The Water Tower - Books 1-3

Chapter 3-3

Adam shifted the travel bag on his shoulder and paused for a moment to take in his surroundings; to breathe familiar air again. It felt fresher, cleaner, tinged with the suggestion of sage and sweet grass, of summer’s perfume, sloping bluebells, sunlight and gardens in full bloom.

It felt like home.

Little Bassington was, by any measurement, the quintessential English village. In fact, some of its lanes and narrower streets were still cobbled – something which had been a source of constant frustration to Iris"s eccentric friend George McCarrick, whose systematic purchase of classic cars for his “collection” had been hampered by the inevitable crush of cobbles against their low exhausts every time he tried to drive his latest pride and joy in the direction of Salt Hill. George had given Adam his first driving lesson when he’d turned seventeen, in a classic Mini 75 GT; an excursion that had begun innocently enough, only to end abruptly when Adam had accidentally displaced a wing mirror from Herbert Hughes’s prized Ford Fiesta. He could still remember the booming timbre of Herbert’s voice as he stood, pointing at the mirror which hung limply from its socket. He’d been sure that the butcher’s voice would carry to the other side of the town, and probably beyond.

“I hope you’ve got proper insurance for that rust bucket you’re driving!”

“I hope you’ve got proper insurance for that rust bucket you’re driving!”The Village Green, the edge of which ran along the eastern side of Market Square, was lush and inviting; an open space where the community would gather for the annual Summer Fete or the midwinter carol service; traditions which had endured for longer than anyone could remember and which, Adam assumed, hadn’t been discarded yet.

Beyond the northern boundary of the Square stood the Water Tower. He"d shared his first kiss with Della Mitchell in a quiet corner of the Tower grounds one summer afternoon when he was twelve. Adam tilted his head back slightly to take in the sight of the familiar edifice. A circle of sunlight had lifted to its zenith, pressing the Tower’s long shadow onto the Green below. The phone box was still standing like a sentinel in one corner; as red and vibrant as ever, as if it had just been painted. In the distance, a father was holding the hand of a young, blonde boy, no more than two or three years old, as he waddled forward, pointing animatedly in the direction of the duck pond and its lazy occupants. Distantly, beyond the furthest copse of trees, Adam could see the outline of one of the village’s two churches; St Mary Magdalene was tucked away on Maple Road, set back from the main drag, its entrance obscured to anyone unfamiliar with the ingress. He resolved to check the noticeboards when he had time to see if Father Dermott was still in situ there.

The tall spire of the Catholic church was a far cry from the unassuming frontage of the Church of St John the Baptist, which lay at the opposite end of Little Bassington. Adam could picture himself walking beside Iris in the direction of the Bricklayers Arms one Sunday mornings in his teens, when they’d been greeted by the sight of Ted McEwan. He’d been sitting on one of the benches outside, smoking his pipe, and revelling in the fact that he and the other parishioners from St John’s had made it back to the pub and been served their first round of drinks before Mass at Mary Magdalene’s had ended. “I may be a heathen,” Adam could hear him joking to Iris, “but at least our services are shorter.” She’d slapped his arm in light reprimand.

Bricklayers Arms“I may be a heathen,”“but at least our services are shorter.”A concrete path spanned the far length of the Village Green; somewhere along its course, it segued into something more akin to a dirt track that twisted and wound its way across the fields beyond the Square’s perimeter towards Whitechapel. Somehow, via the track’s various offshoots and cutaways, it was possible to navigate a route to the back roads that ran along the very outer rim of Little Bassington, in the direction of the railway station from which Adam had just come; and then further south, to a spot overlooking the hills beyond. Most of the time, the track was utilised by the Bassington Ramblers; the fruit farm onto which it eventually led was a favourite summer haunt for many of the villagers, who would take their children, grandchildren and long-distance relatives to pick strawberries there. When he was last here, the sturdy wooden gate at the bottom of the track leading onto the farm had had a laminated sign nailed to it – someone’s idea of a joke, Adam had assumed – showing a grainy black and white picture of John Lennon and three words scrawled in black underneath: “Strawberry Fields Forever”.

“Strawberry Fields Forever”Home, then.

Home, then.Except it wasn’t exactly. Almost, but not quite.

He’d first come here when he was five, when his parents’ work had finally become all-consuming. When his mother had explained that Iris, the great aunt he’d never properly met, had the time to look after him during the day when they couldn’t. He could still remember that first drive into Little Bassington in his father’s car; could still recall stopping at the front gate of Orchard House and meeting the woman who, up to that point, had been little more than a faceless name in the margins of his life, but who quickly became a permanent fixture in his childhood.

It had to be Iris, of course. His parents weren’t exactly overwhelmed with other options. It wasn’t just that she was the closest to them geographically; his grandmother Margaret, Iris’s elder sister, had been infirm even before reaching the hinterland of her years. His father had been that much older than his mother, so he’d never known his grandparents on that side. Then there had been the added “advantage” that Iris had never had a family of her own. It had seemed the ideal solution for everyone.

Days he spent in Little Bassington became weeks. Sporadic visits stretched into more frequent stays. A fortnight one summer holiday became the whole six weeks from July to September the following year. Eventually, he came to accept Little Bassington as the place he would always return to outside of term time. His parents had given Iris whatever money she’d needed to provide for him, and his mother would ring the house every day. He’d never doubted that she’d loved him. But, so often, it had felt like Iris was the one who’d raised him, in all the ways that mattered.

Iris, and Hilda…

Iris, and Hilda…He’d grown up here; the same faces that had been there to greet him at Easter, and again at the height of summer, had watched him turn from a young, eager-faced boy into a teenager and then an Undergraduate. Eventually, his parents hadn’t needed to ask what his plans were when school broke for the holidays; as he’d gotten older, he’d come back here willingly. Not just automatically, but because it had seemed like the natural choice for him. He’d come to know people; he’d made friends. Now that he was back, he remembered that there were a few he needed to look up.

After he’d finished University, it had become more and more difficult to find the time to return to Little Bassington. There had been his work, of course. But there had been other people too; keeping him away, and holding his attention. He’d tried to call Iris as often as possible; making excuses to ring sometimes, just so he could hear her voice. He’d even heard from Hilda now and again, but it felt as if the last few years had turned him into a stranger. And although he’d never found another place he could really call home, he wasn’t sure that the village where he’d spent so much of his childhood could still hold that place in his heart. Given how long he’d been away, he wasn’t sure that he had any right to ask it to.

They’d expected him to come back here after the accident. Perhaps they’d assumed that he’d need the comfort and security of a familiar surround. Hilda had certainly expressed as much to him; but, in the end, Iris had travelled out to London for the funeral and stayed with him for a couple of weeks after. He’d taken a month out of his Postgrad studies, fully intending to return when he’d come to terms with everything; but, in the end, he’d folded to the increasing inevitability and given up on it. Perhaps it had seemed so dry and mundane after everything that had happened.

That night had been largely forgettable, in the same way Iris’s final morning must have been. He’d been at Club 22, a cocktail bar in the centre of the City, a few streets away from the University. He’d been vaguely aware of seeing Jake quietly kissing Melanie in a corner somewhere before the phone call had come. From the corner of his eye, he’d spotted her leading him by the hand out of the bar at the same time the voice on the other end of the line began speaking, steadily but meaningfully, with words he could barely comprehend. He’d only caught snatches of what she’d been trying to tell him: “accident”, “car crash”, “drunk”, “Catherine and James”, “died”, “oh God, I’m so…”, “so sorry, Adam”. Then he’d heard the tears breaching the wall she’d obviously tried so hard to construct and understood that it was his mother’s friend Judith talking, and she was sobbing like she’d never stop.

Club 22His parents had been on their way to a dinner party. Some friends from the business district that they’d partnered with for years had invited them. The driver that hit them was so drunk that the breathalyser test had been, according to the police, “just an exercise in paperwork”. Witnesses swore blind that the man had emptied his stomach over the side of the road at the sight of his father’s severed arm protruding from the wreckage of their old Capri. Judith told him that it had been hours before the paramedics were able to pull both of them from the tangle of metal and crushed limbs. They’d been killed instantly. Head-on collision. He’d often wondered if his mother had died with her eyes wide open; if she’d seen the burning light of the approaching headlamps before they’d swallowed her world and everything around it, leaving him alone.

Alone, except for Iris and Hilda.

His parents were gone. Now Iris had left too.

Not to mention everything in between…

Not to mention everything in between…He admonished himself for allowing that last thought. The situations weren’t comparable. Yet there was still some part of him that couldn’t help but draw parallels. Loss, it seemed, had become a recurring theme in his life. How do we ever move past it, he wondered? Perhaps we don’t. Perhaps we always carry it with us. Maybe it defines us.

How do we ever move past it, Perhaps we don’t. Perhaps we always carry it with us. Maybe it defines us.So much had changed on that night. For a long time after, whenever he’d caught the eye of one of his neighbours, or a friend who’d heard the news, he could see the same tell-tale signs of a person searching for the right words. None of them quite knew how to make conversation with a man who had just become an orphan.