Waiting for Rain
“Only,” the supervisor goes on confidentially, “it’s not the first time he’s bothered girls around here.” She drops her voice. “I’d be careful if I were you. Don’t encourage him. You know what I mean.”
The stitches in her gum have been removed and Greta is invited to pay her bill. But she is also invited to make another appointment. There may be more trouble: fillings, another wisdom tooth. Curious fact: once a dentist has you in his hooks, it is very difficult for him to let go. If he cannot make capital out of pain he will play on fear.
Greta firmly refuses. There will be no more islands of expectation. She is methodically dismantling her life. And this is not difficult to do: notice given on a bedsit, a discarded job, a building society account closed. The cheque is neatly folded in her pocket.
She is clean of everything now, except this money, which is her freedom. What will she do with it? She could buy a car. That is another form of freedom, only, like money, one which depreciates. She could buy a ‘plane ticket to—anywhere. She could take a ship or a train. She could buy a motorhome and travel round the country. She could buy herself clothes, luxuries, a further education. Schemes extravagant and absurd tumble through her mind, but she cannot choose one because it must be to the exclusion of all the others.
If her inheritance had never existed she would have been forced to make a life for herself. As it is, she is paralyzed. Dimly she becomes aware that the money is not in fact her freedom but her prison.
Though it should be autumn, nature too seems paralyzed, unable to progress. No wind strips the leaves from the trees and makes them dance; instead they drop with straight funereal slowness. Colour is bleached from the roses in the town square.
The people of the town stand in their queues and wait. And now their minds are full of bewilderment and suspicion: perhaps they have been betrayed or misled, perhaps they have been lied to and manipulated. But it must have been way back now, and anyway they are too tired to do anything about it. These are the people who stand meekly in their queues and hope.
In the heart of the town, which has become a middle eastern souk, a shanty, a trembling mirage, others are ready for the conflagration. These have taken possession of the woven streets and created a zone. They are bound not by plans or schemes or networks of subversion but by anger.
There is a strange glow about the town at night, as if the leftover heat of day is boiling off. The pavements are almost luminous; the beat of a walking boot creates weird reverberations. A glass shatters and a dustbin lid falls, and the aftershocks echo into every sleepless bedroom.
This is how the conflagration starts: a glass shatters and an alarm goes off, and a young man in a windcheater bearing the legend “Illinois 32” has broken into the supermarket. The alarm is ringing fiercely as his companions follow him in. They are past caring about an alarm, about punishment. They have a raging thirst to quench. They are going for the bottled spring water. No, they are going for the wines and spirits. Illinois 32 screws the top off a litre bottle of whisky and pours it down his throat. The others follow suit: they snap the rings from beer cans, one pops the cork of a champagne bottle. Here is something to celebrate! Here is a party worth coming to, a birthday, a holiday, a festival all in one.
The ringing alarm casts a note of frenzy over the jubilation. Time is short. Drink! Drink as much as you can before it’s taken away!
