Where the West Wind Blows Read Online Free PDF Page A

in all its vengeance. The days will draw in and there will be no more evenings spent on the cliff top sketching sunsets or getting up at dawn to watch the start of the lonely day. It will just be long, drawn-out, solitary nights and short, rushed days before darkness obliterates the light again.
    I’m not sure I can take that. It is one thing being lonely on a bright, breezy day but another thing entirely in a cold, wet winter. I will have to think long and hard about staying …but if I don’t stay here, where on God’s earth will I go?
    I am not ready to go home.
    I doubt I ever will be.
     
    It is lunchtime. I huddle over a book and shovel scrambled eggs into my mouth. The kettle is singing on the hob, telling me it’s time for tea and, stifled from being indoors all morning, I pour the liquid into a thermos cup and take it onto the beach to drink it on the sand. Finding my favourite niche in the rocks where I am protected from the worst of the wind, I settle my mug in the sand, link my hands beneath my crooked knees and gaze across the empty sea. An inky ocean slaps at the rocks, white gulls cry and, far off in the village, a small dog yaps persistently.
    James should be here, sitting behind me, wrapping me in his arms, whispering in my ear, groping up my jumper, laughing and tempting me to naughtiness on the deserted beach. There would never be anyone to tempt me into bad behaviour again and my life stretches ahead in an unbroken plain of celibacy that I am far too young for. My fiftieth birthday is still a year or so away and I’m the sort of woman that needs a companion. I’m not designed to be alone.
    Everyone needs to be loved.
     
    That night, I dream of James again. We are tumbling and turning in a sea of undulating linen, my legs wrapped around his waist as he fills me with love, his hands stroking, probing, kneading, skilfully leading me onward, up and up until I am full of him. I can feel love blowing all around us. My eyes are closed and I am smiling ... washed with contentment. James, I whisper, James, James … I catch my breath, bite my lip …
    I wake up, body throbbing as it always is after such a dream. Almost sobbing with a combination of loss and frustration, my hand trails down between my legs, fingers probing my own wetness to seek a release of sorts – the loneliest kind. 
     
    After that dream I cannot rest. I am plunged suddenly back into the dark hole, the blackness of my future mocking me again. I had thought I was beginning to recover but now I am where I started and I think that perhaps my preoccupation with paint and canvas has just been a façade, a decoupage screen, a conjurer’s trick.
    I am no further forward.
    I doubt I ever will be.
     
    The light has barely begun to leaven the dark when I leave the cottage and follow the path to the top of the cliff. I cannot settle indoors, loneliness is like a virus, my body is itching to be loved and I hope a long relentless walk will tire me out and make me sleep. I plunge my hands deep into my pockets and climb steadily; the wet shale of the surface giving way beneath my feet, making me slip and slide, impeding my ascent. When I finally reach the top, the cleansing wind lifts my tumbled hair and I wrench it back, hold it fast and with grim satisfaction, scan the pink stripe of the horizon and the mercurial darkness of the sea.
    I walk for about half an hour and then sit on the damp grass and watch a seal far below me, nosing its way along the shore. If I were a seal I wouldn’t need a reason . For a seal, life is life, he doesn’t ponder on how long his time on earth will be, or how short. He lives for the moment, the next wave, the next fish, the next mating.
    I wish I were a seal. 
    I watch enviously, intrigued at the unexpected glimpse into the life of a sea mammal. I share the wonders of the morning with him until the chilly fingers of dawn begin to creep up my skirts and beneath my anorak, I get up and walk to and fro, banging my