We arrived more than two hours later than planned, but the summer in the west of England had not yet disappeared even before dusk. A soft golden glow had just been building up at sunset, which had just shown a smooth, calm sea behind this village. We were tourists here, unfamiliar in this small, narrow place.
For us, it was only part of the tour, a long weekend, torn together from the clutches of our united, ever demanding career. I felt completely liberated, on this wonderful evening, when we walked a quarter mile or so on steep, dry cobblestones from the obligatory parking lot to a carefree village, the time and advertising requirements were limited beyond this small place for a while, and I can tell since spring in Jenny, that her battles with the lower sets in Lewisham were now far from our three days on the road.
There was a small gift shop, a place for shopping in a tourist trap, just a hundred yards along the alley. I bought a newspaper in our early departure from St. Petersburg. Ives refuted me, my daily decision about political gossip, which has long been an integral feature of my life adoption in London. I explained that we were strangers here, went down the side road hoping to find something interesting and did not book anything.
The shopkeeper said that we only have three options: the Old Hotel, located along a side street, a bed and breakfast downstairs at the harbor or a farm near the junction with the main road where we turned off.
“It was many years ago,” he said, “when many people stopped, but now all this is one-day tourists and rest houses.”
The old hotel was only two hundred yards from the store, at the head of a steep bay that contained a tangled village triangle. It was a bit higher than the price we used to pay, and she had AA stars located above the reception desk, but we fell into place and checked in, only for one night. It was some kind of black-and-white model of the Jacobi Hotel, which lacked a straight line, perhaps she suggested that it was original. But the rays were empty, and the board above the entrance said: "Restored in 1958."
“Do you have luggage for transportation from the parking lot?” Asked the receptionist. Tag name, attached to her blouse, said: "Hilary, the manager." "We have a man with a donkey and sleigh who will bring you this." She was not joking.
I raised our two deductions and said that this was all we had. She smoked, offering politeness, but sharing knowledge with a touch of judgment. This was in an era when a couple did not know that a couple could not enter into a wife.
We took the key for number six. There were only eight left, and the other seven keys were still hanging on the hooks when we lifted the elevator - yes, elevator! - to the top floor. Number six was at the back, of course, just above the kitchen hood fan and missed the closed courtyard with a yellowed corrugated plastic roof. He hid an array of faceless dustbins, from which a hint of fragrance sweetened the still air when we opened the windows to induce the previous passenger's cigarette smoke to leave. We dropped our bags and went down to the sea to absorb the last of the late spring sun.
The beach was pebbled and small, tightly packed on the wall of the harbor, which stretched a good fifty yards into the shallow sea. Several buildings of clay tiles, large rotten, clung to fame, their profits have long passed, but their structures remained, but remained. There were missing doors, and one design had no interior, the uncovered entrance showed just the sky. At one time, obviously, the locals had something alive from this place, perhaps fishing, perhaps a small trade, smuggling in bad times, design rescue, who knows. And then came the tourists, the alien trade of the invention of the nineteenth century, which evaporated when the trunk road expanded and turned this place into nothing more than a day trip from anywhere in Birmingham or London.
As we walked up the deceptively steep solitary path that halves the village, we went through several open doorways that were looking for air on this restlessly calm evening at the end of May. After London, everything here seemed so cozy, so small, warm and not threatening, as if the place itself welcomed us into its embrace.
We saw only two other people, both descended along the way, and independently offered greetings. “Isn't that pretty,” said Jenny. “Don't you want to live here?” I refused to answer.
We ate at the Old Hotel. Nowhere else was there. We ordered a parsley butter sole on the grill. Potatoes and broccoli were legumes. It took half an hour for the food to appear. We finished a bottle of white house, which we ordered to go with the fish long before even the smell of cooking popped out of the kitchen. We had significant giggles reflecting on how far the boat had to go to the Bristol Channel in order to catch our order. We ate. It was not bad, and then we went through the bar, four steps needed to change the location, effectively redefining us from guests to locals. The concertina glass partition divided the areas in theory, but today it was wide open for ventilation. The rest of the evening was the story of three women, Hilary, Sue and Sandra, about what they dreamed of.
The hotel’s bar is the only place to have a drink, so this is a pub where there are guests. Half a dozen men are collectively and decisively involved in preventing the raising of the oaky peaks, their smooth elbows, including their continued stay on the ground. They endure the time of the night with what is considered a predictable set of platitudes. "I bought D-reg because I thought that in the long run it would be cheaper, with less maintenance bills, etc., etc. ... ... But you bought to do more of this, and you don’t I would have to pay anything ... ... Yes, I know, but I just don’t have time ... You go beyond the limits of the first turn ... ... Along the egg farm where my brother worked ... .. They are really cheap if you buy them from a bag ... ... damn hard, notice ... "
She is forty-sixty years old, completely repenting of what she sees in front of her, but still resigned or condemned - in order to satisfy all her needs. It is quite large and rather square, both over the face and over the body. She was just as she remembered. Black hair, cut pretty, but not very short and swept away by the wave in front, showing that she had spent a little time cleaning and wiping herself before starting work at the bar in the Old Hotel. On the other hand, argumentation is a series of slabs, one of which we have ever seen from behind. His head is triangular with apex at the base. A pair of socket apertures bulges out. It was probably called the “wing-nut”. his classmates at school. I resist the temptation to grab the ear key and turn it over to see what it can unlock. From conversations in the bar, we can clearly hear, the answer, of course, is not very.
In his opinion, Mr. Worth is something of a leader. He rarely misses any conversation that others share to get by without his own comment inserted. He wears a cat costume, heavily colored, and a pair of Doc Martins who have seen the best decades. His skin is rough and darkened, but probably not from the sun. His head is shaved, but shows a shadow on the edge of balding. He seemed to be leading his head, which he stuck to, to underline every three-dimensional word he says.
At some point in the conversation, it seems a lull. Mr. Worth takes one of the wet towels from the bar and throws it at Sandra. He thinks it is very funny and pushes his neighbor in the ribs when he throws himself. Sandra is very surprised. She tries to say: “Please do not do this” as soon as he raises his hand, but she is only halfway through “Please” by the time he threw it. To say that she is not surprised is to downplay what fills her eyes. But still, it is alive.
Her son helped with the washing up in the under-equipped kitchen. He is fourteen, at least, this is what Sandra immediately decided to tell us the moment he appears. She is at our end of a small bar, setting the maximum distance between herself and the group, which we are now studying, including her husband, Mr. Ware. Darren, the son, looks like her, in the same shape, but with brown rather than black hair. I feel that Jenny concludes that mom is colored. Darren is still a very boy of his mother, not yet the threat of his father. Knowing that she would need to put a place in the law tonight, before she left, she made him wipe the tables and put on stools that would not be used today. Mr. Worth, he is out of a triangular head and ears with a key in the keyhole, grins a little in mild pride when he drinks whiskey.
He orders drinks for himself and his comrades. He almost theatrically opens his relaxed purse from the leatherette, and then draws his face, surprising him when he considers it empty. Sandra's expression is knowledge and fatigue when she reluctantly frowns when she turns her back on him, writes down the EUT, and places him in a don. This, no doubt, on her behalf. She takes a little pension in the # of the slot she offers, and he has pockets, rumbles coins against a set of keys in his deep pockets, as if guaranteeing that he has fallen to the bottom. In a few minutes he would need another stock, which costs eighty-five pence, but he only produces twenty-five from his pocket. Sandra does the rest from her wallet, her lips pressing a silent curse while she works.
A minute later, Hilary appears from the kitchen. She hands the brown envelope to Sandra. A small smile confirms that this is a salary, sometimes for a week. Sandra immediately removes the note, puts it in the don and receives her debt receipt, which, after paying attention to her husband, she obviously tears into small pieces and ditches in an ashtray, an ashtray that she will have to clean later, Mr. Wars barks and growls maybe a little feels depressed in front of his comrades, but then we are told that he really wants the paper to be intact so that he can read the amount to check that Sandra does not frighten him and to save something for himself. “Never trust people in business,” he says out loud to his friend, “but never vote against them!” He laughs.
Sue follows Hilary from the kitchen. We know her name right away because Sandra greets her as if she had not seen her for several weeks. Her white down jacket identifies her as the man who roasted our fish. She is a very good cook. I told her that we enjoyed our one and only. She thanks you, but then immediately takes on self-deprecation, apologizing for the fact that she never had any training. Her words are like a magnet for other women, who immediately go to our end of the bar, how far from the locals. Sue then tells us about a coffee cake that prompted a guest to offer her. The ladies laugh, including my jenny. Her husband, however, was the one who tried to cook her fish. It's all in salt. After all, they live in salt water, right?
Perhaps because we are strangers, Sue wants to talk. Obviously, the locals at the other end will not be interested in the fact that she often has to train thirty people in the kitchen, the size of a dog kennel. Hilary, Sue and Sandra are clearly dissatisfied with their fate. Hilary, especially, seems tense and dull, as Sue is trying to explain objects from behind. When she invites us through the bar to check where she works, Hilary looks agitated, even threatened. “Look,” says Sue, waving her hand: “There is one microwave oven, a gas stove from an annual point and a freezer that would not serve a family of four. Dinner time. "
Hilary brings us back to the right side of the bar. There is not much work here, she says. When we visited the kitchen, it was obviously more than her work was worth, so she changes the subject. “It's good here, but I feel that life is passing by. I'm from a city girl. I'm from Walsall. I really like being in London, but my boyfriend is a shepherd and in Mayfair they are not called. ”
But she is confident that we are registering that Sue promises almost nothing in the kitchen. And the owner, who frequently glances, calls to say that he will not be there to reach out this evening because he was sick when she understood perfectly well that in fact he and his wife were invited to dinner by Cowan on their the farm.
“At this time of year, when the sky becomes clear and the air is fresh and the weather is good, you might think that this is a really good place to live, and look around. modern bungalow with double glazing and central heating on any given day. At night, like those, I am almost happy to work here. At least it's warm. ” The words were qualified with a nod to the regulars. “But then you have to sit here and put up with garbage, about which they talk a lot the whole evening ... Honestly, in the winter, on dark nights, there are times when you want to be somewhere separate from here. Work in the village, because of the fact that the owners never want to invest in a place. Nicely. But then you get up in the morning, and the sun is shining, and the sky is blue, and you can see on the island of Landes, and you walk around the dogs over the top of the cliff, and everything looks good.
It was then that she changed. A missed duty came from a forgotten cell. After a moment, she returned from the front desk. She had another brown envelope for Sandra, who smoked when she took it. The word "bonus" could be heard, but there was a question mark. By the time we decided to go to bed, and when we left the bar, we only had time to offer her a good night.
The next morning we went again. In fact, there was no place to go, except for those where we were already. You could go up or down. Returned to the car. Down was to the sea. We chose down. It will happen later. We walked along the wall of the harbor, past half-destroyed shields, to look at the even calm lying under a gray but light sky. There was a buzzard, an intruder screaming when it was grazed, pecking gulls. We watched the chase for ten or more minutes, as the local nests made sure that the foreigner was in good faith and was truly accompanied by their patch.
When we got off the ramp and returned to the pebbles, a British Telecom van appeared from the city. We suggested that he should have a special distribution for driving along the main street, a privileged location only for corporate clients. Downstairs, the driver stopped and then turned on the reverse. Obviously, it was only a change of direction, and nowhere along the main street there was a turn as soon as you entered the village. A group of people on our right noticed the noise and broke away from their idiotic task, trying to pull a rusty old fat man through pebbles with temporary crowbars. It was a hint of circular rotation that attracted them. Here is someone who did not know this place. There was a potential profit. The clue of moving forward in a van dissolves into the engine race when the rear end drops to the hull in loose stones.
Crowds dropped, guys surrounded their captives in seconds. “He’s good and really ...” grumbled Mr. Wors, who was one of the first to arrive. He recognized us from the bar and actually spoke directly to us, but the words were for the convenience of the driver of the van. He scratched his head several times when his comrades appeared. They also muttered when they sat down to check the depth of the problem. The driver of the van and his companion rose from their seats, their doors broken in the pebbles. Mr. Worth said quite a lot, but I just said a strange word. He scratched his head again. “Today is not my day,” he told me as he passed by.
Within minutes, our little crowd still surrounded the loot when Land Rover arrived. Mr. Worth told us that he usually goes back to the parking lot for those who cannot bring themselves back to the hill. “It doubles as a towing boat,” he said. He tied a small thin rope to the tug, and then chose a suitable place to attach it to a Telecom wagon. The whistle in Land Rover made a crawl. Of course, the rope broke. Mr Wors scratched his head again. He clearly needed to work hard today. A friend went in search of a heavier rope that was properly attached. Land Rover grew up when the van driver screamed from his engine. There was a crash on the rear end of the van, and then it was free. Sounded applause. A note was proposed, and Mr. Wers took it, but clearly expressed the conviction that it should be bigger. «То, что я должен сделать, чтобы заработать на жизнь», - сказал он, пробираясь мимо нас, потягивая и перематывая веревку, которая, вероятно, принадлежала кому-то еще. Когда British Telecom заскулила по холму на второй передаче, мы отправились в сторону Старого отеля, чтобы получить наши сумки, проверить и начать. Мы с Дженни поделились шуткой о мистере Уэрах, имея в виду локти и косы.
Сандра нас ждала. У нее был суконный мешок в правой руке, а рука ее сына слева. Он действительно был очень молодым четырнадцать. Сжатый большим пальцем и прижатый к пальцам ее сына был коричневый конверт, предположительно конверт, который Хилари перешла к ней, когда мы вышли из бара. Конверт был разорван, и один лист бумаги перевернулся. Дженни осталась с ней, пока я заплатил счет и получил наши сумки.
«Она хотела подъехать в город, - сказала Дженни, когда я вернулся. Она достала мешок. Они обвинили ее в том, что она взяла деньги с дона. Она уходит. «Я бросил взгляд с холма, но никого не было видно. Мистер Уорс все еще был там, приближаясь, когда четверо из нас, все незнакомые люди, отправились к машине.
