A Letter From the Author to the Reader
For Harry and Mason
Thursday 20 November 1947
I might have done things differently had I had known today that I only had four more days of glorious solitude. That in four short days they would find me at last. That four short days would carry my race to the limit of this sea-ravaged coastline. That here I would feel the nauseating pull and draw of the waves and above it all, hear the darker overtone of footsteps as they strolled inescapably towards me.
I wouldn’t be thinking about myself at that moment. I would simply be waiting, defeated, quivering on the wooden harbour jetty and looking down into the murky water as it heaved beneath. Thinking about him and what he had done; and finally and absolutely admit that despite all my determined efforts to the contrary, I had lost control over both my mind and my freedom, with no hope left of ever regaining it.
But that would be four days from now. Today there were still four more days ahead of wonderful optimism. Today I was feeling the tug of the waves too, but in an altogether more peaceful way.
I had come to Aberystwyth in November two years after the war. I was climbing down from a rough little hilltop that overlooked the town a little after dawn and the view was glorious. The wide bay of terraces clung bravely to the curve where sweeping cliffs met dark granite seashores and today, as ever, it called to the artist in me.
I probably shouldn’t have been up there. The doctors had prescribed rest after my accident and I knew even the walk back to my hotel would have drawn their united disapproval. But at least it was quiet and calming in its way because very few people were about. Those that were cared little for a woman in a beige trench coat with the collar turned up who was walking briskly past shops declaring fresh stocks of corned beef and offal – a novelty in this time of rationing. Nobody noticed me walking past the shuttered tearooms either. These were papered with posters bearing the information that the cinema would be showing the full coverage of the Princess Elizabeth’s wedding just as soon as the newsreels got here. It was all wonderfully like being invisible. It was just unfortunate that the illusion abandoned me just as soon as I climbed the steps to my hotel.
“Good morning, Miss Word.”
The lady in the wood-panelled reception booth in the foyer was excessively genteel and her grey hair was done up in a neat bun. Her greeting was dignified and gracious but slightly marred by the fact that Word wasn’t actually my name. It was Ward but I didn’t tell her that. Just as I had been too embarrassed to correct her late last night when she’d said it after watching me sign my name on the registration form, and again after she’d taken custody of my ration book and handed me my key…
So this morning I repeated the peculiar habit of feeling guiltily responsible for having the wrong name and only stated warmly that it was indeed a good morning and moved bravely towards the dining room. It was the sort of room that belonged a largely imaginary bygone era that had never known the war. The requirement to be brave came from my reluctance to interact with the other guests. I didn’t want conversation today. And besides, the pages of the hotel’s guestbook bore the signatures of an intimidatingly large scattering of high society grandees, which I certainly wasn’t. It had prices to match. I never would have chosen to stay here at all if I hadn’t remembered it from a brief visit many years ago during my honeymoon and the fact that I couldn’t have faced any more decisions last night after such a day and such a long journey.
As it was, when I took my seat it was only to be reassuringly greeted and then ignored by two elderly ladies who were deep in an animated discussion. They were worrying about the danger of introducing unbridled enjoyment – embodied by the recently lifted embargo on foreign travel I think – to a generation that had been brought up knowing only wartime excursions to the respectable English seaside. I think they were unaware that they were, in fact, at present in Wales.
I hid my head in a book. I had borrowed it from the tiny library in the lounge next door and it was a battered copy of Jane Eyre. It was supposed to keep my mind from working while I finished my breakfast but it wasn’t doing very well since I had read the book more times than I could count. Then I discovered a more modern effort abandoned on the table next to me. It promised ‘A Sterling Mystery!!!’ – a weak pun on the name of the principle character I think – and bore the name A. E. Woolfe emblazoned across the cover like a banner. Sceptical purely on the grounds of too many exclamation marks, I picked it up and read the first few pages easily enough but when the first character died in a grisly fashion at the wheel of his car, I felt my head begin to swim and had to put it down.
“Not to your taste?” A male voice.
Looking up, I discovered that the surrounding tables were now packed with a different set of people and the comfortable Miss Bartlemans had miraculously transformed into a dark-haired gentleman who was now sitting in the chair opposite, with a newspaper spread over the table between us. His eyes were a mild pale blue and were watching me benignly and at least they had the relatively harmless excuse that I had been thoroughly absorbed in my book. Anonymity and similar ambitions aside, I tend to be like that when reading. It used to drive my husband wild, along with a great number of other things.
Swiftly suppressing that sobering thought, I lifted my head properly and slipped the paperback back onto the table to sheepishly retrieve the tattered classic. A faint curve was showing at one corner of his mouth. It made me tell him with a foolish beam, “It seems very well written actually but I need something gentle that won’t tax my brain. At least with Jane Eyre, I know the book so well I can start at an easy bit. Even if it does feel a little like sacrilege to discard the childhood section without so much as a glance.”
I stopped. He was sitting with his forearms resting upon his paper and he was the sort of man who wore reasonably good clothes as if they didn’t matter at all. I think he belonged in this hotel rather more than I did. I also think my light reply made him feel he had just made an awkward social error. Those eyes blanked of all expression as he tried to hide it and I cringed inwardly. I cursed myself for breaking my silence so soon after all my good intentions and quickly