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passing days, the work grew ever harder as the flow of water gradually diminished. The regulation two buckets was first cut to one, then to a quart pitcher, then to a pint, then to half a pint per person per day, which decisions were made and enforced by the Reverend Carr, who stood by the pump, day after day, pink-faced and sweating in his clerical black, blinking lizard-like under his hatbrim. And, once each household’s rations were supplied, he clunked the pump’s padlock into place, slipped the key into his waistcoat pocket, and walked away. He went up, I have to say, in my estimation, for that. I wouldn’t have wished that job on anyone.
    All that time I was constantly aware of the dryness of my mouth, the way my tongue stuck to my palate, the dusty catch at the back of my throat. Against my instincts, I was forced to spin out my half pint of water throughout the day, depletingit in mouselike sips. The urge to drink it down in one quick swallow was fierce, but I kept the impulse at bay. It was necessary, this slight refreshment, even though it was never quite enough to dampen down my thirst. At night, sweltering beneath the hot tiles, no breath of air coming in through the opened window, I slept shallowly: I dreamt of rain.
    The heat turned a whole tun of beer: it reeked of rot and no one, despite their constant thirst, could be persuaded to drink it. Uncle George had me empty it onto the vegetable patch, where the leeks had dried into straw and the feathered carrottops were parched as tinder. The plants were past revival: the only possible benefit of emptying the cask there was that the earth, dampened, would at least cease to blow away. Uncle George’s other response to the loss was equally pragmatic: he trebled the price of a pint.
    Waterless, I had taken to cleaning the glasses with vinegar. Each time Uncle George finished off a jar of pickles, he would leave me the vessel and remaining liquid. I would stand behind the counter, dipping a rag into the jar, polishing each fingerprinted glass back to clarity. The vinegar evaporated quickly in the heat, and left the glasses with just a faint acidic whiff, a taint of onion, cabbages or eggs. No one seemed to notice these slight contaminations: every mouth was already bitter and polluted (after a while Uncle George even began to regret the disposal of that rotten barrel) and, unable to perform even the most meagre of ablutions, let alone launder clothes and underclothes, each of us perspiring like cheese left out in the sun, there was not one single villager who did not reek to high heaven, whose skin was not filmed with oily filth.
    My first thought, therefore, when I saw him, was how clean he was. He came into the bar room with a breath of mist and moss, and looking up, I saw a fold of crisp linen, the dipand curve of skin over collarbone, and was suddenly acutely aware of my dirt-embedded fingernails, the stickiness beneath my arms and between my legs. My second thought was that I hadn’t met him before. And I’d never met anyone I hadn’t met before.
    His hat and suit were clerical, black and clean, and his shirt was white and obviously of fine quality, but he wore it open at the throat and collarless, like a working man. He wore boots, not clogs: he’d come in softly on the usually clattering stone floor; and that spoke of quality, but a glance revealed the boots to be worn and dusty, and the laces were frayed with use. He raised a hand to his hat, and the hand was brown and strong, but wasn’t scuffed or callused with work. His nails were neat.
    He said, “Good afternoon,” and the vowel sounds were clipped and unfamiliar. I glanced round to see who he was speaking to. There was no one else there. I turned back to him, opened my mouth, and then remembered what happened the last time I stepped out of line. This would, I suspected, count as stepping out of line. And so I moved back from the bar (mouth still hanging open, no