‘I don’t know. Bennett’s working late over at Hoffman. I should probably just go home.’
Sophia and Izzy started to sing again, Izzy blushing, as she always did when she found herself singing to an audience.
‘Your smile’s a rope around me
Has been since you found me
You didn’t need to chase me to corral my heart …’
Margery took the small mirror from Beth and checked her face for smudges, rubbing at her cheekbone with a moistened handkerchief until she was satisfied. ‘Well, Sven and I are going to be over by the Nice ’N’ Quick. He’s reserved us an upstairs table so we can get a good view. You’d be welcome to join us.’
‘I have things to do here,’ said Alice. ‘But thank you. I may join you later.’ She said it to mollify them and they knew it. Secretly she wanted just to sit in peace in the little library. She liked to be on her own there in the evenings, to read by herself, in the dim light of the oil lamp, escaping to the tropical white of Robinson Crusoe’s island, or the fusty corridors of Mr Chips’s Brookfield School. If Sophia came while she was still there she tended to let Alice alone, interrupting only to ask if Alice might place her finger on this piece of fabric while she put in a couple of stitches, or whether she thought this repaired book cover looked acceptable. Sophia was not a woman who required an audience, but seemed to feel easier in company, so although they said little to each other, the arrangement had suited both of them for the past few weeks.
‘Okay. We’ll see you later, then!’
With a cheery wave, the two women clumped across the boards and out down the steps, still in their breeches and boots. As the door opened, a swell of anticipatory noise carried into the little room. The square was full already, a local group of musicians fiddling to keep the waiting crowds happy, the air thick with laughter and catcalling.
‘You not going, Sophia?’ said Alice.
‘I’ll have a listen out the back later on,’ said Sophia. ‘Wind’s carrying this way.’ She threaded a needle, lifted another damaged book, and added quietly, ‘I’m not crazy about places where there are crowds.’
Perhaps as a kind of concession, Sophia propped the back door open with a book and allowed the sound of the fiddle to creep in, her foot finding it impossible not to tap along occasionally. Alice sat on the chair in the corner, her writing paper on her lap, trying to compose a letter to Gideon, but her pen kept stilling in her hand. She had no idea what to tell him. Everyone in England believed she was enjoying an exciting cosmopolitan life in an America full of huge cars and high times. She didn’t know how to convey to her brother the truth of her situation.
Behind her, Sophia, who seemed to know the tunes to everything, hummed along with the fiddle, sometimes allowing her voice to act as a descant, sometimes adding a few lyrics. Her voice was soft and velvety and soothing. Alice put down her pen and thought a little wistfully of how nice it would be to be out there with her husband of old, the one who had taken her in his arms and whispered lovely things in her ears and whose eyes had promised a future full of laughter and romance, instead of the one she caught looking at her occasionally with bemusement, as if he couldn’t work out how she had got there.
‘Good evening, ladies.’ The door closed gently behind Fred Guisler. He was wearing a neatly pressed blue shirt and suit trousers, and removed his hat at the sight of them. Alice startled slightly at the unexpected sight of him without his habitual checked shirt and overalls. ‘Saw the light was on, but I have to say I didn’t expect to find you in here this evening. Not with our local entertainment and all.’
‘Oh, I’m not really a fan,’ said Alice, who folded away her writing pad.
‘You can’t be persuaded? Even if you don’t enjoy cowboy tricks, Tex Lafayette has a heck of a voice. And it’s a beautiful evening out there. Too beautiful to spend in here.’
‘That’s very kind but I’m just fine here, thank you, Mr Guisler.’
Alice waited for him to ask the same of Sophia, then grasped, with a slightly sick feeling, that of course it was obvious to everyone but her why he wouldn’t, why the others hadn’t pressed her to go with them either. A square full of drunk and rowdy young white men would not be a safe place for Sophia. She realized suddenly that she wasn’t entirely sure what was a safe place for Sophia.
‘Well, I’m going to take a little stroll down to watch. But I’ll stop by later and drive you home, Miss Sophia. There’s a fair bit of liquor flying around that square tonight and I’m not sure it’ll be a pleasant place for a lady come nine o’clock.’
‘Thank you, Mr Guisler,’ said Sophia. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘You should go,’ said Sophia, not looking up from her stitching, as the sound of Fred’s footsteps faded down the dark road.
Alice shuffled some loose sheets of paper. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Life is complicated. Which is why finding a little joy where you can is important.’ She frowned at one of her stitches and unpicked it. ‘It’s hard to be different from everyone around here. I understand that. I really do. I had a very different life in Louisville.’ She let out a sigh. ‘But those girls care about you. They are your friends. And you shutting yourself off from them ain’t going to make things any easier.’
Alice watched as a moth fluttered around the oil lamp. After a moment, unable to bear it, she cupped it carefully in her hands, walked to the partially open door and released it. ‘You’d be here by yourself.’
‘I’m a big girl. And Mr Guisler is going to come back for me.’
She could hear the music starting up in the square, the roar of approval that announced the Singing Cowboy had taken centre stage. She looked at the window.
‘You really think I should go?’
Sophia put down her stitching. ‘Lord, Alice, you need me to write a song about it? Hey,’ she called, as Alice made for the front door. ‘Let me fix up your hair before you go. Appearances are important.’
Alice ran back and held up the little mirror. She rubbed at her face with her handkerchief as Sophia ran a comb through her hair, pinning and tutting as she worked with nimble fingers. When Sophia stood back Alice reached into her bag for her lipstick and drew coral pink over her lips, pursing them and rubbing them together. Satisfied, she looked down, brushing at her shirt and breeches. ‘Not much I can do about what I’m wearing.’
‘But the top half is pretty as a picture. And that’s all anyone will notice.’
Alice smiled. ‘Thank you, Sophia.’
‘You come back and tell me all about it.’ She sat back at the desk and resumed tapping her foot, half lost already in the distant music.
Alice was partway up the road when she glimpsed the creature. It scuttled across the shadowy road and her mind, already a quarter-mile ahead at the square, took a moment to register that something was in front of her. She slowed: a ground squirrel! She felt, oddly, as if the talk of all the murdered hogs had hung a sad fog over the week, adding to her vague sense of depression. For people who lived so deep in nature, the inhabitants of Baileyville seemed oblivious to the idea of respecting it. She stopped, waiting for the squirrel to cross in front of her. It was a large one, with a huge, thick tail. At that moment the moon emerged from a cloud, revealing to her that it wasn’t a squirrel after all, but something darker, more solid, with a black and white stripe. She frowned at it, perplexed, and then, as she was about to take a step forward, it turned its back on her, raised its tail, and she felt her skin sprayed with moisture. It took a second for that sensation to be supplanted by the most noxious smell she had ever breathed. She gasped and gagged, covering her mouth and spluttering. But there was no escaping it: it was all over her hands, her shirt, in her hair. The creature scuttled off nonchalantly into the night, leaving Alice batting at her clothes, as if by waving her hands and yelling she could make it all go away.