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

by Hatch, Ben

  Now we’re parked at South Haven Point on the coast of the Isle of Wight. The kids, watching The Jungle Book, are up to the bit where Baloo in a grass skirt is dancing to ‘I Wan’na be Like You’. It’s raining and we’re waiting for it to subside to go hunting on the beach for 140-million-year-old iguanodon footprints.

  ‘Guess what I’m imagining?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Dinah.

  ‘I’m imagining I’m on Desert Island Discs talking to Kirsty

  Young. I’ve just chosen “I Wan’na be Like You” as my third record.’

  She laughs.

  ‘Kirsty Young’s looking perplexed because “I Wan’na be Like You” doesn’t go with my other record choices, which are mainly Haydn and Bach.’

  Dinah laughs.

  ‘Haydn and Bach!’

  ‘I’ve become cultured. It’s twenty years from now.’

  ‘I see. And you’re such a successful writer you’re on the show?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She laughs. ‘Am I still your wife, or do you have someone more cultured?’

  ‘It’s still you.’

  ‘Good. And your favourite music is classical?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So no Bruce Springsteen, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘“Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel?’

  ‘You know I only like some Billy Joel records, Dinah.’

  She laughs.

  ‘Kirsty wants to know the significance of the record. I’ve been imagining telling her about the trip. The kids watching The Jungle Book the whole time.’

  ‘Five months travelling with small children,’ says Dinah, putting on a Kirsty Young voice. ‘It must have been jolly hard.’

  ‘It was, Kirsty.’

  ‘And how did you wash, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘We didn’t a lot of the time, Kirsty.’

  ‘That must have been hard. For your wife especially.’

  ‘Not really, she’s a bit of a skuzzy cow, Kirsty.’

  Dinah laughs.

  ‘Your next record, Sir Ben?’ she asks.

  ‘Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”,’ I say.

  ‘Not “Uptown Girl”, Sir Ben?’

  ‘No, Kirsty.’

  ‘Because you only like certain Billy Joel records?’

  ‘That’s fucking right, Kirsty.’

  After an unsuccessful foray on the beach looking for dinosaur footprints and fossils (‘No, I think that one was left by my shoe, Phoebe’… ‘No, Charlie, that’s another pebble’) we drive on to the Isle of Wight Zoo in Sandown. The zoo has the largest collection of tigers in the UK, along with jaguars, leopards and, in an inventive enclosure, two lions we see licking their paws on top of an upturned mocked-up zebra-striped jeep, the jokey inference being the rangers inside have been gored to death.

  ‘Distasteful?’ Dinah asks.

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Although they should throw a bucket of offal in there, too.’

  ‘The entrails of the rangers?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  For days now, home is all we’ve been discussing. I’ve been telling random strangers at the Beaulieu National Motor Museum in the New Forest, on the boat to Brownsea Island, at Corfe Castle, how many days we have left, how many thousands of miles we’ve driven, how many months we’ve been away. In Lyme Regis just seeing a car painted the same turquoise as the Brighton seafront railings made Dinah call me over: ‘Look, what does that remind you of?’ But now, with Brighton just over the horizon, strangely we’re both pretending it’s not happening. In fact, on the Fishbourne to Portsmouth ferry it’s the first acknowledgment of the day that we’ll be home tomorrow when Dinah rings a few friends to see who’s around. Sally and Richard are away. Bee and Simon, Banny and Pips, Keely and Jeff, Vic and Dan, Laura and Steve – they’ve all made plans.

  ‘No one around?’ I ask Dinah.

  ‘Did you imagine some tearful homecoming?’

  ‘I did a bit.’

  ‘Ahhhh, love,’ she says.

  In Portsmouth for our 434th and penultimate attraction of the trip, we’re on the HMS Victory in the city’s Historic Dockyard. It’s the oldest commissioned warship in the world and still the official flagship of the British Navy. Charlie’s asleep in the buggy so while Dinah watches him and calls the hire car company to arrange the drop-off tomorrow, I’m on the tour with Phoebe. It starts in the day cabin containing Nelson’s original writing table. I listen to the commentary, taking notes, while Phoebe sits at my feet copying letters of the alphabet from a ripped out page in my notebook. Each time she finishes a page she hands it to me. As the guide tells us how young seamen knocked weevils out of their ship’s biscuits and older sea dogs simply ate them in the dark, I hold up the requisite number of fingers to indicate how many letters Phoebe’s copied correctly. She nods, and holds out her hand for more paper. We climb ladders, duck along low-ceilinged gun decks. On the top deck the guide tells us how Nelson was mortally wounded by a French musketeer at the Battle of Trafalgar and I notice Phoebe’s leaning on the brass plaque marking the spot where he fell. It’s engraved and flush to the deck. Years earlier it protruded. I remember because my mum fell over it when we visited this ship. Reading the plaque after she’d tripped up on it, what she said next became a family joke: ‘No wonder Nelson fell. It’s bloody lethal that is.’ Time flattens gratifyingly out. I was here with my family. And now Phoebe, the day before she starts school, is here with me. Like the Red Arrows in Padstow, it feels like another goodbye.

  Leaving Portsmouth, joining the A27, we see our first sign for Brighton. Forty miles, it says. I look at Dinah. We’re supposed to be visiting Arundel Castle. It’s in the blue folder.

  ‘Tempting to carry on home,’ I say.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Shall we?’

  Dinah smiles. ‘OK.’

  ‘Kids!’ I look in the rear-view mirror. ‘Guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re going home!’

  ‘Home!’ says Phoebe.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘To our hotel?’

  ‘What have we done to them?’ Dinah laughs.

  ‘No, home, Phoebe. The house where you have your own bedroom. Do you remember your own bedroom?’

  She nods and smiles through the thumb she’s sucking.

  ‘We’re going home, Charlie,’ says Phoebe. ‘You remember home where we have our own bedrooms?’

  ‘Dinah, for one last time, The Jungle Book please.’

  Dinah finds the film.

  ‘But first.’

  Dinah takes out her iPhone and syncs it to the car stereo. ‘Homeward Bound’ by Paul Simon comes on. It’s a song we’ve played intermittently since Liverpool. We’ve played it so many times we have new lyrics the kids have learned.

  ‘Ready guys?’

  ‘’K,’ says Charlie.

  ‘Phoebe?’

  She nods.

  ‘One last time then, guys.’ I open my window. Dinah does the same.

  And as Paul Simon sings about sitting in a railway station, with the ticket for his destination, we chorus, ‘We’re sitting in a hired Vauxhall Astra, got a ticket for the Dewa Roman Experience, Chester.’

  Then I point at Phoebe in the back seat. ‘On a tour of night stands, our blue folder and Johnson’s wipes in hand,’ she sings.

  I swivel round and point at Dinah. ‘And every stop is neatly planned for a guidebook writer and his four-man band,’ she sings. I take my hands off the wheel and raise my arms. ‘Altogether guys.’

  And we’re all singing now, practically shouting: ‘We wish we were, homeward booooounnnnnd. Home, where our thoughts escape us, home, where our music’s playin’. Home, where the Saga mini-break, jelly-making pensioners with bath slip mats and brand new tea cosies lie waitin’…’

  And I point at Charlie, who quietly says the final line, his eyes darting self-consciously round the car, as we all stare at him pr
eparing to burst out laughing, ‘… silently for me.’

  The whole way round, through all the hardships, the highs and lows, my dad’s death, the bat attack, the car accident, my kidney stone, I’ve imagined this moment. I’ve pictured myself choked. I’ve seen Dinah and me crying. But now it’s here I just feel hollow.

  We drive the showbiz route into Hove, exiting the A27 on the London Road junction so we come in via Grand Parade, passing the Royal Pavilion and the lit up Palace Pier.

  ‘Hello pier!’ the kids shout through their windows.

  Along the seafront I smell the sea and I can hear the seagulls and the screams from the Super Booster ride at the end of the pier. It’s 6 p.m. and West Street is already thronged. We pass the twinkling lights of The Grand and the Hilton Metropole. The burned out West Pier is a silhouette in the fading light. Over the top of it the murmurating starlings swirl in enormous geometric shapes, forming implausible giant rhombuses that melt into squares, cylinders and other mathematical shapes. We pass the crenulated line of beach huts along the esplanade, the pristine lawn of Hove Bowling Green. The setting sun bleeds shimmering gold into the darkening sea as I turn up our road. I crawl to a stop outside our house. The milometer records 6,234 miles. Added to those we did before the accident in our car the trip total is 8,023 miles.

  The doormat’s buried in post and the hall carpet is filthy. In the living room, one of the shutter louvres is splintered. There’s a black scratch on the wooden floor. The kitchen flooring has lifted. It’s bouncy underfoot. Upstairs in our bedroom the chandelier hangs from the wall, its bracket yanked off. The wooden bathroom floor smells rotten. The carpet in Charlie’s bedroom is stained.

  ‘What the hell were those pensioners doing?’

  ‘I don’t think they were pensioners, love,’ says Dinah, back downstairs.

  We unload the car and, taking the bathroom things up, I find a balloon with the letter L on it. It starts to make sense – the stiletto marks in the wooden floors, the heaps of bin bags full of wine bottles and beer cans in the back garden. We notice more damage – the broken shoe rack, a button missing on the oven. A dining room chair is missing a leg, an electric socket is hanging off the wall. Several plants are dead. The lawn grass is a foot high. Countless items of crockery and cutlery missing.

  Phoebe’s pleased, though. She can’t believe the bin bags of her books I keep opening up from the study on her bedroom floor. ‘Dad, is it my birthday?’ she asks, after the fourth one.

  ‘They’re yours, sweetheart. We packed them before we went away.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Can’t you remember?’

  She shakes her head.

  Charlie’s reaction is different. He cries a lot, trips over boxes and there’s no space to push the doll buggy he’s remembered that he used to love before we went away.

  I find the box containing our bedclothes. I unpack the kitchen and bathroom things. I’m sorting the living room, putting the photo albums back under the telly, when I drop one of the annuals. It falls open at a photo of Phoebe and me on the seafront. We’re side by side, walking past the Brighton Sailing Club. Phoebe’s behind the same buggy Charlie’s pushing around the kitchen right now, while I’m steering the adult one Phoebe would normally be sitting in. She’s almost exactly the same age Charlie is now and the caption underneath reads: ‘For a year and a half I’ve been convincing Dinah this is work!’

  When I was a full-time, stay-at-home dad I used to tell myself it would be easier when they started school. ‘It’s just four years,’ Dinah would say, when I’d had a bad day. ‘It’ll go by in a flash.’ Sometimes I wished the time away. And now it’s gone, Phoebe’s starting school in the morning and all I want is to turn the clock back.

  Phoebe doesn’t want to go to bed after her bath.

  ‘Because I don’t want to go to school in the morning. I want to stay at home with you.’

  Every time I leave the room she cries for a cuddle. Twice I come upstairs and talk to her. I sit on the end of the bed. ‘Give me a quiz, Daddy.’

  ‘You’ve got school in the morning, pops. Try to go to sleep. Why don’t you think of the rabbit you’ll get at the weekend?’

  ‘But I’m itchy. Talk to me or I’ll be itchy. One quiz question. Please.’

  ‘It’s late, sweetheart.’

  She twists her shoulders in frustration and starts scratching madly. ‘One question? Please, Daddy. Please. I’m so itchy.’

  ‘Then that’s it, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘OK, how far away is the moon? Is it a) five miles b) the same distance it is to Tesco or c) 230,000 miles.’

  ‘Noooo,’ her legs go rigid like 1,000 volts are passing through her, ‘do the voice.’

  ‘OK, OK, calm down. You’ll wake Charlie.’

  When I quiz Phoebe, for some reason, it’s become established I have to do this in the German accent of an SS officer.

  ‘OK, OK. Von quvestion. How far avay is ze moon? Is it a) five males or is it b) ze same distance it is to Tesco or is it c) 230,000 males. If you are wrong, you vill be punished severely.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s further away than Tesco,’ she says. ‘Because that’s down the road. Err… is it C?’

  ‘You must answer de quvestion or zere vill be punishments. I haf told you zis.’

  ‘OK, C.’

  ‘Zat is cor-rect.’ I pull her covers up. ‘Go to sleep zis instant or zere will be punishments that you vill not believe.’

  ‘What punishments?’ she says, smiling.

  ‘Come on, pops, it’s bedtime. If you want that rabbit at the weekend…’

  ‘OK.’

  She lies down, pops her thumb in, takes it out again.

  ‘Daddy?’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Why do I always suck this thumb?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I always suck this thumb because the other thumb,’ and she pulls a face, ‘doesn’t taste very nice. I have a tasty thumb and a yucky thumb. Of course I would suck my tasty thumb. Night, night, Daddy. Turn the light off.’

  The next morning Phoebe’s lying in a comma shape across her bed, the duvet moulded tightly around her like a sleeping bag. I kiss her cheek. ‘Morning, pops.’

  She doesn’t stir. I open the curtains and pull her thumb out. She smiles and sucks it back in without opening her eyes. I cross the box-lined hallway to Charlie’s room. Under the covers, his face is a luminous white. There’s a faint aroma of cheese. ‘Morning, cabbagey boy.’ I kiss his springy cheeks and walk back to Phoebe’s bedroom.

  ‘Two sleepy customers this morning,’ I shout to Dinah.

  Phoebe scratches her white blonde hair at the side by her ears and sits up. Her pyjamas are on the floor. She takes them off when she gets itchy in the night. I hold the bottoms up and she swings round, threads her legs in. I go to sit on the top step of the stairs.

  ‘Train’s about to go,’ I shout.

  Phoebe runs down the steps of the half landing, plonks herself on my lap.

  ‘All aboard!’ she shouts. ‘All aboard, Charlie,’ she shouts more loudly. I make a train whistle and Charlie emerges. He climbs on the other leg. As I descend the stairs on my bum, Charlie works his arms backwards and forwards like steam engine wheels. They dismount at the bottom. In the kitchen I sift through the boxes and find the porridge. I make their breakfasts and Phoebe’s sandwiches.

  Dinah works for a news wire website that has to be out by 11 a.m. She comes down in her nightie and starts work in the study, occasionally popping her head in to remind me of things: ‘I’ve put her PE kit bag by the front door.’

  I dress Charlie. I do the same to Phoebe, putting her shirt then tie on. ‘Head back,’ I say, tickling her chin with the fat end as I bring it up through the loop. In a small voice she says she doesn’t want to go to school.

  I keep my tone breezy. ‘Everyone goes to school, sweetheart. You have to learn things.’

  ‘I want to stay here.’ />
  ‘If you didn’t go, Mummy and Daddy would get into trouble.’

  ‘Would you go to jail?’

  ‘We might do.’ I reach for her tights.

  ‘I do tights,’ she says.

  After this it’s her blue pinafore. I pull it over her head and she pops her arms through. I do it up and holding her on both sides of her head, the way my dad did when he was looking at me, I kiss her in the middle of her forehead.

  ‘Shall I get Mummy to do your hair?’

  ‘Because Daddy is rubbish at hair?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Dinah comes out of the study to put Phoebe’s hair in bobbles. She reminds me to take the water bottle.

  ‘To the door guys,’ I call, after she’s finished.

  Dinah gives Phoebe a cuddle, tells her she’ll have her favourite tea ready tonight – pasta with pesto sauce and a chocolate mousse for afters.

  ‘And for me?’ demands Charlie.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Y-ay.’

  I drop Charlie first at his new nursery. I find his peg. I label his apple with a sticker with his name on it. I change him into his day pumps. I tell Mrs Randall I’ll ring later to see how he’s getting on. I give him a cuddle. He won’t let go.

  ‘Shall we find the trains?’ says Mrs Randall, holding his hand.

  Charlie nods.

  He lets go of me. I turn to leave with Phoebe but Charlie breaks away from Mrs Randall. He wraps himself round my leg. Mrs Randall picks him up. He reaches for me with both arms. I take him from her. He koalas around me. I kiss his head and tell him what a brave boy he is. That he’s having chocolate mousse later.

  ‘I want,’ he just shouts, his head back, ‘to stay with you and Phoebe.’

  ‘But Phoebe’s going to school too.’

  Mrs Randall prises him off me, fingertip by fingertip.

  ‘Let’s find the trains,’ she says.

  Charlie flings his head back and wails.

  ‘We can wave to Daddy through the window.’

  Mrs Randall carries him to the window. He’s still reaching out for me as I leave the room. Walking down the stairs I hear Charlie shouting, ‘Daddeeee! Daddeeee!’

  ‘Charlie is only two,’ says Phoebe, as we exit the front door. ‘So he cries. I don’t cry, do I?’