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  This takes place in her shed, with Blossom in attendance and the rest of us admiring from a distance. Apparently Blossom is the only person Sarah will allow to come near her when she is farrowing, opening an evil piggy eye and giving a warning grunt when anyone else threatens to approach, and Blossom is in her element. As each slippery pink piglet arrives, Blossom wipes it with a handful of straw and hands it to its mother for approval, announcing the sex and condition as she goes.

  ‘Male. Nice weight. Another male. Good. Little female. Bit weak.’ And so on.

  And they keep on coming. Nine, ten, eleven. The atmosphere in the shed becomes tense, for how will Blossom react if she has been wrong, and there are more or fewer than thirteen? Blossom hates being wrong (it does occasionally happen),and has been known to sulk for a week.

  But no. On this occasion we are safe, for after the thirteenth piglet, Sarah gives a sigh and opens both eyes, and we all applaud. Thirteen it is. Once again, Blossom is vindicated.

  To my surprise, there is no further talk of drowning and stuffing excess piglets, but there is one tiny runt, and Silas decides to rear it himself.

  ‘Won’t work,’ says Blossom. ‘Be dead by morning.’

  The piglet is dead by morning. Poor Silas has stayed up with it all night, feeding it and rubbing its tiny body to try to keep it warm, but to no avail. When I come downstairs for breakfast, I find him in tears.

  ‘Oh, Silas! Whatever’s the matter?’

  ‘My piglet. It died.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ I make him tea and give him a hug. ‘Perhaps it was for the best.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Silas blows his nose on an enormous handkerchief.

  ‘And this sort of thing must have happened before.’

  ‘Lots of times. But you never get used to it.’

  ‘And — you can stuff it?’

  ‘There is that.’ He pauses. ‘Except that it would be a bit like stuffing a friend.’

  A friend? A newborn piglet he’s known barely twelve hours, a friend? One of the many things about my uncles which never fails to amaze me is their emotional involvement with animals which are largely bred to be eaten. In the short time I have lived with them, they have personally despatched several chickens and ducks, and sent a pig and a beautiful billy kid to slaughter, and on every occasion Silas has shed tears. Once, when I asked him about it, he replied that it was ‘the least he could do’, but I think the real answer is that he simply can’t help it. Eric’s approach is more pragmatic, but he too hates killing things, although once the animals have been butchered into neat little meaty packages, both brothers are perfectly happy to eat them. I decide that if it is ever my misfortune to come back as a farm animal, I would like to belong to Eric and Silas. Their animals may end up in the pot, but they live happy lives and are much loved.

  ‘Told you,’ says Blossom, when she turns up after breakfast to check on her patients and Silas tells her his news.

  ‘Careful what you say,’ I whisper. ‘He’s really upset.’

  ‘Silly old fool,’ says Blossom cheerfully, disregarding the fact that the silly old fool has been extremely good to her, and moreover that Eric and Silas are probably the only people in the world who would employ her. ‘Soon get over it.’

  Meanwhile, Sarah and her brood are doing nicely. When I pay her a visit, I marvel at her serenity and at the neat little row of babies suckling from her recumbent form.

  ‘How do they each find a teat like that?’ I ask Blossom.

  ‘Each have their own,’ she says.

  ‘And do they stick to it?’

  ‘Course.’ She eyes me pityingly. ‘Don’t know much about animals, do you?’

  ‘Well, no. But I haven’t had much opportunity.’

  Blossom smirks.

  ‘Not got the hands for it,’ she tells me.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look at them. Long white fingers.’ She sniffs. ‘Never make a farmer.’

  I take my long white fingers — violinist’s fingers, I console myself — and retreat to the house. I have learnt not to join battle with Blossom. She may be a woman of few words, but she has a knack of winning any argument.

  The whole household seems cheered by the arrival of the piglets. Silas, having come to terms with his bereavement, is making his plans to restore his piglet to the glory it never achieved in its brief lifetime, and Eric has made progress on his ark.

  ‘Noah’s ark isn’t just impossible, it’s totally ridiculous,’ he tells me. ‘Even if you only have a few dozen species it quite simply wouldn’t work. All that fodder. All that prey.’

  ‘Prey?’

  ‘Of course. Mice and rats for the foxes and things, small deer for the big cats. That sort of thing. Of course, mice and rats wouldn’t be too much of a problem. I could breed those pretty fast.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Well, Noah, then. But other bigger mammals have quite long gestation periods, and only produce one baby at a time. So there would need to be a lot of those, just to keep everything fed.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just breed thousands of mice?’

  ‘I thought of that, but there still wouldn’t be enough. So as I was saying, instead of simply disproving the Ark as measured in Noah’s cubits, I’ve decided to prove how big it would really have to be, instead. At the moment, with the figures I’ve got, it would need to be about the size of the Isle of Wight.’

  I picture the Isle of Wight as a neat lozenge off the south coast, but have no idea how big it is.

  ‘As for the number of people needed to build it, not to mention the wood and the time it would take, I’m not even going to go into that.’

  ‘Is all this effort really worth it?’ I ask, amazed that a simple argument with my father can have given rise to all this industry. ‘After all, you admit yourself it’s only theory.’

  ‘Never dismiss theory, Ruth. It can be quite fascinating.’

  ‘He loves a project,’ Silas tells me. ‘With a bit of luck, this’ll keep him amused for years.’

  I look at Eric, bent over his graph paper.

  ‘Perhaps you should have been an academic,’ I tell him.

  ‘I would love to have gone to university,’ he agrees.

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’

  My uncles exchange glances.

  ‘It was me,’ Silas says. ‘I failed my exams. I spent some time in hospital with rheumatic fever, and never really caught up with my school work. I tried to make Eric go without me, but he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Do you regret it?’

  But even before he replies, I know the answer. Quite apart from their mutual dependence, Eric and Silas are not the kind to waste time on regrets.

  That afternoon, Mikey pays us an impromptu visit on his way down to the West Country. Mikey and I have been keeping in regular touch, and I am delighted to see him.

  ‘I couldn’t go past without calling in to see how you are,’ he says, giving me a hug.

  ‘You the father?’ Blossom, who never bothers with introductions, is hovering with her empty dustpan.

  ‘No. I’m gay. Can’t you tell?’ Mikey grins at her.

  ‘Can’t say as I can.’

  ‘Ah well. Can’t win ’em all.’ He follows me through to the kitchen. ‘What’s up with her?’ he asks me.

  ‘Blossom? She doesn’t like visitors. She barely tolerates me.’

  Mikey laughs.

  ‘And how’s my godchild?’

  ‘Fine. Everything’s fine.’

  ‘And the identical twin uncles? How are they?’

  ‘Come and meet them.’

  Eric and Silas take to Mikey immediately, and he to them, and after we’ve been out to visit Sarah and her family, we spend a companionable hour drinking gooseberry wine (apple juice for me), and chatting, while Blossom clatters mutinously up and down the hallway, eavesdropping. Mikey admires Silas’s badger (which is nearly finished and stands in the corner of the kitchen looking like an ageing Master of Ceremonies), listens ca
refully to Eric’s plans for his Ark without showing any signs of surprise, and generally makes himself agreeable. I had forgotten what delightful company Mikey can be.

  ‘What’s happened to your gap year?’ I ask, as I see him out. This is something which still preys on my conscience.

  ‘I’ve shelved it for the time being. Besides, I’ve — met someone.’

  ‘Oh, Mikey! How exciting!’

  ‘Yes. It’s a bit soon to get excited, but I’m very happy.’ He takes my hands in his. ‘And you? What about you, Ruth? Are you happy?’

  I hesitate.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am on the whole.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But — well, I suppose I’d like someone, too.’

  ‘Anyone in mind?’

  ‘Well...’

  ‘The baby’s father perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘But you don’t want to talk about him.’

  ‘I do and I don’t.’ I sigh. ‘It’s — complicated.’

  ‘Isn’t it always?’

  ‘I suppose so. But I’ve never had a baby with anyone before, so this is a first for me.’

  ‘Do you — I mean, how do you feel about him?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. We’ve been friends — good friends — for years, but the sex was a one-off. We’ve never had that kind of relationship. It was always straightforward.’

  ‘And now it’s not.’

  ‘Now it’s not even a relationship, because I have no idea where he is.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Yes. So I haven’t any chance of finding out how I feel about him, if that doesn’t sound too weird.’

  ‘Not weird at all.’ Mikey pauses. ‘But you’d like to find him?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I would. For a while, I wasn’t sure, but now I really want to at least get in touch. To tell him about the baby.’

  ‘Someone must know where he is,’ Mikey says. ‘Nowadays, it’s very hard to just disappear.’

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But Amos has a thing about technology and the internet. He has the most basic mobile, and hates computers. He never does social media. So he’s not traceable the way most people are. Besides, he has a vengeful ex-wife who’s after his assets, and he’s trying to hide from her. He was never going to be easy to find.’

  After Mikey has gone, I go up to my room and sit on my bed, gazing out of the window at the view of ramshackle sheds and untamed vegetation. Speaking to Mikey, I have finally put into words what I’ve been feeling for a while, especially since that fleeting glimpse in town: whatever it takes, I’m going to try to find Amos.

  I reach for up my address book and start leafing through the pages. Someone somewhere must know where he is.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In the course of the next two days, I manage to contact several people, none of whom have any idea where Amos might be. He has apparently mentioned another cruise ship, in which case he could be anywhere in the world, and also “taking time out”, which could mean much the same.

  But before I have time to be seriously disappointed at what is essentially non-news, something happens to turn our household completely upside-down, and take our minds off anything but the matter in question.

  It is all Blossom’s fault.

  Perhaps I should first explain that Blossom is a fully paid-up rosary-carrying Roman Catholic. Not for Blossom the twice-yearly trip to the confessional; she apparently goes to both Mass and confession every week.

  When Silas first told me I was completely stunned. ‘Blossom in confession! I wonder what she says?’

  ‘So do we.’

  ‘Probably not a lot as she never admits she’s in the wrong,’ I say, rather unkindly.

  ‘There is that.’

  ‘But still.’

  ‘As you say. But still.’

  To be fair, Blossom doesn’t talk about her faith much, but it does go some way to explain her attitude to my condition and to the behaviour of Kaz. I’m not at all sure what it is that Kaz does to incur her mother’s disapproval, but knowing Catholics — and I know quite a few — it’s almost certain to have something to do with sex. I have often thought that the Catholic church would be much happier if there were no such thing as sex; if instead of having babies, people simply divided in two, like those micro-organisms we studied in biology at school. Clean, simple and straightforward, with no messy relationships or the ‘impure’ thoughts and deeds to which my Catholic friends felt obliged to confess.

  I wonder why it is that Blossom’s religion has apparently failed to make her a nicer person, but as Silas and Eric point out, she might be a lot worse without it. Silas, ever charitable, says she could well be trying very hard, and have found that this is as far as she can get on her spiritual journey, but I remain convinced that Blossom is a deeply unpleasant person, and that not much can be done to change her.

  Be that as it may, it is a very different Blossom from the one we know (if not love) who bursts into the kitchen on a wet Monday morning after feeding the hens.

  ‘Dear Lord! Oh, dear Lord!’ she collapses into a chair.

  ‘What? What’s happened?’ Eric asks her. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Dear Lord. Oh, Holy Mother of God.’ There are actual tears in Blossom’s eyes.

  Eric gives her a little shake.

  ‘Come on, Blossom It can’t be that bad.’

  ‘Bad? Oh, not at all. Not bad. It’s a miracle. A miracle in this house. Praise the Lord!’

  ‘Miracle? What miracle?’ Silas joins in.

  ‘The blessed Virgin Mary. In the hen house.’

  ‘You mean — you mean you’ve had a vision of some sort?’ says Eric carefully. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘No, no. It’s still there. Oh, praise the Lord!’

  ‘Are you saying that the — the Blessed Virgin is in the hen house?’

  ‘No. Yes. Well, sort of.’

  ‘Tell us, Blossom. Take your time.’

  ‘Oh, Holy Mother! Bless us all.’ Blossom crosses herself. We all wait.

  ‘She’s there. She’s right there on the wall. I saw her clear as I’m sitting here.’

  ‘On the wall.’ Silas repeats the words thoughtfully. ‘Where — where exactly on the wall?’

  ‘It’s not her herself, of course —’ well, there’s a relief — ‘but her image. With stars.’

  ‘With stars. My goodness,’ says Eric.

  ‘Come. Come and see!’ Blossom leaps to her feet and pulls at Silas’s hand. ‘All of you. Come and see.’ She scurries out of the back door and leads the way along the muddy path to the hen house.

  The hen house is the oldest of the outbuildings, having been made many years ago by my grandfather. Rather unusually, it is constructed from oak, since, as Eric explained to me, that was the only wood which was to hand at the time. Everyone has always agreed that a lovely piece of oak like that is wasted on the hens, but it has stood the test of time and of many generations of birds, and Eric and Silas are very attached to it. They used to hide in it as boys, and my poor mother once spent a terrifying afternoon in it when her brothers locked her in. It is, in short, a part of family history.

  When we catch up with Blossom, her eyes are fixed on the side of the hen house and she appears to be in some kind of trance. I follow her gaze, but can see nothing unusual. I wonder whether you have to be a Catholic to see these things (after all, they always seem to appear to Catholics). Agnostics like myself probably don’t stand a chance.

  ‘There. There she is.’ Blossom rouses herself and points. ‘There. The Blessed Mother herself. And — stars.’

  We all look. After a minute, Eric and Silas move closer.

  ‘Well — I think I can see something,’ Silas says, but he sounds a bit doubtful. He fishes in his pocket for his glasses, and peers more closely.

  ‘What? What can you see?’ Blossom cries.

  ‘It could be — yes, it looks a bit like a figure.’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Oh, thanks be to God!’ Blossom
clasps her hands and lifts her gaze heavenwards.

  ‘Hang on a minute, Blossom. Maybe we need to calm down a bit.’ Silas says. ‘We mustn’t jump to conclusions.’

  ‘Can I have a look?’ I ask.

  Eric and Silas move back, and I join Blossom.

  ‘There! There she is,’ Blossom says, pointing a grubby finger.

  Sure enough, in the grain of the wood it is possible to make out a vague figure; tall, wearing a kind of long garment, with what could be outstretched arms.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ I say.

  ‘And stars? Can you see the stars?’

  There is a circle of speckles round the head of the figure. Certainly, with a bit of imagination, they could be taken for stars.

  ‘I think I can.’

  ‘There! Told you! Even Ruth can see her.’

  Even Ruth. Thank you, Blossom.

  Eric and Silas carry out another inspection, and agree that there certainly is something that looks a bit like a figure.

  ‘But even if it is a person, how can you tell who it is?’ Eric asks.

  Blossom looks at him pityingly.

  ‘The Blessed Virgin likes to appear. That’s what she does.’

  This seems true enough. I have read of Virgins appearing, variously, on hillsides, in skyscapes and even on pieces of toast. Why not on the side of our hen house?

  It is a strange phenomenon that once you see a figure or an object in a piece of wood (or in anything else, come to that) it becomes impossible not to see it. I myself have found the head of a fox and a lop-sided dragonfly in the knotted wood of the bathroom floor, and there are lots of faces in the floral material of the curtains in my old bedroom at home. Thus the curtains are no longer flowery, but peopled with little pink and white strangers, and whichever way I look at them, I can’t turn them back into flowers.

  So it is with Blossom’s Virgin. Now that I have seen her, I can’t not see her. She is there. And the more I look, the more Virgin-like she becomes. I fancy I see features, hair, even a veil. The outstretched arms bless, the tiny stars twinkle. I am almost convinced. I try looking away, and then looking back again, but she is still there. I can almost imagine that the garment she is wearing is blue. Whatever happens, from now on every time I look at the hen house, I too will see the Virgin Mary.