Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  For the record, the cathedral was destroyed in 1799.*

  from Kelly’s diary

  Oct. 11

  This morning near 6 I woke up & heard C. moaning. Her wrist hurt. She said they hadn’t set it right, she could feel splinters. So instead of catching the bus, we’re back at Emergency at the end of another long line-up of misery. Later. Finally the wrist is X-rayed. It’s fine. They gave her more painkillers. I felt like screaming at her. If I had a voodoo doll. She did this on purpose because she wants to go home. Or she wants to make F. worry. My desires & the fact that Taurus Tours doesn’t give refunds doesn’t matter. I told her to go home if she wanted to, I’m catching up to the bus. Budget doesn’t allow for train fare, though, & the cards & nickel both suggest I hitch once I’m across the channel. C still hasn’t decided what she’s going to do, & we’re not talking to each other. Midnight Express is playing in Trafalgar Square. Rocky Horror Picture Show is in Notting Hill Gate. Nickel says Midnight Express.

  Mick

  When I saw what time it was I grabbed my suitcase and beetled out of that hostel and down to the tube station, getting there just in time to watch the District Line pull out. I sat down and had a conversation with the girl in the lingerie ad across the tracks. She liked old Marx Brothers’ movies, Johnny Walker Black and raw oysters. When the next District Line blasted out of its tunnel like a jet-propelled dildo, blocking her from sight, I told her I’d probably be back this way in a few months and she could step down out of that poster and we could go for a Scotch somewhere.

  There weren’t too many people on the train, that’s how early it was. Just a few businessmen reading their smutty newspapers and a few secretary types doing their make-up. One spaced-out punk fag with green hair and a bottle of wine between his knees. He gave me a stoned smile. Guy was happy. He was heading home.

  At Tottenham Court Road, I said good morning to Crystal Gayle in the “Don’t It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue?” ad on the wall next to the escalator and then I scooted back and forth between people all the way to the top and when I got outside, the giant Star Wars marquee across the street was yelling at me to get my tail in gear and so I loped down Oxford until I got to a walk light and I made like a jack-rabbit to the other side. I didn’t want to get mowed down by any more taxis.

  When I turned the corner on Rathbone, this guy who looked like Han Solo, a jock type with sandy hair, was standing outside of Taurus Tours, talking to Jenkins. In front of this blue bus. My watch told me I was thirty-three minutes late.

  “Well, here’s one more,” he said to Jenkins. “I don’t think we can wait for any others.”

  Seems that the only reason I made it to the bus before it pulled out was because Jenkins had asked Pete to wait a few minutes for a couple friends of his, both female, to show up. But they didn’t make it. Only I made it. As of that morning, anyhow.

  I slowed down to a trot, and after I handed Pete my suitcase, I hacked up the tar from the first cigarette I ever smoked, back when I was thirteen.

  “You almost missed it, mate,” said the Han Solo type as he stowed my bag in the undercarriage and slammed it shut.

  I was too out of breath to say anything.

  I got on the bus, and I was kind of surprised to see that it was only a quarter full. Less than that, even. Let’s see, Suzie, Rockstar, Patrick, Tim and Mary deLuca, Jenkins, Dana, me, and Pete, the driver. Only eight people. Not your perfect prescription for a good time.

  I guess there were a couple reasons why there weren’t many people. Summer was over and everyone was back at work. There was just a bit of anti-Americanism running around Europe. And, as I found out within twenty-four hours, most of the campgrounds in Europe and Asia turn off the hot water after Oct. 1.

  Pete told us later that the first India Overland, which left in late August (you don’t want to get to India while it’s still hot, right?) had thirty-three people on board.

  Only one face really registered on me when I walked down the aisle. Besides Suzie’s, I guess. And that was the redhead’s.

  Jenkins followed me down the aisle and sat across from me. He had kind of a worried look on his face.

  Pete picked up a microphone out of a holster and introduced himself as Peter Cohen and welcomed all of us aboard.

  “I hope we all have a real good trip,” he said, and then he put the mike back.

  “I have my doubts,” said Jenkins in a low voice.

  I took out a Marley and lit it up while Pete put the bus in gear and pulled away from the curb. “Why’s that?” I said.

  “Just a feeling,” he said.

  About the time we got into the south London slums, I had enough breath back to ask Jenkins about these friends of his we’d left behind.

  “One of them is my girl friend,” he said, “and the other one is a friend of hers.” Then he shrugged, as though that was all there was to say.

  I looked outside. Saw this little kid sticking a needle in his arm. On a porch step, in broad daylight. I got this light-headed feeling, like the bus was about to sprout wings and lift off above traffic. I was picking up on the kid’s heroin high. I also felt real depressed at the same time. Maybe picking that up from Jenkins.

  Three or four hours later, we make Dover. Pete unloaded all the suitcases onto a trolley and we followed him on board a ferry.

  One guy, I noticed, hadn’t been at the party. He was a tall kid who wore a white T-shirt with names of bands like Carrion-Eaters, Voidoids, Dead Kennedys written all over it in dark red ink. Wore torn blue jeans. Had long brown hair that hung to his shoulders, a beard. I don’t think his hair or clothes had been washed for a while. A punk.

  Me and Patrick were up on the top deck, drinking Scotch and Glayva we’d bought at the duty-free on board. We called the little mixture an Overlander. Patrick was taking a picture of the white cliffs of Dover before they sank from sight in the white furrow of water when the punk walked up behind us and asked us what us sooks were drinking. That’s the word he used. He had an Aussie accent. I gave him my cup. “Overlander,” I said. “Try it out.”

  He took my cup and wrapped his flabby Mick Jagger-like lips around the straw and sucked up three fingers of booze and then handed it back.

  At the time I thought it was sunlight behind him playing tricks. But what I saw above his head was something that looked like a black hole against the blue sky, surrounded by a shimmer of purple.

  “Bloody good,” said the punk, wiping his lips with his arm. I told him I thought so too. “But I don’t know,” I said. “There’s something about drinking booze through a straw. It can kick you in the head.”

  Patrick said, “Quite true, Mr. McPherson, quite true.” The punk looked at Patrick and a thin sneer curled up on his lower lip like a worm and he took off. Patrick looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

  “Friendly sort,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “real friendly.”

  But the punk came back a few minutes later with his own bottle of Scotch and Glayva and he was generous enough pouring some of the booze into both our cups.

  This thing about straws and booze, though. I remember the intros. The punk telling us his name, just Rob, nothing else, and how he used to be a Carrion-Eater. Kind of, he said.

  “I was a roadie, I guess, if you want to know the bloody truth, but I played the drums for Fark when he was too stoned. I was bloody better than he was. Chuck said he was just waiting for the right time to get rid of him. Chuck had this girl friend. He was her brother or dealer or something.” Chuck was Charlie Putrid, head honcho of the band. Sounded like a Sex Pistols rip-off to me.

  I remember Rob singing the lyrics to a few songs. The one I remember best was called “Adolph’s Love Song” and I remember Rob taking off, going to get even more Scotch and Glayva from the duty-free, and Patrick was telling me all about this international model he left behind in Somerset and I remember telling him some about Nancy Pickles and how I was sort of sorry to say goodbye to her because it wasn’t that oft
en I’ve found a woman who actually got jealous over me. I remember Rob getting back with the booze with Jenkins in tow. And I remember it didn’t take the four of us too long to knock back the new bottles. And I remember that furrow of water stretching out behind the ferry. But I don’t remember chundering into the waves.

  That’s what the Aussies call puking. Comes from the navy. Short for watch under.

  I don’t remember getting off the ferry. Apparently it was Jenkins who helped me off. Don’t remember getting on another bus or driving into Bruges or Pete telling us to pick our tent mates or Rob sitting down beside me, asking me if I’d like to bunk in with him and Jenkins. This is what Jenkins said he said, and he said he should know since he was sitting right behind me when it happened. Or me saying yeah, sure, okay. Or helping to set up the tent. Or drinking for two hours in the camp cantina.

  All I remember is waking up the next morning with my head throbbing like a jack hammer and my mouth drier than one of my mother’s breakfast martinis. With this naked female body beside me and this grey canvas twilight pounding down at me and this retch climbing up the back of my throat like a snake in heat.

  I knew I had to move fast. I scrambled out of the sleeping bag and over to the tent flap. In the process, kneeing somebody in the stomach.

  “Hey, what the bloody hell,” says a female voice with an Aussie accent. So that little question at the back of my mind is answered.

  I get through the tent flap in the nick of time.

  After that I go back inside, grab some clothes and head through this early morning mist that reminds me of Vancouver in early winter. Takes me a while to find a can. WC in big red letters above the door. Few minutes later I’m making like the Luftwaffe during the blitzkrieg and it’s not till I’m through that I notice there’s no toilet paper. So I decide to take a shower. Take off my clothes, turn the knobs. What comes out would freeze the nuts off R2-D2. But I know I don’t want to ride the bus all day with creeping underwear so I go for it and I must’ve turned bluer than B.B. King in the thirty-three seconds I was in there.

  WEST GERMANY Bruges—Heidelberg

  Day 2

  Departure: 7:30 a.m.—9 hrs.; 560 km.

  Camp: Heide; Ph. 06223/2111.

  Points: 1. One thing you could point out, on the way out of town—in fact, you could drive across it—is the bridge over the River Reie, which gives Bruges its name. That castle in the near distance was built by Boudewijn, Count of Flanders in the ninth century. Yeah, you got it. Time to ease into the history. Things were fine in Bruges up until the fifteenth century, which is when the Zwin inlet silted up and made it difficult to trade with England. By the end of the sixteenth century the city was dead, almost. But then in 1895 a new harbour was built at Zeebrugge and a seven-mile canal was built, connecting the harbour to Bruges, and the city suddenly jumped off the table it was on, down in the morgue. And that’s all you probably need to say about Bruges.

  2. My favourite town on the trip is Heidelberg. A nice romantic little university town at the head of Neckar Valley (or is it at the neck of Heider Valley?) where for some mysterious reason the beer always tastes better than anywhere else in the world. If by any chance you’re lucky and there’s a woman on board the bus who has grabbed your fancy, have a little chat with her while the sun goes down and you’re both gazing down at Heidelberg from one of the parapets of the Schloss Heidelberg. It works like a charm every time. The castle itself was begun in the thirteenth century by King Ruprecht III. Henry the Magnanimous built the beautiful early Renaissance wing in 1556 and the late Renaissance wing was added by Frederick IV in 1601. The castle’s been struck by lightning, attacked by the French, reduced to ruin and restored many times. The famous vat, down in the cellar, is 20 ft. high and 31 ft. long and holds 58,000 gallons, which would make for a decent New Year’s Eve party. The town’s famous university was a stronghold of Protestant learning back during the Reformation. The city got off lucky during World War II, suffering little damage. Pop. is about 117,000, most of whom live on or near the one long narrow street, the Hauptstrasse, which runs parallel to the River Neckar.

  Mick

  I had icicles hanging down my forehead when I made it back to camp, just in time to hear Pete explain to us how to take down tents and how we had to get our sleeping bags to the bus by five minutes before breakfast so Patrick could pack them. I managed to grab a cup of java and I sipped on that while me and Rob and Jenkins took down the tent, which was no problem since the old man and old lady used to drag me and Hasheeba on camping trips all the time when we were kids. Just the same, though, since me and Rob weren’t moving too swift, we were the last ones to get our tent to the bus.

  Speaking of the bus, I guess I’d better describe it. It was a blue Mercedes Benz coach that had seats like the kind you’d find in a DC-9. It could’ve held about thirty people, I guess. Tent cage at the back, and a back door. Couple tables in the middle. In one of the front seats behind Pete there was a box full of books and another box full of cassettes, and the first thing I did when I got on the bus that morning was take a look through the cassettes while Pete pulled out of camp. There was about forty of them but the ones that caught my eye right off the bat were the new Stones, Some Girls, Dylan’s Street Legal, the new Neil Young, Comes a Time, all of which belonged to Jenkins, and a couple Bob Seger, the new one, Stranger in Town, and an old one, the one with “Goin’ to Kathmandu” on it. I took them up to Pete and asked him if he’d mind playing them, and he didn’t answer me. Instead he took the microphone out of its holster, cleared his throat, said, “Should tell you people about a little policy we have on the bus. I get to pick all the music that’s played. Except on those days when someone’s having a birthday, and then they get to pick the music. All day. And I was taking a look through the log this morning and I noticed that Susan Byrnes is turning thirty today—”

  Suzie was sitting about five rows back, all by herself. “Thanks for broadcasting it out, mate,” she said.

  Pete said sorry about that, and then he glanced at me. “So you’ll have to talk to her, mate.”

  Well, that wasn’t the best news I ever heard, since I really wasn’t up for talking to Suzie.

  But since I was kind of anxious to hear the new Stones, I 33

  went back and sat across the aisle from Suzie. She pretended not to notice me. She was smoking a Craven Menthol and staring out the window.

  Pete put the bus in gear and pulled out, so I said, “Well, looks like we’re on our way.”

  She still didn’t look at me. “You got that one right, mate.” I took out my pack of Marleys and lit one up, and I noticed that Mary deLuca, who was sitting up ahead of me two seats, next to her husband, looked back at me and kind of wrinkled up her nose.

  I said, “Listen, you wouldn’t mind asking Pete if he’d play these tapes, would you?”

  Suzie looked at the tapes. “I hate that bloody Jagger,” she says. “Bloody stuck on himself. And I hate bloody Dylan too. And I’ve never heard of Neil Young.”

  “I can tell we’re going to be real good buddies, here,” I said.

  She gave me a long look. “You don’t even remember my name, do you?” she said.

  I said, “Uh, well, as a matter of fact I do have this problem with—” And then I got this flash. Suzie. “Suzie, wasn’t it?” She nodded her head. “And you’re Mickers.” Kind of sarcastically.

  “Well, Mick, actually,” I said. “You never heard of Neil Young? That’s real sad, Suzie. You haven’t really lived until you’ve sunk knee-deep in Neil Young angst.”

  By this time we’re trucking through Bruges, an old city, like something out of the Middle Ages. I looked down this alley and saw an old woman sitting at a spinning wheel.

  “Neil Young’s got the greatest voice in the world,” I said. “You gotta hear it. You’ll thank me for it.”

  She finally gave in and said sure, she’d ask Pete to play it, just to get rid of me, likely. I could tell she wasn’t in a real communicati
ve mood. She got up and asked Pete to plug Neil’s tape in and when she came back, she said, “Satisfied?” just as Neil was beginning to sing “Motorcycle Mama,” and I said yeah, great, thanks a lot, and she didn’t sit back down in her seat, she kept on walking down the aisle, all the way to the back, where she curled up on the long back seat in front of the tent cage. Which was fine by me. I lit up another Marley and leaned back and listened to Neil and watched the Belgian countryside roll past until Patrick tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I’d be interested in a little game of backgammon, and I said sure, and went back to the tables where he had a little backgammon board set up, and we played that until Pete got on the mike and said that it was so many clicks to Heidelberg and that we’d be stopping in Cologne for lunch, and then he held up a black book, the size and shape of your standard high school yearbook, and he said, “What you see here is the daybook. I think you people will find that there’ll be one or two things happen each day that you’ll want to get down on paper, kind of a record of the trip if you like. Best thing to do, I think, is for all of you to take turns alphabetically.

  I put a list of all your names on the inside front cover so you’ll know what order to go in. B for Byrnes is first, so if you don’t mind taking the first turn, Susan, be much appreciated.” From the back seat I could hear Suzie groan. I guess she was a little hung over too.