The Well Read Free

intervals’ and my questions about what that means in practice are unanswered.
     
    Ruth Ardingly has also been subject to the following Finding of Fact judgments, as used under the Emergency Drought Protection Order Regulations for the Rapid Processing of Justice:
(i)  
that Ruth Ardingly started a series of fires with intent to cause grievous bodily harm or death;
(ii)  
that Ruth Ardingly was derelict in her duty towards a minor, resulting in death.
    I put my hands over my ears. I will not listen to that. I will not have that said.
    The small man drones on.
     
    Under the civil jurisdiction of the Emergency Drought Protection Orders, it is confirmed that the property known as The Well shall remain the principal domiciliary residence for Ruth Ardingly, but that under the terms of the Occupation Order 70/651, Ruth Ardingly agrees for the said property to be temporarily used for the purposes of research and development, including, but not limited to: soil sampling; the planting, management and harvesting of crops; the drilling and sampling of, but not extraction of, bedrock wateras defined under the Extraction for Use Act (amended); the collection, sampling and testing (but no distribution of) rainwater run-off.
    Despite the small print of my Faustian pact, they don’t own The Well – I won that much. It is still mine; underneath the wire and the helicopters and the men in brown, The Well is still mine. Half mine. It is not clear to me what has happened to Mark’s share.
    ‘That’s the legal status. Have you got any questions?’ he asks.
    Sinking a little, I shrug. He hands over the file to the fat, anonymous man who is apparently going to deal with the ‘nitty-gritty’ of house imprisonment. He reads haltingly, finding it hard to make sense of the interminable regulations. It is as if I am listening to a foreign language, but the broad message is clear. They are my guards. This is my home. Words slide across the paperwork and set off randomly around the room, sliding down the sink, fluttering up the cold chimney, trying to crawl their way out like wasps from a jam jar. The photo we took of Heligan Gardens in the spring and hung to the side of the kitchen window is tilted and this makes it look as if the lake is flowing over the banks and about to trickle down the cream walls and onto the vegetable rack, empty except for the brittle brown flakes of the outer layer of an onion.
     
    Curfew
    Bread
    Electronic
    Rights
    Request
    Exercise
    A sort of Kim’s Game, by which a large number of disparate things are being laid out before me and named in expectation that when they take the tray away, I will remember them.
    ‘No need to worry about all of this tonight.’ That is the first time the thin one with glasses has spoken since we sat down. He is also the only one who has looked me in the eye.
    ‘I won’t,’ I reply.
    ‘Goodnight then,’ he says, for apparently it is bedtime.
    ‘Goodnight,’ I reply.
    I stare after them. ‘I’m sorry, where did you say you were sleeping?’ I ask.
    The small one stops at the door. ‘We didn’t,’ he says and he and Mr Anonymous leave.
    The thinner, short-sighted one lingers for a couple of seconds. ‘We’re in the barn,’ he says. ‘Not far away.’ He is just a boy. I shall call him Boy.
    Little did I know when we ploughed our time and money into renovating the barn that we were building a barracks for my own guards. They’re not the first to move in there and try to control me; they are following in Mark’s footsteps and his footsteps went out of the gate and straight on till morning and I haven’t seen him since. I doubt the guards will forget me so easily.
    These guards of mine, what will they do all day? What do they eat? What do I eat? Now their commands have receded, questions appear in their place: thousands of questions about blankets and the internet and food and telephones and children and tomato plants and sheep and baths and books and cutting the grass