At the end of our weekend away, we came upon Edlingham Castle. We’d
passed by the English Heritage sign a few times but it took us till Sunday to
visit the glorious ruin.
Arriving at the main stone path, I realised that this encompassed the full
castle grounds. Passing between the stubby walls of the barbican, I saw her
reach out and run her fingers across the top, scattering gravel dust. I didn’t
remark on this. We were the only ones on-site.
I shielded my eyes from the sun as I doubled back on the information panel. She
kept walking through the courtyard, pulling out her camera. Apparently
Edlingham Castle began life as a normal residence, later fortified as the
English meddled with Scottish royalty. Three hundred years of social
disruption, outright destruction and border raiding. Glancing up, I saw her
skid over stray pebbles.
She was snapping photos of what remained of the solar tower. You couldn’t see
much front-on but I knew she was testing how light moved through the windows
and around the full height of the roofless structure. While she sidestepped
around it in a careful circle, I settled among what the panel called ‘the
lodgings’. One of the corners had been eroded just wide enough for me to sit
in.
The view it afforded was, of course, a stretch of scattered aged stone but I
enjoyed the way the midsummer light brought out the white among the grey. I
searched around for other visitors but noticed only Red Angus cows nudging each
other away from wire fences. As I sat there alone, I shut my eyes and focused on
the sharp proximity of hewn brick around my lightly shivering knees. I
quietened my breath long enough to hear the wind rustle past. For a moment I
couldn’t even hear cars zip by on the motorway ahead.
At last I blinked till I could perceive the faint blue of the sky above. The
occasional cloud that curled and uncurled overhead cast brief shadows on the
kitchen range to the east. I wondered how soon this would darken me.
Hoisting myself out of the gap, I crossed the weedy courtyard to move
anticlockwise around the sun tower. The intention was to catch her out, maybe
startle her at the moment of an ideal shot. Still I was distracted by the thin
section of messy brickwork on my side of the tower. A small red amassment of
rough curved stones wedged between smooth yellowed rectangles. The design, if
that was indeed what it was, baffled me so much that I had to reach out and
check that the jutting rocks weren’t actually movable. Fortunately for me and
British History, they remained firm.
Then I broke away from it all and was halfway round the tower before I saw her.
She was leaning at roughly the same angle as the left wall was coming away from
the rest. The way she lined up her shot, it seemed she was most interested in
the black metal bars that were keeping the walls joined together. These were
high overhead and I felt a shortness of breath as I imagined everything
tumbling on both of us.
At last she saw me. We exchanged nervous smiles. Pointing my thumb over my
shoulder, I led her to a bench that was in the middle of the tower’s southern
wall. She put away her camera and joined me in sitting with our backs to the
makeshift fortress. Holding hands, it felt like we were propping up the whole
structure with our tired lonely shoulders.
