The Living and the Dead in Winsford

ONE
1

The day before yesterday I decided that I would outlive my dog. I owe him that. Two days later, in other words today, I decided to drink a glass of red wine in Wheddon Cross.

That is how I intend to pass the time from now on. Make decisions, and stick to them. It’s not all that difficult, but harder than it sounds, and, of course, everything depends on the circumstances.

The rain had followed me all the way across the moor, ever since I turned off the A358 at Bishops Lydeard, and as dusk set in quickly it made tears well up in my eyes like cold lava. A falling movement, then a rising one; but those tears that were forming were perhaps a good sign. I have wept too seldom in my life — I’ll come back to that.

I had set off from London at about one, and after I had wriggled my way out through Notting Hill and Hammersmith the journey had exceeded my expectations. Driving westwards along the M4, through Hampshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire — at least, that’s what I think the counties are called — and a few hours later southwards along the M5 after Bristol. It feels reassuring that all these roads have a number — and all the places a name — but the fact that it feels like that is less reassuring.

Exceeded my expectations may well also be the wrong expression to use in the context, but my apprehensions about getting lost, taking the wrong turning and ending up in endless traffic jams on the motorway heading in the wrong direction, and not arriving on time, had kept me awake for a large part of the night. The rest of the night it was the old story about Martin’s sister’s lover that kept me going. I don’t know why he and she turned up in my thoughts, but they did. One is so defenceless in the early hours of the morning.

I’m not used to driving, thanks to the way things turned out. I remember that when I was young I used to think that it gave me a sense of freedom, sitting behind the wheel and being master — or rather mistress — of my fate and the routes I chose. But it has been Martin who has done all the driving for the last fifteen or twenty years: it’s a long time since we even raised the question of who was going to sit in the driving seat when we went on our joint car trips. And he has always turned his nose up at anything to do with GPS.

There are such things as maps, aren’t there? What’s wrong with good old maps all of a sudden?

And then of course there was the problem of driving on the left in this stubborn old country, so the risk of something going haywire at any moment was quite considerable. But I managed it. I had overcome both the minefield of London’s obsolete traffic systems and the torture presented by the motorways. I had succeeded in filling up with petrol and paying cash without any problems, and it was only when I got as far as the narrow roller-coaster of roads over Exmoor that the feeling of melancholy caught up with me. But I never stopped in a lay-by in order to raise my depressed spirits, even though I maybe ought to have done. Besides, I’m not at all sure that I saw a lay-by.

But as the fact is that in this country nearly every place named on a map also has a pub, at shortly after half past four I parked next to a white van with the text ‘Peter’s Plumbing’ on the door in a strikingly deserted car park next to a strikingly abandoned cricket field. I hurried indoors without giving myself time for remorse or second thoughts.

So, Wheddon Cross it was. I had never set foot here before, and had never heard of it.

Well, I did wonder for just a moment whether I ought to take Castor for a little walk first, before drinking that glass of wine — I must admit that I did. But he doesn’t like rain, and he had been out when we stopped for petrol an hour and a half ago. I don’t think he even raised his head when I opened and closed the car door. He enjoys having a rest, Castor does — he sometimes sleeps fifteen or sixteen hours a day if he gets the chance.

The place turned out to be called The Rest and Be Thankful Inn. Apart from the big-busted bleach-blonded woman behind the bar (about my own age, possibly slightly younger in fact), there were only two other living beings in sight that late November afternoon: a frail-looking old lady with a crossword puzzle, drinking tea, and an overweight man in his thirties wearing working-clothes and a dirty baseball cap with a fancy-looking PP just above the peak, with a mug of beer firmly grasped in his powerful hand. I assumed he must be the peripatetic plumber, but neither he nor the crossword-woman looked up when I entered the room.

But Bar-Blondie did so. Mind you, she did so only after first carefully drying the wine glass she had in her hand and placing it on a shelf in front of her, but still.

I ordered a glass of red, she asked if Merlot would be okay, and I said that would be absolutely splendid.

‘Large or small?’

‘Large, please.’

It’s possible that PP and the crossword puzzle solver raised various eyebrows, but if so it was something I registered in the same way that one notices a butterfly behind one’s back.

‘It’s raining,’ said Blondie as she poured out the wine.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It certainly is.’

‘Rain, rain, rain.’

She said that in a singing tone of voice, and I assumed it must be the refrain in some hit or other. I don’t know why I chose the word ‘hit’ — I’m only fifty-five after all. But there are certain words and phrases that my father used to use, and I’ve noticed that lately I’ve started using them as well. Top hole. Cuppa char. Brolly.

I took my glass and sat down at a table where there was a little brochure featuring local walks. I pretended to begin studying it, in order to have something to do with my eyes. What I would really have liked to do was to drink my wine in three deep swigs and then carry on driving; but it was not my intention to make a lasting impression on those present. I might eventually return — even though my reason for stopping at just this place was that I hoped never to return there. A solitary, unknown woman of mature years who pops in and drinks a large glass of wine in the afternoon would no doubt attract attention in a small village. That’s the way it is, nothing to get het up about unless you are a poet or an artist. I’m not a poet or an artist.

And Wheddon Cross was not my village. My village is called Winsford, and according to the brochure on the table in front of me it is half a dozen miles to the south. The pub there is where I really must be careful not to put a foot wrong. That is where I am likely to become a regular customer, and exchange a few words and thoughts with my neighbour. That was in any case the way I had approached the situation, and after the first sip of wine I was pleased to note that the lava-like tears had subsided. There is a sumptuous, velvety quality about red wine that could turn me into an alcoholic, but that is not the path I intend to follow.

In fact I have very vague ideas about the paths I ought to be following. That’s the way I have developed, and what things are going to look like in six months’ time is a matter of almost laughable unpredictability. As the Bible says, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Very true.

During the twenty minutes I had spent at The Rest and Be Thankful Inn, twilight had thickened into darkness, and it had stopped raining for now. I gave Castor a special treat — dried liver: that’s his secret passion — and consulted the map. I drove out of the car park and set off along the A396 in the direction of Dulverton. After a few tortuous, winding miles I came to a road turning off to the right, with a sign saying: Winsford 1. This new road led down into a narrow valley, presumably following the course of the River Exe — which as I understood it gave its name to the whole moor — but the stream was no more than a vague suspicion of trickling movement through the car window. Or perhaps a premonition, a hint of a living being: it was not difficult to succumb to mysterious illusions in this unfamiliar, almost invisible landscape as the mist began to swallow it up; and when the first buildings on the edge of the village were caught in the beam of my headlights I felt a sort of atavistic relief. I drove past the village shop, and the local post office, then turned left and — in accordance with the instructions I had been given — parked in front of a war memorial commemorating the fallen in the First and Second World Wars. Together with Castor I crossed a simple wooden bridge over a fast-flowing stream, noted a church steeple outlined against the patchy blue sky that had suddenly been washed clean of mist, and started walking along a village street called Ash Lane. Not a soul in sight. Just past the church I knocked on a blue door in a low pommer stone house, and ten seconds later that door was opened by Mr Tawking.

‘Miss Anderson?’

That was the name I had given him. I don’t know why I had hit upon my mother’s maiden name — perhaps for the simple reason that I was hardly likely to forget it. Anderson with only one ‘s’, which is how they spell it in this country. By means of a simple hand gesture Mr Tawking indicated that I was welcome to step inside, and we each sat down in an armchair by a low, dark wooden table in front of an artificial gas fire. A teapot, two cups, a plate of biscuits, that was all. Apart from two keys on a ring lying on top of a sheet of paper, which I gathered was the rental contract. He served tea, stroked Castor and invited him to lie down in front of the warm fire. Castor did as he was bid, and it was obvious that Mr Tawking was used to dealing with dogs. But I could see no sign of one at the moment: Mr Tawking was old and hunched, certainly well over eighty — perhaps he had had a four-legged friend that died recently, and perhaps he had felt it was too late to acquire a new one. Dogs should not outlive their owners, that was a conclusion I had recently come round to.

‘Six months from yesterday,’ said Mr Tawking. ‘From the first of November until the end of April. So there we are — don’t blame me!’

He attempted to smile, but his muscles were not quite able to follow his intentions. Maybe it was a long time since he had anything to feel pleased about: there was an ingrained sense of melancholy enveloping both him and the room in which we were sitting. Maybe it was not just a dog that had left him, I thought, but a wife as well. Wives ought usually to outlive their husbands, but that is quite a different matter and not something I had any desire to think about in the present circumstances, certainly not. Instead I noted that the fitted carpet was dirty and worn in places; there were patches of damp on the gaudily patterned wallpaper, and for some strange reason a piece of red tape was stuck to the top right-hand corner of the television screen. I felt an urge to get out of here as quickly as possible. My own feelings of impending twilight needed no further encouragement, and after less than a quarter of an hour I had signed the contract, paid the agreed price for six months’ rent — £3,000 in cash (plus the £600 I had paid into his account two days ago) — and been given the keys. We had talked about nothing apart from the weather and the practical details.

‘You’ll find an instruction book on the draining board. It’s intended for summer visitors, of course, but if there’s anything else you want to know about just call in or give me a ring. My number is in that book. Be careful when you make a fire.’

‘Will my mobile phone work up there?’

‘That depends on which network you are with. You can always try from the mound on the other side of the road. You can usually get a signal there. The place where that woman is buried, and round about there. Elizabeth.’

We shook hands, he stroked Castor again, and we left him.

The mistress and her dog returned along Ash Lane to the monument and the car. It was becoming windy, gusts lashed and buffeted the larch trees and telephone wires, but the rain held back. The mist meant that visibility was thirty metres at most. There was still no sign of any living creature apart from us. Castor jumped onto his seat in the car, and I gave him another liver treat. We exchanged a few reassuring thoughts, and I did my best to erase the questions in his worried eyes. Then we set off and proceeded carefully along the other road through the village. Halse Lane.

After only fifty metres we passed the village pub. It’s called The Royal Oak Inn, has an impressively thick thatched roof, and faint beams of light shone out of its windows onto the road. Just past it, but on the other side of the road, with gloomy-looking rectangular windows, was Karslake House, a hotel boarded up for the winter.

Then both buildings and street lighting came to an end. The road became even narrower and was barely wide enough to accommodate a single vehicle: but during the seven or eight minutes it took us to reach Darne Lodge, through a series of convoluted and awkward bends, we didn’t meet a single car. Visibility was restricted by high, grassy and stony banks that had evidently been flanking the road for centuries — apart from the final section when the moor suddenly stretched out on all sides, temporarily illuminated by a full moon that succeeded in piercing the clouds and mists for a few seconds. All at once the landscape looked ethereal, like an old painting — Gainsborough or Constable perhaps? Or why not Caspar David Friedrich? Friedrich has always been Martin’s favourite artist: a reproduction of Monk by the Sea was hanging on the wall of his office when we first met.

I was struck by an ambivalent feeling of fear and relief when I got out of the car to open the gate. Or perhaps I had been flirting with this same unholy alliance as Friedrich, darkness and light, ever since what happened on that beach just outside Miȩdzyzdroje.

Miȩdzyzdroje — I still can’t pronounce it properly, but the spelling is correct (apart from the strange accent under the first ‘e’ that I don’t know how to produce): I’ve checked it. Eleven days ago now. A very difficult period of time if ever there was one, but despite everything, the nerve-racking, choking feelings have become slightly less acute for every morning that has passed, and every decision made — at least, I like to think that has been the case.

I have made up my mind to continue thinking that.

And if only I could switch on the electricity, get a fire started and sink a glass or two of port, I would be faced with a sea of tranquillity. Six months of winter and spring on the moor. With no company apart from Castor, my own ageing body and my misguided soul. Each day like every other, every hour impossible to distinguish from the preceding or the subsequent one. . Ah well, in so far as it was possible to begin to envisage the coming six months, that is more or less how things looked. A hermit’s life of redemption and reflection and God only knows what — but both Castor and I were well aware that we should spare no thought for the morrow, and an hour later, when he was on his sheepskin and I was in a rocking chair in front of the somewhat hesitantly crackling fire, we simply fell asleep, one after the other.

It was the second of November, it is perhaps worth noting: we had travelled further than I could ever have dreamt of and as far as I could judge we had swept away all traces of our movements. Feeling confident and secure that this was the case, shortly before midnight we moved over to the bedroom with its sagging double bed. I lay awake for a while, drawing up a few preliminary and practical plans for the following day. Listening to the wind blowing over the moor, and to the refrigerator humming away in the combined kitchen and living room, and eventually deciding that the events of the last few months had now finally come to an end. Or of the last few years, to be more precise.

And to be even more precise: of my life as it had turned out so far.