Are We Nearly There Yet?: A Family's 8000 Miles Around Britain in a Vauxhall Astra

by Hatch, Ben

  The road didn’t go through Wadcrag, I’d said.

  ‘If you’ve been through Wadcrag you must be close,’ she’d said. ‘Have you seen the sign?’

  I’d said again we were on a different road and hadn’t been through Wadcrag. She’d asked which road we were on and, after we told her, ‘How far away from Wadcrag are you?’ she’d said.

  We didn’t know, we were a bit lost.

  ‘When you see the sign for Wadcrag, you’ll be close,’ she said.

  I said again the road we were on didn’t go through Wadcrag.

  ‘Just go to Wadcrag and ring again,’ she’d said.

  ‘She’s fucking mad on Wadcrag, that woman,’ I’d said to Dinah. And we’d decided over dinner it would be Dinah’s mission tomorrow when I was with Dad to see how many more times she could get her to say Wadcrag.

  CHAPTER 17

  Dad’s wearing a checked jacket. The checks are lime green, pink and blue. The yellowness of Dad’s eyes is the colour of an unhealed bruise and his breathing has a background sound to it. It’s like the hum of a fridge at night. We’re in the living room, Dad has two friends over and Mary’s face is fidgety like a sparrow’s head. It moves in and out, back and forwards, catapulting out the bullets of fear she confides as the day wears on. ‘Is he looking worse to you?’… ‘Do you think he’s fading?’… ‘The blockage has made him so tired.’ Dad’s friends are telling stories and Dad’s head moves slowly towards their conversation. He sits stiffly in a simulacrum of relaxation – an arm over the back of the sofa, legs apart slightly. When he smiles it’s slightly too late. His teeth seem larger as well, too heavy for his jaw. He gulps before he says anything and I feel his loneliness from across the room and I want to get up, go over and touch him.

  After they’ve gone, Dad plays the piano. ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. I stand in the doorway of the barn conversion where he can’t see me. It’s too much. The tears twist up and I blub in the bathroom. I dry my eyes, wait until they’re less red, and come out. I move behind Dad and hold his shoulders. I feel the notes resonate through his flesh. Dad’s quiet on the way to the hospital. Mary and I hoist him out of the passenger seat. Leant against the car door he pants and winces. His belly hurts. I ask if he wants a painkiller. He shakes his head without looking at me and widens his eyes. We stay this way for a few moments. Then he nods. ‘Clear the path.’

  I swing open the main hospital doors. I come back.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  I wait until he puts his hand out. I hold it and we steer him. Dad proceeds in the scared, stop-start way you move across a ship’s deck in a storm. He falls into a seat at reception, exhausted, bent forward slightly, his cold clammy hands on his knees. We pat his still heavy shoulders, stroke his damp head and tell him how brave he is, how much we love him, and he occasionally looks up and blows us a kiss between pants.

  In his room on the ward I stand outside the bathroom like a guard while Dad changes into his hospital gown. Five minutes later when he hasn’t emerged I shout, ‘All right, Dad?’ I walk in. Dad’s standing up, his boxers round his ankles. He can’t reach down to take them off. They’re caught under his feet. I pull them off for him. I slip his gown on, do it up at the back as he leans on the washbasin.

  ‘Now put some toothpaste on a brush,’ he tells me.

  ‘You want to do your teeth?’

  He nods. ‘Not too much and wet it.’

  I do what he says. He brushes his teeth. Again his eyes are wide with pain.

  ‘My dressing gown,’ he says, turning round.

  I find it in his bag.

  ‘You’ve got paste round your mouth, shall I wipe it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I wipe his bottom lip. Dad winces.

  ‘Not so hard. My lips are sore.’

  I do it again lightly. ‘Thank you,’ says Dad.

  The procedure to relieve the swelling and do something – nobody’s really sure what – to the stent near Dad’s bile duct will last twenty minutes and Dad’s first on Gorhard’s afternoon list so Mary and I go for a cuppa in the hospital canteen to wait. Sitting at a Formica table sipping tea, Mary hands me a sheaf of letters addressed to Dad from her handbag. There’s one from Nora, a friend of Mary’s. How could someone so ebullient and full of life have been laid so low? There’s a letter from the author P. D. James. There are letters from cabinet ministers, high court judges, former archbishops, TV stars, writers and entertainers. But it’s during the letter from Kieran, Mary’s nephew, that I start to feel lost. The letter is impossibly grown up for a twenty-year-old. It expresses Kieran’s upset and regret that Dad’s been so unlucky, especially as they formed, what he felt, was a special rapport in South Africa. I picture Dad on the balcony at his and Mary’s second home in Cape Town establishing this relationship with Mary’s nephew. At the end of each letter I say ‘What a lovely letter’ or ‘That’s so kind’, or something like ‘I didn’t know Dad knew Cardinal Hume’, and I hand it back to Mary as she passes me another.

  My dad’s a great letter writer. Come rain or shine the first thing he did when he got into work at the BBC at 6.30 a.m. was dash off six letters. He did this for thirty years. When he ran short of colleagues to praise or offer encouragement to, he wrote to public figures in the news he felt were unfairly under fire in the newspapers. Now all these people are writing back to my dad. The letters are kind, thoughtful, respectful, heartfelt and they worry me about the last letter I sent to Dad. Dad was a great building, large on my horizon, impossible to replace, that had been detonated and was about to be received spectacularly into the earth. That was what I wrote. It seemed a clever analogy at the time but now it seems heartless, negative, the opposite in tone from all these other much more upbeat letters.

  At 4.10 p.m. Dad’s back in his room. We sit about the bed on low chairs. Buster and Pen have arrived by now. Buster holds Dad’s arm on one side. Pen wells up on the other. At one point I try to hold Dad’s hand myself when he lets go of Buster’s to undo a plaster over his wedding ring but Dad shakes his hand free of mine. He’s just looking for Buster. Buster’s not long back from Cyprus. Of course he’s looking for Buster.

  ‘Was it good for you, doctor?’ Dad asks Gorhard, when he does his round.

  ‘Yes it was.’

  ‘And can I go out for dinner on Friday, doctor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Pen laughs. Everyone laughs.

  ‘Can I go for dinner on Friday!’ says Pen, shaking her head with wonder.

  ‘Yes,’ says Dad. ‘He said I could.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ says Mary.

  He’ll be kept in overnight and can expect an improvement in the next couple of days. The oncologist will visit in the morning. Back at Mary’s everyone’s ecstatic.

  ‘Dad was bouncing around the room,’ Mary says.

  Pen thinks he already looks less yellow.

  We drink wine and look for the positives. ‘It’s not Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘It’s not a stroke and life like Uncle Dick’s.’

  I hear myself saying, ‘He’s a great man and he’s led a great life,’ and on the word life my voice cracks in half and everyone holds their faces up for a second and after this silence we leave. We each hug Mary. She says she will go on loving us. We say we will go on loving her. I’m in Buster’s hire car. We follow Pen in hers up Nightingales Lane. I’ve changed my plan. I was going to stay the night at Pen’s with Buster. We were going to stay up late and chat. I’d been looking forward to it. I’d take the train back in the morning – but now in the car I change my mind. Buster tries to dissuade me, but eventually signals to Pen. In the car park outside Dr Challoner’s Grammar School, Buster pulls off the road. Pen follows. She draws alongside us and lowers her window. Buster does the same with his.

  ‘I’m going back tonight,’ I shout across him.

  ‘OK, hon,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll be so tired getting up early for the train tomorrow otherwise.’
r />   ‘Do what you think is best, hon.’

  She blows a kiss. I blow one back.

  ‘Tough night,’ I shout and I feel a crack in my voice. Tough night, it’s a Dad phrase.

  ‘Tough night, hon,’ Pen shouts across the car park and Buster drives me to Little Chalfont station.

  The journey back takes six hours. I sleep, read, but most of the time I just look out of the blackened window. Dinah’s waiting up for me when I get in. She puts her book down when I come through the door. We hug and she hands me the glass of wine she’s saved in the bottle. I down it in two gulps, undress and put my pyjamas on.

  ‘That feel better?’

  ‘A bit.’

  We sit on the edge of the bed and I tell her how I felt in the hospital – excluded. I tell her why I hadn’t gone back to Pen’s like I’d phoned her to say I was doing. I felt I deserved to be excluded.

  ‘Why my love?’

  ‘Because I’ve not been around.’

  ‘I’m sure your dad doesn’t think that.’

  I tell her about the letter to Dad I’d written, not to comfort him, the purpose of every other letter he’d received, but merely to impress him. Even on his deathbed I was selfishly scampering about hoping for a pat on the head for an elegant turn of phrase, thinking of myself.

  ‘You’re tired. Let’s go to bed.’

  ‘Tell me something nice.’

  Dinah says that on the Ullswater Steamer earlier that day they passed the hotel where Paul McCartney proposed to Heather Mills.

  ‘And I got the kids to boo. Everyone on the boat laughed.’

  ‘Tell me another nice thing.’

  She talks about Trotters World of Animals park.

  ‘You’d have been ashamed of me.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  She laughs.

  ‘We missed the otter feeding encounter because I wouldn’t pass an enclosure of pancake tortoises. And I had to force the manager of the birds of prey section to radio a woman called Esther who was about to give a reptile talk to make sure she wasn’t going to be handling a tortoise after the monitor lizard.’ Dinah puts an imaginary walkie-talkie to her mouth. ‘Andy to Esther – are you using a tortoise this morning?’

  She nods at the kids’ room.

  ‘Go and have a look at them. But be quiet, they’ve both been a bit shouty.’

  I stand in their doorway. Charlie and Phoebe are sleeping in pretty much the same positions they were when I left them that morning, although it now seems weeks ago.

  ‘Something else to cheer you up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re up to twenty-one Wadcrags. A massive volley when I asked her the way to Hexham tomorrow.’

  And in bed I think of my dad. My fear is vulnerability. With Dad in the world I can cope with any disaster – financial, emotional, physical. I know how to react through Dad’s reaction. I’ll behave the way he behaves. Without Dad I’ll be naked, newborn, helpless – a house without a roof. It takes my breath away, the fear of there being nobody above to look out for me.

  CHAPTER 18

  Draft Copy for Guidebook: Northumberland was once a popular mediaeval dragon-slaying destination, but is now such a sleepy backwater they recently reintroduced the barn owl just for something to talk about. Home to about ten people mainly called Gawain, the county is basically a giant national park run by a few eider ducks and a couple of part-time otters. We are, of course, joking. Northumberland is an extremely vibrant county, with the most diverse wildlife in Britain, and one bursting with varied attractions to walk around, that are fun and would also be illuminating if you could understand a single word your Geordie tour guide was saying. Interesting places to visit include Berwick-upon-Tweed, which until 1966 (because of a treaty signing oversight), was still officially at war with Russia, the Kielder Forest, recently voted the most tranquil place in England, and Alnwick Castle, seat of the ancient Percy family, where during the state room tour in the library, we were informed by a visitor/nutter/local witch/ possibly even a member of the Percy family themselves that it was perfectly legal to urinate on the kerbside wheel of your own motor car. We are still, to this day, wondering at how strangely we must have been standing to have been told this. Lindisfarne

  Priory across the causeway, meanwhile, was founded by Irish monk Aidan in 635, making it one of the earliest cradles of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. To keep the kids amused here there are jigsaws of the Lindisfarne Gospels and although climbing the priory ruins isn’t strictly allowed, Bob in the kiosk turns a kindly blind eye to toddlers running about the lower walls with packets of chocolate gems shouting, ‘This is so boring, I don’t believe it.’

  We’re heading north on the A686 into Northumberland’s Cheviot Hills. It’s a beautiful, gently climbing road lined with drystone walls, flanked with green valleys, sudden vistas opening up all the way to the Solway Firth and Phoebe and Charlie are not only ignoring me when I indicate pretty sights they’re actually telling me, ‘Daddy, please be quiet. You told us that already ’bout a hundred times. And it’s not beautiful. It’s boring. It’s trees.’

  Kielder Leaplish Waterside Park is set against the tree-lined banks of the Kielder Water reservoir, which, at 28 miles long and 3 miles wide, holds 4,000 million gallons of water; enough, according to our Hoseasons stay-pack, for every person in the world to flush the toilet at once.

  On the banks of the reservoir, down a windy shingle road, we find the park’s reception. I go in alone to collect our lodge keys and a site map. A Geordie man behind the desk recommends I buy a bottle of Avon Skin So Soft, a hand and face cream used by the British Army, which trains here. It’s to protect against the midges and is apparently better than any insect repellent.

  ‘The army use Avon Skin So Soft!’

  ‘Aye, tha one wi’ya green bottle. Not tha pink one, mind. That’ll make yer skin soft alreet, boot they’ll bite yer al tha same. Ya knaa, that’s the good thing aboot tha bats,’ he says.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘They eat tha midgies. Now, yer knaa where ya gannin – turn reet, past this building…’

  ‘You actually have bats?’

  ‘Aye, an’ buzzards. Tawny ools, barn ools, grey ools, otters, goldin eagles, puff adders, rinbow trowt.’

  ‘Puff adders! What, in the forest?’ I ask.

  ‘No, al’orver. They bask in tha road sometimes. Ah found one doon by tha lodges las’ week. Aye, but divvent worry pet, they wern’t harm yee if yee divvent harm them.’

  ‘What could they do?’ I ask.

  ‘Bite.’

  ‘And what would happen then?’

  ‘Yer OK unless yee hev a weak hort or,’ and he looks past my head towards the kids in the car, ‘well, it’s not for young bairns, mind. Were yee not warned afore yee came?’

  Dinah and I have an argument on the way to our lodge about whether or not we were warned afore we came. I included Kielder on our route but Dinah found the accommodation through a Hoseasons contact.

  Was she warned afore we came?

  ‘No. He sent me an information brochure about the lodge and the reservoir. It didn’t mention puff adders, Ben. We’re not going to see one anyway. He was probably winding you up. What’s this?’

  She holds up the Avon Skin So Soft.

  ‘It keeps the midges away. The army use it, apparently.’

  ‘What do they use for camouflage – Smokey Brown Eyeshadow? I think he was pulling your leg. What did he actually say about the adders?’

  ‘He said he’d seen one down by the lodges last week.’

  ‘He definitely said that?’

  ‘Why would I panic you? You panic all the time. What’s in it for me? It’s what he said.’

  It’s already been a difficult day. Our first attraction had been Eden Ostrich World at Langwathby Farm just outside Penrith, although calling it Ostrich World is a bit like calling our car Banana Skin World. After all, in it we have, amongst many other items, two banana skins. Eden Ostrich World was home t
o a pair of ostriches in a back field, but there were more emus than ostriches, more goats and more sheep and more chipmunks and more rabbits than ostriches, so why wasn’t it called Goat World or even Guinea Pig World? It was annoying for other reasons. There were insidious signs everywhere as well warning that pregnant women shouldn’t touch sheep and lambs, that the emus, rheas and goats might peck. We were warned we couldn’t eat our own food when the cafe was open and, several times, that we must ‘supervise children at all times’. As Dinah said when we left: ‘Nanny World, more like.’

  Crossing the Pennines, the scenery was staggering – great sweeping views, drystone walls going on forever – but I couldn’t get out of the car to take photos because Phoebe was so bored she started doing the toddler equivalent of self-harming with razors. She shouted every five seconds she wanted a cuddle, clung to me when I tried to return to the driver’s seat and then started scrawling over her face and arms with a black felt-tip pen. On top of this we missed the fort at Housesteads in Northumberland set against Hadrian’s Wall as well as the nearby Roman Army Museum because we were under time pressure after stopping in Alston to buy Charlie his third new pair of shoes of the trip. He likes to hook them under the buggy footrest when we’re not looking, prise them off his feet and hope we don’t discover there’s one missing until we’re 50 miles away and it’s too late to go back for them, at which point he shouts, ‘Daddy!’ his eyes lightening with delight as he highlights his shoeless socks. ‘Look!’

  The temperature rocketed as well. Phoebe was roasting but I couldn’t work the air-con in the hire car. It was slightly different from the one in our old Astra. Opening the windows to cool down, Phoebe lost the balloon she was given for being ‘patient’ at Shoezone in Alston. She went mad even before her long fringe started whipping her face. Craziness reigned.

  ‘I can’t scratch my leg. I need to take my tights off.’

  ‘I want my colouring book.’

  ‘Charlie has taken my teddy bear.’

  ‘It’s taking a long time.’

  ‘I want another biscuit.’