a fourtieth story...'edgelands'

‘This’, said the Surveyor, gesturing with his free hand, ‘is what we call a Ribbon Band Development’.

Stephen stopped fiddling with the aperture settings on his camera and looked down on row upon row of red brick terrace housing, the bleak moorland rising behind.  He brushed a strand of hair away from his eyes.  The wind was blowing in gusts, and with it came damp air and the threat of rain.

‘..And, you are looking at what we call a Linear Town’, the Surveyor continued knowledgeably. ‘Difficult to service, unpleasant to live in, an economy that has dissipated to the cities – Leeds, Sheffield and so on – relatively high levels of petty crime, and some of the highest levels of recreational substance abuse in the UK’.  Stephen shuddered.  The Edgelands: the place of rust, brick dust, the place of ruin.  The place he had so long romanticised. 

The wind picked up once again.

‘Do you want to go down and have look?’, asked the Surveyor, before Stephen could get lost in his reverie.  Stephen felt the first dash of rain, and put his camera back into it’s hard, leather case.  ‘Yes, I think so’, he replied, ‘I think I would like to see for myself’.

~

As the Surveyor’s shiny, Red Ford Fiesta juddered down the stony track to rejoin the road into town, a sheet of rain splattered the windshield, and the cloud descended rapidly.  ‘In addition to the high levels of recreational drug use, I forgot to mention the weather!’, quipped the Surveyor jocularly, hunched over the steering wheel and peering through the downpour.  ‘What else can you do, if you’re forced to stay in doors all day?’.  ‘None of these people have jobs, of course’. ‘In essence, they don’t do anything’.  Stephen sighed.  It was clear the Surveyor had little or no sense of empathy for these unfortunate people, and little or no sense of injustice at local government for doing nothing to alleviate their misery.  Stephen wanted to ask whether the Surveyor believed in the Divine Rite of Kings, but thought better of it.

They were back on the tarmac road now, running smoothly, and sheltered from the rain.  On either side, the road was flanked by banks of peat and heather.  ‘What is it that interests you about these places, anyhow?’, asked the Surveyor presently, as he turned the windshield wipers off, ‘I am mean, why have you given up a day on the sofa, watching re runs of Coronation Street, to come out here?’.  Why exactly? wondered Stephen.  He knew it would be impossible to make the Surveyor see the stalwart romance he saw in these kinds of places, the austere beauty, the beguiling wilderness, the emotional resonance of the wastelands, Eliot, Larkin, Benne .. Stephen shrugged, ‘just curiosity, I suppose’.

~

In the middle of town, the Surveyor said there was a car park, and indeed this is where they stopped.  The car park was adjacent to a recreation ground: the grass overgrown, the goal posts hauled over, what once might have been a changing room, boarded up and decorated in graffiti.  ‘There’s no need to pay, by the way’, said the Surveyor, as they passed the coin operated parking meter with a huge gash in the side, already plundered for loose change, ‘Traffic Wardens don’t operate around here, and the police only turn up on drugs raids’. 

So, this is it, mused Stephen.  These are the Edgelands.

~

They hunkered low in their raincoats and trudged up the road through the centre of the town that also passed as a high street.  Half of the shops were closed altogether, the other half were closed to the elements if not the local populace; one or two of the flats above the shops were burned out, many of them were derelict, broken shards of glass hanging in the window panes. 

‘Fancy doing some grocery shopping?’ the Surveyor remarked sarcastically, striding on ahead of Stephen.  The rain was getting more persistent, and seemed as if it would settle in for the afternoon. 

‘Is there anywhere to get a cup of tea, perhaps?’, asked Stephen, his voice raised against the blustering wind.  The Surveyor turned around, a look of surprise on his manicured features, ‘you want a cup of tea?..Here?’, Stephen came level with him, ‘Yes, I would like that’.  The Surveyor raised his eye brows, and inspected his watch.  ‘Well, OK’, ‘but the only kind of cup of tea you’ll get here will be greased tea, you know that?’.  Stephen smiled.  ‘Perfect’, he replied and off they went in search of a tea parlour.

~

‘Urrrgh’.  The Surveyor grimaced as he took a tentative sip of his tea, Stephen’s dislike of the man was growing by the minute.  They had found a small café further along the high street.  Sure enough there was grease on the walls, grease on the tables, and grease in the tea. 

The Surveyor scraped the legs of his plastic chair on the tiled floor, also sticky with grease.  ‘Disgusting’, ‘absolutely disgusting’.  The Surveyors nose wrinkled and the sides of his mouth turned down.  Stephen put his cup of greased tea back on the saucer, where a brown pool of liquid had formed around the rim.  ‘People live here, you know?’, he remarked, a hint of irritation his voice, ‘and this is someone’s livelihood’.  The café was deserted except for Stephen and the Surveyor.  The old, grey lady who served them had disappeared into a back room.  The Surveyor swivelled around in his seat to make sure they were out of earshot, and leaning forward said to Stephen: ‘Look, let’s just get out of here’.

Stephen realised he was beginning to enjoy the Surveyors discomfort, hitherto masked by disdain.  Out here in the Edgelands the Surveyor was far away from the sanitised confines and clean lines of his eco-apartment, the suburban chic of the white, middle class community of professional men and women he came from; far away from the Friday cocktail crowd the Surveyor felt comfortable being among, far away from safety. Stephen relaxed back into his chair, and kicked his feet out in front of him. 

‘I’d like to stay another cup of tea’, he announced, feeling ever the antithesis of J Alfred Prufrock.