The Widow's Tale (19 page)

I
've gone too far. This time I've really done it.

I need help. I'm not fucking kidding. I need someone to save me from myself.

I got there early. So early that, having crept off the path, through the trees and up to my wall I realised that I still had quite a while to wait. And, after five or ten minutes, how incredibly tired I was. I thought maybe I'd have a cup of coffee. Then promptly fell asleep.

When I woke, Paul's wife was fiddling in the back of the car, strapping the children into their seats. At least, that's what I assumed she was doing.

So I got myself ready. Paul tends to leave about half an hour later. So after another ten or fifteen minutes I slipped over the wall and crept forward. Right down to the edge of the trees.

God knows how long I waited. It's not important. What's important is that I was now close enough to the cottage that when the front door opened I could hear it from where I was hiding. I felt excited. That's an understatement. I felt as if I was going to pass out. And as soon as I heard the latch I got to my feet and headed up onto the lawn and across the garden. I wanted to intercept him before he reached the car.

What threw me was the fact that he had the children
with him. The little girl in his arms, and the little boy walking. I really hadn't expected that at all. What was the wife doing if not fastening the children into their seats? Who knows. That's history now. The little boy was the first one I encountered. He just sort of froze and looked up at me. And I think it was probably his reaction which caused Paul to stop.

Christ, but I wanted so much for it just to have been the two of us. But what was I going to do but carry on.

‘Paul,' I said. ‘I need to talk to you …'

That's all I wanted. To tell him about John's death. And how utterly miserable I've been. I think I also wanted to tell him how much our little affair had meant to me, but that I am beginning to think that it completely screwed up what was left of my love for my husband. And is now stopping me coming to terms with his death.

I suppose that's quite a lot, but I could've said it quickly. And then been on my way. But he looked so utterly stumped. And so thoroughly worried. As if I might grab his precious children or attempt some other crazy stunt.

Then, as I looked at him, the strangest thing happened. His expression … in fact, his whole face began to change. His features altered and he was slowly transformed – from the Paul I knew was meant to be there into someone quite different. And altogether wrong.

He carried on staring at me for another few seconds. And I felt the world begin to flex and bend again.

‘Are you sure you've got the right man?' he said.

And now the children were beginning to get upset. The
little girl in his arms had started crying. The little boy retreated behind his father's legs. But it wasn't the kids I was worried about. It was me. And it didn't help that the man before me looked so concerned. For my general welfare. Then he was telling me that Paul – the man who used to live here – had moved to France, a good six or seven years ago.

I looked the man full in the face now. He looked nothing like him. It must have been the hat and scarves. That and the fact that I wanted it to be him.

I would rather be dead, I thought. I would rather be dead and buried than standing here like this. Really. What is the fucking point?

I have no idea how I removed myself from the situation. I just found myself running down the lane. Which was, at least, probably more advisable than heading back into the swampy woods.

But when I reached the main road I couldn't quite remember where the car was, or how to get there. I started screaming. And very nearly got myself knocked down as I went careering down the road.

Then, finally, I was back at the car. And sitting in it, with the doors locked. Crying. Crying for God knows how long. Then starting the car, in case he called the police. And just wanting to be away from there. Wanting to be gone.

I
've had enough. The relentless struggle just to keep one's head above water. You think, ‘I'll just try and get through the morning. And if by then things haven't improved it'll at least be lunchtime.' Because a little food can sometimes change how you feel. And you find yourself opening a tin of tomato soup, thinking, ‘I wonder if this is going to stop me cracking up?'

But the cupboard's bare. There's no will. The will's unwilling. And you begin to think, Well, fuck it. That really is quite enough.

It's like hearing two voices, constantly bickering. One pointing out every conceivable misery. The other desperately trying to reason, to negotiate. Which is pretty awful to begin with. But, I swear, the voice of reason has just about jacked it in. It's finding it hard to put up any resistance. It's on the verge of just saying, ‘You know what, I think you're probably right.'

When I think about it now I do wonder what the hell I was thinking, prowling round his house like a bloody nutcase. I could've been arrested. Or sectioned. It wouldn't be so bad, but I wasn't even stalking the right bloody man.

In fact, I know very well what I was doing. I just wanted
to get a little nearer to the heat and light of a real home – a place with real love and warmth in it. Like some stray dog, trying to get a little respite from the dark.

I
haven't left the village for a good couple of days now. Have hardly set foot out of the cottage. It's been too wet. But the sun could've been blazing down and I still wouldn't have ventured out there. I'd be too embarrassed. I'd feel the entire world was mocking me.

I've begun to miss my house. Which you'd think might be a good thing. What with me owning it and all. But I suspect it's just the idea of home I miss – and that I've been away long enough to have forgotten that John no longer lives there. Well, there's another little myth I've created for myself. The happy home. The loving husband. The imagination of the common or garden melancholic really is something to behold.

N
ot that long after I first arrived at the cottage I found a leaflet in one of the folders for a circular walk out to a lost village, a few miles south of here.

Perhaps we're just born romantic – or dreamers – but a Lost Village puts me in mind of something hidden. Something waiting to spring back into existence. Or some thriving little fairy-tale community, which somehow slipped between the folds in the landscape and carried on regardless. And maybe that's what I was secretly hoping for when I set off on the walk. A sort of East Anglian Shangri-La.

At the very least, I was expecting a couple of ruined cottages. A chimney stack deep in the woods and one or two walls, all choked in ivy. But when I reached the spot where the map claimed the lost village was located all that was visible were a few low mounds in an open field. If you looked hard enough you could make out where there might once have been lanes. Or drains. Or something. But the whole place had essentially been wiped off the face of the earth. The land had healed right over it. And I'm not exaggerating in the least when I say that it scared me half to death.

A
bout a week after John died I started having problems with time. Serious problems. Problems of such magnitude that I began to question the conventional perception of its passing – namely, a steady unfolding of events along a ruler's edge. Time, or my appreciation of it, fragmented. It seemed to come apart in my hands. There would suddenly be bits missing. It lost its linearity. So that not only would I fail to remember how I got back from the shops that morning, but rather worryingly the memory of my getting home would feel as if it had occurred prior to my going out.

It was a sort of temporal dislocation. Which is a terribly clinical way of describing it, and much too neat and tidy. Because the reality is utterly terrifying in its abstraction. As if one's grip on life has slipped – keeps constantly slipping. As if all the things which are meant to be solid – the very ground on which you walk – are suddenly untrustworthy, and prone to collapse.

What I've endured these last few days is actually quite different. Rather than a sense of fracture or slippage, time has simply stopped. It's not that the clock is malfunctioning. It's that the bloody thing's broke. Moments fail to unfold. And all I'm left with is a dreadful stasis, with just me in it. Nothing but me and my terrifying thoughts.

I suddenly feel dreadfully vulnerable. Exposed to everything, particularly John's death, which has somehow hit me again these last few days like a juggernaut. Which is rather curious, because what have the last three or four miserable months consisted of, if not the reality of my husband's death making itself known to me in a million different ways?

All I know is that it's a different appreciation. As if I'd managed to run away up here, and perhaps even briefly escape it. Or at the very least put some distance between me and all the pain. Then one morning I looked out of the window to find a removal van pulling up. Packed to the roof with all my emotional baggage and general fucked-upness. And a minute later some bloke is standing on the doorstep, saying, ‘Where would you like us to put it, love?'

The old food-to-booze ratio has gone a little pear-shaped. The balance keeps tipping towards the gin. Which would be all very well if it wasn't for the mornings after. Or, rather, the middles of the night, when I suddenly wake, with a small piece of coal burning in the pit of my stomach and another burning in my soul.

I'm slowly pickling myself. I'm going to be a biological phenomenon. Perfectly preserved, in all my widow's glory. They're going to put me in a big glass jar in some dusty museum. The accompanying notice will say, ‘Due to all the booze sloshing around in her system this woman managed to live to be 250 years old. Unfortunately, the last couple of hundred were a complete and utter blur.'

I
've been at it again. The freaking out … the jumping in the car … and the driving, pell-mell, through the bloody dark. And, just like the last time, I'd be hard pressed to put my finger on what actually triggered it. It may just be accumulated angst or grief or anger. All of which I have in abundance. Most days I'm like a pan rattling away on the cooker, somewhere between simmering and boiling. Then, every once in a while, suddenly it's – KAPOW. And I'm up and out and at 'em. And driving like a maniac through the night.

I'd had a relatively booze-free evening. I've been so dreadfully tired and I was just desperate for a good night's sleep. But when I finally managed to coax myself up to bed and turned the light out I just lay there, staring at the ceiling. And, within an hour or so, was wishing I'd had a decent dose of alcohol, just to knock me out.

I was feeling particularly sorry for myself. In fact, I was feeling sorry for pretty much the whole of humanity. I don't recall the details, but I do remember becoming increasingly sick and frightened. Had somehow managed to tie myself in knots. Then I started to panic. And felt that if I didn't do something drastic pretty quickly, that I would go mad and stay mad for all eternity.

Quite suddenly, I couldn't lie there any longer. I jumped
out of bed, pulled on some clothes and went clattering down the tiny stairwell. Grabbed my keys and coat. So that in the space of about two minutes I'd gone from lying in bed to striding through the village towards the car.

I headed west along the coast road, with no clear destination in mind. And it was only as I entered Holkham village that I thought of the beach, and it occurred to me that I might actually find myself out there on it. Then I was pulling up beside the gate to the car park. Was climbing over the gate and heading towards the trees.

It felt quite strange, walking along that wide avenue where all the cars are usually parked and for it to be so empty. It seems as if that was the first time I became fully aware of being out in the middle of the night.

I walked right to the end, and instead of creeping round to the left and through the trees, I carried straight on, up the path over the dunes. I could feel my shoes sink into the sand and how heavy it made each step.

At the top of the dunes there was enough light for me to see the beach spread out below me. That infinite beach. I stopped, but for no more than a couple of seconds. Then I carried on down the other side. And, without ever making a conscious decision, I set out across the sands, towards the sea.

It wasn't as if, now that I was walking, I was suddenly relaxed or relieved or deliriously happy. I wasn't. It was just that I was walking, and had a little mission. And that seemed to have taken precedence over whatever was going on in my head.

The sand was firm now, and I could hear the sea way off in the distance, booming and roaring. A quite incredible sound. Halfway there, I remember stopping and taking my shoes and socks off, so that I could actually feel the sand, cold and damp beneath my feet. And, another ten or fifteen minutes later, I could feel how the sand had formed into ripples. Could feel the balls of my feet catch them as I walked. And the booming of the waves was an almighty noise now, and you could smell the salt and dampness in the air.

Then suddenly I was at the water's very edge and cold, cold water was under my feet and rushing round my ankles. Thirty or forty yards out the waves came crashing down and the foam came in, spreading over the flattened water. Came sweeping in all around me.

I still don't know what I was after. I was all tangled up inside myself. In fact, I think I started to pick over the things I'd been worrying about back at the cottage. Started to rake over the embers of my anxieties. And was doing a pretty good job of breathing some life back into them – when something happened. As I stood there, watching those huge waves rolling and crashing, at the very end of my tether. Just when I felt that I'd had quite, quite enough. It was as if … as if an undeniable truth briefly revealed itself to me. Which sounds preposterous, I know. But I can't think of another way of putting it. It was as if I had the briefest glimpse of some universal force at work. Of incredible power and infinite grace, which obliterated any thought or worry I might ever have. I might almost say
that, in that instant, I finally found myself obliterated – or removed. Which was not the least bit terrifying. And for that briefest, briefest moment I sensed that there might be some grand concordance. That, in fact, contrary to everything I've come to believe in, that the world might be good and kind. And that there might be a place for me in it.

This morning, in the cold light of day, I could rationalise the whole strange experience by saying that, standing before the waves and beneath the stars, I'd simply been overwhelmed or reassured by the force of nature. Or that when one is panicking there comes a point when one's mind and body have simply had enough, and the panic suddenly runs out of steam. Some chemical is released into the bloodstream. So that, after all the chaos and the crashing, there's a sudden release and a spreading smoothness, like the foam on the flat, flat water. And that it's nothing but physiology.

But that's not it. That momentary thought, or revelation, was as real and tangible as anything I've ever encountered. It really was. It was over in a fraction of a second. There were no tears. No angelic chorus. I was the same person I was before. It was just that I'd had this glimpse of something. Then I was back there, with my feet in the water, clutching my shoes, and wondering what on earth had just gone on.