There was a debate about what we should do today. While I was out at the coffee shop I read that the Boston Redsox were playing at home to the Baltimore Orioles. Because the Sox are playing badly (so I am told) it was proving quite easy to get tickets for the game – even at this late stage. When I got back to the flat we had a lengthy discussion about what to do, a discussion that ended when, while looking on the internet to buy tickets for the Nosebleeds, we discovered it was an evening kick-off. The times just didn’t suit, so we decided to head on over to Cape Cod instead. All we needed now was for the rain to stop and for the skies to clear.
We reached the Sagamore Bridge that takes the road across the 17-mile long Cape Cod Canal running from Buzzard’s Bay in the south to Cape Cod Bay in the north, which since it opened in 1914 has effectively made Cape Cod an island, linked to the mainland by a rail and two road bridges. We arrived under a sullen grey sky and faced with lane closures reducing the bridge to two lanes and an inevitable build up of slow-moving traffic. The parapet was low enough to afford a view of the canal to the south, where I could make out the Bourne Bridge. There was still no sign of lighter skies ahead. No sooner had we cleared the roadworks than we were faced with an empty road ahead – all the cars that had surrounded us just five minutes earlier had vanished, evaporated into another reality that was not ours.
The sky was still leaden when we reached the township of Barnstable. At first glance it seemed little more than a small village, with picturesque wooden houses safely ensconced in their own rectangles of carefully tended gardens and effortlessly manicured lawns lining both sides of the narrow country road. Suddenly there appeared a very large stone building occupying a small hillock on the south side of the road. The building – the only one constructed with stone that I saw on the Cape – overlooked the entire town and beyond, out over the rooftops towards the Cape Bay shore. Housing the county court and probably several other official offices, it just seemed so out of place and so out of scale. Its entrance is flanked by two small cannon, one of which has a plaque commemorating the actions of a certain Mr Crowther and the Barnstable Committee of Safety in seeing off a British frigate under the command of a Captain Richard Rapport, which was attempting to secure a ransom from the people of the settlement. Further over, on the lawn outside the courthouse, stands a statue of a woman wielding a cleaver. I’m not at all certain what that commemorates.
Walking back from this colossus of a building towards the invitingly named Nirvana coffee shop across the road, we stepped on a footpath constructed of bricks, many of which had the names of original residents cut into them. The brick footpath confused me: it seemed like someone had got a cheap consignment and didn’t know what to do with them, so just left them lying on the ground for people to walk on.
The small café was in what was once a house. The entrance was the hallway that led to where the counter was, in what was once a domestic kitchen. The tables and oversized sofas were at the front in the lounge with a large window made up of small panes of glass, similar to a Victorian shop window.
The two young waitresses behind the counter were very pretty and very friendly. They seemed to have no trouble understanding me, particularly now that I had begun to speak more slowly and with a more delicate accent. At any event, they gave me exactly what I ordered without any quizzical glances or furrowed brows. One even confessed that her grandmother came from Scotland back in the dawn of time, but that she had long since lost her dulcet Caledonian tone. The coffee was just what was needed and the scone was – encouragingly – light and fluffy (possibly the Scottish grandmother’s influence). Unfortunately, the sky was still grey and threatening rain as we set off towards our next stopping place.
Lusobrandane 