Two Steps Forward

by Graeme Simsion

  I would walk the Camino from Cluny, pulling the cart nineteen hundred kilometres over French and Spanish terrain, taking photos and video, and blogging to build interest. I needed to reach Santiago by 11 May, allowing two days to get back to France for the trade fair. If I started as soon as my teaching duties were over and covered twenty-five kilometres per day, I would make it with a week to spare.

  Winter was not the ideal time to start. The hostels on the two-week section between Cluny and Le Puy would likely be closed and the trail across the top of the Central Massif snowbound, forcing me to take the road.

  My savings allowed for around a hundred euros a day, enough for basic accommodation and food. I did not dwell on the fact that by the time I got to Paris I would be penniless again.

  I was sorry to be leaving. The students and faculty had made me welcome, despite not having met me at the best time of my life.

  I reached the cemetery at the top of the hill. I had read that, under French law, cemeteries were required to provide drinking water. Sure enough, just inside the gate was a tap labelled eau potable which splashed ice-cold water over my bare legs when I tried it.

  The cemetery had the best view in town, and I spent a few minutes surveying the fields, trying to make out the walking track through the drizzle and fading light.

  3

  ZOE

  The rain had set in by the time I arrived at Camille’s address on the town fringe, dragging my broken case. A compact minivan turned into the driveway and a woman jumped out, slamming the door behind her. She was wearing bright-blue eyeshadow and matching nail polish. With her tight jeans, midriff showing despite the cold, and high-heeled boots, it was obviously Camille—but a Camille even younger than when I had met her. It had to be her daughter, Océane. The impression of maturity disappeared when she opened her mouth, shouting back at the man standing half-in-half-out of the vehicle.

  I didn’t understand a word, but didn’t need to. Océane spun around, then stormed up the path to the door.

  The man looked at me and shrugged. Her father? I couldn’t remember his name. Before he could get back in the van, an older version of Océane flew down the path toward him, screaming more abuse. This one was my age, thin in the pinched way French women sometimes are in movies, urchin-style black hair, cigarette in hand, feet in moccasins. Camille. She banged on the hood as he reversed out, then turned with the same precision as her daughter and stormed past me. A second later, she stopped dead, turned, mouth open and hand on hip.

  ‘Camille. It’s Zoe,’ I said.

  She looked at me like I was an alien. I guess I was. And I was soaked. Maybe I should have called.

  ‘Oh my God! You are not arriving tomorrow? You must come in the house.’

  Camille kissed and hugged me, then linked her arm in mine and led me and my case inside.

  The television was up loud. A golden retriever loped into the hallway and started barking as Camille pulled me into the kitchen. ‘I can’t believe you are here finally! We have so much to talk about! So much time and so much happened.’

  She was right about that. I had told myself I needed to see her face to face, that what had happened was too big for written words. But maybe I was afraid that if I saw my new life on paper, it would become real to me.

  Camille started unloading food from the refrigerator. The kitchen was a mess, catalogues and magazines on every surface. Her son—Bastien, eight—was on the f loor in the corner, engrossed in a video game which was emitting sounds of gunfire.

  ‘You are alone?’ said Camille over her shoulder.

  ‘Yes, I guess I—’

  ‘I mean, in life. This is why you are here, non?’ She had grabbed the telephone. When she hung up she was looking smug. ‘Jim. He was coming tomorrow but he will come tonight. He is American. Divorced. A real-estate man from New York.’ Camille rubbed her finger and thumb together. ‘What is your plan?’ She didn’t wait for a reply.

  ‘Tomorrow you will come to lunch with us, yes? You will see the famous abbey, then Monday we will shop in Lyon.’

  Océane joined us and started an argument with Camille, maybe the same one she’d been having with her father. I could identify with this. I’d had every imaginable argument with teenage girls.

  Camille threw open the door of the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of white wine.

  ‘Océane wanted her boyfriend to stay the night at her father’s. Of course this is not possible; she is only fourteen years. But she told him she was taking the contraceptive pill and now he is complaining to me.’

  Maybe I hadn’t had this conversation. My girls had gone to college before it had been an issue.

  Camille poured two big glasses of wine and gave one to me. ‘Her father is a poule mouillée.’

  A wet chicken? There had been another before him. After the crétin in St Louis.

  ‘You still have a very…busy life.’

  Camille waved her arm. ‘No, no, all that it is over. I am a wife and mother. Cluny is not Paris. But you are soaking in water. Océane, show Zoe her room. Your room.’

  By dinnertime I had showered and changed, and was more spaced out than tired.

  ‘You are here on vacation?’ asked Gilbert, whom Camille had introduced as her ‘current husband’.

  ‘Not exactly…’

  We were interrupted by the doorbell. Jim was maybe five years older than me, wearing black chinos and an expensive-looking blazer. He looked a bit like George Clooney. He kissed Camille’s cheeks, greeted Gilbert in what sounded like perfect French and looked at me. I hoped he wasn’t a Republican. The last thing I needed was an argument about politics.

  We did introductions, then sat for dinner.

  ‘Lapin,’ Camille announced, putting a platter on the table. ‘I remember you do not eat red meat, and I have two bunny rabbits in the freezer.’ Camille knew the story about my father and brothers killing a deer when I was eight. I would have become a vegetarian anyway, just not so soon. Camille had never understood.

  ‘So, what brings you to Cluny?’ Jim asked.

  The table had gone silent for the first time. Under the gaze of five sets of eyes, everything that had been impossible to write was now impossible to say.

  ‘Camille has been inviting me for twenty-five years.’

  Jim smiled. ‘You’ll be here for a while? We should get together.’

  When he turned to Gilbert for more wine I frantically signalled Camille: no way.

  ‘There is an insect bothering you?’ asked Gilbert.

  ‘I could give you the unofficial guided tour,’ said Jim.

  ‘Lapin?’ Camille, passing the plate back to me again.

  When she disappeared to the kitchen and Gilbert went to fetch another bottle, Jim asked, ‘First time in France?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve travelled a lot. But not outside of America.’

  He smiled; had I wanted someone to show me around, I could have done a lot worse.

  ‘Fromage of the region,’ Camille announced. For the last week, I had been following a vegan diet, thinking about making a permanent change, but after a meal of bread and endives I was ravenous. And the cheese was amazing. Three kinds, all soft, one from goat milk, one blue.

  Jim got up to leave and kissed me on both cheeks.

  ‘So, Wednesday? Lunch?’

  ‘Um…’ But he had taken the answer as given. Looking like George Clooney would do that.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said to Camille as soon as the door closed.

  ‘But he is so…perfect.’

  ‘I’m not ready.’

  ‘One must always be ready,’ said Camille.

  Finally, I said what I had been trying to say all night. But it came out muted, like a half-story, without the heart and soul, the fact without the substance.

  ‘Keith died.’

  ‘Mon Dieu! You didn’t tell me,’ said Camille, wrapping her thin arms around me. ‘Men. Their hearts, yes? Unpredictable.’

  Gilbert frowned. ‘This is very sad.
When?’

  At last, someone was listening.

  ‘Three weeks ago.’

  I fell onto Océane’s bed. I thought I would sleep for ten hours but after two I was wide awake.

  Camille was…exactly as I should have expected. I had helped her at a time of need back in college and knew she would do the same for me, but matching me up with the local bachelors was not the kind of help I needed. What I needed was headspace: time out to lick my wounds, make sense of my unsettled feelings and balance my chakras. None of my new life felt real; it was like all my emotions had been thrown into a box and someone had put a padlock on the lid.

  Thoughts of the scallop shell kept me awake for a long time. What was it trying to tell me? By morning it had given me an answer. The goose had been right: a quest of sorts, a new beginning. Over breakfast I told Camille that I was going to take a walk to clear my head. A long walk.

  4

  MARTIN

  I had planned to depart the following day, Sunday, but discovered too late that my credencial—a document I needed to produce at hostels to secure accommodation—was not available from the tourist office. The woman rebuked me for walking at the wrong time of year, when they could not possibly be expected to have information available, then grudgingly phoned the local representative of the Association des Amis de St Jacques and made an appointment for the Sunday afternoon. ‘I am sorry but that is when he is available. Monsieur.’

  I had to collect a map for my British Army GPS. It needed to be signed for, so I’d had it sent to the local outdoors shop. The logistics team in London confirmed that it had been delivered, but by the time I finished up and settled my rent with Jim the shop had closed.

  Jim also contributed to Sunday not turning out as planned. He fetched up at my door and offered to buy me a late breakfast. He may have felt that he was losing his only friend. He spoke passable French, but there is a social barrier that outsiders struggle to break through.

  We had coffee and croissants, and talked for a long time about nothing much, beyond the fact that the married Frenchwoman who had been pursuing him earlier in the year had introduced him to a Californian named Zoe. Jim had charmed her into a date.

  I arrived at the outdoors shop fifteen minutes before the lunch break. The proprietor was not there, and I was served by a hawk-nosed older woman who pointed me to a stand of paper maps.

  ‘Un USB,’ I explained. ‘Une livraison.’ A delivery.

  She feigned incomprehension and, when I repeated my request in slow, precise French, shook her head. How could she be expected to know about personal arrangements with the proprietor?

  Our impasse was broken by the arrival of a woman of about forty. She was dressed conventionally, in jeans, long woollen top and trainers, but there was something about her that made me think, at first, that she might be from the Christian commune in nearby Taizé. She was surveying the hunting gear with undisguised distaste.

  ‘Bonjour, excusez-moi,’ she said, addressing madame in an accent that not only made mine sound like that of the president of the Académie, but pinpointed her origins—America, and, I’d have been willing to bet, California. At a time of year when tourists were thin on the ground, she had to be Jim’s new flame. She was his type: attractive—blue eyes, shoulder-length auburn hair, easy smile—Anglophone, and bound to leave him high and dry when her holiday was over.

  She continued, ‘Je ne parle français très bien.’ I don’t speak French very well. No argument there.

  She mimed hoisting a rucksack onto her shoulders. ‘Une backpack.’

  Before I could step in and interpret, madame replied, in perfectly adequate English, ‘Of course. What size do you require?’

  Zoe—it was surely her—made a sizeable box with her hands and madame headed out the back, giving me a chance to duck behind the counter to look for my package. I was rifling through envelopes and small boxes when I looked up to see Zoe watching me with crossed arms. When madame returned, Zoe pulled her aside and had a word in her ear. Madame directed a dirty look towards me, though I was now innocently browsing the maps.

  The backpack she had brought out was at least seventy litres, which was about the size Zoe had indicated. Perfect, if she was planning to fill it with designer clothes and carry it no further than the distance between the taxi and the baggage check-in at Charles de Gaulle. As madame turned towards me again, Zoe sneaked a glance at the tag. I could have told her it was unlikely to have a price on it.

  ‘How much?’ she asked.

  ‘One hundred and eighty-five euros.’

  ‘Oh. Do you have something cheaper? Like last year’s model?’ She laughed and, to my surprise, madame joined in. After a short sotto voce conversation, madame disappeared out the back again. Zoe remained in place, patently to keep an eye on me.

  I was about to introduce myself—‘I believe we may have a friend in common’—when I caught the oh-so-serious look of disapproval on her face.

  Instead, I picked a compass off its display stand and went through the motions of slipping it into my pocket. I watched Zoe vacillating between calling me out or calling madame, then, just as she was about to do the latter, I put the compass, now in my other hand, back in its place.

  It took her a moment to realise that I was taking the piss with the sort of trick you’d perform for a seven-year-old. The trick I had performed—more than once—for seven-year-old Sarah, ten years ago.

  She shook her head slowly, pointed to where madame had gone, and mimed lining me up with a pistol, two-handed, in American-cop fashion. The message was clear: what sort of idiot tries to steal from a gun shop? Except the idea of madame returning with a .45 in her hand was so unlikely as to be ludicrous. I grinned and Zoe grinned back, then covered her mouth with her hand to stop herself laughing.

  I thought, I hope Jim introduces us at some point, then remembered: tomorrow I’d be on the road to Santiago with only myself for company. I felt a sudden twinge. It had been a long time since I’d had a playful moment like this—a hint of a connection, even—with a woman. I’d probably only allowed it because of her link to Jim.

  Madame emerged, shaking the dust off a smaller pack. ‘You can have this as a gift,’ she said. The reason for the pack being stored out of sight was immediately apparent, though probably not to an American. It was an édition spéciale for the 2010 World Cup, featuring images of the French captain and coach. The froggies had disgraced themselves and imploded in a storm of public bickering that had led to a parliamentary inquiry, and much mirth where I came from.

  Zoe left with her bargain, but not before sending a final smile in my direction. Madame waved a bunch of keys at me. ‘Fermé.’

  ‘Attendez’—wait—I said, but there was no point arguing. With luck, the proprietor would be back after lunch. As I left, I checked the hours. Closed Sunday afternoon. And all day Monday.

  5

  ZOE

  At the tourist office, a slim young woman was turning the sign to Fermé.

  ‘Can you wait a minute?’ I said. ‘I need information about the Camino—the Chemin. S’il vous plaît.’

  She beckoned me in. ‘It is okay. There are five minutes.’

  It took a bit longer. She had brochures, but more on the history and sights than the practicalities. The French seemed to speak English and were happy to talk. The guy at the antique store had spent fifteen minutes giving me a history lesson and reassuring me that most walkers were on a spiritual journey rather than a religious one before selling me the scallop shell.

  ‘Do you have a guidebook?’ I asked.

  ‘The guide comes out in February.’

  Right. I had left LA on February 13.

  ‘Where is your destination?’ she said. ‘You are going to Santiago, or you will stop at the Spanish border?’

  ‘How far is it? To the border?’

  ‘A thousand and one hundred kilometres. Approximately. Seven hundred miles.’

  For a moment, I was overwhelmed. It was a familiar fe
eling, and I knew how to deal with it—but on this occasion the mantra was so right that I nearly laughed. One day at a time.

  My flight home was March 16…thirty days. Two days to get back to Paris. So, twenty-eight days. Seven hundred miles…

  ‘Do you have a calculator?’ I asked, miming punching the keys.

  She passed me one from under the counter.

  Twenty-five miles a day, exactly. How fast did I walk? Four miles an hour? Just over six hours a day. If I started early, I could be done by lunchtime with the afternoon free to find a place to stay and see the sights. I could budget around twenty euros a day, with some left over to get me back to Paris. If the antique-store guy was right, and things along the way were cheap or free, it would be enough.

  I gave the calculator back. ‘The Spanish border, I guess.’

  ‘Excellent. The French section is more difficult, but smaller numbers, better scenery, superior food and wine.’ She didn’t have to say ‘superior people’. ‘Spain is an autoroute of pilgrims; every day you are running to find a hostel, and also you have the…’ She mimed sleep, then scratching herself frantically. Bedbugs.

  ‘Is there a map?’ I asked.

  ‘The map is in the guidebook.’

  Right.

  ‘It is not necessary. You follow the scallop shells. Signs. On the trees and lampposts you will find St Jacques pointing the way.’

  A peaceful walk in the French countryside following an ancient route. Simple living with time for mindfulness and renewal. Maybe it was already happening. I had surprised myself in the hunting store, laughing for maybe the first time since Keith had died. But joking about guns?

  ‘You are leaving when?’ she said.

  ‘Today.’ The answer came without thinking, but I knew instantly it was the right one. If not now, when? If not you, who? I needed to look after myself, deal with Keith’s death in my own space, before I could think about shopping with Camille, who didn’t deserve to have someone from the distant past laying their pain on her. Océane could have her room back.