Stranger than Fiction! (Sequel)

Stranger than Fiction (Sequel)

 What was I to do?  Should I tell Mrs Hamilton about the words ‘le quatorze juillet’ ( the fourteenth of July)  which I had ‘heard’ that morning as I woke up?  I decided against it.  She had just sadly told me about her mother’s sudden death the previous summer, early on the fourteenth of July.  What good would it do to add my ‘weird’ story to the account of her loss?

In any case, I myself was still feeling shocked by this ‘coincidence’.  What unseen power had led me to this sitting-room, to comment on her mother’s photograph?  Bob and I had intended to spend the night at the Peebles Hydro, before changing our minds because of Bob’s exhaustion.  We had been given Mrs Hamilton’s B&B address only at the last minute before the tourist office closed.

Now, over thirty years later, I wonder if perhaps I should have told her.  Even if neither she nor her mother spoke French, Mrs Hamilton, who had just returned from France on the 13^th, might very possibly have mentioned the preparations for the fireworks display due that night, to welcome in the French public holiday on ‘le quatorze juillet’.  These words might have featured in the very last conversation mother and daughter had together.  To hear them again in this mysterious way might have helped my hostess to move from the sad mindset of:                                        

 ‘Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not’

 to the much more positive: 

’We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, 

but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day’.

But that evening my main thought was “Gosh!  That’s another amazing coincidence for my notebook!”  However, if I’m honest, I must add that I steered clear of giving any hint of a message ‘from the other side.’  I remembered my own bewilderment and alarm when, after my dear father’s sudden death, I had apparently received a message from him – seemingly to reassure me that all was well with him.                         

(In my book Joyful Witness* I describe how I came to terms with that overwhelming experience, and how it ultimately deepened my faith in God.)

Later, as Bob slept, I began to read Catherine Cookson’s Hamilton, the book I had bought that morning.  Maisie, the girl on the front cover, found spiritual comfort and inspiration in her visions of the symbolic horse which she called ‘Hamilton’.  Not daring to tell anyone of her visions lest people thought her crazy, she recorded them secretly in her notebook.      ‘But if she could not talk about Hamilton, she could at least write about him.'                              
 “Just like me and my notebooks!” I thought - because I had found it better to keep quiet about all ‘my’ amazing coincidences, as my family tended to find my enthusiasm for them somewhat strange and disturbing!   I smiled when I read in Chapter 4: ‘I tore the ten pages out of my notebook and put them in a brown envelope, then looked for a loose board under which to place them’.  That sounded familiar!  Only in my case, the hiding place was in my underwear drawer!

On our return home I decided to write to Catherine Cookson, telling her about how her book had been part of a series of (Hamilton) coincidences.  Shortly afterwards I was delighted to receive a letter from her, in which she wrote: 

'Dear Mrs Bates,                                                                                                               

Thank you for your letter, which I have read with interest...  I can definitely understand your coincidences, for I feel that my life too has been made up of a series of them...  Life is full of strange happenings, and, as you indicate, most people consider one to be fey if one expresses one's feelings in this way.                                                                                         
You ask me why I wrote HAMILTON.  I think perhaps, mainly because I understand loneliness, having had periods in my life when I experienced this to the depths.  Also, this was the kind of thing I used to write in my middle years, but nobody seemed to want it.  But such has been the response to this book that I wrote a sequel, GOODBYE HAMILTON.

Once again, Mrs Bates, let me say thank you for your letter and all therein.  I did appreciate it...

Yours very sincerely, 

Catherine Cookson'

This letter, along with photographs and postcards, is included in an album which I created to commemorate our little 'Easter pilgrimage'.  

The causeway to the Holy island of Lindisfarne

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