The Widow's Tale

Title Page
When I ran out of the house
Christ but it’s cold. I spent half an hour
I walked over to Cley this morning
The young slip of a policewoman who
Woke up last night about four o’clock
This morning I just about managed
Those first couple of years we used
Today, it seems, is laundry day
I once went on a retreat, when I was in
This place is so God-damned cold
Losing one’s husband really is a complete bummer 
One of the surprises, re the sudden onset 
A couple of months ago I did a bit of cursory Googling
I’ve decided to sell the house in France
The wind is up. It’s got all the dogs 
It’s like an ache. Or a sort of emptiness 
Sometime in late November, about six weeks
Not a good day, by any means 
I seem incapable of stringing two decent
I really can’t imagine anything worse than
I’ve come up with a new way of eating
Ginny’s texts and messages have 
I have bought myself a new car! 
I bought a couple of the Sunday newspapers
A couple of days ago I was driving
If it had been John that had had an affair
Even now, I’m at a loss as to why I
It seems that north Norfolk is in the grip of an
I never told a soul. Not even Ginny
Popped into the letting agents this
I have this idea sometimes that John
I’ve never had that many friends. 
By the time we got back from 
Spent most of this morning 
It’s an odd sort of word. Widow 
I didn’t set out to pay a visit to Walsingham 
I’m like a bloody sentry 
My first thought was that I was being mugged 
I am, there’s no use me denying it 
Talking of saints
I’m not entirely sure what I was
Right up until the day I jumped into my car 
I couldn’t now say for certain 
I’ve still not got much of an appetite 
You hear about these couples 
There’s a terrific film called The Awful Truth
I’m rather taken with my new binoculars
I remember going to Rome sometime in the 1970s 
My daily walks have gradually been 
If you’re not careful 
I was in the pub the other night 
I just want to see him. 
Things seem to have fallen 
I very nearly buggered things up this morning 
I’ve gone too far
I’ve had enough 
I haven’t left the village 
Not that long after I first arrived 
About a week after John died 
I’ve been at it again. 
I’m considering buying a map of Britain 
Apparently, I just pull the door 
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright

W
hen I ran out of the house I don’t think I had any real idea where I was going. Although I must have had an inkling that I was doing more than just popping out, or I wouldn’t have packed a bag.

By the time you get to my age you pick up your keys, purse, specs case, etc. quite instinctively whenever you set foot out of the front door. But I’d also managed to grab a couple of fistfuls of clothes and stuffed them into a hold-all, so I must’ve known that I didn’t intend to be back for at least a day or two.

Great chunks of the journey are decidedly patchy. But I do remember winding down the window at one point and screaming. I was having trouble breathing. No – that’s not quite right. I felt as if I was losing my mind. So I wound down the window and put my head out, in the hope that the wind in my face would help snap me out of whatever terrible and terrifying place I’d got myself caught up in. Then I remember screaming, long and hard, out into the night.

I’m just relieved I didn’t cause an accident. Honest to God, I could have easily killed myself and anyone else who happened to cross my path. That stupid Jag is too bloody big and too bloody powerful. I’ve never liked it. But I’d left my lovely little Audi round at Ginny’s, so the Jag was all there was.

Erratic.

That’s the word I imagine the police would have used if they’d encountered me. ‘The crazy woman in the stupid car was driving erratically when we pulled her over’ is what they would’ve written in their report.

I remember finding myself on the M11 – a motorway for which I hold a fair bit of affection, if that’s not a totally ludicrous thing to say, since I also have tremendous affection for other things, such as old brooches and small furry animals and even one or two people. But one way or another I found myself heading north on the M11. Then it was just a matter of whether I stopped off at Cambridge, or turned right and headed over towards Walberswick and Southwold or carried on up to the north Norfolk coast. And it was clear straight away which option I’d take.

Prior to that I’d just wanted to get the hell out of London. I’d somehow managed to find my way onto the M25, then headed east. I remember that series of soulless underpasses near Waltham Abbey. Then off onto the M11. Then up here.

I filled the tank somewhere just short of Cambridge and asked for directions. And perhaps because he was dealing with a woman – and, come to that, a woman with a puffy, tear-stained face – the young lad in the garage simply suggested I follow signs for Norwich, then pick up signs for any of the towns along the north coast. Then I left him to his magazine and the two of us carried on with our lives.

So by then I must have been a little more coherent.
Although I’d be hard pressed now to say with any confidence whether it was eight o’clock or midnight – only that it was probably somewhere in between.

If the rest of the journey is vague it’s a different sort of vagueness, born out of exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion, perhaps, but quite different from the lunacy of that first hour or so. I remember reaching the coast road and turning west along it and, a little later, pulling off into the village and squeezing down the narrow lanes. And suddenly being aware of little houses all around me, with their lights out and, presumably, people sleeping in them. I remember pulling up by the quay, yanking on the handbrake and turning off the engine. And how incredibly quiet and dark it was. I didn’t even get out to stretch my legs or fill my lungs. I just sat there and listened for a good five or ten minutes. Then I climbed into the back seat and pulled my coat over me and apart from turning over once or twice in the night the next thing I remember is waking up about six o’clock this morning, with the sky just beginning to lighten and me dying for a pee.

I’ve never been particularly big on breakfast. A cup of tea and a ciggie and I’m fairly happy, so this morning was a regular breakfast, just without the cup of tea. I’d snuck out onto the saltmarshes to relieve myself. Then sat in the car for a little while. I strolled up and down the quay a couple of times. And eventually headed up into the village.

I suppose by then I’d decided to see about some accommodation. My original plan was to book myself
into the hotel, for nostalgia’s sake – just for a night or two. But as I was wandering up and down I saw the little letting agents. And I thought, why the hell not? So I went back to the car and checked myself in the mirror, to see precisely how deranged I currently looked. Then, on the stroke of nine o’clock, as soon as the girl flipped over the ‘Open/Closed’ sign, I sauntered in.

She showed me round three quite different places – one huge, very swish and terribly minimal … one ramshackle affair on the edge of the marshes … and this rinky little place in the middle of the village, which was by far the cheapest but the price was really neither here nor there. The reason I plumped for it is the fact that it’s tucked away. Which is rather strange, given that I only legged it out of London last night because I felt so dreadfully hemmed in. But clearly being tucked away up here in Norfolk is quite different from being hemmed in down there.

Back at the office – or shop, or whatever you’d call it – whilst the girl was tapping away at her keyboard I slowly leaned forward to have a peek at her screen. As far as I could tell, the cottage wasn’t booked for a clear month or so. The girl did her best to stop me looking, as if she had personal access to the mainframe of the bloody Pentagon, but I’m long past giving a donkey’s dick about what some girl her age thinks of the behaviour of a woman of mine.

I’ve taken it for a week. God only knows what I’ll be up to seven days from now. I’m currently finding it difficult getting from one minute to the next. It was only when I’d shut the door behind me and dropped my bag on the
floor that I finally felt as if I’d landed. Then promptly burst into tears. Which is possibly some kind of record of restraint, on my part. I’ve usually had at least a couple of crying jags by mid-morning.

The only thing on my to-do list right now is to get my head down and grab a little shut-eye. I don’t want to hang about. Don’t like waking from a nap to find it any darker than when I closed my eyes. I find that troubling in the extreme.

On the first page of the ‘Welcome Pack’ I’m reliably informed that this ‘fisherman’s cottage’ was once home to a family of nine, which is clearly a veiled way of telling all those idiots who’d rented the place, imagining that it could quite comfortably accommodate two adults and two children, to quit their whining and abandon any hope of getting their money back.

But the cottage really is incredibly tiny. As I come down the stairs I have to lean back, into a sort of limbo, to avoid smacking my head, and I’m only five foot five. Anyway, a family of nine may very well have squeezed in here at some point, but that’s not to say they were particularly happy as they sat at the fireside, mending their nets or whittling sticks or whatever they did to while away the hours. They were probably paupers and utterly miserable. There’s enough room for me, but I wouldn’t want to be inviting too many guests around for dinner. It’s a widow’s cottage is what it is. Maybe I’ll carve a little sign out of the breadboard and nail it up above the front door.

The walls’ many lumps and bumps are concealed beneath several acres of woodchip. The carpets are of the industrial variety. I have taken down one or two framed pictures to avoid offending my aesthetic sensibilities. They now languish in art-prison, beneath the stairs. They should count themselves lucky. At least they have some hope of parole for good behaviour, which is more than can be said for the half-dozen plastic air-fresheners which I found tucked away behind various curtains and perched on top of cupboards, all now bagged up in the outside bin.

The single bookshelf offers the usual bank-holiday reading – P.D. James … Jean Plaidy … Winston Graham. I can’t say I’ve ever met anyone who’s actually read a Winston Graham. I imagine they’re published exclusively for men, to read on their holidays in England. Not to read, perhaps, but to hold in their lap while their wives read. Or until they fall asleep.

A little later now. I’m not entirely sure what time it is. I took my watch off earlier to do a bit of washing-up and forgot to put it back on. But it’s getting dark.

There’s a tiny TV, with quite a reasonable picture. But I’m resisting turning it on. I’m still a little stunned by the fact that I’m actually up here. And my new surroundings are giving me something to chew on. Otherwise I’d have to have the TV on. Or the radio. Or possibly both.

C
hrist but it's cold. I spent half an hour this morning wrestling with the controls, trying to generate any sort of heat, but the whole system is run on Economy 7, which is next to bloody useless. My attempt at running a bath was an utter failure. All I'll say is that if that boiler isn't capable of providing enough hot water for me to poach, chin-deep, at least once a day then the two of us are going to have a serious falling-out.

Lit a fire which brightened things up a little, but at this rate the small bag of coal and the two or three logs are going to be used up in no time at all. So I have started a little list: ‘Logs … coal … kindling', closely followed by ‘booze … fags'. Maybe those last two should go at the top. I added ‘Milk … bread … etc.' almost as an afterthought. I'm not very big on eating at the moment. The drinking remains quite constant, but the eating comes and goes.

Called in at both pubs last night. The first has been heavily gastrophised and is nothing like how I remember it, with too many lights and too few people making altogether too much noise. I suspect the place is roundly despised by the locals as the clientele seems to consist almost exclusively of boaty types and second-home owners. Whoever they are, they certainly didn't lack self-confidence, on any number of issues. You must've been
able to hear them halfway down the street. And they seemed to take quite a bit of interest in me. Not to the point of actually speaking to me, of course. Just sly little glances in my direction, as I sat in the corner, doing my crossword, steadfastly ignoring them.

The other pub – the Lord Nelson – is more traditional and doesn't seem to have changed too much, with a low ceiling and barrels of beer propped up behind the counter and lampshades that haven't been wiped in twenty years. The kind of place John would've liked. But at least the drinkers at the bar were fully engaged with one another and didn't seem to give a toss about me. Perhaps it was because I was onto my third or fourth drink by then, but as I sat there I could feel myself begin to relax a little. To the point that I started to look up from my paper and peer around the place. And when the barman came along and took my empty glass he gave me a smile that made me feel, perhaps quite mistakenly, that there was a real kindness to it – so much so that I very nearly burst into tears again.

It's true what they say about the kindness of strangers. In fact, to be honest, I haven't the first idea what it is they say about such things. All I know is that some unsolicited kind word from the chap behind the counter in the newsagent's or the boozer has a way of lifting the heart, and breaking it at the same time.

Of course, I'm an utter wreck at the moment, so my judgement is probably a little skewed. The emotional stuff I can more or less weather. At least you can convince
yourself that it's somehow helping you let off some steam. It's all the other stuff – the panic attacks and so forth – I can't be doing with. I find it hard to put a positive spin on that.

When I left London in such a hurry I was aware that I'd been seriously jumpy for a good couple of hours. I often am these days. I hate this time of year, when it starts to get dark before the afternoon's even over. I'm afraid of the dark. Can you credit it? I'm sixty-three and I'm frightened of the bloody dark.

But it was worse than that. I'd had a bath, with a few essential oils dribbled into it (‘Yes, I'd like an oil to stop me being terrified all the time …'), and had a bit of something to eat. I was watching telly and I could feel myself getting more and more agitated. I don't think it had anything to do with what I was watching. I can't even remember now what was on. I just had this irresistible urge to get up and start moving about the place. Like some wild animal in a cage.

Then, suddenly, it seems I'd made a decision, and I was grabbing clothes and swearing and locking up the house. Then I was in the car, and heading north as quickly as possible, which was already too late. Because I needed to be out of London …
now
. Needed to be far, far away – immediately. With luck, I might just about manage to get clear of the city without actually killing somebody. And if not, then what the hell.

Whatever propelled me felt utterly instinctive. Almost primitive. Which makes it sound quite natural and even reassuring. But it wasn't. It wasn't like that at all.

I bought a bottle of Gordon's and a box of tonics from the Spar shop this afternoon, along with a couple of bottles of Sauv Blanc, a few nibbles, etc. The woman on the till was quite impassive but I have a funny feeling that round here one's alcoholic purchases are quite closely monitored. Ah well – fuck 'em. For all I care they can put a big blackboard up on the wall and keep a tally of my daily intake. I'll write it up myself.

I assumed I'd also be able to pick up a few bags of coal there, but for some reason they don't stock it, so I had to drive a couple of miles out to some windswept garage. How do you cope, I wondered, if you don't happen to own a car? What if I never quite muster the courage to leave this neck of the woods and end up hanging about until the old legs pack up? I'd have to have it delivered, I suppose. I'd be the old dear with her face up at the window, waiting for the coal.

I was halfway to the garage before I noticed something flapping on the windscreen. A parking ticket. And suddenly there I go again. That terrible tripping-up of oneself, when my first thought is that I'm going to get an earful from John for being so stupid. And the next thought is, Well, actually, no. Far from it. Because John is dead, and therefore not about to give a stuff about parking tickets or any other thing.

The whole sequence of thoughts is over in a flash. It's as if I'm just footling along, come round a bend and disappear into a walloping great hole. It's the same hole.
I just keep finding new ways of approaching it. If I have a hunch what's coming I can sometimes steer myself around it. Somehow give myself a fraction of a second in which to swerve. But most of the time I just go sailing in.

So yet another of the nation's unsuspecting garage employees is forced to witness the strange, snivelling lady. Thankfully, this one was good enough to help me load the coal and logs into the boot of the car. From the forecourt I could see the sea all laid out below me and was tempted to have a little drive down there, but ultimately decided against it. Couldn't quite commit. So I drove back to the village and pulled up as near as possible to the cottage (which is to say, not very close at all) and discovered that the bags of coal in particular weigh an absolute ton and it took me about twenty minutes to drag everything down the alley to my widow's cottage, by which time I was dripping with sweat.

Parked the car in the village car park where I've been assured I can leave it all week without getting a ticket, but managed to scrape one of the wings as I squeezed through the gateposts. Strange. I scrape the paintwork of the car and it doesn't bother me. But an hour or so earlier I get a parking ticket and it feels like the end of the world.

I don't really feel like walking, or frankly doing anything much at the moment. But I thought I should at least get outside for ten minutes before the last of the daylight goes.

I think that's why I first fell for this part of East Anglia.
You have the sense of so much sky above you. So much space. Which can be a bit overwhelming. One feels exposed, somehow – vulnerable. But the saltmarshes, which are actually a good deal greener than their name suggests, take the edge off the bleakness. They give it a kindness. And there's that word again.

Winter suits this landscape. Winter and autumn. Those are the only seasons I've been up here. I'm not sure I'd be inclined to visit it any other time of the year.

I only walked a couple of hundred yards but it was enough to get clear of all the houses and hear the wind in my ears. The tide was in, which is not to suggest that there were waves crashing about the place, only that all the little creeks were full. The saltmarshes are like a sponge. When the tide comes in the ground turns soggy. The tide goes out and the sponge dries out a bit.

I was just wandering around when the sun came out for a couple of moments. Nothing spectacular, but enough to feel the warmth on one's face. I thought of that poem by one of the First World War poets – Owen, I think – called ‘Move him into the sun'. About some poor wretch who's half-dead, and how one of his comrades suggests they drag him into the sun, to try and revive him.

Well, I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sun and waited – for it to revive me … to heal me … to help me out in any shape or form. I could actually feel it failing to penetrate. Feel it failing to do its stuff. I think I could have probably stood there all afternoon and it still wouldn't have done me any good.

Now at least I'm tucked up by the fire. I'm tempted to do a bit of reading. But I know the moment I start I'll just nod off. I'm doing my best not to watch any telly. I'm not sure why exactly. It's not as if I consider the TV to be particularly evil or anything. It's just that if I watch it I forget where I am, and when I suddenly remember I go into a bit of a panic. Whereas if I just sit and stare at the fire I know that I'm here. I still worry, but after a while it's not so bad. Which must sound mightily pathetic, I'm sure, but right now that'll just have to do.