1
A rebuilding… maybe
IT WAS THE kind of place they just never would have considered living in. At one time. When he’d loved the empty hush of a cold night and the whingeing of old timbers in a gale. Oh… and when he could walk across the yard without a goddamn stick.
He said, kind of tentatively, ‘Don’t you love it… just a little?’
Facing Betty in the curve of the alley, where there was a café and sandwich bar with outside tables, people having morning tea and fooling themselves this was summer.
‘“Love”’s not quite the right word,’ Betty said. ‘Though little certainly fits.’
It was a stone building, maybe a former outhouse, somewhere between a stable block and a pigsty. Most of its ground floor seemed to be a bookstore.
Robin was silent, looking up over the roofs of the shops to the castle’s ivy-stubbled stone, his fingers curling with the need to paint it. She must’ve seen him catch his breath when they drove over the long bridge across the Wye that was like a causeway between worlds.
There weren’t many towns left in this overloaded country that you could see the whole of from a distance, nesting in wooded hills, the streets curling up to the castle, warm grey walls under lustrous clouds. He’d been here a dozen times but never before with that sense of electric anticipation, that sense of intent, Jesus, that sense of mission.
‘So, could you maybe like… grow to love it?’ he said.
Betty gave him the long-suffering look.
‘I know what you love about it. You love how close it is to the castle. If it wasn’t for the castle you wouldn’t even consider living up an alley in the middle of a town.’
Ah, damn, she knew him too well. Robin took a step back. Here, in this alley, the castle was so close that one of its walls seemed to be growing out of the roofs of shops. Including this shop, virtually in its foundations. If he could hop, he’d be hopping. Come on. How often did you get a chance like this, to be almost part of a castle?
And make money. How could they not?
‘And let’s be honest.’ Betty looked up. ‘As castles go, it’s not the most scenic. Some medieval walls, most of a tower. A knackered Jacobean mansion somebody built inside, only it keeps burning down. But then – I keep forgetting – you’re American.’
Two young guys walking down from the main road gave Betty long glances, the way guys did faced with a lovely fresh-faced blonde. She had on the shocking-pink fleece with the naive flower motif that made her look sixteen, unzipped to below her breasts, swelling the tight T-shirt underneath. Robin couldn’t see her expression because the sun was suddenly dazzling him through a split in the rainclouds, and she was spinning around, canvas bag springing from her shoulder on its strap.
‘Bugger! We’re overdue.’
‘What?’
‘Car park. Ten forty-six on the ticket. They’re complete bastards now, apparently.’
Shouldering her bag and stomping off up the alley, away from the café, towards the main road. Robin didn’t move, not ready to lose the ambience of a different era. An old lady was ambling past wearing a tweed cap. She was whistling. He didn’t recognize the tune, but how many places did you actually encounter an old lady whistling? He hissed and tightened his fists until his nails dug into his palms, then limped off after Betty. A tug on his hip as he drew level.
‘I suppose they’re not actually bastards in themselves,’ Betty said, ‘they’re just – according to that woman in the ice cream parlour, you probably weren’t listening, you were gazing around – they’re under orders from the council that anybody gets a ticket, even if they’re only a minute over. Councils are so desperate for cash they’re mugging tourists.’
‘Betty!’ Robin was wringing his hands. ‘Fuck the goddamn parking wardens! Fuck the council! Whatta we do here?’
She didn’t answer. He followed her out to the main road which was called Oxford Road, although it in no way could be said to lead to Oxford on account of Oxford had to be something like a hundred miles away and comparable to Hay only in its book-count.
Across this road, over the chain of vehicles and beyond the wide, sloping parking lot prowled by bastards, hills of pool-table green were snuggled into the Black Mountains. The hills between the mountains and the river. The flesh between the bones and the blood. And in the middle of this right now, the centre of everything, was the grey-brown town, the only actual urban space where Robin had ever totally wanted to be since leaving the States. They could make it here. Get something back. Maybe not all of it, but some of it. A start. A rebuilding. Maybe.