This is what I thought I was waiting for.
After months of intermittent rain and wind, the sun has arrived, but instead of
being able to push on with the floor boarding, the tower has become a furnace
limiting work to early morning. When at the end of May Jean-Pierre told me the
heat would hit us in July, I assured him that working in high temperatures held
no fear for me. But now, sitting in the shade next to the caravan which has
become unusable due to its cauldron like properties, I must decide on what to do
for when Cathy comes over at the beginning of the school holidays with the
kids. Looking around my corner of a foreign field that I thought would be by
now beginning to look something like the idyll I had planned, the shimmering
heat has begun to blur the lines of reality. The mixer and wheelbarrow seem to
melt against the stone and the rest of my tools disappear amongst the wild
flowers, their inanimation mocked by the fluttering butterflies. Surveying this
scene of arcadian inactivity, I look up the field of silent, golden wheat to
the spire of the distant church. It reminds me of a church I once worked on in
England. The stones a different colour and the carvings are earlier of course,
but essentially it's quite similar. One day, years ago, with my Dad and Danny,
our labourer, we were standing opposite the church with Bill, the old school
foreman, in the new village hall which had just been completed when the church
bells started ringing. We walked to the window where we had a panoramic first
floor view of the side of the church with the path leading in our direction
towards the gates with headstones crowded either side. Staring at this scene of
nuptial bliss as they started down the path amidst a flurry of confetti,
Danny's comments that the groom's best days were behind him became overladen
with a distant chugging noise. Bill immediately recognised this as the dumper
truck that Eric had driven for years on sites and that he had been told to use
later to clear up the mess around the new vestry. To Bill's increasing horror,
he appeared into view and was making for the church gates. Looking with wide
eyes he turned to me and asked what he was doing, to which I could only shrug
and suggest he was ahead of his schedule. Nimbly for a man of his advanced age,
he turned and made for the door shouting fruitlessly for Eric as he went.
As Eric spun the dumper effortlessly up
the couple of steps and between the ancient gate piers each side, we knew
Bill's dash would be futile. Once on the path, Eric must have known quickly his
error, but for whatever reason, call it panic or just blind stupidity, he just
carried on. I remember an illustration at primary school that showed Moses
parting the red sea and that's pretty much the effect Eric had on the
congregation. The first to notice was the happy couple, their heads leaning
either side of the photographer who was backing down the path snapping away.
Then a scene from Benny Hill ensued as against a backdrop of bells mixed with
the chugging of the invading truck, the bride and groom, followed by their
guests spilled either side amongst the headstones, the photographer’s face a
picture as he spun round and to his credit I heard later, taking a shot of
Eric's panic stricken face as he went by. Surveying the scene from our grandstand
view, we could only just see Eric as he dismounted the dumper at the church and
made a run for it through streaming eyes.
The church above the wheat now disappears
in the tears of recollection, and I begin to wonder if I should have bought
that hammock I saw in the supermarket the other day.
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