The Water Tower - Books 1-3

Chapter 1-2

“So they’ve finally brought it down, then.” — “It’s gone, has it?” — “That’s that, then.” They weren’t the only ones who’d be watching. It would be the same all over. A dog walker on the Village Green would have stopped by the telephone box, pausing – just for a moment – to take it all in. Shopkeepers along the Parade would have interrupted their customers, tilting their heads towards the windows to try and get a better view. He supposed they might even have stopped playing bowls on the Green; his lip curled slightly at the realisation that the final fall of the Tower might have been the only thing significant enough to halt a game.

The sky was already tinged with the first hints of evening; scattered smears of a ruddy composition were painting the clouds with an undercoat of red. The young man stood at the edge of the cordon, collecting his thoughts, slowing his breathing, and pushing away a mountain of memories as if with the palm of his hand. He tried to suppress the competing ideas in his mind that were wrestling with one another over what to do next. He was ready to turn and walk back the way he’d come, release the clenched fists he hadn’t realised he’d balled, and wind his way back to the house. He had known he wouldn’t be able to embrace the silence for long; there were still things that needed to be done, and the thought of a familiar environment suddenly seemed more appealing.

He gathered himself, watching the man with the blue woollen hat call out a final goodbye to the young couple, as they parted on the corner of the Square and went their separate ways. The couple held hands – not her brother, then, he noted – as the last question he’d been asked replayed itself in his mind.

not her brother, then, “Who was the last person to tell you they loved you?”

“Who was the last person to tell you they loved you?”He could hear her saying it; her voice melodic and light, a wind chime coloured with a playful edge. Then he imagined the question written on a sheet of paper, his answer crossed out with marker pen, hastily removed and awaiting its successor. There was enough blank space to insert dozens of other replies. He wondered how many he’d write there in the years to come, on that paper in his imagination.

The couple turned the corner out of sight. The man with the woollen hat and untidy jeans walked towards a car parked in one of the bays facing the Square. He climbed inside and started the ignition. As he drove away, the young man turned his head to scan the Parade. His eyes skimmed the familiar shop frontages, with their neat, inviting windows, and their immaculately painted doors.

No one ever got round to opening that bookshop, he thought. Missed opportunity.

No one ever got round to opening that bookshopMissed opportunity.Those that weren’t already closed soon would be, before the early evening folded into night. The patient hours would tick along, waiting for the sun to rise again, and the doors to be unlocked. Somehow, almost by reflex, his eyes fell on the one shop whose door he knew would never open again – at least, not as he remembered it. The one that would remain cloaked in its own history, quietly letting the storm of memories wash over it until a new owner came along.

He expected to see nothing but darkness. The inside of the shop was bare; it had already been stripped of its once inviting furnishings. The space formerly occupied by window dressings was shrouded in a gloomy mystery. That’s how it should have been.

Except… there was something…

Except… there was something…His eyes narrowed as he focused on the shop front. The young man edged forward, as if making for the door.

It was then that he saw the light.

* * *

The Water Tower had been built in 1824 by an Italian architect, according to the history books. It had been situated to the north of the old Market Square, accessed by the pedestrianised walkway, which was lined with well-manicured shrubs that rested in ceramic planters between processions of trees. Once, when the industrial revolution had raged, the subsidiary buildings had housed an industrial school. By the time the young man first arrived in Little Bassington, the entire site had long been emptied and abandoned. The Tower itself had been lifeless and crumbling, its pipes corroded, the metal frames and girders of its interior already having succumbed to rust and decay.

The green shoots of weeds that had grown from the creases and folds of its roof space had added a layer of mystery to the place; the way the clicks and clacks of a haunted house tease their trespassers with the hint of something unseen. The Tower’s low walls had been the only boundary between the walkway that led from the Square and the confines of its grounds. The original tall, wrought-iron gates still sat proudly within their arched frame but, for a long time, they had been fused shut and impassable.

Nearly fifty years before the day of the demolition, the Tower had been granted a temporary reprieve from the deterioration it had been enduring even then; the grounds had been renovated, the old chipped concrete raised and laid afresh. The first of the shrubs which now bordered the walkway had been planted, as part of a project which sought to preserve the Tower as a site of historical interest. It was always assumed that more would be done once the initial renovation had been completed. But the project had fallen by the wayside, the money well had run dry, interest had been lost, and other, more pressing concerns had captured the attention of whoever had held in their hands the power to decide its future.

Little Bassington’s past had once unfolded its wings within the sanctuary of that place; yet the Water Tower itself had been left strangely unmarked, save for the wear and tear that had naturally discoloured the brickwork across the intervening years. Beside an empty metal frame within the grounds, where a steel staircase had once provided access and egress to the second storey of one of the domicile buildings, someone had tried to graffiti the words “Sal’s a slag” in hawkish blue on the wall. Their efforts had gone largely unnoticed, and the rain had soon washed away the remnants of their bitterness.

“Sal’s a slag”The Tower had stood like a monument over the quiet, unassuming idyll of Little Bassington. It wasn’t hard to see why the site had so frequently been recreated by members of the local Art Group. As a child, the young man had often hoped to find a way to climb to the very top and sit on the Tower’s roof, or look out over the village from the highest window. It was impossible, though; the interior had deteriorated to such an extent by then as to make the journey unmanageable. He and his friends had even thought to try and scale the side of the building itself somehow, but they had only succeeded in reaching the roof of what had once been the industrial school before a loose slate resulted in Nathan Walker suffering a broken ankle. They’d never tried again.

Once, when he was very young, not long after he had first come to the village, the young man had dreamed that the Tower had a soul; a conscience made manifest by all-seeing and all-knowing eyes that watched the population going about their lives. If only it had, he’d thought later, imagine the secrets that it would have known. From its tallest point, the whole, wide landscape of Little Bassington would have stretched out before the Tower’s gaze; everything from the Square directly below to the distant hills and fields that separated the village from the adjacent town. Love and loss, secrets and surprises, births, marriages and deaths; they would all have been incidents within the circle of its sight. He was certain that if its walls had had ears, it would have heard the confessions of those who’d gathered in its grounds. If it had had a heart, perhaps it would have learned to love them. If it had drawn breath, its lungs would certainly have creaked with the weariness of age.

If only it hadimagine the secrets that it would have knownHe’d wanted to be a writer for as long as he could remember. When he was old enough to venture out alone during the summer holidays, he’d sat in the grounds of the Water Tower and dreamt up characters that might once have inhabited the place. Dusty, grime-coated, flat-capped workers, mixing with miscreants and malefactors who would otherwise have been sent to borstal. Now and again, he had let his imagination run wild; he’d even written the story of an angel who lived inside the Tower. An angel who only showed itself at night, to him alone.

When he’d been a little older, the young man had incorporated his parents into the story. He’d imagined them living in one of the cottages that lined the road just beyond the Square, where the Water Tower and its angel stood guard over them. In reality, it had taken him more years than he’d cared to admit before he’d come to the realisation that it was better to see the world as it was, not as any of us would like it to be. There was to have been no happy ever after for his parents. No angel stood guard over their fate. And the Tower may have had heart, but it had no soul.

But if the Tower had been the herald of impossible dreams, then the village itself had been the willing recipient of that spark of lustful imagination. For years, the populace had treated the site as hallowed ground; it was both a staple and an icon on the vista of Little Bassington, situated as it had been on the boundary of the fields which divided the village from the Whitechapel estate.

It had been, to some people’s way of thinking, a “guardian”; not one akin to the angel of the young man’s childhood fantasies, but one who’d ensured that the respectable, idyllic and peaceful environment of the much sought-after properties in Little Bassington remained separated from the far less salubrious – and undeniably distinct – streets of Whitechapel, whose dark corners and labyrinthine alleyways that ran between the grey, uninviting blocks of former council housing were as notorious as the people who lived there. Yet the residents of Whitechapel had gazed up at the Water Tower in much the same way as the people of Little Bassington had; casting their eyes up, almost daily, towards that which had dominated the skyline immediately outside their homes.

The paintings that had been crafted over the years were plentiful. Every scenescape imaginable had been rendered, painting the Tower in whatever light the artist chose. In one, it had been a monument to industrialisation; resting like a nemesis beneath a dark, foreboding sky. In another, it was a unique and splendid construction to be venerated, soaking up the sunlight that poured across the glory of a summer’s day. The Tower had lent itself to interpretation, becoming synonymous with Little Bassington itself. The defining feature of the locale; every painting, watercolour or pencil sketch testament to its long history and its legacy. Little Bassington, and its famous Water Tower.

Now it had fallen. Now, there would be no more paintings, no icon on the landscape, no ideal focus amidst the scenery to inspire the next generation of brushstrokes. Without it, there were only the fields – and a direct view from Little Bassington across to Whitechapel. The barriers had been broken down, and would never be rebuilt. The guardian had left its post, and would not return. The angel had flown away. There was just the wind now, swirling through the empty space, the close proximity of the two communities sharply emphasised without the Tower there to separate them.