The Giver of Stars

by Jojo Moyes

  “But . . . what about the trial?”

  “I don’t want you there.”

  Sven stood up. “This is crazy talk. I’m not listening to this. I—”

  Margery’s voice lifted. She lurched forward and gripped his hand, stopping him. “Sven, I have nothing left. I have no freedom, no dignity, no future. The only damn thing I have is hope that for this girl, my heart, the thing I love most in the whole world, it might work out different. So if you love me, like you say you do, give me what I’m asking. I don’t want my baby’s childhood marked out in visits to the jail. I will not have you both watch me waste away week by week, year by year in the state prison, with lice in my hair and the stink of the slop buckets, beat down by the bigots that run this town and going slowly stir crazy. I will not have her seeing it. You’ll make her happy, I know you can, and when you talk of me, you tell her not of this, but of me riding out on Charley, in the mountains, doing what I loved to do.”

  His hand closed around hers. His voice broke, and he kept shaking his head, in a way that suggested he wasn’t even sure he was doing it. “I can’t leave you, Marge.”

  She withdrew her hand. She took the sleeping baby and placed her gently in his arms. Then Margery leaned forward, and placed a kiss on the baby’s head. She kept her lips there for a moment, her eyes closed tight. She opened them, drinking her in as if she were imprinting some part of her deep within. “Bye-bye, sweetheart. Mama loves you very much.”

  She touched the back of his knuckles lightly with her fingertips, an instruction. And then, as Sven sat in shock, Margery O’Hare stood upright, her hand braced on the table, and shouted for the jailer to walk her to her cell.

  She didn’t look back.

  * * *

  • • •

  True to her word, he was the last visitor she saw. Alice arrived that afternoon with a pound cake and Deputy Dulles said regretfully (for he did love Alice’s cakes) that he was real sorry but Miss O’Hare was adamant she didn’t want to see anyone that day.

  “Is there a problem with the baby?”

  “Baby ain’t there no more. She left with her daddy this morning.”

  He was real sorry but rules was rules and he couldn’t force Miss O’Hare to see Alice. He did, however, agree to take the cake with the promise he’d carry it down to her later. When Kathleen Bligh went two days later she would receive the same response, and Sophia and Mrs. Brady after her.

  Alice rode home, her mind spinning, and found Sven on the porch with the baby resting on his shoulder, her button eyes wide at the unfamiliar sunlight and the moving shadows of the trees. “Sven?”

  Alice dismounted, hooked Spirit’s reins over the post. “Sven? What on earth is going on?”

  He couldn’t look at her. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he kept his face turned away.

  “Sven?”

  “She’s the stubbornest damn woman in Kentucky.”

  On cue the baby started to cry, the raw, ragged cries of a child who has had to cope with too many changes in a single day and is suddenly, catastrophically, overwhelmed. Sven patted her back ineffectually and, after a moment, Alice stepped forward and took the baby from him. His face sank into his broad, scarred hands. The baby nuzzled into Alice’s shoulder, then pulled her head back, her tiny mouth an O of dismay, as if appalled by the discovery that this was not her mother.

  “We’ll fix it, Sven. We’ll make her see sense.”

  He shook his head. “Why would we?” His voice emerged muffled through his rough hands. “She’s right. That’s the worst of it, Alice. She’s right.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Through Kathleen, who knew everything and everyone, Alice found a woman in the next town who would wet-nurse the baby, her own having recently weaned, for a small sum. Every morning Sven would drive the baby over to the white clapboard farmhouse and little Virginia would be handed over for food and care. It made all of them a little uneasy to see it—the child belonged with her mother—and Virginia herself had swiftly become withdrawn, her eyes watchful, her thumb plugged warily into her mouth, as if she no longer trusted the world to be a benign and reliable place. But what else could they do? The child was fed; Sven was free to find work. Alice and the girls were able to get by as best they could, and if their hearts were sick and their stomachs tight with nerves, well, that was the way it was.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am to-night.

  • F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Tender Is the Night

  A near circus atmosphere descended on Baileyville, the kind of commotion that made Tex Lafayette’s appearance look like a Sunday School reunion. As news of the start date had broken across the town the mood seemed to shift, and not necessarily in Margery’s favor. The extended McCullough clan began to arrive from out of town—distant cousins from Tennessee, from Michigan and North Carolina, some of whom had barely seen McCullough in decades but who now found themselves highly invested in the idea of retribution for their beloved relative, and swiftly took to congregating outside either the jailhouse or the library, to shout abuse and threaten vengeance.

  Fred had come down twice from his house to try to calm things, and when that failed, to reveal his gun and announce that the women must be allowed to get on with their work. The town seemed split in two with their arrival, dividing between those who were disposed to see all the wrong in Margery’s family as evidence of her own bad blood, and those who preferred to go on their own experience, and thanked her for bringing books and a little pleasantry into their lives.

  Twice Beth got into fist-fights on the back of Margery’s reputation, once in the store and once on the steps outside the library, and had taken to walking around with her hands bunched, as if permanently braced to throw a punch. Izzy wept frequently and silently, and would shake her head mutely if anyone spoke to her of it, as if the act of talking were too much. Kathleen and Sophia said little, but their somber faces told of which way they thought this would go. Alice could no longer visit the jail, in accordance with Margery’s wishes, but felt her presence in the little concrete building as if they were connected by threads. She was eating a little, Deputy Dulles said, when she stopped by. Didn’t speak much, though. Seemed to spend a lot of time sleeping.

  Sven left town. He bought a small wagon and a young horse, packed up what remained of his belongings and moved out of Fred’s to a one-room cabin a short distance from the wet-nurse on the eastern side of the Cumberland Gap. He could not stay in Baileyville, not with people saying what they were. Not with the prospect of seeing the woman he loved brought even lower, and the crying baby in earshot of her mother. His eyes were red with exhaustion, and new deep grooves ran down each side of his mouth that had nothing to do with the baby. Fred promised him at the first word of anything he would drive right over.

  “I’ll tell her—I’ll tell her . . .” Fred began, then realized he had no idea what he would tell Margery. They exchanged a look, then slapped each other on the shoulder, in the way near silent men have of conveying emotion, and Sven drove off with his hat pulled low over his brow and his mouth set in a grim line.

  * * *

  • • •

  Alice also began to pack up. In the quiet of the little cabin she began to separate her clothes into those she might find some use for in England, in her future life, and those she could not imagine wearing again. She would hold up the fine silk blouses, the elegantly cut skirts, gossamer slips and nightwear and frown. Had she ever been this person? In the emerald floral tea-dresses and lace collars? Had she really required all these hair rollers, setting lotions and pearl brooches? She felt as if such ephemera belonged to someone she no longer knew.

  She waited until she had completed this task before she told the girls. By this stage they had all, by some unspoken agreement, t
aken to staying at the library together until way beyond their finishing time. It was as if this was the only place they could bear to be. Two nights before the trial was due to start she waited until Kathleen began gathering her bags, then said, “So—I have some news. I’m leaving. If anyone wants any of my things I’ll be leaving a trunk of clothes in the library for you all to go through. You’re welcome to any of it.”

  “Leaving where?”

  “Here.” She swallowed. “I have to go back to England.”

  There was a heavy silence. Izzy’s hands flew to her mouth. “You can’t leave!”

  “Well, I can’t stay, unless I go back to Bennett. Van Cleve will come after me once he’s got Margery safely locked up.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Beth.

  There was a lengthy silence. Alice tried to ignore the looks passing between the other women.

  “Is Bennett so bad?” said Izzy. “I mean, if you could persuade him to move out from his daddy’s shadow, maybe you two would have a chance. Then you could stay.”

  How could she explain now how impossible it would be to return to Bennett, feeling as she did about Fred? She would rather be a million miles from Fred than have to walk past him every day and know she had to go back to another man. Fred had barely touched her yet she felt they understood each other better than she and Bennett ever had.

  “I can’t. And you know Van Cleve won’t rest until he’s got rid of the Packhorse Library, too. Which will put us all out of a job. Fred saw him with the sheriff and Kathleen saw him twice last week with the governor. He’s working away to undermine us.”

  “But if we don’t have Margery and we don’t have you . . .” Izzy’s voice trailed away.

  “Does Fred know?” said Sophia.

  Alice nodded.

  Sophia’s eyes held hers, as if confirming something.

  “When are you going?” said Izzy.

  “Soon as the trial is done.” Fred had barely spoken the whole drive home. She had wanted to reach out, to touch his hand and tell him she was sorry, that this was so far from what she wanted, but she was so frozen with grief at her possession of the paper ticket that she couldn’t move.

  Izzy rubbed at her eyes and sniffed. “Feels like everything’s falling apart. Everything we worked for. Our friendship. This place. Everything is just falling apart.”

  Normally when one of the women expressed such dramatic sentiments the others would leap on her, telling her to stop being ridiculous, that she was crazy, that she simply needed a good night’s sleep, or some food, or to get a hold of herself; it was her monthlies talking. It was a measure of how low they all felt that this time nobody said a word.

  Sophia broke the silence. She took an audible breath and placed both hands palm down on the table. “Well, for now we keep going. Beth, I don’t believe you’ve entered your books from this afternoon. If you’d be kind enough to bring them over here, I’ll do them for you. And, Alice, if you can give me the exact day you’re planning on leaving, I’ll adjust the payroll.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Overnight two trailer homes arrived on the road by the courthouse. Extra state policemen were visible around town, and a crowd began to build outside the jailhouse by teatime on Monday, fueled by a newspaper report in the Lexington Courier headlined: Moonshiner’s Daughter Killed Man With Library Book In Blood Feud.

  “This is trash,” Kathleen said, when Mrs. Beidecker handed her a copy at the school. But that didn’t stop the people gathering, a few starting to catcall out back so that the sound would reach through the open window of Margery’s cell. Deputy Dulles came out twice, his palms up, trying to calm them, but a tall mustachioed man in an ill-fitting suit, whom nobody had seen before and claimed to be Clem McCullough’s cousin, said they were just exercising their God-given right to free speech. And if he wanted to talk about what a murdering bitch that O’Hare girl was then it was nobody else’s damn business. They jostled each other, fueling their bold claims with alcohol, and by dusk the yard outside the jailhouse was thick with people, some drunk, some shouting insults at Margery, others yelling back at them that they were not from round here and why didn’t they keep their troublemaking ways to themselves? The older ladies of the town withdrew behind their doors, muttering, and some of the younger men, emboldened by the chaos, started a bonfire by the garage. It felt, briefly, as if the orderly little town had become a place where almost anything could happen. And none of it good.

  Word got to the librarians as they returned from their routes, and each put away her horse and sat in silence with the door open for a while, listening to the distant sounds of protest.

  Murdering bitch!

  You gonna get yours, you whore!

  Now, now, gentlemen. There are ladies in this crowd. Let’s keep things reasonable.

  “I swear I’m glad Sven isn’t here to see it,” said Beth. “You know he wouldn’t stand to hear Marge talked about that way.”

  “I can’t bear it,” said Izzy, who was watching through the door. “Imagine how she must be feeling having to listen to all that.”

  “She’ll be so sad without the baby too.”

  It was all Alice could think about. To be the recipient of such hate, without the prospect of a word of comfort from those who loved you. The way Margery had isolated herself made Alice want to weep. It was like an animal that deliberately takes itself off somewhere solitary before it dies.

  “Lord help our girl,” Sophia said quietly.

  And then Mrs. Brady walked through the door, glancing behind her, her cheeks ruddy and her hair electric with fury. “I swear I thought this town knew better. I am ashamed of my neighbors, I really am. I can only imagine what Mrs. Nofcier would say if she happened to catch wind of this.”

  “Fred reckons they’ll be out there all night.”

  “I simply do not know what this town is coming to. Why Sheriff Archer doesn’t take a bullwhip to them I have no idea. I swear we’re becoming worse than Harlan.”

  It was then that they heard Van Cleve’s voice rising above the swell of the crowd: “You can’t say I didn’t warn you, people! She’s a danger to men and to this town. The court is going to hear what kind of malign influence the O’Hare girl is, you mark my words. Only one place for her!”

  “Oh, hell, now he’s fixing to stir things up,” said Beth.

  “Folks, you will hear how much of an abomination the girl is. Against the laws of nature! Nothing she says can be trusted!”

  “That does it,” said Izzy, her jaw clenched.

  Mrs. Brady turned to look at her daughter, as Izzy climbed to her feet. She grabbed her stick and walked to the door. “Mother? Will you come with me?”

  They moved as one, pulling on boots and hats in silence. And then, without discussion, they stood together at the top of the steps: Kathleen and Beth, Izzy and Mrs. Brady and, after a moment’s hesitation, Sophia, who rose from behind her desk, her face tense but determined, reaching for her purse. The others stopped to look at her. Then Alice, her heart in her throat, held out her arm and Sophia slid her own through it. And the six women walked out of the library and, in a tight group, along the shimmering road toward the jailhouse in silence, their faces set and their pace determined.

  The crowd broke as they arrived, partly through the sheer force of Mrs. Brady, whose elbows were out and whose expression was thunderous, but partly in shock at the colored woman who stood between them, her arms linked with those of Bennett Van Cleve’s wife and the Bligh widow.

  Mrs. Brady reached the front of the crowd and pushed her way through so that she was standing with her back to the jail and turned to face them. “Are you not ashamed of yourselves?” she bellowed at them. “What kind of men are you?”

  “She’s a murderer!”

  “In this country we believe in the presumption of innocence unless proven otherw
ise. So you can take your disgusting words and your slogans and you can darn well leave that girl alone until the law says you have good reason!”

  She pointed at the mustachioed man. “What business do you have in our town anyway? I swear some of you are here just to cause trouble. Because you’re sure as anything not from Baileyville.”

  “I’m Clem’s second cousin. Got a right to be here as much as anyone. I cared about my cousin.”

  “Caring cousin my backside,” said Mrs. Brady. “Where were you when his daughters were starving, their hair full of cooties? When they were stealing food from people’s gardens because he was too drunk to bother feeding them? Where were you then, huh? You have no genuine feeling for that family.”

  “You’re just sticking up for your own. We all know what them librarians have been up to.”

  “You know nothing!” retorted Mrs. Brady. “And you, Henry Porteous, why, I thought you were old enough to know better. As for this fool—” she pointed at Van Cleve “—I honestly believed our neighbors would have more sense than to trust a man who has built an entire fortune on the back of misery and destruction, mostly at this town’s cost. How many of you lost your homes to his slurry dam, huh? How many of you were given warning to save yourselves by Miss O’Hare there? And yet, given baseless rumor and gossip, you would rather castigate a woman than look at the true criminal around here.”

  “Those are slanderous words, Patricia!”

  “So sue me, Geoffrey.”

  Van Cleve’s skin flushed florid purple. “I’ve warned y’all! She’s a malign influence!”

  “You’re the only malign influence around here! Why do you think your daughter-in-law would rather live in a cowshed than share one more night in your house? What kind of man beats up on his son’s wife? And you stand there presenting yourself as some kind of moral arbiter. Why, the way we judge the behavior of men against women in this town is genuinely shocking.”