Waiting for Rain
Illinois 32 smashes the neck from a bottle of ten-year-old brandy and pours it onto the floor. It sinks into the carpet which Greta once had to vacuum. He signals to his friends, who, with bottles under their arms and in their pockets, step back and watch. A distant siren has joined the ringing of the alarm.
The young man strikes a match and drops it. At once, fires break out all over the town in an act of spontaneous combustion.
The people are tossed out of their houses and into the streets. Even Greta, sleeping the sleep of the just, has woken and joins them.
There is no time to put on more than a light summer dress. She cannot discover her shoes. Barefoot she runs out into the street, to watch the town on fire.
The building next to hers is burning; the surgery, the building society, the supermarket, burning. Now the roses in the town square are going up like paper; the cenotaph is circled by a ring of fire.
Some are already trying to escape. But the roads are black with people: their cars cannot get through. Horns, sirens, alarms: the town is screaming.
Greta ducks and bobs her way amongst the crowd. She cannot be looking for anyone. There is nobody in the town for whom she bears any concern.
She becomes aware of something immensely heavy in her pocket. Something is pulling at it like a lead weight. She puts her hand in her pocket and takes out a piece of folded paper.
It seems impossible that a piece of paper should weigh her down so heavily. When she holds it between her thumb and forefinger it almost flutters away. Yet she is carrying nothing else.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spots the troglodyte.
His jacket is smoking, his face brushed with soot. Whether he has just been saved from the flames, or has been saving others, she cannot tell.
He is the one person in this town for whom she bears any concern. She approaches him and says:
“I have a present for you.”
Before he can answer she has pressed the folded cheque into his hand. At the same moment a knot of astounding panic tightens in her throat.
But she has given and is gone before he can say a word. As she pushes her way blindly through the crowd she thinks: I have just given my mother to a stranger.
Our Greta has left the town behind. It is glowing in the valley beneath her. Slightly breathless, she is making the last ascent up a bank of brittle heath, without even a piece of folded paper to weigh her down.
At the top of the slope she halts, plucks the debris from her light summer dress and looks up. She has reached the reservoir.
