The War Widow Read online

  “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 t
o 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

  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 lik
e 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.