Night Side of the River by Jeanette Winterson

Author:Jeanette Winterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2023-10-10T15:34:55+00:00

The Door

Blackdog Castle overlooks the North Sea. Massy, dark, brooding, part-ruined, part-restored, the stone buildings sit hunched around a courtyard. The inner windows are large and light, like blank eyes that stare at each other without expression. The windows facing the sea are narrow and impassive. Weather has worn away the sharp angles of the stone into a blunt face.

An S-bend road leads from the castle to the village that is now a tourist attraction and was once a fishing port. Built in 1360, it is no longer a fortification. The castle is marketed as an ‘experience’.

Cook in the medieval kitchen! Dance in a kilt! Return to the eighteenth century! Man the big guns in the Battle of the Skies! Get married!

Blackdog Castle is a wedding venue. Stevie and Amy are getting married here on Friday.

I’m Stevie.

Most of our guests arrived with us on Wednesday. Our celebration is a three-day affair. The castle is remote. Anyone travelling this far deserves a drink.

All of us went out to the only pub that night. On foot.

Winding down the roaming road or roaming down the winding road, to drink whisky in a little low-roofed coaching inn, had a romance of its own. No one wanted to leave the big, bright fire warming the panelled room set with wooden chairs, tables, and a candle on every table. The barman had promised us a story. There’s always a story, isn’t there? A story of somebody drowned, somebody murdered, somebody who died for love.

‘Oh, mine is a love story,’ said the barman, ‘indeed it is! Like Romeo and Juliet.’

The barman was filling up our whisky glasses from an oak cask. No bottles. No measures. His forearms were the size of ox haunches. He wore an earring that glinted above his beard.

‘Aye, but mind you, my story is a sad story. When did love stories start to have happy endings? Can you tell me that?’

He has a point. Lancelot and Guinevere. Tristan and Isolde. Dido and Aeneas. Medea. Anna Karenina. Cathy and Heathcliff. Poor Oscar Wilde . . .

‘I prefer the sad ones,’ said the barman. ‘The tale I have to tell has a haunting in it for you too, unless you fear ghosts?’

As he said this, the wind rattled at the window, and everyone laughed. ‘Na fear, then, that’s guid,’ said the barman.

He turned down the lights. He leaned forward. He raised his hand.

‘At Blackdog Castle, in the Keep, you will find an inscription on the wall. You may see it for yourself with your own eyes. It’s from the Bible. It says,’ (he paused to be sure of our attention), ‘Love is strong as Death.

‘Now, why would someone scrape that into the wall, with a knife, the night after a murder?’

I didn’t stay to find out. Unnoticed, I slipped away, a dark shadow on a dark night. Weddings are not solitary occasions, but I am a solitary person. I like to see my friends happy and together. And then I slip away.

Are you afraid of the dark? Not me.

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