The Giver of Stars(79)

She had started to notice new things about Fred: the confident way his hands rested on horses, the fluidity in the way he moved, not like Bennett who, despite his athleticism, had always seemed uncomfortable, restrained by his own muscles, as if movement could only burst out of him sporadically. She found excuses to stay late in the cabin, helping Sophia, who kept her lips pursed. She knew. Oh, they all knew.

‘You like him, don’t you?’ Sophia asked her outright, one night.

‘Me? Fred? Oh, my. I –’ she stammered.

‘He’s a good man.’ Sophia said it with the emphasis on good, as if she were comparing him to someone else.

‘Were you ever married, Sophia?’

‘Me, no.’ Sophia raised a thread to her teeth and bit it through neatly. And just at the point when Alice wondered if she had, yet again, been too direct, she added, ‘Loved a man once. Benjamin. A miner. He was best friends with William. We knew each other since we were children.’ She held her stitching up to the lamp. ‘But he’s dead now.’

‘Did he … die in the mines?’

‘No. Some men shot him. He was minding his business, just walking home from work.’

‘Oh, Sophia. I’m so sorry.’

Sophia’s expression was unreadable, as if she had had years of practice in hiding what she felt. ‘I couldn’t stay here for a long time. Took myself off to Louisville and put all my heart into working at the coloured library there. Built something of a life, though I missed him every day. When I heard William had suffered his accident, I prayed to God not to make me come back here. But, you know, He has His ways.’

‘Is it still difficult?’

‘It was at first. But … things change. Ben died fourteen years ago now. The world moves on.’

‘Do you think … you’ll ever meet anyone else?’

‘Oh, no. That ship has sailed. Besides, I don’t fit nowhere. Too educated for most of the men around here. My brother would say too opinionated.’ Sophia laughed.

‘That sounds familiar,’ said Alice, and sighed.

‘I got William for company. We get by. And I’m hopeful. Things are good.’ She smiled. ‘Got to count your blessings. I enjoy my job. I got friends here now.’

‘That’s a little how I feel, too.’

Almost on impulse, Sophia reached out a slim hand and squeezed Alice’s. Alice squeezed back, struck by the unexpected comfort of a human touch. They held each other’s grip tightly and then, almost reluctantly, released it.

‘I do think he’s kind,’ said Alice, after a moment. ‘And … quite handsome.’

‘Girl, all you’d have to do is say the word. That man’s been pining after you like a dog after a bone since the day I got here.’

‘But I can’t, can I?’

Sophia looked up.

‘Half the town thinks this library is a hotbed of immorality, and me at the heart of it. Can you imagine what they’d say about us if I took up with a man? A man who wasn’t my husband?’

She had a point, Sophia told William afterwards. Just seemed a damn shame, two good people so glad to be in each other’s company.

‘Well,’ said William, ‘nobody ever said this world was going to be fair.’

‘Ain’t that the truth,’ said Sophia, and returned to her stitching, briefly lost in the memory of a man with an easy laugh who had never failed to make her smile, and the long-lost weight of his arm around her waist.

‘She’s a schoolmistress, old Spirit,’ Fred said, as they rode home in the encroaching dusk. He was wearing a heavy oilcloth jacket to keep off the thin rain, and the green scarf the librarians had bought him for Christmas was wrapped around his neck, as it had been every day since they’d given it to him. ‘You see it today? Every time this one spooked she gave him a look as if to say, “You get a hold of yourself.” And when he didn’t listen her ears went flat back. She’s telling him, all right.’

Alice watched the two horses walking side by side and marvelled at the tiny differences Fred could distinguish. He could assess a horse’s conformation, sucking his teeth at sloping shoulders or cow hocks or an underdeveloped top line, when all Alice saw was ‘nice horsey’. He could assess their characters too – they were pretty much who they were from birth, as long as men didn’t muck them up too much, he said. ‘Course, most couldn’t help themselves.’ She was often left with the impression that when Fred said these things he was talking about something else entirely.

He had taken to meeting her along her routes on a young Thoroughbred with a scarred ear – Pirate. He said it was helpful to have the young horse work alongside Spirit’s more level temperament, but she suspected he had other reasons for being there and she didn’t mind. It was hard enough being alone with her thoughts most of the day.

‘Did you finish the Hardy?’

Fred screwed up his face. ‘I did. Couldn’t warm to that Angel character, though.’

‘No?’

‘Found myself kind of wanting to give him a kick half the time. There she was, that poor girl, just wanting to love him. And him like some kind of preacher, judging her. Even though none of it was her fault. And then at the end he goes and marries her sister!’

Alice stifled a laugh. ‘I’d forgotten that bit.’