Nice Poem, Shame about the Place by Ali Bacon
Well it had come to this. A weekend in the Cotswolds. Not that there was anything wrong with the Cotswolds, or with three days of desultory sightseeing. It was only that the autumn was grey and blustery, the beauty spots as rammed as ever with tourist coaches and it was beginning to feel like a very elderly adventure. Get used to it, Jill told herself.
After she and Gary had shared a sandwich in an upmarket farm shop (have you seen these prices?) she felt the need for somewhere more down to earth and maybe a Gregg’s Belgian bun in place of dessert. ‘Shall we try the next town?’ she said. ‘Then it’s only 10 minutes to the hotel’.
Gary drove and so she was in that beatific state between relaxation and boredom when the road-sign popped up that made her catch her breath. The plain black lettering was dusty and unassuming, implying a destination of similar character, but Jill knew otherwise. Was it really, could it be? Again?
‘Wow!’She said, unthinkingly.
‘Wow what?’
The new hybrid purred on past the turning and Jill sat back with a sigh. ‘Nothing. Just somewhere I recognised.’
Had it been a trick of the light, or some unconscious act of wishful thinking? But the map (nothing to beat the old-fashioned paper kind) was on her knee and Jill saw that, yes, Adlestrop, immortalised in one of the Greatest Poems of All Time, was indeed just between Dalesford Eyewatering Organic and Chipping Norton. If only she’d realised. But it was too late, Mrs Satnav had spoken (Jill often wished she could imitate her air of absolute authority) and Gary accelerated onwards. Adlestrop was to remain a myth, a bucket list item never to be ticked. Yet again, so near and yet so far.
In their hotel the room was fine and the evening meal excellent (4 stars or 5, maybe 4.5 if only that were an option). This fish was especially good. Gary wasn’t keen on fish and so she had to take her chance when she could. Chances taken, chances missed, decisions that changed the future. Life she reminded herself, was full of disappointments and marriage was always a compromise, wasn’t it?
Spooling back forty years (how could she not?) it had been late June, one afternoon of heat, and the roads were more clogged than a panful of porridge. The car’s open windows did little or nothing to dispel the fug.
‘So where are we exactly?’ Gary asked.
Jill shared his frustration. The sight-seeing trip had been her idea, but she would like to take issue with the Cotwolds being hills as she understood the term, and Bourton on the Water was definitely a thatched cottage too far. A solitary pub, disappearing in the wake of the mini’s puttering exhaust, could have been a mirage.
Then she caught sight of it, blaring from the hedgerow, a modest black and white sign that could have been in neon letters ten feet tall. She sat bolt upright. ‘Stop! Look!’
‘Where? What?’
Was he blind? ‘ADLESTROP! The name!’
He was tetchy as only a man driving a car with a dodgy fan-belt could be. ‘What name?’
How could she not have known that Adlestrop was here? The railway track bending away, the platform where no one left and no one came. And all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, just around the corner. ‘We have to go,’ she said. It was non-negotiable.
The car decelerated and stalled. Gary swore. ‘So what’s there to see?’
A pause. The trains were long gone, even then. ‘Well, it’s hard to explain. You know, it’s in that poem.’ Silence from Gary. ‘I’d really like to go.’
The ignition coughed to life and Gary stepped on the accelerator. ‘The car’s not happy. It’s too late.’
Words failed her, literally. Yes, it was Sunday and they needed to get back, but come on, some things were more important than unreliable cars and early nights.
Gary, of course, had missed the lesson on Edward Thomas, or forgotten it in the face of more pressing concerns (whereabouts of cheap fags, application of the off-side rule). Behind them, Adlestrop grew mistier, farther and farther. When Gary dropped her off, her thighs peeled off the vinyl seat, like a plaster being ripped off.
There was a line in a song, wasn’t there? The man ain’t got no culture. Was this the future, a future without Adlestrop, or Innisfree or … poetic allusions deserted her, but there must be more. If the banns hadn’t been read, the invitations printed, would she have called it off? Should she have called it off? Of course, she did not. But down succeeding years, did she remember Adlestrop? Yes, she did.
Back in the future, or the present, they agreed next morning’s breakfast, despite acidic orange juice and a lack of poached eggs was a solid 4 stars.
‘So what’s the plan?’ Gary said.
To her surprise, Jill wasn’t quite ready to give up. ‘Weather’s looking nice,’ she said. ‘Let’s have a round of golf and see how we feel.’
Gary’s birdie on the last clinched it. When she said she’d like to make a small detour on the way back, he was way too pleased with himself to object. And so here they were again, approaching Adlestrop, this time from the other direction. Jill closed her eyes and prepared for a moment of long-overdue gratification, the empty platform, the haycocks dry, etc etc.
She opened them to see a hedgerow with a scruffy verge, and after a mile or so, a smattering of houses which petered out without so much as a signal-box in sight.
‘Remind me, what are we looking for exactly?’ Gary said, all mellow unconcern. Hybrids were so reliable, not to mention economical.
Jill on the other hand sagged with disappointment. The Adlestrop she’d imagined was a myth, a lie even, peddled by a long-dead poet. ‘Don’t worry. Doesn’t matter.’
All the same, he slowed down and turned into a lay-by opposite a village hall. Across the road Jill could see a bus shelter bearing the old station sign.
‘Is this it?’ Gary said.
Apparently it was.
‘Get out and look around if you want to. Can’t have you complaining.’
Had she complained in nineteen tumpty-tum? Not much, but she’d nursed her simmering rage and revived it once every ten years or so (Adlestrop moments, she called them) when some mismatch of tastes over films or gigs or holiday activities provoked an argument. And for what exactly?
She opened the car door and jumped out. ‘I can take a photo, I suppose.’
The lay-by was alongside a village hall and car-park. A poster advertising a summer fete hung limply from a lamp-post. ‘I’ll wait over there,’ Gary called. ‘Take as long as you like.’
Jill snapped the station sign as a reminder not to believe everything you read in a poem, then wandered down to where stubbly fields stretched away to a row of poplars on the horizon. She consoled herself that the box was ticked, and walking back to the hall, she counted her blessings which included two of the most adorable grandkids. And the rest had been good too. They had different interests but Gary never (after that single day in Oxfordshire) prevented her from pursuing hers. They rarely tired of each other’s company. Some stupid poem was really neither here nor there.
The car was empty when she got back and she saw Gary approaching from the hall with a bundle in his arms.
‘What’s that?’
‘Just a nice bit of ply.’ He opened the car boot and let the wood fall in with a clatter next to the golf-clubs. ‘It was on the bric-a-brac stall. Pity to see it go to waste.’
Jill pictured the many pieces of unused timber littering their garage floor and let it pass.
‘Get your photo?’ he asked.
‘Yes, thanks. I did.’
Maybe her expression gave something away. Gary narrowed his eyes. ‘They have a cake stall, if you fancy something?’
Nothing like a decent slice of cake to put things into perspective and Adlestrop prices turned out to be a tenth of Dalesford’s. Over the raspberry frangipane, a more recent poem came to mind. Sometimes, some things turn out right. And why stop at the Cotswolds?
‘This cake is immense,’ she said to Gary as she licked the last crumb from her fork, ‘but I’ve been thinking. Next year we could do the Italian Lakes.’
She had a liking for Latin verse and an inkling that Sirmio, Catullus’s island and almost-island was on Lake Garda.
The weather was sure to be good, and if the views didn’t measure up, they might bring home something way more exotic than another piece of ply.