The War Widow. Lorna Gray
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at me and urged me to precede him into the jostling herd of disembarking passengers at the bare levelled ground that made up the station at Devil’s Bridge.
This was a tiny place. It was situated at the narrow head of a steeply wooded gorge and spanned only by the bridge that lent the hamlet its name. A few buildings straggled along the winding road and the sole hotel peeped out over the treetops, seeming incapable of supporting the sheer volume of tourists that were descending from the train. In summer this place was darkly leafy but now, when the autumn had already struck the dead leaves from the mossy boughs, the grazing land above was like a crown above the wild sweep downhill into bleak wooded valleys.
I’d expected it to be quiet here today. Instead it was as busy as summer and I could feel the excitement growing in the crowd around me long before we swept in a sort of united disorientation of hats, handbags and raincoats around a bend lined with high metal railings towards the low parapet that signalled our first glimpse of the natural spectacle that made this place famous.
I handed my shilling to the man at the turnstile. He took my money in a greasy hand and the mechanical clanking as the turnstile’s metal arms turned was stiff and unwelcoming. But then I was through and stepping down into the sudden wilderness of dormant woodland. It was no quieter inside; it seemed as though the crowd’s chatter was magnified in here and I stood for a moment, gathering my bearings before trailing after them down the steps towards the first viewpoint.
For a while there was no view at all. The trees grew sinuously, twisted old oaks clinging to any piece of ground they could. Even leafless, the damply rusting branches still strained vigorously to reclaim the scene. They acted like a ruthless blind; for a while I could see nothing and it seemed as though the cluster of tourists might never grow bored enough to move on and leave me to take in the view in peace. But then, finally, the last of them turned away and bustled past on their own private mission to tackle the waymarked path so I could step forwards and reach out a hand to take sole possession of the cold metal barrier. Here I was at last.
It felt like a lifetime had passed since I’d first begun this journey to this place where I would mark my husband’s death.
But this was no agonised pilgrimage of the sort undertaken by a bewildered war widow. The sort where a grief-stricken wife hopes to achieve some kind of comprehension of the cruelty that stole her beloved husband’s life. This was peacetime, he was my ex-husband after our divorce thirteen months ago and he had been a stranger to me for far longer than that. This was no respectful farewell to former happiness at all.
Before me rose the bridge like a stark monument to past centuries. It held two older bridges cocooned beneath its arch. They lay one on top of the other, each bridge built at a slightly different angle to the older stonework that had gone before and each squatting over a wider gap. Somewhere far below, the fierce waters of the Mynach roared blind into the chasm; folklore claimed that the devil himself had built the first narrow crossing and today, for the first time, I could have almost believed it.
Because about eight days ago, my ex-husband had taken himself to that selfsame spot and looked down into the raging depths. And had then decided to follow the look with his body.
Whatever else had happened in the days since then and now, this part of my story at least was not a creation. The police had confirmed it. The river had been in spate; it had been swollen beyond all normal bounds by heavy rain in the hours before and there was no hope of anyone surviving that. No hope even of a decent funeral. His body had never been recovered. This river’s current was the sort that was strong enough to move rocks and trees, and a human body had been a mere speck of dirt in the stream. The only fragments the torrent had left us as proof of a man’s passing were a broken camera, a few traumatised passers-by and a ruined sock recovered from an eddy half a mile downstream.
It was insane. And worse, it was insufferably sad to have to hear polite judgements about his character, as if this could have ever had anything to do with his usual state of mind. I hadn’t received so much as a note from him in the year since our divorce but still it was incomprehensible; impossible to imagine Rhys, my stubbornly individual ex-husband, ever meaning to end it like this.
And yet he had. And somehow, now, whatever it was that had brought him to this desperate extreme had since turned its gaze upon my life and my mind. And I still didn’t have the faintest idea why.
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