Free The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds Page B

him as funny. It was the cap particularly that made her look cute, childish or comically ecclesiastical. Her haughty, lordly, stern expression when asleep could also amuse him.
    ‘What are you peering at?’ she asked.
    ‘Only you. Can’t a man peer at his wife?’
    ‘Why? Do I look . . . is there something?’
    ‘No, no. You look very nice.’
    ‘Oh well, then. He’ll be gone tomorrow morning.’
    ‘Yes, he will.’
    ‘And he hasn’t been so terrible.’
    ‘Oh, yes, he has. I can’t wait to pack him off. Spiteful, resentful man.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘You don’t know the half of it.’
    ‘So what is there to tell me?’
    ‘Nothing. There’s nothing to tell you, nothing that needs to be told.’
    ‘Well, I’m sorry he’s been horrid.’
    ‘Not that he can help it.’
    ‘Poor battered old cat,’ she said. She petted his head, lay softly against his side.
    ‘Mm. That’s nice.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said pouting.
    Matthew reached a hand down and laid it on the warm width of her thigh. The flesh was so smooth under the sliding soft fabric. ‘Very soothing.’
     
    Oswald Allen’s farewell was surprisingly gracious. He handed out sixpences to the children, even though only Abigail was young enough to be delighted. He thanked Eliza for the hospitality of her home and invited them all to visit in York.
    Matthew and Eliza walked him to the station - again he insisted that they should not get a carriage for him - and during that walk the silences did lengthen uncomfortably. But Oswald could act as though absorbed in details of the scene, the motionless cold cattle, the ponds and their withered reeds, the passers-by.
    Seated in his carriage, he raised a gloved hand to wave. The glove was buttoned at the side, his coat buttoned at the front, his collar firm beneath his chin. Matthew felt he had him strait-jacketed and safely stowed for transportation. In profile, Oswald opened a small volume, presumably devotional, and began to read.
    ‘Yes, yes,’ said Matthew to himself. ‘Off you go.’ The train hissed, clanked, and its four carriages rumbled away towards London. The platform filled with steam. Like a genie in a cloud, Oswald was gone.
    ‘I don’t expect we will see him again for some time.’
    ‘You’re forgetting the wedding.’
    ‘So I am.’The wedding. For which he needed money.
     
    Nobody wanted to play. Abigail’s attentions slid off her father. She clambered up his legs, received a quick flinch of a smile, and was handed down again. Even her trick of folding his ear so that the top bendy part touched the bottom bendy part only resulted in a stubborn horse’s shake of the head and a reprimand for disturbing his papers, which she hadn’t done in her opinion. He apologised when she told him, even smiled at her, and pressed a firm, furry kiss to her forehead, but after that he sent her away.
    Hannah wasn’t anywhere to be found and her mother was little better, talking tediously with Dora. Abigail pulled at her mother’s skirts and was firmly disengaged. Her mother then fetched her outdoor clothes, fitted her into them, deafening Abigail as she fastened her hat, and ushered her out to run around in the gardens.
    Snow. Fresh snow that covered the gaps in the old snow and shone evenly everywhere. Abigail squinted at the hard bounce of bright light, breathed the sparkling, almost painful air. She ran a little way to stamp her footprints, looked back at them, continued onto the lawn, which gave way differently under her so that she stumbled, whitening her knees and mittens. She tasted the snow on her palms: a nothing taste, but full of an unnameable big thing, full of distance, full of the sky. Quickly it soaked through the wool and chilled her skin. She rubbed her hands on her coat and set off running again - she’d remembered the water pump by Fairmead House.
    Yes, there were! There were icicles hanging from its nose.They were smooth at the top and tapered down, with bulges, like a pea pod, to a