Storymania - Peripheral Vision by Simon King

Peripheral Vision
Simon King

1998

It was one of his favourite places. Since he discovered it about five years ago, he’d lost count of the number of visits he’d made here. Approaching the village along the gently winding road, he anticipated spending an enjoyable hour or so browsing around the tiny yet packed bookshop, a converted three-story terrace in a row built, originally, to house mill-workers in this most important of Derbyshire villages.
  Cromford was the name of the village, and stood out in English history for one very good reason. It was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. In 1771 Sir Richard Arkwright had chosen this site to build his first water-powered cotton mill, because of the existence of the strong, fast stream, Bonsall Brook, which flowed into the River Derwent at Cromford. The water flowing down Bonsall Brook was warm, owing to hot springs further up in the hills forming tributaries into it, thus meaning the water did not freeze in winter, which made it an ideal source of power for his water wheels. The village grew up around the mill; houses, shops and other necessities of life springing up to support the battalion of mill-workers.
  He turned left at the traffic lights in the middle of the village, then turned right into the car-park fronting the magnificent stone-built Greyhound Inn, standing imperious, a solid imposing monument to eighteenth-century confidence.
  Climbing out of the car into the warm June morning, Pete stretched, closed and locked the car door, and started the short walk to the bookshop. The village was beautiful not, perhaps, in a quaint ‘Cotswoldy’ way, but because of the character and history of it’s buildings. It was a miniature of a northern mill town, where King Cotton had served as a Prince. Most of the buildings were tall and narrow, long terraces winding up steep hills away from the brook running through the centre of the village, past the famous mill. He walked through a short alley and into “Scarthin”, a particularly picturesque terrace, narrow and cobbled, with the Black Swan Inn on one side, and the tiny Post Office on the other. Further up, on the same side as the Post Office, was his destination. Scarthin Books, the most fantastic bookshop he’d ever been in. He approached the tiny shop, squeezed through the narrow doors, and immersed himself in the unique smell of aged tomes, lost himself among the labyrinthine aisles, corridors and rooms, totally content.

1983

There was an air of excitement and anticipation, as always on these occasions, as the minibus was loaded after school finished on Friday night. The two teachers, Mr. Rogers and Mrs (perpetually referred to as “Miss” by the pupils) Newbury, packed the bags into the bus while the children talked loudly, ran, chased, and generally caused mayhem around the playground.
  When all the bags had been packed, Mr. Rogers called his lairy wards to order. “Right, calm down, shut up, and get on the bus, in an orderly fashion please. Just find a seat, it doesn’t matter where you sit, let’s get moving.”
  Mrs. Newbury did a head-count as the twenty-one twelve- and thirteen-year-olds climbed onto the mini-bus, racing to find the best seats, alongside their particular friends, in total disregard to their earlier instruction.
  After a few minutes of general musical chairs, a last minute conflab between the two teachers, the minibus departed through the school gates, Mr. Rogers at the wheel.
  A school field trip was the very epitome of excitement and adventure for these youngsters, half-way between children and young adults. A weekend away from home, maybe a chance to flirt in a half-innocent, half-knowing way with ‘fancied’ members of the opposite sex, usually amounting to displays of strength from the boys, met with feigned disgust and disregard from the girls. For Pete, sitting alongside his ‘best friend’ (for now), Jason, it was no different, although being rather shy, he was not normally given to showing off for the benefit of certain girls, even though his feelings towards them were the same as most thirteen-year-old boys.
  The drive to Cromford was not a long one, being only about twenty miles in distance, and took just under an hour, but for children of that age, it was a world away.
  The minibus moved along the winding road, flanked by a steep wooded hillside on the left, and an equally steep wooded drop to the right, down to the old Cromford canal at the bottom of the narrow valley. Presently they came to the entrance, signposted with “The Wharfshed. Property of the Derbyshire Education Authority.” Mr. Rogers pulled the bus off the road and drove carefully down the steep track towards the canal, and pulled to a stop in a cleared area surrounded by several small buildings and one rather larger, the Wharfshed itself, now converted into a small hostel for school trips, right on the side of the canal itself.
  After a similar display by the group of general excitement, anticipation and general horseplay whilst unloading the vehicle, the two teachers led their flock into the hostel, showed them the separate girls’ and boys’ dormitories, and left them to their own devices for a while, for the ritual of fighting for upper and lower bunks, ribbing, teasing, and discussions about prospective rendezvouses with various members of the opposite dormitory.
  After their evening meal, eaten to the accompaniment of cutlery rattles, youthful raised voices and laughter, they were led into the common room and, after finally getting settled in, on and around the chairs and sofas, were given the itinerary for the following day.
  “Okay, lads and lasses,” began Mr. Rogers in his usual way, “What we’re going to do tomorrow is we’ll walk down the canal into Cromford itself, it’s about two miles,” which was accompanied by exactly twenty-one groans. “Alright, alright. Then, we’re going to have a good look round Cromford, but the way we’re going to do it is this. You’ll split up into groups of three, and each group will have a map of the village, a list of things to find in the village, and a task for each one. Now, you’ll need to find each item or place on the map first, then find your way to that place, so that you’ll be able to complete the question. Some will be written answers, some will need you to draw. You’ll have about three hours in Cromford, you’ll all have a packed lunch, then we’ll meet up and walk back along the canal again. After tea we’ll see which group got the best score, and there just may be a prize for the winners.”
   This was received with somewhat more enthusiasm, although thirteen-year-old adults are not easily impressed, so the obvious excitement was quickly subdued with adolescent laissez-faire.
  After this speech, the group was allowed to do their own thing for a couple of hours before bedtime. Pete, along with Jason and Mark, went to look at the canal. As they walked along the towpath, they came to a narrow inlet (or outlet, it was impossible to tell which), complete with a sluice gate. Jason and Mark walked along the narrow dam, over the raised top of the sluice gate, and onto the towpath at the other side. Pete, always a little awkward, was the last to go, and gingerly stepped out onto the slippery dam. It was hard enough just to keep his balance, but as soon as he left the safety of the towpath, Mark and Jason started throwing stones in the water to either side of him. Although he knew they were not aimed at him, it put him off sufficiently that he lost his balance, tipped over to the right, temporarily steadied himself by placing his foot onto a slippery rotted log, before slipping again and landing in the green canal water with both feet, the water reaching almost up to his knees.
  To the enormous hilarity of his ‘friends’, he climbed out of the inlet, trainers and jeans absolutely sodden. “You bastards”, he shouted, trying not to laugh himself. “Look at me, I’m bloody soaked.”
  After another half-hour’s walking, though, the garments were dry and the friendships restored. It would not always be so easy, but at thirteen, these sort of things were quickly forgotten.
  Getting the kids, particularly the boys, to go to sleep that night was no easy task for the two teachers, and it was after midnight when all the laughing, joking and surreptitious attacks on unsuspecting sleepers finally died down.

1998

Pete was in heaven, as he browsed around the cramped bookshop. Every available space was filled with books. Floor to ceiling shelves, shelving up both sides of the stairs, shelves on the landing, and in all of the former bedrooms. It was a bibliophilic Aladdin’s cave, and for more than an hour he was lost in the world of words.
  When he finally emerged into the outside world again, the bright sunshine making him blink, he happened to glance across the road. For some reason, though he had been here many times, he had never before looked in precisely this direction, and the view was one that was immediately familiar to him. He wandered across the narrow cobbled street, the heavy bagful of books knocking the side of his leg, to the railings on the other side of the street. On the other side of the railings was an almost perfectly circular millpond, the surface of which was as flat and mirror-like as it’s eponymous phrase would suggest. Pete looked at the pond, then over to the other side, where a row of tall, narrow houses lined up like a bad set of lower teeth, uneven in height and colour.
  He knew this place, knew he had been here before, but could not bring the memory into clarity.
  There was a wooden bench here, placed so people could sit and look out over the pond, and he sat down, lifting the bag of books onto the seat beside him. For a while he just gazed out over the pond, trying to bring that elusive scrap of information out of it’s pigeonhole.

1983

The June morning was bright and warm, as the young group assembled roughly and energetically outside the Wharfshed. After once more checking that all were present and correct, Mr. Rogers and ‘Miss’ Newbury led the group off down the towpath. Twenty-one youngsters, looking like trainee market-researchers, clipboards in hand, followed on, laughing, fooling, attempting to push each other into the canal. Just a bit of fun.
  After about three quarters of an hour, the ragged group reached the village itself, where they climbed the steep path up from the canal to a grassy area by the traffic-lighted crossroads in the centre of the village.
  Mr. Rogers gave the instructions. “Now, you’ve all got your worksheets, all got your packed lunches, so I want you to split into groups of three.” This was the cue for a round of chaos, some groups forming quickly, some individuals floating round before joining, or being joined to, spare pairs. Eventually, seven groups of three enthusiastic teenagers each could just about be discerned.
  “Right”, continued Mr. Rogers, “it’s eleven o’clock now, so we’ll all meet up here again at two o’clock. Now I want no stupidity, no messing about,” (fat chance), “and I want you all to be very careful of the these roads. They’re busy, and there are a lot of quarry lorries going up and down here, so look what you’re doing. There’re plenty of crossings, so please use them.
  “Okay, off you go, and good luck.”
Twenty-one excited, happy adolescents walked off briskly, not, of course, with the anticipation of looking round a very important site for English History, but with the enthusiasm of dogs being let off the leash in a field full of rabbits.
Pete was in a group with Mark and Jason, and they crossed the busy main road to stand on the pavement edging the market square, empty of stalls this morning, but full of cars. Pete looked at the list of tasks, and read out the first. “The Greyhound Inn was built in 1797, and has a magnificent example of a late Georgian frontage, built in the local materials of limestone and millstone grit. In the space below, make a sketch of the front of the Hotel.” Since it would have been virtually impossible to stand where they stood and not see the Inn, the maps were not immediately required.
  This would be tricky, particularly for Pete, who had never shown much aptitude for freehand drawing, but the three stood in a line in front of the wonderful old building, and for the next twenty minutes or so, attempted, with varying degrees of artistic licence, to replicate the beautifully symmetric frontage of the building, with it’s sawtooth patterned limestone block edging, and nineteen small-paned windows, finishing off with the clock in the centre of the topmost angle.
  Sometime later, after much comparing with and deriding of the others’ efforts, the three looked at their next appointed task.
  “Find the waterwheel next to the millpond, and count the number of blades. Also describe the type of waterwheel (undershot or overshot), and briefly explain how it would have worked.”
  After consulting their maps, they found that the millpond was directly behind the Greyhound Inn, just up a narrow street, so they set off with typical youthful speed. Rounding the Black Swan Pub, they found the millpond, and, adjoining it, next to the Pub, was the old mill, complete with waterwheel, which did in fact turn out to be of the undershot variety. As they made their way to the edge of the millpond, Pete saw out of the corner of his eye, a youngish man sitting on a bench a little further up. He seemed to be just staring straight ahead, and Pete wondered if he was perhaps a little simple. But there were more important things to attend to. The three friends stood at the edge of the millpond, leaning on the rusty railings, and began to count the blades of the old, disused waterwheel. The soft breeze failed to make any impression on the millpond, which was as flat as a marble floor. Counting the blades was fairly easy, since the water level was now low enough to see the blades all the way around the wheel. After deciding how to describe the relatively simple mechanism involved, they decided to attack their packed lunches, and Jason pointed to the bench and suggested they go and sit on it to eat.
  When Pete looked over to the bench, the man he had seen earlier had gone. “Where did that bloke go?”, he asked the others. “What bloke?”, said Mark, the tinge of sarcasm just beginning to colour his words. “There was a bloke sitting on that bench when we came, he was just staring out at the pond. I think he was a loony or something.”
  “There’s only one loony round here”, said Mark, into full flow now, “and I’m looking at him. There wasn’t anybody on the bench. I looked at it when we first came round.”
  Jason agreed that there had been no-one on the bench, and the three went and sat down on the bench. Pete was puzzled for a while, but at thirteen these sorts of things are quickly forgotten.

1998

As Pete gazed into the millpond, his vision blurring through the inactivity of the focusing muscles of his eyes, he began to recall why this particular view had been familiar. It must have been on that school field trip, God knows how many years ago, when they were sent out around the village in groups. Who had he been with? Oh, that’s right, Jason, his best friend at the time, and Mark. They must have come here to see the pond and the waterwheel. As the memories came back to him, he smiled to himself, as he thought of happier times, when spending a weekend just a few miles from home was such an adventure, and life, in general, was simpler and brighter. And now his vision blurred further, since he was looking through a film of tears.
  It was movement on the surface of the water that brought his attention back to the present, and as he focused on the pond once more, he could see that it was not the water itself that was rippling, but that there was a reflection on the glassy surface. There seemed to be about three people walking towards him. Was it three kids? As he turned to the left to look, he could see nothing all the way back down the street, and, turning back to the millpond, the reflections had disappeared. The millpond was still as flat as, well, as a millpond. After a minute or two, he stood up, picked up his bag of books, and walked back down Scarthin towards the Greyhound Inn, where he had left his car.