Wolf Hall Read Free

He can do the figures for you, he can add and . . . what’s the other thing? All right, don’t laugh at me, how much time do you think I had for learning figures, with a father like that? If I can write my name, it’s because Tom here taught me.”
    â€œHe won’t,” he says, “like it.” He can only manage like this: short, simple, declarative sentences.
    â€œLike? He should be ashamed,” Morgan says.
    Kat says, “Shame was left out when God made my dad.”
    He says, “Because. Just a mile away. He can easily.”
    â€œCome after you? Just let him.” Morgan demonstrates his fist again: his little nervy Welsh punch.

    After Kat had finished swabbing him and Morgan Williams had ceased boasting and reconstructing the assault, he lay up for an hour or two, to recover from it. During this time, Walter came to the door, with some of his acquaintance, and there was a certain amount of shouting and kicking of doors, though it came to him in a muffled way and he thought he might have dreamed it. The question in his mind is, what am I going to do, I can’t stay in Putney. Partly this is because his memory is coming back, for the day before yesterday and the earlier fight, and he thinks there might have been a knife in it somewhere; and whoever it was stuck in, it wasn’t him, so was it by him? All this is unclear in his mind. What is clear is his thought about Walter: I’ve had enough of this. If he gets after me again I’m going to kill him, and if I kill him they’ll hang me, and if they’re going to hang me I want a better reason.
    Below, the rise and fall of their voices. He can’t pick out every word. Morgan says he’s burned his boats. Kat is repenting of her first offer, a post as pot-boy, general factotum and chucker-out; because, Morgan’s saying, “Walter will always be coming round here, won’t he? And ‘Where’s Tom, send him home, who paid the bloody priest to teach him to read and write, I did, and you’re reaping the bloody benefit now, you leek-eating cunt.’ ”
    He comes downstairs. Morgan says cheerily, “You’re looking well, considering.”
    The truth is about Morgan Williams—and he doesn’t like him any the less for it—the truth is, this idea he has that one day he’ll beat up his father-in-law, it’s solely in his mind. In fact, he’s frightened of Walter, like a good many people in Putney—and, for that matter, Mortlake and Wimbledon.
    He says, “I’m on my way, then.”
    Kat says, “You have to stay tonight. You know the second day is the worst.”
    â€œWho’s he going to hit when I’m gone?”
    â€œNot our affair,” Kat says. “Bet is married and got out of it, thank God.”
    Morgan Williams says, “If Walter was my father, I tell you, I’d take to the road.” He waits. “As it happens, we’ve gathered some ready money.”
    A pause.
    â€œI’ll pay you back.”
    Morgan says, laughing, relieved, “And how will you do that, Tom?”
    He doesn’t know. Breathing is difficult, but that doesn’t mean anything, it’s only because of the clotting inside his nose. It doesn’t seem to be broken; he touches it, speculatively, and Kat says, careful, this is a clean apron. She’s smiling a pained smile, she doesn’t want him to go, and yet she’s not going to contradict Morgan Williams, is she? The Williamses are big people, in Putney, in Wimbledon. Morgan dotes on her; he reminds her she’s got girls to do the baking and mind the brewing, why doesn’t she sit upstairs sewing like a lady, and praying for his success when he goes off to London to do a few deals in his town coat? Twice a day she could sweep through the Pegasus in a good dress and set in order anything that’s wrong: that’s his idea. And though as far as he can see she works