Free Communion Town by Sam Thompson

to it. As usual she’s determined to prove something or other. Let her do as she likes, and see the outcome.’
    He tapped the desktop with a thick fingertip.
    ‘But you listen to me. If I should learn that you have in any way – taken advantage …’
    His voice trailed off. He stared at me a while longer.
    ‘Do I make myself quite clear?’
    I nodded, not knowing what I was agreeing to.
    ‘Don’t think,’ he said at last, ‘that I can’t find you. Wherever you go.’
    I found myself thanking him, sniffing, wiping my nose, stammering assurances, as I made for the door. He had already turned his attention to some papers on his desk, and did not look up.
     
    The next morning she took me out early to see the estate. We tramped down into the valley under a filmy sky, our breath clouding and our feet sending stones ahead of us along the hard track. She was cursing in exasperation with her father.
    ‘He can’t help himself, can he?’ she said. ‘It’s all about him, every time.’
    In the groves the trunks looked like bodies frozen in motion. In the midst of struggling to escape, they had metamorphosed, and now they signalled their acceptance of the new life by sprouting silvery leaves and hard purple-black fruit. We passed gangs of workers as we descended the slope. In harvest time, she told me, her father employed more than a hundred labourers. They travelled down from the city for a few weeks’ work and received board and lodging in barns on the estate.
    ‘They’ve been out here since before dawn,’ she said.
    We paused to watch one of the gangs at work. They wore overalls, rubber boots and headscarves. Their greasepaint was utilitarian, as if someone had slapped a brushful of whitewash across each face. The inbuilt tunes jingling away in their breasts sounded distant but clear through the acres of trees. They had laid nets and groundsheets, and were dragging at the lower branches with rakes to dislodge the olives. Others had climbed ladders into the upper branches, and balanced there, scraping the fruit down with their hands.
    I rubbed my itching eyes and blew my nose. We continued into the floor of the valley, circling back towards the trail.
    ‘They’ll get a month’s work, then they’re packed back to the city or on to the next temporary contract,’ she said scornfully. ‘Sixty or seventy hours a week at less than minimum wage, no rights, no security. And if you listen to him you’d think he was doing them a favour.’
     
    We were halfway back to the villa when the sound of an engine made us turn. A motorised buggy, splattered with dried mud, was coming up the track, pulling a short trailer covered with a tarpaulin. It rattled to a stop beside us and a young man swung himself from the seat. She made a kind of squeak, a sound I hadn’t heard from her before, and threw herself into his arms. He lifted her easily off her feet. ‘Hey hey,’ he said.
    She turned to me happily. ‘This is Leo,’ she said. ‘We grew up together – you know, I’ve told you.’
    I didn’t remember that, but I nodded.
    He leant over and caught my hand. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ he said. His face was fleshily handsome between a chestnut tousle and a grubby red kerchief knotted around his throat. He wore knee-high boots and jodhpurs stained with grass and mud. A stubby leather truncheon dangled from his belt.
    ‘We go all the way back,’ she was saying. ‘Leo’s family has the next estate. The pair of us were always planning to run away together.’
    ‘True. Nearly made it right across the valley, that time, eh?’
    ‘Yes, till you made me come home, sissy!’
    Leo gave a chivalrous shrug. The silence stretched. I got the feeling they might forget I was there, and exchange something too private.
    ‘I didn’t know you were home,’ she said at last.
    ‘Back for the harvest.’ He nodded. ‘Here, take a look.’
    He beckoned us over to his trailer and lifted the tarpaulin to show what was underneath.