Free The Well by Catherine Chanter Page A

no good on active service and came up with us three. The blind, the deaf and the dumb.’
    ‘And you are?’
    ‘The blind. Lenses – very strong. Adrian – Anon as you unkindly insist on calling him – he’s asthmatic. Mind you, it’s hard to find anyone who isn’t nowadays, with the dust and everything.’
    ‘His weight can hardly help,’ I add. ‘So that makes Three the dumb one.’
    Boy looks away. ‘Hardly,’ he says. ‘He was already in the Volunteers apparently, so one step ahead as always. He was telling us how he’salready had experience policing the demonstrations as a reservist. So I told him I was probably one of those marching.’
    ‘What were you marching about? Not me, I hope.’
    ‘I’m afraid not. I’m not religious. Other stuff. Human rights mainly. I think there have to be ways to manage a drought without chipping away at all our civil liberties. And the land, of course, the way we’re messing up the climate. Have messed up, past tense for all we know. I’m not a geographer for nothing.’ He glanced at the camera. ‘Anyway, I got the rest of my degree in footie and beer.’
    I would have liked a son. I turn away and pour the remains of my drink down the sink.

 
    S itting outside, my back to the stone wall at the rear of the house, inviting the spring sun to repair my prison-pale face, my heart is beating a little faster in the knowledge that today I will have a visitor. I wait, half in hope, half in fear, counting the minutes. Then, through the haze, I spot a black lumbering shape at the top of the drive. For a split second I think a Friesian has got loose, before remembering that there are no cows around here any longer. A few moments later the cow becomes a man wearing a dark suit, a black hat and a billowing black raincoat and carrying a white plastic bag. He must be the only person in England who still possesses a raincoat. The man is limping slightly, inching along the track and like most people, when he reaches the crest of the hill, he stops and looks around him, but he stays there much longer than most, sitting on the raised verge beneath the turbine for a few minutes before getting up heavily, brushing down his trousers and picking up his bag and continuing on towards the house. Here is my priest. Enter The Reverend Hugh Casey.
    God knows the last thing I need is another persuasive religious, let alone a male version. This distrust of men is the legacy of Amelia and her sisters, I tell myself: you should rid yourself of this prejudice. On the way into the house, I pick some daffodils from thewilderness of weeds straggling along the edge of the drive, stick them randomly in a redundant milk jug and put them in the middle of the table; it isn’t something I’ve done since I returned here, but today I am entertaining.
    Boy announces the priest’s arrival like a maître d’. ‘Ruth, meet The Reverend Hugh Casey. Come on in, sir.’
    ‘No, no, I’ll wait for the good lady of the house to invite me in.’
    It is a polite, cultured voice with a hint of an Irish accent. The body which accompanies it is large and the face is flushed, although whether that is from the walk or embarrassment I don’t know. I play my part and greet him; he takes my one thin hand in his two warm palms and holds it slightly longer than I am prepared for. In the kitchen he introduces himself again, takes off his coat and hat and hangs them over the edge of the chair.
    ‘Not your local man, I’m afraid. They dug me out of retirement for this. I can only suppose it’s because I live relatively close and many years ago used to be the chaplain at a military hospital. Hardly guaranteed secure, but that’s the way their minds work, I suspect.’
    ‘Well, thank you for coming anyway.’ I offer him a cup of tea.
    ‘Ah. Now, that’s where I can make myself useful,’ he says and rummages in his plastic bag. He pulls out a Bible, which was to be expected, a small wooden box with a cross on it which he