Lorna Gray - The War Widow

I moved towards the open door. He wasn’t looking at me any more but that may well have been because he too was noticing the approaching bus. It was squeaking huffily to a halt behind the stationary car instead of running me down. All the same I flinched aside instinctively. And then I gave a self-conscious laugh that couldn’t help turning into a lift of my eyes to Adam’s face when I realised he’d been sharing the thought too. But he’d already suppressed his own reaction and was chivvying me into the back seat so that he could press the door shut on me and release the impatiently idling bus. Then, with an apologetic lift of his hand, he climbed in and prepared to send the car cruising away down to the promenade.

He didn’t even get as far as releasing the handbrake. Mary exclaimed ‘Jim!’ and a hand met the door handle to my left as a different male voice said cheerfully, “Room for one more?” Then Jim Bristol was sliding in beside me to share the cramped confines of the ridiculously small back seat and smiling at me while I was fumbling with the door catch on the other side with every intention of getting straight out again. Unfortunately Adam had already sent the car on its way and Jim was distracting me with an idle pleasantry on the delight of meeting friends until I got confused between the impulse to escape and the impulse not to be rude. And then it was too late.

Our escape from the town was a lurch into a different kind of tension. The wide curve of the Victorian seafront promenade vanished at the turn beneath the vast art deco King’s Hall with its amusements and tea dances, and it seemed only a moment later that we were emerging from the crowded crush of shopping streets to trace a course inland. With these two men in the car it felt like I was a captive but I couldn’t be. I couldn’t be. Not really.

If I told myself that enough times perhaps I would believe it.

Beside me, Jim was leaning slightly forwards so that he could join Mary’s animated conversation in the front. I think he’d guessed pretty quickly that all he was going to get from me was a thin-lipped smile. We were literally inches apart – the car was so narrow that his knee kept knocking mine. I had felt trapped by him at Devil’s Bridge but the muscular presence I’d experienced there had been nothing compared to the inescapable closeness to him here. He seemed insufferably strong in this tiny space. It wasn’t hard to see that this was a man who had taken a firm grip upon the trials of army life during the war and found he was more than capable of meeting them. He was also truly very handsome. He was, as I have said, leaning forwards slightly and it cast his profile into elegant relief so that his jaw was perfectly defined with just the barest grain of a fair shadow beginning to show. His mouth was mobile and the brief gleam of teeth as he smiled in response to something Adam said was very engaging. None of this really fitted the part of sinister collaborator to those two men. I also wouldn’t have expected their only weapon to be the well-thumbed tourist guide now held in his right hand. I permitted myself a glance at the reflection of Adam’s face in his wing mirror. Where Jim shone with amusement, Adam’s expression was calm and concentrated, and I couldn’t tell what either man was thinking.

I did at least recognise the road we took. We crossed the river at Machynlleth and traced the winding road northwards into deep craggy valleys that had long since settled down for the coming winter. I began to feel a vague nervous excitement about where we might be going. My trips with Rhys had only rarely taken me inland. Rain-soaked mountains oppressed him he had said and our filial visits to the area had only really reached as far as busy towns and fishing ports where he might be able to steal some shots of the locals.

Wherever Adam was taking us today, it was safe to say populated areas were not his target. The car swung left off the main road and rolled gingerly down an uneven lane as Adam navigated his way without needing to refer to a map. I briefly toyed with the idea of panicking but I didn’t do it and eventually, with a wide valley below us and the distinctive sweep of the lower range of Cadair Idris above, the car drew into a wide gravel lay-by and the engine was silenced.

It wasn’t a popular destination. There was no house, and no prison to match my imagination either. Only two other drivers had managed to conserve enough fuel for the trip to this remote spot; a blue Morris and what looked like a farmer’s run-about. Nothing moved. The hush was sudden and very intense, and I sat there in a questioning stillness, listening for any sound at all, until Mary tugged on her door handle with such a clunk that I believe Jim and I both jumped.

Jim laughed. She climbed out, shaking the creases out of her skirt. She gave a little turn. “Well.”

“Well indeed.” Adam was out and dragging open my door. I think Jim had expected me to slither meekly out after him at his side but I didn’t. I climbed out through the door Adam opened for me and stood there while he locked up the car feeling absurdly like I was expecting him to shield me.

I don’t know what from because there was nothing here except a crude lay-by and a footpath into the short scrubby woodland on the far side.

Adam spoke over my head across the roof to the other two. “Ready for a cultural delight?”

“If this cultural delight involves any more sheep droppings, I’m staying in the car.” Mary was examining the gravel beneath her flimsy shoes. “Why are we here again?”

Adam pocketed his keys and set off towards the dense little woodland. “I’m here to do research. Jim’s here because it saves trying to sidestep the petrol shortage by paying for a hired car if he uses my fuel instead, Kate’s here because she didn’t know how to refuse and you’re here, I believe, because you threw yourself into the road and begged to come, but forgive me if I’m wrong.”

The footpath was wider than I’d thought. It was obviously well used. I trailed along in their wake beneath supple limbs of overgrown hazel that swiftly closed in overhead. I couldn’t hear a thing beyond the whisper of old leaves in the branches and the distant questioning mew from somewhere up above that was a buzzard. It was very hard to judge whether we were still near the valley floor or rising as I thought. Then the tangled thicket opened to clear rocky grassland and I had to forget everything, even every little doubt, for a moment.

Adam had stepped aside to let us pass. To our left, the land fell dramatically away to a vast glacial valley that curved gently away towards the distant sea. To my right stood Adam and beyond him were the shattered remains of a castle. The landscape ached with the memory of the lives that had sheltered within those walls.

Mary took control of the scene. She cast a look around with wide eyes, dismissed it all with a shrug – because that was what she was expected to do – and then turned back and pouted. “Go on, Mr Adam Hitchen: explain. What’s so special about a mouldy old ruin?”

It transpired that this was Castell y Bere, a Llewellyn strong-hold and an 800-year-old monument to a defiant people and the vital trade routes they had guarded. What made it particularly special to me was that this was the first place in days that allowed me the peace in which to absolutely set aside my fears and even my scrutiny of my companions’ motives.

Even Jim left me alone here. He seemed content to watch the artist from afar as she settled comfortably on top of the cool stones of the curtain wall, pencil in hand and the faithful sketchbook lying open across her lap. Mary had long ago vanished to seek excitement elsewhere and Adam was out of sight on the other side of the structure, doubtless writing notes and staring intently at the tumbled stones by his feet. That left only me and Jim and, as I have said, he was content to leave me alone now. He was sitting on a broken flight of stairs about fifteen yards away, hands about his knees and idly contemplating the view.