But even Charlotte must think the danger couldn’t quite stand up to the money Agnes was offering, or she would have forbidden him to go. Begged him not to. But she hadn’t.
He grabbed his novel off the side table and meandered up to the attic, mumbling about the forest all the way.
It was a small, cramped space, the attic, crammed with sacks of potatoes and carrots, old clothes, broken furniture they might repair or repurpose. Arthur’s bed was there, too, shoved up against an exterior wall so cold that he was reluctant to relinquish the warmth of his quilt on chill autumn mornings. Just now, Freya was curled on his pillow.
Arthur stashed the book in a box under his bed, where he’d kept his romance novels since first hiding one from his mother.She’d caught him with such a book at fifteen and given him an odd look.
Why would you be interested in a book like that?she’d asked, in a tone that had made him crimson with shame. He didn’t remember how he’d responded, only that he’d mumbledsomething. After a long moment, Eileen had said,I suppose it might teach you a thing or two about how to treat a lady.
But she’d looked so uneasy every time she’d seen him with a romance novel that he’d gone back to hiding them. Biscuit baking had been much the same. When Charlotte was eight, their mother had taught her to bake biscuits. Arthur, fifteen, had asked whether she might teach him, too. Eileen had laughed and told him it wasn’t something a young man needed to know. He’d been almost glad to make her laugh—she’d rarely laughed since their father’s disappearance—except that it had been at his own expense, for reasons he didn’t understand. Charlotte had taught him several years later.
Sometimes Arthur wondered how his father would have reacted to these things. George had always been so soft with him, so kind, so understanding of the ways in which Arthur was different from other boys. But perhaps he’d only been that way because Arthur had been so young: Eileen had been the same, until Arthur was a fifteen-year-old reading romance and asking how to bake biscuits.
His skin prickled. He’d been a failure all his life. He’d been afraid all his life, all the while pretending he had nothing to fear. He’d been afraid to tell his father who had broken his glasses. He’d been afraid to let his mother see his romance novels. He’d been so afraid to take the leap and move his family to Port Lorne that, the moment he had anything like enough saved up to manage it, he’d thrown his savings into the hands of the young woman he was supposed to be courting. For the romance of it all, was what he’d told himself—but wasn’t it truehe’d also done it as an excuse? So he could say,Ohwell, such is life, I’m sure I’ll save enough someday, and go peacefully about his dull, lonely existence in the comfort of knowing he couldn’t do anything to change it?
The rising wind howled, rattling the tiny window over his bed. Outside, the dark mass of trees bent lazily in the coming rain. Their leaves rushed like ocean waves. Arthur sat on his bed, waking the cat, and gazed at the dark forest.Thatought to have been what he feared. Instead he feared ridiculous, amorphous, almost nameless things.
No longer. He could do this. For God’s sake, all Mrs. Livingston wanted him to do was buy a clock. He could buy a clock! He would love to buy a clock! Clocks were his whole thing! Surely he could do that for his family, even if he failed them in sundry other ways.
He fell asleep imagining a house in Port Lorne and all the friends he would have to fill it. In the morning, over coffee, he told Charlotte he’d decided to go, then went down into the village and told Agnes the same.
vii. In which Arthur learns to drive a cart
Arthur had not expected to set out immediately, but with the sun cresting the horizon he was in the driver’s seat of a small cart hitched to a burly palomino gelding. The gelding tossed his head. He seemed to find Arthur’s driving skills dubious before they’d even set out. Arthur didn’t blame him. He’d never driven anywhere, never ridden a horse, barely interacted with a horse except to sometimes, surreptitiously, pet the nose of a cart horse after disembarking from the occasional hired cart on one of Charlotte’s bad days.
Agnes had not seemed to think of this, probably because she’d always had a driver until now. Likely because he was Arthur, Arthur had not thought of it, either, until he was in the driver’s seat, trying to get the driving lines in hand, and she’d already sailed back into the manor.
Arthur slapped the lines feebly. The horse snorted and pulled forward, but with Arthur’s uncertainty and lack of guidance, he stopped.
Arthur climbed out of the cart, considering asking Agnes to show him how this worked, but she never drove. It was always her driver or, in recent years, Gracie. And Gracie was in no condition to teach him.
Foolishly, he led the horse along by the bridle. Thank God the fishermen were out to sea, the factory workers at their shifts, the women tending house since it wasn’t market day, most of the shops shuttered for years. Ordinarily, the villagers ignored Arthur, but the few he passed now gawked and, when they thought he was out of earshot, laughed.
As he passed the Youngs’ cottage, Cormac emerged, carrying a fishing net. He was one of the few fishermen of Arthur’s generation who hadn’t yet had to resort to the cannery.
Like the other villagers, Cormac stared. Unlike the others, he recovered, cleared his throat, and spoke.
“Trouble with your cart, there?”
Arthur flushed. Sometimes he’d forget how blue Cormac’s eyes were; remembering flustered him. He never knew why.
“Well, er, Mrs. Livingston is sending me to Port Lorne on an errand, but I’m... I’m afraid I don’t know how to, er...”
Cormac thumbed up his cap, gazing at him. Arthur had always wished Cormac would notice him; now that Cormac had, he found it overwhelming. He stared at the cobblestones, fingers tight on the driving lines. The gelding snorted at his shoulder.
“Easiest thing in the world,” Cormac said at last. “I could show you, if you want. For a spell. Need to get back,” he added, nodding in the direction of the sea. “Came in for a fresh net. Lost my best one first thing.”
Arthur swallowed. “Yes, that would—that would be lovely.”
They clambered into the cart, sitting so close their thighs pressed together. It was unbearably intimate.
This is what comes of having no friends, Arthur thought in a panic.Anything at all starts to feel like intimacy.
“I didn’t know you knew horses,” he said, attempting to make conversation. To his mortification, it came out as a squeak.
The corner of Cormac’s mouth turned down. “Got an uncle who’s a farmer a few miles inland. Da used to lend me out to him, when he needed me. Here, take the lines.”
He talked Arthur around the perimeter of the village, correcting the way Arthur held the lines, telling him how to make the horse go faster or stop or change direction. The gelding’s ears twitched toward them, but he was a placid beast and did whatever Arthur made him do (which wasn’t always what Arthur had meant to make him do). Warm and strong, Cormac’s hands made Arthur’s stomach swoop whenever he touched Arthur to make some small correction, whether to the lines or Arthur’s grip or posture. It would have been extremely distracting had Arthur not been determined to focus, to show Cormac he was worth the time and that they might be friends hereafter.
