Without A Song

Chapter Fifteen: Decision made

Beyond Old Dereham was Summer Heath, a part of the vast Great Barton Forest that paraded itself about a mile inland from the sea, circumvented Orford and Aldeburgh, to where it eventually tiptoed its roots onto the sandy dunes of the North Sea near Dunwich. Like Dunwich, my life possessed a habit of falling to pieces when I least expected it. Dunwich may have once been a much larger town, possibly even a city dating back to Roman times. Historians have since placed it as a thriving market town within its own bay and, if it hadn't been for several severe storms in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which destroyed several of the churches and reclaimed portions of the hitherto coastal fortress, it may have survived to become the most important town in East Anglia behind Bury St. Edmunds and Kings Lynn. The proximity of Dunwich to the coast at the time had worked against it because as well as supplying the very lifeblood of land to farm and the sea to fish from, its very society held it together. Instead the sea ate away at its heart over the centuries, leading to the almost complete abandonment of Dunwich by the nineteenth century. Just by being here above the cliffs you could sense the desolation, sense the effect of the sea battering against the shore. In this history slot not only the property was lost but also the people and the very fabric of the place.

I drove to a reclaimed beauty spot and parked the Miata amongst the dunes. A long pontoon of sand-dusted timbers took my path between roped handrails to the wide open beach whilst the dunes themselves crested four or five metres to either side of me. Combs of seagrass sat at their tops. I felt I needed time to walk the shore, to mull over the options, consider the what-ifs? I needed the wide open space to think. I dug out the telephone number of the lady rector and dialled it again from the mobile brick. Once again the same answer. No answer. Maybe that was the answer I really wanted, maybe it wasn't. This mess still had to be sorted but with only me trying how would it end? I found a small hump of sand that offered a bit more grass than others did and sat down to watch the sea. As I watched the waves roll to the shore I tried to compare each of them to my marriage. Each wave ran over a gradually rising shore until it petered out and went back from whence it had come. For a moment the shore and the wave were together, then they were apart until the next time. Much like my life with Sue in recent years. Each new contract had taken me away from home, only to return home for a finite time before I left again for somewhere new. The togetherness Sue and I dreamt of when we married never worked out as well as weʼd hoped and I was always drifting further away from her on a new tide, soon to be lost forever. I knew we both had to move on but the how of communicating this to Sue and how we resolved any of it remained a clear stumbling block.

The wide open spaces had cleared my mind and replaced old questions with new ones. I could do no more for now and in a more positive frame of mind I drove out to Hazyleigh, the home of Paul, Maddy, Tamsin and Kirsty seven miles beyond Barton. The house was quiet when I approached it. Although still very light there was no response to my pressing of the front doorbell. The secure high fences prevented trespass around the sides of the property. Paul Wilcox was probably still at work at the big British Telecommunications building out at Martlesham Heath and I realised that the girls would still be at school. Years of travelling had equipped me with strange ways, one being always to have some blank cards or envelopes with me. They come in handy when calling on unsuspecting friends or businesses. I left a card with Rupert's house telephone number and my mobile phone number on it, then put it through the door.

My next destination was on the edge of the Minsmere nature reserve and, like my visit to Hazyleigh, my arrival at Steve and Catie Mellor's home was unheralded. Not that it mattered, if Steve and Catie weren't at home I'd take a bracing walk across the reserve to drink at the Eel House on the Leiston road. Steve was a hands-on computer program designer and electronics whizzkid, he'd always been that way since he was very young. His father, a music professor at the home of the Aldeburgh Orchestra at nearby Holmeness, could never understand his only son's interest in new technologies. Catie's skills lay in jewellery design and she created necklaces, bangles and rings from metals, tumble stones and gems to sell at local markets and boot fairs. They were a match for each other, creative flair and headstrong drive existed in each half of the partnership. A couple of years ago Steve hit his personal gold mine when he patented and copyrighted some prototype software.