The Colours

by Juliet Bates

Genres: Coming of Age; Marriage & Divorce; World War I; World War II; Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Ellen sees the world differently from everyone else, but living in a tiny town in the north-east of England, in a world on the cusp of war, no one has time for an orphaned girl who seems a little strange. When she is taken in to look after a rich, elderly widow all seems to be going better, despite the musty curtains and her aging employer completely out of touch with the world. But pregnancy out of wedlock spoils all this, and Ellen is unable to cope. How will Jack, her son, survive - alone in the world as his mother was Can they eventually find their way back to each otherThe Colours is a sweeping novel of how we can lose ourselves, and our loved ones, for fans of Kate Atkinson and Virginia Baily.

Release date: April 4, 2020

Publisher: Fleet

Print pages: 384

Sample

Through the windscreen, smeared with drizzle and dead flies, is the sea, only the sea. The emptiness is uncanny, breath-taking; the metallic gleam of the water against the flat white sky.

‘It’s gone,’ he says, turning to the girl in the passenger seat. ‘You see, there used to be a …’

He points at the windscreen, but she is twisting her hair around her finger, gazing down at her lap.

‘There used to be …’

He peers into the distance. The tower was on the far shore: a squat stone structure, two floors high – a watchtower, a lookout. Now that it has gone he can only visualise it as a pale blue silhouette.

‘I’m going for a walk.’ He reaches for his sketchpad on the backseat. ‘Do you want to come?’

She usually stays in the car while he draws, biting her nails or reading a book, but this time she nods her head. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Over there.’ He gestures at the space where the tower once stood. ‘To look at the view.’

There is a new gate at the head of the track. Beyond it, emerging from the waves, is a windswept plane of shingle and sand. It is a narrow line that from this distance appears no more solid than the sea itself.

‘We’ll have to climb over the gate and walk across the marsh to get there.’

‘But it says …’ She is pointing to a metal sign planted in the ground. She runs her fingers across the rusted letters.

‘I know what it says.’

She takes a step away from him, stumbles over a stone. ‘It says it’s against the law.’

‘But there’s no one here. Look,’ and he waves his hand at the grey horizon.

Ahead, on the track, a cluster of gulls are pecking at the soft-shelled crabs that have been washed up with the tide. As he moves towards the gate, the birds scatter and skim away across the marsh, then they settle on a far pool, eyeing him uneasily, waiting for his decision.

‘There’s no one here now.’ He is attempting to convince himself as much as her. ‘Look, nothing.’

She is standing by the sign with her arms folded. She looks cold – he should have told her to bring a coat – and she must have stepped in a puddle because her boots are damp and edged with sand.

‘Let me give you a hand.’ He reaches out but she doesn’t move.

‘If there’s nothing to see I may as well go back to the car.’

He is not surprised. He remembers how it was.

‘I won’t be long then.’ He watches her trudge towards the road, head down, hands in her pockets. When she turns the corner, a gust of wind makes her long hair coil into the air for a second or two, forming a brown halo round her head.

On the other side of the gate he walks cautiously, avoiding the deep ruts that have filled with salt water. With every step, lumps of silty gravel and pebbles tumble into the marsh: the track is slipping away from him. It is only when he reaches the relative stability of the sea-spit that he turns to look at the town. He has never seen it from this angle before. He can make out the beach, the thin line of the promenade and the thicker band of Marine Parade. Looking back at the town is like peering at a distant star. If he had a telescope he would see himself, a small boy leaning against the railings of the promenade staring out to sea.

The wind blows. His eyes smart, his ears ache. He weaves through the clutches of marram grass and seakale to the shoreline. But there is nothing left of the tower, just a scatter of stones and a small patch of fissured concrete. A few steps away, half buried in the shingle, is a helmet from the last war, or the war before that. He touches it with the toe of his shoe and the brim shatters into red flakes that are swept away. Still hopeful, he stands for a while – listening, watching – but all he can hear is the shrill wail of the wind, all he can see are the waves.

Da said the Pearson family came out of the sand. He said they were born out of the red clarty sand that stuck to the soles of boots and the hems of frocks. On the beach, the women had deep frills of it around their skirts, so heavy it weighed them down. You couldn’t just brush the sand away, you had to beat your clothes with the palm of your hand like you were smacking them for being naughty. You had to bang your boots against the doorstep and find a knife to gouge away the sand that clung to the heels and round the stitching. But however much you cleaned your clothes, it was always in the seams and the pleats and the pockets. It was in the bed too, trapped in the pillowcases and the folds of the sheets. On wash days, if you filled the basin with clean water and pushed your nightgown under the surface the water turned pink straight away. And afterwards, when the basin was emptied, there was a sulky red sludge in the bottom and a hard skim of red around the rim.

Teesby was covered in sand. It piled up in the streets and filled the cracks in the pavements and the gutters. It covered the front gardens and got caught in the long grass and the privet and the flower petals. When the wind was bad, the sand would swirl around your ankles, nip your legs and arms like a snappy dog. And when the waves were fierce, the sea would hurl fistfuls of it at the town, then the faces of all the houses were spotted with soggy gobbets of dark red sand.

Da told Ellen that the sand blowing over Teesby came from the Snook. He said the Snook was a sea-spit. The sea carried the sand in its waves then spat it out in the same place year after year. When the tide was high the Snook was an island, and you would have to swim across the bay to reach it. But when the tide was low, you could get there by crossing the river and walking along the causeway over the marsh.

Right at the end of the Snook was a tower. From a distance it was a short stubby thumb of a building against the pale grey sky.

‘They built it to keep the Frenchies out,’ Da said. ‘That was a long time ago.’

If you climbed to the first floor, you could stick your head out of the window and look back at Teesby. From the tower, the town was just a dark-roofed cluster of small-windowed houses that looked like they were trying to ignore the view. But the Snook was different. It was unpredictable: glowing in the sunshine, glowering in the rain.

When Ellen was small, Da had said that the Pearson family came from the Snook. They had pushed their heads out of the sand and levered themselves into the world with their brawny arms. Every Pearson had Snook sand running through their veins, Da said, and Pearson blood was red like the colour of the shore when the tide was low.

But Da’s blood was almost black. He kept coughing it up. She heard him in the night and when she went to his room in the morning, shiny clots were splatted onto his pillowcase and his nightshirt and there was a great streak across his mouth. Henry was leaning over him, dabbing at the drops, gleaming and bright, hanging from the bristles of his beard.

‘Do you want the doctor, Da?’ he asked.

Da tried to lift his hand that had been gripping the bedclothes and managed to wave his fingers a little. ‘Don’t fuss yourselves. I’ll be all right.’

They watched him all morning – Ellen at the end of the bed and Henry beside him – breathing in then breathing out again, labouring, as if he was climbing a steep hill. Sometimes he groaned gently and sometimes the air that came out of his open mouth whistled like the wind spinning round the trees on the moor behind the town. Then he stopped. Swallowed. Took a deep gasping rattling gulp.

‘I suppose you could ask Aunt Minnie to come,’ he finally said, his voice struggling through the thickness in his throat.

It was Henry who ran to the post office to send the telegram. Ellen was only twelve and didn’t know what to do, so she stood in the bedroom waiting for something to happen. Da always got better in the end. He always cleared his throat and sat up in the bed and said something like: ‘So how about a cup of tea, Nell, or a nice boiled egg.’

But he didn’t move. He lay on his back, his breathing quietened now. It sounded like faraway waves, ‘Shush, shush, shush, shush,’ each one fainter than the last.

When Henry returned, he peered at the face on the pillow. Then he pulled away the sheet and grasped Da’s wrist.

‘I think he’s gone, Nell.’

‘Gone?’

‘Gone to heaven. Didn’t you notice, didn’t you look?’

So this was it. This was what she had been waiting for. She held her breath and clutched her hands together until her knuckles turned white. If she didn’t breathe or move or think she could almost believe that it hadn’t happened.

‘Nell, come here. Look.’

She edged slowly round the bed and stood beside Henry. He was right. When she leaned over her father she could tell that something had gone. The thing that was Da had slunk away, seeped out of him, leaving just flesh and skin and hair. She could feel the thing floating above them. She could see it: deep blue and glassy like sea water when the sun shines.

‘Maybe we should let it out,’ she murmured.

‘Let what out?’

Ellen reached over to the window and pulled up the sash. The wind blasted through the room and ruffled the covers on the bed as if Da had kicked the sheets. And that was it. That was the end of it. He was gone.

Whenever something bad happened, Da always used to say ‘life goes on’. Which was true, except for Da’s life. Life went on but it was always a different sort of life. Endings became beginnings again.

This beginning began with Aunt Minnie standing on the doorstep in the dark: a great big shiny woman with a fat shiny face, patent boots and an enormous Gladstone bag.

‘I’m not too late, am I? He hasn’t passed on already? I had to change at York and at Darlington, then it was stop-start all the way here.’ Aunt Minnie had a surprisingly shiny sharp little voice like tin. You could hear it ringing long after she had walked through the hallway and into the parlour.

Although she didn’t stay shiny for long. You couldn’t stay shiny in Teesby. As soon as she sat on the settee, the sand that lay on the backrest and the cushions rose up in a cloud and descended again, showering Aunt Minnie and her Gladstone bag and her neat little boots.

She flailed her hands above her head as if the sand was a swarm of flies. ‘Enough to drive you mad all this sand,’ she cried. ‘It gets in your hair and your eyes.’

‘And it’s in our blood too,’ said Ellen, solemnly.

They should have taken Da to the Snook. Instead they buried him in the churchyard next to Ma where the soil was boggy. As the undertakers lowered Da’s coffin into the grave, the rain began to fall, light, warm, slanting rain that hit the sides of the mourners’ faces. Damp coats flapped against damp legs, and handkerchiefs that were clutched between fingers quivered respectfully. Even the long grass and the cow parsley growing beside the old tombstones swayed from side to side. Only Father Scullion at the head of Da’s grave was a solid black shape: unmoving and unmoved.

‘May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace,’ he declared flatly.

‘Amen,’ mumbled the mourners. ‘Amen.’

After the funeral there were sandwiches in the parlour: ham and cheese and egg and cress. The bread was dry and each time Ellen took a bite it crumbled away, taking little bits of yolk with it. She sat on the edge of the settee trying to hold the sandwich together and watched Aunt Minnie shining brilliantly in the centre of the room.

‘Another cup of tea? Another iced bun?’

‘And what about the children?’ somebody asked.

‘The boy’s old enough to look after himself.’ Aunt Minnie’s voice soared.

‘And the girl?’

‘We’ll see, we’ll see,’ she trilled.

Ellen placed her sandwich on the arm of the settee. The bread fell away from the egg. The two parts lay in dry isolated clumps on the green horsehair. She looked down at the mess and with a quick flick of her fingers she brushed the remains onto the floor then kicked it under the settee with the heel of her boot.

She found Henry in the hallway, leaning against the banister rail that was draped with the mourners’ coats. He was biting his nails.

‘What’s going to happen to me?’ she asked.

‘You’re to live with Aunt Minnie,’ he said, pulling his finger from his mouth.

‘And where are you going?’

‘Mrs Veasey’s boarding house on Marine Parade.’

‘So I could come and live with you, then.’

‘No, you can’t,’ said Henry dully, pushing his hands into his pockets.

‘Da would have said—’

‘Da’s not here.’

Ellen glared at Henry in his best suit and his new black tie. He was blank-faced and calm. His calmness smelt musty and mothy like the woollen coats behind him. She could see their creased greasy collars and the sagging pockets filled with dirty handkerchiefs. Beyond them, she could see the brown flowered paper on the hallway walls and the linoleum floor that she had swept the day before Da died. She could hear someone clattering the dishes in the kitchen and Aunt Minnie’s shrill sing-song voice, echoing through the parlour door: ‘A cup of tea, Mrs Pym? Milk? Sugar?’

She despised the ordinariness of it all: Henry, the coats, the linoleum. It should have been a day that was far from ordinary, it should have been a day that was special. Something inside her began to lift its head, began to unwind. It spiralled upwards, knotting itself round her throat and her tongue before it spewed out of her mouth and into Henry’s face.

‘I hate you!’ she spat at him. ‘I hate you all!’ she screamed at the coats and the clattering dishes and Aunt Minnie’s piercing voice.

She darted out of the house and along the street. The rain had stopped now, the sun was strong. As she ran the sweat streamed down her neck, and the heavy velvet funeral dress beat against her stockinged legs. She made her way towards the promenade, then sprinted over the sand to the river, weaving round the ice-cream salesmen and the donkeys then dodging the noisy children with their buckets and spades. At the quayside the little ferryboat was waiting to cross the estuary. As she stepped aboard, the boat lurched queasily down then up again.

*

It only took five minutes to cross the river, but by the time the boat had reached the opposite bank, Teesby was far away, just a heat-hazed huddle of buildings in the distance. The tiny half-dressed figures on the beach were silent now, their excited voices muffled by the breeze. Ellen began to trot down the road towards the causeway, sensing Da beside her: a ripple in the air, a shadow on the ground. If he could have spoken he would have turned to her and said, ‘You should calm down, Nell. Take a deep breath. Look at the view.’

He had said that to her after Ma died. They had stood together in the tower looking out of the window at the sea. ‘Take a deep breath. Look at the view.’

‘Look at the view,’ she whispered into the breeze.

The Snook was just ahead of her, a wide red line: silty and pebbly and sandy, speckled with seakale and storksbill. She stopped running, moved slowly, picking her way over the causeway, careful not to step on the washed-up crabs. Her anger was beginning to retreat. She could feel it settling down, curling up like a cat, resting but still alert: one eye open, one eye shut.

On the Snook she skirted the clumps of yellow gorse that grew amongst the pebbles then slid down a bank of shingle to the shore. There were heaps of driftwood on the sand – sea-shaped tree branches, bark-stripped and bleached – that had floated down the coast from Hartlepool and Sunderland. There were other treasures too: bits of rusted metal, fragments of china, buttons from the clothes of sailors who had drowned. She crouched down and found slivers of jet like black fingernails and shards of rose-pink quartz. She collected the stones, along with a few steel-coloured razor shells and periwinkles. And when her pockets were bulging and her hands were full, she made her way across the shingle to the tower before the sun disappeared behind the hill.

Ellen returned to Teesby in the dark. The ferryman had already gone home by the time she reached the estuary: she had to walk a mile upstream to the swing bridge in order to cross the river. When she finally turned onto her street again, she could see them standing on the pavement: Henry stooping into the warm night, and Aunt Minnie spinning this way and that.

‘Where have you been?’ Aunt Minnie snapped as Ellen reached the front gate. ‘Everyone saw you tearing along the street. Everyone!’ Aunt Minnie was shaking Ellen by the shoulders, but Ellen didn’t care, she was calm now. She watched the sand fly off her clothes.

The day after the funeral, Henry traipsed round the house, gathering things up: Da’s old penknife, a clutch of Ma’s embroidered handkerchiefs, and a dish from the parlour mantelpiece with ‘Souvenir’ painted on the side. He packed them into an old suitcase that he had found in the attic and when it was full, he carried it down the stairs and placed it carefully by the front door.

‘You know where to find me, Nell. It won’t be for long. In a year or two you can come back to Teesby. You’ll be fourteen, old enough then.’

He heaved Da’s best coat over his shoulders. Then he moved towards her and brushed his dry lips against Ellen’s cheeks. ‘Behave yourself, Nell. It’ll always be easier if you just behave yourself.’

There were visitors to the house now that Da was gone. Ellen sat at the top of the staircase and watched them: the landlord, who skulked along the hallway, lifting up the corner of a rug and picking at the peeling wallpaper; and Mr Parry, the auction room manager, who turned up with a yellow pencil tucked behind his ear and a notebook in his hand. Mr Parry sped through the bedrooms and the parlour, muttering the names of things and writing them down: Grandmother clock, silvered dial; set of brass fire irons; black lacquered bamboo what-not.

Then, late on Saturday evening, Father Scullion arrived. He stood in the shadows by the front door while Aunt Minnie squeaked at him like a tiny shrew.

‘What should I do? You know what she’s like … and my husband said …’

Ellen heard Father Scullion rattle his rosary and say in a low dark voice ‘Ellen Pearson’ and ‘Sacred Heart’, but the rest of the words soaked into the gloom of the hallway, or got lost in the folds of Da’s scarf which was still hanging on the hook by the front door.

Things were taken away or packed away and the sand that had been trapped behind the pictures and underneath the china figurines and in between the sheets and blankets, escaped and drifted round the house. Ellen could feel the sand, gritty between her teeth and salty on her tongue. When a grain got caught in her eye it was enough to make her weep.

The rooms were almost empty now. The beds had been stripped and the mattresses rolled. The settee had been carried away by Mr Parry’s men, and the kitchen chairs had vanished late one afternoon. The only place to sit was in the hallway, leaning up against the door to the parlour.

On the other side of the door, Ellen could hear Aunt Minnie and Mrs Pym, their next-door neighbour. She could hear the clink of the last few tea plates and the clatter of the silver spoons. The spoons were being laid out like Da, ready to be swathed in shrouds of the Northern Echo and buried deep inside Aunt Minnie’s Gladstone bag.

Through the lock, Ellen could even see the spoons on the newspaper, lying together, round bowl against round bowl. She had always liked the spoons. They were kind and easy-going, they used to hum when she polished them.

‘Jam spoons, teaspoons, sugar tongs,’ said Mrs Pym. ‘And look, a whole set of Apostle spoons!’

‘But it’s out of the question …’ said Aunt Minnie. ‘We live a quiet life and my husband says …’

The spoons were swaddled in newsprint and bundled into the Gladstone bag. Now it was the turn of the forks: fish forks, dessert forks, meat forks. But the forks weren’t like the spoons, they were sullen and quiet and watchful. The pickle fork was the meanest because it only had two prongs and spent its life in vinegar.

‘Who’d have thought they’d have so much cutlery?’ said Mrs Pym between the sound of the crumpling newspaper and the moaning forks.

Only the knives were left: butter knives, meat knives, fish knives. The knives were complicated and misunderstood. They could be sharp and clever, but if you took a knife apart, unscrewed the metal blade from the bone handle, you could make it useless, make it sad.

‘Of course, I’d have taken her if she’d been a quiet girl,’ muttered Aunt Minnie.

‘… always a handful,’ said Mrs Pym, from the other side of the parlour door. ‘And the priest … didn’t he say?’

It was Ellen’s turn. She was packed away, bundled into clean combinations, woollen stockings, the velvet frock, a winter coat, a brown straw hat and buttoned boots. Aunt Minnie stood in the bedroom, brushing the sand out of the creases of the dress, scooping it out of the coat pockets, shaking it out of the straw hat. Ellen could see the sand, falling away from her, drifting towards the floor and disappearing into the cracks between the wooden boards.

Father Scullion was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, a pyramid of black cassock topped by a small bald head.

‘Am I not coming with you, Aunt Minnie?’ asked Ellen, turning back to look at her.

Aunt Minnie’s mouth tightened and twisted as she shook her head. ‘You see, Ellen, after the other night … well, we can’t be doing with … and my husband … he says …’

‘You need to learn,’ said Father Scullion. He was using the voice he used for mass, booming and pious. It made the parlour door rattle. It made Da’s scarf swing back and forth on its hook. ‘You need training up, Ellen Pearson.’

She might have retorted, ‘Training up for what?’ but his voice was a sledgehammer, pounding and crushing.

‘Come along now,’ he said, taking her case and pulling her through the doorway. ‘Say goodbye, say goodbye to your aunt.’

Outside, the wind scudded across the front garden making the Michaelmas daisies nod their heads. Then the sand in the air swirled up in a flurry, grazing her cheeks and stinging her eyes. It followed them all the way along the promenade and up the High Street and along Sidings Lane. But when they reached the station the wind dropped and the sand flopped down onto the street like a weary dog.

There was no sand on the platform while they waited for the train. The porter had swept it all away, along with the torn-up tickets and the lost handkerchiefs and the sweet papers. Ellen could see the clean stretch of the platform, and the railway that headed westwards, narrowing until the tracks merged and vanished into the horizon. She could smell the dry odour of steam coal and the stench of hot metal from the engineering works on the other side of the river. She could hear the flat rasp of the porter’s voice, and the clunk of the station clock as its hand pushed forward from one minute to the next.

The train coughed and spluttered: ‘Calm down and look at the view. Calm down and look at the view.’ But the view was grey and soundless. Inch by inch the pale sea was disappearing out of sight.

It was almost dark when they arrived. The village was called Dinsdale, it was written on the board outside the railway station. When Ellen muttered the name under her breath it was a sad bell tolling in her throat. ‘Dinsdale, Dinsdale.’

‘What did you say?’ Father Scullion was adjusting his cassock. It had got trapped between his legs; in the half-light their broad outline looked like massive tree trunks under the black gown.

‘Does Henry know where I’m going?’ she asked.

‘I’ll be seeing him at mass.’

‘Yes, but will you explain, Father? Will you tell him exactly where I am?’

Father Scullion grasped her wrist with one hand and her suitcase with the other. ‘I’ll do what’s best,’ he said, leading her out of the village, slapping his large feet against the road: slap, slap, slap, slap. The noise he made was as grey as the view in front of them.

They climbed a slight hill. At the top was another board: Convent of the Sacred Heart. Roman Catholic Home for Orphans and Necessitous Females. There were gates, a flat lawn, a small tree and a large front door. Father Scullion dropped Ellen’s wrist and pulled the bell. As the door swung open there was a squawk, followed by a scurry of black-clothed women from behind it.

‘So good to see you again, Father.’

‘Will you be wanting supper, Father?’

‘A drop of the Irish, Father?’

‘Good to see you, Sisters,’ said Father Scullion, pushing his way through them and setting Ellen’s suitcase down on the floor of the entrance hall. He followed the nuns into the darkness of the convent, and all that was left was his voice, lowing like a fat bull in a distant field. ‘Is there any of that roast left from Sunday, Sister Matthew? I won’t be saying no to that if you’re offering.’

A young woman stepped forward out of the shadows. She was not much older than Ellen. She wore thick-lensed spectacles and a short white veil that covered her hair.

‘You’re to come with me and bring your suitcase.’ She had a light nervous voice. As they made their way through the convent, she twitched and fluttered from one subject to another.

‘There are rules in this house: no running in the corridors, and if you meet one of the sisters you’re to stand back against the wall and let her pass. And no talking, no talking at all.’

They walked down a long white passageway lined with small plaster statues of the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin, set into niches or placed on plinths.

‘I was a girl here once, then Our Lord called me to him. It doesn’t happen to everyone. I’ll be taking my vows in November. I’m to be Sister Mary Aloysius. The name was chosen for me.’

At the end of the passageway was a narrow staircase that twisted upwards.

‘You’ll get a good training here,’ said the young nun as she climbed the stairs. ‘You’ll learn how to clean and mend. Our girls are sought after by the best families in Manchester and York: parlour maids, house maids, nurse maids.’

They reached a long low room on the second floor. There was a line of beds and between each bed was a wooden chair on which lay a neatly folded uniform. The heads resting on the pillows turned to look at Ellen as she passed.

‘This is where you will sleep,’ said the nun, pointing at an empty bed. ‘And this is a new uniform for you to wear.’ She gestured to a pile of clothes on the nearby chair. ‘Tomorrow you’re to give me your coat and dress and we’ll put them away until you leave.’

‘But where will they go, Sister?’ Suddenly the velvet frock and the winter coat and the brown straw hat took on a new importance. They were her old self. They smelt of home, of seaweed and Da’s tobacco and the damp wardrobe in which they had been stored. And despite Aunt Minnie’s desperate shaking, Ellen could still feel the gritty sand inside the dress.

The nun did not reply, either she hadn’t heard the question or she didn’t think it was worth answering. ‘Mass is at six thirty. You’re to be washed and dressed and ready to go,’ she said as she spun away.

In the dark, Ellen gently pulled off her coat and hat and lay them carefully on top of the new uniform. As she started to tug at the hooks at the side of her dress, a girl at the other end of the room sat up in her bed.

‘You can’t take your clothes off like that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You have to put your nightgown on first and take your clothes off underneath. It’s a rule.’

‘Why?’

‘Modesty! You should know about that at your age.’

In her old life Ellen would have replied that she had nothing to be ashamed of, especially in the dark, that none of them had anything to be ashamed of. But the night was heavy. The darkness pushed her down, squeezed something out of her, the thing that made her Ellen. She had barely enough energy to open her mouth; better to say nothing at all. She took the nightgown from her suitcase, pulled it over her head then flailed under the white flannel for a while until her dress fell onto the floor.

She lay down in her new bed, but she didn’t sleep.

When it was light again, she rolled over and peered out of the small square window beside her bed. The window overlooked the back of the convent. She could see a strip of yellow grass incised by a series of paths that led to a line of washing at the end of the garden. Sheets and pillowcases and tablecloths were swinging gently in the breeze: a long white undulating wall. It was almost impossible to see anything beyond them. Only occasionally was there a gust strong enough to lift up the corner of a sheet and reveal the view behind it, a fragment of ploughed field and stony track.

‘We do all the washing and the mending for the nuns and the priest and the hotel in the village. . .