We disposed of the ostensible purpose for our meeting quickly, to Krista’s obvious relief. The cart’s mechanics were not complex, and Anders was more interested in its performance, which translated, at least for Krista, into an interesting travelogue. It was good to recap, but I found myself talking it up. Selling wasn’t my style, and I was reminded that I had a lot hanging on this. I didn’t have a job to return to if I couldn’t find an investor.
Anders knew the German company that was bidding for the cart. They were reputable but tough businessmen. ‘Don’t deal with them without a lawyer,’ he said.
As the meal progressed, I wondered if there was a deeper motivation for their generosity, an envy for what I was doing, shackled only to my cart. Anders would be back at his desk next week as I ambled along the Atlantic coast.
In my room, I took advantage of the big dry space to unpack everything and review my kit. It was getting warmer and I thought about sending some of the clothing and the thermos back to Jim once I was out of the Pyrenees. He might wonder about the blue dress, which I had chosen not to return to the shop. As I unpacked the medical kit, with its now-unneeded blister treatments and condoms, a small object fell out. It was Zoe’s scallop-shell charm.
45
ZOE
My second day in the Pyrenees was worse than the first. My pack had gotten wet under the poncho and not dried, and it was still raining. And I was hungry. The local bar served me bad coffee, and pointed me in the direction of the track with the sort of boredom that came from too many annoying hikers having asked too many annoying questions.
I couldn’t tell how far I’d walked. Before, I’d had an idea of my pace but now I was in mountains, with a heavier pack. The landscape was barren, rocky and windswept, with views forever of mountains covered in rocks and dirt. I paid it little attention. I collapsed into another uninviting hotel, without dinner, unless Oreos counted. I finished them.
I didn’t feel any better the next day. I started to wonder if I had bedbugs. I was itching all afternoon, scratching myself like the tourist agent in Cluny when she was trying to describe them to me. The idea terrified me. It would mean I was a liability in hostels, and as far as I knew the only way to get rid of them was to burn all your stuff.
‘Are you happy now?’ I screamed at the sky, at fate, at God, at my dead husband. ‘Is this what you wanted?’
The answer I got was what had to be the most tasteless crucifixes I had ever seen, and I had seen plenty in the last seven weeks. Not one, but three, life-size. Jesus with the thieves beside him, all contorted and looking a lot like I felt.
‘Screw you all!’ I yelled, but my words were lost in the wind and rain and my tears.
If the ascents were bad, they were nothing compared to the descent into Ainhoa. It took me three hours and, for a while, I had to walk backward to relieve my muscles and knees. Which made me trip and fall into the muddied side of the mountain.
When I saw Ainhoa, a real town, I wept harder. I wanted to go home. But I was miles from any airport and who knows how far from an international one. Not that I had a ticket anymore. I walked along the main street, where there were plenty of expensive-looking hotels. On an outside table, out of view of the restaurant interior, a full glass of rosé had been abandoned. Such a waste. On an impulse, I picked it up and drank it.
‘All right,’ I said to Keith. ‘You told me so. You told me I should plan and I didn’t, because you always did it for me and I never had to.’
The tourist office directed me to a gîte, where sixteen euros bought me a bunk bed in the dormitory.
I was alone. I had wanted solitude; now I had it, and I hated it. I wanted my children, Martin, Monsieur Chevalier, anyone. I hated myself, I hated Keith and then I hated myself some more. He thought he had failed me, but I had failed him. I had accepted him as the provider because that was what he wanted to be. But I was supposed to have been the one in tune with the emotional landscape, the one in charge of keeping things on an even keel, in balance with the universe. I had let us both down.
My passiveness, my failure to say, ‘It’s okay, I don’t need a vacation in France or a big house—I’m happy to live with what we have,’ had meant he had never been comforted by my perspective and balance. He had thought I needed money more than I needed him. The sheer craziness of the idea made me shake with rage.
I cooked some sad-looking vegetables, ate until I could eat no more and packed up the leftovers. Afterwards, I drank enough of the bourbon to make sure I’d sleep for a while, then washed everything before I crawled into Todd’s sleeping bag. It might have been too hot for the Camino Francés, but it was perfect for the Pyrenees. I was feeling less certain about the bedbugs and wondered if I had an allergy. Maybe my whole body was trying to purge itself of grief: the only comfort was a sense of connection with all the souls who had suffered over the centuries as they had walked and died along the Camino.
I woke with a sore head from the whiskey and felt some sympathy for my father. Well, some understanding. Of the need to obliterate yourself and how it added to the problem. I left the half-full bottle behind.
The hostel owner told me I had a short walk to Sare, a long walk to Biriatou, and then I would reach the coast at Hendaye, on the French side of the Spanish border. My spirits lifted a little. I was nearly in Spain.
I crossed the border sooner than I’d expected, but not in the right place. I had now not only lost my way spiritually, but physically. After some distance with no red and white stripes I saw a building on a river and made for it. To my surprise, it was a bar. Even more surprisingly, they didn’t speak French and not because they were being belligerent. After five minutes my Spanish started to flow more easily, though we both struggled with accents. The younger man drew me a diagram to supplement his rapid-fire directions. It led me back to red and white stripes, but it got dark before there was any sign of Sare. I was going to have to spend the night on the trail, in the cold.
I consoled myself that it wasn’t raining. There was no snow, and the temperature was probably above freezing point. I had a cold-weather sleeping bag and a poncho that could work as a tent. Things could be worse.
At 3 a.m., they were. I woke to find that rain had been dripping down the back of my neck. Todd’s sweater hood had been functioning as a miniature reservoir. I spent fifteen minutes finding a way of keeping the hood from squishing against me, and another ten refixing the poncho. To keep dry, I had to curl into the foetal position.
I fell asleep again—for an hour or two. When the sun rose on a damp and misty day, I ached in the way I imagined I might in old age, but I wasn’t thinking of the future. My mind was stuck on ruminations about how I had failed Keith. I deserved this.
46
MARTIN
Whether or not the scallop charm had any influence, I found the Pyrenees less daunting than I’d expected. There was a fair bit of climbing but not too much to bother the cart. I met a few other walkers, most just out for the day, and persuaded a couple of them to shoot video of the cart on the more difficult terrain.
The red-and-white-striped markers of the GR10 were not as prominent as the scallop shells had been, and it was handy to have the GPS. The views were stunning: eagles soared below me and after I gave up trying to catch them on video I spent an hour just watching them.
The towns through the Pyrenees were, like the golf resort outside Bidarray, oriented towards holidaymakers rather than walkers. In Ainhoa, on a balmy evening, I sat in a street restaurant sipping Navarre rosé, which had become my drink of choice. The waiter topped up my glass without prompting, and nodded towards the interior.
‘Is that your cart?’
‘Yes—is it in the way?’
‘No, but don’t leave anything valuable in it.’
I had my wallet, passport and phone with me, but went inside and retrieved Zoe’s charm and a safety pin. I had a fantasy of returning it to her with the news that I had fulfilled Monsieur Chevalier’s prophecy that it would go
to Santiago. I pinned it inside the breast pocket of my jacket.
When I returned to my table, my glass was empty.
Uuuuuurgh.
I wasn’t sure if Sarah’s message, on my phone as I came into Biriatou, still in the Pyrenees, was a reaction to a careless error in an assignment or to something more personal.
The previous evening, we had spent an hour talking about a maths problem, and she had even turned on the video at the end. She had never seen me with a beard and was suitably surprised. I was permitted to leave it on—especially if Zoe liked it: ‘C’mon Dad, you are going to see her again. I really am okay with it.’ But we turned off the sound and video before she messaged the Love you Dad.
Tonight, it was text messages again. It seemed the engineering student was keeping his options open and managing to divert any blame to his partner, who was selfishly trying to hang on to the father of her child.
She doesn’t love him.
Why do you think he’s staying with her?
She guilts him out. Love for his kid would have been a worthier answer.
How old’s the child?
A few months. He tried to make it work.
Right. By hooking up with a seventeen-year-old.
Mum thinks I should dump him. Totally. Not see him ever again.
Julia was totally right, except in offering advice. Though maybe she needed to give Sarah a clear statement of where she stood.
I had a limited toolkit for dealing with human relations. Don’t give advice unless it’s asked for; assume self-interest until proven otherwise. Sarah’s engineering student was getting the best of both worlds as long as Sarah and his partner let him get away with it. And Sarah had Julia’s and my attention.
While I was thinking, she texted again. What do you think?
Depends what you want to happen.
Are you being a shrink? What do you think?
What would you like me to think?
DAD!
;-)
If I got pregnant, he’d have to choose who he really wanted.
She was pressing my buttons. Which was what she was getting out of this in the first place. If I reacted, she would get positive reinforcement for the behaviour; if not, she would push harder or find other ways to do it. If there were more effective ways than telling her father she was thinking about getting pregnant in order to test her relationship with a married man.
I left it till she continued: Gotta go. Test tomorrow. Then: Science test, not pregnancy test. Haha.
LoL here. Not. Good luck.
Love you Dad.
xxx
Hey, is Zoe the woman in the short dress? The white one. On your blog?
No. Zoe’s AMERICAN. They were Brazilians. Read caption.
Good. She looked like trouble.
Walking the next day, I allowed myself a little pat on the back. The boyfriend hadn’t gone away but the communication lines were still open, and I had given Sarah a bit to think about without imposing my view. When we talked maths, she had her head on straight, so her angst seemed not to be interfering with her studies.
My holiday in the Pyrenees ended at the seaside. After walking through the suburbs of Hendaye, I said goodbye to France with a dozen oysters and a glass of Mâcon Blanc before catching the ferry for the short crossing to Hondarribia. I could have taken a roundabout urban route via Irun to avoid using a boat, but my new guidebook counselled otherwise. Ancient pilgrims would not have refused the offer of a boat ride, and I was happy to follow tradition.
Almost as soon as I disembarked, I realised that the Camino, no longer the Chemin, would be different in more than name. A crude yellow arrow painted on a concrete wall pointed the way, and a series of similar markers took me into town and past my first tapas bar.
I found a quaint pensione at a more than reasonable price. A foot race was in progress, and the streets were full of people in a festive mood cheering the finishers on. I propped in a bar and ordered a glass of fino, which they heard as vino. When it was made clear I was in the wrong region for sherry, I settled for a rosé and some pinchos, and began to get into the mood of Spain.
I felt good, and mildly philosophical, sitting alone with a glass of wine, a toothpick loaded with anchovies, chilli pepper and olives, and a basket of bread. Was this what it was about? Suppose Zoe’s charm did deliver happiness. Would it just give me day after day of this until it palled and I sought something deeper?
It was 11 p.m. when I returned to my room, well fed and thinking it would have been cheaper to buy the whole bottle of rosé in the first place rather than order it by the glass. As I tossed my phone on the bedside table, ready to charge, I saw there was a series of messages.
The first told me everything I needed to know. It was from Julia. Call me urgently. Sarah has disappeared.
47
ZOE
I arrived in Biriatou beat, physically and emotionally, and nearly broke. Though there were plenty of cheap hotel options, I didn’t want to hand over the reserve that I would need for the first albergues on the Camino until I found some massage clients. The épicerie owner was sympathetic when I told him I had been lost. He may have thought I had been robbed. A phone call and a short walk later, I had a bed in a barn. The owners offered me a shower and a hot chocolate, which I accepted gratefully, and a glass of liquor, which I refused. As I drifted off in Todd’s sleeping bag, I reflected that at least I wasn’t giving anyone bedbugs—which I probably didn’t have anyway—and I wasn’t cold or hungry.
The next day there was some improvement in the weather but it was something else that helped my spirits. Right in front of me was the sea. I had arrived in Hendaye. I was only a short boat ride away from Spain.
I have always loved the sea, never more than when it is at its most treacherous. I was craving a little of that to hurl some anger at. But the day was mild and the sea peaceful and, as I leaned on the wall looking out across the beach and water toward my own country, the anger drained out of me. I knew that whatever Keith had done, however misguided he might have been, he would never have deliberately hurt me or the girls.
On my side, as much as I had failed him, it had never been my intention. We had differed on so many things that I ended up being just something else to worry about. I wondered about the silences when I had insisted on paying a good wage to his immigrant workers and a fair price to his foreign suppliers. I had wanted him to be a progressive and he had wanted to be a businessman. He tried to be both, for me, and ended up succeeding at neither. I took for granted so many things: his getting dinner on days I was stressed out; his common sense, which steadied me when my teenage girls had pushed me to the edge; and, of course, the encouragement he gave for me to follow my dreams, at least as he understood them.
In the end, it wasn’t the sea that took me from the dark place I’d inhabited for the past five days. It was a sign, advertising glaces. On vacations, Keith would buy an ice cream every day, for him and the girls, some unhealthy confection of chocolate and fat and artificial flavours. In the end, I’d given in and joined them.
I bought an ice cream from the local store, sat on the beach with my shoes and socks off, toes wiggling in the warm sand, smiling as I licked the chocolate covering that had been his favourite, and celebrated the good things we’d had.
48
MARTIN
I didn’t call Julia. I texted Sarah.
You OK?
Yep dw. It took me half a minute to work it out: don’t worry.
When the relief that flooded over me had receded, I was guiltily aware of something left behind: a sense of satisfaction—of smugness—that at least one parent knew what to do. Unfortunately, this was not the parent that Sarah was dealing with day to day. Whose fault was that? There was no way in the world that Julia would have let me have sole custody, if that was the right term for a relationship with a now demonstrably independent and wilful seventeen-year-old.
Where are you?
Safe. DW.
&nbs
p; Text me later, OK?
Whatevs.
Tell your mum. She’s worried.
You tell her.
And that was the real message, the literal bottom line. I guessed Sarah was holed up with a friend and quite safe, following a fight with Julia or the engineering student. I would have put money on the former. However angry I felt towards Julia for failing to look after our daughter, for creating the situation in which I could not be there, I could not let her hang.
I texted: Sarah safe dw.
The message came straight back.
DW??
Don’t worry.
Fuck you.
Well, no change there. I left the phone on in case Sarah texted again.
I had a day up my sleeve before I was due to meet the Germans in San Sebastián, and decided to spend it in Hondarribia. The hotel was pleasant and there were more tapas bars to explore. It was raining, quite hard, and the forecast suggested that delaying the walk for a day would be a smart move. More importantly, it gave me an opportunity to skype Sarah, at her convenience rather than mine.
I used the time to construct a parking brake—a simple wheel lock—for the cart to prevent further runaways and to demonstrate that I was using my experience on the Camino to refine the design.
The Sarah situation aside, the scallop charm seemed still to be working. There was an email from Jonathan asking for a copy of the plans for the cart. I obviously can’t promise anything, but those video clips through the Pyrenees were bloody impressive. We’re always looking for low-cost solutions in places where we’re trying to hand over to the locals.
My blog following was still growing, although the emphasis was increasingly on me rather than the cart. If anything, the implication was that I was a quixotic character doing it the hard way—not quite the impression I was aiming for.
Fantastic achievement. Tough enough with a backpack, let alone that cart.
You must be getting incredibly fit hauling that beast.
Two Steps Forward Page 17
