Susanna sews. She sews and sews. Her grandmother asks her mother, Where is Judith, how are the serving girls getting along with the washing, is it raining, doesn’t it seem that the days are getting longer, was it not kind of their neighbour to return that runaway fowl?
Agnes says nothing, just keeps on looking out of the window.
Mary talks on, of the letter they received from Susanna’s father, how he is about to take the company on tour again, that he had a chest cold – caught from river fumes – but is now recovered.
Agnes gives a sharp intake of breath, turning to them, her face alert, strained.
‘Oh,’ Mary says, putting her hand to her cheek, ‘you frightened me. Whatever is—’
‘Do you hear that?’ Agnes says.
All three pause, listen, their heads cocked.
‘Hear what?’ Mary asks, her brows beginning to knit.
‘That . . .’ Agnes holds up a finger ‘。 . . There! Do you hear it?’
‘I hear nothing,’ Mary snaps.
‘A tapping.’ Agnes strides to the fireplace, presses a hand to the chimney breast. ‘A rustling.’ She leaves the fireplace and moves to the settle, looking up. ‘A definite noise. Can’t you hear it?’
Mary allows a long pause. ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s likely nothing more than a jackdaw come down the chimney.’
Agnes leaves the room.
Susanna grips the cloth in one hand, the needle in the other. If she just keeps on making stitches, over and over, of equal size, perhaps all this will pass.
Judith is in the street. She has Edmond’s dog with her; it lies in the sun, one paw raised up, while she weaves green ribbon into the long hair of its neck. It looks up at her trustingly, patiently.
The sun is hot on her skin, the light in her eyes, which is perhaps why she doesn’t notice the figure coming down Henley Street: a man, walking towards her, hat in his hand, a sack slung on his back.
He calls her name. She lifts her head. He waves. She is running towards him before she even says his name to herself, and the dog is leaping along beside her, thinking that this is much more fun that the ribbon game, and the man has caught her in his arms and swung her off the ground, saying, My little maid, my little Jude, and she cannot catch her breath for laughing, and then she thinks she has not seen him since—
‘Where have you been?’ she is saying to him, suddenly furious, pushing him away from her, and somehow she is crying now. ‘You’ve been gone such a long time.’
If he sees her anger, he doesn’t show it. He is lifting his sack from the ground, scratching the dog behind his ears, taking her by the hand and pulling her towards the house.
‘Where is everyone?’ he booms, in his biggest, loudest voice.
A dinner. His brothers, his parents, Eliza and her husband, Agnes and the girls all squeezed together around the table. Mary has beheaded one of the geese, in his honour – the honking and shrieking were terrible to hear – and now its carcass lies, dismantled and torn, between them all.
He is telling a story involving an innkeeper, a horse and a millpond. His brothers are laughing, his father is pounding the table with his fist; Edmond is tickling Judith, making her squeal; Mary is remonstrating with Eliza about something; the dog is leaping for scraps thrown to it by Richard, barking in between. The story reaches a climax – something to do with a gate left open, Agnes isn’t sure what – and everybody roars. And Agnes is looking at her husband, across the table.
There is something about him, something different. She cannot put her finger on what. His hair is longer, but that’s not it. He has a second earring in his other ear, but that’s not it. His skin shows signs of the sun and he is wearing a shirt she hasn’t seen before, with long, trailing cuffs. But it is none of these things.
Eliza is talking now and Agnes glances towards her for a moment, then back at her husband. He is listening to whatever Eliza is saying. His fingers, shining with goose fat, toy with a crust on his plate. How the goose complained and then shrieked, Agnes thinks, and then ran for a moment, headless, as if sure it could get away, could change its fate. Her husband’s face is eager as he listens to his sister; he is leaning forward slightly. He has one arm around Judith’s chair.
It’s a whole year, almost, that he’s been away. Summer has come again and it is almost the anniversary of their son’s death. She does not know how this can be, but it is so.
She stares at him, stares and stares. He has come back among them, embracing them all, shouting for them, pulling gifts from his bag: hair combs, pipes, handkerchiefs, a hank of bright wool, a bracelet for her, in hammered silver, a ruby at the clasp.