me. I’ll sleep the rest of the day and maybe all night too.
The sun breaks out for a moment and there is too much glitter everywhere. A cold, jostling glitter, without a trace of warmth in it. Geoff says again, ‘You want to tend those cuts,’ and looks at me, and I’m startled, because for a moment I don’t see hostility, or even indifference. He’s uncertain. He wants a word from me. Company on the path, even though he’s heading his way and I’m going the other. He’s on his own, as I am, and a hand on the head of a collie bitch is no sort of comfort. But as I part my lips to speak I hear the slabby masses of the sea rushing together, green and pewter, as cold as icebergs, and I’m in the middle of them, climbing, struggling for a life I don’t even want. They could crush me as your boot crushes an ant. They’d know nor care no more than the boot.
He’s gone. He whistles to the bitch who hangs back behind him, mopping and mowing for my attention, because I’ve made no gesture to her, not a look, a touch or a word. ‘Get on with you then,’ I say, to release her, and she nearly dances as she runs to heel.
When I get back, I don’t go to bed as I intended. I go to the foot of Mary Pascoe’s grave and tell her what I’ve done that day. I start off standing but by the time I’ve finished I’m on my knees in the new, wet green that covers her. I tell her about the rocks and the sea; things she knows already. I wonder if she ever walked into the sea, in some confusion of her heart, before she became the old woman who had lived up here for ever, keeping her hens and her goat, hardened by the wind and not talkative, but the vegetables she grew were second to none. I don’t ask her. Instead, I tell her about Ollie Curnow’s feet.
6
Good strong wire entanglements, of the pattern in fig 14, fixed to well-driven posts, should be constructed wherever it is possible. With proper training, infantry should be able to make entanglements of this nature as close as 100 yards from the enemy on a dark night. The iron posts now issued, which screw into the ground, can be placed in position without noise and strengthen the entanglement.
The maintenance of the wire obstacle calls for constant care. It must be inspected every night, and a few men should be told off in each company as a permanent wiring party for the repair and improvement of the obstacle.
I PACK THE last of two dozen eggs into the straw. When Mary Pascoe grew too old to walk into town with her eggs and vegetables, she came to an arrangement with a smallholder a couple of miles away. He took her produce to Simonstown market along with his own, and she got a better price there than selling through a shop in the town. He walked down to the cottage with his hand-cart to fetch her produce. She packed the eggs so well that never once did a single one crack, let alone break, or so she told me.
I didn’t want him coming to the cottage, but knew that he’d think it strange if she stopped selling her eggs. Besides, I needed the money. I told him that I would bring the eggs up to him, and vegetables too when they were ready. I could pack the eggs, layered with straw, and they would come to no harm.
He seems to see nothing unusual in it. Maybe he thinks there’s some family connection between me and Mary Pascoe, and that is why I’ve come to take care of her. He doesn’t ask after her. He nodded when I told him that she was ill and keeping indoors, and that was all. He’s fifty at least, with a long straggle of beard and matted hair. He has a couple of half-savage dogs, and I take a stick when I visit the smallholding. They snarl from a distance, and he cuffs them back as he opens the gate. He barely speaks and never looks at me directly. I give him the eggs and he counts out the money from the previous week. His hands are hard and his nails broken. Before accepting the eggs, he turns each of them over to examine it for cracks or weaknesses in the shell.
The sun breaks out for a moment and there is too much glitter everywhere. A cold, jostling glitter, without a trace of warmth in it. Geoff says again, ‘You want to tend those cuts,’ and looks at me, and I’m startled, because for a moment I don’t see hostility, or even indifference. He’s uncertain. He wants a word from me. Company on the path, even though he’s heading his way and I’m going the other. He’s on his own, as I am, and a hand on the head of a collie bitch is no sort of comfort. But as I part my lips to speak I hear the slabby masses of the sea rushing together, green and pewter, as cold as icebergs, and I’m in the middle of them, climbing, struggling for a life I don’t even want. They could crush me as your boot crushes an ant. They’d know nor care no more than the boot.
He’s gone. He whistles to the bitch who hangs back behind him, mopping and mowing for my attention, because I’ve made no gesture to her, not a look, a touch or a word. ‘Get on with you then,’ I say, to release her, and she nearly dances as she runs to heel.
When I get back, I don’t go to bed as I intended. I go to the foot of Mary Pascoe’s grave and tell her what I’ve done that day. I start off standing but by the time I’ve finished I’m on my knees in the new, wet green that covers her. I tell her about the rocks and the sea; things she knows already. I wonder if she ever walked into the sea, in some confusion of her heart, before she became the old woman who had lived up here for ever, keeping her hens and her goat, hardened by the wind and not talkative, but the vegetables she grew were second to none. I don’t ask her. Instead, I tell her about Ollie Curnow’s feet.
6
Good strong wire entanglements, of the pattern in fig 14, fixed to well-driven posts, should be constructed wherever it is possible. With proper training, infantry should be able to make entanglements of this nature as close as 100 yards from the enemy on a dark night. The iron posts now issued, which screw into the ground, can be placed in position without noise and strengthen the entanglement.
The maintenance of the wire obstacle calls for constant care. It must be inspected every night, and a few men should be told off in each company as a permanent wiring party for the repair and improvement of the obstacle.
I PACK THE last of two dozen eggs into the straw. When Mary Pascoe grew too old to walk into town with her eggs and vegetables, she came to an arrangement with a smallholder a couple of miles away. He took her produce to Simonstown market along with his own, and she got a better price there than selling through a shop in the town. He walked down to the cottage with his hand-cart to fetch her produce. She packed the eggs so well that never once did a single one crack, let alone break, or so she told me.
I didn’t want him coming to the cottage, but knew that he’d think it strange if she stopped selling her eggs. Besides, I needed the money. I told him that I would bring the eggs up to him, and vegetables too when they were ready. I could pack the eggs, layered with straw, and they would come to no harm.
He seems to see nothing unusual in it. Maybe he thinks there’s some family connection between me and Mary Pascoe, and that is why I’ve come to take care of her. He doesn’t ask after her. He nodded when I told him that she was ill and keeping indoors, and that was all. He’s fifty at least, with a long straggle of beard and matted hair. He has a couple of half-savage dogs, and I take a stick when I visit the smallholding. They snarl from a distance, and he cuffs them back as he opens the gate. He barely speaks and never looks at me directly. I give him the eggs and he counts out the money from the previous week. His hands are hard and his nails broken. Before accepting the eggs, he turns each of them over to examine it for cracks or weaknesses in the shell.
Similar Books
