Chapters (27)
I am still surprised by how cheerfully I drove back here, the wind before me, the Fuglemans and the Flatmans behind. I was in such prime condition that I ought really to have stopped off at Paddington before I left London and gone looking for Melpomene. But I was eager to be away. I sailed along the motorway, acknowledging the friendly waves of lorry drivers and traffic police alike. For the first time ever I crossed the Tamar without a qualm. I didn’t even mind those last, normally spirit-breaking fifteen miles, the ones that tell you you really are leaving the kindly concessions of social man. I whistled down those blind lanes with my windows open, and slowed the car right down to enjoy the spectacle of that ultimate upward sweep of land, its final flourish before dropping sheer into the sea.
I wasn’t in a hurry to seek out the manilla envelope that Harry Vilbert had posted into my unused garden shed, but of course I was curious enough about it to have remembered it was there. The rats hadn’t got it, but the damp very nearly had. I reckon the odd snake had tossed it around a bit also. The envelope was just about legible. It read, What I think of my Husband. And its contents were still legible too. I suppose it was inevitable that they would not contain a single reference to Thomas Hardy. I was the husband that Camilla wanted to express her thoughts about.
I don’t know what effects this composition would have had upon my peace of mind had I read it when I was intended to – last autumn. I’m sure it would have set my convalescence back by months. But I’m stronger now, as I’ve proved. I read what Camilla had to say, then I walked down with it through the village, smiling and nodding as I went, out into the harbour, past the Museum and the harbour master’s cottage, and up on to the cliffs. Once there I made for one of my most favourite vertiginous ledges, where I sat awhile and peered down into that absurd fuss and ferment below me; then, choosing my current of air as craftily as if I were a kestrel, I up-ended Camilla’s envelope and let the pages of what she thought of her husband hang and sway for a moment before floating down with a rocking motion into the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea.