A Disturbing Tale

A Disturbing Tale

I overheard the following distressing story in the pub. Horace was recounting his observations and deductions to his sympathetic friend Gaius Maecenas, who was suitably moved.

I knew Horace quite well, a retired academic biologist and dilettante browser in the Literary Review Weekly. Some 10 years ago he had placed a personal advertisement in his favourite magazine; something along the lines of:

"A young seventy year-old, who loves the LRW for its liberal views and wide coverage of philosophy and politics, would like to meet a woman who enjoys music as conversation and vice versa.

He thought this might catch the eyes of women who shared at least some of his interests.

Needless to say he received a number of replies: some interested, some tentative, some distant. One ended up as a pen-pal, one as a musical but temporary affair, one as a soul-mate and partner. Horace moved from Cornwall to a modest house in our village in Oxfordshire, nearer family, but not too near. The chosen lady duly arrived, for 3 months, but, like Persephone, she had to return every year to her home in Ecuador for the remaining 9 months. Horace in his turn would spend a couple of months each year with her in Quito, but for the rest of the year lived a bachelor existence in the village.

Our academic used occasionally to cross the road to the Bell Inn to chat with a few of the regulars while drinking a half pint. It seems that, one day, an attractive stranger caught his eye sitting in the window seat, for she was reading the Literary Review Weekly.   It was the first time he had seen that paper in the village, other than in his own home. 

"Hello! A fellow reader of the LRW " he said. 

"Yes. Isn't it awful about those prison camps?" she replied.

"I have not seen the latest number, because I am two or three copies in arrears. But I trust the paper will give a fair account."

She was never seen again, in the pub. But some months later was seen waiting at the Bell Inn bus stop. Indeed, it appears she regularly walked past the academic's house on the way down to the bus, or back from it. Handsome, blonde, well-dressed; she was conspicuously different from typical residents of this particular village.   

Taking the bus one day, Horace found himself sitting behind the blonde stranger, so he took the opportunity of getting into conversation, learning her name (Sarah) and inviting her to coffee any time she was passing his door. 

No such opportunity occurred for several months, but Sarah did eventually pop in; once. She seems to have worked in the States at one time, in some slightly obscure capacity, perhaps banking or our diplomatic corps.  She lived, he learned, in a small house, in the road behind his own, backing on to fields. After that single visit she was not seen again for more than a year. Then she turned up, at the door, asking if the coffee-offer was still valid. Well, it was, but not just then, for a reason I did not catch. Sarah seemed unwell. She wondered if Horace was also experiencing the debilitating radiation emanating from the building-site behind her house. It affected her in disturbing ways. She fingered her hair which hung in lank strands across her face. She thought that he, a scientist, would probably know about such things. But he, a scientist, was scared. Was she going mad? 

"So sorry not to be able to invite you in just now, but come another day." Well, she never did. After several months Horace went round into the cul-de-sac and looked for a small house. The end one was tiny, but seemed empty. He pressed the door-bell. An irritated neighbour popped out and asked him what he wanted. He said he was trying to track down Sarah. 

"Sarah lives in number 26, next door the other side." He thanked the neighbour and crossed over to ring at number 26. Eventually the door opened sufficiently to reveal an even more bedraggled Sarah. 

"Thank you for asking me, but not just now. I shall be in touch." And the door closed again. '

Horace was disturbed. Being, by profession, a maker of hypotheses, given to adding  two-plus-two , he wondered if the reading of the LRW was no accident? And how did she know he was a scientist? Questions started to flood his brain. Was she one of the women who had seen his personal advertisement in the LRW? Had she been stalking him for 10 years? Did she move to the village after he had? Had she suffered a 'break-down'; broken by disappointment at the failure of her gambit. Did she ever come out of the house now? Did she have her food delivered?

"It is a sad, and moving, story", said Maecenas, "whether or not she moved to the village to 'trap' you; for you describe the collapse of an attractive, intelligent and extrovert woman into a dejected recluse in the space of six or seven years. You might blame yourself for not noticing her pain. But you cannot blame yourself for enticing her to the village. You seem to have been essentially unaware of her"

"Well, thank you Gaius. That is what I keep telling myself. But what should I do now? I am scared of getting involved. I already have the Sri Lankan widow ringing my doorbell once if not  twice a week. Her curious mixture of Tamil and Portuguese baffles and exhausts me, though I can see she needs help, with her phone, bank account, probate and what not! "

"Hmm", said Maecenas.

I left before they did, unobtrusively, with a quiet wave to Tracey behind the bar.