The Conversion by Amanda Lohrey

Author:Amanda Lohrey [Amanda Lohrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2023-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

19

At the farmers’ market on a Sunday morning the stalls are set up under an avenue of plane trees that in autumn offer little shade. Wandering through the dense crowd with her hessian shopping bag and feeling comfortably rustic, before long Zoe finds herself gazing down at a trestle table laid with braids of purple garlic. Overhead is a striped awning and behind the table sits a woman close to her own age with flawless skin and ash-blonde hair. The carefully braided bulbs make her think of a statue in the National Gallery of a harvest goddess with a plait reaching to her waist, and while she is wondering if she could use that much of the pungent bulb over the coming months, a man enters through the back flap of the tent carrying two coffees and she recognises the Reverend Patrick Carter.

‘Hello, I’m Zoe North,’ she says. ‘I bought St Martin’s.’

‘So I heard.’ He hands one of the coffees to the blonde woman. ‘How are you managing there?’ And before she can reply: ‘This is my wife, Peggy.’ And she and Peggy nod and smile at one another, but there are buyers jostling at her elbow and a woman shouting in her ear: ‘I say, is this the Ethiopian stuff?’ Zoe is in the way of trade but manages to blurt out: ‘May I come and see you sometime? I’d like to know about the history of the church.’

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘We’re in the book. Give us a ring.’

At the end of the street the roof of her car is littered with leaves the colour of rust and turmeric that have dropped from the plane tree directly above. How bright they are, and yet how dry. In the small adjacent park she recognises Dr Khalid’s wife, who is pushing a child on one of the swings. She knows little of the hospital staff; after work they retreat to their small bush holdings or commute to one of the bigger towns in the valley. She is not one of them. When Lachie had asked if she were lonely, she could answer truthfully that she was not; for now her situation suited her and she need not think beyond the coming week. That was the point of her retreat. She has no plan for the conversion and is no better than reactive, and even then only when in a low mood. ‘I am squatting,’ she says to herself as she opens the car door, and the empty vestibule tells the tale.

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