The War Widow. Lorna Gray
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of regaining lost creativity. There was no sympathy – even on a normal day I wouldn’t have wanted that – but absolute understanding that must come from a creative mind who had faced his own challenges during the turmoil of the war.
I had barely painted through the war years and hadn’t particularly wanted to. I had been far too busy hosting patriotic exhibitions in the little Cotswold gallery that had been my home and putting in my hours as a married woman at the WVS canteen; and if I had painted, what would I have used as my inspiration? The bleak horror? Or would I have become one of those artists pretending that all was as it should be and beauty could be found in all the usual places?
Now though, there was hope again. I had moved away in the course of my separation and subsequent divorce and in all honesty it was an escape from the emotional barrier that had begun chipping away at my creativity long before the dramatic changes of a world war. I was of course careful to make no mention of where I had been living, or even the name of the northern gallery where I now worked and had recently had a minor exhibition and, to Adam’s credit, he didn’t ask.
In return he told me something of his own experiences while undertaking the research for his current novel. I tried not to feel like I was quizzing him because to be honest, it didn’t feel particularly like he had been quizzing me. His first had been released before the war. His second was penned during the six months’ leave after Dunkirk and the last had been a thoroughly chaotic affair jotted in note form on any scrap he could find in the lull between manoeuvres in Malta, Italy and Greece, and hastily thrashed into shape and published almost as soon as he had returned.
This one, he told me, was being allowed to take a rather less disorganised course and his research was thorough. Although that apparently still presented its own difficulties.
“Research is a problem?” I asked doubtfully. I felt like I’d missed a point.
I had. There was a trace of that smile again. “The last two were set in the area around home. It was inescapable when I was away and home was all I could think about. But I was demobbed about fifteen months ago and life has settled into something of its new rhythm and now the whole of the British Isles is supposedly my muse. Unfortunately in a fit of optimism I’ve managed to set this book in the depths of Wales just for the time when it has suddenly become very socially unpopular to go tearing about the countryside racking up the miles, even if it is running on my own relatively legitimately saved cans of fuel. I’ve had to visit this area twice so far this year chasing threads and locations.”
“You’ve come by car?”
“I have. This’ll be my last trip for a while I think.”
“What sort is it?”
“Sort of what?”
“Car. What sort of car is it?”
It was my turn to startle him by barking out my question. I hadn’t meant to, but I suppose it was inevitable that the mention of the car should jerk me back into a remembrance of what I had come here for today. And it wasn’t to form new friendships with travelling authors.
He made his answer while I was also remembering that I ought to have been watching the turn of the road outside the window. His car was a red Rover 10 and there was something else he told me about it that didn’t matter anyway because my gaze had already run to the wide terrace outside. As it did so I caught sight of Jim Bristol yet again. Not close by; he was about forty or so yards away and I felt a sudden surge of tension when I saw that man, or rather the turn of his head as he examined the wares of a postcard seller. He appeared completely absorbed by the mundane products but I knew beyond all doubt that a moment ago he had been staring straight at me.
Then the chill of seeing him was undone by the idiotic thrill that followed in the next second. The one that made me think for a moment that the postcard seller was my husband.
He wasn’t of course. This wasn’t one of those moments when a person believed to be dead turns out to be alive after all and takes to turning up in all the oddest places. Instead it was like trying to convince a wounded war veteran that he’ll hardly miss his left foot: impossible and the delusion can only ever last a heartbeat. Fiercely, defiantly, while the blood roared in my ears, I took a deep breath and forced myself to think. The postcard seller was dark haired, as I had known he would be, and was presumably Welsh, and that was where the resemblance ended.
“Kate?”
My companion had stopped speaking and was staring at me. We retreated into the uncertain formality of new acquaintances. He said again, “Kate – Miss Ward – perhaps I shouldn’t ask, but are you all right?”
Finally, I felt my heart begin to beat again. I knew the sense of my ridiculousness would hit in a moment, as it had done every time I had seen my husband’s image in the past days since my accident. It was a public humiliation, a cruel display of my overactive and stressed imagination timed to happen just at the precise moment when any misstep would be observed by an audience. It was a bizarre mirror of the way my life was now. Like always; a hurtful confirmation of my sheer inability to exert any control, and nothing more.
I met the stranger’s concern across the table and set down my cup with a distant hand. Now I felt alone again and glad of it. In a moment I would make my excuses and leave. But first, for the sake of formality, I said, “Sorry, I was listening really. What were you saying about May? Why didn’t you bring her?”
I was impressed that I had managed to grasp the dog’s name; I had barely heard the rest of what he had been saying.
“She wouldn’t like all the hanging about while I write my notes.” He was speaking slowly, staring at me still. “You’re not all right at all. Whatever is the matter?”
I thought about my answer and what he would say if I admitted the full implausible truth. Not about seeing Rhys, but the rest of it. I could already picture the concerned looks, the hasty covering of his instinctive recoil and the rushed assurances that of course it didn’t sound like fantasy, not really. This was, I observed grimly, precisely why I had decided to avoid unnecessary contact with my fellow guests.
Reluctantly, I said, “I had an accident. Just over five days ago. I banged my head and still get awfully tired.” Even as I said it, I wondered what on earth had prompted me to speak. After all, any excuse would have done. Indigestion perhaps. Or a sudden alarm about the time of the next train. I gave him a watery smile. “I’m quite all right really. Please just ignore me.”
He didn’t even blink. I began to feel extraordinarily uncomfortable. I wasn’t alone because he wouldn’t let me feel it. His eyes, I realised with a jolt, were flecked with deeper hues and at this moment they were fixed on me with an intensity that seemed to be trying to bore right into my mind.
“An accident?”
His brows had furrowed, perhaps in doubt. Perhaps in disbelief. And this was just the edited version. I wasn’t mad enough to tell him the truth.
I wouldn’t tell him about the nightmare which claimed to be a memory of two men who had appeared beside me as I waited by the bus stop in Lancaster.
The images of that day belonged to the subsequent moments of semi-consciousness at the hospital. Moments of confusion where visits from nurses and doctors merged seamlessly with the dizzying recollection of being at one moment innocently daydreaming and in the next being steered by rough hands into the depths of a shaded doorway. The questions those men had asked there were impossible demands woven about my husband’s end that I couldn’t understand and certainly could never fulfil. The bewilderment I experienced that day was indescribable. They had fixed me there with a determination that was like nothing I had ever encountered before. They had left me with a desperate hope to the very limit of my being that I would never again be required to accept the utter inferiority of my will when pitted against the dominance of another. And a terrible suspicion that hoping was never going to be enough.
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I had woken – if waking was the correct term when I had never been asleep in the conventional sense – to the busy silence of a women’s