The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey

Author:Samantha Harvey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

‘Benedicite.’

‘Dominus.’

‘Confiteor.’

A sob. Poor Carter. I might have known he’d be the very first to confess. A moment before, he’d been outside the Lewyses’ house sweeping their yard, and I’d seen him drop his broom and run to the church after me. I was only half on my stool when his ‘Benedicite’ burbled like water from a spout and his body dropped to the cushion.

‘He was as good as a father to you,’ I said.

‘He was.’ A strangled kind of sound.

‘You’ll see him in heaven.’

We were whispering; it hadn’t been decided that way, but now that we were, it seemed we were committed to it. So we whispered on like thieves, and I bent forward to hear him.

‘Whatever’s to be done in the village, I’ll do,’ Carter said through tears. ‘I’ve swept Mary Grant’s house, and Fisker’s with his bad leg, and the Lewyses’ because of Joanna being so bloated with child, and Hikson’s. I said I’d help Hikson with his brewing, and there’s some slates on the church porch need replacing, and the dean said he’ll need help down at – down at – Tom Newman’s house, with the animals and that. Now that Tom’s – now that.’

Carter went into a pain-racked silence. I couldn’t see why Hikson needed any help, able-bodied man that he was. Lazy as a cowpat, was Hikson. If a child offered to carry him to church on a Sunday, he’d let them.

‘Why do you have to help everyone?’

‘I have grief all through my body, Father, like I’m stung.’

‘And so you’re running in sore circles.’

Carter said nothing.

‘Sometimes we have to sit with our sorrow, not run from it. Helping Hikson mash his grain won’t ease the sting.’

‘It might help atone for it.’

This time I said nothing. The day before, Janet Grant had rung the death bell, and all of Oakham had come to the church as was our custom, and I’d invited them to pray, and told them the death was Newman’s, but there was no body to bless or bury. I’d seen Herry Carter’s face among the many, blank as a stone, and I hadn’t known until then that, far from the absence of feeling, blankness could be the overwhelment of feeling. I thought he too had died, standing there.

Carter was sitting further back on the cushion than most did, and I was making no effort to turn myself from the grille. So I could see him, though the light was never good. He was so young in the face, and innocent, his nose button-ish and mildly upturned. His grey eyes were calm and fetching. His face was slack and melting with sorrow, the cheek I could see held the sheen of tears, his hair a nest, his fingers continually going up to it to scratch or ruffle.

‘Do you remember when Newman first came to the village?’ he said. ‘And we thought he was a criminal, or a merchant, or diseased, and we kept away from him.’

I nodded into my lap, though Carter wasn’t to know.

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