Книга - The War Widow
The War Widow
Lorna Gray
While the bells of a Royal Wedding peel out to the fading echoes of war, danger stalks the coastline of Wales…Wales, 1947Injured and terrified after an attempted abduction, desperation drives artist Kate Ward to the idyllic scene of her ex-husband’s recent suicide. Labelled a hysterical, grieving divorcée, no one believes she is being pursued by two violent men demanding answers she cannot give. Not the police, not the doctors, and not the guests at the Aberystwyth hotel she has come to in an attempt to find out what happened to her charismatic photographer ex-husband, and why her identity – and her life – are now at risk.Kate can trust no one, not even the reclusive war-veteran-turned-crime-novelist, Adam Hitchen, a reserved widower and the only source of kindness in a shadowy world of suspicion and fear. And as ghosts old and new rise to haunt her, Kate must rely on all her strength and courage to uncover the shocking truth hidden within a twisted web of lies…
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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2018
Copyright © Lorna Gray 2018
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com (https://www.shutterstock.com)
Cover design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Lorna Gray asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008279578
Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008279561
Version: 2018-06-27
Table of Contents
Cover (#u7e15f305-666b-5fb5-a637-4dbb1cda587f)
Title Page (#u80ebbe3d-ec68-5876-9afd-b1686435dfbf)
Copyright (#u25a67d85-0413-5f56-a3fa-ec6d273e8e2c)
Dedication (#uf4395edf-a7b9-5f55-9300-9f605255aa3a)
Chapter 1 (#ub9476c5d-cf96-503b-8c3a-48c44234b908)
Chapter 2 (#u3e88bf66-113b-5674-8cbe-819fd71545b0)
Chapter 3 (#ued85be8d-86d9-5aa5-bbb9-296e9bbe83ec)
Chapter 4 (#u57d763c6-b405-5e6a-92f9-5d1ccbc47e3a)
Chapter 5 (#uced89efa-498d-5830-a1c9-0bf43c17e101)
Chapter 6 (#u181b2896-b3ab-5772-afe1-d697ea9b6681)
Chapter 7 (#u641514ac-d112-5766-b76a-ddc50523dbaa)
Chapter 8 (#ue85b8b61-307d-5612-a505-5a4c4462fadf)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
A Letter From the Author to the Reader (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)
About HarperImpulse (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
For Harry and Mason
Chapter 1 (#u98feb200-d0da-50c8-aca5-2f0bec3ce6d5)
Thursday 20 November 1947
I might have done things differently had I had known today that I only had four more days of glorious solitude. That in four short days they would find me at last. That four short days would carry my race to the limit of this sea-ravaged coastline. That here I would feel the nauseating pull and draw of the waves and above it all, hear the darker overtone of footsteps as they strolled inescapably towards me.
I wouldn’t be thinking about myself at that moment. I would simply be waiting, defeated, quivering on the wooden harbour jetty and looking down into the murky water as it heaved beneath. Thinking about him and what he had done; and finally and absolutely admit that despite all my determined efforts to the contrary, I had lost control over both my mind and my freedom, with no hope left of ever regaining it.
But that would be four days from now. Today there were still four more days ahead of wonderful optimism. Today I was feeling the tug of the waves too, but in an altogether more peaceful way.
I had come to Aberystwyth in November two years after the war. I was climbing down from a rough little hilltop that overlooked the town a little after dawn and the view was glorious. The wide bay of terraces clung bravely to the curve where sweeping cliffs met dark granite seashores and today, as ever, it called to the artist in me.
I probably shouldn’t have been up there. The doctors had prescribed rest after my accident and I knew even the walk back to my hotel would have drawn their united disapproval. But at least it was quiet and calming in its way because very few people were about. Those that were cared little for a woman in a beige trench coat with the collar turned up who was walking briskly past shops declaring fresh stocks of corned beef and offal – a novelty in this time of rationing. Nobody noticed me walking past the shuttered tearooms either. These were papered with posters bearing the information that the cinema would be showing the full coverage of the Princess Elizabeth’s wedding just as soon as the newsreels got here. It was all wonderfully like being invisible. It was just unfortunate that the illusion abandoned me just as soon as I climbed the steps to my hotel.
“Good morning, Miss Word.”
The lady in the wood-panelled reception booth in the foyer was excessively genteel and her grey hair was done up in a neat bun. Her greeting was dignified and gracious but slightly marred by the fact that Word wasn’t actually my name. It was Ward but I didn’t tell her that. Just as I had been too embarrassed to correct her late last night when she’d said it after watching me sign my name on the registration form, and again after she’d taken custody of my ration book and handed me my key…
So this morning I repeated the peculiar habit of feeling guiltily responsible for having the wrong name and only stated warmly that it was indeed a good morning and moved bravely towards the dining room. It was the sort of room that belonged a largely imaginary bygone era that had never known the war. The requirement to be brave came from my reluctance to interact with the other guests. I didn’t want conversation today. And besides, the pages of the hotel’s guestbook bore the signatures of an intimidatingly large scattering of high society grandees, which I certainly wasn’t. It had prices to match. I never would have chosen to stay here at all if I hadn’t remembered it from a brief visit many years ago during my honeymoon and the fact that I couldn’t have faced any more decisions last night after such a day and such a long journey.
As it was, when I took my seat it was only to be reassuringly greeted and then ignored by two elderly ladies who were deep in an animated discussion. They were worrying about the danger of introducing unbridled enjoyment – embodied by the recently lifted embargo on foreign travel I think – to a generation that had been brought up knowing only wartime excursions to the respectable English seaside. I think they were unaware that they were, in fact, at present in Wales.
I hid my head in a book. I had borrowed it from the tiny library in the lounge next door and it was a battered copy of Jane Eyre. It was supposed to keep my mind from working while I finished my breakfast but it wasn’t doing very well since I had read the book more times than I could count. Then I discovered a more modern effort abandoned on the table next to me. It promised ‘A Sterling Mystery!!!’ – a weak pun on the name of the principle character I think – and bore the name A. E. Woolfe emblazoned across the cover like a banner. Sceptical purely on the grounds of too many exclamation marks, I picked it up and read the first few pages easily enough but when the first character died in a grisly fashion at the wheel of his car, I felt my head begin to swim and had to put it down.
“Not to your taste?” A male voice.
Looking up, I discovered that the surrounding tables were now packed with a different set of people and the comfortable Miss Bartlemans had miraculously transformed into a dark-haired gentleman who was now sitting in the chair opposite, with a newspaper spread over the table between us. His eyes were a mild pale blue and were watching me benignly and at least they had the relatively harmless excuse that I had been thoroughly absorbed in my book. Anonymity and similar ambitions aside, I tend to be like that when reading. It used to drive my husband wild, along with a great number of other things.
Swiftly suppressing that sobering thought, I lifted my head properly and slipped the paperback back onto the table to sheepishly retrieve the tattered classic. A faint curve was showing at one corner of his mouth. It made me tell him with a foolish beam, “It seems very well written actually but I need something gentle that won’t tax my brain. At least with Jane Eyre, I know the book so well I can start at an easy bit. Even if it does feel a little like sacrilege to discard the childhood section without so much as a glance.”
I stopped. He was sitting with his forearms resting upon his paper and he was the sort of man who wore reasonably good clothes as if they didn’t matter at all. I think he belonged in this hotel rather more than I did. I also think my light reply made him feel he had just made an awkward social error. Those eyes blanked of all expression as he tried to hide it and I cringed inwardly. I cursed myself for breaking my silence so soon after all my good intentions and quickly buried my head in the book before the more alert part of my mind could find another explanation for the barely definable stiffness that had come over his posture as soon as I had begun to speak.
Some other people arrived, noisily. This was the truly fashionable contingent of the hotel’s residents. They were a Dr Alderton and wife and her younger sister followed by a capable-looking gentleman who settled with his paper at the table behind. He had arrived shortly after me the night before and he had, from what I had overheard, found something wrong with his original hotel, had almost cut short his business and made for home but then had decided to give Aberystwyth another try. I had a vague recollection of his name being Brighton. Or perhaps it was Brinnington, or something like that. I couldn’t quite remember.
“Adam Hitchen, by the way.” The man sitting at my table interrupted just as my heroine was exploring Thornfield for the first time. His manner of speaking seemed shorter now. “We’ve met before.”
“We have?” I looked up, startled all over again. Then I recalled the walker, complete with notebook and innocent binoculars, whose arrival earlier this morning on that hilltop had sent me scurrying away with my half-finished painting back down to the town. He’d seemed middle-aged in that blurry dawn light but this man wasn’t. But he certainly was the same man. When standing, he’d been reasonably tall and well-built but slim in the way men are when they have a natural enjoyment of the outdoors. Since this was consistent with the taking of lonely hilltop walks of the sort that I liked, I added easily enough, “Of course we have. You identified those little birds in the gorse for me. I’m Kate Ward; and pleased to meet you again, naturally.”
I smiled at him just long enough to imply that I meant it and then escaped into my book again. She was about to unhorse Mr Rochester, I was sure.
“On holiday?” Another interruption. It was delivered in that new oddly abrupt tone that made it seem as though he barely cared to hear the answer, but was going to ask the question anyway.
“Something like that,” I said, turning a page. There at last was the vital exchange of words between governess and master. But then manners roughly asserted themselves and I remembered that it would be better not to be rude to the same man too many times in one day. I closed my book and smiled at him, this time genuinely. “What about you?”
But the question was lost in the sudden interest of Mrs Alderton and her sister. They turned to us, or rather him, and claimed him with a flurry of excited talking. Their casual assumption that they had the right made it clear they were already on considerably better terms with this man than I.
They were both beautifully made-up. The younger sister was perhaps five years younger than my thirty-two and had lovely big doe eyes. I suspected that she knew full well the effect they had. She had also achieved the near-impossible in the form of perfect satin curls. This was something my hair would never do, which was why mine was now cropped short and left to its own devices in a woolly version of the style seen everywhere in recent years curling neatly around the base of a WREN’s cap.
The older sister, Mrs Alderton, was adhering to the new severely girdled style and she was so smart that even to a cynic it must have seemed a little odd that she had been united with a slightly moth-eaten if wealthy husband. Perhaps she thought the same because she paid the doctor about the same amount of attention as she did me; although in theory I was more relieved than otherwise to be permitted to retreat once more into the comparative sanctuary of my book.
It wasn’t a sanctuary for long. I heard the walker speak; a light response to the younger woman’s extraordinary brand of banter and I noticed that she was receiving even less than the bland sentences he had used on me. Now his replies were actually painfully flat. They made his whole person seem very dull indeed and, to be quite frank, I just couldn’t quite believe him. It made me suspect he was deliberately trying to seem insignificant here. Though it also occurred to me that perhaps he was just a little shy.
Or perhaps he simply liked to be awkward. The sister, Mary James, said something – she made an unashamed joke at her fellow guest’s expense I think; she certainly leaned in closer to deliver it – and I must have made the mistake of glancing up from my book because I suddenly found myself catching a brief and most definitely unexpected flash of wry intelligence in her victim’s eyes as he calmly countered this new attack with yet another very bland reply. They were actually grey and, disconcertingly, very alert indeed.
Mrs Alderton must have seen his glance. She certainly turned towards me with a very odd expression on her elegant face. I had already moved to gather together my things, but I felt her gaze as it took in my taste in clothes, my age and my figure before dismissing it all just as rapidly. Then it ran onto the table beside me.
“Oh. Here’s your book, Mary.”
From the distance of several feet, I felt Mary James turn like a puppet to her sister’s command. She immediately snatched up the modern paperback. She drew me helplessly away from my book again as she murmured silkily, “Thank heavens it isn’t lost after all; I’ve read it a thousand times, haven’t I, Alice? It has to be one of my all-time favourites.”
Mrs Alderton only inclined her head. Then I saw her follow it with one of those swift, calculating glances beneath lowered lashes which only ever seem necessary for married women when there is a potentially available man around; particularly if she has an unmarried sister on hand and that man should happen to be passably attractive. In Adam Hitchen’s case, he was certainly passable and I suspected that the crinkle at the corner of his eyes when he smiled very possibly qualified him for the next tier above that. Not that he was smiling now though.
“Haven’t I?” Mary’s prompt was faintly urgent. Mrs Alderton took her cue, theatrically, saying, “You really should be more careful, dear. Who knows who might try to borrow it? Not everyone has read them all you know.”
There was quite some emphasis on the ‘all’.
My gaze touched the walker’s eyes again but there was no betraying flash of character this time. They seemed in fact, if it were possible, to now be devoid of any personality whatsoever.
It was the goad I needed to lever me out of my seat and across the foyer into the mild November day.
---
The town was busier now that its residents had emerged to undertake their morning scurry to offices and shops. The thick traffic was a bizarrely confused mixture of old carts and aged horses that should probably have been retired after the war, and lorries in the crisp painted liveries of the bigger firms who had the advantage now that the basic petrol ration was being withheld from the public. There were few cars on the road. It probably explained why the vast town centre train station was absolutely crowded with people again just as it had been last night.
My destination was the Vale of Rheidol railway, a narrow gauge line tucked in a modest corner away from its larger black cousins. It was a lifeline for the remote villages dotted picturesquely along the steeply rising mountains and it gave me an odd moment when the train gave a jolting shudder and began the slow ascent.
Many years of my life had been spent in paying dutiful visits to my husband’s family in this seaside town. Then a war had been declared and he had gone away, with the result that opportunities for sightseeing of any sort had ceased for the duration. So I ought to have been thrilled now that it was peacetime and a crowded seat in a tiny carriage was gifting me a fresh glimpse of that once much loved scenery. But I wasn’t. The past minutes had been occupied by an unceasing surveillance of the platform and now I was able to only stare blankly as the valley slopes closed steadily in.
It was a fiercely controlled air of calm. I wished that I’d managed to achieve something like this yesterday during the long journey south from Lancaster. Yesterday’s hours between waking and dinner had been consumed by an exhaustion of crowded stations and carriages until the deafening rattle shook me out of logical thought. Sometime after Crewe I had convinced myself that an elderly gentleman was making notes about me and his neighbour was excessively interested in the stops along my route. All of which had, of course, later been embarrassingly – and publicly – proved false.
Today though, I was rested and defiant in the face of yet another journey. No silliness was permitted to accompany me here, not even when my neighbour smiled at me and urged me to precede him into the jostling herd of disembarking passengers at the bare levelled ground that made up the station at Devil’s Bridge.
This was a tiny place. It was situated at the narrow head of a steeply wooded gorge and spanned only by the bridge that lent the hamlet its name. A few buildings straggled along the winding road and the sole hotel peeped out over the treetops, seeming incapable of supporting the sheer volume of tourists that were descending from the train. In summer this place was darkly leafy but now, when the autumn had already struck the dead leaves from the mossy boughs, the grazing land above was like a crown above the wild sweep downhill into bleak wooded valleys.
I’d expected it to be quiet here today. Instead it was as busy as summer and I could feel the excitement growing in the crowd around me long before we swept in a sort of united disorientation of hats, handbags and raincoats around a bend lined with high metal railings towards the low parapet that signalled our first glimpse of the natural spectacle that made this place famous.
I handed my shilling to the man at the turnstile. He took my money in a greasy hand and the mechanical clanking as the turnstile’s metal arms turned was stiff and unwelcoming. But then I was through and stepping down into the sudden wilderness of dormant woodland. It was no quieter inside; it seemed as though the crowd’s chatter was magnified in here and I stood for a moment, gathering my bearings before trailing after them down the steps towards the first viewpoint.
For a while there was no view at all. The trees grew sinuously, twisted old oaks clinging to any piece of ground they could. Even leafless, the damply rusting branches still strained vigorously to reclaim the scene. They acted like a ruthless blind; for a while I could see nothing and it seemed as though the cluster of tourists might never grow bored enough to move on and leave me to take in the view in peace. But then, finally, the last of them turned away and bustled past on their own private mission to tackle the waymarked path so I could step forwards and reach out a hand to take sole possession of the cold metal barrier. Here I was at last.
It felt like a lifetime had passed since I’d first begun this journey to this place where I would mark my husband’s death.
But this was no agonised pilgrimage of the sort undertaken by a bewildered war widow. The sort where a grief-stricken wife hopes to achieve some kind of comprehension of the cruelty that stole her beloved husband’s life. This was peacetime, he was my ex-husband after our divorce thirteen months ago and he had been a stranger to me for far longer than that. This was no respectful farewell to former happiness at all.
Before me rose the bridge like a stark monument to past centuries. It held two older bridges cocooned beneath its arch. They lay one on top of the other, each bridge built at a slightly different angle to the older stonework that had gone before and each squatting over a wider gap. Somewhere far below, the fierce waters of the Mynach roared blind into the chasm; folklore claimed that the devil himself had built the first narrow crossing and today, for the first time, I could have almost believed it.
Because about eight days ago, my ex-husband had taken himself to that selfsame spot and looked down into the raging depths. And had then decided to follow the look with his body.
Whatever else had happened in the days since then and now, this part of my story at least was not a creation. The police had confirmed it. The river had been in spate; it had been swollen beyond all normal bounds by heavy rain in the hours before and there was no hope of anyone surviving that. No hope even of a decent funeral. His body had never been recovered. This river’s current was the sort that was strong enough to move rocks and trees, and a human body had been a mere speck of dirt in the stream. The only fragments the torrent had left us as proof of a man’s passing were a broken camera, a few traumatised passers-by and a ruined sock recovered from an eddy half a mile downstream.
It was insane. And worse, it was insufferably sad to have to hear polite judgements about his character, as if this could have ever had anything to do with his usual state of mind. I hadn’t received so much as a note from him in the year since our divorce but still it was incomprehensible; impossible to imagine Rhys, my stubbornly individual ex-husband, ever meaning to end it like this.
And yet he had. And somehow, now, whatever it was that had brought him to this desperate extreme had since turned its gaze upon my life and my mind. And I still didn’t have the faintest idea why.
Chapter 2 (#u98feb200-d0da-50c8-aca5-2f0bec3ce6d5)
I wasn’t going to find my answers here. Abruptly my silent vigil was broken. Oblivious to the recent history of this place, the next group of tourists appeared noisily on the viewpoint beside me to exclaim in their turn, and my bitter enjoyment of my half-angry grief was destroyed in an instant. Casting a last glance at the bridge and its forbidding heights, I swallowed the wealth of unanswered questions and found myself leaving room for sorrow instead. It came with a bolt that rocked me. One doesn’t expect to feel grief in company and there is a certain shame inherent in feeling a flood of emotion that is at odds with the laughter of all your fellows. Somehow it felt a little like seeking attention despite the fact that attention was the very last thing that I could possibly want. And yet he was the man I had spent years of my life with – had loved once and probably still did – and this was where he had died.
And then in the next breath I had myself under control again and emotion of any sort was swept aside with about as much resolution as the sheer strength of will that had brought me here in the first place. It was the same willpower that had seen me leave him all those months ago and the same steel that had helped me build my new life in the north. Now it helped me set my feet to the empty path downhill. There was a distant whistle from a departing train.
It was echoed by a deep voice saying my name. My proper one I mean; Miss Ward. As a question. I span round. My solemn descent had led me far beyond the reach of the nearest tourist chatter and it was hard to contain the urge to curse at this resounding proof of my stupidity. How could I have imagined fear would give me room to breathe here?
My first line of defence rested on politeness. “Yes, it is. Hello, Mr …?”
“Bristol. Jim Bristol.”
Suspense transformed into an urge to laugh as he solved the little mystery of his name, but then mirth evaporated as the suave businessman from the hotel stepped lightly down the immensely steep stone staircase to join me. He was wearing a well-made suit in one of the customary shades of grey – because the variety afforded by clothing coupons limited men just as much as women – and he stopped on the step above and turned to lean his elbows easily on the barrier there before throwing an appreciative glance around him. He was perhaps six foot tall and broad shouldered to match and standing on that step he positively towered over me. The twisting fingers of bare branches cast lines across his jaw. He was one of those men whose muscular fitness made him very handsome. I thought he was also one of those men who knew it. His gaze settled on me.
“Beautiful spot, isn’t it?”
I tried not to feel crowded by him or by the white flood of water travelling down the black rock face, the stunted overhanging trees and the impossible sweep below of the near-vertical staircase descending into deeper darkness. My fingers knotted in the straps of my bag while I smiled. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
He was probably in his late thirties but it was difficult to be precise. His toned physique perhaps indicated that he had recently returned from his duties in foreign climes, although his hair wasn’t cropped short in the military style and his suit wasn’t the standard shapelessness of the Government Issue demob suit. Anywhere else he might have been impressive or even beautiful but here, far from any other voices, he definitely was not. I swear I saw something lodged within those friendly brown eyes that hinted at a harder mind behind.
Superficially, however, he was only warm and I was only useless at saying no. He said, “Do you mind if I keep you company for a while? I’m trying to find a nice spot to sit down with a sandwich. You won’t mind if I go first?”
I let him move past me. I concentrated on the tricky steps and not glaring fiercely at the back of his head. The woodland smelled of wet things down here and rot and moss. A wren snapped past with the speed of a rifle shot but oblivious to the dramatic comparisons my mind was making between small birds and weaponry, my companion only turned back once more and fixed me with a mischievous grin. “You know, you looked very picturesque back there framed by all those trees and rocks.”
“How very …” I searched for the word, “gratifying.”
“Oh definitely.” He was negotiating another narrow step and pointing out a broken section. “Makes me wish I could paint – you know the sort of thing, all blobs of paint and drama entitled ‘Girl in Raincoat by Waterfall’ or something equally unimaginative. But I shouldn’t be telling you this. You actually are an artist I gather?”
“How on earth did you discover that?”
Jim Bristol cast a captivatingly handsome smile over his shoulder that made a mockery of my tone. He also didn’t seem to notice that I had stopped dead with one hand gripping the metal rail. “Among other things, you put it on your registration form last night when you were collecting your key. I’m unashamedly nosey, you see – an occupational hazard you might say – so I noticed. What sort of things do you paint?”
“People mainly. What’s your occupation? If it makes you curious, I mean?”
“Have you got your sketchbook here? You do carry one, I presume? All artists do.”
He turned his head briefly to note that I had resumed walking – where else could I go, really, when the alternative was to run back up these lethal stone steps – and I shook my head in a lie. “Not today.”
“That’s a shame. I should have liked to see it – I’m sure you must be very gifted. Perhaps you can show me when we get back later. You’ll be having dinner at the hotel of course?”
I only gave a deliberately ambiguous, “I imagine so.”
He returned my smile with a more generous one of his own and stepped down off the last flight onto the narrow platform that marked the base of the gorge. It was surprisingly sunlit after the dank brown shade of our descent through autumnal trees. A narrow bridge was the only exit on the far side, spanning the surprisingly tame outflow from the final plunge pool. A yellow wagtail flew in to land bobbing on an outcrop on the towering cliff only to notice us and dart away again. It was the perfect place for a trap. He only said harmlessly, “I’d like that.”
Doubt rekindled, and this time with a vengeance.
I think he might have been intending to help me down off the last step but I kept my fingers firmly entwined in the straps on my bag. And even if his gesture wasn’t the sinister action I was watching for, the look he gave me as I stepped past him was almost certainly that of one who was checking whether his much-exercised charm was having its customary effect. It meant that, now, there was no need to wonder why I should be feeling so untrusting. Since attempting to travel quietly, it was, I suppose, inevitable that I would instantly find myself attracting attention from all sorts of quarters who would have normally let me pass unnoticed. But no one can pretend that ordinary men deal out this sort of unsolicited flirtation to perfect strangers. And certainly not when the setting is beyond isolated and the woman in question frequently feels that the stain of her failed marriage is written all over her like a marker to steer well clear. This might all seem like a plea to be contradicted, but the facts were there all the same.
The wagtail sauntered by, letting out a sharp tic tic of annoyance as it flashed away again. I put a pathetically unsteady hand on the rail of the footbridge but his voice called me back. “What do you plan to do with your day now?”
I made myself tear my gaze away from the both forbidding and inviting prospect of the towering ascent. Somewhere far, far above, a buzzard was calling. I turned to face him. He was crouching over his pack and focussed on attempting to draw out the tin that bore his sandwiches. He spared only one brief glance for me as he added, “Now that you’ve seen the sights here, I mean?”
“I don’t know. What exactly is it that you do, Mr Bristol? You said your job requires you to be inquisitive.”
If he noticed the brusqueness in my question he didn’t show it. He paused in his task, elbow resting easily on one grey-clad knee. “It’s not as exciting as I made it sound, I’m afraid. I’m just a civil servant; local government dogsbody – you know the sort, endlessly running around following up other people’s loose ends. Quite tedious really.”
I stared at him sideways beneath lowered lashes while pretending to examine the flowing water, trying to decide whether I could fit this person wearing the standard camouflage of the businessman-at-large with a vision of the same man, starched, collared and ensconced in any kind of bland office tedium. Somehow I really could not.
I watched as he lifted out the first neat triangle of his lunch, declining the tilt of a hand that offered another to me. The close walls of the gorge towered above us. Even now, eight days on, there were signs of the recent heavy rain. Truly sizeable branches and bits of rubbish had jammed themselves on this the lowest of the various steps of the waterfall’s descent and just beyond the little bridge I could see where a green furred boulder had been crudely thrust aside to reveal fresh stone underneath. For a moment something red flickered beneath the current and my heart turned over. It wasn’t his body. It was a fragment of different coloured stone and that was all.
That was all. It made me wonder how far down the treacherous course of this river the rescue team had dared to climb. And how much danger they must have encountered working hastily beside a river in spate purely because some hope still remained. This rough terrain would continue for some miles before the river widened into the easier floodplains that led to the sea. It seemed clear to me now that perhaps the buzzards might find him, but no one else would.
“Are you catching the train back later?” Jim Bristol’s voice was jarringly cheerful. I must have been hiding the desolation in my heart very well because he was oblivious. He had moved his bag to one side and was now leaning comfortably against the flat plane of the towering rock. He was about five yards away.
“The train?” I had to moisten my lips.
“I saw you on it this morning. I was wondering which one you would be taking back.”
“The last one,” I said smoothly, stepping onto the bridge. “I want to explore a little first.”
“Ah. I might see you on it.” He moved to take a bite from his last sandwich, seeming pleased with the information, and then paused with it inches from his mouth. “I’d like to talk more, if you don’t mind?”
That sense of alarm intensified sharply. He seemed innocently intent on enjoying his lunch but the quick glance I saw him cast before taking that next bite seemed to my heightened senses to contain far more than purely casual interest. And I was sure he couldn’t possibly have missed the fact that I couldn’t wait to get away from him. It suddenly occurred to me that if I didn’t hurry up and take my leave, he’d have finished his lunch and I’d find myself accepting his company for the ascent.
“I’ll look forward to it,” I lied.
He let me go. “Excellent. Enjoy the rest of your day.” The smile he gave was simply one of open friendliness but I must have climbed about two hundred steps before I allowed myself to slow down.
---
At least that’s what it felt like. The ascent rose in short aggressive bursts from pool to pool with the black cliffs of the narrow gorge towering above. My heart was pounding and my leg muscles were complaining to the point of nausea, but I almost enjoyed the sensation as a relief from the panic I was experiencing because a man from the hotel had drawn me into conversation. Because that, after all, was all it had been.
Now I was free of him, I even had time to feel the irony; I knew full well that I wouldn’t have felt the need to break into a run just as soon as I had climbed out of his sight, had my companion been a woman from the hotel instead.
It was all very predictable, of course, that the divorcee should have developed an aversion to men, but that didn’t diminish the inner debate that was roaring away in my head. The one that didn’t care about my romantic history and was simply waiting to find proof, either in this man’s favour or against it; and all the while knowing with a grim sort of certainty that with the usual pattern of this thing I never would.
I finally faltered at the viewpoint that jutted out over the largest of the swirling steps in the waterfall. I was very hot. I knew I should feel tired too, I knew I must, but adrenalin held it at a determined distance. It held foresight at a stubborn distance too. I removed my coat simply for the sake of doing something that might bring some relief and laid it over the cool metal barrier that was designed to protect the unwary from the drop. And unfortunately that, perfectly predictably, led me to look down at the rushing water crashing into the pool below. The sight did me no good at all.
That chattering herd of holidaymakers finally laboured into view; the pack that had driven me on from my lonely examination of the head of the waterfall but lagged too far behind to save me from the distress of a private interview with Jim Bristol. Their breathless voices were filled with the excitement of the view. A family with a teenage girl and a younger brother in short trousers leaned over the barrier beside me, exclaiming and pointing as the whirlpool sucked and dragged at a few small branches caught in the flow. The girl was teasing the boy and threatening to throw him in, or worse still, leave him there as a test for whether the devil really did stalk the bridge at night. His half-laughing half-fearful pleas for help as she tugged on his arm made my mind flinch. They crashed carelessly past me, wrestling and completely ignoring the routine complaint from their mother and the boy, laughing giddily, pretended to fall.
I found that I had turned quickly away to the comparative safety of the path and then had to turn back again when I remembered my coat. I was flustered now and angry with myself and with Jim Bristol, and other people were coming so I pushed myself onwards. I was determined to keep ahead of them, I don’t know why. The steps were crude and very steep, and I had to concentrate hard on simply keeping my footing. And all the while I was focussing on the vision of the hotel at the top, the refreshing tea I would take, and the time I would find there to adjust to the realisation that now I almost craved the company of a crowd more than I dreaded it.
“Careful!”
A hand flashed out. I stumbled clumsily against it. I flinched as it steadied me. No jacket at all on this one; only the practical woollen jumper of a hiker and my eyes travelled from the hand to his face as I was thinking I shouldn’t have come here. I really shouldn’t have come.
I had the horrible impression I might have said that out loud.
Adam Hitchen released me and I made to hurry on only to discover that he had changed his mind and put out his hand again. His grip was warm through my clothing. My frock was a handmade belted affair in red that wrapped around with a tie above my left hip – my treasured coupons always went on fabric – and the thick winter sleeves were no barrier to the sense of his touch. I was suddenly very conscious indeed of how close we were to the lip of the drop; how easy it would be to have a little slip, an unfortunate accident. To go tumbling over the edge to the same inevitable end that had met my husband…
I found myself falling again into the trap of that first line of defence by apologising hastily: “So sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.” Then, brittle, “I must get on. Goodbye.”
If only I didn’t keep thinking politeness would save me. He didn’t let me go. He didn’t acknowledge my distress either. But at least the first words that interrupted the pounding of my heart were not unnaturally admiring. When he spoke, it was not pitched to match the visions that stalked my dreams, but in his distinctive tone that was perfectly level. “I’ve found something you might find interesting, do you want to see?”
I stopped trying to work out how I would force my way past for a moment and blinked up at him. If anything he seemed to be fighting a private battle with his own embarrassment. “That came out sounding a little strange, didn’t it? It really is nothing untoward, I promise you. Are you prepared to take a chance?”
Quite frankly, no I thought fiercely but didn’t say it. Instead I waited for his odd manner to run to an explanation. It didn’t come and he simply fixed his attention upon a tree standing a short distance away from the path. I would have judged his behaviour truly disturbing, except for the faintest disarming impression, given by the way a muscle in his jaw tightened, that he was in fact cringing from his own oddness and hoping very profoundly that I hadn’t noticed.
The latest cluster of holidaymakers – one that might have been my salvation – puffed past but still that hand kept a firm grip upon my arm, both shielding me from their breathless jostling and preventing me from getting away. Jim Bristol was following them and he eyed us curiously as he climbed the path but then he too rounded the turn and it was just me and the walker alone in the woodland. Allowing him to keep me here, I realised sharply as the silence closed in around us, could well prove to have been a very, very stupid mistake.
My companion seemed oblivious to the shivers running under my skin and simply ducked his head towards my ear. “Look there; above that broken branch.”
His hand dropped from my arm. The release of his grip seemed to unleash surprise so that it washed over my overburdened brain like the floodwaters in the pools below. With it came a surge of relief that made me want to both laugh and cry at the same time.
There was an owl. Just an owl, resplendent in his mottled plumage, pretending to be part of the bark of a tree. It was a repeat of the momentary connection that this man had instigated very early this morning on top of the isolated hilltop behind Aberystwyth. Then it had been a jolly little bird that I had been both seeing and not seeing as I took in the view, oblivious to the man’s approach. This bird was perched in the curve where the heavy limb of a gnarled and twisted oak joined the main trunk and he was perfectly confident that he had succeeded in assuming the identity of a rather stunted branch growing from the larger bough beneath his feet.
“You see?” said my companion softly. He was laughing a little. “Well worth taking a chance.”
It was then that I discovered that the sudden release into something unexpectedly like happiness had made me pass my hand across my body to meet the warm wool of his sleeve instead. It had been an instinctive gesture. It meant appreciation, gratitude. I don’t believe he had noticed; or at least he didn’t until the sound of approaching voices made me snatch my hand away and turn swiftly towards the path. My heart was pounding in a different way, high and nervous, and I felt a fool. I felt a fool because my touch to his sleeve was nothing, and yet, it was also a marker of a deeper emotion that I had no right to share; not now; not when every sign of weakness was a forerunner to making a mistake again and I was finding it so hard these days to temper my reactions to within normal bounds. Whether dealing with fear, friendliness or some other sudden expression, in the end I always made a mistake and embarrassment crept close enough to wreak its own damage.
Now I was wrestling with a giddy sense of exhilaration in that way one does when, in a moment of severe distress, someone does something that reminds you that humanity is sometimes beautiful after all. Adam didn’t seem particularly keen to capitalise on the feeling though. He left me in peace to regain my composure and he even let me feel like I was managing to behave quite normally when he followed me up the last flight of steps towards the exit. And in return, I suppose for the first time, my usual gnawing readiness to find him suspicious slunk to the back of my mind.
The turnstile was there and then we were stepping out onto the sweeping curve of the road barely yards from the hotel. I waited, calm once more, while he slipped through the gate behind me. He stooped under the low archway. The air was fresher up here away from the dense gloom of the gorge, and the breeze was cool through the sleeves of my frock. I slung my coat around my shoulders and as I did so I spotted Jim Bristol through a small swarm of people moving towards the bridge. The rest were all wearing excitement on their cheery faces and all pointing delightedly over the edge. But not Jim Bristol. I had the very strong suspicion that only lately had he bent forward to peer over someone’s shoulder. I turned my head aside and found Adam Hitchen meeting my gaze instead.
He said, “Do you think our luck will hold long enough to get us a table in the tearooms?” His voice held that unsmiling reserve again.
It ought to have made me decline but somehow, before I knew it, I was walking with him towards the grandly overbearing frontage of the hotel. Then I was allowing myself to be ushered towards the comfort of a plush upholstered seat in the crowded room almost before the previous occupant had left it. If this was a fresh assault on my nerves, so be it. At least I would be fed at the same time.
Dining out was a restricted affair when nearly every morsel of food was regulated by rationing. Patrons irrespective of wealth could enjoy two courses, either a starter and a main, or a main and sweet, with tea or coffee to follow. I think I must have been rather too quick to state a preference for the latter. It made his eyebrows lift but he didn’t disagree.
The reason for my decisiveness was that the main was only a standard offering of some kind of stew but the dessert was a neat little plate of Welsh cakes, freshly made and warm still. I think they were the dish that first made me realise that I too had been entirely unsmiling for the duration of our meal.
“Thank you, Mr Hitchen.” He was handing me the plate bearing my share of our second course. Taking it was like awakening after an unsettled sleep and finding daylight more cheerful than you had thought.
“Adam, please.” He poured the tea that had accompanied the dessert. “Assuming you don’t mind my calling you Kate?”
The first of my pair of Welsh cakes was simply heavenly. I will forever remember that moment as a brief peaceful island in the sea of all that fear, and in all honesty I don’t think my companion can take all the credit. That gentle scone-like delicacy was a little touch of much needed comfort and it acted like a restorative upon my entire mind.
My companion was being reassuringly harmless too as he prompted, “It is Kate, isn’t it? Not Katherine?”
I leaned back in my seat with the teacup cradled in my hands. I was ready at last to attempt the part of civilised luncheon partner. “No,” I said, “definitely Kate. It’s short for Katarina, which I hate.”
“You’re from Russia? Your English is very good, if you don’t mind my saying.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was teasing or not. I really couldn’t tell. It made me say drily, “Yes. I mean; no I don’t mind your saying. And yes, as if you haven’t already guessed: my accent is boring and English through and through. My mother just has an active imagination and an unhealthy obsession with the Ballets Russes, that’s all. My older sister is called Ludmilla, so I count myself lucky.”
An eyebrow lifted. “And does she abbreviate her name too?”
“Millie,” I said with a faint smile. “Much more pronounceable.”
“You’re an artist, aren’t you?”
Again that abrupt delivery that made his question seem somehow like an accusation. With a little sickening swoop from confidence into restraint, I wondered if this was working up to being a parody of my recent conversation in the gorge after all. He must have noticed the sudden tightening of my mouth because by way of explanation he added more gently, “You were painting when I stumbled across you this morning.”
I swallowed the sour taste of suspicion and admitted the truth. “Lovely up there, isn’t it? I might have gone further if I had thought to bring a more useful wardrobe of clothes.”
“No slacks or gumboots?”
He was teasing me. I nodded. “Precisely. I reached the point where the path turns into a very dirty sheep track and then stalled. Painting was my excuse – or camouflage if you will – and at least honour was saved by the fact that the view up there ranks as beyond inspirational.”
“Yes. It does. There’s quite some atmosphere around that hilltop.”
There was a deeper ring of sincerity in his tone. Then I saw him blink at me across the brim of his teacup. I saw his mouth dip as he set the teacup down. There was something in the action that was a familiar kind of self-reproach; like a guilty realisation he’d said too much. I recognised the feeling because I was constantly doing it myself. My attention sharpened abruptly. I said quickly, “You were making notes – are you a writer?”
Then a sudden thought struck me as he looked at me – that sort where you get a rare glimpse of the real person for the first time and it comes with a kind of kick that feels like shock but might just as easily be care. I found myself staring. “You go by the name of A. E. Woolfe …”
“Quick, aren’t you?” He spoke a shade curtly. Then he conceded with a rueful smile, “This is meant to be a research trip but unfortunately I haven’t been able to travel quite as incognito as I would have liked.”
I laughed and saw his eyelashes flicker.
He asked “What’s funny?”
“I was just thinking that it’s a good job I’d said that book was well written, otherwise I’d be feeling very embarrassed at this precise moment.”
Suddenly he grinned. He sat back in his chair. It was like a sudden shelving of reserve. Then he leaned in to rest his forearms upon the table with an eagerness that matched Jim Bristol’s, but with an entirely different energy. An entirely different style of warmth I mean. In his person he was as physically fit as Jim Bristol, as befitted a tall man who clearly liked walking, but without Jim’s excess of muscle so that the whole effect was of restrained strength rather than formidable bulk. As he leaned in his whole posture changed as if his nervousness had suddenly eased, and in a rare moment of not thinking everything was about me and my little drama, I wondered if my earlier theory had been correct and he truly was a little shy.
As if to prove the point, his attention dropped to the salt cellar, toying with it and moving it in a circle around the pepper pot. Then his hand stilled and he said carefully with his gaze resting upon the tabletop, “What about you – you’re travelling incognito too, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean? What makes you say that?” I demanded, thrust abruptly back into unhappy suspicion. I wondered what I would do if it turned out that this man sitting opposite in a pleasant hotel tearoom was actually a different kind of person entirely.
“No reason,” he said, “just an impression I got, that’s all.” He was still playing with the salt cellar and he carefully set it back into its place beside its peppery companion before lifting his head again. His mouth gifted me a quick glimpse of a reassuring smile. “Natural assumption based on nothing more than solidarity between artists. If I’m in hiding then so must you be.”
I gave a short laugh then and turned my head aside under the guise of being distracted by the earnest discussion between the waitress and the patrons at the next table so that he needn’t see the workings of my mind. Then I dared to glance at him again and the expression on his face drew my mouth into a sheepish smile. “Comparing me with the great A. E. Woolfe? That’s setting me a little high I should think – no need for incognito when you’re an unknown.” And then, lulled by the answering crease that touched the corners of his eyes, I foolishly added, “And this isn’t really a painting trip anyway.”
“No?” he asked. “What is it then?”
I hesitated. I actually wavered for a moment between sense and further stupidity. But then I heard myself only say, “I’m sorry to sound mysterious but I’d rather not speak about it, if you don’t mind.”
To many this would have been the perfect encouragement to pry but I was astounded to find that with this man at least, this was not the case. He simply sat back in his chair and said calmly, “Fair enough. You needn’t tell me anything you don’t want to. After all, why should you when—”
“—I don’t know you from Adam?”
“Quite,” he said. And then he smiled at me.
Chapter 3 (#u98feb200-d0da-50c8-aca5-2f0bec3ce6d5)
Adam Hitchen was as good as his word. By degrees our conversation returned to the safer ground of his books and my artwork, though given my general intention of remaining aloof from my fellow guests, it was perhaps a little startling to find myself willingly telling him about my gradual rediscovery of inspiration in the year since my divorce. I was also struck by how astute he was in his observations on the difficulty of regaining lost creativity. There was no sympathy – even on a normal day I wouldn’t have wanted that – but absolute understanding that must come from a creative mind who had faced his own challenges during the turmoil of the war.
I had barely painted through the war years and hadn’t particularly wanted to. I had been far too busy hosting patriotic exhibitions in the little Cotswold gallery that had been my home and putting in my hours as a married woman at the WVS canteen; and if I had painted, what would I have used as my inspiration? The bleak horror? Or would I have become one of those artists pretending that all was as it should be and beauty could be found in all the usual places?
Now though, there was hope again. I had moved away in the course of my separation and subsequent divorce and in all honesty it was an escape from the emotional barrier that had begun chipping away at my creativity long before the dramatic changes of a world war. I was of course careful to make no mention of where I had been living, or even the name of the northern gallery where I now worked and had recently had a minor exhibition and, to Adam’s credit, he didn’t ask.
In return he told me something of his own experiences while undertaking the research for his current novel. I tried not to feel like I was quizzing him because to be honest, it didn’t feel particularly like he had been quizzing me. His first had been released before the war. His second was penned during the six months’ leave after Dunkirk and the last had been a thoroughly chaotic affair jotted in note form on any scrap he could find in the lull between manoeuvres in Malta, Italy and Greece, and hastily thrashed into shape and published almost as soon as he had returned.
This one, he told me, was being allowed to take a rather less disorganised course and his research was thorough. Although that apparently still presented its own difficulties.
“Research is a problem?” I asked doubtfully. I felt like I’d missed a point.
I had. There was a trace of that smile again. “The last two were set in the area around home. It was inescapable when I was away and home was all I could think about. But I was demobbed about fifteen months ago and life has settled into something of its new rhythm and now the whole of the British Isles is supposedly my muse. Unfortunately in a fit of optimism I’ve managed to set this book in the depths of Wales just for the time when it has suddenly become very socially unpopular to go tearing about the countryside racking up the miles, even if it is running on my own relatively legitimately saved cans of fuel. I’ve had to visit this area twice so far this year chasing threads and locations.”
“You’ve come by car?”
“I have. This’ll be my last trip for a while I think.”
“What sort is it?”
“Sort of what?”
“Car. What sort of car is it?”
It was my turn to startle him by barking out my question. I hadn’t meant to, but I suppose it was inevitable that the mention of the car should jerk me back into a remembrance of what I had come here for today. And it wasn’t to form new friendships with travelling authors.
He made his answer while I was also remembering that I ought to have been watching the turn of the road outside the window. His car was a red Rover 10 and there was something else he told me about it that didn’t matter anyway because my gaze had already run to the wide terrace outside. As it did so I caught sight of Jim Bristol yet again. Not close by; he was about forty or so yards away and I felt a sudden surge of tension when I saw that man, or rather the turn of his head as he examined the wares of a postcard seller. He appeared completely absorbed by the mundane products but I knew beyond all doubt that a moment ago he had been staring straight at me.
Then the chill of seeing him was undone by the idiotic thrill that followed in the next second. The one that made me think for a moment that the postcard seller was my husband.
He wasn’t of course. This wasn’t one of those moments when a person believed to be dead turns out to be alive after all and takes to turning up in all the oddest places. Instead it was like trying to convince a wounded war veteran that he’ll hardly miss his left foot: impossible and the delusion can only ever last a heartbeat. Fiercely, defiantly, while the blood roared in my ears, I took a deep breath and forced myself to think. The postcard seller was dark haired, as I had known he would be, and was presumably Welsh, and that was where the resemblance ended.
“Kate?”
My companion had stopped speaking and was staring at me. We retreated into the uncertain formality of new acquaintances. He said again, “Kate – Miss Ward – perhaps I shouldn’t ask, but are you all right?”
Finally, I felt my heart begin to beat again. I knew the sense of my ridiculousness would hit in a moment, as it had done every time I had seen my husband’s image in the past days since my accident. It was a public humiliation, a cruel display of my overactive and stressed imagination timed to happen just at the precise moment when any misstep would be observed by an audience. It was a bizarre mirror of the way my life was now. Like always; a hurtful confirmation of my sheer inability to exert any control, and nothing more.
I met the stranger’s concern across the table and set down my cup with a distant hand. Now I felt alone again and glad of it. In a moment I would make my excuses and leave. But first, for the sake of formality, I said, “Sorry, I was listening really. What were you saying about May? Why didn’t you bring her?”
I was impressed that I had managed to grasp the dog’s name; I had barely heard the rest of what he had been saying.
“She wouldn’t like all the hanging about while I write my notes.” He was speaking slowly, staring at me still. “You’re not all right at all. Whatever is the matter?”
I thought about my answer and what he would say if I admitted the full implausible truth. Not about seeing Rhys, but the rest of it. I could already picture the concerned looks, the hasty covering of his instinctive recoil and the rushed assurances that of course it didn’t sound like fantasy, not really. This was, I observed grimly, precisely why I had decided to avoid unnecessary contact with my fellow guests.
Reluctantly, I said, “I had an accident. Just over five days ago. I banged my head and still get awfully tired.” Even as I said it, I wondered what on earth had prompted me to speak. After all, any excuse would have done. Indigestion perhaps. Or a sudden alarm about the time of the next train. I gave him a watery smile. “I’m quite all right really. Please just ignore me.”
He didn’t even blink. I began to feel extraordinarily uncomfortable. I wasn’t alone because he wouldn’t let me feel it. His eyes, I realised with a jolt, were flecked with deeper hues and at this moment they were fixed on me with an intensity that seemed to be trying to bore right into my mind.
“An accident?”
His brows had furrowed, perhaps in doubt. Perhaps in disbelief. And this was just the edited version. I wasn’t mad enough to tell him the truth.
I wouldn’t tell him about the nightmare which claimed to be a memory of two men who had appeared beside me as I waited by the bus stop in Lancaster.
The images of that day belonged to the subsequent moments of semi-consciousness at the hospital. Moments of confusion where visits from nurses and doctors merged seamlessly with the dizzying recollection of being at one moment innocently daydreaming and in the next being steered by rough hands into the depths of a shaded doorway. The questions those men had asked there were impossible demands woven about my husband’s end that I couldn’t understand and certainly could never fulfil. The bewilderment I experienced that day was indescribable. They had fixed me there with a determination that was like nothing I had ever encountered before. They had left me with a desperate hope to the very limit of my being that I would never again be required to accept the utter inferiority of my will when pitted against the dominance of another. And a terrible suspicion that hoping was never going to be enough.
---
I had woken – if waking was the correct term when I had never been asleep in the conventional sense – to the busy silence of a women’s ward where fresh questions began just as soon as I opened my eyes. These questions in their turn had brought their own confusion but at least the doctors and nurses hadn’t minded at first if I didn’t know the answers. But those men, the pair on the foggy shopping street, had acted decisively when I failed to give them the response they wanted. There had been no violence from them. There had been no need. I had found myself being bustled with grasping fingers beneath each elbow towards the flank of a waiting car. I can vividly recall that moment. The memory is filled with the sheer debilitating agony of experiencing all that in a crowd and learning that that not one of the labourers, shopkeepers or besuited office workers scurrying by was even going to notice.
It was like a very bitter repeat of an old lesson that I had tried very hard to forget.
It had ended at the moment the car door was dragged open and I somehow slithered free and dashed round the rear to make my escape. Only to run slap bang into the path of the oncoming traffic.
Adam was still waiting for my explanation so I gave him a carefully edited version. “I stepped out in front of a bus.” My lips formed a hapless smile. “Don’t worry; it was coming to a stop anyway.”
“Good grief—”
I added, “Oh, the bus wasn’t the problem. It was the rapid collision between my head and the pavement as I fell that did the damage.”
“Good grief,” he said again. He stared at me for a moment. I watched the disbelief fade into other calculations as he read the proof in my face, in my manner and my general bearing. Then he was saying in an altogether harder tone, “And this was barely even a week ago? What on earth are you doing here? Why did I see you strolling about on the crown of a hill at the crack of dawn when you should be at home in bed being fussed over and generally well looked after?”
I was hastily making calculations of my own. This was the most I had confessed yet to a stranger. Every other time that I had been drawn into speaking about my injury, the explanation had been forced out of me. It had been required by such people as the cab driver who had carried me away from the hospital, those people on the train and lastly the station master at Shrewsbury. Always, it had formed part of the aftermath of a dreadfully uncontrolled slide into panicked accusations. Now, for once, suspicion wasn’t directed at the person I was speaking to and I was, nominally at least, a willing participant in this conversation. It left me utterly unprepared.
Finally, I said as mildly as I could, “My parents are abroad – in Paris in fact, as a kind of homage to the Ballets Russes who are disbanding or relocating or something like that, and I couldn’t possibly go to my sister.” I caught his look and added quickly, “She has far better things to do with her time than worry about me when she already has a hard-working husband and two very young children to care for.”
It was easier to let him see that I was tired. It was the better part of my defence to play the hand of feebleness. Experience had taught me that much at least. It was after all a perfectly real symptom of a severe concussion and it was a wise fraudster who filled her excuses and explanations with something that passed as plausible truth.
Because whatever else I said, I knew now beyond all doubt that I mustn’t let him see that I was frightened. That I mustn’t give anyone else the opportunity to encounter the same barefaced distrust that I had levied at about half a dozen people in the past two days and even now was trying to fix itself anew upon the dubiously friendly Jim Bristol after our strange conversation at the base of the waterfall..
By contrast, this man wasn’t looking particularly friendly at all. He was asking, or rather demanding tersely, “Why aren’t you in hospital then? You can’t tell me your doctor willingly let you take yourself off like this?”
I tried to think of a convincing lie, but I couldn’t. He wasn’t impressed.
“This is downright insane, Kate. Why the devil—” He stopped when he saw my chin lift. I wasn’t helpless here. I had, I know, had a stiff lesson that sometimes people will do things that I can’t stop and can’t control, but that didn’t mean that I had to give up the fight.
Besides, the people on the next table were listening in. They were pretending to be reading the menu but I could tell they were eavesdropping. The tilt of the nearest person’s head gave them away. Adam seemed to perceive this too. He leaned in with a lowered voice to say more earnestly, “Sorry. No wonder you look pale.”
His was the one new voice in the sea of all the memories. I swear it was new. It didn’t fit the helplessness of that time when two male voices growled questions about my husband, followed by the doctors’ whispered consultations over my head with the police while my self-belief bled away into the stiff white sheets of my hospital bed.
Because I had told the police. I wasn’t foolish enough to omit that sensible step. And besides they could see for themselves that I cringed in my hospital bed every time a door opened and I heard a man’s heavy tread approaching. But those passers-by at the bus stop had been thoroughly blind to my plight. No witnesses could recall my two men and the bus driver was adamant that he had seen nothing untoward until a lone woman had lurched into the road. And what did it matter that I could describe those two men, when there was no real proof that they even existed?
All the same, the police had been very thorough. Their questions had begun in the usual way but very gradually even a person in my state had to notice that the kindly constables seemed to be pursuing something else, chasing an altogether different line of investigation which was perhaps even more dangerous than the incident by the bus stop had been. The tone of the policemen’s questions barely changed as they drew me to talk about my grief at my husband’s passing. I had mentioned it earlier myself so couldn’t claim it was unrelated now. In any case, they said, this particular event wasn’t actually decisive enough to count as unstable. Clearly I was perfectly sound in mind now. But wasn’t it possible I had experienced a momentary bleakness? An upsurge of desolation just as the bus had made its final approach? Apparently I should find it reassuring that the doctors didn’t think there was enough evidence for true instability; because suicide was illegal and therefore liable to end, if not in an untimely grave, then certainly with a spell in prison.
If that hadn’t been awful enough, I had to lie there patiently while they tested a second theory in the course of their questions. And I fought it even more violently than the first. They asked me why I accepted so fully that my husband was dead. They were probing for a different kind of delusion, the sort where blind hope meets reality and the collision drives a person crazy. They needn’t have worried. It was impossible for me to believe that my husband was still alive. Because if he were; if this should have been unleashed on me because he was making some devious play of his own, it meant he had knowingly sent these men after me without even so much as a note of warning and I couldn’t believe my worth ranked so low with him as that. I didn’t dare. I was even more afraid of that idea taking root than all the rest put together.
I was used to his indifference. I had in fact worked very hard since my divorce to teach myself that indifference was all it had been and grow wise enough to share some of the responsibility for that. I was even able to apply the same reasonableness to the fact that strangers had passed by the scene of my abduction without a glance. But this wasn’t an act of indifference. This was a man I had been married to. And he had loved me once.
If Rhys should have willingly staged his disappearance and passed this violence on to me, this was something so indescribably evil it must question the very meaning of everything I thought he was, and everything I was too. It would shatter all my values, all ideas I’d nurtured of rediscovering empowerment and freedom since my divorce. It meant my sense of self-worth really did belong to other people – those men in the bus stop, the doctors, the police and more particularly my husband. And it was theirs to take away again.
I couldn’t believe that. I wouldn’t. I’d left hospital that same day and given myself the only hope I could. I set myself the task of unpicking Rhys’s last movements. I’d come to Aberystwyth.
---
This day, Adam was waiting for my answer. I pulled myself together and began working towards a peaceful exit.
“Anyway,” I told him cheerfully. It wouldn’t help to overdo the weariness. “I do have something to be thankful for.”
“Really? And that is …”
“That the bus didn’t live up to the old adage: You wait half an hour and then two come along at once.”
He relaxed at that, clearly relieved that for the moment I was sounding perfectly normal once more. Then there was a sudden sharp clatter as a car passed beyond the window and although I fought bitterly against the instinct that prompted me to turn and look, I saw something form in his face that might have been a reflection of my underlying obsession. Sure enough I watched helplessly as his brows lowered.
“Kate?” he began, leaning in and watching me closely. In that unsmiling gaze was something more than concern.
Suddenly our comfortable conversation over tea and Welsh cakes might never have been. All the wise strategies for dealing with this conversation were nothing. His mouth was not forming a new question about my general welfare. It began to form something unanswerable. It only remained to discover whether the question was designed to continue the work of those men in that bus stop, or to exert control over the precarious strength of my mind.
“Do you really not recall—?” he began but was interrupted this time by an extraordinarily prolonged clanging of bells and blowing of whistles from the station. I took the chance. I began hastily gathering my things together.
“Oh, goodness; that’s my train.” I ignored his surprise – the perfectly authentic surprise that undid rather too many of my concerns – and set about scrabbling in my bag. “Here, let me give you my share of the bill. Did you come by train too?”
“No, by car. You know that.” He waved aside my money with an air of intense irritation. Then I felt his hand close over my wrist as I moved to stand up. “Don’t think for one minute that I’m letting you go.”
I felt something cold stab inside at this new tone. His hand was there upon mine. I demanded sharply, “Why ever not?”
It was his touch that hardened me. It swung the pendulum back towards distrust. Although he was being stern it might have been meant as a joke between us. By rights the gesture ought to have belonged to someone who knew me. A friend, perhaps, who might have the right. Only he didn’t and it made me afraid to test the power of his grip and measure it against the rough grappling of those two men. Fear hinted that he wanted me to try.
Only he didn’t. He must have felt my recoil. I saw him make a rapid reassessment, a jerked withdrawal of his hand, and watched his mind dismiss the moment as nonsense. He was already saying impatiently like a perfectly normal man might, “Why not? Because you’ve just told me you have lately sustained a severe concussion; that you haven’t been resting properly and that you’re absolutely exhausted. That’s why.”
I struggled out of my seat and past him, dragging my unwieldy coat and bag through the gap behind me, unable to recall any more if this rough attempt at reasonableness really did stand apart in my memory from all the other angry voices that were lodged there now. It felt like something he’d said was an echo of something familiar, something much older than this recent stress, which drifted out of reach almost at the instant that I reached for it. But there was no memory there. It was nothing more than a fresh trick of the tiredness that stalked behind the fear in my mind.
Because I was tired. I was tired of pretending to be nice. I snapped, “Don’t be silly, Mr Hitchen. I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”
I saw his lips release from their tight line. They parted slightly. Disbelief, stupefaction, injury; they were all here. I had to pretend I didn’t care. I had to make such a drama out of my exit even when we had just shared such a civilised lunch because the alternative was even worse. The alternative was to cling to him in the way that a lifetime of conditioning urges any frightened female to cling to the first unwitting male who happens to present himself for the part of prospective hero. But I didn’t need the vision of those men at the bus stop to remind me that reality didn’t mirror imagination and I certainly wasn’t going to truly put chivalry to the test by actually getting into a car with one.
I shuffled out of my seat and past him with a simple farewell as my only concession. He didn’t return it. I hadn’t got many yards down the road, however, before he’d changed his mind and caught up with me. I stopped at the entrance to the station, turning to face him and trying not to bristle, not to give in to weary frustration, and most of all trying not to notice how very forbidding he seemed.
“Thank you for the lovely meal,” I said with a brightness that jarred. “I truly am very grateful for your offer, but I’d really rather take the train.”
“Never accept lifts from strangers, eh?”
His wry perceptiveness shook me more than any temper could. I gave a jerky nod and turned my eyes fiercely to the oblivion of the waiting carriages before doubt could transform into guilt and from there into a confession.
He stood there, saying nothing and frowning down at me, waiting for my attention to return to him again with perfectly genuine disbelief etched across his face. The frown softened to something closer to his natural level of seriousness and abruptly I realised, conditioning or not, just how much I wished to dare go with this kindly man with whom I’d shared a pleasant lunch instead of hurrying for the crowded train.
But before I could formulate the thought into words, he was saying heavily, “All that steam whistling, by the way, was to mark the end of the Royal Wedding. But all the same you’d better get on. Looks like it’s about to leave. If you change your mind, I’ll be the one wrestling with the starter handle of that draughty relic of a geriatric car over there.”
I followed the line of his hand and saw, amongst the modest cluster of blue Morrises and black Austins that still had enough fuel for a scenic outing, a sweet red touring car with soft canvas roof and deep leather seats. It was battered and worn and might have been splendid in summer but was really not very suitable for a November excursion, even when it was a dry day like this one.
It struck me then, just how sorry I was.
“Thank you,” I said, very sincerely indeed. He only inclined his head in a short nod of farewell that somehow communicated everything that needed to be said about fiercely independent women and their lunatic decisions, and turned away to find his car. Its plates showed that it had been registered in Brighton.
Feeling both the wonder and shame of my release in equal measures, I hurried down the platform into the fug of coal smoke with the other passengers. I expected a rush for the seats but they seemed to be all standing about exchanging merry congratulations on the successful conclusion of a state wedding rather than queuing to get on.
“Miss Ward.” A quick step and a man’s voice appeared just behind me. “We get to have our chat after all. What luck.”
I was a fool. A complete and utter fool. In my urge to get away I had forgotten about this irrepressible source of cheerfulness.
Trying to be discreet, I cast a desperate glance at the waiting carriages ahead and then back down the platform past Jim Bristol to the dirty gravel near the road. I could just make out Adam as he rummaged beneath the dashboard for the starter handle. No more than a moment later, he had it in his hand. I looked up to Jim Bristol’s face. He was still smiling, honest, handsome and open; and yet again peculiarly thrilled by the prospect of spending more time with me.
I blinked at him for a moment and then looked away. In the car park, the engine must have rattled into life because Adam was climbing in behind the wheel.
“Sorry, Mr Bristol.” I stepped out of the crowd and smiled guilelessly. “I’ve just realised I’ve forgotten something. Would you mind being very kind and seeing if you can find me a seat?”
I left him nodding eagerly into the space where I had been and hurried back down the platform. I reached the end just as the car roared into life. For a moment I thought I had left it too late and my heart fell as I saw the car swing in a great arc towards the road. But then I was stepping heedlessly out onto the smooth tarmacadam and lifting a hand.
I thought he hadn’t seen me; I wondered whether to actually place myself in his path. But then, with a hiss of brakes, the car slowed and drew to a smooth halt so that the driver’s door was about a yard from my feet. Adam turned his head; he looked up at me with a mixture of surprise and badly concealed impatience and something else that was obscurely like a quickening into relief.
I gave a silly flustered smile and spoke through the glass. “I’m sorry, Mr Hitchen, I’ve changed my mind. Might I come with you after all?”
“I thought we’d settled on Adam.”
“Adam, then.”
He hesitated. But then, without another word, he reached across and tugged on the handle to the passenger door. In the time that it took to swing open, I had stepped around the car and then I was climbing in beside this irritated stranger, just as the train gave a formal whistle to indicate that the party was over.
With a rather less elegant chuckle, the car’s engine rose to match it, smothered it, and then we were away in this Rover 10 that came from Brighton and accelerating along the high winding ridge towards Aberystwyth.
Chapter 4 (#u98feb200-d0da-50c8-aca5-2f0bec3ce6d5)
The reason it mattered so much that the car was from Brighton was that it wasn’t from Gloucestershire – or, to be precise, the market town of Cirencester. It meant they hadn’t found me again. And it meant that I hadn’t made a terrible mistake in getting into this car.
Cirencester had been my home until my divorce and it housed the gallery where Rhys had still been living and working until those final few hours that had ended here. At least one of the demands levied by those two men had tenuously referenced the gallery and, although the details had grown muddier through the course of my bewildered wanderings in that hospital bed, they had certainly decided to take me somewhere. Reason told me it was the gallery. The alternative was that they’d simply decided to carry me away to some secluded spot where they might dispose of me, but I didn’t dare think about that for long.
Either way, this car mattered. And so did the risk I was taking now. Aberystwyth gave me hope. In Aberystwyth I stood a chance of uncovering a few meagre hints about Rhys’s last movements and through them a glimpse of what awaited me at the gallery. It could all vanish in a heartbeat if it turned out I’d made the wrong choice by tentatively deciding to believe this man beside me was what I thought he was.
We were at least heading in the right direction; west towards the coast where the sun was already dipping. Adam was driving smoothly but with a degree of seriousness that implied conversation would be unwelcome, even if I could have made myself heard over the noise from the road. He was wearing driving gloves. This was perhaps an alarming development since it meant he would leave no fingerprints. But actually, on the assumption he wasn’t planning to throttle me, even I could understand why he should want them. The view northwards to the foothills of Snowdonia was glorious but the car was immensely draughty, the canvas roof thrummed overhead and I was grateful when he reached one of those gloved hands onto the back seat and drew forward a thick woollen blanket for me to drape across my knees.
The road ran high along a ridgetop. Every turn offered a fresh spectacular panorama of the wide glacial valley below, filled with leafless trees and pasture fields and sparse hills turned the colour of burgundy by old heather. I caught sight of the distinctive spread wings of a buzzard once and I lifted my hand to point it out to my companion but he only gave it a cursory acknowledgement now that he didn’t feel the need to disarm me. That is to say, he glanced upwards and nodded his appreciation and then returned his attention to the curling road. It was actually quite pleasant to be travelling with a man who understood the value of companionable silences. Then the worst happened. The car suddenly checked as if to stop.
We were passing through a small hamlet; a little plain cluster of five or so workman’s cottages typical of the area. They meant nothing to me; at least nothing beyond the vague familiarity of having travelled this road once or twice in the course of my marriage. Now I turned to my driver. He wasn’t looking at me. He was peering beyond me at a set of two grey cottages that squatted a short distance away from the road. Quite automatically, I pressed back in my seat to give him a better view, and it was barely acknowledged before he identified the one he wanted and steered the car to a halt on the verge.
Now he turned to me. He looked very different in this dull light. He wouldn’t have known it but the cold had ruffled his hair and drawn his features into dramatic relief. It hardened him and made him a stranger all over again. He was drawing off the leather gloves with measured tugs on long fingers. They would have dwarfed mine. The cold must have been working on my face too and making my eyes very large because when his gaze found mine, it seemed to throw him for a moment. Then he covered it by reaching past me into the cramped space of the back seat for a jacket and a discarded hat.
He said, “Are you in a hurry to get back?” His gaze was angled into the footwell; his posture held that air of distance which for a time had disappeared.
My voice wasn’t working very well. “N—no?”
“Good,” he said. “You won’t mind then if I just nip in there for a few minutes? You can come if you’d like? Or stay in the car; it’s up to you.”
He was already pushing open his door. I stayed in the car. It seemed to be what he wanted and politeness was acting as my defence again. I do believe if he’d asked if I minded a spot of abduction I probably would have given him a tactful reply to that too.
As he climbed out, I asked in a voice made even more rapid by the shadow of his own tension, “What are you doing?”
He paused in the act of shutting the door. “Research,” he said.
Then, by way of an afterthought, his head ducked below the doorframe. He added, “Here, put these on. Your hands will thaw in a moment. It’s not that cold out here now that the car’s stationary, I promise.”
He’d dared to glance at me at last. The swift gleam of those grey eyes was shy but the humour there was genuine. He was bemused by his own brusqueness and by my reaction to it. It was a sudden simple reassurance. He knew he’d confused me and he meant me to know everything was fine with this little act of kindness. I took the gloves. Then he shut the door.
I watched as, shrugging his way into the coat and conventionality, he stepped across the grassy verge towards the nearest of the low run-down cottages. The unkempt door with its peeling red paint and the dilapidated coal shed certainly fitted my idea of what constituted sinister. Adam rapped lightly on the wood, waited, then peered through the glass at the side before knocking again. Someone must have seen him because with a change to his posture he waited until the door finally opened and then, with a quick unsmiling glance back at me, he stepped inside. The other man had been ordinary and old and crabbed.
I sat there for about ten minutes, watching the road behind in the single driver’s side wing mirror in case it should turn out that this was a simple way of arranging an exchange with those men, but no other car appeared. A pony-cart crossed the road ahead from one field into another with a lean sheepdog trailing dutifully behind, but nothing else happened that could possibly be an excuse for alarm and finally I was forced to admit that his stop was exactly as he implied – nothing to do with me.
With a grimace at what amounted to yet another painfully unnecessary display of doubt, I rummaged in my bag to drag out the little sketchbook. I waited a while longer but then, laying the gloves upon his seat and clutching my pencil and pad like a shield, I decided firmly that if he could do research, so could I. I climbed out of the car and drifted artlessly around the wide curve of the road.
Beyond the corner I found a gateway overlooking a promising field where broken hedges and ancient trees straggled down the tussock-strewn slopes. The solitude was glorious. But I wasn’t alone. A sheep gave a surprised grunt and lumbered quickly to her feet as I appeared and I quickly sketched her head before she could decide to run away. She had half a bramble thicket trailing from her fleece and I sketched that too before slowly but surely moving onto the hints and touches for the field’s other occupants as they rolled gently downhill to the floodplain at the bottom.
“I thought you must have given up and had decided to walk back.”
A now familiar voice broke my all-absorbing peace of concentration. I’d heard his step on the gravel behind but it hadn’t frightened me this time. I turned my head as Adam appeared next to me to contemplate the view, faintly perfumed with pipe smoke and inoffensively comparing my work with the scene below. He had reverted to his more usual habit of looking like a relaxed companion, although his voice was not fully restored to the ease of our tea in the hotel. He asked, “Are you ready to go, or do you want to stay a while?”
I shut my sketchbook with a snap and smiled at him.
“I’m finished, thank you. I was only passing the time while you paid your visit, and my model has very rudely walked away without so much as a by-your-leave anyway …” And then, because I knew that was, to all intents and purposes, exactly what I had done to him at Devil’s Bridge, I followed it with a hastily mumbled, “Sorry. I am very glad, you know, that you let me tag along on this drive.”
“Think nothing of it.” His quick dismissal was meant to reassure. We were already walking back around the bend to the car.
I waited until we were out of the hamlet before trying to make a fresh beginning by asking, “Did you get what you needed?”
He had to incline his head towards me to be heard over the shrill wail of the old engine and he made me think his tension over the past minutes had been because he’d been waiting for that apology because that old stiffness wouldn’t quite leave his voice and he barked out, “Very useful interview actually.” Then he grimaced a little before adding in a less stilted tone, “In case you haven’t guessed, that meeting was the conclusion of one of the threads I’ve been following for some time. It’s taken me all week to set up this visit and it was worth the effort. My latest work will be – or I should say is – based around a small mining community. Old Mr Hughs worked in the local lead mine before it shut so was able to give me all sorts of useful insights on the mechanics of that kind of life.”
“How interesting,” I said. I suspect my own efforts to sound more normal were lost in the noise from the road because I saw his eyes flick left twice to read my face before apparently being reassured that I wasn’t trying to mock. His doubt was valuable to me in its way though. It gave me the chance to realise once and for all that it wasn’t temper that had been colouring his manner on this drive; he hadn’t been trying to punish me for my rudeness. He’d simply been nervous about his meeting. And the realisation was like a glimpse of a far less justifiable tragedy than the one that was presently stalking me. The one that had made a kind, normal, safe man like him shy.
It made me say in a sudden urgency of honesty because I knew now that it mattered, “I didn’t mind staying in the car just now, you know. If I’d been in your position I’d have wanted to go in alone too. I know what it’s like when you’re steeling yourself to do an interview. You don’t need anyone else muscling in and disrupting your thoughts when you just need a few quiet seconds to think of everything you want to say. You know I had to do it all the time with the clients at the gallery.” I stumbled a little then. I’d slipped into talking about my old life at the Cirencester gallery where I’d handled the business for Rhys. In fact, invariably Rhys would have been the source of the distraction that had put me off my stride. But Adam wasn’t going to know that and he couldn’t have known that I wasn’t talking about my present placement at the Lancaster gallery, certainly not when I hastily tacked on, “I mean I still do have to talk to people. I told you that at lunch earlier.”
I faltered. I’d seen his initial surprise as I’d sympathised. That had been natural enough perhaps, but then it appeared again as I rushed into adding those last words. I’d meant to make him comfortable and he was in a way but his swift sideways glance also bore a hint of incredulity, like the rhythm of his thoughts had experienced a momentary sharpening of concentration, followed by an anticlimax when the growing feeling was dismissed as an error. Then I felt his gaze briefly touch my face again and saw him register the curiosity there, and in an instant his expression was wiped clean.
When he spoke, it was only to assure me that I wouldn’t have been in the way.
“But thank you,” he added, contradicting himself. “Thank you all the same.”
And then we were safely stowing his car on a backstreet where the salty sea-spray couldn’t cement itself onto the precious paintwork before winding our way back through the town.
He stopped as we were about to cross the main shopping street onto the road that ran down to meet the seafront and turned to me. Behind him, someone stepped out of a red telephone box and I heard the quick murmur of apology as they made him step aside.
He was himself again. He tipped his head at the box as an indication of what he intended to do next. It obviously required privacy since there was a telephone at the hotel. He knew I’d noticed, and he also clearly appreciated that I made no remark. Then he asked with his faintly mocking smile, “Do you think you can cope with walking all the way back to the hotel on your own?”
He’d obviously read my thoughts too. I’d been running an eye downhill towards the frontage of the pier that stood at the bottom and telling myself sternly that the gauntlet of terrors – imagined or otherwise – between me and the hotel was all of about four hundred yards long. Adam meant his comment as a joke. He didn’t really think I was worried. I gave him a slanting smile in return. And was still smiling when I said something vague about it nearly being time for dinner and he broke in to say rather abruptly, “I’m sorry, this is going to sound strange but since you said in the car a moment ago that you know me, I’m going to take you up on it. Can you not mention to the other guests that I drove you back just now?”
“I, er … Yes. Of course, if you like.”
His brows lowered. “Now I’ve confused you and that isn’t what I meant, I promise. I just don’t want to attract any more attention to myself than I already have. You’ve seen how it is; if I become the subject of idle chatter about a fellow guest, my cover really will be blown …”
“Absolutely,” I agreed heartily. I could tell I was beaming like a mad thing. Inside I was cold. I was rapidly thinking that he was right; I was confused and if he thought I knew him, he was mistaken. I was trying to absorb the unpalatable truth that my attempt at ordinary friendliness with this man was an even bigger disaster than paranoia. I had the horrible feeling he thought I was meaning to turn our quiet lunch at the hotel into a public dinner together at the hotel and this was his way of tactfully curbing it. Only if he was he was mistaken there too. And now I was rushing into giving him blind sympathy and I could tell from the way those grey eyes were scrutinising my face that this wasn’t the response he wanted. He drew breath and I knew he was going to try to change it, soften it and steer me into not minding the misunderstanding, and it was all going to get even more excruciatingly tangled than ever.
So I took control in the only way I knew how and paved the way for an easy – and permanent – conclusion to this ridiculousness for both of us by wrapping the moment in yet more layers of politeness. I gave him a broad smile and said brightly, “Actually, I understand perfectly. No, really I do. Fame and fortune is all very well, but not when you want a bit of peace in which to get on with the day job?”
I saw him nod. “Exactly,” he said. “Thank you.”
There didn’t seem much to say after that. I thought he would be glad to have it so easily laid out that I understood and he would get the privacy he required but I found instead that my smile had made his brows furrow again. Apparently he’d read my withdrawal beneath its cheerful mask and he was puzzled by it. Quite simply, I couldn’t get away from him today without causing some upset first.
Instinct made me slide hastily into a firm utterance of goodbye and then things went from bad to worse because he seemed determined to end things on a friendlier note after all and in the midst of the confusion of awkwardness and platitudes we ended with a swift step in to touch cheek to cheek.
I don’t honestly know who initiated it. I thought he had but there was that briefest telltale hesitation from him as I automatically reciprocated that gave me time to realise that I really had got it wrong this time. Or perhaps I hadn’t. Perhaps he’d done it in that awful impulsive way people have of assuaging their conscience when they’re a little bit ashamed that you’ve guessed they really just want to be shot of you and end up accidentally lurching into warmth instead. Perhaps it was simply a reasonably appropriate way to mark the end of a social outing as new acquaintances might do.
Whichever way it was, it didn’t exactly warrant the reaction I had. After all, I’d made this gesture all the time at home both in greeting and farewell with clients at the various events in the gallery. At the Cirencester gallery I mean. In the north, women simply shook hands like sensible creatures and saved themselves the trouble of getting it wrong. In Cirencester, this would have all just been an embarrassingly mishandled version of a familiar social norm. The feel of his touch to my arm, the automatic lift upwards to draw closer, that brief ordinary moment of confusion as one or other of us had to dictate which cheek was presented, even the accidental little intake of breath at the moment of contact and with it drawing in the faintest hint of the scent of his skin, followed by the oddly prolonged sense of suspense before one or other of us finally withdrew … It was all so familiar.
In a way this was the problem. We might have done this before. This all told me that this was a man who was used to observing this kind of social etiquette too. And yet even this needn’t have really been a cause for alarm. After all, logically speaking, I already knew this. His accent was non-descript and could have originated from anywhere vaguely southern. His car was from Brighton. He had as much right to belong to that cultural tradition as I did.
When I drew away with the beginning of embarrassment that must verge on laughter because it was funny how this latest bit of confusion really had crowned all the rest, I saw his face. His eyes lifted. He was embarrassed too but in a different way. He saw my shock. Instantly my mind was tripped into trying to match his dimly lit features to the pattern of some inconsistent memory. In its way, this was the same infuriating trick that daylight persisted in playing with visions of my husband. But if this was an echo of the past, it was a puzzling one. He wasn’t wearing a scowl to match the harsh demands of those men who stalked every shadow in my mind. He was looking like an attractive, capable man who had just seen his mask exposed and was calculating how best to explain the joke.
And above it all, like a persistent tone playing a darker note that had for a while slipped by unnoticed, I discovered that his hand was still gripping my arm.
Firmly so.
I felt the moment that he registered the shift in my attention. I felt the tightening in his concentration too and the faintest echo of his heartbeat transmitting from his fingertips through the layers of my sleeve. His grip held me sternly on the spot before him. I could only stare, fascinated, as that mouth hardened. It slid on towards speech. As it twisted from there inexorably to frame a question, I knew that this was the point where it became a demand. It would be the same one I had experienced in that Lancaster shop doorway. And this time I would have to fight for my soul as well as my body.
Adam’s voice said roughly, “What on earth have I said to make you look like that?”
---
Oh. That most certainly was not the question I had been expecting.
This one belonged to a man who was only entirely wounded by whatever he saw written on my face.
Oh no.
Whatever offence I had given him earlier, this crime was worse. Mortification rose far beyond the shame of repeatedly mishandling the consequences of a bad exit from a tearoom. That was humbling enough but regardless of what had come before and what must certainly come after, I couldn’t imagine anything would ever again be as crippling as this moment; this instant of finally having to accept that the police and the doctors and everyone were right. Reality was not a fixed mark for me. I truly could not rely on the accuracy of my own mind.
This day had been exhausting. My voice was a taut rush. “You’ve done nothing.” I’d broken contact with his hand a moment before. Now I was blinking rapidly and backing away. “Nothing at all. I’m so sorry. I must get on. Goodbye.”
And I left him standing there at the telephone box. I could feel him staring after me all the way to the corner by the pier.
Chapter 5 (#u98feb200-d0da-50c8-aca5-2f0bec3ce6d5)
It wouldn’t exactly be surprising if I found it distressing to discover this question mark hanging over my sanity. But actually, I did still have my wits enough to know that it wouldn’t be unusual for anyone in my circumstances to be reacting a little nervously, particularly coming as it did after a day spent braced to meet the terrors of my first tentative steps towards uncovering Rhys’s last actions only to discover nothing but my personal grief. And in truth, this wasn’t why I was upset.
I was distressed because I’d wounded an innocent man and there was in my history a very small, very insignificant part of me that nursed an insecurity far older than abrupt encounters with moving buses. It was a part that had instead everything to do with that old lack of faith in my value to the world.
Sometimes I feel that the belief I am generally found to be harmless is my most durable merit. Only today I hadn’t been harmless at all. I’d taken what ought to have been a pleasantly peaceful afternoon for a fellow guest and ruined his day with my own irrational anxieties. The experience humbled me, and it brought me face to face with an uglier aspect of myself. And now I was ruining his evening too.
This was because it became very swiftly became clear to me almost as soon as I entered the lounge after dinner that our resident famous person had completely wasted his time asking me to keep our shared journey a secret. The other guests already knew. I’d seen Jim’s smirk. They knew it hadn’t merely been a kindly passerby who had taken pity on me when I’d missed the last train. And what’s more, the fact that this information had been deliberately omitted from Adam’s own description of his day wasn’t simply taken as a reflection on me and left to rest at that. They were delighted to have the excuse to tease him about it.
I was reading the same paragraph for the fifth time when I overheard Mrs Alderton drawing Adam out from behind his newspaper long enough to confirm that he had driven to Devil’s Bridge today and that yes indeed he still had fuel for his car. Then Mary said something about it being a long way to go and that good company might have made all the difference. I don’t think she was really making a jibe at me, at least not completely; I imagine she was merely hinting that Adam should invite her and her sister along with him next time but her challenging manner of asking was more than a little intimidating. Her bold way of talking belonged to a woman who was in the habit of confronting what she wanted. Since her recent past must have been not entirely dissimilar to mine and by that I mean it must have featured war, I thought she was, if it wasn’t unkind to say it, the sort of woman for whom the war had meant liberty, frivolity and adventure; and she hadn’t yet decided whether peace was going to rank on the whole as an improvement.
I already knew what peace meant for her older and colder sister, Mrs Alderton. It meant a tearing race to snare Mary a wealthy husband. And at present that meant steering the room away from a discussion on Jim’s experiences on manoeuvres in Burma and back onto the subject of Devil’s Bridge with delicious details of the site’s awful heights.
She did it because she thought Adam might join in. Instead she had Jim’s account of nauseating plunges, relentlessly roaring water and crushing swoops onto the rocks. Now he was sharing the spectacle of the first viewpoint that looked out at the falls beneath the three bridges. Mrs Alderton was disappointed because while Adam clearly ranked as a desirable conversational partner, Jim Bristol, only a lowly civil servant and an infantryman before that, very definitely did not.
I distracted myself from it all by talking to the little boy who was kicking the leg of the chair beside me. He was tired and wishing he hadn’t been lured in here by the Miss Bartlemans since they were now being old and boring. His mother seemed to be desperately praying that no one would say anything about certain guests being better fitted for boarding houses before she managed to get him away to bed. They were the perfect distraction for me. I was just in the throes of discovering young Samuel was a fellow artist and quietly attempting to interest him, rather unsuccessfully I might add, in the gift of a few bits and pieces I kept at the back of my sketchbook when I noticed that Jim was watching me.
He watched me slip the sketchbook back into my bag and then he very deliberately turned back to Mary and began revisiting every dip, every plunge of the crashing waters in vivid, untamed detail. It made my head spin but not because of his passion for the waterfalls. It was because it felt horribly like Jim was punishing me for the lie over the sketchbook; the one where I’d told him that I didn’t have it with me today. It felt like he blamed me for leaving him on the train and that he must have enjoyed betraying this second lie to these two woman because he knew what they would do with it. It felt like he must know too what the endless revisits to the scene of that awful drop would mean to me so was describing them deliberately.
My distress came also from fearing that I was being unkind in my present judgements about him and he was as blameless here as the last man had been.
It was then that Adam abruptly decided to speak. He dropped his newspaper to say loudly, “Yes Mary, it was a long way to go by car.”
His interjection was rough. It burst onto the room like it was wrenched out of him against his better judgement as his resistance was finally eroded by their incessant probing on the subject of that fated decision to allow me along on his drive. The truth is it actually came when he might have just as easily remained silent. They weren’t talking about him any more. They had been distracted by a longer, more delightfully detailed account from Jim of the claustrophobic depths of the gorge and the weight of the falling water and the branches and debris being soundly shattered in the roaring maelstrom at the base.
Then Adam added this rather helplessly, “And indeed you were right about the other bit too.”
He meant the part about good company being a useful addition.
I knew I deserved it, but somehow I’d never have expected this man to be intentionally cruel.
I stayed just a few seconds more, long enough to hear the wireless silence everyone with a report on the Royal Wedding and to observe the solemn toast to the newlyweds as instigated by the Miss Bartlemans, and then I retreated to my room.
The only truly disconcerting element that followed me from the lounge was that the dignity of my quiet exit didn’t stop me from accidentally leaving my borrowed library book behind as I hurried away.
---
The loss of Jane Eyre was the real punishment for my mistakes that day. I felt it particularly at three o’clock in the morning when I gave up on sleep just as I had the night before and the night before that. It was proof of why I ought to have been grateful to Adam for his interjection. No one here can have known – with the exception perhaps of Jim Bristol – about Rhys’s fall from that bridge. They didn’t know that every fresh mention of those branches churning in the depths hurt my mind and flooded it with visions of my husband’s broken limbs doing precisely the same thing. They wouldn’t know that I would have traded almost anything not to be driven from the lounge to my room with that image in my head. It had been hard enough getting to sleep of late without the stresses of that place stalking me in my dreams.
As it was, I ended up climbing out of bed to wrap a housecoat over my unnecessarily elegant nightdress for a prowl about the darkened corridors back down to the lounge. The nightdress was an unhelpfully extravagant birthday present from my mother designed to reawaken my femininity after the divorce – thoughtful, generous and, in that way only mothers can achieve, it had the dispiriting effect of making me feel like I must routinely look like a shapeless sack where I had thought myself quietly sophisticated.
The lounge opened off the marble-clad entrance hall. It was an ornate box with no windows that was tucked in the space between the wide sweep of the staircase, the long range of the kitchens at the back and the dining room that overlooked the seafront. It had a deep carpet and heavy plasterwork framing the ceiling and a very grand arch that let patrons through to the dining room. The pictures on the wall harked back to the time when the educated classes were getting particularly excited about imaginary classical ruins. The furniture was equally antiquated and smelled faintly of stale potpourri. In the dim light cast from the reception desk everything was a grey shapeless clutter, which unfortunately didn’t include my book.
A burst of tired frustration hit me hard then. It served me right, I thought viciously, for presuming that the century since its publication would protect Jane Eyre from the same interest excited by the work of a Mr A. E. Woolfe. That book, I could see, was lying abandoned on a footstool where I suspected it would remain until the next time it was required for the ongoing campaign to impress the author. I was tempted to take it, but realised that as well as being tantamount to open warfare with Mary, the act would be bound to give the other guests the delight of deciding that I too was vying for his attention. So instead I took the well-thumbed remains of a newspaper and climbed the darkened stairs again.
It was when I put the key in the lock that I happened to notice Jane Eyre lying innocently outside my door. It was propped against the doorframe where some kind soul had placed it and I had simply missed it before.
At least that was what I realised about five ludicrous minutes later, once I’d finished worrying that someone was playing tricks on me and had scoured the shadowy doorways for their presence.
I read for a while, blinking through the eternal sparring of its heroine with her will, her hardship and indeed her master, wondering whether a book filled with heartache and loneliness was really the right kind of reading matter for someone on the brink. But then, lulled by its comfortingly familiar tones, I actually managed to doze a little and when I stepped out of my room for an early breakfast, I was surprisingly rested. It was a good job too because this morning promised to be just as difficult as the last; although at least it wasn’t expected to involve yet another cramped train ride.
“Good morning.”
Adam had stepped out of a room two removed from mine. He was dressed in the same style as the day before; a pair of tough-looking trousers that had probably been very expensive once and a warm jumper that on any other man might have been purposefully chosen to enhance the colour of his eyes. Clearly today was expected to involve more walking.
“Morning,” I returned formally and shrugged off the impulse that made me think to wait while he set his key to its lock.
But today it seemed he thought I should because I heard a short mention of my name as he stepped quickly down the carpeted corridor to join me and then a brief uneasy quirk at the corner of his mouth followed by: “I think you must have—”
The revelation of what I must have done now was interrupted by the unusually disorderly arrival of Mrs Alderton and her sister as they clattered down the stairs from the upper floor. Judging by the younger woman’s urgent hushing movement with her hands and the few words that drifted down the length of the corridor, we’d met them at the end of a fierce lecture. Mrs Alderton only seemed to be satisfied by Mary pursuing us down the stairs, across the foyer and flinging herself down into the spare seat at the breakfast table that Adam was claiming. Once there, she promptly helped herself to a portion of his paper. I saw him shrug and take his seat. Then he quietly offered to exchange a different part of the paper for the piece she’d taken, which had consisted of dry numbers from the stock exchange, and it made her smile.
My breakfast became isolation then, wonderful and tranquil isolation. No one cared about me. Whatever had been building in the undercurrents in last night’s conversation appeared to have been miraculously relegated to the status of old news today. No one was going to be required to drive me anywhere and none of the guests had any cause to speak to me, alarm me or otherwise disturb my peace when I then took my walk through town. I was free to think only of the rhythm of my footsteps and how they had carried me many times before to this familiar secluded street.
Chapter 6 (#u98feb200-d0da-50c8-aca5-2f0bec3ce6d5)
The houses in this part of town were set in steep terraces that must have originally sheltered the town’s shipwrights. My sharp rap on the metal door knocker was lost in the musical jingling as boats and their yards shivered in the light breeze at the nearby harbour. Those two men and their demands might never have existed. The only footsteps I heard were the muffled ones that approached in the passage behind the blue front door.
They belonged to the aproned figure of Sue Williams. My ex-mother-in-law.
Rhys’s mother was pretty and plump in the manner of the quintessential housewife in an advert for baking powder and she stared at me from an armchair that was well-hung with doilies. It was placed in the corner of a small room made dark by heavy burgundy wallpaper and thick curtains that might have easily been blackout curtains left over from the war. I suppose she must have been in her late-sixties by now. She looked younger. “Well,” she said finally. “It’s a long time since I last set eyes on you.”
“It is,” I said and settled on the settee, wondering if the stuffy shadows replayed the old scenes as vividly for her as they did for me. It took bravery of many different sorts to come here. “It is. How are you?” Then I felt like an utter fool. How exactly should she be, given what had happened.
“Well enough,” she said, and reached for a half-drunk cup of tea. It seemed she did recall those old scenes.
I smiled one of those sympathetic smiles that are nothing to do with happiness and made some stilted offerings of regret, which were received graciously but coolly, and tried to remember what I had come here for. I was glad at least that her husband was not present. That man was like a cumbersome caricature of his son; the same forceful personality and strong features, but without the brightness of mind which marked his son. Had marked his son.
Seeing her like this abruptly brought it home to me. If there had been any lingering doubts about whether or not he had really died that day, they couldn’t survive this visit. Rhys would never have let her suffer like this. It came as a violent little shock somehow. Perhaps I really had never quite accepted it before now.
Her softly accented voice covered my stumbling halt. “So, you’re here to read the condolence messages?” She swept a collection of cards off a gloomy dresser and passed them to me without leaving time to demur. I had to carry them to the small shaded window to make them out. They were a varied bunch, some inclined towards mourning and some treading a fine line nearer disbelief. All expressed sympathy and care to the parents of a lost man and they did not remotely make for easy reading.
One in particular caught in my hand. It was written in elegant curls and it read; ‘We each want to make our mark, to stand out a little from the rest and Rhys did just that. He always will. I will miss him.’ and an indecipherable scrawl that I knew must read ‘Gregory Scott’.
“What is it?”
I turned in the light from the window to find Mrs Williams staring at me. “Oh, Sue,” I said, shaken into a guilty realisation of what this visit must mean for her. “Gregory called me the day after I heard the news. He wondered if I would help him go through the prints Rhys had kept for him from that project they did together but I said I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.”
I stopped short when I registered the hurt that had passed over his mother’s face. Gregory was one of Rhys’s oldest patrons. When he, Rhys and I had first been introduced I had still been a young painter studying classical lighting techniques under the tutelage of my long-suffering uncle at the old man’s gallery in Cirencester. That had been twelve years ago. Six months after that, Gregory had been signing his name as the witness on my marriage certificate. And a year after that, Gregory had performed the next in a long line of introductions by bringing a famous critic to the launch of Rhys’s one-man show. This critic had promptly dubbed Rhys the Most Promising Photographer to Emerge from the Depths of Wales and I might add that Rhys had mildly resented this title. He hadn’t particularly liked being considered only promising.
“Oh, Sue,” I repeated. “I’m so sorry. I’m letting you think the unforgivable.” I moved back to my seat before adding firmly, “Gregory didn’t mean that I should march over the gallery threshold as if I’d never left. He wasn’t thinking about retrieving his old sporting photographs; he was thinking that we should do our utmost to honour the work that Rhys had done with him. Whatever else happened between Rhys and me, however our marriage ended, I could never forget the sheer beauty of his talent and the important part that Gregory played in it.”
This determined eulogy did far more to smooth the waters than any wild outpourings of emotion could. Her demeanour transformed and she showed the bright cheerfulness of the truly bereaved. “I know. And you’re right; Gregory was the friend Rhys needed. I remember the rows when Rhys first told his father he was going to pursue photography rather than engineering.”
I also remembered the other rows, like the one in this house that last summer before Rhys left us all for the war and the other one in our Cirencester home when he came back again. Looking back now, it amazes me that I had let his creative impulses dictate my life for so long. If I was looking for proof my judgement was poor, this was it. Not, it must be said, that I mean to imply that I call his going off to war one of his impulses.
His decision to lend his considerable skills to the Army Film and Photographic Unit was a raw opportunity to test his talent against the grittiest subject matter of all. The war was the muse to end all muses, and even I can admit that he had never lacked the kind of resolve a person must need to face the long years of hard work and utter bravery of sustained conflict. It could have changed him like many other men, but it didn’t. When he came back he only brought with him a new muse, a revitalised urge to create and the expectation that his wife would once again give way to the weight of his point of view and compromise as she always had; which really meant redrawing every fresh line, reforming every fragile emotional boundary that previously had been the last one I’d thought would never be crossed.
The surprise I think was for him, because he came home to a wife who understood herself a little more clearly. The war for me had come as a glorious respite. The hardships and terrors of bombing were nothing. War gave me the solitude I needed to rediscover a sense of balance and to break the old patterns so that by the time Rhys came back again I was a little more capable of perceiving where I was right and a little less wedded to the idea of sacrificing everything for the sake of his art.
Or perhaps I was still shackled. He came back as demanding as ever. I won my little victory by divorcing him. But he got to stay in our beautiful home while I scuttled meekly away to the north of England and my parents like the dreary little cast off I’d always played. And yet, feeble as it might sound, it had seemed right at the time. Even before the war I must have had opinions. After all, our rows were always pretty heated affairs. But this wasn’t an argument I would have even attempted to win, for my own sake rather than his. Anything else would have felt painfully like revenge.
“He left a note, you know,” his mother suddenly announced.
Before the divorce she had liked me well enough I think – though without children, what was the point of me? – but Sue Williams was a woman who was fiercely committed to the idea that it was a woman’s duty to maintain the appearance of happiness even when it was absent. I think I’d offended her more than anyone by suddenly deciding to set my own desires above the luxury of continuing to care for her flawless, incomparable son.
Today the acrimony of my sudden departure was like a shadow that faded in and out of her manner as she wavered, quite reasonably, between despising me for being the woman who had walked away from her son, and treating me as the only other woman who had known him intimately enough to appreciate the full horror of his loss. Her lightness of tone now was so far along on the scale of control that it practically met devastation coming the other way. She told me, “He left a note but the police have it so you can’t see it. He just said sorry. No explanation or anything. Just sorry.”
Behind it all, I think her voice cracked and I nearly put my hand out to her but she raced on. Her eyes were held wide open and they glittered in the dim light as she rushed into saying, “He only visited us a few weeks before, and he seemed fine, absolutely fine. He’d just opened an exhibition in the gallery so he was tired of course but nothing that …” Her voice suddenly deepened. “Nothing that could imply he was thinking of—” Devastation really did show itself this time.
It was beginning to tell on me too. Rhys belonged to that set of artistic temperaments that verge upon genius. He had been prone to bleak periods of self-doubt and foul moods, and the run-up to a new exhibition had always been our most fraught time. But stubborn, beautiful, magnetic, inspiring and exacting though he was, no one could ever pretend that the stress of a new exhibition would have been sufficient to drive him to this lonely end.
Instead, this dark heavy room was filled with the echoes of his presence. His personality lingered in the gramophone in the corner and in the terrible prints his mother kept on the wall in a kind of merry defiance of his lectures on taste. He lurked in the desk where I knew she had written her regular fortnightly letters to tell him the news.
I asked, “In this last visit did he say anything about any kind of harassment or some sort of trouble or anything? Anything at all? I mean, are you really sure that this note meant that he was planning to …?” I trailed off helplessly, not at all sure I could justify this crime of interrogating a recently bereaved mother and not even sure I wanted to ask any more. In the midst of all the real grief for the loss of his life, it felt intensely selfish to have come here for the sake of worrying about the difficulties of quietly going on living mine.
Her reply was a flat croak. “You mean to ask if anyone was pressurising him? No. One of the people who saw him there was Mrs Thomas from next-door’s sister’s girl. She was out for dinner with her new husband. She actually called in barely minutes after the police came knocking on my door. I told her she was a fool and a liar. She told me she wished she was. He was … alone.”
The way she said the word alone made the shadows of that desolate bridge in the night time loom now from the corners of this gloomy room. Her son’s isolation in his last moments was her own loneliness now.
Then she beat the shadows back with a stern little shake of her head. She was a stronger woman than I. “He said nothing about any trouble. Nothing. He talked about his future projects and the latest one which was a new little collaboration with a newspaperman who was proving a touch unreliable but nothing of any note. The police asked about shell shock, and at the time I didn’t really know how to say for certain it wasn’t, but I’m sure now he never gave me any sign.” She paused and looked uncertainly at me; focussing on me, I think, for the first time. Her voice was suddenly a little firmer, a little harder. “He did mention you at one point, but I don’t think it was anything important.”
My heart began to beat.
There was another pause and I began to worry that I would have to decide whether to prompt her or to let it pass but then when she spoke I realised that her hesitation had only been because she was carefully editing his phrasing. I was sure Rhys would not have put it so politely. “He said you were going to try to take the gallery from him.”
Sue Williams gave a brief pursing smile at my exclamation. “You’re in Lancashire for now aren’t you? Your sister told him – she’s still in his neighbourhood isn’t she? – that you’d started dabbling again. Perhaps Rhys thought you might want to come back. I don’t know. He wasn’t very clear about it. But I told him that you wouldn’t; you couldn’t. Not that you mightn’t have the right but I was sure even you wouldn’t be so cruel as to take the rug out from under his feet, not when he had such talent.”
I was thinking; dabbling?
My voice was perfectly measured. “I don’t want to go back there; I thought you knew that. I’m sure he knew that. Gregory certainly did. He wasn’t remotely surprised when I refused after he called the other day. So I can’t imagine what Rhys thought could possibly have changed my mind.”
Her odd little pursing smile came and went again. I’d actually surprised her. Rightly or wrongly, she had expected me to be quietly bewildered by Rhys’s doubts. Now I was decisive and clear. The funny thing was that Sue gave the distinct impression that she approved of the change. She even made me wonder if she might have liked me better had I been like this in the days of my marriage.
It made me think if this was a new me I must be getting things very wrong indeed.
Or perhaps this was just the old patterns repeating themselves. I hadn’t broken them as much as I had thought. These people had always made me feel terribly guilty. They’d always made every desire of mine feel somehow like a selfish whim; even in the days when I’d been an optimistic young thing and the desire had been to love their son.
Now I was feeling the shame of coming here and burdening this woman with my questions when I ought to have been displaying the grief she was looking for in the ex-wife. I felt guilty for forcing her to acknowledge I was the survivor when Rhys had died. I felt guilty for thinking she was the sort of person that would think like that when she and her husband were probably perfectly decent and it was only my own petty resentments that made me so inadequate here.
I saw her glance at the clock. It made me realise I should leave before her husband came home. I shouldn’t have come here, knowing what I was facing. I should never have imagined that I could withstand this encounter with the past.
Of course, if I hadn’t been trying to deal with an appalling threat, I would never have been desperate enough to have come here at all.
Very carefully, I rose to my feet and stepped down the passage. The door opened. I would have to step outside but first I concentrated specifically on the selfish whim of wishing not to be persecuted in my ex-husband’s name. I made her squint against the unaccustomed light. “Just one more thing, if I may? Have you had any unexpected visitors? Anyone else asking questions?” I knew the answer before she even spoke. There never were going to be any witnesses to confirm my story.
There was a pause, and then she added with a terrible blandness; “If they find his body, I’ll let you know. For the funeral.”
That was supposed to be her final word. It had every right to be her final word. But as she prepared to shut the door, I paused and turned back, asking entirely on an afterthought:
“Was there a film in his camera? The one they found in the riverbed, I mean?”
Her expression blanked and for a moment I thought she was going to close the door before she conceded, “Yes. I think so. We were shown some pictures at one point so I suppose there must have been; yes. The police still have it.” Then her face wrinkled and I realised with a sudden pang that I thoroughly deserved to feel guilty this time because I’d made her cry. She added, “I can’t bear the thought of his beloved things lying in a storeroom somewhere. I wish you hadn’t reminded me. I suppose I could ask for them back but I just can’t bear that either. I wish you hadn’t reminded me.”
I put out my hand to her then. I gave her fingers a little squeeze. I was sorry. I really was sorry. For all of it.
---
I’d been sustained until now by the belief that I was pursuing something that might yield my escape. Now I’d paid this visit and discovered nothing except guilt and the very bitter truth that after this I had absolutely no purpose at all. If I wasn’t careful, I’d find myself forming a new plan, any plan, even to the extent of sneaking off into that impenetrable gorge and personally scouring beneath every rock within about four miles for Rhys’s body; just for the sake of doing something, anything rather than giving up.
I was hurrying once more down that increasingly familiar street that led to the pier and the turn to the hotel. It was colder here. The buildings at the left hand side were extraordinary. They belonged to the university and were a long line of insanely tall towers and halls that had all the magic and style of a misplaced Arthurian castle. They cast a long shadow but it wasn’t this that made me cold.
It was because there on the far side of the road, under the calm gaze of the towering university buildings, stood a black Morris Eight.
I’m not even sure which was worse; the fact that the car was there at all, or the knowledge that I had been wandering about all morning with barely a thought for where its owners were. I glowered at it for a moment, disbelieving; trying to convince myself that it wasn’t just a coincidence; this wasn’t another needless panic about a perfectly common breed of car. I didn’t need to debate with myself for long. Even with the risk of further embarrassment, the case for inaction wasn’t one I was going to win.
I did at least pause long enough to take the precaution of scanning the street in case someone should be watching or even worse there was some sign of the owners, innocent or otherwise. About a dozen more swift cautious glances at the street, the buildings and behind me – always behind me – as I crossed the road told me that no one was around. No one was watching. There was no one in the car either. I made sure of that. The whole place was so still, the only sound of movement was of the distant wash of the tide on shingle.
The black car stood there trying to look innocent. I glared at it. It felt like an extension of the meeting with Rhys’s mother. Faintly unreal, like it was manipulating my emotions purely for the purpose of challenging my resolve. The difficulty began with the fact that I had no memory of the licence plate, not even of one digit. Somehow I’d thought the image of it would pop up in my mind as clear as day the moment I needed it. The letters on this vehicle’s plate proved that it had not been registered in Gloucestershire, but this taught me nothing when I realised any old car might well have moved home many times since its original registration. I cupped my hand to the glass and peered inside, trying to see if there was any sign of the owner’s identity. I believe I was expecting to find a photograph of me or something else profoundly obvious but there was nothing of the sort, of course.
A newspaper lay curling on the back seat but bar it being a tattered edition of yesterday’s local newspaper, it wasn’t conclusive evidence of anything. A tin of sweets had fallen to the floor but I wasn’t remotely confident that the memory had been accompanied by a particularly strong scent of liquorice. I moved round to the other side and cupped my hand again.
I could just make out a few scraps of paper on the shelf under the dashboard but salt and grime had crusted the glass and it was hard to distinguish more. With another quick glance along the deserted street and paying particular attention to my unguarded back, I ducked against the wing to peer inside. Hoping vehemently that no one would spot me in this position I wiped the glass, squinted against the gloom, and finally saw what the papers were.
The first was a till receipt for drinks and bore nothing but a few numbers and a code for the items bought. The second was a garage receipt but I couldn’t make out much from the scrawl of handwriting; the final scrap was just the remnant of an empty matchbook with no branding whatsoever. Frustrated, I wiped a little harder and squinted again at the handwritten note.
It was, it transpired, a receipt for fuel and a top-up of oil. I couldn’t make out the name of the garage. I rested my eyes for a moment before looking again.
There was, predictably enough, the word ‘Garage’. Something Garage, Garstang Road, Ca— I concentrated fiercely on the untidy lettering. Of course. Catterall. I enjoyed a moment of triumph at identifying this small garage in a small town on the road south from Lancaster; before crashing back down to earth with a very sudden bump indeed.
My first thought, after all that watching and waiting, was not ‘they’re here; they’ve found me’, but with a kind of desolate relief: It’s true.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_1653e5e7-43ef-5107-88a6-3407faeb9c55)
There was in my mind a certain terrifying wish for them to take hold of me again because then it would all be over and I could stop this ridiculous pretence that I could do anything about it. The other part of my brain, the sensible part, was already propelling my body sternly back up the hill towards shops and shelter from the stiff breeze, and down again towards the police station. I wasn’t intending to beg for sanctuary. I’d learned that lesson before and I wasn’t that desperate. Yet.
I had a small, very fragile germ of an idea and I suppose it was growing from the sudden shock of finding the car. Nothing else would have had the power to cut through the fog of helplessness that had followed me from that house. It was just a shade unfortunate that the relief of finding a new strategy – or indeed any strategy at all – subsequently led me to veer off course into the telling of downright lies.
The police station stood on the main shopping street opposite the post office. The street was called Great Darkgate Street and fittingly the police station was constructed in fearsome black stone and had crenulations. It squatted menacingly between dwellings and innocent shop fronts like a miniature fortress. Or perhaps that description was just indicative of what I wished it to be that day.
A woolly-haired sergeant looked up from her post behind the desk as I entered, clearly very busy and clearly very worn out by the world. She was not at all pleased by the interruption. She gave me a brief look up and down and I think she could scent fear, but mistook it for guilt.
“Yes?”
At her resigned bark, I withdrew my hands sharply from where they had been defensively thrust into my deep coat pockets and approached the desk. “I’d like to talk to someone about viewing Rhys Williams’ possessions, if that is possible. Are they available?”
“I don’t know. Do you have a case number?”
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t. He died. At Devil’s Bridge. The investigation has concluded, I believe. That’s why I’m here.” I counted breaths in an effort to calm my sense of urgency as she fussed with some documents, and stumbled blindly into telling my first lie. “His mother was told the possessions they found were ready to be collected. I believe someone is expecting me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh dear – perhaps I can speak to the policeman in charge? Is he available?”
“No.”
Failure stung. “Is there anyone else I can speak to?”
“No.”
Perhaps lying really did reap its own rewards. I was about to add a little truth when she abruptly deigned to expand a little. “You have to see Detective Inspector Griffiths. It’s his case.”
I waited. I don’t think I was being brave. I think the truth is I was numb. I don’t think I was really thinking anything except that I didn’t want to have to go back out onto those streets like this. So I waited, face moulded into something bordering on polite encouragement and at long last she mustered the energy to concede, “He’s back in tomorrow. Would you like to make an appointment?”
“On a Saturday?”
She peered up at me beneath lowered brows. Meaning, I think, to imply that a policeperson’s work didn’t stop for the weekend.
I said contritely, “Yes, please.”
“Eleven o’clock suit you?”
“Yes.”
“Name?”
This was where I made my second mistruth. Some wildness within me made me say after only the tiniest of hesitations: “Mrs Williams.”
The foolish thing about it was that technically I was still entitled to use that name. It was on my passport and on various other documents such as my account with the bank. However my latest ration book was most definitely in my maiden name and it was the one I had very recently taken to using on a daily basis so really the truth here was a touch blurred. I suppose if I’d been truly honest I’d have dictated Mrs Kate Williams (indicating divorcee) rather than Mrs Rhys Williams (indicating that a husband still had ownership of me).
I watched as her hand carefully entered the name in the large diary on her desk. Then the hand recorded the name of the case I’d mentioned in my enquiry. The pen paused hovering over the paper. After a moment she looked up and suddenly seemed considerably more human. “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Williams, I’m sure Inspector Griffiths will be glad to help you. I’m sorry he isn’t in today. It’s his mother’s birthday. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Lies really are an ugly thing, and they definitely do bring their own punishment. I walked out with my head wavering between the unexpected return of hope and the rather grimmer calculation of waiting another day and whether or not it mightn’t be wiser to abandon everything and make for the nearest train, and I only came to when I caught myself glaring fiercely at every man I met as I hurried along. My heartbeat kept intensifying until they were past and I was safe again. Which was ridiculous because if they were that close it was already far too late. And as it was, I ought to have been watching more closely for someone else because Jim Bristol was following me.
Or rather, remembering my terrible mistake yesterday with another man from the hotel, it would be more accurate to state that he was sauntering along at his ease some way behind me.
It was hard to be sure. He seemed to have his head thoroughly buried in his guidebook so he might have just been completing his much discussed tour of the town. As I hurried along another shopping street towards the promenade with half a plan of going from there to the hotel to retrieve my bags and pay my bill, I kept throwing little glances over my shoulder and at first I thought I had lost him. But the second time I looked, a carefully staged examination of a pair of gloves in the window of a gentleman’s outfitters, I saw him more clearly. He seemed to vanish just as I turned but I was confident now that I was not mistaken; he was following me.
It was exhausting work guarding myself from this specific threat at my back at the same time as remaining ever watchful for the uncertain threat of the two men who might approach from any side they chose. It was exhausting to the point that it made my brain ache. Part of the difficulty lay in the fact that with each passing day since the accident, I was growing less confident about my memory of those men from Lancaster. I knew I would recognise them if I saw them. I also knew they weren’t Jim Bristol and I’d managed to eliminate the other faces I’d met so far from my endless watch. But these days when I tried to fix my mind upon a definitive description, their eyes and noses slid away into nonsense. Sometimes the faces in my memory were the doctors at the hospital. Sometimes they had the faces of old friends like Gregory or even my husband. And the more I fought it, the more I found it hard to tell if any of it was real. As was happening now, in fact, with the uncertainty of being followed.
In the end, I opted for ambush. I turned a full circle and doubled back up the main shopping street. I crossed again as I neared the junction onto the street that led down to the pier. There was a tearoom there, just on the corner. Jim Bristol was still behind as I followed an old lady step for step around a man selling newspapers and finally slipped inside. I waited by the door for a few thrilling moments; nerves and eyes fixed on the street outside and eventually he obliged me by walking past. His coat today was a well-cut pre-war sports jacket. It was burgundy and unmistakeable. I shrank back in case he saw me, but he only seemed interested in the antics of a group of young soldiers on the opposite side of the road who were clearly on leave. They still wore their uniforms even for a day at the seaside.
I waited a while longer before finally acknowledging the waitress’s ushering and I allowed myself to be shown to a table in the heart of the room for a rest and a sandwich. It was an expensive bolthole. After the outlay of funds for the train journey and the hotel it was perilously close to being above my means but it was the perfect position. I was screened from the street outside by the line of crowded booths that were arranged along the high glass windows and yet I could see the car. It was still entirely deserted and ordinary.
The tearoom was reassuringly ordinary too. It was the sort that appealed to wealthy older couples and thankfully none had the fearsomely brutish form that my two would-be kidnappers must take. The patrons did unfortunately put me through the usual rigmarole of making my heart jolt every time one of them spoke in a tone that was reminiscent of Rhys’s voice or turned their head in just such a way to cause a momentary spark of recognition before it evaporated again, but I was getting used to that by now.
Then my solitude was disturbed by a loud call of ‘Katie’ and it was clear that someone had managed to surprise me here.
Mary James bore down on me like a whirlwind through a rose garden and to be honest it was a relief to find that it was only her. I’d been surveying the shadows around that parked car. I hadn’t imagined I could have been so inattentive to the traffic through the door.
Mary draped her coat over the back of the chair opposite, dropped like a bomb into its seat and stole a sip of my water while the bright whirlwind slowly settled into the standard garish print of her day dress. Modern frocks were frequently rather garish. The cynic in me suspected that it was a deliberate tactic – probably engineered by a committee somewhere – founded on the principle that we women might not notice the shortages and hardships of our daily lives if we were sheathed in bright things.
If that was their aim, it hadn’t worked for this woman. I had thought before that she was testing the peace for its tedium and now I saw she was actively working to break it at any cost. She was made up again today with rather too much drama about the eyes that outdid the customary flash of crimson upon her lips. Her frock was narrow-waisted but whereas the extreme restrictions of a girdle made her sister look angular and severe, Mary only looked impressively fashionable. I didn’t think the cost of my lunch would have meant much to her. She observed cheerfully, “It smells of cabbage in here. Are you having a nice day?”
She must have noticed my rather blank expression because she gave me an astonishingly genuine smile. She leaned in to rest her chin upon a hand and said in a confidential whisper that was anything but discreet, “I’ve been abandoned by my sister. Dear Aged Albert has decided he feels unwell. Oh no, nothing serious, don’t worry.” There was a waft of her hand in response to my automatic shift from bewilderment towards polite concern. “Being a doctor he is well versed in a variety of complaints that aren’t awful enough to mean he shouldn’t take his usual luncheon but still absolutely require his wife to tend him lovingly. It just means that our planned adventure has had to be postponed yet again so I’m at a loose end – and sulking like a five year old.”
I began to feel a stuffy prude. There was something truly disarming in this assault – there is no better word for it – by her determined good humour. I’d seen it at work on the men at the hotel and scorned their weakness then. But now I couldn’t help asking amiably, “Does your loose end happen to extend to having lunch? I’m just having mine. There’s some tea left in the pot if you can get a fresh cup.”
In many ways she was a very clever woman.
Mary shook her head. “I’ve already eaten, thank you. I couldn’t face waiting any longer. What are you going to do now? Do you fancy being my chaperone for the day? I fully intend to drop you as soon as my sister is free but if you don’t mind I’d love to borrow you for a while. We could catch the bus to Ynyslas.”
I thawed and only then did it occur to me to wonder if she was somehow a rogue sent to winkle me out of my hiding place. But she didn’t leave much room for scepticism because she was already hurrying me into finishing my tea and in truth, I wasn’t particularly hard to persuade. That fatalistic part of my brain that wanted to end this hadn’t faded away with the brief rest in this tearoom. The defiance had revived a touch but that was all. If they had found me, this was it. If Jim really was part of this, I had no hope of evading anyone if they chose to come and get me. And if he wasn’t, I didn’t want to pin my hopes on being able to hide away in my room till the next day, attempting to turn the hotel into a garrison with the other guests cast as my guards; achieving nothing and doing nothing until the time came to face the race across town to my meeting with the inspector at the police station tomorrow. That was the kind of waiting game that felt it must leave scars on the mind.
So I paid my bill and climbed to my feet with absolutely no expectation other than that I would soon know precisely what part she meant to play if I followed her.
That being said, the first step outside was taken a little less recklessly. Regardless of my decision I couldn’t help glancing behind as we stepped out on to the pavement but if Jim Bristol was there, I didn’t see him. I didn’t see those two men either. Their car was still waiting serenely beneath the university building. I was just checking the darkened telephone booth and deciding that it was likewise definitely empty when the woman beside me suddenly let out a wild shriek and leapt into the road. Quite understandably, it was a moment or two before I realised the rapidly approaching car was a red Rover 10 and her scream was a cry of delight.
It was delight though, and now Mary was laughing like a maniac. She was standing there in the middle of the road, striking a pose of careless elegance as she turned back to me, eyes bright and absolutely determined to defy the box-like nose of the car that squealed to a stop, quivering, barely inches from her knees.
“Are you insane?” Adam didn’t sound remotely amused. I suppose it was Mary’s way of proving the cost of following her sister’s orders to ensnare her man; it was just unfortunate for her that her sister wasn’t watching to learn the lesson and we were. I watched Mary sashay around to the driver’s door and found myself alternating between fascination that anyone could really act like that and make it seem such a natural part of herself, and watching the road for any of the men who might be after me. There was also a part of me – the wiser part – that was adding Adam to the list and contemplating scuttling off while he and Mary were distracted. In the road, Mary had come to a rest with her hand laid artlessly along the top of the driver’s door. Her coat was trailing from her other hand onto the grimy tarmacadam.
“Yes, I’ve gone mad,” she admitted firmly. She’d noticed the coat’s plight and draped it carelessly about her shoulders with about the same elegance as a millionaire with a fox fur. “As I’ve been telling everyone who’ll listen, I’m at a loose end and acting like a five year old.”
“Most five year olds that I’ve met have learned a little road sense.”
Mary was unsquashable. But she did at least moderate her voice so that it was a glimpse of her real self. It had the bizarre effect of making her whole appearance – clothes, make-up and all – seem like borrowed plumage applied under the strict supervision of another. “Where are you going? You promised to take me with you.”
I saw him suppress a smile as he shifted the car out of gear. “A castle.”
“I love castles.” The idea that her charm was a front was gone again. She chose to be this way too. A finger ran along the top of the doorframe and I swear she actually simpered.
Adam only raised an eyebrow. Mary laughed. “All right, I don’t like castles; they’re boring. I was going to catch a bus to the beach but it’s hardly the time of year for it and perhaps you’d let me come with you instead? It’d be so nice to actually go somewhere, even if it is a castle. Please? We’ll be quiet, I promise; won’t we Katie?”
I baulked at this sudden inclusion. Now I really did wish I’d taken the opportunity to slip away. She jerked her head and beckoned me closer to add weight to her plea but I gave a quick silent negative and remained where she had left me, hovering foolishly on the edge of the pavement. His gaze followed hers to fix on me for the first time and as a respite from the usual terrors, the embarrassment was excruciating.
I made it worse by saying; “If he’s got things to do, I’m sure he’d much rather be on his own.”
Mary rolled her eyes. “Oh, ignore her; she just doesn’t want to admit that she’d much prefer your castle to my beach. And she’s got to come. She’s playing the part of the maiden aunt to my youthful heroine. Please?”
Adam’s resigned sigh was carried on the light breeze. With a triumphant smirk at me, Mary darted round to the passenger door and slid in. She fixed me with an expectant stare but Adam was already climbing out and dragging open the rear passenger door for me. He gave a brief jerk of his head. “Come on,” he said with that slight smile of his that might have been teasing, or it might not.
I moved towards the open door. He wasn’t looking at me any more but that may well have been because he too was noticing the approaching bus. It was squeaking huffily to a halt behind the stationary car instead of running me down. All the same I flinched aside instinctively. And then I gave a self-conscious laugh that couldn’t help turning into a lift of my eyes to Adam’s face when I realised he’d been sharing the thought too. But he’d already suppressed his own reaction and was chivvying me into the back seat so that he could press the door shut on me and release the impatiently idling bus. Then, with an apologetic lift of his hand, he climbed in and prepared to send the car cruising away down to the promenade.
He didn’t even get as far as releasing the handbrake. Mary exclaimed ‘Jim!’ and a hand met the door handle to my left as a different male voice said cheerfully, “Room for one more?” Then Jim Bristol was sliding in beside me to share the cramped confines of the ridiculously small back seat and smiling at me while I was fumbling with the door catch on the other side with every intention of getting straight out again. Unfortunately Adam had already sent the car on its way and Jim was distracting me with an idle pleasantry on the delight of meeting friends until I got confused between the impulse to escape and the impulse not to be rude. And then it was too late.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_97ea02c5-3708-5652-8e53-9e93476d3ebe)
Our escape from the town was a lurch into a different kind of tension. The wide curve of the Victorian seafront promenade vanished at the turn beneath the vast art deco King’s Hall with its amusements and tea dances, and it seemed only a moment later that we were emerging from the crowded crush of shopping streets to trace a course inland. With these two men in the car it felt like I was a captive but I couldn’t be. I couldn’t be. Not really.
If I told myself that enough times perhaps I would believe it.
Beside me, Jim was leaning slightly forwards so that he could join Mary’s animated conversation in the front. I think he’d guessed pretty quickly that all he was going to get from me was a thin-lipped smile. We were literally inches apart – the car was so narrow that his knee kept knocking mine. I had felt trapped by him at Devil’s Bridge but the muscular presence I’d experienced there had been nothing compared to the inescapable closeness to him here. He seemed insufferably strong in this tiny space. It wasn’t hard to see that this was a man who had taken a firm grip upon the trials of army life during the war and found he was more than capable of meeting them. He was also truly very handsome. He was, as I have said, leaning forwards slightly and it cast his profile into elegant relief so that his jaw was perfectly defined with just the barest grain of a fair shadow beginning to show. His mouth was mobile and the brief gleam of teeth as he smiled in response to something Adam said was very engaging. None of this really fitted the part of sinister collaborator to those two men. I also wouldn’t have expected their only weapon to be the well-thumbed tourist guide now held in his right hand. I permitted myself a glance at the reflection of Adam’s face in his wing mirror. Where Jim shone with amusement, Adam’s expression was calm and concentrated, and I couldn’t tell what either man was thinking.
I did at least recognise the road we took. We crossed the river at Machynlleth and traced the winding road northwards into deep craggy valleys that had long since settled down for the coming winter. I began to feel a vague nervous excitement about where we might be going. My trips with Rhys had only rarely taken me inland. Rain-soaked mountains oppressed him he had said and our filial visits to the area had only really reached as far as busy towns and fishing ports where he might be able to steal some shots of the locals.
Wherever Adam was taking us today, it was safe to say populated areas were not his target. The car swung left off the main road and rolled gingerly down an uneven lane as Adam navigated his way without needing to refer to a map. I briefly toyed with the idea of panicking but I didn’t do it and eventually, with a wide valley below us and the distinctive sweep of the lower range of Cadair Idris above, the car drew into a wide gravel lay-by and the engine was silenced.
It wasn’t a popular destination. There was no house, and no prison to match my imagination either. Only two other drivers had managed to conserve enough fuel for the trip to this remote spot; a blue Morris and what looked like a farmer’s run-about. Nothing moved. The hush was sudden and very intense, and I sat there in a questioning stillness, listening for any sound at all, until Mary tugged on her door handle with such a clunk that I believe Jim and I both jumped.
Jim laughed. She climbed out, shaking the creases out of her skirt. She gave a little turn. “Well.”
“Well indeed.” Adam was out and dragging open my door. I think Jim had expected me to slither meekly out after him at his side but I didn’t. I climbed out through the door Adam opened for me and stood there while he locked up the car feeling absurdly like I was expecting him to shield me.
I don’t know what from because there was nothing here except a crude lay-by and a footpath into the short scrubby woodland on the far side.
Adam spoke over my head across the roof to the other two. “Ready for a cultural delight?”
“If this cultural delight involves any more sheep droppings, I’m staying in the car.” Mary was examining the gravel beneath her flimsy shoes. “Why are we here again?”
Adam pocketed his keys and set off towards the dense little woodland. “I’m here to do research. Jim’s here because it saves trying to sidestep the petrol shortage by paying for a hired car if he uses my fuel instead, Kate’s here because she didn’t know how to refuse and you’re here, I believe, because you threw yourself into the road and begged to come, but forgive me if I’m wrong.”
The footpath was wider than I’d thought. It was obviously well used. I trailed along in their wake beneath supple limbs of overgrown hazel that swiftly closed in overhead. I couldn’t hear a thing beyond the whisper of old leaves in the branches and the distant questioning mew from somewhere up above that was a buzzard. It was very hard to judge whether we were still near the valley floor or rising as I thought. Then the tangled thicket opened to clear rocky grassland and I had to forget everything, even every little doubt, for a moment.
Adam had stepped aside to let us pass. To our left, the land fell dramatically away to a vast glacial valley that curved gently away towards the distant sea. To my right stood Adam and beyond him were the shattered remains of a castle. The landscape ached with the memory of the lives that had sheltered within those walls.
Mary took control of the scene. She cast a look around with wide eyes, dismissed it all with a shrug – because that was what she was expected to do – and then turned back and pouted. “Go on, Mr Adam Hitchen: explain. What’s so special about a mouldy old ruin?”
It transpired that this was Castell y Bere, a Llewellyn strong-hold and an 800-year-old monument to a defiant people and the vital trade routes they had guarded. What made it particularly special to me was that this was the first place in days that allowed me the peace in which to absolutely set aside my fears and even my scrutiny of my companions’ motives.
Even Jim left me alone here. He seemed content to watch the artist from afar as she settled comfortably on top of the cool stones of the curtain wall, pencil in hand and the faithful sketchbook lying open across her lap. Mary had long ago vanished to seek excitement elsewhere and Adam was out of sight on the other side of the structure, doubtless writing notes and staring intently at the tumbled stones by his feet. That left only me and Jim and, as I have said, he was content to leave me alone now. He was sitting on a broken flight of stairs about fifteen yards away, hands about his knees and idly contemplating the view.
I sketched in the turn of the river as it snaked across the floodplain to disappear behind Jim’s shoulder. That done, I was lucky enough to discover that I still had some water in the very stale flask that lurked in the bottom of my bag. Tipping a few drops into its metal cap, I began to add the little hints of watercolour here and there which would bring my painting to life. No one would notice that this whole piece was composed just so that I could make a sly portrait of the man in the foreground.
“Are you painting?” Mary suddenly reappeared and threw herself down beside me. “May I see?”
She took the sketchbook with her customary self-assurance and leafed interestedly through the pages. She paused here and there to ask a question about the subject or scene and it was very sweet how she took care not to smudge the drying paint.
“Who’s he?” She wasn’t looking at my cunningly signed and dated record of Jim’s presence. I saw with a jolt that she had discovered the sheaves of paper that I kept as little treasures inside the cover.
“Rhys,” I said, carefully scrutinising her face for her reaction. “My husband.”
“Your husband?”
“Ex,” I clarified. Her reaction was reassuring. He meant nothing to her, except more idle intrigue.
“Oh,” she said softly, examining the vivid green eyes as they stared insolently back at her. It had been a good likeness; in those days my figure work had emulated the flowing energy of those portraits by El Greco whose subjects seem to be perpetually in motion. This quick study of my husband’s face had captured his expressive good looks with the dramatic lighting that had been my specialism. Rhys had always claimed that the intense shadows made him look sulky. If the cap fits, I had later thought, but not dared say it.
Mary asked, “When was that? Your divorce, I mean.”
“We divorced last year. That portrait is from ten years before that – the year we were married.”
“Oh,” she said again, reading the pathetically soppy inscription that recorded the date: 12 June ’36. “Is that how you met? Through painting?”
“It was,” I confirmed. This at least was a relatively painless piece of my past. I had been a freshly arrived young student working under my uncle. There was no embarrassment in remembering the crucial first exhibition I’d helped the old man hang and how it had also been my first introduction to his fearsomely precise photographer friend. I’d thought Rhys was the most inspiring man I’d ever met. He’d liked me too. He’d liked my youthful enthusiasm for his old friend’s small Cirencester gallery and my optimism allied with the fact that, as a student of art, I was almost as passionate about the scope of Rhys’s work as he was.
Mary was examining his face a little more closely, perhaps reading the traces of the rise and fall of my marriage in the uneven brush strokes. Then she returned the wad to its home and handed the sketchbook back. “We thought you were a spinster. You’re so self-contained.”
That made me smile. “No.”
We sat for a while in a companionable silence, her contemplating the view, me finishing my painting, before, with a sigh, Mary abruptly twisted in her seat to draw her feet up onto the broad stonework and began fiddling with a bracelet. I painted for a while longer but then she sighed again, more loudly, and I realised what she wanted.
“Is something the matter?” I finally asked, just as I was supposed to do. She was staring at the metal band that encircled her wrist and her face had set into an unusually serious frown that was somehow very endearing.
She said abruptly, “It’s irresponsible, don’t you think?”
“What is?”
“The fuss they’ve been making about the Royal Wedding. They’re deliberately bombarding us with the fairytale of being a princess and being swept off one’s feet by a beau and it’s unachievable.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “But the bride in question is a princess.”
“Don’t laugh; it’s true. It sets an unobtainable standard and gives rise to all sorts of pressures and expectations. And they keep making such a big statement out of the fact the poor woman has had to hoard her clothing coupons like the rest of us as if that’s a good thing. I’m so heartily sick of having to make-do-and-mend.”
I caught a brief fluttering glance beneath those elegant lashes. It made me say blandly, “Well at least if you wanted to escape all the fuss, I suppose you’ve come to the right place.”
I saw her blink at me incredulously and then blink again. “Are you being serious? You are being serious.” She laughed. “Haven’t you noticed that the town is overflowing with people and events and tea dances? It’s November: the town should be battened down for the closed season and instead all the usual summer entertainments are out in force. It’s like that tale of the swallow that stayed for winter or something. They’ve got the funicular running up and down the hill for heaven’s sake and I should know because it was the only activity remotely pertaining to a holiday that I managed to do yesterday.”
I stared at her blankly. I really hadn’t noticed.
She continued, “It all makes a bit more sense now that I know you were married. Your independence, I mean. We had wondered if you were a real oddity; you know, one of those aggressively intellectual women who purse their lips and forge their own path come what may and are destined ultimately to decay into irritating habits and dressing in frills for dinner like the Miss Bartlemans.”
Something unguarded in me made me say rather dryly, “I’m flattered that you think I’m an intellectual.”
I’d surprised her. Obviously she didn’t expect me to react at all. She blinked at me and drew her coat more closely around her waist. There was a chill in the light breeze here. Having secured her coat with its belt, she then returned her attention to the heavy bracelet around her wrist. I saw the corners of her lips curve. “I suppose it’s natural that you wouldn’t feel the burden of being in a nation obsessed by a wedding. You’ve done your stint in acting the part of a romantic. You’re free to be alone now and no one can judge you for it.”
I had to raise my eyebrows at that. She cast a sly sideways glance at me and grinned.
“All right, everyone gets judged. All the time. But it’s not the same, you know it’s not. A few years ago I drove ambulances – at least I did when the old drivers let me which wasn’t all that often – and looked glamorous while I did it and everyone said it was a jolly good thing because we were keeping the image of the merry English Rose alive so that the troops had something to dream of while they were laying down their lives to defend us. Now the men have come home again and it’s important we still keep hauling out our tired old glamour even if it is all getting rather worn and thin, because now our job is to be swept away by marriage like the blushing females they dreamed of.”
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- Жанр: Книги о войне, Современная зарубежная литература
- Язык: Книги на английском языке
- Объём: 440 стр. 8 иллюстраций
- ISBN: 9780008279561
- Дата выхода книги: 29 декабря 2018
- Версия: 📚 Электронная книга
While the bells of a Royal Wedding peel out to the fading echoes of war, danger stalks the coastline of Wales…Wales, 1947Injured and terrified after an attempted abduction, desperation drives artist Kate Ward to the idyllic scene of her ex-husband’s recent suicide. Labelled a hysterical, grieving divorcée, no one believes she is being pursued by two violent men demanding answers she cannot give. Not the police, not the doctors, and not the guests at the Aberystwyth hotel she has come to in an attempt to find out what happened to her charismatic photographer ex-husband, and why her identity – and her life – are now at risk.Kate can trust no one, not even the reclusive war-veteran-turned-crime-novelist, Adam Hitchen, a reserved widower and the only source of kindness in a shadowy world of suspicion and fear. And as ghosts old and new rise to haunt her, Kate must rely on all her strength and courage to uncover the shocking truth hidden within a twisted web of lies…
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- A4 PDF - открывается в программе Adobe Reader
Другие форматы:
- Сохраните файл на свой компьютер или телефоне.
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