And this street (it was a dismal little row of semi-detached houses called Cumberledge Road, I remember) is the lane where we used to go with Katie Simmons, and the nut-bushes grew on both sides.’ No doubt I got the distances wrong, but the general directions were right. I don’t believe anyone who hadn’t happened to be born here would have believed that these streets were fields as little as twenty years ago. It was as though the countryside had been buried by a kind of volcanic eruption from the outer suburbs. Nearly the whole of what used to be old Brewer’s land had been swallowed up in the Council housing estate. The Mill Farm had vanished, the cow-pond where I caught my first fish had been drained and filled up and built over, so that I couldn’t even say exactly where it used to stand. It was all houses, houses, little red cubes of houses all alike, with privet hedges and asphalt paths leading up to the front door. Beyond the Council Estate the town thinned out a bit, but the jerry-builders were doing their best.
And there were little knots of houses dumped here and there, wherever anybody had been able to buy a plot of land, and the makeshift roads leading up to the houses, and empty lots with builders’ boards, and bits of ruined fields covered with thistles and tin cans.
In the centre of the old town, on the other hand, things hadn’t changed much, so far as buildings went. A lot of the shops were still doing the same line of trade, although the names were different. Lillywhite’s was still a draper’s, but it didn’t look too prosperous. What used to be Gravitt’s, the butcher’s, was now a shop that sold radio parts. Mother Wheeler’s little window had been bricked over. Grimmett’s was still a grocer’s, but it had been taken over by the International. It gives you an idea of the power of these big combines that they could even swallow up a cute old skinflint like Grimmett. But from what I know of him–not to mention that slap-up tombstone in the churchyard–I bet he got out while the going was good and had ten to fifteen thousand quid to take to heaven with him. The only shop that was still in the same hands was Sarazins’, the people who’d ruined Father. They’d swollen to enormous dimensions, and they had another huge branch in the new part of the town. But they’d turned into a kind of general store and sold furniture, drugs, hardware, and ironmongery as well as the old garden stuff.
For the best part of two days I was wandering round, not actually groaning and rattling a chain, but sometimes feeling that I’d like to. Also I was drinking more than was good for me. Almost as soon as I got to Lower Binfield I’d started on the booze, and after that the pubs never seemed to open quite early enough. My tongue was always hanging out of my mouth for the last half-hour before opening time.
Mind you, I wasn’t in the same mood all the time. Sometimes it seemed to me that it didn’t matter a damn if Lower Binfield had been obliterated. After all, what had I come here for, except to get away from the family? There was no reason why I shouldn’t do all the things I wanted to do, even go fishing if I felt like it. On the Saturday afternoon I even went to the fishing-tackle shop in the High Street and bought a split-cane rod (I’d always pined for a split-cane rod as a boy–it’s a little bit dearer than a green-heart) and hooks and gut and so forth. The atmosphere of the shop cheered me up. Whatever else changes, fishing-tackle doesn’t–because, of course, fish don’t change either. And the shopman didn’t see anything funny in a fat middle-aged man buying a fishing-rod. On the contrary, we had a little talk about the fishing in the Thames and the big chub somebody had landed the year before last on a paste made of brown bread, honey, and minced boiled rabbit. I even–though I didn’t tell him what I wanted them for, and hardly even admitted it to myself–bought the strongest salmon trace he’d got, and some No. 5 roach-hooks, with an eye to those big carp at Binfield House, in case they still existed.
Most of Sunday morning I was kind of debating it in my mind–should I go fishing, or shouldn’t I? One moment I’d think, why the hell not, and the next moment it would seem to me that it was just one of those things that you dream about and don’t ever do. But in the afternoon I got the car out and drove down to Burford Weir. I thought I’d just have a look at the river, and tomorrow, if the weather was right, maybe I’d take my new fishing-rod and put on the old coat and grey flannel bags I had in my suitcase, and have a good day’s fishing. Three or four days, if I felt like it.
I drove over Chamford Hill. Down at the bottom the road turns off and runs parallel to the towpath. I got out of the car and walked. Ah! A knot of little red and white bungalows had sprung up beside the road. Might have expected it, of course. And there seemed to be a lot of cars standing about. As I got nearer the river I came into the sound–yes, plonk-tiddle-tiddle-plonk!–yes, the sound of gramophones.
I rounded the bend and came in sight of the towpath. Christ! Another jolt. The place was black with people. And where the water-meadows used to be–tea-houses, penny-in-the-slot machines, sweet kiosks, and chaps selling Walls’ Ice-Cream. Might as well have been at Margate. I remember the old towpath. You could walk along it for miles, and except for the chaps at the lock gates, and now and again a bargeman mooching along behind his horse, you’d meet never a soul. When we went fishing we always had the place to ourselves. Often I’ve sat there a whole afternoon, and a heron might be standing in the shallow water fifty yards up the bank, and for three or four hours on end there wouldn’t be anyone passing to scare him away.
But where had I got the idea that grown-up men don’t go fishing? Up and down the bank, as far as I could see in both directions, there was a continuous chain of men fishing, one every five yards. I wondered how the hell they could all have got there until it struck me that they must be some fishing-club or other. And the river was crammed with boats–rowing-boats, canoes, punts, motor-launches, full of young fools with next to nothing on, all of them screaming and shouting and most of them with a gramophone aboard as well. The floats of the poor devils who were trying to fish rocked up and down on the wash of the motor-boats.
I walked a little way. Dirty, choppy water, in spite of the fine day. Nobody was catching anything, not even minnows. I wondered whether they expected to. A crowd like that would be enough to scare every fish in creation. But actually, as I watched the floats rocking up and down among the ice-cream tubs and the paper bags, I doubted whether there were any fish to catch. Are there still fish in the Thames? I suppose there must be. And yet I’ll swear the Thames water isn’t the same as it used to be. Its colour is quite different. Of course you think that’s merely my imagination, but I can tell you it isn’t so. I know the water has changed. I remember the Thames water as it used to be, a kind of luminous green that you could see deep into, and the shoals of dace cruising round the reeds. You couldn’t see three inches into the water now. It’s all brown and dirty, with a film of oil in it from the motor-boats, not to mention the fag-ends and the paper bags.
After a bit I turned back. Couldn’t stand the noise of the gramophones any longer. Of course it’s Sunday, I thought. Mightn’t be so bad on a week-day. But after all, I knew I’d never come back. God rot them, let ’em keep their bloody river. Wherever I go fishing it won’t be in the Thames.
The crowds swarmed past me. Crowds of bloody aliens, and nearly all of them young. Boys and girls larking along in couples. A troop of girls came past, wearing bell-bottomed trousers and white caps like the ones they wear in the American Navy, with slogans printed on them. One of them, seventeen she might have been, had PLEASE KISS ME.
