The Death of a Much Travelled Woman Read Free Page A

disguised herself as a harem girl to get into the Sheik’s inner sanctum?”
    “Oh yes,” said Constance dryly. “Tommy was quite the quick-change artist.”
    “I hadn’t realized she was still travelling,” I said. “Where’s she off to this time?”
    “The city of Pagan in Burma,” Constance said. “She said she had an old friend there she wanted to see. At her age she’s trying to pack in as much as possible.”
    The disapproving look came over Miss Root’s wrinkled face again. I wondered how it must feel to be always left behind.
    “You’ve known Miss Price a long time, I gather?” I said.
    She shook her head and asked, “More tea?”
    I returned to Mrs. Droppington’s farm house and spent the evening curled up with Kangaroo Cowboys , which Constance Root had insisted I take.
    “It can’t make up for having come all the way from London, but please take it anyway. I know Tommy wouldn’t mind.”
    The next morning I decided that I’d take a walk on the moors before returning to Exeter and London. I was disappointed not to have met Tommy Price, but felt inspired all the same. Would I still be on the go at eighty, visiting pagodas in the jungle? Or would I have retired to some quiet village like Sticklecombe-in-the-Moor? I had never been a true adventurer except in spirit; I liked a bittersweet espresso and a good newspaper far better than a jungle teeming with scorpions and snakes.
    Mrs. Droppington fixed me a hearty country breakfast and warned me about straying too far from the paths.
    “The mists and rain can come sudden up here. There’s plenty of folks lost on Dartmoor every year.”
    I promised to be careful and took the Wellingtons and oilskin slicker she pressed on me, as well as a sandwich and thermos of tea for later. It was a clear morning, sunny and brisk, just right for walking, and I set off in good spirits, dutifully sticking right to the paths. The hills above Sticklecombe-in-the-Moor had a number of famous tors, those masses of bulging granite that look in some cases like great fists pushing their way up from the earth and in other cases like Easter Island gods, with enormous noses and full lips. To gaze out across the landscape was to feel in a very wild place, at the top of the world; yet the ground itself was hard going, being covered with what is called clitter, the rubble from outcrops of granite, and being squelchily wet. Dartmoor is poorly drained; the land is a like a sponge, with bogs among the tussocks of purple moor grass and tufts of whortleberries and wild thyme.
    I walked for several hours, seeing few signs of life except for the occasional pony and, high above, the lark or stone curlew with its eerie cry. I had hoped to see some of the hut circles that Sheila Cragworth had been so keen on all those years ago, but all I saw were a few moorstones, the old stones along the ancient path that had been erected by villages like Sticklecombe-in-the-Moor centuries ago to help travellers find their way across the stretches of high ground. I remembered how irritating Sheila had found my superstitious bent. Poor old Sheila; she was now some sort of Tory functionary in Brighton, which showed what a broken heart could do to you.
    I had lunch next to a particularly impressive tor that looked like a Northwest totem pole with a raven’s beak and a bear’s torso and finished Kangaroo Cowboys :
Someone once said to me: Why travel? After all, there’s nothing new to discover, no place where no one has been before. To that I would say that more than half of travel, perhaps ninety percent of travel, is imagination. Some people can stay home and live lives of great adventure; others may roam the entire globe and yet remain as provincial as a country lad. What you get out of travel is what you put into it; and if you put your whole imagination, you get a great deal.
    I had difficulty reading the last words and raised my head to realize that, quite suddenly, the weather had changed.
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