Free Out of Time by Ruth Boswell Page A

pants had ‘St. Michael’ on a label tacked to the back, then a lot of stuff underneath, letters and numbers. That hooded jumper was really odd. GAP stitched in the front in huge letters, you saw it last night. A tag that had been cut in half on the inside, at the base of the hood, done perhaps to stop us reading it.’
    ‘What does it all mean?’
    ‘Impossible to know,’ Otto said, ‘but we’d better watch out.’
    *
    Susie has found a small stone in her cell. It has an edge sharp enough to make marks. She uses it as her charcoal and writes stories on the wall. They occupy much of her time and become more and more fantastic.
    One day while she is writing she hears tapping through the wall. Someone is trying to communicate with her. She signals back. At first, the tappings appear to be random but after a while she discerns a pattern. The pattern perhaps forms words. She makes some up for each set of taps and replies. She does not know if she is making sense to the other person but it does not matter. She has human contact.
    *
    It was impossible to make contact. Joe was sharing his life with a group of young people whom he could see, hear, even touch but who had nothing to say, either to Joe or to one another, for each one appeared to be absorbed in ceaseless conversation with himself. He sensed that they had been together so long words were superfluous.
    Angry and resigned by turns, he pursued the daily tasks he was allotted and, under Kathryn’s reluctant tutelage, quickly acquired farming skills; but no sense of companionship developed for there was disdain on her part for his ignorance of the most practical tasks and resentment on his for her disdain. In any case, he was too absorbed in his own problems to attempt drawing her out. His victory over loneliness and depression in the cave had induced a certain euphoria which made him, however irrationally, believe that his return home was imminent, even though he could not imagine how it would occur. He visualised his homecoming, tried to imagine what it would be like, wondered whether his mother, friends, teachers had despaired of seeing him again. Had the police been informed, was he a missing person or had they given him up, adding his name to the long list of young people who disappeared, never to be seen again? And would they recognise in the strong young man he had become the much punier boy he had been? How had his friends developed? Were they unchanged, absorbed by the same pre-occupations, still going to gigs, following favourite bands, smoking weed, going after girls, drinking, gathering at parties? Not that he had been away long, a summer and now the autumn but it felt longer. Time in this place did not have the same progression as it had at home. Calendars and diaries had no meaning. Wearily he accepted the inevitable.
    He was, in any case, soon too occupied for long periods of contemplation. Farm work kept him busy. He helped gather dry stooks from stubbled fields, piled onto carts pulled by oxen and brought to the edge of the home field that lay beside the farm. He learnt to throw the stooks by pitchfork to Meredith and Randolph, precariously balanced on a fast growing rick. It was hard, dusty work but he found satisfaction in it; or would have if he had felt some sense of companionship. But there was none. Joe wished with longing that there were other people to meet or friendships to cultivate, but the community, relying entirely on its own resources, had no outside contacts. The good life, glamourised by television, was a hard taskmaster which left no time for thought or play or even the relieving jolliness of banter. Remembering the robust relationship among his mates Joe was puzzled at these young people’s unrelieved seriousness like older, disillusioned adults.
    Each one had their allotted tasks, Randolph and Meredith in the fields, Kathryn on the farm, Belinda in the house making and mending clothes. Otto cooked and saw to provisions. Everyone