Susanna sews. She sews and sews. Her grandmother asks her mother, Where is Judith, how are the serving girls getting along with the washing, is it raining, doesn’t it seem that the days are getting longer, was it not kind of their neighbour to return that runaway fowl?
Agnes says nothing, just keeps on looking out of the window.
Mary talks on, of the letter they received from Susanna’s father, how he is about to take the company on tour again, that he had a chest cold—caught from river fumes—but is now recovered.
Agnes gives a sharp intake of breath, turning to them, her face alert, strained.
“Oh,” Mary says, putting her hand to her cheek, “you frightened me. Whatever is—”
“Do you hear that?” Agnes says.
All three pause, listen, their heads cocked.
“Hear what?” Mary asks, her brows beginning to knit.
“That…” Agnes holds up a finger, “…There! Do you hear it?”
“I hear nothing,” Mary snaps.
“A tapping.” Agnes strides to the fireplace, presses a hand to the chimney breast. “A rustling.” She leaves the fireplace and moves to the settle, looking up. “A definite noise. Can’t you hear it?”
Mary allows a long pause. “No,” she says. “It’s likely nothing more than a jackdaw come down the chimney.”
Agnes leaves the room.
Susanna grips the cloth in one hand, the needle in the other. If she just keeps on making stitches, over and over, of equal size, perhaps all this will pass.
—
Judith is in the street. She has Edmond’s dog with her; it lies in the sun, one paw raised up, while she weaves green ribbon into the long hair of its neck. It looks up at her trustingly, patiently.
The sun is hot on her skin, the light in her eyes, which is perhaps why she doesn’t notice the figure coming down Henley Street: a man, walking towards her, hat in his hand, a sack slung on his back.
He calls her name. She lifts her head. He waves. She is running towards him before she even says his name to herself, and the dog is leaping along beside her, thinking that this is much more fun that the ribbon game, and the man has caught her in his arms and swung her off the ground, saying, My little maid, my little Jude, and she cannot catch her breath for laughing, and then she thinks she has not seen him since—
“Where have you been?” she is saying to him, suddenly furious, pushing him away from her, and somehow she is crying now. “You’ve been gone such a long time.”
If he sees her anger, he doesn’t show it. He is lifting his sack from the ground, scratching the dog behind his ears, taking her by the hand and pulling her towards the house.
“Where is everyone?” he booms, in his biggest, loudest voice.
—
A dinner. His brothers, his parents, eliza and her husband, Agnes and the girls all squeezed together around the table. Mary has beheaded one of the geese, in his honour—the honking and shrieking were terrible to hear—and now its carcass lies, dismantled and torn, between them all.
He is telling a story involving an innkeeper, a horse and a millpond. His brothers are laughing, his father is pounding the table with his fist; Edmond is tickling Judith, making her squeal; Mary is remonstrating with Eliza about something; the dog is leaping for scraps thrown to it by Richard, barking in between. The story reaches a climax—something to do with a gate left open, Agnes isn’t sure what—and everybody roars. And Agnes is looking at her husband, across the table.
There is something about him, something different. She cannot put her finger on what. His hair is longer, but that’s not it. He has a second earring in his other ear, but that’s not it. His skin shows signs of the sun and he is wearing a shirt she hasn’t seen before, with long, trailing cuffs. But it is none of these things.
Eliza is talking now and Agnes glances towards her for a moment, then back at her husband. He is listening to whatever Eliza is saying. His fingers, shining with goose fat, toy with a crust on his plate. How the goose complained and then shrieked, Agnes thinks, and then ran for a moment, headless, as if sure it could get away, could change its fate. Her husband’s face is eager as he listens to his sister; he is leaning forward slightly. He has one arm around Judith’s chair.
It’s a whole year, almost, that he’s been away. Summer has come again and it is almost the anniversary of their son’s death. She does not know how this can be, but it is so.
She stares at him, stares and stares. He has come back among them, embracing them all, shouting for them, pulling gifts from his bag: hair combs, pipes, handkerchiefs, a hank of bright wool, a bracelet for her, in hammered silver, a ruby at the clasp.
The bracelet is finer than anything she has ever owned. It has intricate circling etchings in its slippery surface and a raised setting for the stone. She cannot imagine what it must have cost him. Or why he would spend money on it, he who never wastes a penny, who has been so careful with his purse ever since his father lost his fortune. She fiddles with it, spinning it round and round, as she sits at the table, across from her husband.
The bracelet, she realises, has something bad coming off it, like steam. It was too cold, at first, gripping her skin with an icy, indifferent embrace. Now, though, it is too hot, too tight. Its single red eye glowers up at her with baleful intent. Someone unhappy, she knows, has worn it, someone who dislikes or resents her. It is steeped in bad luck, bad feeling, polished with it to a dull lustre. Whoever it used to belong to wishes her harm.
Eliza sits, smiling now, as she finishes speaking. The dog has settled itself beside the open window. John is seizing the ale and refilling his cup.
Agnes looks at her husband and suddenly she sees it, feels it, scents it. All over his body, all over his skin, his hair, his face, his hands, as if an animal has run over him, again and again, leaving tiny pawmarks. He is, Agnes realises, covered in the touches of other women.
She looks down at her plate, at her own hands, her own fingers, at their roughened tips, at the whorls and loops of her fingerprints, at the knuckles and scars and veins of them, at the nails she cannot stop herself gnawing the minute they emerge. For a moment, she believes she may vomit.
Grasping the bracelet, she draws it off her wrist. She looks at the ruby, holds it close to her face, wondering what it has seen, where it has come from, how it came into her husband’s possession. It is a deep interior red, a drop of frozen blood. She raises her eyes and her husband is looking straight at her.
She puts the bracelet down on the table, holding his gaze. For a moment, he seems confused. He glances at the bracelet, then at her, then back; he half rises, as if he might speak. Then the blood rushes to his face, his neck. He lifts a hand, as if to reach out for her, then lets it drop.
She stands, without speaking, and leaves the room.
—
He comes to find her that evening, just before sunset. She is out at Hewlands, tending her bees, pulling up weeds, cutting the blooms off chamomile flowers.
She sees him approach along the path. He has taken off his fine shirt, his braided hat, and is wearing an old jerkin that he keeps hanging on the back of their door.
She doesn’t watch him as he walks towards her; she keeps her head averted. Her fingers continue to pluck at the yellow-faced flowers, picking them, then dropping them into a woven basket at her feet.
He stands at the end of the row of bee skeps.
“I brought you this,” he says. He holds out a shawl in his hands.
She turns her head to look at it for a moment, but doesn’t say anything.
“In case you were cold.”
“I’m not.”
“Well,” he says, and he places it carefully on top of the nearest skep. “It’s here if you need it.”
She turns back to her flowers. Picks one bloom, two blooms, three blooms, four.
His feet come nearer, scuffing through the grass, until he stands over her, looking down. She can see his boots out of the corner of her eye. She finds herself seized by a passing urge to pierce their toes. Over and over, with the tip of her knife, until the skin beneath is nicked and sore. How he would howl and leap about.