I am sitting in the garden, in sunlight, thinking about this place and about other green places. Hidden birds are cheeping and twittering in bushes and trees around me. I cannot see the birds but by their loud, enthusiastic songs, I can imagine them, behind leaves, singing at the full capacity of their tiny lungs.
My thoughts are appropriate for such a bright sunny day, relaxing in the garden – my thoughts are slow and soft. Nergal, our cat, is lying underneath my garden chair. She is flattened out on the shadowed grass. It is too hot for her to be running around on the grass or running up the trunk of her favourite tree, but she might do that later, when the air cools. I imagine her scrambling up the tree into the leafy branches. A furry blur, reaching the longest, thickest branch, and walking along its horizontal surface. It is high up, and as I gaze up at that branch, which only has an imaginary cat on it, I gaze beyond to a perfect blue sky. And I think of other days, other skies, and a high bridge. Much higher than the tree.
Seven Arches Bridge – its name sounds like a myth. For most of my life, it has been my favourite place, although I rarely go there now. It is an old bridge in a small piece of countryside, a few fields on hills, a few houses. Still, amazingly, it has the same heartbeat it had when I first saw it, a few decades ago. The special heartbeat of a high bridge with seven tree-touched arches. I have wandered beneath those arches many times and craned my neck to look up at tons of stone bridge, where once, long before I was born, steam engines thundered across a pure blue sky.
And now, which is not now, I am sitting in the cool air beneath the bridge. A favourite spot in a favourite place: big dark rocks by the river. A woodpecker is morse-coding against an elm tree nearby. My eyes are closed, and I shouldn’t be able to see sun-stars dancing in the river, but I can, as the fast river, deep-green, flows by the rocks where I sit. Aromas of blends of leaves reach my nostrils, like the blends of seasons mixing into one new season: now. A deep-time smell in this cool place of trees, river, bridge and sky. Steam engines rumbling in the distance where no steam engines are. And the river Dichty repeating and repeating soft announcements. Departures, arrivals. And twirling sycamore seeds floating down through a glimmer of sky through the trees. A few tired leaves floating by on the water. Murmurs from the river, from its fast, narrow gentle channels, repeating and repeating, but always with tiny variations of emphasis. We are going this way, and that way, we have come down from the hills where the deer roam, down past the moss and the broken buildings, we flow, we flow, under the bridge, past the families of trees, and down, down to the River Tay. Always the same. Always new.
Seven Arches Bridge was where I searched and tramped and climbed for hours, following minute tracks of voles. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the baby ones. I never did but I’d read they were unbelievably small.
I’m back in the garden I never left. I look down, expecting to see Nergal under my chair, but the space is empty grass. I look up and see her, sitting perfectly still on the thickest branch of the tree. Sitting proudly like a commemorative photograph of her climbing prowess.
Later, I reluctantly leave the garden and my enchanted reveries of an old bridge, because I have things to buy and things to do in town. But as I walked down the Hilltown, I wondered if I could grab some time soon, and cycle to Seven Arches. Days are getting warmer and brighter, so it would be a perfect time for a visit to the bridge and the river. And, cycling is always the best way to get to the bridge – first, along by the River Tay, so I can see the sparkling water and the dream-white sails of yachts glowing like the brightest memories. And, thinking about all of this, walking down the hill, I glance up and see over the Wellgate Centre and much further across the River Tay itself to the low green hills of Fife. Today, they do not look real, but more like miniature replica hills for an elaborate model train set, the green and yellow colours unnaturally strong.
All day, as I wandered from shop to shop, ticking off things on a list, I thought I heard birds singing in the trees, high overhead, but then I realised I was in some big department store, where the lighting was sometimes as bright as sunlight but there were no birds or river or bridge. So, I did a lot of internal shrugging and thinking – “oh, well, never mind, I’ll be there soon in real life, and that’ll be good”. But part of me worried if I’d forget to cycle to the bridge. Maybe, weeks would go by and I’d do what I had done for months – go to work, have good family time, rest, read, write, fight fascists, read more, write more, fight more fascists, rest, family, work, and a lot of other things too. But no Seven Arches.
A few days went by and mostly I was too busy to think about the bridge or wish I was there. One day, it rained heavily. I hid in a café and watched people outside walking by the windows, holding their coats shut at their necks and scowling as they hurried through rain which is very good at obliterating thoughts. Or, every thought but – get me out of here. I felt a little guilty sitting at a table drying off in the café. I imagined my own scowling face moments before, my forehead very cold in the rain. I shivered at the thought.
I tried to think about Seven Arches. The rain drummed at the window louder and faster, as if an invisible conductor was raising both hands, his long bony fingers extended, instructing the drums and orchestra to increase their volume and pace. Looking at the rain on the windows and hearing the loud drumming, I could not imagine the bridge or the river – or not the way I way I wanted to, vast and beautiful and bright. Then, I turned my head just a little and glanced at a nearby table where a woman was pouring tea from a teapot into a white cup with a blue flower on it. Something about the sound of the tea being poured calmed me instantly, and I found myself smiling and remembering tiny rivulets of water passing by where I lay on grass at the edge of the Dichty, staring into the water, and half-shutting my eyes as sun-stars on the water dazzled me, so it was hard to see fish beneath the water’s surface, but sometimes I did or I thought I did – sudden brief impressions of silver and brown, a gleaming within a gleaming.
It will be fine. I will wait for another sunny day. Then, I’ll cycle to Seven Arches.
HARVEY DUKE 