The Water Tower - Books 1-3

Chapter 3-2

“Where to, mate?”

“The Market Square in Little Bassington, please,” Adam replied.

The driver nodded in the rear view mirror and set off, the car committing itself to the same 90 degree turn as the one in front, where Adam caught a glimpse of the red-headed mother fussing over little Tommy. He was vaguely aware that they had been sitting further along his carriage during the journey from Euston, but his mind had mostly been elsewhere, his eyes locked onto the blur of Home Counties scenery that the train had cut a path through.

His plan, he decided, was to visit the house first. The thought of stepping across the threshold, knowing that Iris wouldn’t be there to greet him, caused his stomach to knot. The realisation came to him, suddenly and acutely: she’s gone. Just like his mother and father. Just like—

she’s goneNo, not like that. It’s not the same thing.

No, not likethat. It’s not the same thing.Iris was dead. His parents were dead.

He pushed the memory of other places and other people out of his mind as he gazed from the taxi window, trying to concentrate on what the next few days would bring. As soon as he had checked the house – his house, he reminded himself – he needed to find Hilda. He’s decided to keep the rental on his flat in London, at least for the time being, while he figured out exactly what to do.

hisIt had pained him not to be able to attend the funeral but Hilda, in her own indomitable way, had taken care of everything. The church had been full, she’d told him; almost everyone in the village had turned out to say goodbye. Hilda had been Iris’s friend for as long as he could remember and, he realised with an additional pang of guilt, like a surrogate mother to him when he was younger. She and Iris had been like sisters; practically joined at the hip. He hadn’t fully appreciated the extent of Hilda’s influence on his life when he’d been staying with Iris, but he’d come to cherish the memory of her; more so after he’d started University and moved on from there. She’d been like an anchor to him, in almost the same way that Iris had been. There had been nothing that felt more like coming home than a welcome from Hilda Stanton; her arms encasing his shoulders, a warm kiss planted on his brow, her silver hair glancing off the sunlight, and all the possibilities of life and love dancing in her eyes.

She wasn’t family, not by blood, but she was still his Hilda – or, as he liked to call her, his Aitch.

Those eyes – subjects of time and age like anyone else, yet somehow still the same deep pools of understanding – had never left him. She’d always been by Iris’s side; when she’d picked him up from the train station in that ridiculous Beetle car she used to drive, or holding court in the sitting room at Orchard House, ready to talk the ear off the world. Iris and Hilda: inseparable, until they were separated. Together, until a Monday morning when the curtain had fallen, and only tears were left.

He felt he owed Hilda something, for all the years she’d shared with Iris, and for everything she’d done over the past month. Questions he wished he’d had the chance to ask, words that had been left unsaid, intruded upon his thoughts now, welding themselves to the unfairness of her abrupt end. The opportunity to ask those questions, to tell her all the things he wished he’d told her, had just ceased. Evaporated. There would be no closure, no final farewell between them. But then, we never choose the kind of ending we get, he thought. We just have to make the best of what we’re given.

But then, we never choose the kind of ending we get, We just have to make the best of what we’re given“You local, then?”

The taxi driver’s question hauled him back to the present. He shook his head and thought momentarily. “You could say that,” he replied. “I suppose… I used to live here.”

The driver made a non-committal grunt of acknowledgment. Clearly sensing that his passenger wasn’t keen on being pulled into a lengthy conversation, he retreated into silence and let the discussion lapse.

They were heading towards Salt Hill; the yawning, inclining road which separated the village from Bassington Town. The Hill had been christened for its historic links to the route once used to carry salt inland from the coast, along the stretch between Lymington, Hurst and the New Forest, before competition from the Cheshire mines and the development of the railways in the 19th century had made the coastal trade uneconomic.

From the window, Adam saw the offices of the Bassington Post, the twice-weekly newspaper that served the village and its adjoining town. I wonder if Jan is still working there, he mused to himself. Still setting the world to rights from the desk of her small town newspaper? Writing about cats stranded on supermarket roofs, wheelie bin fires, and the fight to save the Post Office? He smiled inwardly; there had been that local Councillor once, who’d had a hair transplant and had ended up being mistaken for Rick Astley by some drunken partygoers outside a gay bar. He recalled Jan telling him that sparing a few column inches for the story had been worth the effort, if for no other reason than to puncture the man’s sizeable vanity. Everyone she’d spoken to at the Town Hall, according to her, had thought the Councillor was a pain in the arse; they’d just been too afraid to say so.

Bassington PostI wonder if Jan is still working thereStill setting the world to rights from the desk of her small town newspaper? Writing about cats stranded on supermarket roofs, wheelie bin fires, and the fight to save the Post Office?He’d started working there when he was 14. A weekend job, where he was officially “learning the ropes” but which, in reality, amounted to making the tea and occasionally proof-reading a story before it made the back page of a newspaper whose readership had been diminishing, even then. When he’d entered his late teens, before he’d gone to University, he’d been able to write his own pieces for them; nothing sensationalist or front page worthy, just small columns on the kind of mundane topics that regularly crossed the desks of local papers and which fuelled sufficient interest amongst their readers to warrant pursuing.

His first knock on the door of their office, and that first conversation with Jan (what had she been then? One of the Deputy Editors?) had been at Iris’s behest. A way to channel his gift, she’d said. Something to keep his mind sharp during the summer holidays. Something to give him a foot in the real world. He’d hoped that Jan would turn him away, or tell Iris that they didn’t take work experience students, but he’d had no such luck; she’d seen something in him, something in his manner or the calibre of his writing, or the way in which he’d conducted himself during that interview (which he was under no illusion had all been for show) that had enamoured him to her.

what had she been then? One of the Deputy Editors?And it had spiralled from there.

He didn’t know exactly when he’d first become a journalist. It had happened almost by accident; and certainly unintentionally. Weeks of school holidays spent interning at the Post had led to stints on University newspapers for no other reason than he’d seemed ready-made for the job. Then another raft of local publications had followed when he’d finished his degree. He’d been toiling in newspaper offices ever since; watching the phone ringing on a front desk somewhere, heralding an over-excited reader with a story they thought was going to break the front page. He’d sold a few pieces to the nationals in the last couple of years; breaking the seal on a couple of stories centred around “big figures” in the City’s financial district, a scattering of political commentary, and even a column on the manoeuvrings inside City Hall that had reached him courtesy of a whisper from a woman who worked there in one of the Press Offices.

becomePostHe had no idea how he’d ended up adopting this version of his life. It wasn’t a road he’d ever set out to follow. It was all thanks to Iris steering him towards the door of the Post that day, probably as a means by which to get him out from under her feet. And because of Jan, of course, who’d told him the week before he’d left for University that he was going to be a household name one day; a journalist that people would sit up and take notice of. That he was going to make the front pages somewhere, eventually, with something.

PostExcept he’d never wanted to be a journalist. He’d always wanted to be a writer. Sometimes it felt like journalism was what people did when their well of imagination had run dry. They wrote about inconsequential things, because they’d lost the strength to write about the things that really mattered.

Or maybe it was something to do with what Iris had told him once. Maybe that was the reason he hadn’t tried to publish anything for a long time now; why he’d kept his writing locked away in an endless supply of notebooks, the ones filled with pages and pages of dead ends that didn’t deserve to see daylight. “Do you know how many people earn a proper living from writing,” she’d asked, not expecting an answer. “And anyway, the trouble with writers is, they’re so obsessed with shaping a perfect little world of their own, they forget about the one we’ve already got. You’ve got to see the world as it is, not the world as you’d like it to be.”

that Do you know how many people earn a proper living from writing,”“And anyway, the trouble with writers is, they’re so obsessed with shaping a perfect little world of their own, they forget about the one we’ve already got. You’ve got to see the world as it , not the world as you’d like it to be.”Those words had cut through him, in a way he still couldn’t really define. The irony was, she’d meant it kindly; encouragingly. She’d wanted him to channel his hobby – his talent – into something worthwhile. Her great-nephew, the journalist.

The journalist who didn’t come to your funeral, he thought.

The journalist who didn’t come to your funeralThey’d scattered her ashes in the garden of remembrance. There was no grave to visit but they’d planted a memorial tree, in front of which they’d fixed a plaque of solid brass, engraved with four words:

“Forever in our hearts.”

“Forever in our hearts.”“Forever in our hearts.”* * *

The taxi pulled into Market Square and Adam stepped out to find himself face to face with the War Memorial that acted as a centrepiece amid the cobbled surround. He paid the taxi driver quickly and watched the cab depart, weaving back the way it had come; through the winding streets that led to Salt Hill, out of the village and towards the town. He took a few steps towards the Memorial, coming to a halt before its stone base, which had been engraved with the names of the dead – from both the village and the town – who had fought and perished in the Great War. The names of soldiers lost in subsequent conflicts had been etched onto a bronze plaque affixed to the lower half of the concrete base. He’d raced home to Iris in tears from here once, the thumb of his left hand wrenched back so far it had almost broken, after Darren Roberts had fallen on him during his bungled attempt to climb the monument.