Walking Alone

by Carolyn McCrae

  The sheets were out of order, jumbled and untidy. Graham must have read most of them. How much time had he had?

  Max was annoyed with himself for letting down his guard. He should have realised that strangers, any strangers, even members of Alicia’s family, could be a threat. He certainly hadn’t allowed for Graham.

  He tried another drawer in his desk. It was still locked.

  Max thanked God that Graham hadn’t opened this drawer as well. Locating a small key on his key fob he unlocked the drawer and pulled out a folder crammed with notes and photographs. The pages of familiar uneven blue type were scarcely readable in places on the yellowing paper. Fancifully he imagined the words wanting to disappear, tiring of the pain they caused. The ribbon on the typewriter had needed changing, the tops of the letters were red and some were missing altogether and she had been grateful when he had sent her two new ones.

  He re-read the hand-written letters wondering yet again whether he should have done anything differently.

  He had thought it was all history, never to be resurrected. He would let Carl see all the papers when he was dead. Not before. But now he knew he had been living in a fool’s paradise. Perhaps he should never have thought his secrets could be kept forever.

  He had been burying Alicia that day, but the past had been resurrected. Two spectres from his past had appeared signalling in their separate ways that the past could never be buried.

  Carefully putting the folder away and re-locking the drawer, he turned back to the album on his desk, leafing through it until he found a particular photograph.

  No one would recognise David McKennah in the small group of uniformed men laughing at the camera as they waved their caps in the air celebrating… he could not remember what… it had obviously seemed important at the time. Max only recognised David because he knew the tall, smiling, young man was him. He hadn’t been called McKennah then. In any case, in the manner of the day, he had always been known by his nickname. Max remembered his, Kipper, because someone had thought it a clever pun on his name. David’s had been Ginger, which always was remarked on by people who didn’t know him well, because he didn’t have red hair.

  Next to David was Jimbo, the man Max knew as Elizabeth’s husband. Within a week of this photograph he was dead. Would he still have been laughing at the camera if he had known? Probably.

  The young man on the right of the group, in a uniform of a different colour but still joining in with the hilarity of the moment, he could scarcely recognise as himself.

  Thirty years had changed Ginger and Kipper into David and Max. He knew Jimbo had died, he wondered if any of the others had survived.

  Turning the pages of the album, back through time, he saw Rebecca, standing awkwardly in the sunshine, her hands clasped behind her, her head to one side. Her long blonde hair was in plaits curled, like a halo, around the top of her head.

  Would Monika recognise herself in it? Max felt safe, she could not know what she looked like when she was young. She would not have looked at Holly and seen her young self.

  As he had.

  The similarity was immediately obvious to Max as he had watched Holly walking into the church that morning. Was it the roundness of the face, the particular colour of the hair? How could someone be so like someone else and not be them, somehow reborn?

  He would try to keep them apart though, to be on the safe side.

  Max had been expecting Matt to contact him for some time, ever since the letter from his old friends in the village. Now he recognised his daughter, who had somehow become friends with the Forsters. Had Matt engineered that? Max dismissed that from his mind. Matt could not be that clever.

  But Graham may be. Graham had seen Holly, he had seen these photographs. He would find Matt. If they weren’t already they would soon be working together.

  And Matt with Graham was a very different matter. Especially with the knowledge Graham must now have.

  Holly was his family too and although he knew he should do his best to protect her he had more important concerns. It was not Holly in these photographs; Holly was young, strong and seemed well able to look after herself.

  She would probably have to.

  Max put the photographs away, as he did so wondering how much time Graham had had, how much had he read, what photographs had he seen? He did not like not knowing. Not knowing made it more difficult to protect Monika.

  And he must protect Monika.

  In protecting Monika he protected himself.

  Max took a sheet of writing paper from the stand on the desk and began to write.

  Charles,

  It is the night after your mother’s funeral and perhaps I am feeling a little maudlin but there are some things I think you should know.

  Maybe not now but when the time comes.

  It was after six in the morning when he finished writing though both the finished letters were only two pages long. Every sentence he wrote brought back vivid memories he had thought long forgotten. He put each letter in an envelope, wrote Charles on one and Ted on the other.

  He pushed his chair back and walked stiffly to the fire which had died away hours since. He tried to resurrect it with some of the wasted sheets of paper.

  It was some time later, just as a quiet glow of red appeared on the coals he heard steps in the hall. Charles’s leather soles on the parquet flooring.

  Max wondered if he should make some attempt to stop him, but he stayed, staring into the small flicker of flame. The front door opened and shut again and a few minutes later he heard the sound of the Daimler accelerating down the drive.

  “Goodbye young Charles.” Max said to the flame.

  He knew he would never see the same man again.

  Chapter Nine

  I left before it was light. It didn’t occur to me that there were people I should talk to, who would want to talk to me. Even if it had I would still have left, I had no intention of meeting Graham.

  I didn’t bother with breakfast, Monika would be in the kitchen and I didn’t think I could trust myself to see her. I could stop for coffee at a café when I knew where I was going. Wherever that was.

  During the night I had thought about the Lake District but decided against it. Father had lived there, with Kathleen, and although they were both dead I felt awkward about being in an area they would have known so well. I wanted to go somewhere with no connections with the family, where there was no chance I would be recognised and where my name couldn’t raise any difficult questions.

  At the roundabout where I had to make the first decision I turned right, towards Chester, and drove along the familiar roads south through the Wirral. As if in automatic pilot I turned right, off the main road, towards Queensferry and Wales, I passed the sign welcoming me to Wales, Croeso u Cwmru, the sign I had always dreaded when going back to boarding school. At the next roundabout I turned left, south; north had always meant ‘school’ and even after all the time that had passed the pain and unhappiness of the year I had spent there was very raw.

  I drove down through the marches of Wales, the prosperous market towns each with their hotel called the ‘Feathers’ or ‘The Prince of Wales’. There were few other cars on the road but for once I took little enjoyment in the driving. I crossed the Severn into Gloucestershire and headed south, past Bristol across the Somerset levels and into Devon. It had been dark for a while and I began to feel the need to find a room for the night.

  Years before I had stayed at a large hotel with Mother and Susannah on one of the awful forced holidays we had had together. Although I’d hated the holiday I’d liked the hotel, I remembered it overlooked a lake with rhododendrons. There had been pairs of Wellington boots lined up in the hall and large dogs drying themselves in front of the fire, even in the summer. It was peaceful and comfortable, at least it had been 15 years earlier. I tried to remember the name of the town.

  After Exeter I headed towards Dartmoor. I recognised nothing so I kept going. ‘If I find it I find it.’
I said out loud, partly to keep myself awake. ‘If I don’t there’ll be somewhere else signposted.’ I was tired, too tired to be driving on unfamiliar roads, but I carried on, concentrating hard to keep awake. The few towns I drove through seemed dark and closed. I saw nothing like a hotel or even someone I could ask directions of.

  The road was very narrow now, climbing up onto the moor, there were no more trees, no more houses, just blackness pierced by the infrequent headlights of oncoming cars. I hated driving in the dark. It as something I hadn’t had much practice at and oncoming headlights multiplied in my glasses making it even more difficult to make out where the road was. I was beginning to panic, regretting my impulse to leave home so unprepared, when at last I saw a group of lights that were not oncoming vehicles and was extremely relieved to find a hotel with a full car park.

  After the loneliness of the road across the moor any sign of civilisation was welcome.

  It was only a few minutes before I was sitting on a soft bed in a perfectly adequate room. It wasn’t a proper hotel, just an old fashioned inn, but I was happy to accept the offer of a sandwich with my pint of beer.

  I sat eating and drinking in front of one of the roaring fires that had a sign saying it hadn’t been out since 1845 watching the people in the bar. For a week day evening in January in the middle of nowhere there seemed to be a large number of young people. Some of the drinkers enjoying their evening seemed to be bird watchers, I was not too tired to notice the binoculars and one of the magazines I wrote for on the table in front of a particularly large and noisy group. I wanted Susannah to be here to see that not all people who loved studying birds were the fossils she seemed to think we were.

  I had thought of them as ‘young people’ yet they were probably at least my age, or even older. I was suddenly conscious of feeling a generation older. My green cord trousers, checked shirt and cravat would not have looked out of place worn by a man of 70 and contrasted horribly with the jeans and sweatshirts worn by the men and women laughing and joking in the bar. I felt as old as Ted.

  Would I ever get to know people of my own age? I realised I had never tried. I was not yet 30 but I looked, and probably acted twenty years older.

  Although they all seemed friendly no one spoke to me.

  I knew Carl, had he been in my position, would not have had to sit the evening out on his own. He would have had the confidence to speak to them, he would have used shared interests to open a conversation. Carl wouldn’t have sat for two hours speaking to no one except the bar maid each time he asked for another pint.

  It was a perfect clear sunny morning as I drove across the moor the next morning. The sky was a deep blue, any signs of the mist had cleared and the colours of the heather and gorse contrasted completely with the dark and mist of the previous night. At Tavistock I turned towards Plymouth. On that holiday in Moretonhampstead, too late I remembered the name of the town I had hoped to find the previous night, on that holiday we had been into Cornwall, across a bridge and into what seemed like a foreign country. Even the buses had ‘Cornwall, Near England’ written on the back.

  So I headed for Cornwall. The road was narrow and as there was no chance of overtaking any of the few other vehicles I settled down to enjoy the winter sunshine at a sedate 30 miles an hour.

  As I drove I conjured up images of the ‘Perfect Fishing Village’. Images from magazines and the television worked themselves into a picture of steep cliffs tumbling into a small harbour filled with brightly coloured fishing boats protected by a stone harbour wall. The cottages would be climbing up the steep roads, clinging to the hillsides. There would be cheerful signs welcoming visitors to cream teas and Cornish pasties. There would be quiet, unspoilt pubs and cafes where I could enjoy the sea and my own company. I had no idea whether such a perfect village existed, but I would try to find it if it did.

  I decided to let fate guide me. At the first road junction I turned left, at the next one right, then left, then right. It worked. A little more than half an hour after crossing the Tamar I dropped down a steep hill towards the village of Polperro. Ignoring the signs warning drivers to leave their cars in the car park at the top of the hill I drove down the ever-narrowing street. Still turning ‘left, right, left’ I stopped at the harbour. I had to, the next right turn was a flight of steps.

  It was perfect.

  Reasoning that in the middle of winter it wouldn’t be a problem, I pulled up next to a No Parking sign. It seemed to be what everyone else did as several other vehicles seemed to be parked across similar signs, including an elderly Rolls Royce. I wondered how that had negotiated the narrow turns. As I walked around the harbour I noticed that practically every cottage had a picture in the window saying ‘Holiday Cottage To Let’. There would be no difficulty in finding a place to stay.

  “I don’t suppose you’d know of anywhere to stay would you?” I asked the man behind the bar of the pub at the end of the quay.

  “Don’t suppose I do.” Was the unhelpful response.

  “Don’t listen to Scrumpy. He’s in one of his moods.” An impossibly dark haired elderly woman wearing an incongruous red poncho and holding an empty cigarette holder stood down from her bar stool and pulled a card off the beam where it had been pinned. “Dani’ll look after you. Just say you’ve been sent from The Smugglers”.

  “That’s very kind of you, though it sounds quite mysterious.” I tried to sound as informal as everyone else appeared to be, but it must have seemed pompous. Until I had accommodation settled I would not relax, but even then I doubted if I could ever be quite as free from stress as the men and women sitting around the bar. And it was only just past eleven o’clock.

  “The pub. It’s the Smugglers.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Just up the steps here, turn left onto the cliff path and it’s the last house on your right.”

  “There aren’t any houses on the left you silly cow, there’s only the cliff.” The man behind the bar commented as he concentrated on wiping a dishcloth around a glass.

  I left them and climbed the steps as they had directed. After 30 or so, I gave up counting and paused for breath. I was at a bend in the path where I could look down over the harbour. It was exactly as I had imagined. The tide was out and the yachts and brightly coloured fishing boats in the harbour were resting at drunken angles on the mud, there was a makeshift landing stage at the bottom of the cliff I now realised I was half way up. I felt completely detached from it all, high above the beach no one would know I was there.

  Having got my breath back I walked on up the cliff path, thinking I must have missed the house but, rounding a small bend, I saw the gothic grey stone building set into the cliffs looming above me. There were only 15 more steps to the front door.

  After I had rung the bell I turned to look across the outer harbour. The village was out of sight, the bend in the path had taken me around the headland enough so that all that could be seen was cliff and sea, and a few houses in the trees on the other side of the harbour.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Danny.” I managed to say as I tried to catch my breath, handing the card towards the young woman who was walking down the steep path at the side of the house.

  “I thought I heard someone. I’m Dani. The bell’s useless, it’s the salt.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is. I was expecting a man,” I continued “the lady in the pub said ‘Danny’.”

  “Dani. With an I.” She explained in a patient, not unfriendly, way. She had obviously had to make the explanation many times before. “Danielle really.”

  “What can I do to help?” she repeated. “Do you need a room? We usually only take couples, same trouble as one but twice the money.”

  “Well I am looking for a room, but there’s only me. But I’ll pay for two if that helps. Charles Donaldson, by the way.” I thought I had better introduce myself.

  “How long for?” As she asked the question I realised I had absolutely no idea. If I tu
rned and went home now I would have been away three days. How long did I need?

  “I’m not sure. Until Sunday?”

  “Only two nights? Stay until Monday. You’ll find driving anywhere a lot easier if you leave on Monday rather than Sunday even at this time of year. We’ll leave it open, you might find you want to stay longer.” She didn’t wait for an answer before continuing “Well Charlie, I’ll come down with you and help with your case. Those steps can be a bit much until you’re used to them. Where’s your car? I’ll bring the key to the garage. It’s quite a long walk I’m afraid, but you’ll get used to it.”

  I let her talk on, comfortable that I had found exactly the right place, though I wasn;t so sure about being called Charlie.

  An hour later, the Daimler safely garaged at the top of the village, I sat sipping a blue and white striped mug of tea in the garden looking out to sea. On the way back from the car we had stopped at the bakers. “Hi Chalky, this is Charlie, two pasties please.” Turning to me she added “For lunch”. Chalky handed me the white paper bag that was already glowing transparent with the grease from the warm pasties.

  I had never been shopping with Monika. I tried to remember when I had ever been in a food shop. I couldn’t imagine being introduced to a shopkeeper or ever calling one by his nickname.

  As I relaxed in the garden Dani sat down in the chair beside me, putting the plate of pasties on the table in front of me. “Do you mind or would you rather be on your own?” I was happy enough for her to sit with me but I had no idea what to say to her, she didn’t fit any of the types of people I knew. She didn’t seem to need to talk, just sitting silently looking out at the waves rhythmically beating against the rocks. Eventually she did speak, though it seemed more to herself than to me. “I love it when elements meet, the wind on the water, the water on the rocks, the wind in the pines. There’s always something to watch and sounds to hear.” So I watched and listened to the elements as Dani went back to the house to refill the mugs.