The Widow's Tale (11 page)

S
pent most of this morning wandering around the sands out at Holkham. I parked up on that wide drive just off the coast road and found a sandy path that zigzagged through the fir trees and came out behind the dunes. My original plan had been to walk out to the sea and have a little paddle, but the water was nothing but a thin, silver line on the horizon, so I decided just to have a stride around.

Christ, but it's a big old beach. I'd forgotten. The sort of place where you could imagine someone attempting a land speed record. I walked up and down, trying to find the spot where Paul and I had sat, however many years ago that is now. It was autumn, but still quite warm. We must have sat there for hours. Some part of it, I'm sure, we spent kissing, and quite possibly groping each other. We may even have talked from time to time. But the majority of it we just sat there, curled up together, with Paul's coat wrapped around us. Huddled under the firmament, with the roar of the sea somewhere way off in the distance.

If I think about it long enough I can retrieve some tiny fragment … some tangible taste of what was going on inside of me. And the best description I can come up with is that it was as if the world was suddenly a very good place to be. That I belonged here. And that, up to that
point, I'd been making my way through my life on little more than a fraction of my capacity.

Well, I had no luck this morning trying to find the spot where we'd been sitting. I always thought that we'd been due north of a series of sand dunes. But I must've marched up and down for a good hour and a half without seeing any sign of them. I suppose it's possible that the landscape has somehow changed in the meantime. Sand does, after all, have a tendency towards transformation, especially when it's exposed to the wind. Then again, it's not exactly the bloody Sahara. And it's much more likely that I was just on the wrong part of the beach.

Not being able to find that particular spot quite upset me. I'd wanted very much just to sit there again and see if I could pick up some trace of that benevolent power. And not being able to do so had me wondering if it was possible that I'd made the whole thing up.

That same weekend we were walking along a lane a couple of miles inland and saw this great V of geese flying overhead. Then another one. And within a couple of minutes that huge blue sky was strewn with thirty or forty of these squadrons of geese – way, way up above us. And it was so still that we could clearly hear the sound of their wings pumping away at the air.

When you're in love – or infatuated or besotted or whatever you want to call it – moments like that are a sort of benediction. My fear now, and it's a real fear, is that when I encounter anything with even half as much wonder, what will I do with it? In the past, if I happened
to be alone when I witnessed something magical I always knew that I'd be seeing John later and I'd be able to report it back to him, which, in its way, still served to validate the experience. Even if it was just some eccentric little thought I'd had. But now I worry that without someone else to share my thoughts with, all the magic will just drain away.

I thought it would help, being out on the beach. Thought it might recharge my battery. But, if anything, it's just made things worse. And by the time I'd spent a couple of hours flailing about I felt so low that I just got back in the car and drove around, to try and distract myself. To try and clear my head.

At some point there was a programme on the radio, about a group of women who were being referred to as War Widows, but not in the conventional sense. So many young men lost their lives in the Second World War that when it was finally over there were simply not enough of them to go around. It's one of those facts that is so blindingly obvious only after someone else has pointed it out to you. Strange also that that generation would have included my mother, but I never heard her make any reference to it.

Anyway, they interviewed some old girl who was talking with great stoicism on the subject, as if life was just some dance down at the local Alhambra or Locarno and if you were lucky some fellow might happen to come along and invite you out onto the dancefloor. But, what with there being twice as many girls as boys, she never got
the chance. Of course, her resilience just made it all the more moving. And to my shame I found myself thinking that perhaps if you never happen to find a partner, you never miss what you've not had. Honestly, sometimes I surprise myself with my callousness.

And then the strangest thing happened. I was just puttering along down some country lane when this man – I couldn't even say how old he was – but this man of indeterminate age crossed the lane before me, barefoot, then climbed a stile into a field.

I carried on down the road, thinking, He's probably just strolled off the beach. But then it occurred to me that we were nowhere near the beach here. That we must've been the best part of five miles from it. Not to mention the fact that it was the middle of winter. Then I felt this awful sense of doom creep up my back and sweep across my shoulders – a sickening sense of everything suddenly being quite wrong.

I pulled up and reversed the car to the point where I'd seen him. And when I stopped by the stile there he was, halfway across the field. I was tempted to get out and call after him. To ask him what was with the bare feet. He would've almost certainly heard me. But some van came up behind me and started honking his horn, so I had to carry on.

And like everything else these days if I allow it, that merest glimpse of a barefoot man has been niggling away at me ever since. As if there's something askew. That there is inexplicable strangeness and peculiarity all around me.
And perhaps even some terrible conspiracy.

All afternoon, whenever I thought of him I kept thinking of a dead man. That's what bare feet mean to me. And that's not just me being loopy, surely? Think of all the to-do when Paul McCartney was photographed walking barefoot across the zebra crossing on the cover of
Abbey Road
. A man with bare feet signifies death. Everyone knows that.

And I began to think that if I wasn't careful the bare feet would join the Holbein and the black heart under my thumbnail and all my other little obsessions, over which I expend an inordinate amount of mental energy, which I can frankly ill afford. Then, only an hour or so ago, it suddenly dawned on me. I suddenly worked out what was going on. That not far from where I passed the barefoot man is Walsingham – that little village with all the shrines and springs. The man I saw was, in all likelihood, a pilgrim. He was walking barefoot, the last mile of the way.

I
t's an odd sort of word.
Widow
. I keep trying it on for size –
widow's weeds
…
widow's walk
…
widow
-
woman
– but can't say I'm especially enamoured. Rather vainly, I don't consider myself sufficiently wizened. On the other hand,
widowhood
– that period of indefinable length which I have apparently now entered – sounds rather inviting. It conjures up a black cape or cloak, with a good-sized hood on it. Like Meryl Streep in
The French
Lieutenant's Woman
. Actually, I think I'd look pretty good, wending my way across the windswept marshes. Although, all that billowing material would be bound to slow you down.

One of the major downsides to cohabitation is the fact that you can enjoy the most wonderful day and be pretty much skipping around the place, only for your partner to arrive home after the most appalling of days and within a minute all that
joie de vivre
has been squashed underfoot.

It's just a law of physics, or possibly chemistry, that if you introduce one element to another, and one of those elements has had an insufferably crappy day, then the crappiness always comes out on top.

It used to drive me mad. In fact, I would sometimes insist that John had an hour or so to himself when he
got in from work, just to calm down or acclimatise to the domestic environment. Or I would simply disappear into another part of the house where he couldn't find me and hope that by the time we next met up he wouldn't be quite so pissed off with the world.

Of course, since John's death my thoughts on the matter have had to be amended slightly. If I wake up in a funk now, or manage to develop a certain crotchetiness during the day, my only option is to wait for it to pass, like bad weather. Either that or try to analyse it into oblivion, which is often too tedious to contemplate. There is no one around now, or due home, to whom I can kvetch and moan in an attempt to alleviate my grumpy load. Not unless I've previously arranged to meet someone at some point during the day (or hastily done so with that sole intent). But even moaning to a friend is not the same as moaning to your husband. One doesn't feel any sort of guilt making one's husband a little bit miserable. That's what they're there for. In fact, in all sorts of ways once you've been together for a couple of years you begin to treat your partner with the same level of contempt previously reserved for yourself.

I
didn't set out to pay a visit to Walsingham – at least, I don't think so. I just happened to be over at Burnham Market and on my way back spotted a sign to the village, and decided to drop in and have a look around. I suppose I was curious about where that barefoot pilgrim was headed. I'd read the odd thing about the place years ago, but never actually been there. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting. Possibly just a regular English village, with an especially busy church.

The first thing that strikes you is the number of priests and vicars striding up and down the pavements. That and the fact that every other shop seems to be selling religious knick-knacks. Like those shops in seaside resorts that stock nothing but sticks of rock and buckets and spades and postcards. Whereas in these shops everything has a cross on it, or the face of Jesus. Or, more specifically, Our Lady of Walsingham.

It was only when I came across a noticeboard with a street map on it that I appreciated how many different denominations have set up their own little outposts there. Although as far as I could tell they all seem to rub along perfectly well.

Religious places make me slightly uneasy. Partly, I suspect, because of the intrinsic mysticism. But I do
always rather worry that some spiritual hand might reach out and grab me. I'm sure I can't be alone in that. And Walsingham itself has about it the feel of a village from some 1950s black-and-white movie where the protagonist gradually discovers that there's no way out.

So, all in all, I was a little on edge as I made a quick tour of the place. I popped my head into the main shrine and managed to convince myself, despite it all being quite High Church and there being plenty of candles, etc., that the architecture was a little too modern for my taste. And that I like my religious buildings to have been around for a good four or five hundred years. There were quite a few people arriving, and it looked as if they were gearing themselves up for some sort of service, so I left them to it and bought a ticket to the museum up the road, and read all about the woman in the eleventh century and her visions and how people started to flock to the place, including Henry VIII – presumably, a few years before he had a change of heart and decided to raze the place to the ground.

I suspect I was rather hoping to bump into my barefoot pilgrim. At least then I'd have been able to ask him what he wanted from his visit – what his story was. But all the people I passed looked very well-shod, and there was no one obviously halt or lame. And I was beginning to feel a little disappointed when a fine drizzle began to settle over the village. I was about twenty yards from the Russian Orthodox chapel, so I slipped in there for a minute or two.

The chapel itself is nothing but a small plain room in what was once the railway station. Windowless, but lit by dozens of candles. And almost immediately I felt quite at home there – or as close to it as I've got these past few months. Around the walls were Eastern icons, with all their gold leaf and luminous blues and greens. And perhaps in the end that's all you need – the dark, the warmth. The candlelight, and the smell of hot wax. And some focus, such as an altar. Or the odd icon or two, to catch the light.

As I sat there, I began to appreciate how I was having a little moment of stillness, and I remember vaguely wondering if there were going to be tears. They seemed like the right sort of conditions. I can't say I would have minded. A good old cry, as I'm sure I've already noted, will sometimes do me the power of good. But it seemed there weren't. It was just a little peace that I was having. A little meditation. Some sense of stillness. And calm.

I've no idea how long I sat there. Ten minutes? Maybe more. And perhaps the fact that when I finally emerged from the chapel I was feeling a little light-headed contributed to the weirdness which followed. I was just standing around, stretching my legs. But as I stood there, with my mind still filled with candlelight, I thought I saw something in the distance – something in the drizzle, down the way.

If there had been singing, or prayers, or chanting I might have understood a little sooner. But all I heard were the muffled sound of footfalls – the sound of movement – as
a band of thirty or forty souls slowly headed towards me.

As they grew nearer I felt the weight of their silence. There was nothing but their relentless collective shuffle. And even the children who walked along, holding the hands of their mothers and fathers, were solemnly mute. The silence hung over the whole party like a shroud.

And now I could see how one of the men carried in his arms a statue of Mary, clamped to his chest and tilted slightly, as if it was something he'd just picked up along the way. And someone else held a staff, with a brass cross at the tip. Their progress was made even stranger by the fact that nobody looked to left or right. They all kept their eyes fixed most concertedly on the road ahead. So that as they passed I had the sense that I had been quietly annihilated. Or that I was but a ghost to them.

All except for one – a little toddler, of about eighteen months or so, who was being carried in his mother's arms. He had his own eerie calm about him. And I couldn't help but notice how he held his hands in that same strange way – as if in mid-genuflection – as the apostles in the church in Salthouse. And just as Jesus does in all the statues of Mary and child.

As the group crept quietly by the child saw me and stared straight at me. He even turned in his mother's arms to keep his eyes on me. I'll be honest, the little fellow quite frightened the life out of me. I was convinced that, any minute, his little lips would part, he'd point a pudgy little finger at me and cry out, ‘Adulterer' … or … ‘Degenerate'.

Anyway, the silent throng carried on their way and
finally disappeared around the corner. I stood in the road, quite stunned. I have to say I didn't hang about much after that. I was in my car and out of there in next to no time. And the moment I got back to the village I went straight round to the Nelson and had a half of Woodforde's Wherry, chased down with a large brandy, just to settle my nerves.