She recalled the set-to, filled with shame and, forgetting the peril she’d been in, felt that her brothers-in-law had been hard done by. They’d stood little chance against his cock-of-the-walk sailor-bully who tricked them by bluff rather than fair fight.
The motorway curved, banks of rock and yellow soil close to the side. Heavy gunmetal clouds lay up the Rhône valley ahead. She struck again, fearing to vomit if she didn’t – blows more unexpected than the first and even more forceful, screaming at him to stop the car. He looked at the front, tightened his grip, and drove on. He thought she had finished, worked out her demons as if she were a mutinous deckhand whom he had to polish off by the old one-two. When she struck at him on a clear patch of the road his fist spun and knocked her head against the window.
‘Be quiet,’ he said loudly, ‘and pull yourself together.’
There was no other way. She was carrying his child. He would make sure no death occurred while he had control. And for the moment he had. But they were finished.
South of Lyon, a coppice of tall pipes speared into the air, blazing flames of gas burning at their tips against a dark underbelly of cloud. The tips of flame rippled like flags of victory against the world of darkness. She noticed him look at it yet watch every foot of the road. The zone the chimneys covered was immense. Her head turned to stay with them as he drove by. The rhythm of their waving flame-tips calmed her.
At the night-stop hotel, placed between the main road and a railway line, their room was only a few steps away from the dining-room, a bungalow sort of settlement which, he said, would have to do because you were forced to put up with what you got while on the road. She hoped he wouldn’t refer to her fit of rage that day, but he said: ‘I don’t particularly mind when you try to kill me, but I object to you wanting to do yourself in, not to mention the child you’re going to have.’
She stopped herself, by an effort as violent as when she had lunged at his hand on the steering wheel, from saying she was sorry about everything. Couldn’t help myself. Don’t know what got me going. Never.
He stood in his underpants to shave, face hidden from her, thinking that what he had said was the end of the matter.
‘Life’s not real any more,’ she said.
He laughed. ‘Isn’t it, by God? It’s real enough for me. You sometimes make it too bloody real for words, I’ll say that for you. Not that I want to talk about it, though not to do so would be worse for me than for you, so I suppose I have to.’
She felt exultant at his admission, petty as it was, sly as all get-out, and did not regret anything she had done or said. His eyes, when he turned, were troubled by a fire in the void behind them, which was more intense and painful than he would admit even to himself. Thus he could only smile, fresh-faced and smooth, a cut below the ear from which blood oozed. The smile was a shadow of his acquiescence to whatever demands she’d make, and he clearly expected many. Whether or not he guessed anything specific about them was unimportant, his expression said – which made her run to him and hold him.
Weeping with relief, she drew the flat of her hand over the rough hair of his chest. Every day ended in victory, when it had not seemed possible, when it had seemed that even defeat would be denied. Life might not be real, but the fight was, and so was the happiness she felt that came after it.
12
He cruised north-west along the motorway at between sixty and seventy knots. They had left the south, what little had been seen of sea and luxury-green. She was not saying farewell for long. The hills were bare and gentle, and to get north did not seem so imperative. They were behind a high, broad-wheeled safari sort of wagon laden inside and out with bedrolls, jerrycans and canvas bags. Tom kept at the regulation distance. The vehicle looked dependable for all terrain, an All-Europe construction heavy with purpose, yet capable of speed. It must shine well in advertisements and glossy brochures. She asked if he wouldn’t like that sort of thing, assuming that part of his character was similar to its virtues.
He nodded. ‘Maybe. I’m not sure. But I’ve often thought of driving through Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan to India, so it would do, certainly, though I read that there’s now a paved road all the way from Calais to Katmandu. An ordinary car like this would be good enough.’
‘If you go on that kind of journey,’ she said, ‘I’ll come with you. Sounds just the kind of trip for us.’
He laughed. ‘As long as you promised to behave!’
They watched the safari wagon move briskly, almost brusquely out, and increase speed so as to overtake a saloon car that appeared to be dawdling by comparison. Tom looked in his mirror. ‘Maybe I’ll overtake as well, for a change of view.’
‘OK to go,’ she said.
He swung to the outer lane.
She felt a twinge of worry. The heavy safari car swerved, skidding as they followed. Had the driver fainted? Had a heart attack? It weaved ponderously across the motorway, smoke pluming from the rear wheels and filling their own car with the smell of hot rubber and scorching bakelite, plastic and tin.
He braked slightly, some of his tension transferring to her. She was too fixed by her stare to speak. Bits were breaking off the wagon, now to their right-front, and a car steaming up close behind seemed about to come through his rear mirror. Her feet treddled as if she also could slow the car.
The height of the safari wagon diminished, its body nearer the tarmac, while pieces from around the back wheels were spat up and away by the force of rims hitting the ground. The wheels appeared to be disintegrating, as on a stricken aircraft that had touched the runway too fast.
The only safety lay in speed. He knew it instinctively. Pam was fascinated, no fear possible. She watched the falling to pieces of the car, the helplessness of the man at the wheel as his vehicle hit the side of the road and was carried back towards the centre, then again to the side and in a more or less straight line as their own car with a few inches of gap shot by and suddenly had the whole motorway to itself.
Tom slowed when it was safe, seeing the damaged car stopped on the hard shoulder behind. ‘It was a close call,’ he said, ‘but I think they’re all right.’ He set hazard lights going. ‘I’d better have a look, though’ – and backed a few hundred yards to get close.
The driver was laughing. Tom might have been, he supposed, in a similar plight. Not much else to do. The man’s face was pallid, his one concession to fear. He knew he’d been breathed on by death, so was letting his wind out by noise. He bellowed, amused at his own luck.
Two children and a woman were silent inside, as if blaming him for what happened. If he had been gibbering with guilt and hopelessness they wouldn’t have been so ready to blame. He treated the collapse as a bit of a lark, unwilling to get down and pray thanks for his deliverance. But he couldn’t do that because maybe he’d forgotten how.
Perhaps he had been driving the car too roughly for its own good, Tom said, when he had been told there was nothing to be done. The man didn’t want anyone to share the harvest of his downfall. Since it had happened, he would relish this crack-up. It would be his and his alone, an experience that, dangerous though it may have been, and (perhaps fortunately) rare enough in one’s life, was not to be divided with anyone, or diminished by an offer of help, which could not alter the fact that he was stranded on the French motorway miles from anywhere, after his car-marvel of automobile technology had so undeniably packed up on him.
Tom read this and more into his face, and thought he wasn’t far wrong. The man thanked him for the offer of help, and motioned him away, not wanting any other being to come between him and the breakdown gang or the one-way alley to the knackers’ yard. It was understandable, yet childish; and while Tom thought he really ought to consider his wife and children (though perhaps they weren’t his – who was to say? If they were they had every right to be far more angry), the man held up his other hand and waved a sheaf of insurance papers which, to judge from the wide grin, would bring all the necessary assistance, and pay for
it, and put them into the best hotel while his wagon was repaired or replaced, or transport of the plushiest category was provided to get them home. He had no problems – but thank you very much.
Which was all very well, but there was a risk of explosion and fire from leaking petrol. It was a hot day. Tom explained, in spite of the man’s grinning vociferations turning into anger, and opened the doors gently to get the passengers out. They climbed the barrier off the hard shoulder and walked fifty yards up the slope. The driver, clutching his papers, thanked him very much, and went to find a telephone.
When he saw a breakdown car already on its way to the stricken landboat Tom drove on. ‘What I would like,’ Pam said, ‘is to get off at the next exit, and go up to the Channel in a leisurely way on ordinary roads.’
‘All right.’
‘Do you mind?’ She sensed danger, especially in speed, and on the motorway. The needle rarely showed less than eighty. Her hands shook. The wreck of the safari-wagon had been a little too close.
He grimaced, as if he did mind. I do and I don’t, his expression said. ‘The motorway ends in a few miles, in any case. One day I expect it’ll go right to the Channel. Maybe even under it in three hundred years.’
He liked the thrusting forward along the great wide road that would get him quickly back to the English water. On the other hand she was right: it would be more interesting from the point of view of scenery and navigation to go slowly along minor roads, forgetting any notion of time or a schedule for reaching home. As long as they were pointing generally north nothing else mattered, though the course would be modified from time to time. ‘We’ll go north-west for a while, and get into the valley of the Loire, then head through the beautiful belly of France and curve around Paris to the west. Schlieffen in reverse. We’ll zig-zag through Normandy, and cross from Dieppe.’ If the car came to pieces on a Route Nationale, and there was no knowing that it might not let them down, they would find a couple of days extra added to their time. Speed not only killed, it wore the car out, and that was worse, he jested, telling himself that a rear-tyre blow-out at seventy could mean coffins for them both. Off the main roads there seemed less chance. But he was going to miss the excitement of the solo cavalry charge along the broad road, the tension of high speed and the hazard of so many overtakings a minute.
When he drove at such a rate he was hard to talk to. She felt the intensity of his concentration and didn’t want to break it. On an ordinary road he would go slowly and they could talk. It would be more human. Also, she said, it’ll be much cheaper not having to pay tolls every hundred kilometres. Well, he replied, so it will. But there’ll be an extra night or two on the road, though that should be a pleasure for us both.
The green and wooded hills rolled into a central French fairyland of châteaux and self-contained villages. In one they stopped at an épicerie for food, and bought bread from next door. She left him in the car and stammered her bit of French, pointing when that failed.
They parked among chestnut trees. The place was wet and she avoided mud on stepping out. The air was dank, and she reached into the back for a sweater. Tom primed the stove and made tea on the blue flame. She pulled the long bread apart with her fingers and forced Camembert in between. ‘This is the best of being on the road. I feel like a tramp. Nothing in life matters, because I’ve got nowhere to go, and there’s nowhere for the moment I want to go. I certainly never thought this feeling was part of me.’
Could he still love such a person? Wouldn’t much matter. Couldn’t matter. She loved him in so far as it didn’t interfere with her being herself and doing whatever she wanted to do. Travelling not only broadened the mind, as it was said, but opened it where all had been closed before. If somebody loved you, and she believed him when he said he did, they loved you in spite of you being yourself. They saw something more mysterious than yourself to be in love with. She felt the same with regard to him. There was an equality in a relationship that cemented them in spite of all surface imperfections, of which she sensed there were many.
He was busy, and didn’t care what she thought. Even when her speculations were spoken aloud he did not seem to concede their importance.
She felt less sleepy after food and tea. ‘Tell me if anything’s coming. I’m going behind that bush.’
He repacked the stove, then himself went to piss.
She said: ‘When we set off, I want to do some driving.’
He gave her the keys.
She began slowly, going barely thirty miles an hour. The road was curving, undulating, and in places narrow. He sat with the map on his knees, and she felt that every mile seemed like ten to him. ‘You don’t need to worry. I’ve driven ever since George got his first car. Not all that often, because he never liked me using his precious possessions, but I can drive all right.’
At this rate, she saw him thinking, we’ll be a week on the road before landing anywhere. ‘I can look at the scenery for a change,’ he said.
‘Well, do it, then.’
But he observed the road as if he were still driving. He’ll get used to it, she thought. He worked out every gear-change and brake tread, looked in the (for him) non-existent rear mirror whenever she needed to move out and get by stationary cars in a village. At junctions and crossroads he looked to see if it was clear.
‘I’m not nervous at all,’ she said, ‘and I’m the one who should be. So don’t you be.’
He laughed. ‘You caught me out.’
‘Hard not to.’
It began to rain. ‘Which switch works the wipers?’
He reached across. ‘That one.’
‘Thought so.’ A few miles further on she said: ‘Where do we stay tonight?’
‘Wherever we land. Most places have a hotel of sorts, and I expect they’re pretty much the same.’
So they could drift. Just as well, at the rate I’m going. It was more interesting, and in a way more relaxing, to drive instead of twiddling your thumbs as a passenger in the cabbage seat. ‘You just tell me when you’ve had enough,’ she said. ‘Then we can find a place to eat and sleep.’ A car coming from the opposite direction flashed its headlights. ‘What was that for?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘he’s either warning you to slow down because there’s a police speed trap ahead, though I don’t think that can be the reason, or you’re just a shade too far to the middle of the road.’
‘You’re so bloody diplomatic.’
‘It’s my nature.’
‘Just as well.’ On a straight piece she increased to fifty and overtook a 2CV van. He tried to count the trees as they went by, but they rippled along his vision like a washboard. The chaussée was certainly déformé, but she seemed not to have noticed. Or it didn’t matter.
At seven o’clock she drove into the square of a large village. The blonde middle-aged landlady of the Hôtel des Charmettes showed them street-floor accommodation across from the hotel. All other rooms were taken. He went back to fill in the passport form. They walked before dinner, sharing an umbrella along streets of grey houses that were mostly shuttered and seemingly minus inhabitants, despite the Michelin’s claim that the village had eight hundred. She liked the clean air and occasional touches of rain when a corner was turned. ‘It’s marvellous to be in such a place,’ she said, ‘and know we’ll be gone in the morning.’
A mildewed statue to a local philosopher of the last century glowed with the sheen of sunlight between showers. ‘I’ve turned you into a sailor,’ he said.
‘I always was one, perhaps. And maybe you always weren’t.’
‘I think I’m tired of continually wondering what I was, and trying to find out who I am. I don’t think it much signifies. I don’t know, and don’t want to know. Or I know, and don’t care. Whatever happens will happen, and that’s all that matters.’
Each word was an ache to his spirit. Confusion was never far below the surface, and he couldn’t stop indications of it breaking through. To that extent she had ruined him, or human
ized him, though the turmoil would have been there no matter what childhood he had gone through, or what life he had led. Whatever he wanted he hadn’t yet found, and she suspected he knew very well but wasn’t capable of discussing it. He was lost, more lost than she had ever been. His tightrope of despair underfoot had turned into a razor-blade. He did not want to speak because he felt that changes were coming over which he would have no control, and that whether good or bad came from them they would be better by far than the perilous uncertainties that embroiled him.
But it was nothing to do with her. The fact that she was close would not make things easier for him. He knew it also. Love should be made to support only so much. She knew what she wanted, and it was up to him to know what he wanted. She wanted not to want, and at times felt close to that state. He wanted to want, and was nearer than he imagined. In a way it made some kind of harmony out of the chaos, a space at the centre of the storm in which she could stay calm. If she could thus be at rest she would be able to help him, and to that extent love could go a little way towards their support.
They got into the soft double bed at eleven and kissed goodnight, turning away into separate sleep. Every day generated absolute exhaustion. It wasn’t possible for the bones to be more tired, softened and ready to melt. But sleep fought away from such a body. Traffic went by outside, beyond the narrow pavement. The worst was the motorbikes which, though rare, cut the silence like an enormous saw. Someone upstairs finally dropped his second boot and got into bed.
The ceiling was made of paper, and when she heard him pick his boots up there was light at the window and she realized it must be dawn. Dreams, though unremembered, still weighed heavily, so she snuggled against Tom in the soft cave of the bedclothes until nine o’clock, when he moved away and got up.
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