The View, Temporarily Mislaid

I paid twenty pence to look at a cloud. This was unnecessary. A considerable quantity of the same cloud was available outside the telescope, free of charge.

There should have been an abbey. The little plaque beneath the eyepiece promised one, together with a lake, three named peaks and a distant village of architectural interest. I could see the plaque. Beyond it, the universe had been reduced to a wet railing.

I had walked up before breakfast. This was the first error; the coin was merely the first error with an itemised cost. Below the hill, the town had been waking in sections: a light above a bakery, someone dragging bins across cobbles, a delivery van negotiating a corner which had plainly been designed before vans were considered a serious possibility. I had followed the sign for PANORAMA.

Now I stood at the panorama with water gathering in my hair.

The telescope clicked shut. My allotted portion of whiteness was over.

I sat on the bench and took out the notebook. The page already contained a sketch of the route, a question about the bakery's opening time and a drawing of a bird which I could no longer identify even as a bird. I added the telescope's price, then rubbed a drop of water out of the ink. This improved the bird.

A clear night, damp ground and very little wind: the makings of radiation fog. The ground had lost heat overnight, cooling the air near it until water began condensing into tiny suspended droplets. I had noticed the clear sky when I arrived and felt pleased about the morning's prospects. There was the small oversight in my forecast. Clear skies could help make the very thing I was now complaining about.

Somewhere downhill, a dog barked. Another answered, or the same dog had rapidly developed a contrary opinion. I could not tell.

I tried waiting intelligently. This involved examining the railing, checking the pale space above it and considering how sunlight warming the ground might disperse the fog. Then I tried waiting unintelligently. It looked much the same, except that I was hungry.

A woman emerged carrying a camera and a small folding ruler. She wore waterproof trousers and had a pencil tucked beneath the strap of her watch. Without looking towards the view, she crouched beside the telescope.

I moved my boots out of her way.

“You've come a long way for this,” I said.

“About twelve miles.”

“I meant the visibility.”

“Oh. It's excellent.”

She laid the ruler beside a bolt and photographed it.

Her name was Pam. She was surveying the council's outdoor fittings: benches, signs, railings and the telescope. Each had a number. Each required photographs. The fog had removed a great many distracting backgrounds from her working day.

I had imagined a disappointed landscape photographer. Pam was trying to establish whether a mounting plate needed replacement, and had no professional interest in the abbey.

“Does it work?” she asked.

“The shutter does.”

“Good. Someone said it was stuck.”

I described the click, the open eyepiece and the eventual closure. She made a note. It was gratifying to discover that my twenty pence had purchased usable evidence, though I should have preferred a lake.

While she worked, I looked at the bench. There was an old date cut into its underside, almost hidden by a later coat of paint. I bent to read it and knocked my head on the seat.

Pam glanced over.

“That's number forty-six.”

“I shall remember it.”

She offered me a tissue for the wet mark on my forehead. I accepted it and sat upright until my interest in municipal furniture became less physical.

The fog moved. Not a grand lifting of the curtain; a brief thinning through which a branch appeared, carrying several leaves and no information about the mountains. Then it was gone. Pam took another photograph. I resisted asking whether she had caught my branch. She had her own list to finish.

After a while she packed the ruler away and asked if I knew the lower path.

I showed her my map.

“That's the steep one.”

“It was.”

She drew a longer curve with her finger, through a wood and past the cemetery. The bakery lay at the bottom. I wrote the turnings down while she described them, then read them back. She corrected the second turning. My original route would have supplied a second hill, which I had not ordered.

Pam went on to inspect a litter bin. I stayed long enough to hear its lid squeak, and her saying, quite distinctly, “You too, then.”

I understood the conversation perfectly.

The lower path began between two stone posts. Under the trees the fog collected on twigs and fell in irregular drops. My jacket smelled of wet wool. I had stopped expecting every pale opening to become a view, which made walking easier. There were roots enough to occupy me.

Halfway down, the path bent beside a gap in the trees. For perhaps ten seconds I saw the abbey: a broken tower, dark against a field, much nearer than I had expected. A strip of water shone behind it. I stopped with one hand on a stone post and forgot the notebook entirely.

Then the gap filled again.

At the bakery I bought something warm with currants in it. The woman behind the counter asked whether I had been up to the viewpoint.

“Briefly successful.”

“You want to try it in summer.”

I said I might. Outside, I found a dry place beneath the awning and ate slowly, pulling the paper bag lower as I went. Across the street, someone was putting postcards on a rack.

The abbey cost forty pence. The lake was included.