Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield Page A

William would not bring grief into it.
    But, but, but. They couldn’t go on as they were. Bliss, disaster, call it what you will, the thing was bound to happen sooner or later, they wouldn’t be able to stop themselves. It was a predicament.
    On Thursday, in the tenterfield, the solution came to him.
    “Uncle Paul!”
    Paul half rose in alarm as William burst in. “What is it?” He prepared himself for news of an accident: someone burned or drowned, cloth scorched or torn or blown away.
    “I must have the horse. I have to ride to Nether Wychwood.”
    “Now? Why?”
    “There’s a girl. I have to marry her.”
    “This minute? Surely not. Sit down.”
    William didn’t sit down. He didn’t even remove his hand from the door handle but stood ready to be out the door the minute he had permission. But he did answer Paul’s questions. Who are her people? And this Rose, what does she do all day? Why is it this girl that you must marry?
    They rode to Nether Wychwood together. Paul saw that the Westons were good people. The Westons liked what they saw of Paul. Will and Rose sat palely on the settle, hand in anxious hand. The date was set for a fortnight’s time.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

    T he hopes of the Misses Young, which had never matured into expectations, now died. Poll ruffled William’s hair like a pet dog when Ned took him for a last bachelors’ drink in the Red Lion. “Nice girl, is she?” and on learning the answer, “that’s all right then.” The spinsters teased relentlessly until they made William blush, for once he was wed, they would never be able to tease him again. And everywhere he went in the mill, men shook his hand and offered congratulations or jovial warnings. Mute Greg presented him with a pair of figures, a bride and groom, that he had twisted himself out of straw.
    William met Fred and Jeannie arm in arm in the high street, she buxom as a hen, he grown fat on bread and contentment: “Good news, William. It’s a sweet life!”
    “And this is from Charles,” Paul said. It was a letter congratulating him and letting him know that he was sending a gift for William and his new wife: a painting of Venice, to put on their wall.
    And now, walking home after midnight, the night before his wedding day, he failed to see a form hunched low against a wall in the dark. The first he knew of it was when his foot caught and he went flying, hands out to save himself from a fall. The thing he had tripped over sprawled and grunted and something sounded: glass, a bottle tipping over.
    “Luke? Is that you, Luke?”
    “Who’s that?”
    “It’s Will Bellman.”
    The figure in the dark groped for something, there was a tiny chinking noise and a murmur of satisfaction. The bottle was not broken, then. The smell of drink was strong off him, and William was not certain that Luke knew who he was, nor whether he knew someone was there at all. He put a hand on Luke’s shoulder—he was even thinner than he had been as a child, if that were possible—and shook gently.
    “Luke? You all right? What are you up to, these days?”
    There was a long silence, long enough for Will to think the drink had put him to sleep, before Luke came to himself and spoke.
    “I remember . . .” Words failing him, Luke resorted to an impoverished pantomime with his shaking hands. Spitting in his palm—well, that was what it looked like—and fingertip meeting thumb with drunken delicacy, and a gesture, fine, stroking, meaningless. Luke expelled a few more syllables— catapult, it sounded like that, anyway—and chuckled in pleasure.
    William waited, but there was no explanation.
    “I’m getting married tomorrow,” he said.
    There was no sign that Luke had heard him. After another silence, William made up his mind to go, but Luke’s voice came again: “Do you remember? I remember . . .”
    William turned. He walked home for his last night alone in his bed.
    I am getting married tomorrow, he told the house as he entered it. I