The War Widow

Chapter 2

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.”