Lost in Hardy Country

Mara Kurtz

Photo by Mara Kurtz

Word Count 938

We flew to London on Friday, May 13th. I liked traveling on days most people considered unlucky. The planes were always half empty.

I’d always dreamt of visiting Wessex, Thomas Hardy’s name for a group of English counties in Dorset where his novels take place. Having read them all, I often wondered whether the locations Hardy wrote about were as beautiful as his descriptions suggested.

We had a reservation at a hotel in Dorset called The Summer Lodge, a romantic country house located in Evershot, a tiny village with a population of 150. As we rode down a steep hill next to a church and onto the winding cobblestone main street, I noticed a little thatch roof house on the left with a sign that read “Tess Cottage.” This turned out to be the actual home in which the heroine of my favorite Hardy book, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, ate breakfast in a “cottage by the church.”

My husband quickly became comfortable driving on the “wrong side of the road,” and we spent our days meandering through charming hamlets in the rolling countryside and stopping in lovely little tea rooms along the English Channel. It was all just as Hardy described.

Antique shops lined the streets of every town. I bought little silver dessert forks in velvet-lined boxes and delicate porcelain cups and saucers with floral patterns. We seldom left empty-handed.

Along the way, I came across a flyer advertising an antique market with 100 dealers to be held the following morning in nearby Dorchester.

We awakened early and dressed quickly, anxious to arrive at the show by 9 o’clock when it opened.

Entering Dorchester, John turned onto the High Street and drove past the Kings Arms Hotel, the legendary setting for Hardy’s classic novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Further down the road, we could see a large white sign with bright red letters spelling out ANTIQUE SHOW TODAY above an arrow pointing to an alley on the left. John said, “I know you’re sure everyone is buying everything you want, so go ahead. I’ll park at the bottom of the hill and catch up with you in a few minutes.” I laughed and headed down the alley.

All three floors of the grey stone building were filled with tables displaying an exceptional array of antiques and other vintage pieces the British call “collectibles.” There were already quite a few people milling about on the first level, and I walked around to take a quick look before John arrived.

On the second floor, I took my time, examining each piece that interested me, and bought a sterling silver frame with a hand-colored photograph of Queen Elizabeth.

There was no sign of John, so I walked up the steps to the third floor and strolled around slowly, stopping at each table to examine the tempting displays.

When I returned to the main floor, John was still nowhere to be found. I’d been at the show for almost an hour and expected to find him at any moment searching for me. I stopped to ask two dealers near the door if they’d seen a man who fit John’s description. They had not. After going back up to take another careful look on each of the floors, I still couldn’t find him.

It was now 10:30, an hour and a half since my arrival. I tried to remain calm but felt increasingly alarmed. I decided to see if John might be fixing a flat tire and walked all the way down the steep hill and back up again.

Unable to imagine what could have happened to him, I began to panic. Going back into the show, I asked a dealer to let me use his phone to call the police. After explaining the situation, the officer I spoke with said, “Oh, Miss, he probably just stopped into a pub for a pint.” I responded, “We’re Americans. My husband doesn’t drink beer in a pub at 11 o’clock in the morning.” He offered to check the hospitals and roadside accident reports and asked me to call back. When I did, it was almost noon. Three hours had passed. The officer said he could not find anything amiss.

I started to imagine that John had been in a car crash, perhaps driving on “our side” of the road. Or maybe a heart attack. Or a robbery. But Dorchester hardly seemed like a dangerous town.

I considered calling the owner of the Summer Lodge and asking him to bring me back to the hotel. As I stood and waited, I wondered if I would have to bring John back to America in a coffin. Or if my daughters would come to England to help me. I was certain he was dead.

Unsure about what to do next, I walked out the front door of the building and decided to check the narrow street at the end of the alley. Looking both ways, I didn’t see anyone in either direction. Walking left as it began to rain, I passed several rough-looking men wearing greasy clothes working on motorcycles in a garage. I didn’t dare look at them.

Further on, I noticed ominous strips of barbed wire above a wall across the street that turned out to be the back of the county jail.

Feeling desperate as I walked toward the end of the long dark road, I suddenly saw John rushing toward me, both arms above his head waving. I ran toward him, and we stood there hugging for a long time.

When I finally felt calm enough to ask him what happened, he said he’d spent the entire morning searching for me at the Vintage and Collectibles Market in the Town Hall around the corner.

No one ever mentioned there were two Antique Shows in Dorchester on Wednesday mornings.

Mara is a graphic designer, photographer and illustrator and founder of Mara Kurtz Studio. Her work has been published in numerous publications including Metropolis, New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel and Leisure, and The Wall Street Journal. She has been a Professor at Parsons School of Design,The New School, NYU and School of Visual Arts since 1990. She is a graduate of New York University and Parsons School of Design. She received an MA from The New School in 1995. The Rock Hill Pictures, a book of Mara's documentary photographs, was published in 2012.