Leaving The Village

Regis came from a long line of farmers. He lived in a village where everyone owned a plot of arable land. He had a large house and several fields on which he grew wheat, sunflowers and rapeseed. Behind his house stood a hanger where a workshop was set up. People would come and go and use the machinery and borrow tools or stop off and chat the local gossip. You couldn’t help but like Regis. He was a big cheerful fellow, always with a smile.

This close knit community was where he was born. Family were all around. His auntie lived down the lane on the corner, his cousin Patrick was a neighbour and lived two fields up. 

The days rarely differed. Everybody seemed to know what everyone else was doing. 

One fine spring afternoon Regis was loading fertilizer onto his tractor and a car pulled up. 

It was Delphine, a local, who lived down in the village with her boyfriend Marc.

“Hey Delphine.”

She got out of her car in a hurry and Regis noticed her thin drawn face and furrowed brow.

“Marc came off the road, his car’s stuck in a ditch.”

Regis wanted to get the fields done by sundown but felt obliged to help.

“Okay. I’ll take the truck down and pull him out.” 

He stopped what he was doing, got into his pick-up and followed her down through the village. 

The car’s back end was in the ditch, its front sticking up. Marc had taken a bend too fast. He was standing by the car, dishevelled, thin and unkempt. Regis pulled up beside him.

“You okay?” 

“I’m fine,” said Marc looking dazed.

From where he was Regis could smell fumes of alcohol. He attached the winch rope to the underside of the bumper, got back in the pick-up and slowly pulled away. The front of the car came down and bounced on its wheels. The car was out of the ditch and back on the road but its rear axle was damaged. Delphine thanked Regis profusely and Marc went to get back in the car. Regis jumped out of his pick-up and grabbed him by the arm. 

“You’re in no fit state to drive.”

They wrestled for a bit. Delphine intervened and guided Marc into her car and drove him home. Regis towed the broken car to the local garage and left it there to be worked on. 

He came back from the fields later than he would have liked. Dead tired he grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat on his porch overlooking the sunflowers. The sun was on the horizon and had turned the sky a rose colour. He gazed across the fields that swept down to the road and the village hall and then up again to the church on the hill.

Sipping his beer, he leant back listening to birdsong. Footsteps approached. Regis looked over and saw Patrick standing in front. 

“Hey buddy, wanna beer?”

Regis told Patrick about his day and how he thought that Marc needed help and was a danger to the village. Patrick thought so too.

After a few beers Regis loosened up and was on a roll. He told Patrick how he harboured thoughts of escaping the village and getting away. Though he had space, he felt smothered by village life. There was a property on the coast a few hours away that he had set his sights on. Patrick scoffed at this. He told him that he would never leave the village, this was his life, he was born here and he would die here. 

Regis didn’t sleep well that night. Since his wife had died several years ago he had felt unsettled. Her death was a shock to him and the old gal was still in his thoughts. When she was alive, they often talked of getting away and starting afresh somewhere else. Next morning he rose with an overwhelming urge to make a change. He had enough money saved to buy that place on the coast freehold. He made inquiries. It was still available.

The village seemed quieter lately. Someone piped up and said that they hadn’t seen Regis for a while. His hanger was closed up and his tractor was left sat outside.

Regis would breakfast on his balcony overlooking the ocean while waves lapped on the rocks below. He would look out at the bay and watch the fishing boats bring in the morning catch. Regis spent the first few weeks going back and forth into town in his pick up, buying supplies and materials for the house. He painted the shutters a pastel green and fixed the guttering on the sides. It was always sunny and the salty sea air enlivened his senses. From his place, he could walk along the bay to the bars. It wasn’t long before his new abode began to feel like home. 

One morning while he was out front repairing a fence, he heard the screech of tyres and the roar of an engine approach. He leant over his boundary and saw a truck coming up the road. He recognised it and felt a swell of discouragement. The truck drew up outside his gate. Marc was behind the wheel, Delphine beside him. Speech slurring, Marc said they heard from Patrick that he had moved out this way and thought they would look him up. Regis could smell the booze from the other side of the fence. They said they were staying in a hotel on the bay and wondered if they could all hook up that night. He reluctantly agreed. A pang of disappointment welled up inside Regis, he still felt tethered to the old village. Maybe Patrick was right, he could never escape, never really get away.

He didn’t go to the bar that night. He sat on his balcony watching the lighthouse on the edge of the bay, and the flickering lights that necklaced the coast, downing a bottle of scotch with a creeping realisation that maybe his coastal life was just a fantasy and it would all be over soon.

“Will I ever break free?” he asked himself.