Two Steps Onward

by Graeme Simsion

  ‘Yes, but as you know, Camille has a particular…mistake.’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t know.’

  ‘Zoe has not told you?’

  ‘Zoe doesn’t know either.’

  Gilbert looked surprised, and took a while to reply. ‘If Camille has chosen not to tell Zoe, I’m sorry, but I cannot tell you.’

  ‘Understood. But you know what it is?’

  ‘I am her husband. I know everything—some things I wish I did not know, and some things that because of the illness Camille does not know any more.’

  There was no reason not to believe Gilbert. I could only assume that either the lie was too terrible for Camille to tell Zoe about or—make that and / or—it involved Zoe herself. What had happened back in college besides the fabled road trip? Why would anyone care now?

  We’d made it back to the B&B. The bedclothes were heaped in the middle of the floor. The tablets—a substantial stash—were taped behind the bedhead.

  ‘I hide them because Camille will forget she’s taken them and take them again.’

  He popped two tablets out of a foil and swallowed them without water. Then another two from a plastic bottle. ‘These are mine—Italian food is bad for the digestion.’

  ‘How did you forget them?’

  ‘Camille had…It’s not important. One day is like another, and in my mind I had already checked them off. And then I should have used the phone instead of risking my health by running to catch you and Zoe. I forgot.’ He laughed. ‘It is not only Camille whose mind and body is failing. We are all getting older. Camille is showing us our futures.’

  29

  ZOE

  Gilbert’s ‘destination restaurant’ was in the heart of the town, which our hotel was not. Again. Martin was defensive when I mentioned it as we walked a mile back the way we’d come.

  ‘They’re hardly going to make a point of telling you that a B&B is a kilometre or so out of town. Anyway, most tourists have a car.’

  Gilbert conceded: ‘It is possible there was a problem of communication.’

  ‘You’re doing a better job than any of us could,’ I said. I was worried more for Camille than for me, and she seemed to be doing fine. She seemed calmer, more centred, since her confession to Grietje.

  Now that we were out of the Alps, the nights were warmer, and we were seated outside, on tables set on a narrow cobblestone lane off the main street. The town that we weren’t staying in was pretty: churches, arcades of stores under stone archways, faded murals. Camille had gotten into a conversation with a Japanese couple at the next table. At college, she’d been a language major and before coming to the States she’d spent time in Tokyo, where her father had a diplomatic job.

  My restaurant-Italian was not enough to decipher the menu. Signora explained, but in a mixture of French and Italian too rapid for me, and Martin didn’t seem to get it either. Hard to know if Gilbert had understood—but when the share platter arrived, it was all sausage. Raw sausage. Was it pork? Raw pork sausage?

  ‘We need to google this stuff before we order anything else,’ I said, and Bernhard got his phone out. Whoever had written the menu had used descriptions like wild boar on a bed of late-season red delicious rather than pork with apples. Poetic, but not so great when the two words you did know were missing.

  We were maybe a quarter of a way through the first page when I noticed Camille working through the menu with the Japanese couple. Then a group of four behind them said something and she shifted her attention to them. Whatever language she was speaking, it wasn’t French or Japanese.

  She turned back to us briefly to explain. ‘Polish. Their Italian is not so good either.’

  I pointed out what everyone could now see.

  ‘Camille reads Italian?’ said Martin.

  ‘I guess.’ We’d been in Italy five days and hadn’t noticed—nor had she pointed it out.

  ‘And she speaks Japanese and Polish?’ said Bernhard.

  ‘You can see as well as I can. Or hear.’

  I looked at Gilbert. Surely he knew. Sarah nodded as if she did.

  Camille finished her interpreting and returned to the table.

  Bernhard said something to her in rapid German, and she fired something right back. I didn’t understand anything, except that she’d passed the test.

  Camille shrugged. ‘I studied English, Japanese and Spanish. Last night I was speaking with Grietje in Dutch. My Dutch is so-so but she was more comfortable talking about personal matters in her own language. I am working in a language school for many years, so I pick up others.’

  One of the Polish couple leaned over to us and said, ‘Your friend’s accent is very good.’

  ‘Speaking a few words of other languages is nothing special,’ said Camille. ‘Every kid in the Fez medina who wants to be your guide can do that.’

  ‘The Fez medina?’ said Martin meaningfully, and Camille turned back to the Polish couple like he’d hit a nerve. Martin was trying not to laugh and Gilbert was giving him a strange look. I had no idea what it was about.

  I was still thinking about Camille. After her abortion, she had dropped out. As I had, when I got pregnant and married Manny, my first husband and the father of my two girls. When she’d written me about her work, it had always sounded like administration.

  Camille went through the menu for us, and I thought of how little I knew of her life. Of her. Mostly when I thought of her, I was thinking of the twenty-one-year-old: the little flirt with her over-the-top French accent and phrasing. I am working in a language school for many years, so I pick up others. Right.

  ‘Camille,’ I said, ‘if your Polish accent is so good and you didn’t even study that, how come when you speak English…’

  Camille looked as though I’d insulted her. Again. Then she laughed. ‘You want me to talk like this: shoot the breeze, buddy; have a nice day? Be one with the universe?’

  I stared at her. No French accent. No accent at all.

  Sarah started laughing. ‘You sound just like Zoe.’

  I guess she did. She’d never lived in California. What was the deal with the universe?

  ‘Because it is from Americans that I am learning thees Eenglish.’ Now the French accent was thicker than Pepé Le Pew’s. ‘And if you are ’aving ze choice between ze sexy French accent and sounding like an American, which will you choose?’

  30

  MARTIN

  After a day walking through hazelnut orchards and past greenhouses full of red and yellow peppers, I did my first booking shift with Camille. Gilbert had been visibly tired, so I’d taken the opportunity to suggest that his multilingual wife assist me in his stead. Language difficulties were likely to become more frequent as we put the border towns behind us.

  ‘Of course. Even I was not aware she had these skills to such a level.’

  ‘What about you? Where did you learn English?’

  ‘I worked for a manufacturing company—in administration. But at fifty, my position was eliminated, and they paid for my retraining.’

  ‘In the wine business?’

  ‘In small-business management. Which in France is how to conform to the regulations. Thus, my wine business. I combine my passion and my training.’

  ‘You’ve got someone running it for you?’

  ‘I sold it. Three months ago, when I knew that Camille would need me at home to care for her. Forever.’

  We were installed at an agriturismo—the Italian equivalent of a farm stay—with a barbecue and, assuming Gilbert and I had communicated the requirement successfully, an assortment of meat and vegetables to cook on it.

  Camille was an entirely different booking partner from Gilbert: in no hurry, keen to chat and with an almost coquettish appreciation of my command of the itinerary which would have sat oddly, to say the least, with Gilbert. The one thing they had in common was an early assault on the evening’s booze.

  I hadn’t had much one-on-one time with Camille; the walk home from the restaurant after
meeting Grietje had been an anomaly. I’d had enough trouble keeping Zoe and Sarah happy. I’d grown accustomed to her forgetting and occasionally filling in the gaps with inventions, some plausible, some less so. Seldom a real problem.

  ‘You think we can find a place with cooking? Or don’t you like my cooking?’

  ‘I love your cooking. So does Zoe, by the way.’

  ‘You’re being polite. Tell me the truth. This is important to me.’

  ‘You’re a terrific cook. The other night, I think Zoe was just saying that it’s a different job cooking for a larger group, like in a restaurant or a hostel.’

  ‘We are six, and on this chemin, I think it would be unlikely there would be more than six guests in a hostel.’

  ‘Fair point. The problem isn’t your cooking—it’s the places we’re staying. They’re not set up for walkers or self-caterers. The hotels are for business people, and tourists like to eat out.’

  She stabbed a finger onto my screen. ‘We will try this place. I think they will let me cook.’

  And, after a protracted conversation in Italian, that seemed to be the outcome.

  ‘Nice work. Better be a good meal.’

  ‘Marteen. You are always joking.’ Hand on my shoulder. I reminded myself that the accent was intentional, or at least habitual. It would have been odder for her to sound like Zoe. With her free hand, she reached for the wine bottle.

  ‘Are you sure you should be drinking this? I mean…’

  ‘Maybe not. But I am enjoying it, and I want there to be some happiness in my life.’

  I picked up the bottle myself and filled her glass.

  ‘You are a bad man, Marteen,’ she said, her hand still resting on my shoulder, as Zoe appeared in the doorway.

  31

  ZOE

  I guess I should have shared my feelings with Camille about her flirting with Martin. But there was a gap between us that I wanted to bridge, not make wider. Flirting had been Camille’s go-to behaviour when she was feeling insecure. And when she wasn’t. She’d even flirted with Manny, my boyfriend back then. A lot. And he was totally not her type. Was it just that, or were those white bits in her brain making it worse?

  When Camille and Martin were done with the reservations, Martin went to check out the barbecue. The rest of us were using the lounges that were set out across the lawn, watching the setting sun send shadows across the rolling hazelnut orchards of Piedmont.

  ‘Has Gilbert ever done anything like this walk before? Physical I mean?’ I asked Camille.

  ‘Does he look as if he has?’

  ‘He seems to be giving it his best.’ ‘For you’, I wanted to add but Camille had already raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows.

  ‘You want me to tell you what a fine man Gilbert is?’

  ‘He’s been very supportive.’

  ‘I did not ask him to do this. Yet I must feel grateful. And guilty.’

  She didn’t know how lucky she was. She had a positive, decent man who loved her and was prepared to care for her when she could no longer do it herself. Maybe by the time he got her to Rome she’d see that. Even without the Pope to tell her.

  She interrupted my thoughts. ‘If I am not going to live so long, why should I compromise?’

  ‘Have you thought of seeing a specialist? Maybe in the States?’

  Camille turned to Bernhard and Sarah, who had been having their own conversation. ‘Zoe thinks I should see an American doctor. What do you think?’

  ‘If I had a choice between the US and France for medical care,’ said Sarah, ‘I’d pick France.’ And just to rub it in, she added, ‘I’d pick any developed country over America.’

  Bernhard nodded. ‘The American health system…How much would it cost you to have the best care for multiple sclerosis, a nurse to visit, drugs, hospital treatment?’

  ‘Someone to take care of me at the end when everything has failed?’ added Camille.

  They were right. I couldn’t pay for Camille to get specialist medical care in America. My own situation wasn’t exactly great.

  ‘You have an insurance plan? In France?’ I asked Camille.

  She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. Like Bernhard says, I will be looked after. We are civilised people.’

  Martin was having problems getting the barbecue going: it was a home-made contraption that used real wood.

  Bernhard put his phone in his pocket and wandered over. This was going to be interesting.

  ‘You must allow more air to come up,’ he said.

  ‘You have these in Stuttgart?’ said Martin. Bernhard turned away and disappeared inside.

  ‘It’s the wood,’ said Martin to nobody in particular, as smoke blew into his face. ‘Wet.’

  ‘We used to have a kettle barbecue in LA,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you supposed to have a bag of charcoal?’

  ‘I’ve got charcoal,’ said Martin. ‘Need to get the wood going first. Thanks for the help, everybody.’

  Bernhard was back, with a package. Firelighters. He grinned. ‘Organic.’

  Sarah was watching them both. It made me think of the Zen stories about young and old men—or maybe bulls. I guess Sarah choosing someone like her father was more common than not, though I found it hard to relate to. I’d never wanted a man anything like my father.

  Tonight, the young bull won. Martin watched with grudging respect—or at least grudgingly—as Bernhard got the fire going, then helped him lay charcoal on top.

  I was still watching Sarah: was there a subtle shift in allegiance happening? And, as if she’d picked up the vibe from the men, Camille refused all offers of help with the cooking. She handed me my plate piled with grilled vegetables—zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers and baby beets drizzled with olive oil and a hint of Dijon on a bed of herbed couscous—with a look that said, ‘So now do you think I can do vegetarian?’

  The terrain was changing again. For our first days in Italy it had been flat and a bit industrial in places, but now we were on gentle hills, moving through orchards and vineyards. Lush green waist-high vines were heavy with fruit and being hand-picked as the harvest got underway. Gilbert had told us that Piedmont was wine country, but it had taken us a little time to reach that part of the province.

  I caught Martin stealing a bunch of grapes. In the States, I’d have smiled and taken a few for myself but here it was different. The orchardists were not big corporations. ‘If every pilgrim took a bunch…’ I said.

  ‘You’d lose about two bunches a week,’ said Martin.

  ‘In Burgundy or Champagne that would be a serious loss,’ said Gilbert. ‘But we are in Italy and these are not prestigious vineyards.’

  Perhaps not, but the soil must have been fertile. Each house along the way seemed to be full of heavily laden fruit trees—branches over the fences dropping ripe fruit into piles with the sweet fragrance of fermentation.

  ‘And,’ said Martin, ‘I believe that under ancient Roman law, overhanging fruit is fair game. At least it is in the UK, so I’d expect it would be in Italy. Roman law.’ He selected two ripe peaches from the tree and handed one to me.

  As we crossed the river for the ascent into Neive, a hilltop town where we were stopping for the night, Bernhard announced that he and Sarah would not join us for dinner.

  ‘Noodles?’ asked Camille.

  ‘No, this,’ replied Sarah, laughing. She opened her pack to show their bounty of peaches, figs, grapes, pears and apples.

  They were experiencing something simple that we would miss. The feeling dissipated before I could catch it and decide if it was a pang for lost youth, for the last camino or for something I needed in my life now. Or maybe it was the nagging worry: what was my life with Martin going to look like in Sheffield, without the Chemin supporting it?

  32

  MARTIN

  Perhaps it was the camino mindset of one day at a time, but I’d not given much thought to what life might be like with Zoe back home. On the one hand, the prospect of having her with me perman
ently was exciting; on the other, a two-bedroom flat a few miles from the centre of a city known more for steel than for scenery didn’t compare with a hotel overlooking the vineyards of Piedmont. I reminded myself that we were on holiday, and holidays were about escape from everyday life. Except that virtually all of my time with Zoe had been in this artificial setting. The Camino is not life, she’d said.

  In Neive, our accommodation was bang in the middle of town. I hadn’t needed Camille’s Italian for the booking: there were plenty of online deals late in the season in this wine-country destination. The hotel was about as different from a walkers’ hostel—and the drab workers’ hotels of recent days—as could be. Well-dressed tourists speaking French and English were standing about in the foyer, checking out tour brochures.

  It had been a hot day, and the receptionist suggested that we have a drink in the courtyard bar before proceeding to our rooms. Gilbert was quick to accept for all of us.

  ‘Which Arneis do you recommend?’ he asked, and the result was six different glasses of white wine. We passed them around, and Gilbert took notes, which he shared with our waiter, a man of about forty.

  ‘You are interested in wine?’

  ‘I was a wine merchant in France.’

  ‘So, you and I, we represent the two great wine-producing countries of the world.’

  Zoe piped up: ‘We make a little wine where I come from, too. California.’

  Our waiter ignored her and addressed Gilbert. ‘If you would like to try more…’

  All of us bar Gilbert headed to our rooms. Our gear had been piled together, and Bernhard picked up Gilbert’s pack to get to his own.

  ‘Hold this,’ he said to me, then laughed as I almost dropped it. If there’s one rule about long-distance walking, it’s to travel light. Zoe had already called me out for my heavy sleeping bag, computer and toolkit. But even with these, and a full water bottle, I was only at twelve kilos. Gilbert’s must have weighed at least fifteen. No wonder he’d been struggling.

  Zoe and I hauled our own packs upstairs, showered, washed our clothes and hung them around the bathroom—the end-of-day ritual. It lowered the tone of the place a little.