You Are Enough lettering in a circle

You will laugh at me, but I have spent three weeks on my knees in the chapel at Carrow Keep with a wire brush and a pot of lime, because the old mason cut something above the altar and the rain has nearly had it. Under the lichen the words run in a hand that leans forward like it is late for a train: you are enough. I took it for a prayer at first. Mrs Pryce at the village shop says the chaplain had it cut after the men came home from the Boer war with nothing to show for themselves but their boots.

Above the words somebody ran a double ring into the stone, two careful circles, one a shade wider than the other. I thought the ring was the decoration and the words were the message, but the longer I scrub the more I think the ring is holding the words in, the way a hand holds a cup. The stone inside is pale where the lime has bitten, and the letters have the same brisk fall as the script on the tea caddy Mum kept for the good visitors.

Mr Vaughan, who looks after the gate and the grass, came up the stair with a flask and watched me work for a while without saying anything. Then he told me the mason had been a boy of sixteen, and that he had given up halfway through the last word because his mother had sent for him. The line under enough was the boy's breath, Vaughan said, and nobody ever had the heart to chisel it off.

I have left that stroke exactly as it is, the thin dash under the final word where the chisel stopped and started again. The scaffolding goes up on Monday, so come and see it before the men in hard hats make it tidy. Bring the good tea caddy. I will tell you the rest over a cup.

Your sister, Nell