市政厅

市政厅

The Town Hall

霍林布里奇市政厅的大厅建于1887年，当时的人们怀着维多利亚时代的自信，坚信这里的人口会永远增长下去。大厅天花板很高，上面绘着褪色的金星，有高大的窗户，一端还有一个小小的舞台，管乐队曾在这里演奏，新人们曾在这里结为夫妻。大厅里还弥漫着地板蜡和旧暖气片的味道，在安娜的心目中，这种气味已经和冬日集市以及三百个小圆面包联系在了一起。

The big hall of Hollin Bridge town hall had been built in 1887 for a population that had believed, with Victorian confidence, that it would go on growing for ever. It had a high ceiling painted with faded gold stars, tall windows, and a little stage at one end where brass bands had played and couples had been married. It also had a smell of floor polish and old radiators that Ana had come to associate with the winter fair and three hundred rolls.

普里亚说，今晚大厅里聚的人，比当年工厂关闭那一夜还要多。看门人排出的两百张折叠椅坐得满满当当。接着人们靠墙站着，再后来又挤在后面的门口，身上的大衣都没脱，因为外面下起雨来，谁也不想回家错过这一幕。安娜认出了其中一半的人，都是差十分五点排队的老面孔。而另一半，她完全不认识。

Tonight it held more people than it had held, Priya said, since the night the mill closed. They filled every one of the two hundred folding chairs the caretaker had set out in rows. Then they stood along the walls, and then they stood in the doorway at the back, coats still on, because it had begun to rain and nobody wanted to go home and miss it. Ana recognised half of them from the queue at ten to five. She did not recognise the other half at all.

在铺着绿布的长桌旁，规划委员会的五名委员坐在台上，面前摆著名牌，脸上带着隐隐被围困的神情，仿佛他们原本以为今晚讨论的不过是停车场的问题。坐在正当中的是主席，一位六十多岁、举止严谨的女士，名叫黑尔议员，戴着一副银色半月形眼镜，拿着一把她显然打算派上用场的小木槌。

On the stage, at a long table covered with green cloth, sat the five members of the planning committee, with name cards in front of them and the faintly hunted look of people who had expected an evening about car parks. In the middle sat the chair, a small, precise woman in her sixties called Councillor Hale, with silver half-moon glasses and a gavel she clearly intended to use.

安娜坐在第四排，一边是丹尼尔，他还穿着黄夹克，因为十一点要去赶公交车；另一边是普里亚。普里亚已经二十分钟没说话了。她笔直地坐着，手提包放在膝头，里面揣着四张折叠好的记事本纸，像护着某种有生命的东西一样。她时不时做个腹式呼吸，就像她丈夫教孩子们的那样，然后再极其缓慢地吐出气来。

Ana sat in the fourth row with Daniel on one side, still in his yellow jacket because he was due on the bus at eleven, and Priya on the other. Priya had not spoken for twenty minutes. She sat bolt upright with her handbag on her knees and four folded sheets of notepad paper held inside it like something alive, and every so often she took a breath from her stomach, the way her husband had taught their children, and let it out again very slowly.

杰斯坐在第一排，画夹放在膝上，红发扎得紧紧的，看着都让人觉得勒得慌。安娜注意到，她的打扮完全是她祖父的风格：一件白衬衫，扣子一直系到领口，神情仿佛在挑衅谁敢对此指指点点。坐在她身旁的是戴着毛线帽的莫琳，莫琳宣称，自己来是为了确保没人敢对这姑娘出言不逊。

Jess was in the front row, with her portfolio on her knees and her red hair tied back so tightly that it looked painful. She had dressed, Ana noticed, in her grandfather’s style: a white shirt, buttoned to the collar, and an expression that dared anybody to say anything about it. Beside her sat Maureen in her woolly hat, who had come, she announced, to make sure nobody was rude to the girl.

而在大厅最后方，在看门人为他腾出的那片靠近双开门的地方，坐着沃尔特。医院准许他出来三个小时，配了护士、毛毯，还有一大堆附带条件。他坐在轮椅上，穿着体面的夹克，压膜字母板放在膝头。迈克尔站在轮椅后面，双手握着扶手，站得极稳，仿佛他正扶着某种随时可能沿山坡滑滚下去的东西。

And at the very back, by the double doors, in the space the caretaker had cleared for him, sat Walter. The hospital had let him out for three hours, with a nurse, a blanket and a great many conditions. He was in a wheelchair, in his good jacket, with the laminated letter board on his knees. Michael stood behind the chair with his hands on its handles, very still, as though he were holding something that might roll away down a hill.

安娜知道迈克尔此前极力反对父亲过来。他在船上和杰斯争辩过，在普里亚家的餐桌上争辩过；安娜还猜想，迈克尔还通过那张压膜板，一字一字地和他父亲争辩过，直到沃尔特干脆拼出“NO”，然后闭上了眼睛。他最终还是来了，因为没有他，父亲就到不了这里。而且，正如迈克尔那天凌晨四点隔着面团对安娜所说的那样，如果他们一定要做这件可怕的事，他绝不能让那个老人独自去承受。

Ana knew how hard Michael had argued against coming. He had argued with Jess on the boat, with Priya at her kitchen table, and, she suspected, with his father through the laminated board, letter by letter, until Walter had simply spelled NO and closed his eyes. In the end he had come because his father could not get there without him. And because, he had said to Ana at four that morning over the dough, if they were going to do this terrible thing, he was not going to let the old man do it on his own.

黑尔议员敲响了木槌。大厅里自前向后一阵接一阵地安静下来，宛如风止时的麦田。一位手拿笔记本电脑的年轻规划官员用略显紧张的声音宣读了申请书：拆除桥街三号、五号和七号建筑，并新建一座包含二十二套住宅单元及底层咖啡馆的综合开发项目。他又补充说，申请人已请求在投票前向委员会陈词。

Councillor Hale tapped her gavel. The room went quiet in stages, from the front to the back, like a field of wheat when the wind drops. A young planning officer with a laptop read out the application in a nervous voice: the demolition of numbers three, five and seven Bridge Street, and the erection of a mixed-use development comprising twenty-two residential units and a ground-floor café. The applicant, he added, had asked to address the committee before the vote.

海伦·芬威克独自坐在第二排靠边的位置，穿着那件灰色大衣，手里没有拿她的皮质文件夹。她没有回头看大厅里的人。安娜早在做葡萄干小圆面包那阵子起就不再恨她了，从她那一头银发的脑后，安娜看不出她心里在想什么。大厅里没人知道周日晚上的那个电话。除了那个年轻的规划官员，或许没人知道——他带着一丝轻微的恐慌看了她两眼。

Helen Fenwick sat alone at the end of the second row, in the grey coat, without her leather folder. She did not turn round to look at the room. Ana, who had stopped hating her somewhere around the time of the currant buns, could not tell from the back of her silver head what she was thinking. Nobody in the hall knew about the phone call on Sunday night. Nobody except, perhaps, the young planning officer, who looked at her twice with an expression of mild panic.

接着，公众开始发言，每人三分钟，由委员会桌上的一个小电子钟计时，钟面会由绿变黄再变红。五金店的丹尼斯·道布森第一个发言，他的大嗓门天生适合在集市广场上喊叫。他说这是进步。是工作岗位。是年轻家庭。一个城镇不能靠怀旧和陈旧的面包苟活，十五年来，贝尔一家给桥街带来的除了麻烦还是麻烦。有些人鼓起了掌。在倒数第三排，他的儿子凯尔低头死死盯着自己的鞋子。

Then the public began to speak, three minutes each, timed by a small electric clock on the committee table that turned from green to amber to red. Dennis Dobson spoke first, from the hardware shop, in a voice made for shouting across market squares. Progress, he said. Jobs. Young families. A town could not live on nostalgia and old bread, and the Bells had brought nothing to Bridge Street but trouble for fifteen years. Some people clapped. In the third row from the back, his son Kyle stared at his own shoes.

一位年轻的母亲单手抱着婴儿走上台，为公寓项目据理力争，讲得平缓而得体：她和丈夫都在这里长大，也都在利兹上班，但在霍林布里奇，他们根本买不起也租不起房子。安娜发现自己赞成这位母亲的说法，也发现这改变不了任何事情，而且这两种想法可以同时成立。在这个小镇上，她正在学会如何在双手各拿一件事物时，一件也不掉落。

A young mother with a baby on her hip spoke for the flats, quietly and well: she and her husband had grown up here, they both worked in Leeds, and there was nowhere in Hollin Bridge they could afford to live. Ana found that she agreed with her, and that this did not change anything, and that both of those things could be true at once. She was learning, in this town, to hold two things in her hands without dropping either.

接着是其他人上台。冬日集市上那位拄拐杖的老妇人说，她1961年的婚礼蛋糕就是在贝尔家买的，她希望自己入土时手里也能攥着一个贝尔家的小面包，非常感谢。夜班公交车上的护士读了一张她病房里夜班员工的名单，他们都是在差十分五点来买面包，那个钟点别处根本没有开门的铺子。镇长声明自己有利益关联，坐了下去，接着又站起来，说全镇已经承诺出资近十万英镑来保住贝尔面包房，就他的经验而言，在霍林布里奇，除了足球俱乐部以外，任何事情都不曾有过这种待遇。

Then the others came. The old woman from the winter fair, leaning on a stick, who said that she had bought her wedding cake at Bell’s in 1961 and would like to be buried with a Bell’s roll in her hand, thank you very much. The nurse from the night bus, who read out a list of the night workers on her ward who bought their bread at ten to five and had nowhere else open at that hour. The mayor, who declared an interest, sat down, stood up again, and said that the town had already pledged nearly a hundred thousand pounds to keep Bell’s as a bakery, which was, in his experience, unheard of in Hollin Bridge for anything except the football club.

接下来发言的是杰斯。她夹着画夹走上前头的麦克风，安娜看见她打开画夹时双手在发抖，接着又看见双手止住了颤抖，仿佛是靠着意志力强行克制住了。她没有谈论面包。她谈的是建筑。她举起自己画的深夜里的面包房，画里的绿门和泛黄的窗户，她讲述了在凌晨四点，一扇亮着灯的窗对一条街、对公交车司机、对护士、对一个走在回家路上的孤独老人究竟意味着什么。

Jess spoke next. She walked up to the microphone at the front with her portfolio under her arm, and Ana saw her hands shake as she opened it, and then saw them stop shaking, as if by an act of will. She did not talk about bread. She talked about buildings. She held up her drawing of the bakery at night, the green door and the yellow window, and she talked about what a lit window means to a street at four in the morning, to a bus driver and a nurse and a lonely old man on his way home.