We are in the tulip garden at Mount Edgcombe, where W. comes sometimes to read Kafka. ‘Where are the tulips?’ – ‘It’s the wrong season, you idiot.’ Autumn crisp and blue all around us. To get there, you have to go past the Orangery and then past the geyser – then of course there is the boat which crosses from the pier that leads out from the street with the naval barracks.
We like sitting on the low wooden boatseats and looking towards the redeveloped Naval Dockyards where we went to see if we could look at a flat and we wanted to be taken to be a wealthy couple. But they saw through us right away, and no one would show us around. That was a few months ago – summer – and we were feeling especially inane.
Now it is autumn when there are no tulips, and I photograph W. sitting on the bench where he comes to read Kafka in the gardens of the old country house. The last Duke of Edgcombe, W. tells me, married a barmaid from the pub, and had to sell up the whole estate, so the city bought it. It’s a miracle, we agree, as we walk out along the shore to where the path rises up to pass through the woods.
It was here the Dukes and their guests would charge their carriages in the darkness, imagining they were in some Gothic romance. There’s even a faux-ruined folly built on the hill, very unconvincing in the autumn sun. We know nothing about trees or nature, but W. suspects I might be a woodsman, because I am confident among the brambles and fallen trees.
A landslide took the woods with it; some trees still stand, growing at a slant, though most are fallen. The path has been diverted, but W. prefers the old route. It’s slow going – very overgrown – and, where the cliff has completely collapsed, you have to scramble across scree. All the while, we manage to keep up our chatter, like birds. Is there anything we’ve not said?
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