The Giver of Stars(81)
He placed the saddle on its stand and stood, thinking. Then he took a step towards her, lifted a hand, and touched the side of her face softly, an olive branch. She didn’t look up. Before, she would have pressed his palm to her skin and kissed it. The fact of this made something plummet inside him.
‘We’ve always been straight with each other, haven’t we?’
‘Sven –’
‘I respect how you want to live. I accepted that you don’t want to be tied. I haven’t so much as mentioned it since –’
She rubbed at her forehead. ‘Can we not do this now?’
‘What I mean is – we agreed. We agreed that … if you did decide you didn’t want me any more, you would say.’
‘Are we on this again?’ Margery sounded sad and exasperated. She turned away from him. ‘It’s not you. I don’t want you to go anywhere. I just – I just got a lot to think about.’
‘We’ve all got a lot to think about.’
She shook her head.
‘Margery.’
And there she stood, mulish as Charley. Giving him nothing.
Sven Gustavsson was not a man possessed of a difficult temperament, but he was proud and he had his limits. ‘I can’t keep doing this. I’m not going to keep bothering you.’ She raised her head as he turned. ‘You know where to find me when you’re ready to see me again.’ He held up one hand as he walked off down the mountain. He didn’t look back.
Sophia was off on Friday as it was William’s birthday and, given they were up to date with the repairs (possibly due to Alice’s spending so much extra time at the library), Margery had urged her to stay with her brother. Alice rode up Split Creek as dusk fell, noting that the light was still on, and wondered, given Sophia’s absence, which of the librarians was still inside. Beth was always swift to finish, dumping her books and racing home to the farm (if she didn’t get there quick enough her brothers would have eaten whatever food had been put by for her). Kathleen was equally keen to get home, to catch her children’s last waking moments before bedtime. It was only she and Izzy who kept their horses at Fred’s barn, and Izzy, it appeared, was gone from the project for good.
Alice unsaddled Spirit and stood for a minute in the warmth of the stall, then kissed the mare’s sweet-smelling ears, pressing her face against her warm neck and finding treats for her when she nuzzled her pockets with her soft, inquisitive nose. She loved the animal now, knew her traits and strengths as well as she knew her own. The little horse was, she realized, the most constant relationship in her life. When she was sure the mare was comfortable, she headed for the back door of the library, from which she could still see a sliver of light through the unpapered gaps in the wood.
‘Marge?’ she called.
‘Well, you sure do take your time.’
Alice blinked at the sight of Fred, seated at a little table in the middle of the room, dressed in a clean flannel shirt and blue jeans.
‘Took your point about not being seen with me in public. But I thought maybe we could have a meal together anyway.’
Alice closed the door behind her, taking in the neatly laid table, with a little vase of coltsfoot, harbinger of spring, in the centre, the two chairs, and the oil lamps flickering on the desks nearby, sending shadows over the spines of the books around them.
He seemed to take her shocked silence for reticence. ‘It’s just pork and black bean stew. Nothing too fancy – I wasn’t sure what time you’d make it back. The greens may have cooled a little. I didn’t realize you’d be so thorough with that horse of mine.’ He lifted the lid off the heavy iron pot and the room was suddenly filled with the scent of slow-cooked meat. Beside her on the table sat a heavy pan of corn bread and a bowl of green beans.
Alice’s stomach gurgled unexpectedly and loudly, and she pressed a hand to it, trying not to blush.
‘Well, someone approves,’ Fred said evenly. He stood and walked over to pull out a chair for her.
She put her hat on the desk, and unwound her scarf. ‘Fred, I –’
‘I know. But I enjoy your company, Alice. And being a man in these parts, I don’t get to entertain someone like you too often.’ He leaned towards her to pour her a glass of wine. ‘So I’d be much obliged if you’d … indulge me?’
She opened her mouth to protest, then found she wasn’t sure what she was protesting. When she looked up, he was watching her, waiting for a sign. ‘This all looks wonderful,’ she said.
He let out a little breath then, as if perhaps even up to that point he had not been sure whether she would cut and run. And then, as he began to serve the food, he smiled, a slow, broad smile that was so filled with satisfaction she couldn’t help but smile back at him.
The Packhorse Library had become, in the months of its existence, a symbol of many things, and a focus for others, some controversial and some that would provoke unease in certain people however long it stayed around. But for one freezing damp evening in March, it became a tiny, glowing refuge. Two people locked safely inside, briefly released from their complicated histories and the weighty expectations of the town around them, ate good food and laughed and discussed poetry and stories, horses, and mistakes they had made, and while there was barely a touch between them, apart from the accidental brushing of skin against skin while passing bread or refilling a glass, Alice rediscovered a little part of her that she hadn’t known she missed: the flirtatious young woman who liked to talk about things she had read, seen and thought about as much as she liked to ride a mountain track. In turn Fred enjoyed a woman’s full attention, a ready laugh at his jokes and the challenge of an idea that might differ from his own. Time flew, and each ended the night full and happy, with the rare glow that comes from knowing your very being has been understood by somebody else, and that there might just be someone out there who will only ever see the best in you.