The Telling

towing a barge, hundreds of feet above the valley floor. There was a man at her head, leading her.
    ‘Pardon me,’ I called, ‘is this the right way into town?’
    ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It is.’ His voice was strangely accented, his face weather-tanned and pocked. ‘D’ you want a lift? Hop on.’
    I thanked him. He held the horse, and a second man came out of the long low cabin and helped me on board. There was a bench built into the front of the boat; I sat there, and wrapped my shawl around me, and the horse began to walk on, and the barge to move, and suddenly the weight of all that had happened, and what I had done, and the fatigue of my journey, descended on me together, and I leaned my head against the side of the cabin, and I closed my eyes. I heard the gentle thump of the horse’s hooves, the wash of the water against the prow, a clink and clatter from within the cabin. It was a relief to be borne along.
    I may have dozed a little; the next thing I remember was being offered a cup of steaming tea.
    ‘It’s a bit stewed,’ he said. ‘I’ve just heated it through. We were going to get new supplies at Atkinsons.’
    The tea was black and sour, but I was in need of it, and was grateful for it. He sat with me and asked where I was heading for, and I told him the street, and lied, saying that I was going to stay with friends and look for work, and he said he knew the street, it crossed the canal; he could let me off at the bridge. I thanked him, and he said it was no trouble, and he smiled.
    The canal continued through open, marshy-looking fields, studded with sheep and cows. We passed a farm, then the canal was flanked with hawthorn and hazel hedgerows, heavy with berries and nuts, and it wasn’t easy to see beyond them. There were high buildings ahead, built of golden stone. I could hear a strange humming, clattering sound, and was just about to ask the bargeman if he knew what it might be, but then we cleared a bend and were between the buildings; the air was filthy with smoke and damp; it was dark. Walls rose up on either side of the canal like cliffs, but full of bright-lit windows. Men scrambled to unload cargo from the barges on to the banks; others shifted the loads and hooked them to ropes hanging slack from winches and pulleys; others hoisted them up into the air, others leaned out to grab at the bundles and guide them into the buildings. All the time insults and instructions were flung back and forth and up and down. The noise was terrible. The air was vile. The clattering and burring were too loud almost to talk over.
    ‘What’s the noise?’ I asked.
    ‘Spinning,’ he said. ‘And weaving. They’ve got power looms now. They’re the worst of it.’
    We’d passed the first mill and were approaching a bridge. He called out to the man at the horse’s head, who spoke to her, slowed her to a halt. He lifted a pole from the roof of the cabin, and lowered it into the water, and pushed against it, moving the boat into the bank. They helped me off the barge.
    ‘Up yon,’ the bargeman said. ‘That’s Fell Lane.’
    I could see nothing but a flight of stone steps up the bridge, the slab-fronts of mills on either bank, the buildings beyond blanking out the sky.
    ‘Thank you: thank you very much.’
    He shrugged. ‘Nay bother. Take care of yourself.’
    The horse walked placidly into the shadows of the bridge, and the first man went with her, and then the barge slipped into the darkness, and the bargeman waved at me, and they were gone. I climbed the steps up to the street; I felt faint now that I was nearing the journey’s end; I couldn’t catch my breath. I came out through a narrow gap; below me the street swept down through mills and warehouses and shops; above, there were flat-fronted terraced houses built in stone.
    I checked the number on my slip of folded paper. 108. I made my way up hill, the paper clutched in my hand. The sound of the mills grew a little fainter. I’d never been to a house with a number before. It was new-looking, as if it hadn’t yet settled on to its foundations, but was already streaked with damp. The front door opened straight onto the street. I knocked.
    I waited, listening. A baby’s cries, sharp and demanding. I felt something inside me cleave towards it, an urgency to comfort it, to stop it crying. I heard footsteps, and a murmuring consoling voice. The door was opened by a woman; she was carrying the baby. Too old to be the baby’s mother, she