it true that your English girl is really a Communist?

Occasionally they even received insults and abuse from people they visited. They had started to avoid riding past the honky-tonks on Main Street as men would catcall obscenities from the doorways, or follow them down the street, mimicking what they claimed was in the reading material. They missed Izzy’s presence, her songs and her cheerful, awkward enthusiasms, and while nobody spoke openly of it, the absence of Mrs Brady’s support felt like they had lost their backbone. Beth stopped by a few times but was so grumpy and despondent that she – and eventually they – found it easier for her not to be there at all. Sophia spent the hours she no longer had to fill with filing books by making up more scrapbooks. ‘Things can still change,’ she would tell the two younger women firmly. ‘Have faith.’

Alice plucked up courage and made her way to the Van Cleve House, flanked by Margery and Fred. She felt weak with relief when Van Cleve wasn’t there and it was Annie who silently handed her two neatly packed suitcases and closed the door with an all-too-emphatic slam. But once back in Margery’s cabin, despite Margery’s assurances that she could stay as long as she liked, Alice couldn’t help feeling like an interloper, a refugee in a world whose rules she still didn’t entirely understand.

Sven Gustavsson was solicitous; he was a kind man who never made Alice feel unwelcome, and took time to ask her during every visit about herself, her family back in England, what she had done with her day, as if she were a favoured guest he was always quietly delighted to find there, not just a lost soul clogging up their living area.

He told her about what really went on at Van Cleve’s mines: the brutality, the union-breakers, broken bodies and conditions she could barely stand to picture. He explained it all in a voice that suggested this was simply how it was, but she felt a deep shame that the comforts in which she had lived at the big house had been provided from its proceeds.

She would retreat to a far corner and read one of Margery’s 122 books, or she would lie awake through the unlit hours, her thoughts periodically interrupted by the sounds emerging from Margery’s bedroom and their frequency. Their uninhibited nature and unexpected joyfulness left her feeling first acute embarrassment then, after a week, curiosity tinged with sadness at how Margery and Sven’s experience of love could be so different from her own.

But mostly she would sneak glances at the way he was around Margery, the way he watched her move with quiet approval, the way his hand strayed to her whenever she was nearby, as if the touch of his skin on hers was as necessary to him as breathing. She marvelled at how he discussed Margery’s work with her, as if it were something he took pride in, offering suggestions or words of support. She noted that he pulled Margery to him without embarrassment or awkwardness, murmuring secrets into her ears and sharing smiles lit with unspoken intimacies, and it was then that something in Alice would hollow out, until she felt there was something cavernous inside her, a great gaping hole that grew and grew until it threatened to swallow her whole.

Focus on the library, she would tell herself, pulling the counterpane up to her chin and blocking her ears. As long as you have that, you have something.