The Photograph on the Wall

I was in another city. I wanted to go to the park. I got on the wrong bus. I went to a small market. I saw old men playing cards. I will remember the small market and the old men.

Last summer, I planned to visit a big city for the day. I had a list of museums and shops. I took the bus from my town.

The bus was very full. After an hour, the driver said something I did not understand. The bus stopped. The road was closed. There was a big problem.

The driver said we had to get off the bus. I was in a small village I did not know. I was a little angry, and a little tired.

I walked into the village. There was a small market. People were selling vegetables and bread and small honey jars. I bought a small jar of honey. The woman gave me a piece of bread with the honey.

The sun was warm. I sat on a bench and ate the bread. The honey was very good.

After two hours, a new bus came. I went home. I did not see the big city that day.

I never went back to that small village. I do not remember its name. But I still remember the small market, the honey, and the warm bench.

Last summer, I had planned a special weekend in a famous old town, two hours from where I live. I had booked a hotel. I had a list of three churches to visit and a particular restaurant for dinner.

When I arrived at the train station on the Saturday morning, there was a problem. There had been a small accident on the line. My train was cancelled. The next train was three hours later.

I was annoyed. I had planned this weekend for a long time. I sat in the station café with a coffee, feeling sorry for myself.

After about half an hour, I noticed that the station café was actually quite nice. It had old wooden tables and small framed photographs of the station from a hundred years ago. There were a few other passengers waiting, all of them reading or eating quietly. The coffee was good.

I went outside. The town where the station was — which was not a famous town, and not on my list — had a small market on Saturday mornings. I had not known this. I bought a small piece of cheese, and a peach, and a small bunch of flowers, which I gave to the woman at the hotel reception when I finally arrived in the famous old town three hours later.

In the famous old town, I visited the three churches and went to the restaurant. They were all good, as expected. But what I remember now, two summers later, is the small market in the small station town, the cheese, and the peach, and the flowers I had not planned to give to anyone.

I think now that delays sometimes give you small things you would not have stopped for if everything had gone to plan.

Last summer, I had planned a special weekend in a famous old town, two hours from the city where I live. I had booked a hotel; I had a list of three churches to visit; I had researched a particular restaurant for the Saturday dinner. I had, in short, prepared the kind of weekend that one prepares carefully when one is hoping that a place will live up to its reputation.

When I arrived at the train station on the Saturday morning, slightly early in the way that anxious travellers are slightly early, there was, of course, a problem. There had been a small accident on the line earlier in the morning, and my train was cancelled. The next train was three hours later. I would arrive at the famous old town in the late afternoon — which meant the morning churches, and possibly part of the afternoon, would have to be sacrificed.

I was, briefly, more annoyed than the situation deserved. I had been looking forward to the weekend for two months. I sat in the station café with a small coffee, feeling sorry for myself in the slightly self-aware way of a person who knows they are feeling sorry for themselves and finds it slightly amusing.

After about half an hour, I noticed that the station café was actually quite a nice one. It had old wooden tables and small framed photographs of the station from a hundred years ago — the same building, with horses and women in long dresses. The other passengers waiting were all reading or eating quietly; nobody seemed particularly stressed. The coffee was good, in the way that station coffee occasionally is.

After another half hour, I went outside. The town in which the station was — which was not a famous town, and not on any list of mine — turned out to have a small Saturday morning market in the square just outside the station. I had not known this. I bought a small piece of cheese, a peach, and a small bunch of late summer flowers. I gave the flowers to the woman at the hotel reception when I finally arrived in the famous old town three hours later. She seemed slightly surprised, in the slightly pleased way of a person who is not often given flowers by someone who has just arrived.

In the famous old town, I visited the three churches, and the restaurant, and they were exactly as advertised — careful, beautiful, slightly grand. But what I find I remember now, two summers later, is the small Saturday market in the small station town, the cheese, the peach, and the slightly surprised face of the hotel receptionist. The famous town gave me what I went for. The small unfamous town gave me what I had not known to ask for, which has turned out, on the whole, to be the more memorable gift.

Last summer, I had planned a particularly careful weekend in a famous old town, two hours from the city where I live. I had booked a hotel; I had a small list of three churches to visit; I had researched a particular restaurant for the Saturday dinner. I had, in short, prepared the kind of weekend that one prepares carefully when one is hoping that a place will live up to the slight insistence with which it has been recommended.

When I arrived at the train station on the Saturday morning, slightly early in the way that anxious travellers are slightly early, there was, of course, a problem. There had been a small accident on the line earlier in the morning, and my train was cancelled. The next train was three hours later. I would arrive at the famous old town in the late afternoon — which meant the morning churches, and possibly part of the afternoon, would have to be sacrificed.

I was, briefly, more annoyed than the situation deserved. I sat in the station café with a coffee, feeling sorry for myself in the slightly self-aware way of a person who knows they are feeling sorry for themselves and finds it slightly amusing. There is, I noticed even at the time, a particular quality to feeling sorry for oneself in a public place — one is performing the feeling slightly, even when no one is watching, partly because one suspects that someone might be.

It is necessary to pause here, before going further, to admit that the weekend I am about to describe has, on reflection, been improved by memory. I do not believe, in fact, that I was annoyed for only thirty minutes; I think I was annoyed for closer to an hour, and that the cheerful reframing I am about to perform took rather longer than I now remember it taking. This is the kind of detail that two summers tend to soften.

After, in any case, some unspecified amount of feeling sorry for myself, I noticed that the station café was actually rather pleasant. It had old wooden tables and small framed photographs of the station from a hundred years ago. The other passengers waiting were all reading or eating quietly. The coffee was good. I went outside. The town in which the station was — which was not a famous town, and was not on any list of mine — turned out to have a small Saturday morning market in the square just outside the station. I had not known this. I bought a small piece of cheese, a peach, and a small bunch of late summer flowers, which I gave to the woman at the hotel reception when I finally arrived in the famous old town.

In the famous old town, I visited the three churches and the restaurant. They were exactly as advertised — careful, beautiful, slightly grand. They were also, I noticed at the time and remember now, slightly less interesting than they were supposed to be — perhaps because the slight insistence with which they had been recommended had set them up to be slightly more than they were.

What I find I remember now, two summers later, is the small Saturday market, the cheese, the peach, the woman's slightly surprised face when she was given the flowers, and the slow particular feeling of having been, for forty minutes, somewhere I had not planned to be. I have come to think that there is a particular kind of attention one brings to the unplanned that one does not bring to the planned — although I admit, even as I write this, that I am repeating a thought I have had several times before, and that having the same thought several times is not the same as having tested it. Whether the thought is true, or only flattering, is something I have not entirely worked out.

There is a small bookshop near the canal, in the city in which I have lived for the last twelve years, that I went into one wet Wednesday afternoon in February with no particular intention beyond getting out of the rain, and in which a woman I had never seen before, and have not seen since, said something to me, in passing, that I have been thinking about for nearly two years. I want to write the encounter down, and I want, in writing it down, to be honest about the several small things I am uncertain of: whether I have her words exactly right, whether the small piece of writing I am about to make of the encounter is a tribute to it or a small appropriation of it, and whether — given that she is not in a position to read this, or to authorise it, or to correct it — I have any business writing it at all.

She was, I think, in her late sixties. She was wearing a dark green coat that had been wet and was now drying, and she was looking at the small shelf of poetry near the back of the shop with the slightly crouched attention of a person who reads poetry regularly enough to know which poets she is looking for. I was looking, in the desultory way of a person who has gone into a bookshop to dry off, at the table of new fiction near the door. She straightened, looked over at me, and said — in the tone of a person making a remark to a stranger she has decided is the right kind of stranger to make a remark to — that she had read the book I had just picked up, and that she had not, in the end, liked it very much, although she could see why other people had. I asked her why. She said, after a small pause, that the book had been honest about everything except the writer's own position, and that this was, in her experience, the failure most reflective writing eventually fell into. She put the book she had been holding back on the shelf, smiled at me — a smile that was kind, and slightly tired — and left.

I have thought about that remark many times since. I have thought about it because I write reflective things myself, and because I had not, before that afternoon, framed for myself the failure she named — that one can be honest about everything in a piece of writing, and meticulously so, except about one's own position in the encounter being described, and that this last omission is the one that quietly undoes the others. I have, in writing things since, tried to attend to it. I am not certain that I have succeeded.

There are several things I am uncertain of, in writing this down. I am uncertain whether her remark was as crisp, on the day, as it is on the page now: I have almost certainly tightened it. I am uncertain whether I would, on a different day or in a different mood, have heard it as the small useful gift I have come, since, to think it was, or whether I would have heard it as a slightly presumptuous remark from a woman who did not know me. I am uncertain, also, whether I am writing it down in order to honour the gift or in order to display it — to be seen, that is, as the kind of writer to whom such gifts are given, which is a small vanity that I do not think I am wholly innocent of.

The strongest critique, I think, is that I do not have her permission. She did not give me the remark in order that I should make literature of it; she gave it, as far as I could tell, because she wanted to say it, to a stranger she had decided was the right kind of stranger, on a wet afternoon in a bookshop, and then she went home. To convert that small generous remark into this piece of careful prose is to do something to it she did not ask me to do. I think the conversion is, on balance, justified — I have, I hope, given her remark back to others in a form in which it might be useful to them, as it has been to me — but I am not certain. I notice, also, that having now said I am not certain, I have done nothing to resolve the uncertainty.

I shall close by saying that I do not know her name. I do not know whether she is still alive. I have been back to that bookshop several times, partly with the small hope of seeing her again, although I am not sure what I would say to her if I did. I would, I think, like to thank her. I would also, I think, like to ask her permission, retrospectively, for the writing of this; and I am aware that the asking, three years on, would itself be an awkwardness I have no real right to inflict on her. The honest condition of the encounter, on inspection, is that I have received something I cannot return, from a person I cannot find, and that the writing of this — including the part of the writing that admits this difficulty — is the closest I have come to a form of return.