round the countryside in England. Behind this rise, the woods began, although the tower itself was out in the open. This would have given it a superior position should any border reivers have come calling, a regular occurrence during the centuries when the border between England and Scotland continually shifted. The intent of the reivers was always the same. They were marauders who had taken advantage of the lawlessness of that period of time, perfecting the art of stealing cattle and oxen, invading homes, and stripping their victims of everything they owned. Their objective was always plunder and getting back to their own homes without being killed in the process. If they themselves had to kill to accomplish this, they did so. But that hadn’t been their first priority.
The pele towers had been an answer to the question of protection from the reivers. The best of them were indestructible, with stone walls far too thick to be harmed and windows just wide enough for an archer to fire from, and separate floors for animals, their owners, their household activities, and their defence. But the towers had fallen out of use as time went on, after the border was finally firmly established, along with laws and the advent of lawmen willing to make those laws more than someone’s passing fancy. Once the towers fell out of use, their materials were employed for other buildings. Or the towers themselves were subsumed into larger structures, becoming part of a great house, a vicarage, or a school.
Middlebarrow Tower was of the first type. It stood tall, with most of its windows intact. A short distance from it and across a field, a group of old farm buildings gave testimony to what some of the tower’s original stones had been used for. Between the tower and these farm buildings, a camp had been set up. It was equipped with small tents, honey pots, and several makeshift sheds with a larger tent to accommodate the twelve-step programme, Nicholas Fairclough said. This was also the dining tent. Meals and twelve-stepping went hand in hand.
Nicholas pulled back into the road, which descended to a lane leading off towards the tower. The tower, he said, was on the private land of Middlebarrow farm. He’d got the farmer to consent to the project — not to mention to consent to the presence of the recovering addicts who were currently living and working there — once he saw the benefits of a restored tower that could be used as anything from a holiday rental to a tourist attraction.
“He’s settled on turning the place into a camping site,” Nicholas told her. “It’ll bring him some extra money during the season, and he’s happy enough to put up with us if that’s the end product. That was Allie’s idea, by the way, approaching the farmer with the possibilities for the tower if he’d let us renovate it. She was involved with the pele project in its initial stages.”
“But not now?”
“She likes to be in the background. Plus… well, I daresay when the addicts began to arrive, she was a bit more comfortable being at home than hanging about here.” They pulled onto the site where work was in progress, and Nicholas added, “No need to be wary, though. These blokes are far too used up — and far too ready for a change in their lives — to be harmful to anyone.”
But they were not, Deborah found, far too used up to work. A team leader had been assigned to the project, and when Nicholas introduced him as Dave K — “It’s traditional not to use surnames,” he told her — it was clear that work leading to hunger leading to meals leading to twelve-stepping and then to sleep was the order of the day. Dave K had a roll of plans with him, and he unscrolled them on the bonnet of Nicholas Fairclough’s car. With a nod at Deborah meant, she assumed, to convey acknowledgement of the introduction, he lit a cigarette and used it as a pointer as he spoke to Nicholas about the project.
Deborah wandered from the car. The tower, she saw, was huge, a bulky mass of a building that looked like the makings of a Norman castle, complete with crenellation. Upon a casual glance, it didn’t appear in need of a great deal of restoration, but when Deborah walked round the other side of the structure, she saw what had become of it during the centuries it had lain available for anyone to maraud upon it.
The project was going to be enormous. Deborah couldn’t think how they were going to manage the scope of work needing to be done. There were no floors to the building, one of the four external walls was missing, and another wall was partially collapsed. Removing debris alone was going to take ages and then there was the not small matter of obtaining materials to replace those that had long ago been carted off to become part of other buildings in the district.
She gazed upon it with a photographer’s eye. In the same fashion, she examined the men who were working there, most of whom seemed to be the age of pensioners. She didn’t have any of her cameras with her aside from a small digital one to keep her position as a filmmaker’s research scout on the up-and-up. She took this from her bag and applied herself to recording what was round her.
“It’s really the act of creation that heals. The process not product, I mean. Of course, at first they focus on the product. That’s human nature. But in the end they’ll come to see that the real product is self-belief, self-esteem, self-knowledge. Whatever you want to call it.”
Deborah turned. Nicholas Fairclough had come up beside her. She said, “To be honest, your workers don’t look strong enough to do much, Mr. Fairclough. Why are there no younger men to help them?”
“Because these are the blokes who need saving the most. Here and now. If someone doesn’t reach out to them, they’re going to die on the streets in the next couple of years. My thinking is that no one deserves to die like that. There’re programmes all over the country — all over the world — for young people, and believe me I know, because I spent time in a lot of them. But for blokes like this? Shelters for the night, sandwiches, hot soup, Bibles, blankets, whatever. But not belief. They’re not so far gone that they can’t read pity at fifty yards. Feel that way towards them and they’ll take your money, use it to get high, and spit on your charity. ’Scuse me for a moment, okay? Have a look round if you like. I need to talk to one of them.”
Deborah watched as he picked his way through the rubble. He yelled, “Hey, Joe! What d’we hear from that stone mason?”
Deborah wandered in the direction of the large tent, identified by a sign in front of it reading
Deborah said pleasantly, “Hello. Not to worry. I’m just having a look round.”
“Th’ always are,” he muttered.
“Lots of visitors?”
“Always someone comin’ hereabouts. Himself needs the funds.”
“Oh. I see. Well, I’m not a potential donor, I’m afraid.”
“Nor was the last. Doesn’t matter to me. I get food and the meetings and ’f someone wants to ask me do I think this’ll work, I say it will.”
Deborah approached him. “But you don’t believe in this process?”
“Didn’t say that. And doesn’t matter what I believe. Like I say, I get food and the meetings and that’s enough for me. Don’t mind the meetings as much as I reckoned I would, so that’s not half-bad. Dry place to sleep as well.”
“During the meetings?” Deborah asked him.
He looked up sharply. He saw her smile and he chuckled. “Anyway, like I said, they’re not half-bad. Bit much with the God bit, bit more with the acceptance bit, but I can cope. Maybe it’ll sink in. Willing to try it. Ten years sleeping rough… it’s enough.”
Deborah joined him then at the serving table. He had a large box on a chair next to it, and from this he began taking out cutlery, tin plates, plastic drinking glasses, cups, and a mound of paper napkins. He began to arrange these on the table, and Deborah helped him.
“Teacher,” he said quietly.
She said, “What?”
“That’s what I was. Secondary comprehensive in Lancaster. Chemistry. I bet you didn’t reckon that, did you?”
“No. I didn’t.” Her words were equally quiet.
He gestured towards the outdoors. “All shapes and sizes,” he said. “We got a surgeon, a physicist, two bankers, and an estate agent out there. And those’re just the ones willing to say what they left behind. The others…? They’re not ready yet. Takes time to admit how far you’ve fallen. You don’t have to make those table napkins so neat. We’re not the Ritz.”
“Oh. Sorry. Force of habit.”
