The Story of My Face by Kathy Page

slowly down. His father embraces him, grasps the back of his head and pulls it down close to his own.
    After the reading, they all go outside to sit on the recently mowed grass, eat squares of communion bread and then the Sunday meal. The older people have chairs brought for them, the rest sit on the ground. A warm breeze lifts the edges of the cloths and rugs, the women’s skirts. More of the blue delphiniums are growing in a packed border against the barn wall. Edith Thorn, neat in her ironed Sunday blouse, reaches her hand over and rests it on top of Mark’s.
    â€˜You’ve spoken what is in many hearts,’ she says, smiling. ‘We shall talk of these things a great deal in the Summer Congregation. What you have to say will be very important indeed.’
    It has been more or less decided, she explains, that because so many are unable to renew their passports they will hold the Summer Congregation near Hunmanby on the East Coast. Arrangements are being made with a landowner to use several of his fields for a week. Privacy is guaranteed, a water supply, chemical toilets, rubbish clearance. The price is reasonable. . . . ‘Are you feeling all right?’ she asks, touching his forehead gently. ‘Why not lie down?’
    He follows her back into the house and upstairs into a shady room, allows her to bring him a glass of water. Certainly, he thinks, sipping it and watching the curtain being gently sucked in and out of the window, something has happened to him. He recalls the story of Tuomas Envall, holding the hands of the dying man. Of course, it was not so great a thing as that, but perhaps it was an experience of the same kind – ‘a kind of white heat that does not burn.’
    â€˜At least,’ Barbara says on the way home that afternoon, ‘there won’t be that ferry journey to deal with. I’ve never liked it much. And another thing – everyone will speak the same language, which is surely a good thing.’
    â€˜You seem almost pleased,’ Mark tells her, his judgement of her clear in his voice. Although his earlier intensity of emotion has gone, it has left behind a kind of strengthening residue.
    â€˜I’m just making the best of things, darling.’ She has clipped sunshades onto her glasses; her arm trails outside the car window, catching at the tips of comfrey and vetch in the narrow lanes.
    That evening, while he’s in the kitchen and his parents sit over the remains of supper, he distinctly hears her tell his father that she would like to invite Natalie to the Summer Congregation.
    â€˜The red-haired girl?’
    â€˜She’s an only child.’
    The gaps between these remarks seem long, and the connections between them weak, as if the real communication was taking place some other way.
    â€˜Has she shown any interest?’
    â€˜She does so like to be with us –’
    After another long pause, his father asks, lightly, ‘What about her parents?’ The wrong question, Mark feels. He goes back into the room; they’ve moved their chairs closer and are holding hands on the table, both hands, fingers interleaved. His father gives Mark an odd, almost sheepish smile.
    â€˜Don’t,’ Mark tells them. ‘Don’t ask her.’ They stare at him.
    â€˜She’ll spoil things,’ he announces with all the authority of having earlier spoken in Service ‘what was in many people’s hearts’. He addresses his father, banishing Barbara to a dim presence at the edge of his frame of vision: ‘She’ll drive us apart –’ he announces, and feels as he says it as if the girl is on the verge of materialising in the gathering darkness and any minute will be in the room with them again, looking around, greedily taking it all in for some incomprehensible purpose of her own –
    â€˜I’ve no idea why he’s like this,’ Barbara says. ‘Maybe he’s jealous.’ With