Open Writing

'Don't just stand there, do something,' he said.

'What do you expect me to do?' I asked, looking down at him as he lay on his back in the ditch under the hedgerow.

'I can't move,' he said, 'and I'm getting soaked.' There was indeed water, filthy water, in the ditch. I could smell it. And now the rain had started.

'Well,' I said, 'you're far too heavy for me to pull out... I don't want to do my back in again .. . Why did you have to walk into a ditch?'

From across the fields came the sound of shooting.

'You could have warned me,' he said, looking up, his fat red face beginning to quiver. 'But no, you were too busy telling me all about those catapults that you say were used in the first world war, weren't you?'

They were enormous,' I said.

'I don't care . .. Now are you going to pull me out of here or not?'

'I think I'd better go for help,' I said.

*

'Come in, out of the rain,' said the sturdy woman who opened the door. 'Go and sit by the fire, take your coat off, I'll make a cup of tea.'

'Out there, in the ditch -' I began.

'Here's a towel, wipe your face. And now drink this. It should warm you up.'

'A colleague of mine,' I began again, 'from the university . . . out there -'

'Would you care for some apple pie?' she asked.

'Thank you,' I said, eating a slice, 'it's delicious.1

'Homemade,' she said. 'I do all the baking for the four of us.'

The four of us ... I mean the four of you?'

'Yes, me, my husband and our two sons - they all work on the farm. They're out in the fields now, looking for somebody to shoot.'

'Wh . . . at?' I spluttered.

Ah, that scared you, didn't it?' she said, cutting another slice.