Tag Archives: romance

The Austen device

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Tom and Anika meet again in Conques in France exactly one year after they parted and exactly as they had promised. Their love has withstood its first test and it would be easy now to write a story where they stay together and live happily ever after; how boring would that be? As Tolstoy famously wrote [I paraphrase here] – all happy families are the same, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own distinct way.
The genre demands that our two lovers must suffer for their love as we do in the so called real world. They must be separated before they can consummate [delightfully old fashioned word, no?] their love and in Jane Austen’s world they must be kept apart until the very end through circumstance or that favourite device, ‘the misunderstanding’. Think Persuasion in particular where red blooded readers will be shouting ‘come on guys, get it together!’ but the resolution is deferred repeatedly.
So it comes to pass that Tom and Anika must be plucked apart; as luck would have it, Anika receive news that her father in England has had a heart attack and she must leave Conques and fly to England that very day.
Mere hours after being reunited, Anika is in a taxi to Rodez airport and Tom is left bereft in the village.
Will they never be together?
And how is their romance linked with the mystery of the pilgrim deaths?

Love and death are in the air on the Chemin de Saint Jacques

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Tom begins his commissioned walk from Le Puy en Velay to Saint Jean Pied de Port, the 734 km journey which I undertook in 2013 as preparation for this novel.
In 12 days time it will be one year since Anika and Tom parted and agreed to meet again in a year.
The two have had zero contact in the last year.
Much will happen to our hero in the 12 days until the two lovers are supposed to be re-united.
The weather is bad on the Aubrac plateau; snow and sleet and wind churning the path to mud and ice and few are walking in such wild weather.
Tom travels through the forests near Domaine du Sauvage and learns of the deaths of two pilgrims in the woods. A few days later he hears of the death of a third pilgrim and what was abstract when read on a computer screen becomes real as he walks the same paths upon which they walked and died and hears their stories from the locals.
The reality of the deaths is heightened by the drama of the wild weather and the handful of scared pilgrims huddle together as news of the dead pilgrims spreads along the Chemin.
In the midst of the fear and of the rumours, Tom is astonished to meet Charo, whom he had met previously when crossing the Pyrenees on another day of wild weather and who had told him a bizarre story of an elderly pilgrim ‘vanishing’ near the ancient monastery refuge of Roncesvalles: intriguingly, there was talk of Anika accompanying the woman before she died.
What is Charo, a most unlikely pilgrim, doing walking the Chemin alone?
Is it a coincidence that she has met Tom again?
Will Tom lose faith that he and Anika will meet on their anniversary (how? where?) and instead be tempted by the attractive and flirtatious Charo?
How and why are the pilgrims dying?
How can Tom combine solving the mystery of their deaths with writing his novel about their deaths?

Coast to Coast mayhem: Episode 6

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Eventually the pieces fall into place. Mel recalls some story of Ralph leaving Iraq in hush hush circumstances and DI Kate and her team track down the truth. Jean in a previous life was a Sobranie Black Russian smoking temptress working undercover for MI and she has more to add to the story. Jeri and Jean are cleared. Bruce is eliminated as a suspect and now only a few of us are left as ‘persons of interest’. Investigations continue around the clock ( as all good police enquiries should do). Will is cleared, to Kate’s immense relief ( for there is love in the air).
Finally the breakthrough! There is a connection of names, dates and places between Ralph and one of the group and after hours of intense interrogation David cracks and confesses. Yes, David killed Ralph!
It is me! For it is Ralph who was responsible for my young brother’s death years ago in Iraq, the victim of a covert US operation gone dreadfully wrong. I could not believe my luck when I heard his name on that first day in Saint Bees; to have him before me and I simply had to wait my chance to perform the deed. I never wanted to kill sweet Maggie and smart and funny Matilda, but I had no choice. They got in the way. Collateral damage, as they said of my brother.
Ah, cruel twist for all such stories have a twist at the end. I have killed the wrong man! It was Ralph’s crazy twin brother who was responsible, not the poor innocent man I murdered! Ralph had not even seen his brother for years as he is a survivalist hiding out in the remotest part of Montana.
There is one final twist, for such stories always have one twist just when you think you have seen the last one. Bruce and Denise worked out long before DI Kate that I was the mad murderer and, under the pretence of offering me kindly morning cups of tea, have been systematically poisoning me with foxglove. Oh unhappy me!
I finish my tale and as the pen falls from my hand and the coldness enfolds me, I have a vision of the group completing their walk in Robin Hoods Bay and returning home without a backward glance to my lifeless body and of Kate and Will in the year ahead, raising a family of little adventurers in the wilds of the Antartic.

Thanks to a wonderful group for being such good sports and fine walking companions who allowed me to pen and disseminate this bit of fun. Thanks guys!

Coast to Coast mayhem: Episode 5

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Isolated in our rooms except when questioned by DI Kate, time passes slowly as the rain tumbles down. There is unexpected good news. Jeri is out of danger and it was not poison, rather a rare allergy to the Mozambique toffee used in the desert and Jeri is due to rejoin us in a few days. So we are back to two deaths and we cling to the hope that maybe it can all be innocently explained. We all have our theories and Matilda’s astute observations of us has led her to focus her suspicions on one member of the group. Oh foolish woman! That evening on the stairs she tells one of our group of her conclusions and that she plans to share her thoughts with the lovely Kate first thing in the morning. A terrible mistake indeed.
The next morning one person is missing at breakfast – Matilda. There is a frantic search and she is found dead in the drying room, cooked to death with the temperature set at maximum and the door jammed shut. With her own blood and in her dying moments she has managed to scratch one word on the inside of the drying room door. The police will not reveal that fatal word; at least now they have a real clue and we must put aside our childish hopes of an innocent explanation and accept that we have a cold blooded murderer, perhaps a lunatic, in our midst.
Tentative connections emerge. Ralph worked with the US military in Australia. Jean was in the Australian army. Mel was a crack investigative war journalist in Iraq and Afghanistan before choosing a quieter and slower life in Western Australia. Jenny says that Bruce had army connections, but this proves untrue; why has Jenny tried to shift attention to good old Bruce? Denise has come to Australia from South Africa and there are whispers of dark secrets but she divulges nothing. Has Jeri deliberately staged her seizure to distract us all from the truth, for she also has wandered the world and is a mathematical whizz. More details are unearthed of Ralph’s undercover military work across the globe and Kate understands that it his death which is the key and that the other deaths resulted from saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. It is in Ralph’s history that the answer must lie.
And at night time she walks and talks with Will and the passion which never died is rekindled in the moonlight as we wait in fear, the old grandfather clock in the front parlour measuring out our time.
The concluding episode is upon us …

Coast to Coast mayhem: Episode 4

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We creep down to breakfast, dreading what we may find. Jeri is clinging to life in intensive care, Jenny has returned from one of her mysterious absences and nobody else has been harmed during the night. We sniff suspiciously at our food and drink and eat only what is sealed and presumably safe. Tempers fray. David is ordered to stop writing his damned notes and Matilda to stop observing us like ants in an ant farm.
The police arrive, led by DI Kate McCuddley with her piercing blue eyes and her steely gaze and we are instructed to stay in our rooms and await questioning. Our hotel is sealed off.
Nor is the drama over yet! The DI announces that the autopsy showed that Maggie had been poisoned! Foxglove poisoning! What a cunning method. We look at each other open-mouthed and struggle to recall who had spoken before of foxglove as a poison. It is Denise and our eyes turn towards her as she protests her innocence. Jean, Jeri and Mel also had displayed impressive botanical knowledge, not to forget Will himself. And had not Jean argued with Ralph? We have our suspects and we draw away from them.
But there is more!
Will walks into the dining room and he and Kate see each other and reel back in shock, their faces pale. For what seems like hours, both are speechless and then the truth is revealed. Will and Kate had been inseparable childhood friends and then young lovers deep in the remotest part of Scotland: soul mates who should have been together for ever. But young Will yearned to be the first person to swim around the world non-stop and Kate wanted to move to the big city to fight for fairness and justice and to make the world a better place and so they parted and have not seen each other lo, these many years though always they had kept a secret part of their heart for the other and lived with the regret of ‘if only’.
Destiny has flung them together again.
Will their old love be rekindled? Will they seize this second chance of happiness?
Will any of us survive this dreadful walk?
Who is the crazed killer?
Read on, dear reader …