by Jonathan Coe
Beginning to think that she what? I could guess, but would never know for certain, because at that moment her BlackBerry started tinkling again.
‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘I have to look at this.’
The message made her scream with laughter, whatever it was.
‘It’s from Ariana,’ she told me, as if this explained everything. ‘She’s photoshopped this picture – look.’
She showed me the screen, which had a picture on it of a perfectly ordinary-looking girl.
‘Very good,’ I said, handing it back. What else was I supposed to say?
‘No, but she’s put Monica’s head on to Jess’s body.’
‘Ah, OK. That’s clever.’
Lucy started writing her reply, and in the meantime, I took out my phone and began tapping out another message to Lindsay. It was probably for the best that I never got around to sending it. What stopped me? It was the look on the face of a woman sitting at the table next to ours. I don’t know quite how to describe the look. All I know is that she took in the scene that she saw at our table – a weary middle-aged father taking his daughter out for dinner, the two of them sitting opposite each other, nothing to say, one of them sending a text, the other one playing with her BlackBerry – and she responded with a toe-curling mixture of amusement and sympathy, all contained in one expressive glance. And in that instant an image came into my mind, again: the Chinese woman and her daughter, sitting opposite each other at that restaurant in Sydney harbour, laughing together and playing cards. The connection between them. The pleasure in each other’s company. The love and closeness. All the things that Lucy and I never seemed to have. All the things that I had never been taught how to create between us, by my sad fuck-up of a father.
I sent one more text message that night. Not to Lindsay, though. In fact you’ll never guess who I sent it to – so I’ll tell you. I sent it to Poppy’s uncle, Clive.
I dropped Lucy back home at about 9.30. Caroline wasn’t back yet. Lucy took me inside and made me a cup of coffee and sat talking to me (after a fashion) in the kitchen for half an hour or so. When it became obvious that Caroline was not exactly going to rush home to see me, I decided to call it a day and I got back into the car and drove to my Travelodge, which was about ten minutes out of town.
So much for my family reunion, then.
Back in the hotel room I knew that, although I was tired, I was too agitated to go straight to sleep. There was nothing on TV so I got Clive’s DVD of Deep Water out of my suitcase and slotted it into my laptop. I had a weird notion that watching it might somehow cheer me up. You know that cliché that ‘There’s always someone worse off than yourself’? Well, I figured that, in my case, it would be hard to find that someone right now. But there was always a chance that it might be Donald Crowhurst.
It was a powerful film. Over the last week, before setting out on this journey, I had been reading The Strange Voyage of Donald Crowhurst. I was about halfway through, which was pretty good going for me. The book was really detailed and well researched, but the film took you much further into the story, into the atmosphere of it. It opened with images of enormous waves heaving in the wind-tossed night, and immediately you got a sense of how lonely and scared Crowhurst must have been out there, putting himself at the mercy of the elements – it made me feel cold and seasick just looking at it. Then there were shots of the man himself, taken late into his voyage and looking toughened and hardened by it: a cruel-looking moustache on his upper lip, his eyes by now guarded and wary. After a few more of these, accompanied by unnerving, portentous music, we flashed back to a scene which at once gave me a shock of recognition: the approach to the harbour at Plymouth, lined with cheering crowds who had all turned out to witness the homecoming of Francis Chichester following his solo voyage. (A scene I could still remember watching on TV with my mother, one Sunday evening back in the spring of 1967.) Next up, you got introduced to all the major players in the story: Crowhurst himself; his wife and family; his main competitors, Robin Knox-Johnston and Bernard Moitessier; his sponsor, Stanley Best; and – perhaps most memorably of all – his press agent, Rodney Hallworth. Hallworth was described as a ‘Dickensian figure’, and the description certainly seemed to fit this imposing, fleshy presence, with an avuncular manner which barely concealed the clear streak of cynicism and ruthlessness running just beneath the surface. ‘Many people who do great things are often, as personalities, rather dull,’ he was heard to declare, blithely. ‘The press agent’s job is to get hold of the package, which could be as dull as an old tin box, and then you’ve got to dress it up – make it a bit Christmassy – so that it appears attractive.’ Crowhurst, I supposed, was the ‘old tin box’ in this scenario, and it would be Hallworth’s endeavours to exaggerate his qualities, to ‘dress him up’, that would be largely responsible for creating the impossible situation that edged him on towards madness. The film went on to chronicle this process in sympathetic but unsparing detail. You saw the chaos that accompanied his departure from Teignmouth, and how apprehensive he looked, during this time, when caught off his guard by the camera. (It was at this point, I thought – not for the first time – that his resemblance to my father was most pronounced.) And then, as the voyage progressed, the focus gradually began to shift from the challenging practicalities of single-handing to Crowhurst’s diaries, his logbooks, his disturbed scribblings, his disintegrating state of mind. The lingering close-up on his final statement – ‘IT IS THE MERCY’ – was especially chilling. When the film was over I felt shaken and drained.
By the time I had finished watching the film, it was after midnight. Despite this, I decided to send Clive a message:
Hi there, just watched the Crowhurst film. Absolutely amazing! Thanks so much for lending it to me. Still on my way to Shetland – not there yet.
I went into the bathroom to clean my teeth. A few minutes later I fell into bed and I was almost asleep when my phone started to sing its by now familiar tune. Clive had texted me back already. He had written:
Glad you enjoyed it! Have a safe crossing and look forward to hearing about your exploits when you get back. X
I looked at this message – or rather, that final ‘X’ – in some puzzlement. Why was Clive, of all people, sending me a virtual kiss? Coming from Lindsay, I could just about understand it, but Clive? I had never, ever, in my life received a text message from another man that ended in a kiss. The idea of Trevor, for instance, putting a kiss at the end of one of his texts or emails was unthinkable. So what was Clive playing at? I wished that it hadn’t been too late to contact Lucy, to ask for her opinion about this. She might at least be able to tell me whether it was normal or not.
Thinking about it made me uncomfortable. At last I began to sink into sleep, but the Crowhurst documentary had left queasy, unsettling images stamped upon my mind. They were still there, swimming before me, as my breathing began to settle. The fall and rise of the waves … Crowhurst’s face – reminding me (more strongly than ever, tonight) of my father’s … the fall and rise of the waves … Rodney Hallworth and his ‘old tin box’ … the fall and rise of the waves … where had I heard that expression before? … Rodney Hallworth … Lindsay Ashworth …the fall and rise … Rodney Hallworth … Lindsay Ashworth … the fall and rise … the fall and rise …
Kendal–Braemar
16
‘OK, Emma, it’s all starting to become clear now. It’s all falling into place.’
– Proceed on the current road.
‘I don’t know how it’s happened, but I seem to be turning into Donald Crowhurst. That’s who I’m about to become. Call it fate, call it predestination – call it whatever you like – but it looks like I have no choice in the matter. It’s going to happen whether I like it or not.’
– In three-quarters of a mile, right turn.
We had left Kendal about ten minutes ago, and were now driving along the A6 in the direction of Penrith. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, and the windscr
een was splattered with heavy drops of something between rain and sleet. The road was climbing steadily in a series of curves through wild, verdant countryside.
‘Here I am, after all, driving a car which is meant to be new and innovative and a radical step forward in design – just like Crowhurst’s trimaran. It’s a sort of modern version of the Teignmouth Electron, and I’m at the helm.’
As we turned off the A6 towards Junction 39 of the M6, on our left we could see the vast chimneys of the Corus limestone works, hidden away at the bottom of a long, somehow intimidating private road which gave it the look of a secret military installation. In a few minutes we had reached the motorway junction.
– Heading left at the roundabout, take first exit.
‘And just think who the other characters in his story were. Rodney Hallworth, Stanley Best – do those names remind you of anyone? It all makes sense.’
– Exit coming up.
‘So what’s going on? Have I become sort of … possessed by him, or am I going mad? And if I am going mad, does that really change anything? Because that could be all part and parcel of me turning into him, couldn’t it? What do you think, Emma? What’s your advice?’
– Proceed on the current motorway.
Well, yes, that was sensible enough, I suppose. There seemed to be little else I could do, at any rate.
It was getting on for 12.30. After a long bath and a late breakfast at the Travelodge, I had driven back into Kendal itself and wandered around the town for a little while, trying to enjoy the experience of being in a different part of the country, and to shake off the unaccountable feeling of strangeness, of foreignness, that had been creeping up on me for the last couple of days, ever since leaving Watford. I had spent three weeks in Sydney and never noticed this sensation, so why did it now feel as though every new English town that I found myself in was slightly more unreal than the last? Perhaps it had something to do with my growing Crowhurst fixation. I was beginning to feel disconnected from myself: I sometimes had the feeling that I was standing outside my own body, looking down on it, and even that morning in Kendal there was a moment when it seemed as though I was looking down on the High Street from above, and watching myself walking along it with all the other shoppers, like extras in a perfectly composed shot from a film, with these hundreds of insect-like people in the foreground and the huge sweep of the hills forming a distant, painted-in, not-quite-believable backdrop.
Late in the morning I saw Caroline again. She wasn’t expecting me, but I decided to surprise her. I knew that she was working as the manager of one of the charity shops in the High Street, so I dropped in, unannounced, not expecting much more than a curt rebuff but in fact finding myself made far more welcome than I might have hoped. She made me some coffee and took me into the back office and we talked for about half an hour or more – mainly about Lucy – and this morning Caroline seemed warm, and kind, and interested in what I was doing, and when I left it wasn’t because she wanted me to but because I wanted to. Because having her being nice to me like this just made me want to be with her more than ever, and I knew that could never happen again and in that case the only thing to do was to get out and move on.
– Proceed on the current motorway.
Now we were somewhere between Junctions 41 and 42. We were heading north, and the further north we went, the thinner the traffic seemed to get. We were averaging 68 miles to the gallon, because here it was easy to drive at a comfortable 55 miles per hour without people tailgating you and flashing their lights to make you hurry up. And oddly, despite the fact that it would have been safer to drive fast here than it would 100 miles south, there didn’t seem to be so many cars exceeding the speed limit. Everybody seemed more relaxed. Are there statistics to show that drivers in the north of England consume less petrol than drivers in the south? It wouldn’t surprise me at all.
– Proceed on the current motorway.
There’s not much you can do when you’re driving for hours at a moderate speed, other than to notice the few distractions that the motorway throws up – a yellow police notice reporting a ‘Possible Homicide’, exit signs pointing to Penrith, Keswick, Carlisle, a big blue sign saying ‘Welcome to Scotland / Fàilte gu Alba’, a large pine forest planted on a hillside in the shape of a ‘T’, with the shadows of dark rain clouds drifting across it – and to let your thoughts start drifting. Funny how, when you do that, memories pop into your head, things that you’d forgotten or perhaps suppressed for forty years or more. It was thinking about Francis Chichester that did it, today. I could remember watching the TV coverage of his homecoming with my mother, but couldn’t remember whether my father had been with us or not. And then it came back to me: something odd had happened that night. My father had been watching the television with us, at first, but then the doorbell rang, and he went to answer it, and a few seconds later this strange man came into our house. I say ‘strange’ not just because Mum and I didn’t recognize him but because he was … well, strange. He was wearing a fancy wide-brimmed hat, for one thing, and was dressed in the kind of clothes that people might have been wearing in Carnaby Street in 1967 but had certainly never been seen within fifty miles of Rubery. He had a thin, reddish beard, too – that’s the only other thing I can picture about him. The man didn’t come into our living room and I saw no more of him than the glimpse I caught through the open living room door as Dad led him towards the back of the house. The two of them went into the dining room and started talking while Mum and I carried on watching the television. The man must have left after I’d been put to bed, because I don’t remember him leaving at all. In fact, as I say, I had forgotten all about his bizarre, unexpected appearance in our house until this very moment, when the memory of it came back to me vividly as I drove with Emma across the border into Scotland and the M6 shaded into the A74(M). And the question that I immediately asked myself was this: who could it possibly have been, other than the mysterious ‘Roger’, who had sent my father monthly postcards from the Far East all through the 1970s, and apparently continued to do so even now? I had never been told the visitor’s name – of that I was certain; but I was equally certain that it could only have been Roger.
– Proceed on the current motorway.
I held on to this peculiar memory for a few moments but found that it was quickly supplanted by more random thoughts. The miles slipped by as we travelled further into Scotland, and I continued to drive in an almost dreamlike state, miraculously failing to collide with any other cars. At least ten minutes must have gone by before I snapped out of it and realized, with a start, what it was that I’d just been thinking about.
I had been trying to work out the square root of minus one.
This wouldn’t do at all.
Another solitary lunchtime, another motorway service station, another panino. Mushroom, prosciutto and green leaf salad, this time.
Abington Services. Welcome Break. I can’t help it, I like these places. I feel at home in them. I liked the dark-wood chairs and the light-wood tables, the Habitat look. Very 1990s. I liked the two enormous yucca plants sitting between the tables. I liked the windswept decking area outside, the folded-up sun umbrellas flapping in today’s wet breeze. I liked the way that here, in the midst of such a spectacular rural landscape, somebody had contrived to create this little oasis of urban ordinariness. I liked the look of pleased expectancy on people’s faces as they carried their trays of pizza and fish and chips away from the counter of ‘Coffee Primo’, confident that they were about to enjoy tucking in to something special. This was my sort of place. The sort of place where I belonged.
None the less, my feeling of slight, palpable unease wouldn’t shift. Was it because I was nervous of seeing Alison? I could always phone her and call it off, although I’d still left it too late to catch that day’s ferry from Aberdeen, however fast I drove from here. But anyway, that wasn’t it. Something else was bothering me. Perhaps the weight of all these resurfacing memories.
After
I’d finished eating, I booted up my laptop and inserted the little gadget that connected me to the mobile broadband network. I checked my emails, and checked Facebook. Nothing. As I turned the laptop off again I noticed that the battery was almost empty.
Feeling guilty that I had barely used it so far, I took the digital video camera outside and shot some footage of the service station and the surrounding mountains. Only about thirty seconds’ worth. As before, when I’d taken some film of my father’s apartment block in Lichfield, I could sense that this wasn’t at all what Lindsay would be wanting, and it would probably never make the final cut.
*
There are also delays on the northbound side of the M6 – the problem is a stranded lorry between Junctions 31 and 31a, it was in Lane 3 and there are queues back to Junction 29. Stranded lorry in the roadworks on the M1, northbound after Junction 27 north of Leicester – that’s now been recovered, but our problems continue on the M1, which is blocked southbound at Junction 11, which is at Luton – being diverted via the sliproads, queues though – thanks to Mike and Fiona for this one – those folks say it’s back to Junction 14, which is Milton Keynes, loads of traffic using the A5 into Dunstable which is now very heavy on that southbound side. Northbound the M1 was closed for a while, it was to allow an air ambulance to land – that has landed and taken off, so that road is fully open again. There was a vehicle blocking the M25, Junctions 18–17, that’s anti-clockwise from Chorleywood to Rickmansworth – that’s all been cleared but it’s left quite a long delay, in roughly the usual place but it seems heavier today – this is anti-clock from Junction 23, which is the A1(M) to Watford at Junction 19. There’s also an accident which has just been picked up from the M25 anti-clockwise, from Junction 5, which is the M26 turn. Cambridge, there’s an accident on the northbound A11, it’s closed northbound at Papworth Everard, that’s north of the A428 at Caxton Gibbet …
