not the Bruce
words by Derek Meins
Norham Castle ranks among the finest sights in the border country. Set high on a grassy mound, commanding a vital ford over the River Tweed, it was one of the most important strongholds in this once turbulent region. It was also the one most frequently attacked by the Scots - it was besieged at least 13 times, once for nearly a year by Robert Bruce. But even its powerful 12th century keep and massive towered bailey walls could not resist James IV's heavy cannon, and it fell to him in 1513, shortly before his defeat at Flodden Field.
English Heritage, 2018
I remember that when we met on the first day of middle school, he refused to speak to anyone directly and used his hand to communicate as if it were a puppet. It didn't bother me. In fact, we became best friends immediately. From then on, we spent most of our time together and, most nights after school, I would ride my bike down the steep hill, past the castle, to the village where Robert lived.
When football had become boring, our hunger for adventure led us to try different things. We invented 'garden louping', which became a favourite past-time. A group of us would race the length of a terraced street, jumping over the fences through the back gardens. It became quite competitive but often resulted in either minor injury, or worse still, being caught by an angry homeowner. It continued for a while until, Dog, one of the village boys, jumped over a fence at the wrong place and crashed through a greenhouse roof. He was badly cut up and, after that, no one much cared for the sport.
We lit fires down by the river to blow up aerosol cans. Like silent snipers, we perched in the reeds, eyes fixed on the flames, waiting until the tell-tale hiss began, and dodged the molten grenades as they exploded from the inferno.
One time, Robert found a huge tractor tyre and rolled it onto the fire. The village, and the whole of the valley, filled with thick black smoke. We escaped to the castle grounds and watched from the hilltop as the fire engine arrived and tried to put it out. It smouldered for days and the village stank of burnt rubber for a week.
Robert's mother bought a new television and he told her he'd get rid of the old one. I had a red Honda moped at that time. We tied the television onto the back of it with a piece of rope and Robert, with a Russian 'Ushanka'-style hat flapping in the night breeze, sat on top of it as I drove us up the hill. In good conditions, the moped went 27mph flat out, so with the extra weight of him and the television, we didn't make great speed.
The castle was undergoing renovations at the time and the front side had scaffolding that reached to the top of the Grand Tower. Although all the ladders had been removed to stop intruders, he somehow scrambled his way up to where a pulley and rope was mounted. He lowered it down to me at the bottom where I secured it around the bulky telly. With some difficulty, we eventually got it hoisted up. With little ceremony, Robert untied it and pushed it over the side of the castle. It slowly and heavily tumbled down to earth, eventually crashing into the remains of a stone rampart. It exploded into a thousand pieces of glass and plastic; the deafening low boom echoing down into the valley.
In the local newspaper the week after, a small article on the front page carried the headline;
Hooligans Vandalise Ancient Castle
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| "Norham Castle" image credit David McLear |
Robert had found out that the dad of one of the other boys in the village was growing cannabis in his garden shed. We waited until the coast was clear and broke in. Astonished by the amount of it, we stared in silence for a moment. I suggested we only took a small amount and, that way, we could always come back and get more without anyone knowing we'd been in there. Before I'd even finished saying this, he was tearing it off the wall and stuffing great plants of it into a bin bag he'd brought with him. We made our escape and smoked joints in the school playing field. I was terrified the dad would know it was us and give us a hiding. Robert seemed less bothered. He even smoked it a few times, quite deliberately, outside the front of their house, in full view, just to antagonise the dad.
'What's he going to do?', he said, 'Call the Police?'.
We had a party in another boy's house when his mum was away on holiday. Robert got really drunk. As he came through the door from the garden, he tripped on the threshold, dropped a glass bottle he'd been drinking from onto the tiled floor and landed on top of it. A huge shard stuck 3 inches into his stomach and punctured his right kidney. I'd never seen blood like that before. It wasn't like the watery red stuff you got if you cut your finger; it was thick and dark, brownish, like engine oil.
After we'd eventually got him into the ambulance, we went back into the house. It looked like a murder scene from a horror film.
The day after, still drunk, Robert was in the pub stumbling around peeling off the dressing to show people how big the wound was.
Some men from London came up to the village and offered me a recording contract. I jumped at the chance and boarded a train to the big city, eager and naive. I was leaving the village behind. And Robert too.
Initially, after I'd moved away, we spoke regularly, but over time the phone calls dwindled and we lost touch. My mum would always let me know if she'd seen him around the village or heard anything of him.
Once, she told me he'd been arrested in the middle of the night for climbing up the big oak tree in the middle of the village green and trying to cut it down with a chainsaw.
A while after that, I heard the armed Police had been at his house because he was holding his parents hostage with a shotgun his dad kept in the loft. What actually happened though, I never knew. As with a lot of stuff I heard about the village, it was just stories...
A couple of years later, I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognise. When I answered, it was him. He was calling from a pay phone in a rehab hospital. I was quite surprised when he told me he'd found God. It transpired that he hadn't actually, he was pretending so that he was allowed to stay there, otherwise he would probably be sectioned.
'Mind you,' he said, 'I'm not really sure which is worse.'
I was on a night coach from London to Liverpool when Sam, another friend from the village who'd escaped about the same time I had, phoned me and told me that Robert was dead.
I sat silent for that long journey, trundling up the motorway thinking about all the times we'd laughed together.
His family asked me to sing a song at his funeral. I wrote one for him and sang it in the ancient village church.
The bridge had the refrain;
The castle was a high one
You climbed it too fast
You came down the hard way
And it just couldn't last
It was a peaceful spring day. Robert's mum hugged me as I walked through the graveyard from the church. I had always thought of her as an older lady, but today she looked ancient. Her hair and thick eyebrows still jet black, but her face gaunt and tired as a ghost. She held my hand and looked deep into my eyes and asked me intently,
'You had a lot of fun together though...didn't you?'
I stood in the churchyard and looked up towards the castle, perched on its hill as ever, silently keeping an eye on Scotland. I remembered the television and the Russian hat and smiled to myself. In that placid moment, as with every time I've seen the castle since, I wasn't necessarily thinking of the Scottish army dragging Mon's Meg canon down from Edinburgh to blow up the ramparts, or the pilgrim monks headed to Lindisfarne. I don't really look at it and think of the feudal homage that took place in the great hall, or the massacres along the river banks; or of Queen Elizabeth I, or James IV. When I see that castle, I think of my friend, Robert, not the Bruce; gone but not forgotten.
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Derek Meins lives in Lancaster where he works as a builder and is studying part-time for an MA in English Literature. He also sings in the band Vex Message who will be releasing new music over the coming months.
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| "ushanka" image credit Eugene Zelenko |