36. Looking Out

30/11/08

We've learned something. I don't know how it changes things; if it changes things.

This was the second time we'd entered the church. This time it did feel spiritual, perhaps because we knew we were at turning point, perhaps because of the steadfast smell of oak and stone, or the way shafts of light reached in through the windows and lit up scenes of disciples and apostles looking upwards for salvation. I whispered prayers in my head, while B. clattered the ladder, sending motes of dust to dance in the light.

The hatch was reluctant to let us through, but B. forced it, disturbing jackdaws into flight out over the churchyard. We climbed up into the belfry. It seemed that the birds had claimed the bells as soon as they'd been positioned, surrounding them with their own detritus, in spite of the power and majesty.

Above us, another ceiling and another hatch. B. hauled the ladders up after us and started work on the rusted bolts that secured our way. And then we were through.

We looked out over trees, roofs and fields, the cold air and brightness making us blink and draw breath. The tower wasn't high enough to show us everything - nearby buildings hid their neighbours, but we still enjoyed that feeling of being all-seeing, and for then (for now), we were lords of all we surveyed. That is, all that was within the wall.

From our vantage point we could see most of the wall, wrapping itself around our enclosure like a serpent. At points where the wall ran close to houses, we could just make out its top. And beyond it?

The wall itself obscured the area directly behind. An area which we could now see had been made into a no man's land between our wall and a second, which ran parallel to it. Away from the walls, things looked much as they always had. There was no traffic on the road which had once brought cars, lorries, buses and their noise through our village. On the hillside to the South, where I had often cycled, enjoying the quiet wood-edged lane, we could make out unnatural colours, a crane? Maybe construction traffic? They must be widening the road - making a bypass, steering travellers away from us.

So the world goes on. But how do we rejoin it?