Susanna, shortly before her second birthday, sits in a basket on the floor of her grandmother’s parlour, her legs crossed, her skirts billowing up around her, filled with air. She holds a wooden spoon in each hand and with these she paddles as fast as she can. She is sculling down the river. The current is fast and weaving. Weeds waft and unravel. She has to paddle and paddle to stay afloat – if she stops, who knows what may happen? Ducks and swans drift alongside her, seemingly serene and unruffled, but Susanna knows that their webbed feet are working, working beneath the water. No one but she can see these animals. Not her mother, who stands at the window, her back to the room, scattering seed on the sill. Not her grandmother, who sits at the table, her workbox open in front of her. Not her father, who is a pair of legs, encased in dark stockings, pacing from one wall to another. The soles of his shoes scuff and thud on the surface of Susanna’s river. He walks past a duck, through a swan, across a bank of reeds. Susanna wants to tell him to be careful, to check if he can swim. She has a vision of her father’s head – dark, like his stockings – disappearing beneath the brownish-green lapping waters. She feels her throat clutch, her eyes sting at the thought.
She looks up at her father and sees that he has stopped pacing. His legs are still, straight, a pair of tree trunks. He is standing in front of his mother, who is still sewing, her needle disappearing and reappearing through the fabric. It looks to Susanna like a fish, a slender silver one, a minnow perhaps or a grayling, leaping out of the water and diving back down, leaping out, diving down, and she is thinking about her river again when she realises that her grandmother has slammed down her sewing, has stood up, has begun to shout at Susanna’s father, right up into his face. Susanna watches, aghast, spoon-paddles poised. She takes in this unusual sight, presses it into her mind: her grandmother, face distorted by anger, her hand gripping the arm of her son; her father wresting his arm from her grip, speaking in a low and menacing tone; then her grandmother gesturing towards Susanna’s mother, rapping out her name – said by her grandmother so that it sounds like Annis – making her mother turn around. Her mother’s dress is stuffed out at the front with another baby. A brother or sister for you, she has been told. Her mother is also holding a squirrel on her arm. Can this be true? Susanna knows it is. The animal’s tail flares red as a flame in the sunlight coming through the glass. It scampers up her mother’s sleeve, to nestle under her cap, next to the hair, which Susanna is sometimes permitted to unravel, to brush, to plait.
Her mother’s face is serene. She contemplates the parlour, the grandmother, the man, the child in the boat-basket. She strokes the squirrel’s tail; Susanna feels a pull, a longing to do the same, but the squirrel will never let her come near. Her mother strokes the tail and shrugs at whatever is being said to her. She gives a vague smile and turns away, lifting the squirrel down from her shoulder and letting it escape out of the open casement.
Susanna watches all this. The ducks and swans swim closer and closer, crowding in.
Mary stitches and stitches, the needle rising from the seam and falling into it. She hardly knows what she is doing but she can see that, as she listens to what her son is saying, her stitches are getting bigger, clumsier, and this annoys her in a specific way because she is known for her needlework – she is, she knows it. She tries to keep her head, tries to remain calm, but her son is saying that he has no doubt this plan will work, that he will be able to expand John’s business in London. Mary can barely contain her rage, her scorn. Her daughter-in-law is contributing nothing to this discussion, of course, but merely standing at the window, making half-witted noises into the air.
There is a reddish, rat-faced squirrel that lives in a tree outside the house: Agnes likes to feed and pet it, from time to time. Mary cannot for the life of her understand why, and she has told her daughter-in-law that it must not enter the house, heaven knows what diseases and plagues it might carry, but Agnes will not listen. Agnes never listens. Not even now, when her husband is proposing to leave the house, to run away, to hide, when what he really ought to be doing is falling on his knees and begging forgiveness, from his mother, who took him and his bride and her swollen belly into her own house not three years ago, from his father who, with God as their witness, has his faults but always tries to do his best by his family. Not-listening is Agnes’s customary state.
She cannot look at her son; she cannot look at her daughter-in-law, standing there, her belly swollen once more, fussing over that damn squirrel in her hands, as if nothing of any consequence is happening here.
John treats Agnes as a simpleton, a rural idiot. He nods at her, if he passes her in the house or sees her at table. How are we today, Agnes? he will say, as if to a child. He will look upon her mildly, if she brings a tangle of filthy roots out of her pocket, or opens her hands to show them a collection of shining acorns. He tolerates her eccentricities, her night-time wanderings, her sometimes dishevelled appearance, the daft imaginings and predictions she on occasion comes out with, the various animals and other creatures she brings into the house (a newt, which she put in the water pitcher, a featherless dove, which she nursed back to full health). If Mary complains to him as they lie in bed at night, he pats her hand and says, Let the girl alone. She’s from the country, remember, not from the town. At which Mary could say three things: Agnes is no girl. She is a woman who enticed a much younger boy, our boy, into marriage for the worst possible reason. And: You forgive her too much, and only because of that dowry of hers. Don’t think I don’t see this. And: I am also from the country, brought up on a farm, but do I run about the place in the night and bring wild animals into the house? No, I do not. Some of us, she will sniff to her husband, know how to conduct ourselves.
‘It would help matters,’ her son is saying, airily, insistently, ‘help all of us, to expand Father’s business like this. It’s an inspired idea of his. God knows things in this town have become difficult enough for him. If I were to take the trade to London, I am certain I might be able to—’
Before even realising that her patience has slipped out from under her, like ice from under her feet, she is up, she is standing, she is gripping her son by the arm, she is shaking it, she is saying to him, ‘This whole scheme is nothing but foolishness. I have no idea what put this notion into your father’s head. When have you ever shown the slightest interest in his business? When have you proved yourself worthy of this kind of responsibility? London, indeed! Remember when we sent you to fetch those deerskins in Charlecote and you lost them on the way back? Or the time you traded a dozen gloves for a book? Remember? How can you and he even consider taking business to London? You think there are no glovers in London? They’ll eat you alive, soon as look at you.’
What she really wants to say is, Don’t go. What she really wants is for him to be able to unpick this marriage to this scullion with wildness running in her veins, for him never to have seen her, this woman from the forest whom everybody said was a strange, unmarriageable sort. Why would she have set her sights on Mary’s son, who had no job, no property? She wishes she had never come up with the scheme to send her son as tutor to that farm by the forest: if she could go back and undo that, she would. Mary hates having this woman in her house, the way she can appear in the room without being heard, the way she looks at you, right into you, right through you, as if you are nothing but water and air to her, the way she croons and sings to the child. What she really wants is for her son never to have got wind of John’s plan to branch out into London. The thought of the city, its crowds, its diseases, stops the breath in her chest.
‘Agnes,’ she says, as her son irritably pulls away his arm, ‘surely you agree with me. He cannot go. He cannot just walk away like this.’
Agnes turns at last, from the window. She is still holding, Mary is incensed to see, the squirrel in her hands. Its tail slides and slips through her fingers; its eyes, gold beads pierced with black, fix themselves on Mary. Beautiful fingers, Agnes has, Mary is pained to notice. Tapering, white, slender. Agnes is, Mary is forced to admit, a striking woman. But it is an unsettling, wrong sort of beauty: the dark hair is ill-matched with the golden-green eyes, the skin whiter than milk, the teeth evenly spaced but pointed, like a fox’s. Mary finds she cannot look at her daughter-in-law for long, she cannot hold her gaze. This creature, this woman, this elf, this sorceress, this forest sprite – because she is that, everyone says so, Mary knows it to be true – bewitched and ensnared her boy, lured him into a union. This, Mary can never forgive.
Mary appeals to Agnes now. Surely, on this, they may be united. Surely, her daughter-in-law will come down on her side in this matter, the task of keeping him with them, at home, safe, where they can see him.
‘Agnes,’ Mary says, ‘we are in agreement, are we not? These are foolish plans with no basis in sense. He must stay here, with us. He should be here, when this baby is born. His place is with you, with the children. He must get down to work, here, in Stratford. He cannot take off like this. Can he? Agnes?’
Agnes lifts her head and her face is visible for a moment, beneath her cap. She smiles, her most enigmatic, maddening smile, and Mary feels a falling in her chest, sees her mistake, sees that Agnes is never going to side with her.
‘I see no reason,’ Agnes says, in her light, fluting voice, ‘to keep him against his will.’
Fury swarms into Mary’s throat. She could strike the woman, no matter that she is with child. She could take this needle and drive it into the white flesh of her, flesh that her son has touched and taken and kissed and everything else. The thought of it makes Mary sick, makes her stomach heave, the idea of her boy, her child, and this creature.
She gives an inarticulate noise, half sob, half scream. She hurls her needlework to the floor and stamps away from the table, away from her work, away from her son, stepping over the child, who is sitting in a basket by the hearth, two kitchen spoons in her hands.
It does not escape her notice, as she makes her way towards the passage, that Agnes and her son start to laugh, softly at first, then more loudly, shushing each other, their footsteps sounding on the flags, walking towards each other, no doubt.
Weeks later, Agnes walks through the streets of Stratford, her hand hooked into her husband’s arm. The greatness of her belly prevents her from walking too fast; she cannot draw enough breath into her chest because the baby is taking up more and more room. She can sense her husband trying to move slowly for her, can sense his muscles quivering with the effort of suppressing his innate need for exertion, for motion, for speed. It is, for him, like trying to hold off from drinking when you are ravaged with thirst. He is ready to be gone: she sees this. There has been much preparation, much argument, many arrangements to be made, letters to write, bags to pack, clothes that Mary must wash and wash again herself; nobody else is allowed. There are samples of gloves that John must oversee, then package and unpack and repackage.
And now the moment has arrived. Agnes conjugates it: he is going, he will be gone, he will go. She has put these circumstances together; she has set it in motion, as if she were the puppeteer, hidden behind a screen, gently pulling on the strings of her wooden people, easing and guiding them on where to go. She asked Bartholomew to speak to John, then waited for John to speak to her husband. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t got Bartholomew to plant the idea in John’s head. She has created this moment – no one else – and yet, now it is happening, she finds that it is entirely at odds with what she desires.
What she desires is for him to stay at her side, for his hand to remain in hers. For him to be there, in the house, when she brings this baby into the world. For them to be together. What she desires, though, does not matter. He is going. She is, however secretly, sending him away.
His pack is bound and tied upon his back. More boxes of goods will be sent after him when he is settled. His boots are cleaned and polished; she has massaged grease into their seams, to keep out the damp of London streets.
Agnes casts a sideways glance at him. His profile is set, his beard trimmed and oiled (she did this herself, too, last night, stroking the blade against the leather strop, then taking its lethal edge to the skin of her beloved – such trust, such submission). His eyes are lowered: he doesn’t want to greet people or talk for long. His hand is tight over hers, his fingers pressing down hard. He is eager to get under way. To get this over. To embark.
He is talking about a cousin he will visit in London, how the cousin has secured a room for him.
‘Is it by the river?’ she hears herself say, even though she knows the answer: he has told her all this before. It seems important that they keep talking, about nothing of great significance. The people of Stratford are all around them. Watching, observing, listening. It is important, for him, for her, for the family, for the business, that they appear harmonious, in step, in accord. That their very bearing refute the rumours going around: they cannot live together; John’s business is failing; he is leaving for London because of some kind of disgrace.
Agnes lifts her chin a little higher. There is no disgrace, says the straightness of her back. There is no problem in our marriage, says the proud, outward curve of her middle. There is no failing in the business, say her husband’s shining boots.
‘It is,’ he says. ‘And not far from the tanneries, I believe. So I shall be able to view them, for Father, and establish which is the best.’
‘I see,’ she says, even though she has a distinct feeling that he shall not be in the gloving business for long.
‘The river,’ he continues, ‘is said to have dangerous tides.’
‘Oh?’ she says, even though she has heard him telling this to his mother.
‘It is crucial, my cousin says, each time you cross to secure an experienced boatman.’
‘Indeed.’
He talks on, about the different shores of the river, the landing stages, how certain times of day are safer than others. She pictures a thick, wide river, twisted with lethal currents, studded with tiny vessels, like a garment sewn with beads. She pictures one of these vessels, containing her husband, swept downstream, his dark head uncovered, his clothes filled with river-drink, streaked with mud, his boots brimming with silt. She has to shake her head, grip her fingers to the solidity of his arm, to rid herself of this. It is not true, it will not be true; it is just her mind playing tricks on her.
She walks with him as far as the posting inn, him talking now about lodgings, about how he will be back before she knows it, how he will think of her, of Susanna, every day. He will secure a dwelling for all of them there, in London, as soon as he can and they may all live together again, by and by. There, by the milestone with one arrow towards ‘London’ (she knows this word, the large, confident stroke of the L, the rounded os, like a pair of eyes, the repeated arch of the n), they stop.
‘You will write?’ he says, his face creasing. ‘When the time comes?’ Both his hands reach towards her and cup the lower curve of her stomach.
‘Of course,’ she says.
‘My father,’ he gives a rueful smile, ‘is hoping for a boy.’
‘I know.’
‘But I do not mind. Boy or girl. Maid or lad. It is all one to me. As soon as I get word, I shall make arrangements to come and fetch you all. And then we shall be together, in London.’
He holds her close, as close as he can, with the swell of the child between them, his arms around her. ‘Do you have no feeling?’ he whispers into her ear. ‘No sense this time? Of what it will be?’
She leans her head into him, close to the opening of his shirt. ‘No,’ she says, and she is aware of the puzzlement in her voice. It has come as a surprise to her that she has been unable to picture or divine the child she is carrying: girl or boy, she cannot tell. She is receiving no definite signs. She dropped a knife from the table the other day and it fell pointing towards the fire. A girl, then, she thought. But later the same day she found herself spooning the pap of an apple, sharp, pleasingly crisp, into her mouth and she thought: A boy. It is altogether confusing. Her hair is dry and crackles when she brushes it, which means a girl, but her skin is soft, her nails strong, which means a boy. A male peewit flew into her path the other day but then a female pheasant came squawking out of the bushes.
‘I cannot tell,’ she says. ‘And I don’t know why. It—’
‘You must not worry,’ he says, putting a hand on either side of her face and lifting it up so that they are looking into each other’s eyes. ‘All shall be well.’
She nods, dropping her gaze.
‘Have you not always said you will have two children?’
‘I have,’ she says.
‘Well, then. Here,’ he rests a palm against her, ‘is the second. Ready and waiting. All shall be well,’ he says again. ‘I know it.’
He kisses her, full on the mouth, then draws back to regard her. She pulls her face into a smile, catching herself hoping that some of the town may be watching. There, she thinks, as she cups her hand against his cheek, and there, as she touches her fingers to his hair. He kisses her again, for longer this time. Then he sighs, cradling the back of her head, his face buried in her neck.
‘I shan’t go,’ he mutters, but she feels the pull and stretch of the words, how he says them, but at the same time they peel away from his real feelings.
‘You shall,’ she says.
‘I shan’t.’
‘You must.’
He sighs again, his breath rustling in the starch of her coif. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be leaving you now, while you are . . . I think perhaps—’
‘It must be,’ she says, and touches her fingers to the canvas of his pack from which, she knows, he has removed some of the glove samples his father has given him, and replaced them with books and papers. She gives him a wry halfsmile. Perhaps he catches her knowledge of this act, perhaps not.
‘I have your mother and your sister,’ she continues, pressing her hand to his luggage, ‘and your whole family. Not to mention my own. You need to go. You will find us a new home in London and we will join you there, as soon as we can.’
‘I don’t know,’ he murmurs. ‘I hate to leave you. And what if I fail?’
‘Fail?’
‘What if I can’t find work there? What if I can’t expand the business? What if—’
‘You won’t fail,’ she says. ‘I know it.’
He frowns and looks at her more carefully. ‘You know it? What do you know? Tell me. Have you a sense of something? Have you—’
‘Never mind what I know. You must go.’ She pushes at his chest, putting air and space between them, feeling his arms slide off her, disentangling them. His face is crumpled, tense, uncertain. She smiles at him, drawing in breath.
‘I won’t say goodbye,’ she says, keeping her voice steady.
‘Neither will I.’
‘I won’t watch you walk away.’
‘I’ll walk backwards,’ he says, backing away, ‘so I can keep you in my sights.’
‘All the way to London?’
‘If I have to.’
She laughs. ‘You’ll fall into a ditch. You’ll crash into a cart.’
‘So be it.’
He darts forward, catches her to him and kisses her once. ‘That’s for you,’ he says, then kisses her again. ‘That’s for Susanna.’ And again, ‘And that’s for the baby.’
‘I shall be sure to deliver it,’ she says, trying to keep the smile on her face, ‘when the time comes. Now go.’
‘I’m going,’ he says, walking away from her, still facing her. ‘It doesn’t feel like leaving, if I walk like this.’
She flaps her hands. ‘Go,’ she tells him.
‘I’m going. But I shall be back before you know it to fetch you all.’
She turns away before he reaches the bend in the road. It will take him four days to reach London, less if he is picked up along the way by a willing farmer with a cart. She will encourage him to go but she will not watch him leave.
She walks back, more slowly, the way she came. How odd it feels, to move along the same streets, the route in reverse, like inking over old words, her feet the quill, going back over work, rewriting, erasing. Partings are strange. It seems so simple: one minute ago, four, five, he was here, at her side; now, he is gone. She was with him; she is alone. She feels exposed, chill, peeled like an onion.
There is the stall they passed earlier, piled high with tin pots and cedar shavings. There is the woman they saw, still making her decision, holding two pots in her hands, weighing them, and how can she still be there, how can she still be engaged in the same activity, in the choosing of a pot, when such a change, such a transformation has occurred in Agnes’s life? Her very world has cloven in two, and here is the same dog, dozing in a doorway. Here is a young woman, tying up clothing into bundles, just as she was doing when they passed. Here is her neighbour, a man with grizzled hair and a yellowish tinge to his thin face (he will not last the year, Agnes thinks, the fact flitting through her mind like a swallow across a sky), giving her a grave nod as he walks by. Can he not see, can he not read that life as she knows it is over, that he is gone?
The baby gives a swift, shrugging movement, pressing a palm, a foot, a shoulder against the wall of skin. She places a hand there – a hand outside, next to the hand inside – as if nothing has changed, as if the world is just as it was.
