I nipped down to the village mid-morning on a couple of errands, and was surprised to see a police car parked outside the lettuce farm car park, plus other emergency vehicles and people in uniforms milling around. Nobody attempted to flag me down, and I was fairly sure I saw next door's Airedale wandering among the throng, so it didn't look like a crisis, on the other hand it was an odd thing to find on your doorstep on a Sunday morning. I wondered whether there had been an accident with a forklift or something, and more frivolously whether the lettuce farm had been busted for employing illegal labour, though that seemed very unlikely. There were still police cars there when I got back, and an unmarked white van with people dressed in black standing next to it, looking unhurried but purposeful.
I told the Systems Administrator that there were police down at the farm, though I hadn't seen if there was an ambulance as well, and we speculated uselessly about what might be going on. Then a police helicopter arrived, and began flying low and slow over the surrounding fields, following the hedge lines. The SA commented admiringly that that was skilled piloting, and we agreed that they must be looking for something or someone, but that whatever it was couldn't be judged to be a threat to the public, given that nobody had come to warn us or tell us to remain indoors. We decided that they must either be looking for someone who was feared to be a risk to themselves but not other people, or else had another sighting of the Essex lion, though after the embarrassment they suffered last time we didn't think they'd send the helicopter out for the lion again.
There were voices outside the front door. The SA went to investigate, and came back saying that five coppers had just gone down through our wood as being the quickest way to reach the small copse across the field. They hadn't said much, but confirmed that they were looking for somebody at risk of harming themselves. We stood in the sitting room window, watching the helicopter circle, and after a while the figures of five policemen in luminous vests appeared crossing the field. They reached the copse, circled it, and seemed not to find what they were looking for, as they set off again heading south towards the far corner of the field. More police arrived and said that they would like to search our garden and outbuildings.
They were full-blown police officers, not community support officers, in the search team clothing of a one piece suit and boots, and carrying Google Earth printouts of the area. It is very strange to find your property and immediate neighbourhood the subject of a police search, especially on a beautiful, calm, sunny Sunday morning when you are about to go to lunch with your assembled relatives. We jumped for a moment seeing somebody moving on the bottom lawn, then saw that it was just a policeman. The SA wondered if it was OK for us to go out, but the police confirmed that it was fine, and I couldn't see what good it would do if we blew my mother out, besides which, I had the meringues and the cheese straws. As we got into the car, dressed in our party clothes, a police officer appeared from the side of the house, looking absurdly young and fresh faced. He said we had a lovely garden, and we said we hoped they found the person they were looking for, and off we drove. There were clusters of officers in the lane by our spinney, and more police cars parked in the field entrances.
I did deeply and sincerely hope that they found whoever it was, safe and well, as the standard phrase goes. Two of my classmates killed themselves not long after leaving school, in both cases becoming depressed following educational setbacks, and I always thought what a terrible, tragic waste that was. There were so many fulfilling lives each could have led, instead of the ones they'd initially visualised for themselves aged eighteen, it really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things where they went to university, or whether they went at all, but they had reached a point where they couldn't see it like that. I very much wanted whoever it was to be found.
I also had a much baser and selfish thought, which was that I didn't want this missing person to commit suicide in our wood. That wasn't very nice of me. I shouldn't have been thinking about my own feelings at all at such a time, but I'm afraid it is in human nature to do so. Later on, chatting with someone over lunch they told me about the summer they'd had worrying about their father, who is over a hundred and in poor health in a nursing home some way from where they live. They were busy with a set of monthly weekend classes leading up to an exam, which they wanted to pass, and with their career, and couldn't help wondering after each scare what they would do if their father died, and whether they would be able to complete the course, or do the exam. They said they knew it was mean of them, and they shouldn't think in that way, but one did. One couldn't help it. Normal life kept happening even in the face of something momentous. Ah, like the Auden poem Musee des Beaux Arts, I said. I felt better thinking that I was not alone with my inappropriate thoughts.
We drove home wondering nervously whether we would find police in the front garden, or an ambulance, and incident tape, and how it would feel looking at that patch of one's home and knowing that somebody had killed themselves there, and whether if it turned into a tragedy the press would turn up. All was quiet. Everybody had gone, apart from three cars parked as normal for a Sunday in the fishing club car park by the reservoir. There was nothing obvious on the local news websites to say who they had been searching for. I very much hope that they found them, safe and well.
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