Two Steps Onward

by Graeme Simsion

  And then, a few minutes on, ‘Have you read her stuff? I mean the stories that go with the drawings?’

  I hadn’t. I was surprised Zoe had shared them with Sarah and not me.

  ‘Just the cartoons. I haven’t asked. Why?’

  ‘Well, it’s in the cartoons too if you look. She seems to have issues. Not about you.’

  ‘What do you think they’re about, then?’

  ‘I think, Camille. But more than just feeling bad about the MS.’

  ‘Makes us confront our own mortality. Before you know it, you’ll be thirty.’ I said it with my tongue deep in my cheek but it landed anyway. As it would have for me at that age.

  ‘I know. Graduation from medicine always seemed like forever away. If I want to specialise, I’ll be that old when I qualify. And now I’ve lost a year.’ Bugger. I hadn’t meant to provoke that.

  We had caught up with Camille and Gilbert faster than I’d expected, and Sarah put her arm in front of me to slow me down. ‘Look at Camille. Watch her walk.’

  She was right. We were climbing again, and Camille was using one of her sticks, heavily, to support her left leg whenever she pushed off on it.

  We caught up, and Sarah asked, ‘Strained a muscle?’

  ‘It’s just tired,’ said Camille.

  Sarah shook her head. I knew what she meant. Individual muscles didn’t get ‘tired’, not normally. Injured, yes, sore, yes, but tiredness was usually more general, and not one-sided.

  ‘I think we should give it a rest for today. Let’s get the accommodation guide out.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Camille, but without any conviction, and she was happy to make the phone call. No answer.

  ‘About five kilometres, most of it on the road,’ I said. ‘Shall we try to get a taxi to meet us?’

  ‘It’s only the climbing,’ said Camille, and this time I was prepared to believe her. And indeed, a few hundred metres on, we joined the road, and she seemed to be coping okay.

  The hotel was in the small town of Passo del Bocco, and the car park was full of vehicles. We dumped our packs outside and spruced ourselves up a bit before entering.

  The restaurant was bustling—hunters and collectors lunching. Likely they hadn’t even heard the phone.

  I managed to intercept one of the staff, flat out serving tables.

  ‘No. No rooms,’ she said, backing it up with a hand gesture.

  ‘Full? Completo?’

  Her hand swept across the room. It said, clearly enough, ‘We’ve got enough on our plates with this lot without worrying about walk-ins for rooms.’

  I pointed to Camille, indicating an injury. Shrug.

  ‘Pellegrini,’ said Bernhard, and the server’s face changed instantly—why didn’t you say so in the first place?

  ‘Wait. Drink.’ And we were installed at the bar until the lunch crowd subsided and a middle-aged man took us upstairs to our rooms. Camille was still struggling, using her right leg to lead up each step, even without carrying her pack.

  If this was a progression of her MS to a new stage, her walk was over.

  53

  ZOE

  ‘It is nothing,’ said Camille. ‘I just need a rest.’

  ‘It has been getting worse,’ said Gilbert. ‘I have phoned her physician and he says it is the disease. It may get better for a while or it may not. We will have to wait.’

  ‘I’ll give you a massage,’ I said.

  Sarah frowned.

  ‘It won’t do any harm,’ I said. ‘We’ve been walking for six hundred miles. All of our bodies are feeling it.’

  Mine was doing weird things. I had a burning sensation down my left thigh. And numbness. I didn’t want to think about it. Maybe it was in sympathy with Camille.

  ‘Massage is enjoyable even if it does not fix the problem.’ Bernhard gave Sarah a grin. ‘Even when there is no problem.’

  Though I’d done a massage course I had no experience with physical problems beyond muscle soreness and minor strains. But when I got Camille relaxed on her stomach, her left arm looked thinner than her right. And her left hand was shaky, though she didn’t seem to notice it. I couldn’t do anything for that, but there were knots in her shoulder muscles and she seemed to settle as I rubbed my thumbs deep between the blades.

  When I finished, she stood up—and right away dropped to the floor, or would have if I hadn’t caught her. Camille laughed. ‘My leg, it does this. Goes to sleep and forgets it must hold me up.’

  Oh, Camille. I forced a smile.

  ‘But this is not the problem that I had today. I think that will be okay.’

  ‘You know we can go slower. Or maybe stop and come back when you’re stronger.’ I didn’t sound convincing.

  ‘I must do it now, with you,’ said Camille.

  I felt a surge of emotions, most of which I couldn’t make sense of. But it was one of the few signs she’d given me of the bond that had endured through the trauma of her abortion, the cruelty of my mother and the years of absence. Suddenly, her faith in me was empowering—and overpowering.

  ‘Camille,’ I said, ‘of course I will be here for you. But can’t you see that so is Gilbert? The man is incredible. And he loves you so much.’ I added hurriedly, ‘Even if he did screw up once.’

  Any good I had done with the massage was undone in an instant.

  ‘Men are pathetic. Even Martin. Last night he wanted to talk about sex with me.’

  If Camille was trying to turn the conversation around, she’d succeeded.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I should never have told him about Gilbert’s liaison. He wanted to know every tiny detail. And how to do it. You know what I’m saying? How to make love against a fridge. I hope I am not spoiling a surprise for you.’

  ‘Oh shit. I’m sorry.’ I knew exactly what must have happened. ‘I think he was just trying to understand…’

  ‘There is nothing to understand.’

  ‘You’re being rather tough…’

  ‘If Keith had not killed himself, would you still be together?’

  ‘I’d like to think if I went back in time, I would have seen his depression and helped him.’

  ‘This is not what I meant. Imagine he would live to be one hundred.’

  ‘I…I don’t know.’ I got her point, and she could see I did.

  ‘So, if you had one day to live, would you have that day with Keith or with Martin?’

  ‘Martin.’

  ‘I do not have a Martin—perhaps I never will. But I have no chance of it if I stay with Gilbert.’

  ‘Is it possible what you are looking for doesn’t exist? I mean, Sarah and Bernhard: young love—infatuation—that isn’t what makes marriages work.’

  ‘Zoe,’ said Camille shaking her head. ‘Perhaps I do not know you anymore either. When did you get so practical?’

  Was that what the Camino de Santiago had done to me? Or was it Keith’s death—my failure to help him—that had made me put a wall up and use the practical as a shield?

  ‘God,’ said Camille, ‘has shown me faith. What do you have faith in?’

  She got up and I followed her downstairs, where the others were sitting alone looking at menus in the huge restaurant that had been crowded with porcini pickers a few hours earlier.

  ‘I am a new woman,’ Camille announced, though she was walking cautiously. ‘And, if I am not, I realise how practical Zoe is. If Martin does not marry her, she and Gilbert can get together when I die.’

  54

  MARTIN

  ‘What was that about?’

  ‘What was what about?’

  ‘You and Gilbert. Getting together.’

  We were back in our room. All of us, Gilbert included, had let Camille’s comment go, as we often did, but I was curious about where it had come from.

  ‘Jealous? He’s very sweet. Sophisticated Frenchman, who jumps whenever his wife says jump and schleps her hairdryer halfway across Europe. What’s not to like?’

  ‘Probably h
is liver and his bank balance. He’s a bit cavalier about both of them.’

  ‘You are jealous.’

  ‘Well, we’ve all decided he’s bloody God’s gift to women and mankind, and frankly, some of us do what he’s doing without having any fuss made about it.’

  ‘If I wanted to open a hostel, would you drop everything: your job, Sheffield, England, to help me? For real?’

  ‘Of course I would. If that’s what you really wanted to do. If you were passionate about it, frankly you’d have a better argument than I have for staying where I am.’

  ‘All right. I want to run a hostel.’

  She looked me in the eye, but I knew her well enough to tell that she was bluffing. A part of me was a bit disappointed.

  ‘Italy or France?’

  ‘You don’t like Spain?’

  ‘Seriously, whatever your dreams are, I want to be part of them. I thought I’d told you that.’

  Zoe went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and I half-expected her to come back talking about a wild dream I hadn’t heard of.

  ‘Have you ever had sex standing up?’ she said. ‘From behind?’

  The obvious answer was that I was willing to try, but I knew where this was coming from. ‘I was trying to get Camille to tell me exactly what she saw. Because I think what she described is physically impossible.’

  ‘I hope you weren’t planning to demonstrate.’ She laughed. ‘You really have led a sheltered life.’

  ‘And…’

  She pointed to the wardrobe. ‘That looks a lot like a fridge to me.’

  After Sarah’s observation about birdsong, we were now acutely conscious of its absence whenever we stopped. Crickets is the expression, and they were indeed the dominant audible wildlife. We were in alpine forest, and seemed to have left the boar hunters and porcini gatherers behind. And still, the whole way on this Alta Via dei Monti Liguri, we hadn’t seen a single pellegrino. Or for that matter a cyclist: these weren’t cycling paths. Just us and the crickets.

  Any hike is going to make you aware of environmental issues. Today, a row of wind turbines across the hilltops prompted a discussion on energy. Sarah and Zoe predictably signalled their support for renewables. Gilbert, in his non-confrontational way, suggested that the huge vanes were aesthetically unpleasant, and Bernhard, in his confrontational way, suggested that his was the generation that would pay the price of Gilbert’s generation’s selfish short-sightedness.

  ‘France and Italy are not the problem,’ said Gilbert. ‘Developing countries demand the right to use fossil fuels as we have in the past to achieve our standard of living—’

  ‘Why fossil fuels? If renewables are economically attractive, possibly through subsidies…’

  Bernhard expanded, at length, and though his manner was as irritatingly superior as ever, it was hard to fault the substance. He’d done his homework.

  Gilbert, at least, was impressed. ‘Your arguments are good. You should share them more widely.’

  ‘Bernhard would make a good activist,’ said Zoe.

  ‘I’m not interested in politics,’ he said. ‘But there is work to be done to put these ideas into practice.’

  I looked at Zoe expecting to see a smile, and it was there. No doubt she’d mention it to me later: the transformative power of the Chemin. It was hard to disagree.

  Our B&B was a good kilometre off the track, set in an orchard. As far as we could tell, it was the only option. It was a traditional set-up: a house divided into one section for the owners and another for guests, with a convenient three bedrooms in the latter.

  Camille was enthusiastic. ‘Nowhere else to stay for many kilometres in both directions. I checked the visitors’ book. Almost all pilgrims. Mostly French. Two or three a week. That would be enough for me: I would not have the energy to cook and offer counselling every day.’

  ‘And you’d have the orchard. Home-made preserves.’

  ‘Of course, and the garden for vegetables and herbs.’

  ‘Maybe Gilbert could plant vines, make wine.’

  Camille burst out laughing. ‘Now you are joking again. Gilbert making Italian wine? With the frizzante? He would die before he would do this.’

  ‘How about this one?’ I said to Gilbert as we lit the wood-burning stove.

  ‘I like it. We have community but also privacy. And the owners are not watching everything we do.’

  ‘I was thinking of you as the owner. You and Camille.’

  ‘I am not going to live in Italy. Camille will not want to cook pasta every night. If we buy a gîte, it will be in France.’

  Before I went to bed, I emailed Jim, my estate-agent friend in Cluny. I’d had an idea. Two ideas, in fact.

  55

  ZOE

  After dinner with our hosts, a couple in their sixties, we shared the space around the fire with our drying clothes. Martin was on Gilbert’s case again—according to plan, but not with a lot of subtlety.

  ‘They seem like a happy couple—nice lifestyle. I mean, out here, you barely know what country you’re in.’

  Gilbert shook his head. ‘A plate of pasta and sauce leaves no doubt.’

  ‘Only because it was so good. Pasta is universal.’

  ‘True. For an Italian, our host was excellent.’

  Renato had done the fun stuff like pouring the wine and sharing the meal with us. We hardly saw his wife, who had made the wonderful pasta. She was stuck in the kitchen, running after six guests and her husband. For Camille’s sake, I pointed this out.

  ‘Hey, he’s the one getting up early,’ said Martin. With the moving south and the lower altitude, the weather had gotten hot again and we’d asked for an early breakfast, then realised that we were putting them out. But Renato had insisted and volunteered to cook breakfast for us at 6.30 a.m.

  ‘So, Camille and I will get some sleep,’ said Gilbert, standing. Sarah and Bernhard followed, but Camille didn’t move.

  Martin and I had so far had no luck trying to convince Camille of Gilbert’s strengths. Time for the last idea on the list.

  ‘Do you think Gilbert’s hoping he will be forgiven?’ I asked her.

  ‘By me or the Pope?’

  ‘Maybe by God? Then by you?’

  Camille’s expression suggested it wouldn’t be happening anytime soon.

  ‘It’s not going to work,’ I said to Martin as we went to bed.

  ‘It all helps,’ said Martin. ‘Maybe she’ll have to try the hostel and fail before she’ll go back to Gilbert or call him in.’

  ‘Hardly fair to Gilbert.’

  ‘He’s made that choice. Love isn’t about fairness.’

  And Martin had said he’d do the same for me. Whatever my dreams were, he wanted to be a part of them. Nobody had ever shown that sort of devotion to what I wanted before. I wished I could get Camille to appreciate that too.

  Which of course meant I would go to Sheffield. I’d been obsessing about it, and it wasn’t the most important thing. Even if his apartment was next to smokestacks and had no sea view. Even if pea soupers would hide whatever the view was anyway. Now I’d made the decision, I felt the tension fall away.

  I’d been worrying about Camille, but Martin had never wavered in supporting me—even with Sarah’s competing needs to deal with—and I could talk to him in a way I hadn’t been able to with either Manny or Keith. Sometimes he avoided answering, but only to give himself time to think. Oftentimes he saw things that I didn’t. More than he had the first time around.

  He’d changed because of me, even when he hadn’t expected to be with me. Whether it was walking, Sheffield or San Francisco, this was who I wanted to be with. It was all about the person. The place didn’t matter. Well, not as much.

  It was dark when the alarm on my phone went off. Outside the air was still cool; by the time we all went down to the breakfast room, with its windows looking across the valley, there was a golden hue on the horizon. We heard movement in the kitchen and caught the aroma of fresh pastries and strong
coffee. Renato setting a good example for Gilbert.

  Then Renato’s wife—whose name we hadn’t even caught—emerged with an expression of ‘Men—what do you expect?’

  ‘I do not think she would let him in her kitchen,’ said Camille.

  I was feeling suffused with energy—a good night’s sleep, a balanced breakfast and fruit in my pack. The leg numbness was still there but the burning sensation had gone. I wasn’t going to think about it.

  Bernhard and I took off first, barely noticing the mile climb back to the track. The sunrise sent a pale-yellow light dappling across the mountains, and the silhouettes of the wind turbines created a striking—and for me harmonious—juxtaposition of old and new. The chapel at the top of the hill added another element to the composition.

  When we reached it, and the others caught up, Camille and I went in to do the candle ritual.

  Since the conversation with Camille about Keith and whether I would have stayed with him, I had found myself also thinking about Manny, my first husband, who I had left when it became clear he couldn’t deal with the responsibility of fatherhood. Did we ever talk about hopes and dreams? Briefly, I guess, before we’d been overwhelmed by parenting the girls.

  Looking around me at the panoramic views of farmland and forests, small pockets of mist engulfing sections, I felt a prickle of what my getting pregnant had cost him: of the freedom that we had both lost. The pregnancy had been as much his fault as mine, and I would never regret having my daughters…but when I lit the candle for him, it was the half of my responsibility for the timing, the lack of discussion and choice that I was saying sorry for.

  Camille wasn’t walking easily and nearly tripped on the way out, but Martin indicated that he, Sarah and Gilbert had it in hand, so Bernhard and I took off again, leaving behind views all the way to the horizon, as the climb took us into forest again.

  The dawn’s light-show magic was followed by exquisite patches of bright-red and orange fungi—circles of red toadstools which would have delighted my girls when they were little and delighted me now. It was fun even at my age to think of the fairy world of the imagination here in this forest. Bernhard seemed bemused by my interest in them. Gilbert would have been the same—they were not going to be edible.