The Giver of Stars(24)

It was the first week that the four women had split up and ridden their own routes. They planned to meet at the library at the beginning and end of each week, to debrief, try to keep the books in order, and check the condition of those returned. Margery and Beth rode the longer routes, often leaving their books at a second base, a schoolhouse ten miles away and bringing those back fortnightly, while Alice and Izzy did the routes closer to home. Izzy had grown in confidence now, and several times Alice had arrived as she was already riding out, her polished new boots from Lexington gleaming, her humming audible the whole way down Main Street. ‘Good morning, Alice,’ she would call, her wave a little tentative, as if she were still not quite sure of the response she was going to get.

Alice didn’t want to admit how nervous she felt. It wasn’t just her fear of getting lost, or of making a fool of herself, but the conversation she had overheard between Beth and Mrs Brady the week before, as she had unsaddled Spirit outside.

Oh, you all are just marvellous. But I confess I am a little anxious about the English girl.

She’s doing fine, Mrs Brady. Marge says she knows most of the routes pretty well.

It’s not the routes, Beth dear. The whole point of using local girls to do the job was that the people you visit know you. They trust you not to look down at them, or to give their families anything unsuitable to read. If we have some strange girl going in talking with an accent and acting like the Queen of England, well, they’re going to be on their guard. I’m afraid it’s going to damage the whole scheme.

Spirit had snorted and they had quieted abruptly, as if realizing someone might be outside. Alice, ducking back behind the window, had felt a spasm of anxiety. If local people wouldn’t take her books, she realized, they wouldn’t let her have the job. She imagined herself suddenly back inside the Van Cleve house, heavy with silence, Annie’s beady, suspicious gaze on her and a decade stretching ahead of her at every hour. She thought of Bennett, and the wall of his sleeping back, his refusal to try to talk about what was going on. She thought of Mr Van Cleve’s irritation that they had not yet provided him with a ‘little grandbabby’.

If I lose this job, she thought, and something solid and heavy settled in her stomach, I will have nothing.

‘Good mornin’!’

The whole way up the mountain Alice had been practising. She had murmured, ‘Well, good morning! And how are you this fine day?’ to Spirit over and over, rolling her mouth around the vowels, trying to stop herself sounding so clipped and English.

A young woman, probably not much older than Alice, emerged from a cabin and peered at her, shading her eyes. In the sunlit, grassy patch in front of the house, two children looked up at her. They resumed their desultory fight over a stick while a dog watched intently. A bowl of unshucked sweetcorn had been left, as if awaiting transport, and a pile of laundry lay on a sheet on the ground. Some pulled weeds were thrown in a pile by the vegetable patch, the earth still on their roots. The house appeared surrounded by such half-finished tasks. From inside Alice could hear a baby crying, a furious, disconsolate wail.

‘Mrs Bligh?’

‘Can I help you?’

Alice took a breath. ‘Good maoahning! Ah’m from the travelling laahbrurry,’ she said carefully. ‘Ah wuz wondering if yew would lahk some bewks, fer you and the young’uns. Fer to do some book learnin’.’

The woman’s smile faded.

‘It’s okay. They don’t cawst nuffink,’ Alice added, smiling. She pulled a book from her saddlebag. ‘Yew kin borreh four and ah’ll jest come pick ’em up next week.’

The woman was silent. She narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips and looked down at her shoes. Then she brushed her hands on her apron and looked up again.

‘Miss, are you mocking me?’

Alice’s eyes widened.

‘You’re the English one, right? Married to Van Cleve’s boy? Because if you’re after mocking me you can head straight off back down that mountain.’

‘I’m not mocking you,’ Alice said quickly.

‘Then you got somethin’ wrong with your jaw?’

Alice swallowed. The woman was frowning at her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I was told people wouldn’t trust me enough to take books from me if I sounded too English. I was just …’ Her voice trailed away.

‘You was trying to sound like you was from round here?’ The woman’s chin pulled into her neck.

‘I know. Said like that it sounds rather – I –’ Alice closed her eyes and groaned inwardly.

The woman snorted with laughter. Alice’s eyes snapped open. The woman started to laugh again, bent over her apron. ‘You tried to sound like you was from round here. Garrett? You hear that?’

‘I heard,’ came a man’s voice, followed by a burst of coughing.

Mrs Bligh clutched her sides and laughed until she had to wipe the corners of her eyes. The children, watching her, began to chuckle too, with the hopeful, bemused faces of those who weren’t quite sure what they were laughing at.

‘Oh, my. Oh, Miss, I ain’t laughed like that since as long as I can remember. You come on in now. I’d take books off you if you was from the other side of the world. I’m Kathleen. C’mon in. You need some water? It’s hot enough to fry a snake out here.’