In the inky
black of pre-dawn I glimpsed, through gaps in the silhouettes of hedges, what I
took for car headlamps, one slightly dimmer than the other, marking the meandering
downhill course of the lane; perhaps belonging a driver who had taken a wrong turn
on the main road. As the lights came closer I noticed their separate side-to-side
motion. It was this, along with the absence of engine noise, that made me realise
they belonged a pair of early-morning cyclists, riding two abreast.
Both men
greeted me as their bikes flashed passed – their brusque “Good mornings”
delivered in the military tones of people who feel they are engaged in a serious
business; one that places them on a superior plane of existence to slower-paced
bystanders and pedestrians.
I watched
them traverse the small tarmac car park of The Watermill Gift Shop, leaving
behind a trail of fogged breath; falling into an uneasy single-file, whose
order was decided at the last moment, as
they joined the flinty towpath in the direction of Lower Dent.
After they
were gone I unlocked the door of the gift shop and disarmed the burglar alarm. For
the next hour I worked in silence at the counter, beside the sleeping cash
register.
The waxing December
moon cast its pale luminescence impassively over the contents of the shop,
moving with the imperceptible speed of a searchlight across a shallow wicker basket
stocked with jars of homemade lemon curd; picking out the dimpled glaze on some
rustic pottery; reflecting, as a brilliant white glare, off the glossy sheen of
the postcards in their wire carousel.
The darkness
was slowly diluted by the encroaching daylight, the leaden grey of the overcast
morning weakening the glow of the reading lamp, that stood poised over the open
accounts ledger. I rose from my chair and unlocked the antiquated machinery of
the neutered mill, freeing the wooden wheel on the exterior, allowing it to turn
uselessly with the current.
Through I
could not see them, I was aware of the excited chatter of the sparrows who had roosted
between he paddles overnight, and who were now scattering like a handful of
carelessly flung stones over the millrace, skimming the rapids (those strange
worn boulders that break the surface and which a long time ago – long before I
came here - were painted with white numerals, from one to eighteen, for some
unknown purpose); the rag tag flock alighting where they always do, in the
honeycombed depths of the immaculate privet hedges that border the gardens of a
row of cottages on the opposite bank.
The churning
of the water, caused by the protruding spokes of the wooden wheel digging beneath
the surface, disturbed the trout who had waited out the darkness shoaled together
in its shadow. They dispersed, like a fleet of submarines, into the wider course
of the river, each one seeking its own territory.
The creaks of the metal axle, that faithfully repeat
with each revolution, broke the trance of the heron who, since the first light of dawn, had been fixated
on a daguerreotype of his own likeness, reflected in the still brown waters of
the mill pond. With great effort he took
to the air, his laboured wing beats, fixing him on a lumbering flight path
towards more secluded fishing grounds. As
he crossed the tree line, a pair of crows rose from an unkempt nest in the upper branches, on a course to
intercept.
Here in this
English backwater, beyond the sight of God – his tiny providence and his universal
old testament rage - I have been entrusted with the worn mechanism that sets
the day in motion.
