one
The beginning Is simple to mark. We were in sunlight under
a turkey oak, Partly Protected from a strong, &usty wind. I
was kneeling on the grass with a corkscrew in my hand, and
Clarissa was passing me the bottle-a 1987 Daumas Gassac
This was the moment, this was the pinprick on the time map: I
was stretching out my hand, and as the cool neck and the black
foil touched my Palm, we heard a mans shout. We tamed
to look across the field and saw the danger. Next thing, I
was running towards it. The transformation was absolute
don't recall dropping the corkscrew, or getting to my feet, or
making a decision, or hearing the caution Clarissa called after
me. What idiocy, to be racing into this story and its labyrinths
sprinting away t
happiness among the fresh spring
grasses by the oak. There was the shout again, and a childs
cry, enfeebled by the wind that roared in the tall trees along the
lgerows. I ran faster. And there, suddenly, from different
Points around the field, four other men were converging on
the scene, running like me
I see us from three hundred feet up, through the eyes of
the buzzard we had watched earlier, soaring, circling and
dipping in the tumult of currents: five men running silently
towards the centre of a hundred-acre field. I approached from
the south-east with the wind at my back. About two hundred
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