The Widow's Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

venture out beyond the village, if only for an hour or two. I’d read somewhere about a church a couple of miles down the road with what are said to be sixteenth-century graffiti of ships. So I climbed into the Jag and headed out past Cley, along that lonely stretch of road where the creeks come right up to the tarmac on one side, and on the other there’s nothing but the occasional little row of houses looking out towards the sea.
    Someone once observed how I’m drawn to places that are half in and half out of the water. At the time, of course, I thought she was completely crackers, but as I drove along this morning that innocent little remark came back to me and, not for the first time, I felt a twinge of guilt which suggests that she might have had a point.
    The actual church is a solid-looking piece of architecture, not particularly pretty – or particularly modest, considering the location. But I suppose north Norfolk was a fair bit busier and more God-fearing when they built it. I parked the car on a patch of grass right beside it and marched up the steep little path.
    The actual ‘graffiti’ is on the back of pews which have all been arranged for viewing quite close to the main door– essentially just a series of scratches etched into an earthy wash of ochre, which makes the whole thing feel quite primitive, as if there might be the odd drop or two of ox blood mixed in with it. The ships themselves are pretty rudimentary – skeletal and quite fragile, with a little rigging and rectangular flags. Before actually setting eyes on them I’d somehow assumed that they’d been done by grown men as they struggled to stay awake through some interminable sermon – predecessors of Alfred Wallis, drawn in the naïve style. But, of course, why on earth would someone who spent his working life out on a boat return home and scratch ships into the furniture? The moment you see them it’s fairly evident that it was the handiwork of children, or more specifically, young boys. The galleons they aspired to one day climbing aboard.
    There aren’t that many of them – maybe four or five ships in total. The sort of vessel a stick figure would sail. But I found myself inordinately moved by them. Perhaps it was the thought of a child’s crewless ship drifting through the murky ochre for four hundred years or more.
    Certainly, they’re far more touching than any number of stained-glass windows or spires or communion tables. In a way it’s a shame that they’ve been dragged out of their original position. I would have quite liked to have got down on my hands and knees and peered round a corner to view them where they’d been secretly scraped into being.
    The old rood screen is also on display, in various sections. Eight pairs of saints, or possibly apostles,standing around, doing that beatific thing with their hands. What’s shocking is that all their faces have been scratched out, presumably in the Reformation. Strange, considering the mutilation is only done to an image, but one can’t help but imagine the physical sensation of the knife on one’s actual face.
    I dropped a few coins into the wall as a donation, then smoked a cigarette out in the graveyard. And on the way home I made a bit of a detour and called in at Holt, principally in search of a better bottle of wine than those on offer in the village shop. Wandered into a second-hand bookshop to have a quick nose about. I hadn’t gone in there with any particular objective, but perhaps because of my little visit to the church in Salthouse, I found myself loitering around the Art section, and within a couple of minutes had found a rather lovely collection of Holbein prints.
    I was still leafing through the book when some old chap approached the counter. The couple who run the shop were sharing the duties – about my age, perhaps a tad younger. And they’d just about finished totting up the bill for the bloke’s books and putting them in a bag, when the old chap