Second chapter, in which Nathalie experiences a reunion with the past
"It's up ahead," Glenn said, glancing at the dashboard clock. "A little before eleven-thirty. That'll be all right."
For the most part they had driven along the motorway, which was lined on both sides by office buildings. Where once allotment gardens had been tended and cultivated, and small artisan businesses had made their homes, where factories full of workers had once stood, there was now little else but cool, angular blocks of steel and glass. They looked confusingly similar, and in purpose also did not differ much from each other - almost exclusively occupied by companies that had something to do with the internet. Companies whose employees were particularly progressive and environmentally conscious, driving e-bikes or electric cars.
The sight of these buildings made Nathalie melancholy every time. She was open to new technical developments, there was no question about that. And yet she was also attached to old, cherished things - like the trusted garage around the corner, where every vehicle was repaired in the smallest of spaces and without customers having to spend a fortune. The fact that she wasn't greeted in such a workshop by a fashionably dressed receptionist with a cappuccino and a small plate of pastries, but by a man in dirty overalls with a red face, dishevelled hair and oil-smeared hands, didn't bother her. In fact, she preferred it. Anything was better than these well-designed, artificial worlds; where a complaint was received with a fake smile, but then filed away without any response.
It wasn't until they had only a good fifty miles to go to their destination that the scenery to the left and right of the road noticeably changed. They had switched to a well-built country road. To either side stretched the familiar and beloved landscape of rolling green hills and woods. Here and there, flocks of sheep grazed in the vast meadows, recognisable at the great distance only as a greyish-white mass.
Earlsraven, in the tiny historic county of Bransmere, was, coming from the north, something like the antechamber of Cornwall. Everything seemed a little more primitive, and not as polished as the beauty spots of Cornwall. Nathalie quite liked that.
The special charm of its hilly landscape for Nathalie was that you always had the feeling of peace and seclusion, even though the next village was just in the next valley. If you went by car, or even by bike, you could reach a neighbouring village within a few minutes. Even on foot, it didn't take very long to reach the next town if you were used to walking. You were never really in the middle of nowhere, but you could feel that way if you wanted to.
*
They drove past the battered town sign of Earlsraven.
"How many people live here?" asked Glenn.
"How would I know."
Glenn laughed. "I didn't expect that answer from a woman whose speciality is statistics."
She raised an eyebrow and let out the hint of a smile. "And what would you expect?"
"Well, you know, a listing of how many people live here, how long they live on average, what the per capita income is, and so on."
Nathalie laughed. "I try to leave that in the office."
"Not quite," Glenn replied.
"What do you mean?" She had been sure that she didn't talk much about her work at home.
Glenn smiled mischievously at her. "Well, there are days when hardly a sentence goes by that you don't start with 'statistically .'." He smiled at her. "You put your heart and soul into your job."
"Well, that's true," she said, deciding to be careful to avoid that phrase in the future.
She pointed ahead. "Where the road bends to the right, you need to make a sharp left."
They followed the road until Glenn saw a small signpost pointing to the "Village Centre".
"Turn here," said Nathalie.
He slowed down, he had spotted a parking bay just beyond the turnoff with the sign "Parking for guests of the Black Feather only".
"But there's-" he began, turning off the blinker again.
"Yes, I know, but you have to turn here," Nathalie interrupted emphatically. "I know my way around here!"
Irritated, Glenn had to brake harder than he wanted to, or he would have missed the turn. Nathalie clung to the handle above the passenger door so that she wouldn't slide against Glenn.
"Jesus, it's almost like driving into a hairpin," he grumbled.
"Where were you going?" she asked, annoyed. "I told you to turn here."
"Because we turned right in front of the Black Feather," he replied. "Twenty yards further I could have turned into the car park. Why this way?"
There was nothing to be seen except some hedges several feet high, so thick that you couldn't tell what was behind them on either side of the narrow road.
"Glenn, I have been here a few times, you know. That's the car park on the pub side, you can only turn back into your lane from there. You can't turn around there because it's too sketchy a spot. That means you have to go past Earlsraven and follow the road for who knows how many more miles before there's an opportunity to turn. There's nothing but bends where you can't see if there's someone coming your way until the last moment."
"Then this is just the car park for people travelling onwards?"
She nodded.
"And what do people do who come from the opposite direction and want to stop? Surely they can't make a U-turn either, and even if they did, they'd have to continue in the wrong direction afterwards."
"They park on the opposite side and get to the Black Feather via a wooden bridge."
"A bridge?" He gave an appreciative whistle. "Do you need to pass an exam to get to the Black Feather? A secret handshake?"
She didn't get a chance to retort because a bus came hurtling towards them out of nowhere from the next bend, forcing her boyfriend into a hasty evasive manoeuvre. In the process, his Range Rover ended up with its left wheels on the grass verge. Angry, and yet relieved that nothing had got damaged, Glenn swore after the bus.
They drove on. The road branched off to the left, and with it the high hedge ended. The view opened out onto a cosy little market square with a handful of stalls. The square was framed by trees that must have been planted many decades ago and had picturesque houses on three sides of the square. Through the trees, Nathalie could make out the butcher, the boutique and the pub.
Then she had to focus on the road again, and said to Glenn, "You need to turn right-"
"I know!" he said. "I saw the sign."
In front of the flat wall that surrounded the garden of the corner house, there was a blackboard with the outline of a feather drawn on it in a fine white line, with the name "Black Feather" written below it in an inconspicuous shade of beige.
The road leading to the pub was unusually wide, which Glenn also noticed.
"Strange," he muttered, "this should be an alley just like the two left turns."
"It used to be," Nathalie countered. "But then more and more patrons started coming to the pub, and it created such a mess here that Aunt Henrietta bought a strip one metre wide on each side from her neighbours to allow the council to put a second lane here."
"Wow - her neighbours could have really held her to ransom over the price of that land."
"As far as I know, it's all been peaceful and amicable," she said. "After all, in a roundabout way, everyone benefits from the pub doing well. If they hadn't agreed to the widening of the road, there would have been gridlock here on a regular basis, and no one wants that."
"Well that also suggests that the place must be doing just fine. Otherwise, she couldn't have spent that kind of money."
"True. I don't want to jump to any conclusions though."
"Why are you so pessimistic?" he asked.
"I prefer realistic," she stressed. "I'll wait to see the details."
The statistician in her was coming through again. Nathalie decided that maybe that wasn't the worst thing.
With all the stress of navigating, she hadn't stopped to appreciate her surroundings now that they had arrived.
She looked out of the window with delight, and once again admired the neighbouring gardens - some of which bloomed in wild confusion, and some of which were stylishly colour-coordinated. She had admired the gardens on previous visits but had never met the owners.
They reached the end of the street and found the car park, which was bordered by a meadow and then a terrace. Behind it stood the inn itself - the Black Feather, an elongated half-timbered house, still with all its original features. White plastered surfaces were framed by black wooden beams arranged in a complex pattern that stretched across the entire façade, from the ground floor to the first floor. Windows had been inserted almost haphazardly wherever the weave of beams allowed. Some architects might have...
