[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Cheapside, and finally Oxford Road. The signs, the buildings, the rooftops
over the towering windows, the sky itself, all seem to expand and dilate in
the sweetly gathering outrush of wealth. Scented with shop produce and brass
polish, the Northcentral air lifts and surrounds me as
I cling to the jolting back of our filthy tram. Here rise the chapels of the
lesser guilds, grey-white or golden, spired and domed; antique churches
pillaged from the Age of Kings and re-made with aethered statuary and bolted
Page 82
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
doors for a God who, along with all the rest of England, took the best and
most obvious choice when the world changed and joined up and became a
guildsman.
We jump down at Northcentral Terminus, scurrying from the tramaster's shouts
until we reach sudden and amazing tracts of grass, huge sunlit eruptions of
tree and water and statuary. There, we catch our breath, and Maud inspects the
substantial oily stains on the front of her dress. I look about me. The
greatest of all the guildhalls on
Wagstaffe Mall rise beyond silver-white avenues of impossible trees in their
mountain domes; coppered and silvered and glazed, winking in the sunlight over
the rivers of top hats, straw boaters, piggyback children.
`Come on, Robbie  what are you staring at?' Saul hauled me on through the
crowds. `They're only buildings for God's sake! This is only a park.
We're here to have fun, aren't we . . . ?'
But it was more than that. Weaving past the stalls, the spivs and the
pickpockets and the scrambling lesser urchins, even on the day of the
Midsummer Fair, it was the extraordinary nature of the trees in
Westminster Great Park which most entranced me. In the Easterlies, just as in
Bracebridge, blooms too big and lurid to be the fruit of simple good husbandry
would sometimes make it to the baskets of the flower-sellers, and there was
always the waterapple and the sea-potato to remind us of the guildsman's art,
but here, bright and solid, were whispering, living creations of dream.
Perilinden, which rose tall and silver and chattered
its leaves. Cedarstone, far squatter, with its massive red trunk, which was
gnarled and polished, the grain beautiful and intricate as sunset caught in
the currents of a river. Firethorn, which was an ugly-spined bush up in
Brownheath planted for deterrence and protection, was here a chaos of heraldic
flowers. And sallow, even sallow, that common herb, became a tree of
greenish-white beauty with a scent like bitter honey. As the bands of several
guilds struck up brassy waves, I breathed these names like spells. Leaves red
and gold, and heart-shaped to the size of trays. Trunks wound with pewter
bark. Flowers like downturned porcelain vases. I resolved to come here again 
in fact, to leave the
Easterlies  and wander more quietly and perhaps forever with the ghost of my
mother. But the bustle of the Midsummer was puffing at me, and everywhere,
there were promises of greater wonders if you stepped through a turnstile,
entered a tent, touched a pretend haft; just as long as you paid, paid, paid.
I sat with Saul and Maud, groaning and clapping as white rabbits vanished and
reappeared amid fanfares of smoke and gong  all, so it said on the
prestidigitator's sign outside the smelly tent, without the aid of a single
drop of aether. It was a hot thy. Passing burlesques, clowns, familiars
dressed like little sailors, strange monologues and dioramas of journeys
through distant lands, gazing over heads, I bought a wrap of sherbet ice and
sucked it greedily. Wiping my numb lips, I looked around for Maud and Saul. I
could see no sign of them. But the plan had always been that we would meet up
by
Prettlewell Fountains at three that afternoon. I had no watch, and no idea of
where those fountains actually were, but no matter. I wasn't lost 
lost wasn't something which happened when you were wandering under the
astonishing trees of Westminster Great Park amid balloon-sellers, dancing
familiars and spinning acrobats. Not at Midsummer. Not in
London. Not when you were Robbie. This Midsummer Fair, I decided, was like
London itself. By turns brash and sad, quiet and teeming, stinkingly ugly,
heart-stoppingly lovely ... And, like London, there were things more easily
stumbled across than actually found.
I tried my luck shooting tin birds. I inspected the giant bones of monsters
said to have been spawned in a distant Age. There were red-
scaled beasts and ravening balehounds. There was an incredible tooting machine
Page 83
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
like a madly enlivened forest which had been made by the guildsmen of Saxony.
I must have wandered for several thoughtless hours, spending what money I had,
letting the crowds lead and buffet me, taking in all the horrors and wonders
and disappointments of the fair. Then I saw Annalise. She was walking alone,
in her own quiet space amid shouting groups of lads, tired families. She
stopped by a carousel ride and I caught my breath in the shadows behind,
waiting for my heart to stop pounding. She was dressed in a light blue skirt
and a puffy white blouse which was bunched at the neck and the sleeves. She
had the
shape of a woman now, and her hair, pale blond, and coiled, ribboned, plaited,
lay across her shoulders. Everything about Annalise was different, and
impossibly fine, down to the curve of eyelash which drooped and rose as she
watched the children swirling by on their painted drays, but at the same time
she hadn't changed. I'd have been happy to stand there forever, watching
Annalise through ride after ride.
But if it's possible for someone's back, the line of a cheekbone, to convey a
knowing amusement, then that was what she managed to do. The colours swept by, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]