A Van of One's Own

by Biddy Wells

  I had been just as inept as my teenage self. What did I think might be the consequence of speaking honestly? What was I so scared of? Was Maira going to bite me? Was my mother going to reject me? Did I think friendship and love were so flimsy that I could lose them by voicing a modest need? It’s not personal, and it’s not about Maira, or my mum. If it’s about anyone, it’s about me and how I attempt to project some image of myself as pleasant and compliant. It’s a cover-up that I suppose fools almost no one. Perhaps I have always been afraid of people. I am sure there’s a reason why this little clash happened at a time when I have been preoccupied with untangling threads from the past. It was an opportunity to reassess things.

  *

  After yesterday’s afternoon of sunshine we are being treated to more rain. It feels just like home. Today I met a woman of my age: a solo traveller, like me. I realise I have met only two lone women on the whole trip so far, and the other was just leaving a place as I was arriving. Campervanners usually come in pairs, sometimes even with matching his ‘n’ herswalking clothes, like tiny teams.

  Adele and I talked, drank coffee and swam together. It was really wonderful to spend time with a fellow female traveller. She had a lot to say, perhaps because, like me, she hadn’t had much opportunity for female conversation. We skipped peripheral issues and got straight into the pithy stuff, give or take the odd observation about the weather. I found myself enjoying being in the role of listener more than talker – a relatively new position for me and my chatterbox mind. It was relaxing just sitting back and absorbing her words rather than rummaging for stories I might have to offer. Adele was very open and seemed to trust me with her concerns of the heart. It felt like an honour to be taken into her confidence.

  I gave Adele my book by Eckhart Tolle, which I had read in the spring and now felt I had absorbed thoroughly enough to let it go. If that turns out to be a delusion I can buy another copy. I had first picked it up at a friend’s house several years earlier, flicked through and thought that I had understood the message. Years later it fell into my hands again and I read it very slowly, over several weeks. This time I didn’t understand it with my mind; instead, what Tolle was talking about dropped into another place, a place that was now more receptive and fertile – the ground already prepared. I experienced what Tolle was showing me: that what I am is something other than my mind. I started to notice how my mind distracts me with its thoughts and that there was a me that could be distracted – or, ideally, that could remain undisturbed and steady. Underneath the clutter of the mind was clarity, stillness and peace. I didn’t instantly find myself rooted in a state of constant bliss; nevertheless, there had been a shift, and life was better for that shift. It was work in progress.

  *

  I’ve noticed that some people appear disturbed when they discover that I am travelling alone. The French campervanners I meet along the way invariably exclaim:

  ‘You are alone? But where is your ‘usband?’ At first I simply answered that I was on a solo journey, and they seemed to find this surprising and alarming.

  ‘But are you not afraid?’

  ‘No!’ I told them. Well, I wasn’t afraid until they mentioned it! There was an occasion in Sagres, at the campsite, when two middle-aged French men in a very smart Winnebago, after gleaning that I was on my own, started laughing and shouting, suggesting I join them as they were free of their wives.

  ‘We could all have a good time together, no?’ they called from their plot. That is when I started to change my story a little:

  ‘Yes, I am alone; my husband had to go back to Wales, but he’s joining me in a few days.’ Is it strange that, in this century, women travelling alone are still seen as an anomaly, a bit loose or irresponsible, or perhaps something to be pitied?

  ‘Poor girl, she has no husband!’, or, ‘She must be running from something.’ Is that what they are thinking?

  A few years before my trip, David and I went to a tiny music festival in the mountains in mid-Wales, and there we watched as a sizeable truck came across the camping field and pulled in next to us. Out climbed a diminutive woman, who glanced at us as we watched her put wedges under the chunky wheels. It was hard not to stare. She looked so small against the vehicle, which had been converted into a quirky home on wheels. We got talking and she told us of her travels. She spent part of each year driving through Spain to Morocco, alone, in her fairly eccentric-looking rig. She was nearly seventy, and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that’s brave. I could never do that.’ I warmed to her and enjoyed her stories, some of which I suspected contained a little exaggeration when she described scary things that had happened or had almost happened to her. Still, perhaps I didn’t want to hear about what could go wrong for a lone woman going on such an adventure, even though I had no intention, at that time, of doing any such thing. I didn’t want to believe that there was anything bad out there to spoil the lovely picture that was emerging in my mind of travel, freedom and independence.

  Adele was about to leave for the next leg of her journey, and I realised it was time for me to leave too and find somewhere close to Faro to spend the night. Tomorrow I’d collect David from the airport, two months after he waved goodbye to me at the start of this trip. I am very keen to see him, and I now know that it’s not just so that I have a dinner buddy and playmate, but because I need to see him, David, and find out what exists between us. We have had a difficult year and have both said that things needed to change. I am unsure about him, and about where we are going. Yet now I am excited, and I can’t wait to give him a massive hug. This will be a journey for him too.

  After a two-hour drive in pouring rain and heavy evening traffic, I arrive at the aire in Estoi, twenty minutes from Faro airport, and I walk into the only cafe I find open. I am now completely comfortable entering a strange place, being the focus of curious attention and throwing myself on the kindness and tolerance of strangers whose language I barely speak. I am no longer self-conscious; it doesn’t matter. In this place I am the only female, apart from the waitress/bartender, who welcomes me sweetly. I use sign language and, this time, Google Translate, and manage to understand the menu from the pictures on my tiny screen. I order the prata do dia, which today is a casserole with rice. It’s delicious, as is the wine which comes with the deal – as much as I like. The bread goes into my bag for breakfast.

  All the way west to east along the N125, the Algarve’s main road, I saw dozens of stands piled up with oranges and clementines. I wanted to buy some, but the conditions were difficult for stopping. I kept hoping for the perfect lay-by where I could pull in and buy a huge net of fruit for a few pennies, but it never appeared.

  Sitting at my table for one, I notice that the men at the large central table are peeling and eating clementines, which they are picking out of a bucket on the floor. I consult my phone again, brave the group and say in parrot-fashion Portuguese:

  ‘I would like to buy some clementines, please.’ I am answered in English:

  ‘No, you can’t buy them, but you can have them. How many?’ They all laugh.

  ‘I’d like six,’ I say, and a man gives me a carrier bag full. As I am settling my very modest bill at the bar, another man comes over and insists I take another bagful! It is a great end to the evening, with lots of smiles and ‘obrigada’s’. Back at the van, I count over two dozen sweet and juicy clementines. This is such a wonderful country.

  I got up early and made the short trip to the airport. After a brief wait in arrivals, David appeared and we bear-hugged in front of the automatic doors. It was so good to see him. Thanks to Tanya, we took a surprising and circuitous route that snaked up into the hinterland of the Algarve. It seemed familiar and homely, and I realised this was the area near Moncarapacho, where I’d been driven around by Martin and Catherine. I thought it would be nice to show David their house, though they were no longer in residence. The lanes seemed so familiar now, but perhaps that was only because they all looked the same. We couldn’t find the
house, so we made our way to the coast.

  The eastern Algarve has a special and distinct character, quite different from the wild west coast, and could be a different country from the built-up resort strip between Lagos and Quarteira. This area is unspoiled and a bit rundown. The hillsides are scattered with white cottages. Small terraced villas, faced in Arabic tilework, line the streets of the villages.

  I had booked three nights in a small hotel overlooking the large tidal river in Tavira. We checked in, rested and then went to Julia’s restaurant, where I knew we would be well fed, having eaten there with my friends in what seemed a far distant time but was, in fact, only about six weeks ago. David and I clicked straight back into our comfortable togetherness and enjoyed a long lunch of freshly caught sea bass, a fabulous salad and wine. Julia and her family run this lovely little place, and she has a character well suited to her role of welcoming hungry customers, treating each one like an old friend.

  After our lunch, Julia came and sat with us and told us about a terrible accident that had happened the previous night, just along the street from the restaurant. A Scandinavian couple had dined at her place, drunk a fair amount of wine and left late. The man had been very chatty, engaging with other diners, while his wife was silent and, according to Julia, as pale as the white tablecloth upon which our coffee cups now sat. Back at their hotel, she went on, this poor woman had climbed the steep steps and, at the top, had fallen to her death. What a horrific story! How tragic and shocking for the man to see his wife die like that. We walked to our hotel in a sober mood and went to bed, realising that the steep steps of the dreadful story were, in fact, the very steps we had just climbed to get to our room, where we now lay in the bed where this couple had spent their last ever night together. This was not the sort of thing you expect on a romantic reunion weekend, and I felt sick at the thought of what had happened.

  Next morning in the breakfast room, the widowed husband was sitting talking to the other guests about the incident, and we joined in for a while. He seemed to be holding up well, but I guessed he was in shock and just trying to keep it all together while he waited for the police to come and see him later. The incident was further dissected by Julia when we revisited our now favourite restaurant for Saturday night’s dinner. On Sunday we ate there one more time, and on Monday morning we checked out and drove northwest into the hills, stopping briefly at Silves.

  The day was dull and overcast, but when we reached the top of mount Foia with its magnificent panoramic views, we were rewarded with a clear spell and a beautiful place to stay the night. We avoided the actual viewpoint, which is blighted by a forest of masts and ugly buildings, and instead pulled in to a nearby picnic spot with a sacred spring and view equally splendid, though technically only half as panoramic. We parked looking out beyond the Algarve to the sparkling sea, the spring gurgling and splashing right behind us and nobody else around. The clouds began to gather again on the horizon and made for a spectacular sunset.

  After a while, an old VW camper van rolled up. and a young German couple came to say hello. They were students taking a year out to tour Europe. They had a bed and a single gas ring, which they used outside for cooking, and not much else. Some weeks earlier, they told us, their van had been broken into in northern Portugal, and all their belongings – even their clothes – had been stolen. We shared chocolate, beer and wine, and I gave them a collection of things I didn’t really need but which I had continued to carry with me, in the hope that they would be useful to someone. This couple seemed the perfect recipients, and I hoped they would bring them good luck.

  Having overindulged on chocolate and red wine, I woke up feeling rough. We drank the wonderful water from the spring, where several people came to fill their bottles during the morning. The heavy, glowering sky was a fitting accompaniment to my hangover and gloomy frame of mind. My doubts about David and our relationship were surfacing again. I couldn’t say what was troubling me exactly, but I felt uneasy. Was I just happier and lighter on my own?

  David and I are normally totally comfortable around each other. We rarely quarrel. He is a fairly quiet person. In fact, when I try to describe him, I find I am a bit lost. Perhaps this is because we are so familiar to one another. He is a still-waters-run-deep sort of man, sensitive and sometimes lacking in confidence, except when he drinks too much. He is also extremely talented and creates things from wood, including entire buildings, that are beautiful, simple and practical. His work is done with such efficiency that it seems to appear without effort (I know this isn’t true). He is a natural, gifted. Elegance, proportion and integrity are vitally important to him. He loves his work.

  He’s said that he believes he was born in the wrong time and belongs to a bygone era – somewhere around the late nineteenth century, perhaps – and I share his sense of discomfort with some aspects of modern life. Are we unusual or do lots of people feel this way? When I was young, my ambition was to live as a peasant, tending a garden, growing herbs and food. That got a few laughs, but I was serious. Not that I wanted to be poor and struggling to survive under the oppression of an overlord, but I wasn’t materialistic or aspirational, and I found so many man-made things desperately ugly. I wanted peace and to live as close to the earth as possible without actually being a mole or a slug. It was a deep yearning, a respect and passion for natural wisdom, beauty, simplicity and tranquillity – and yes, it may be idealistic. The world is changing so fast and there’s barely time to absorb anything. Perhaps the old wisdoms will be lost forever. David understands all of this – he feels the same. His work springs from this philosophy, and when metal screws and bolts rust, perhaps David’s structures, pegged in the old fashioned way, will stay together.

  Periodically David becomes disconnected from himself, from his heart. I can almost hear his mind telling him things that are not helpful, not loving, not true – things that are born of deep emotional wounds that still fester and hurt from time to time. When this happens I try to get him to name his feelings, to see them. Of course, sometimes I come up against resistance, which is entirely understandable; yet when he finally comes to observe what is going on and expresses it, he changes quickly – sometimes instantly – and it is like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. This is what I love about him: he is willing to face his ‘stuff’ – to look at it, expose it and let it go as best he can. He is always happy when it’s done. This time, though, I felt unable to reach him. I couldn’t find his heart and felt I was spending time with his mind talk, not with the loving, funny best friend I know so well. Perhaps I didn’t have the energy to delve into his old stuff this time. I wanted him to stop rerunning that useless old programme. He’d have to sort it out for himself.

  The rain continued over the next two days as we sheltered in Myfanwy, free camping in places with spectacular views of wild waves seen through steamed-up windows, and, beyond them, the mizzle. We drove to Odemira, where the river was racing by, high and dramatic, and the colour of strong tea, with a dash of milk. It was Wednesday, which meant that the excellent fish restaurant I had been to a few weeks before was closed, so we went to Zambujeira, where we hoped to find a good place to eat and celebrate David’s birthday. Wet but optimistic, we entered the bar of what seemed a nice restaurant and saw two very intriguing-looking fellows sitting in the corner. This was to be a catalytic meeting – a turning point in so many ways.

  Marco and Dominic had met in Fatima, the famous town north of Lisbon where three shepherd children are said to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1917. A chapel was erected in honour of the vision and the town became became a place of pilgrimage. Within two years of the event, two of the three children died in the flu epidemic that had swept through Europe. I have heard that Fatima is a rather strange place.

  Dominic was in his twenties and on a quest to find meaning in his life.

  ‘I walked very slowly the Camino, from France through Spain, to Santiago de Compostela. I had many questions in me,’ he told us in goo
d English with a Czech accent.

  ‘Did you camp in a tent?’ David asked.

  ‘At first I had big rucksack, but I saw that I don’t need things. I give away all belongings and ask to stay at houses.’

  ‘And what if there is no place for you to stay?’

  ‘I sleep in hedge.’

  He pointed to a small knapsack. ‘Now I travel very light. This is all I have.’

  He looked sweet, with dark, child-like eyes and a wide, open face. He was very thin from walking, living rough and surviving on whatever charity people gave him.

  He had joined forces with Marco, in whose car he now travelled and slept. Marco was Belgian, older and perhaps more worldly wise than Dominic, with lines on his serious, sensitive face. His English was almost non-existent.

  ‘How do you communicate?’ I asked Marco, who looked to Dominic and prompted him to answer.

  ‘I speak in English, which he knows only a little, and he speaks in French. I am learning a few words, but really we speak telepathy of the heart. We understand each other.’

  Then Marco made a long speech which was barely fathomable, but some of it made sense.

  ‘The world is trouble for me. Man is trouble. Religion is trouble. Priests and churches… they… trap… make prison… no freedom. All men… all peoples is free… but not no more. It make man very sick,’ he said solemnly.

  We spent a few hours talking with the two men, understanding as well as we could and buying rounds of hot chocolate and beer.

  Suddenly Dominic said: ‘We have come here to see someone called Mooji. We go there on Sunday.’

  ‘I am going too,’ I heard myself say, because it was true. At that exact moment I committed myself to going to see Mooji, a man who I had not really thought about whilst travelling but who was deeply connected with this trip to Portugal. We said our farewells after Dominic told us that if we went to the bar in a certain tiny village in the hills, we would be directed to Mooji’s ashram.