Alver Shore. A place of crowded brick terraces cratered by air raids, children swarming over the bomb sites. Waiflike young mothers who scrubbed and baked and carried home the coal, and fell asleep darning socks of an evening. Old men, backs bent under the sea wind, mining the black mud of the harbor for cockles and clams to add to a family diet consisting largely of bread and potatoes and fresh air.

“The Alver Shore of 1946,” I say, smiling, “is a far cry from the modern-day Upton of 1974.”

“A far cry. Of course.” He gives a strange unnerving little chuckle. “I must say, Mr. Acton, that is very well put.”

It began one evening in early May, less than three months ago.

The dusk was draining from the sky and I was sitting at my desk writing a sermon in candlelight, something I’d learned to do over the decade since Yvette died, so effectively did the small flame cast the world, even if only for an hour or so, into shadow. A few days previously I’d said goodbye to my son, Tom, who, having completed his first year at university, was off to fruit-pick his way across France until the autumn. I was well used by now to Yvette’s absence from my bed, and I was even taking my student son’s increasingly sporadic visits in my stride, but that evening the house seemed especially empty. Safe in the candle’s soothing glow, pen in hand, I happened to glance at the latest issue of the Church Times which lay just within the light’s perimeter; my eyes, wandering down the Positions Vacant column, came to rest upon the phrase rural parish, Hampshire. It didn’t even register properly at the time.

But later that night, as I started my usual prayers before sleeping, I felt a tension inside me, a pulling—or was it a push? Was it coming from outside or was I the one seeking? I couldn’t be sure. By the following morning the feeling had formed itself into a statement so urgent that it woke me up.

It’s time to go.