And so we return to the pub. One night, that happened to have been my penultimate, we took in the village. While the English village in these times is little more than a retirement home cross-pollinated with a pleasant nursery, it once served an interesting role in congruence with the country house. It was the tandem of rural life, the village offered workers and the big house offered work. Not all of the landed gentry were kind to, or willing to fraternise with, the villagers, but for my unnamed hosts it was an obligation; noblesse oblige, as it were.
It was in this pub, so identical to that of the East India Club, that all distinctions of class vanished, and rich man drank with poor. They hunted together and they drank together; while it is entirely possible that the ancestors of one were tenants of the other’s ancestors. I spoke little that night, for I could only observe. I don't think I said more than a few words, mostly 'please' and 'thank you'.
The night ended with a chorus of laughter, over some joke I have since forgotten. While I looked on and beamed, an older chap, who I was sitting next to, leaned over and addressed me.
"They're a good lot," he said. "Keep them around."
Alas, I did not heed his words. And while I never fell out with my unnamed friend, life pulled us in different directions. Lockdown made islands of us all, and some of us stayed that way. He lives abroad now, America I think. The last messages we exchanged were for the wishing of a happy Christmas, in 2019. As I took my seat in the car, alongside my fellow tourists, and Amorley was driven out of view, I knew that I would never return, and should never return; for my week there was so perfect, that I could never hope to recreate it. If I was to, then I'd become a tragedian junkie, forever chasing that first high with a greater and greater dose.
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