Two Steps Forward

by Graeme Simsion

  Monsieur Chevalier smiled at Paola.

  ‘And Renata? I thought you were ahead?’

  Renata nodded. ‘This is true. But they sent me a message…’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps we are learning to play together.’

  Bernhard had been in contact with the Spanish Six, and they, in turn, with the Brazilians. The men had held off finishing, waiting in A Rúa so we could all do the final leg together—and, now, help pull the cart. They emerged from the bar, without robes. Embraces all around except for Martin, on the cart, and Bernhard, who stood to the side until Felipe shook his hand and then hugged him. Fabiana told me that she and Margarida had rented the costumes in Melide.

  As we started up again, three of the Spanish men took handles, and Renata was about to take the other when Monsieur Chevalier waved her aside and took it himself. As bearers changed on our march to the outskirts of Santiago, Monsieur Chevalier never gave up his place. Tina danced around us, shooting video on her phone, obviously delighted that the ordeal was almost over.

  ‘You know Monsieur Chevalier well?’ I said to Paola as we were moving again.

  ‘We met when I gave a talk in St Jean Pied de Port,’ said Paola. ‘But when we saw each other in Melide…we decided to walk together.’ She shrugged her shoulders and looked at him. I looked at the scallop shell around her neck and smiled.

  ‘Why didn’t you just take a taxi?’ asked Tina.

  ‘It’s not in the spirit of the walk, is it?’ I said.

  ‘We cheat on many things in life,’ said Fabiana. ‘But some things matter more than others.’

  It was a long haul to the ice-cream vendor where I had met Bernhard two days earlier. This time we continued down the hill until we reached the bridge and the sign.

  Santiago.

  I looked at Martin and there was a silent agreement. We wanted to do this together. The Brazilians smiled and kissed and hugged us before racing ahead. Tina had linked arms with her mother.

  There was maybe a mile to go, through the outskirts and then the narrow tourist-filled streets of the old town, where I became conscious of being part of twelve hundred years of history. I pulled slowly and we hardly spoke. In those last thirty minutes, scenes from the whole walk were flashing before me and I was so lost in thought I barely noticed Martin’s weight or the pilgrims around us. The edge of the cathedral was to the left as the final descent appeared ahead: stairs. Martin pulled himself out of the cart, taking his sticks.

  ‘I want to walk in. With you.’

  ‘We’re leaving the buggy?’

  ‘I don’t need it anymore.’

  ‘Without you in it, I can do it easily.’

  ‘No. Leave it. It doesn’t matter.’

  We turned to the shout of ‘Zoe!’

  The Brazilians were running up the street waving the cardboard tubes that held their compostelas. I felt I already had mine: the battered credencial with almost a hundred stamps.

  ‘She deserved hers,’ said Fabiana, hugging Margarida. ‘She saved me.’

  ‘No, I nearly killed her,’ said Margarida gravely. ‘But this scared me more than her, I think.’

  ‘And me also,’ said Felipe. He was holding Fabiana’s hand.

  Tina hugged me tightly. ‘I passed on the compostela. Because of the taxis. Next time, for sure.’

  Monsieur Chevalier looked at Paola in adoration. What better person for her to share the walk with in the future? She might even corrupt him a little.

  ‘Are you going to Mass?’

  ‘I’ll see you all there,’ I said.

  That would be later. Martin and I were not done yet.

  We walked the last fifty yards together, him leaning heavily on me. As we got closer we heard music. A quartet with a violin case open for donations serenaded us under the archway that thousands, maybe millions of pilgrims before us had walked beneath. I emptied my pockets of coins. Classical music—it was the same as I had heard in the fog so many weeks and miles ago. The ‘Toreador March’ might have been more appropriate but this was more magical—‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle’, I now recalled: love is like a wild bird. It evoked the triumph of spirit, as my body, mind and soul soared to its refrains.

  For a moment, we stood side by side, looking at the magnificent façade of the Santiago cathedral. We had done it. Despite everything—despite all the obstacles that perhaps fate, or more likely we ourselves, had put in the way—we had made it. Together.

  My legs had started to shake, and I thought I would join other pilgrims who were laying on the cobblestones against their packs, when Martin grabbed my arm. ‘Over there. I know that guy.’

  ‘How many painkillers have you taken? It’s Bernhard.’

  ‘No, the older guy.’ Bernhard was being congratulated: hugged to death by a woman while the older guy stood by. They had to be his parents. ‘He’s a professor of engineering. Dietmar Hahn. He’s German.’

  ‘No shit.’

  ‘All right, of course he’s German, but he’s famous as the most arrogant prick in engineering academia.’

  ‘Is he good at it?’

  ‘At being a prick? Brilliant. In his field? Best in the world. But no one wants to work with him. Imagine being his son. Christ. To know all is to forgive all.’

  Martin waved, there was a quick discussion at their end and they came over. Dietmar knew Martin by reputation, though they hadn’t met, and he didn’t seem any more arrogant than half the Americans I knew as they got into a technical conversation about the cart. In fact, he seemed very respectful of Martin. Not so much Bernhard.

  ‘My son was two days late—not a good look for a future engineer.’

  Martin was right back at him. ‘He used the time to redesign my cart. And rebuild it. I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t.’

  Bernhard’s father nodded slowly. ‘You think he’ll make a competent engineer?’

  Martin looked at Bernhard and then at Dietmar. ‘I’ve walked for three months with Bernhard. He’ll succeed at whatever he sets his mind to.’

  We spent just a few minutes sitting silent—though there was noise all around us—taking in the cathedral. Then, there was Mass and the rush to get my plane as soon as the monks pulled on the ropes for the last time. The church might look down at indulging tourists, but it was not above taking a donation from Marco to ensure we would see the botafumeiro at the end of the Mass. As it swung through the air above us while several hundred pilgrims watched in awe, I felt I was once again pulling the bell cord in Conques, where I had begun the change that Monsieur Chevalier had promised: forgiving my mother, understanding what had happened with Keith, rediscovering what I had left behind. But the bell had been to say goodbye to Martin.

  On the public computer at the airport, there was a message from Lauren. Good news: the house had sold for more than expected and Albie had been able to release fifteen thousand dollars into my account. I logged on, keyed in Martin’s account details and transferred what I owed him. I labelled the transaction Camino karma.

  On the flight home, cocooned in a middle seat, I reflected on the many good reasons I shouldn’t have walked the Camino.

  I had never walked more than ten miles in a day. On the Camino, I had walked more than that every day for three months. It was 2,038 kilometres, according to Martin’s GPS—and I had re-walked the final two days, so I could add another fifty. More than twelve hundred miles, on the toughest variant.

  I had never been into physical challenges. When my friends in their forties had discovered an interest in marathons, I had stuck to art. Even marathons made more sense than three months of frostbite, blisters and sleeping outside in the rain.

  It was a Catholic pilgrimage and I had been angry at the church.

  My husband had just died and I was broke.

  I lived five thousand miles away from where the walk traversed Europe, starting in France, where I didn’t speak the language, and ending in Spain, where I knew no one.

  There were many reasons not to walk the Camino. But I
walked it anyway. One day at a time.

  It was fate that sent me but its lesson was to rely less on fate than I ever had.

  I learned that it is important to know not only what to hold on to and what to let go of, but what to go back for.

  Monsieur Chevalier was right. I got blisters. The Camino changed me. Peace? I knew there were challenges ahead. But now I knew I could manage them.

  I had found what I had lost—the belief in myself and the integrity to take risks for something that was important. When I stood before the cathedral in Santiago, I was humbled by both my own stupidity and the evidence before me of how great humankind could be, and I experienced a sense of belonging that I had never experienced before.

  And I cried.

  EPILOGUE

  MARTIN

  The universe smiled on us, at least where it mattered and where I had not made its task impossible by my own bloody-mindedness. My cartilage did not miraculously grow back, and I endured a second knee operation. Jonathan put me up while I recuperated. One afternoon, Julia and I met over coffee and managed not to bite each other’s heads off when one of us slipped back into bad habits. Sarah’s exam results would allow her to study medicine and she was considering her options. The engineering student was no longer on the scene, and she seemed to be on a more even keel emotionally. Whether or not that had anything to do with the improved relations between her parents, we had a better safety net in place for future crises.

  Julia knew about Zoe, thanks to Tina, who had posted footage of my ride on YouTube and added a link as a comment on my blog, complete with a teenage girl’s observations on the romance of it all. Julia’s only reaction was that she did not want me moving to America and abandoning Sarah again.

  Jonathan also saw Tina’s video. As a luggage cart, my invention was not much chop. But as a stretcher for use in mountainous areas by soldiers and civilians without access to helicopters, it was a different proposition. Carrying a conventional stretcher along mountain trails was a tough task for four men. Two, three or four—or an animal—could pull the modified cart in far more comfort and security for all. The British Army was not going to wait for a Chinese imitation and wanted to be seen to pay well for local ingenuity.

  By the time I was off crutches, I had a more than satisfactory offer for the design and a contract as a consultant for its ongoing refinement. And Bernhard had a nice cheque for his contribution.

  I applied for a job in the Department of Built Environment at my old university. My expertise in design theory was transferable to architecture and the Camino had rekindled my interest. I wanted to be close to Sarah, at least for a while. The university offered me a start in the new academic year.

  I wrote a short note of thanks to Zoe for repaying the loan. What I wanted to say was: Come and spend your life with me. But, of course, I didn’t. The Camino had not changed me that much.

  EPILOGUE

  ZOE

  My flight from Santiago went via New York. I stopped there to see Lauren—and found that she did need me. If I had doubts about being a grandmother, hers about being a mother were greater. I had never seen her so anxious. But by the time I left, she was back to being the girl who had told me on the first day of school to not kiss her because she wasn’t a baby. I returned six weeks later when their son, Lucas Emmanuel, was born, content in the knowledge I had been able to give her what I hadn’t been offered by—or asked of—my mother.

  I watched my daughter glow as she fell in love with her child, and I knew she would be fine; after another week, she was happy to let me go. She refused to give up the battle with the insurance company. I wished her the best with it and told her that she, Tessa and their future children could share anything that came from it. I believed that, knowing everything, it was what Keith would have wanted.

  Home had been a different hostel every night for three months and I no longer had a house or belongings or ties. Thanks to the botafumeiro’s swing, I flew to San Francisco instead of LA, rented a studio and slept on the floor for weeks. I missed the snoring, the rustling in the night and the morning tortilla more than a bed.

  I continued to work on my cartoons. The Chronicle directed me into political satire and I found my talent for capturing personality was even more useful in this arena. My Pilgrims’ Progress series, including some cartoons that had not been published, was given its own showing at my friend Corrina’s gallery, a block from where I had set myself up. I’d taken Martin’s advice to keep ownership of the originals.

  I was nervous about the opening, not just because I wanted people to like the cartoons, not just because my heart and soul was in every one, but because I wanted to sell them. I wanted Keith, through the children he had helped me raise, to see me independent and to be proud. I couldn’t do anything about the irony that this made his sacrifice all the more pointless.

  I wanted my lessons of the Camino shining on the walls of the people they spoke to. Richard and Nicole couldn’t come to the opening but they told me that my sketch of them was on display at Tramayes, and they bought the cartoon of Marianne and Moses from the catalogue for their home in Sydney.

  I had invited Martin, writing and rewriting his invitation, wanting the wording to be right. I thought that there might be another man one day, that I had learned from what went wrong with Keith. At least I wasn’t going to hold back out of fear of rejection or thinking I couldn’t manage alone. That much had changed. I liked how Martin had stood up to me—Manny had never tried and Keith had retreated—and how he had been prepared to change. And his strength of purpose. I had learned to get and even like his British humour, and I could have paid him back with a little American optimism. But he didn’t reply.

  The gallery was full for the event and a bunch of friends had come from all over the country. I watched people grab glasses of wine and resisted the urge to stand behind them as they viewed my pictures. Ten minutes in, Corrina told me I had my first sale of the night. ‘Both of the Buggy Man ones.’

  I looked up and there he was: no beard, but definitely a walker and not a hunter.

  ‘Couldn’t have my picture on some stranger’s wall,’ he said.

  I wanted to fling my arms around him, but he was radiating that British reserve.

  ‘I’ve flown all the way to bloody San Francisco,’ he said.

  ‘I know…’

  ‘Do I get a hug for that?’

  So I flung my arms around him, and his kiss took me back to the other side of the Atlantic.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I sold the cart design to the British Army…’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘And I’ve persuaded them I should test the new prototype in the Alps—on the trail to Rome.’

  ‘Italy? From where?’

  ‘Cluny, again. The Assisi Way. As in, St Francis of Assisi. I’ve got a few months before my new job starts. The surgeon tells me my knee’s up to it. I was wondering if you’d like to come with me.’

  ‘That’s what you came to ask me?’

  ‘More or less. I quite enjoyed walking with you, but things kept getting in the way. Thought we could give it another go.’

  Martin must have been thinking about it for a while, but right now it felt like he was the one being spontaneous and I was the one needing time to plan. My heart said yes, but…

  ‘I…don’t know. I’m doing a lot of things here. Can I think about it? It’d be good to go to Cluny again. Visit Camille. She and her husband have broken up.’

  I was still thinking about it later in the evening when Tessa arrived. She liked Martin. And she brought a gift to wish me luck. She’d seen it in the market and was sure I would like it.

  It was a small enamel charm—a dove. A wild bird? A sign of peace. But more than that: the dove is the symbol of the Assisi walk.

  AUTHORS’ NOTE

  We first walked the Chemin/Camino from Cluny to Santiago de Compostela, on the route described in this book—specifically Martin’s, with the Célé variant—from February to Ma
y 2011 (eighty-seven days, 2,038 kilometres).

  From March to June 2016, we walked from Cluny to St Jean Pied de Port (Zoe’s route) and then on to Santiago via the Camino Francés (seventy-nine days, and this time, like Zoe, we didn’t carry a GPS, so our best guess is nineteen hundred kilometres).

  This novel was inspired by our walks and the people we met along The Way—but it is not intended to take the place of the excellent guidebooks available. While we have endeavoured to be accurate about route, timing and most locations, we have taken occasional liberties with accommodation and restaurants, which, in any case, change from year to year. The walkers are fictional, as are the hoteliers, gîte staff and hôtes, and their behaviour in the story is of no relevance to the reception you can expect in a particular place. The exception is a nod to our hosts at L’Oustal in Corn, who won our vote for best chambre d’hôte meal on our 2011 pilgrimage.

  On our first Camino, the bells at the Abbey Church of Sainte Foy did ring us out of Conques, but they did not seem to be operating in 2016.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We drafted this book in 2012, a year after walking the Camino for the first time, and returned to it after our second Camino, in 2016. The people we met on both journeys inspired many of the stories and characters. A young Belgian man, Matthias, was the only other walker we encountered on the Chemin de Cluny, and it was he who encouraged us to collaborate on a mature-age love story.

  Our editor, David Winter, has been our wise and tireless guide on the road to publication.

  Along the way, our early readers provided valuable feedback at all levels, from ‘Maybe you should write it as one book rather than two’ to ‘You missed the accent in San Sebastián’: Jon Backhouse, Danny Blay, Lahna Bradley, Jean and Greg Buist, Tania Chandler, Angela Collie (the first person inspired by this story to walk the Camino), Robert Eames, Amy Jasper, Cathie and David Lange, Rod Miller, Helen O’Connell, Rebecca Peniston-Bird, Midge Raymond, Robert and Michèle Sachs, Debbie and Graeme Shanks, Daniel Simsion, Dennis Simsion, Dominique Simsion, Sue and Chris Waddell, Geri and Pete Walsh, Fran Willcox, and Janifer Willis.