seriously want to see a priest? I was surprised. I wondered if it was some sort of joke on Adrian’s part.’
‘No joke and yes, I do.’
‘That’s what he said. So, I brought two forms over. If it was up to me . . .’
Those six words are a windbreak where cowards hide during a storm. I let him stew for a few moments and with his complexion, he blushes easily. I am a vindictive old cow.
He breaks the silence. ‘It’s quite straightforward.’ He is showing me which boxes to fill in. Not many people have stood this close to me recently and I can smell the soap he uses for shaving, breathe in the maleness which saturates his cotton shirt.
‘The usual bureaucratic crap. Date, name, signature,’ he says. As he puts the papers down, his hand touches mine accidentally and after he has left, I examine my hand as if this brief moment of contact might have left an imprint in the shape of normality on the flesh.
Having signed in all the required places and frustrated by the tedious processes which confine me more effectively than any ball and chain, I wander as far as the beginning of the drive from where I can see the government workers planting strips of trial crops in geometric patterns across the top fields. Apparently they moved in with their Portakabins and GM crops virtually the day after I was moved out. The land still looks fertile enough, as if beneath the crust the seeping springs are still working their magic, but I have been gone for more than two months and apparently there has been very little rainfall even here in that time and I have been back more than two weeks and it has still not rained. I don’t know what to make of this. Perhaps the clouds don’t like these khaki farmers and are waiting for me to pick up the plough, but I won’t fall for the same trick twice. Back in the cottage, I pick up the pen instead. I will apply to walk my land, not work it. As I complete the form, I remember the worksheets I sometimes set at school on Friday afternoons, inspiration gone. They were called ‘cloze’ exercises and consisted of blocks of text with words missing and all that the pupils had to do was to put the right word in the right place. It was a mindless exercise designed to control behaviour as much as anything else. Then, later, I would pack up the marking for the weekend and head home on the Underground. Minding the gap. Filling in gaps. Staring at the bottom of gaping holes. This is my business now.
Permission finally arrives in the form of an amendment to the terms and conditions of the house arrest, reluctantly shared with me by Three. I am to be allowed into my beloved vegetable garden, into my heaven of an orchard; I am to be allowed to sit and lean against my oak tree and look through the latticed world of branch and leaf to the untouched sky above, and I am to be allowed to visit the Wellspring.
As he walks away, Three turns casually and says, ‘Oh – and there’s a letter for you. I’ll send it over later.’
‘I didn’t know I got post,’ I say suspiciously.
‘This was for our attention, to be directed to you if I judged it appropriate. If you did receive post in your own name, it would be read by us. Whether or not it was passed on to you would be my decision. But,’ Three smiles, ‘this is all hypothetical because no one has directly written to you, have they?’
The wait for the letter is unbearable. It could be from Angie. It would start, ‘Dear Mum, I forgive you . . .’ It could be from Mark – confession or accusation, who knows. Or from one of the Sisters; I really thought Sister Amelia would write if no one else. Sister Amelia. What would we say to each other if we were to meet again? Since my return, I have fought against her shadow, which has tried again and again to stand between me and the light, but the idea of imminent, direct contact from her is too strong and the thought of her dries my mouth with hope and fear and thoughts, wild and screeching as crows at dusk, scattering into the darkness.
Breathe, breathe, I tell myself, slowly, imagine you are blowing out a birthday candle in one long breath. There. She is gone, for now. The spring sun moves in millimetres across the sky and I am beside myself with dread and hopeful expectation.
Finally Boy bangs on the window. ‘Post,’ he says as he comes in. I can imagine him as someone’s son, or holding out a birthday card for a girlfriend. ‘Read it.’
‘I fear the Greeks,’ I say and am surprised when he replies.
‘I’m not bringing any gifts. Not on my wages.’
These children must be part of the new breed of ‘community conscripts’, much disputed in Parliament but introduced in the face of the drought on that most tenuous of premises that ‘needs must’. He is probably doing his stint after university and there is no reason why an army private shouldn’t be quoting Virgil nowadays, but I have become predatory and recognise in him not only a possible source of conversation, but a potential source of information from the outside world. Right now, though, I am consumed with anticipation about the letter and am torn between ripping it open and a more reverential approach which would allow the moment to last.
The Rev. Hugh Casey has written from The Pumphouse, Middle Sidding, to say he has been contacted by the Prison Welfare Division in relation to my request to see a priest. He is pleased to let them know that it would be a pleasure to visit. Not Angie. Not Mark. Not Amelia. Disappointment punches me in the stomach.
‘It’s good news isn’t it? This priest bloke will come on Sunday.’
‘This Sunday then.’ I don’t want any of them, even Boy, to know how much I have lost track of times and dates.
‘Yep. Two days. Be a bit of an event for us all. Perhaps we should have a party.’ Boy clicks his fingers and reggaes his way around the kitchen. ‘Red red wine . . .’ he croons. I think he’s one of those people who can’t tolerate other people’s unhappiness and feels a personal responsibility to cheer them up. I manage to laugh just because I feel sorry for him: he has his work cut out for him here.
This must be a boring posting for three young men. No doubt their mothers are pleased that they are safe in the English countryside, with running water and the task of guarding some inoffensive crops and keeping a middle-aged nutcase in a field, rather than out on guard duty, firing off rubber bullets at protestors or policing the marches which I am sure must have continued – the motivated and the mad stamping their thirsty way up and down Whitehall, demanding rain. The news used to be on constantly in the dayroom at the unit, blaring from the TV hung too high on the wall: pictures of soldiers guarding the reservoirs, the lakes in Cumbria, the building sites where the first desalination plants are under construction, or shots of the RAF, droning overhead in their helicopters, sights trained ready for unscheduled activity on the ground – an old woman with a bucket, a black kid with a hose, a group of men rigging an illegal pump next to an unauthorised factory. These jobs carry a lot more risk than this one, I am sure. Here the risk is of insights into one’s own dry soul and that has never worried anyone’s mother unduly.
Needing to do something to wash away the taste of abandonment, I hold up a mug and he says please.
Small talk. That will help. ‘It must be quite boring for you here,’ I begin.
‘The job description’s pretty dull,’ he admits, ‘but the location, now you can’t call that boring. The science of it, if you like.’
‘What science?’
‘We were recruited because we’ve all got science degrees of some sort. Typical army. They thought, oh, he’s got a degree in particle physics, he’ll be good at taking rain gauge readings, although of course it hasn’t actually rained since we got here.’
‘And
