AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Same time,’ the gruff male said.
The heavy front door clanged shut. That was it? No post-sex chatter or a nice cup of tea? A simple hump over the settee and done? Sliding back the bolt, I opened the door and stuck my head through the gap. Meg was trotting upstairs, her face rosy cheeked, her ruffled hair angled upwards. The spaghetti strapped top barely covered her breasts and as she moved along the landing, the black PVC mini-skirt squeaked, her long, elastic legs bowing outwards.
I shrivelled at the sight of the caricature of what I knew her to be. The lack of comforts in the bedroom was evidence of her abandoning her lodgers for a more lucrative business. But it was too late to avoid her. Meg had spotted me.
Her colouration deepened, and she pursed her lips. ‘Lodgers don’t pay as much as I’d thought,’ she said, with a brisk shoulder shrug. ‘And that bastard of an ex-husband doesn’t cough up a penny. Needs must.’ She ran her fingers through her tangled, sweaty hair. ‘Goodnight.’ The satisfied smile, which spread across her face and creased into her flushed cheeks, had a glorious edge to it. That will-o’-the-wisp charm had to be appealing to a night visitor.
Alnwick, the home of the troublesome Percys and centuries of warfare, was no different to my hometown. What had I been thinking?
I washed my hands thoroughly in the bathroom. I was mortified by my mistake. By my ignorance. I had greeted solitary businessmen staying the night in my hotel workplace with courtesy. What a dolt I’d been, assuming their crumpled suits and tired eyes were due to hard work while their companions, smartly dressed and heavily laden with make-up, were supposedly their work colleagues. It wasn’t often, but occasions had arisen when the cleaners rolled their eyes when questioned by the duty manager, who turned a blind eye to the practice. It wasn’t worth damaging the hotel’s reputation to draw attention to them. “Escorts” was the manager’s preferred term.
Before I went to bed, I reviewed the list of B&B bookings and crossed out another cheap one. I would replace it with a three, no, four-star one as soon as possible. David didn’t need to know why and even if he did ask, I had my personal safety to consider. As for my planned second night at Meg’s, it wasn’t happening. I would find somewhere else to stay.
I checked the door was locked before turning off the light.
Ten
Dunstanburgh
A massive fort, battered by weather, destroyed by war, it sits proudly on the headland, refusing to be cowed still. Other than the natural rock known as the Great Whin Sill, there appears to be no apparent strategic purpose for the location of the vast castle. Upon the same rock, many a fearsome structure had been built - Hadrian’s Wall, Bamburgh Castle and Dunstanburgh. The Normans were not the first to pick the site - at one time, an Iron Age fort stood upon the outcrop.
Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who built the current castle in 1313, associated himself with Arthurian legends, and created his Avalon Island with the use of water features. None obviously survive, but the golf course benefits from the lower plateau. Isolated from nearby settlements, even to this day, Dunstanburgh requires sturdy legs and a brisk walk to reach the gatehouse, avoiding the golf balls along the way. Ideally, don’t pick a rainy or blustery day, you’ll be hugging the walls for shelter.
What brings visitors to this bleak outpost is the aesthetics of landscape and the castle’s rugged determination not to crumble and expire into the sea. The once mighty, rather aloof castle, perched on a spillage of magna rock, has all the elements of an abandoned fortification robbed of its stone - forgotten, bleak, inaccessible and haunted by its past. Turner painted here, and Gothic writers penned antiquated myths as splendid as Lancaster’s own ambitions.
Bird watching is also recommended.
~ Alistair Braithwaite’s Touring Guide of Northern Castles
Ire-packed the camera bag for a second time and, regardless of my efforts, its weight remained uncompromisingly heavy even after I’d sacrificed the tripod and a zoom lens. I heaved the strap over my shoulders and attached a flask of water to my trouser belt. The weak sunshine was welcome, the energetic breeze less so.
The walk from the car park in the village of Caster to the castle was approximately one blustery wind-swept mile along a coastal footpath. Unlike many fortifications, no habitation had blossomed at the base of the castle, unless you counted the golf course. A few hundred yards down the track, I paused to take a swig out of the water flask and cursed the feudal lord whose idea it was to build a castle on the rise of a bleak promenade of cliffs and rocky coves.
The earl, whose name I’d forgotten, should have taken sound advice. Walking briskly, I conjured up the equivalent of a feng shui consultant standing with the earl, evaluating the outcrop’s potential. The nervous advisor muttered a word or two about bad vibes and the wrong energy, and dispatched a perplexed look of disbelief at the choice of location. He suggested, as politely as possible, that the sea air was too harsh. He wrung his hands, imploring the earl to think of the masons and carpenters who’d have to labour in such remoteness. Then, there was the obligatory, ‘The cost, my lord!’; the lord’s reply, ‘You’re dismissed.’
Yet, Dunstanburgh had been built, and later its gatehouse was enlarged. Its fate was decided by a series of civil wars and, unlike Alnwick and Bamburgh, no one cared to rescue the crumbling fortress and transform it into a palatial home like Kenilworth. Lifeless and alone, Dunstanburgh suffered the ignominy of neglect. For lovers of ruins, it was a blessing, and worthy of my daydreams.
From a distance, the giant gatehouse and crippled keep seemed to be all that had survived, and Braithwaite was keen to point out its size.
The gatehouse is on such a grand scale it diminishes the rest of the walls. So big, it is impractical and unsophisticated; Dunstanburgh remains the largest castle ever built in Northumberland. The space inside the walls was mostly unoccupied, a testament to its use as a garrison fort rather than a home. With much of the original structure missing, one is required to be imaginative about what else might have stood within its bailey.
I smiled. Imaginative? This was why I liked the little guidebook. I liked the idea of Alistair lost in his own daydreams, just like me.
As I approached the gatehouse, other features emerged and brought shape: elongated walls, steep inclines and half-formed towers. Humbled by the fragments of a once enormous fortress, and wretchedly aching from my exertions, I paused to sympathise with the weathered shell, robbed of its stone and fractured into remote parts. My own life had often felt equally fragmented. Walls implied strength, but without care and maintenance, they amounted to nothing, and so it had been with me. Friends and colleagues thought I quietly persevered through life’s mishaps and hurdles, but the reality was that I lived a directionless life, compartmentalised and unfulfilled. This summer, I’d broken out of that routine and done something different, surprising friends and family in equal measure.
Arriving at the bottom of the hill, I grappled with the straps and zipper of the bag, and fished out my film camera to take a few wide angled views to add to my landscape collection. Medici wanted, unsurprisingly, something different to my choices.
Dunstanburgh was little more than a line of uneven grey stone sandwiched between patchy clouds and a sheet of swaying grasses and yet it had so much to offer me.
‘You’re truly dramatic. Tell you what,’ I said, aiming the viewfinder at a window, ‘we can be friends for the day, can’t we?’ Each shot seemed to present the castle as lonelier than the last and I commiserated with its melancholy isolation.
My brother, Richard, the soldier accustomed to camaraderie, had been quick to point out my fears in a rare call home, not long before I’d left Coalville.
‘The loneliness will drive your bonkers,’ he said, his voice breaking up with the weak connection.
I had huffed with annoyance. Mum had said the same thing. ‘It’s not for the rest of my life,’ I had said.
‘All the same, sis, you’ll pine for home cooked food and company. It isn’t even a proper job.’
