The Great Fern
posted by Barter Books @ 7:47pm, Thursday 24 July 2008.
The evening before renovation work was due to begin on the lost room, I went in to have a last look - the Before before the After.
As excited as I was about turning that derelict room into a smart little buffet, I nonetheless felt that that room had done very well all on its own, created its own little life, with who knows what quiet revels all out of sight. And now that was about to be destroyed. And by me.
I unlocked the padlock (we all had keys now) and slid open the door, all in anticipation of paying a proper little tribute. I would take particular note of that rusty old bike (whose had it been?), those pre-war barrels stencilled BUTTER, that yoke and harness (before they were pulled down, there were stables on this station site for the work horses). Even the broken mug, somebody’s a long time ago.
To all this, I would say a quiet Goodbye.
It was not to be.
Because there in the fading light, I could just see that the clean-up job had already begun.
Rotten staves from the barrels had already been neatly piled into one corner ready for use as kindling.
In another corner that old hoe stood propped up against the wall – maybe it was still useful. (Funny how inanimate matter lasts longer than we do.)
As for the rest, the room had pretty much been emptied. The wheelbarrow and the bike, the paint pots, the yoke, the harness, the nails were all gone. And with them, oddly enough, that charged silence which had given me upon first entering the room such a strong sense of having just missed catching the room at play.
Stlll, one thing made me break that silence with an involuntary gasp: on the brick wall opposite the sliding door, a single tiny cluster of leaves signalled all that remained of the great fern - that and the massive scattering of fronds at its base, all still brilliant green.
That fern was the one thing I had planned to keep and just where it was.
I’ll make it up to you, I thought.
And I have.
One of these days, if you ever have time, take the London - Edinburgh Express from Kings Cross, the one that makes the Alnmouth stop, come to Alnwick, come to the bookshop, go to the buffet. And look at the wall on your left.