The Giver of Stars(12)

‘It ain’t hard. You know when you have a bunch of animals gathering at a waterhole?’

‘Um, not really, no. Surrey isn’t big on watering holes.’

‘You go to Africa, you got the elephant drinking next to the lion, and he’s drinking next to a hippo, and the hippo’s drinking next to a gazelle. And none of them is bothering each other, right? You know why?’

‘No.’

‘Because they’re reading each other. And that old gazelle sees that the lion is all relaxed, and that he just wants to take a drink. And the hippo is all easy, and so they all live and let live. But you put them on a plain at dusk, and that same old lion is prowling around with a glint in his eye – well, those gazelles know to git, and git fast.’

‘There are lions as well as snakes?’

‘You read people, Alice. You see someone in the distance and it’s some miner on his way home and you can tell from his gait he’s tired and all he wants is to get back to his place, fill his belly and put his feet up. You see that same miner outside a honky-tonk, half a bottle of bourbon down on a Friday and giving you the stink-eye? You know to get out of the way, right?’

They rode in silence for a bit.

‘So … Margery?’

‘Yup.’

‘If you’ve never been further east than – where was it, Lewisburg? – how is it you know so much about animals in Africa?’

Margery pulled her mule to a halt and turned to face her. ‘Are you seriously asking me that question?’

Alice stared at her.

‘And you want me to make you a librarian?’

It was the first time she had seen Margery laugh. She hooted like a barn owl, and was still laughing halfway back down to Salt Lick.

‘So how was it today?’

‘It was fine, thank you.’

She didn’t want to talk about how her backside and thighs ached so badly that she had nearly cried lowering herself onto the seat of the lavatory. Or the tiny cabins they had passed, where she could see the inside walls were papered with sheets of newspaper, which Margery told her were ‘to keep the draughts out in winter’. She needed time to process the scale of the land she had navigated, the feeling, as they had picked a horizontal path through a vertical landscape, of being truly in the wild for the first time in her life, the huge birds, the skittering deer, the tiny blue skink lizards. She thought she might not mention the toothless man, who had sworn at them on the road, or the exhausted young mother with four small children running around outside, naked as the day they were born. But mostly the day had been so extraordinary, so precious, that she really didn’t want to share any of it with the two men.

‘Did I hear you was riding out with Margery O’Hare?’ Mr Van Cleve took a swig of his drink.

‘I was. And Isabelle Brady.’ She didn’t mention that Isabelle had failed to turn up.

‘You want to steer clear of that O’Hare girl. She’s trouble.’

‘How is she trouble?’

She caught Bennett’s flashed look: don’t say anything.

Mr Van Cleve pointed his fork at her. ‘You mind my words, Alice. Margery O’Hare comes from a bad family. Frank O’Hare was the biggest ’shiner between here and Tennessee. You’re too new to understand what that means. Oh, she might dress herself up in books and fancy words, these days, but underneath she’s still the same, just like the no-good rest of ’em. I tell you, there’s no decent ladies around here would take tea with her.’

Alice tried to imagine Margery O’Hare giving a flying fig about taking tea with any ladies. She took the plate of cornbread from Annie and put a slice on her plate before passing it on. She realized she was ravenously hungry, despite the heat. ‘Please don’t worry. She’s just showing me where to deliver the books.’

‘I’m just saying. Mind you don’t hang around her too much. You don’t want her ways rubbing off on you.’ He took two slices of cornbread and put half a slice straight into his mouth and chewed for a minute, his mouth open. Alice winced and looked away. ‘What kind of books are these, anyway?’

Alice shrugged. ‘Just … books. There’s Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott, some cowboy stories and books to help around the home, recipes and suchlike.’

Mr Van Cleve shook his head. ‘Half those mountain people can’t read a word. Old Henry Porteous thinks it’s a waste of time and tax dollars, and I have to say I’m minded to agree. And, like I said, any scheme with Margery O’Hare mixed up in it has to be a bad thing.’

Alice was about to speak up in Margery’s defence but a firm pressure from her husband’s hand under the table warned her off.

‘I don’t know.’ Mr Van Cleve wiped away some gravy at the side of his mouth. ‘I’m pretty sure my wife would not have approved of a scheme like this.’

‘But she did believe in charitable acts, Bennett tells me,’ said Alice.

Mr Van Cleve looked across the table. ‘She did, yes. She was a most godly woman.’

‘Well,’ Alice said, after a moment, ‘I do believe that if we can encourage godless families to read, we can encourage them to turn to scripture, and the Bible, and that can only be good for everyone.’ Her smile was sweet and wide. She leaned forward over the table. ‘Can you imagine all those families, Mr Van Cleve, finally able to truly grasp the word of God through a proper reading of the Bible? Wouldn’t that be a marvellous thing? I’m sure your wife would have had nothing but encouragement for something like that.’