It must have been near the mid-point of the ridge that I stopped simply to stare for a few minutes at the wide green world laid out before me. I sighed and shook my head and said aloud, for no particular reason: “Heavenly.”
And a voice behind me said, “Isn’t it just?”
I started and looked round. A few yards away, a woman was sitting on a flat stone at the base of a ruined cairn. She was smiling, though whether at me or the scenery her dark glasses made it impossible to tell. Her blonde shoulder-length hair looked golden in the sunlight, though maybe there were some streaks of silver there as well. She wore a white blouse and tailored beige slacks, slender ankles showing above moccasin-style shoes. Her smile was beguiling, almost girlish, but my immediate impression was of somebody who was no longer young but somehow better for it, somebody who might once have been pretty but was now beautiful.
“I’m sorry if I startled you,” she continued, in a soft slightly husky voice.
“No, no. It… doesn’t matter. I was…”
“Lost in thought?”
“Well…” I too smiled. “You could say so, yes.”
“It’s an ideal place for it. I quite understand.” Oddly, I felt she did. I felt she understood completely without needing to be told. She took off her glasses and gazed past me. “Up here, everything’s so… so very clear. Don’t you think?”
“You… come here often?” I asked, wincing at the inanity of the question.
“Not as often as I’d like. But that may be about to change. What about you?”
“Never before. I live… a long way away.” Thinking of Brussels, I added: “But that may be about to change as well.”
“Really?”
I shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“You’re walking Offa’s Dyke?”
“Part of it.”
I stepped across to the cairn, lowered my rucksack to the ground and sat down on a boulder beside her. She looked round at me, her smile fading into the gentlest of appraising frowns. Closer to, my earlier guess was confirmed. She was older than me, in her mid-forties perhaps, but younger in spirit. There was something graceful but also skittish about her, something elegantly unpredictable. Hers was the face you’d notice across a crowded room, the voice you’d strain to hear, the quiet air of mystery you’d long to breathe.
I glanced at her left hand where it rested on her knee. There was no ring on the fourth finger. But there was a pale band of untanned flesh where one had recently been. Some flicker of her blue-grey eyes suggested she knew I’d noticed. But she didn’t withdraw her hand. I coughed to cover my embarrassment and said: “Yours is the Mercedes parked in the lane?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “Pathetic, isn’t it? That it’s so obvious, I mean.”
“It was the only car there. I-”
“Can we really change anything, do you think?” Her tone had become suddenly urgent. Her hand tightened on her knee. “Can any of us ever stop being what we are and become something else?”
“Yes,” I said, taken aback by her intensity. “Surely. If we want to.”
“You think it’s as simple as that?”
“I think it is simple, yes. But not easy. I think the real problem is…” I hesitated. We were talking about each other’s life without knowing what the other’s life comprised. It made no sense. And yet it seemed to.
“What is the real problem?”
“Knowing what we want.”
“Deciding, you mean?”
“If you like.”
“But once we have decided?”
“Then… it’s still not easy. But at least it’s possible.”
“You believe that?”
She was staring at me intently, as if what I said-as if my exact choice of words-might make a real difference. For a fleeting instant, I was convinced she was asking me to make up her mind for her. What about I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. The freedom to choose a future mattered more than our separate pasts. That freedom was what she was silently urging me to assert. So I did-for my sake as well as hers. “I believe it,” I said, with quiet emphasis.
She nodded in satisfaction and glanced down at her wristwatch, then back up at me. “Where are you heading tonight?”
“Gladestry.”
“Then I should let you get on.”
“I’m in no hurry. But perhaps you…”
She chuckled faintly. “I’m in no hurry either. But, still, I must be going.” She rose to her feet, leaning forward as she did so. I caught a lacy glimpse of bra-a cool hint of flesh-between the buttons of her blouse. Then I stood up as well and realized how much shorter she was than I’d thought, how much slighter and more vulnerable than her eyes and voice had implied. “Yes, I really must be going,” she murmured, scanning the horizon. She turned to me with a broad smile. “Can I offer you a lift to Gladestry? Or would that be cheating? I know what sticklers you hikers are.”
I was tempted to contradict her, to say no, on the contrary, a lift to Gladestry-perhaps a drink in the pub there-would be delightful. But somehow I knew she didn’t want me to say that. The true value of a stranger lies in his never becoming anything else. “I’ll walk it, thanks.”
“Goodbye, then,” she said. “And good luck.”
I grinned, thinking she was casting humorous doubt on my hiking abilities. “You reckon I’ll need it to reach Chepstow?”
“I’m sorry.” She blushed slightly and shook her head. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Never mind. I probably will. Good luck to you too.”
“Thank you.”
I found myself shaking her hand. One fleeting touch of palms and fingers. Then the same dazzling smile she’d greeted me with. Before she turned and walked away down the broad grass track towards Kington. I watched her for a minute or so, then, fearing she’d look back to find me staring dolefully after her, I too turned, heaved on my rucksack and started on my way. I glanced at my watch as I did so and noted the time. It was just after a quarter to eight. She would still have been in sight then. The future would still have been retrievable. But by the time I next stopped to look back, near the summit of the ridge, she’d vanished. And the future had taken its invisible shape.
I reached Gladestry at dusk. A cluster of stone cottages by a drought-sapped brook, complete with church, school, post office and pub. I lingered long enough in the bar of the Royal Oak to eat a hearty supper. Then I went up to my feather-mattressed bed and slept the log-like sleep of the long distance walker. Early next morning, I set out for Hay-on-Wye.
That day and the four following settled into a pattern of prompt starts, midday lay-ups to dodge the heat and evening arrivals at comfortable inns. The landscape varied from the bleak grandeur of the Black Mountains to the soothing beauties of the Wye Valley. On a conscious level, I thought of little beyond mileages and map references. But subconsciously, as I realized at the end of the walk, my mind was hardening itself against a return to the life I’d led in Brussels. I’d have to go back, of course, if only to resign, but I could never go back in the true sense. Somewhere behind me on the path, a bridge had been decisively burnt. If I’d had to specify where, I’d have opted for Hergest Ridge. The woman I’d met that first evening didn’t fade from my memory. On the contrary, my encounter with her seemed to grow in significance as I went on. Not because of the words we’d exchanged so much as the suspicion that somehow, by letting her go so easily, I’d let some opportunity-sexual, psychological, altogether magical-slip from my grasp. I didn’t know her name or where she lived. I knew nothing about her at all. And now I never would. It was a melancholic reflection, heightened by solitude. Yet it steeled my resolve. Whatever happened, I wasn’t going back to the life I’d left behind.
During those six days on Offa’s Dyke, I was effectively sealed off from the outside world. I read no newspapers, watched no television, heard no radio. My conversation was limited to trifling exchanges with publicans, shopkeepers and fellow hikers. I suppose it was a little like retreating to a monastery for a week. As a source of refreshment, it equalled the most ravishing scenery. Being out of touch came to seem a deliciously pleasant condition. I didn’t want it to end. But it had to, of course. Every journey has a destination. And mine was the real world.