Are the twins well? And you?

Ever affectionately,

John

He read it through then read it through again. The difficulty of knowing if you are behaving correctly. The difficulty of knowing how what you say and do will appear to the others, if perhaps you have lost some common, invisible thread of sense.

He folded, sealed and addressed the letter, handed it to Nell who passed it to Tom who took it to the toll house where it would be forwarded to the Cross Keys and loaded on to the Bristol mail. The reply came in three days. Nell carried it up with his lunch. She had recognised the hand and said how nice it was to have a letter from Lucy. She said she hoped it might mean a visit would soon follow.

He broke the seal and moved to the window. There were some lines about her relief in hearing from him at last, a gentle admonishment at his leaving them all so long without knowledge of him. Some news of their sister Sarah (pregnant with her fifth), some matter about the twins (childhood illnesses). Then, near the bottom of the page, the information he was looking for. A ship (William is making me copy this most precisely for he does not entirely believe a woman can be relied upon to be accurate in a matter of business . . . ) was leaving Bristol on the 29th, bound for Glasgow. Was the 29th too soon? She was called the Jenny, and William undertook to speak to her master about a cabin. It was, however, likely to be a very small cabin as the Jenny was in no way a large or luxurious vessel!

The 29th. He looked at Nell. “What day is it?” he asked.

“The day?”

“The date.”

She thought a moment. “The 24th,” she said. “Or it may be the 25th.”

He nodded. “Nell,” he said, “I shall be away a while. You will have the place to yourself again.”

“You are going back to the regiment? To the war?”

“I am going to see Lucy. Then I may . . . travel a while.”

“Travel?”

“You are disappointed in me, Nell.”

“I had hoped you would stay longer.”

“I will come back.”

“Are you in trouble?” she asked.

“What’s that?”

“In trouble.”

He smiled at her, and for a moment rested a hand on her shoulder.

He would take only what he could carry himself. In that, at least, he would be a good soldier. He looked for a suitable bag, something stout, not too large, and found, in his father’s dressing room, a leather holdall about the size of a hollowed dog-fox. Then, in the cupboard behind the steps to the attic, he pulled out another bag, slightly smaller, that had his mother’s initials on it, and inside, in the empty leathery whiff of it, a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress.