Border Crossing

by Rosie Thomas

  It was evidently a big day in Zhangmu, which couldn't see a great rush of border activity at other times. Faces bloomed in the open windows of the Amazon, mostly creased, brown Tibetan faces framed with loops of hair and coloured silk and turquoise or amber beads, although there were a few Chinese too. A pair of pretty young Chinese policewomen, smart as paint in short-skirted uniforms, refused to let Phil take their pictures. A woman in a pink mohair cardigan who had two words of English – hello and marnie – came by with her baby and we sat the little moppet in the driving seat and photographed her. All this time the column of cars was patrolled by hard-faced men with calculators and wads of notes in their greasy pockets.

  'Shange marnie?' they muttered incessantly. 'Dollah? Rupee?'

  Then a young Tibetan man struck up a conversation. He had been to school in India and had learned enough English to tell us that living in Tibet was very hard. Phil asked him about the Dalai Lama and when he might return. The man's face was immediately suffused with a soft reverence.

  'Maybe some day. I hope and pray. He is my Holiness,' he whispered. 'My Holiness.'

  The line of cars inched slowly forward. In fact, when we reached the frontier post, the formalities were not as tedious as we had been warned to expect. Our passports and car documents were glanced at and, in what was clearly the central transaction, US$7 was extracted as a 'non-inspection fee' for the car. A refusal would probably have resulted in all our belongings being poked through at the roadside.

  A red-and-white pole lifted and we were waved through. We left Chris Taylor on the Tibetan side, lounging on a bench in the sunshine. His passport hadn't been stamped on the way into Beijing, and now he was being detained. Howard sat in the Camaro, head in hands.

  'Every time, everywhere we go, it's Chris it happens to. We could be here for days.'

  But in the event it was no worse than 1½ hours, with a $60 fine thrown in. Not a big price to pay for a sight of the right side of the Chinese border. Down beyond the striped pole lay 20 kilometres of the worst road in the world, no-man's land before the Nepali frontier. At one point the route turned into a fully-fledged calf-deep river that chuckled prettily over mossy rocks. There were several other streams to cross, and a bigger concentration of ruts and rocks and craters than we had had to deal with even in crossing the plateau.

  At last, the bridge came into view, a span of metal girders against the sweep of the forested gorge. We had descended probably a vertical mile in height since the early morning. Down here the warm air was heavy with humidity, and pungent with the rotten-sweet smell of wet vegetation. We stripped off layers of clothes, and still felt too hot.

  'Do you want to drive across the bridge?' Phil generously asked.

  'Yes I do.'

  We changed places and the car rattled over. Beyond was the frontier post, where smiling officials put garlands around our necks while our passports were checked, and thumb-pressed red paste tika dots on our foreheads. Rally officials in their red shirts were grinning in relief.

  'Welcome to Nepal!'

  'Namaste, namaste.'

  This was the first car rally ever to pass through Nepal. There was a huge banner strung across the road. The way ahead was lined with beaming faces and hands waving or clapping or pressing together in greeting. Leaving the dour monochrome officialdom of western China and arriving in Nepal was like walking from a dentist's waiting-room into a brilliant party. In the pleasure of it all I forgot how to drive. The car juddered and almost stalled.

  'Clutch, clutch!' Phil shouted.

  Looking back in the mirror we saw John Vipond doubling up with laughter at this little cameo of my deficiencies and Phil's response to them. An icy dart of tension immediately jabbed through the car. Phil didn't care for being laughed at, even my small attempts at teasing him had revealed that, and if my incompetence drew ridicule it was also directed towards him because we were a team.

  I said nothing, judging that this was probably quite a good moment to concentrate on what I was trying to do.

  The route notes had promised us that the 100 km from the border down into Kathmandu would be mostly asphalt, although broken in places. This turned out not to be the case. There were, in fact, more huge craters and potholes and head-sized rocks, very occasionally flattening out into tantalisingly short expanses of decent asphalt. At the lip of every crater it was a matter of deciding which route would be the least damaging to follow, which rock was most likely to hit the differential, what would be the optimum speed to go for.

  It was the middle of the afternoon, very hot now, and we had been driving or queuing since 8 a.m. without a stop or any proper food. The road followed the Sun Khosi river, a lazy brown thread of water in which happy-looking people were bathing or scrubbing clothes, and passed through a chain of villages. In every village the people came out to greet us. They showered us with flowers and thumbed tikas on our foreheads, and they wanted to exchange greetings and shake hands as we passed by. The warmth was palpable, but after an hour of it the strain of responding began to tell on us. Smiling was making my neck ache and the sun in my eyes gave me a headache to match.

  Phil must have been feeling just as tired and thirsty as I was. He was irritable, and instead of pulling his hat over his eyes and letting me learn from my own mistakes, he kept telling me to slow down or speed up or change gear. I knew he was trying to be constructive, but he was making me angry.

  I began thinking peevishly that I had paid for the entire trip for both of us and I would have to work very hard to earn that outlay back. It was my car. If I damaged it, then that was part of the risk of having me along in the first place. If he had wanted a professional rally driver, he should have invited one to pay for the trip instead of me. Why shouldn't I enjoy my share in the adventure without being nagged and bullied? And so on. All the things that I had secretly vowed not to make into an issue between us – because it wouldn't have been fair to do so and because I knew the deal from the outset – built into a logjam in my mouth.

  And now I was beginning to be afraid of the car. I didn't want to pull away from a standstill because I had lost the knack of feeling the exact point where the clutch bit. I wasn't sure where to brake, or when to change up or down. Everything I did seemed to produce a wrong response in it. A trickle of sweat crawled down the nape of my neck and my mouth was dry. My anger intensified.

  We came to the edge of yet another bomb crater and Phil hissed 'slow down' and flapped his hands at me.

  I stopped the car immediately, jamming on the brakes. I was furiously angry with him now, for the first time since the foot of Kalapathar. I got out very slowly, and walked round to the other side of the car. The sun was hot on my head and bare shoulders. I opened the door.

  'You drive.'

  'No, no. Come on. I'll try to shut up. I want you to drive.'

  'Well, I don't. It isn't any fun for me, because you are so controlling. And if it can't be any fun, there isn't any point in doing it, is there?'

  I slammed the door, deliberately. He was always complaining that I slammed the doors and the boot unnecessarily. I walked away to the edge of the road and lay back against a rock. It was pleasant to be out of the burning heat inside the car, and not to have the engine drumming in my head. Fifteen metres below the Sun Khosi made a wide bend enclosing a spit of sand, and there were brown-skinned people splashing in the water and sending up glittering arcs of spray. I played with the idea of walking away from Phil and the rally and scrambling down to submerge my hot shaky self in the water too. I could swim away to some pleasant village on the river bank and not have to drive another metre in this car with this companion.

  After a minute I looked round and saw him sitting stiffly in his seat, staring straight ahead. Sighing, I walked round to the passenger side and waited for him to let me take his place.

  'Are you ready to go on?' he asked, in a new, patient voice.

  While I sat on the bank he had completely changed his persona. From unforgiving taskmaster he
had turned into hired help, meekly subscribing to you're-the-boss and whatever-you-say-goes. I thought it perverse of him, and also irritating that he wouldn't admit just to being at fault once in a while.

  Without answering I got into the navigator's seat and we drove the whole of the remaining 75 km down into Kathmandu in silence. Welcome committees headed by the mayor of each village stopped us as we passed and put flowers and gifts and – best of all – bottles of cold water into our arms. Phil and I smiled and smiled, and called out greetings and thanks and touched hands with everyone we could reach out to, without once looking at each other. The road improved and we spun through groves of banana palms and great clumps of red and yellow canna lilies. It was a sub-tropical confusion of growth, dizzying in its lushness after the aridity we had just left behind.

  Kathmandu looked familiarly chaotic and welcoming, lying in its polluted basin enclosed by the hills. The jumble of collapsing roofs and crooked walls and tangled wires was turning from brown to grey in the evening light, and the hooting traffic closed in and swallowed us up.

  The cars were to be left for the duration of the rest-stop in the huge car park of the Kathmandu Convention Centre. As soon as we pulled in Phil threw up the bonnet and began an intent study of the engine, which was his way of being alone. I hauled my luggage over to the waiting shuttle bus and rode to the Yak and Yeti.

  It is the best hotel in Kathmandu. Last year the Marines and Phil and I had gone there for a cocktail, and had looked longingly at the lush gardens and the swimming pool and the elegant dining-rooms. Now I dragged my dusty self into the air-conditioned bliss of the marble foyer and asked for my messages. The whole space was swarming with exhausted, filthy, jubilant rally crews.

  We'd made it. Paris would be plain sailing from here.

  I couldn't think of that yet. Please, I muttered to myself, please let it be here.

  The receptionist passed a handful of faxes to me, and a square DHL package. The medicine. In my room, which had windows opening on to a little courtyard, and a bowl of fruit with a silver knife, and white bathrobes and CNN and a minibar full of western chocolate, I ate a handful of progesterone tablets and read my messages. They were full of love and congratulations.

  The phone rang and it was Caradoc.

  'Thank God you're there,' he said. 'Did you get it? Are you all right?'

  'I've got it. I'm okay.'

  I was looking at the accompanying fax from him. At the end it said, 'I love you more than I can say.' Gratitude and happiness and a sense of my own good fortune made it hard to speak for a minute.

  'Are you there? Can you hear me?'

  'I'm here.'

  Much later, after we had finished talking, I tipped my belongings on the floor and salvaged the clean ones from the dustheap. I called Housekeeping for an iron and ironing board, and pressed my one chic outfit. I had a shower and made up my face and anointed myself with cream, and put on frivolous shoes. It was dark, and dinner-time, and there was no sign of Phil. Melissa rang and ordered me to dinner.

  I was clicking across the foyer towards the dining-room when I met him coming in.

  'You look lovely. Can we talk somewhere?'

  We needed neutral territory, not our uncomfortably shared bedroom. We sat down on a sofa in a secluded corner of the lobby.

  Phil knew Kathmandu well, he had worked there regularly for Exodus, and tonight he had been to visit some local friends. He began defiantly.

  'If you want to fire me, you can. Get yourself another driver. I'll stay here, I like it.'

  We stared at each other in mutual hostility. I thought it was underhand of him to try to turn the tables. He was the one who had been finding fault with me.

  'Don't be so fucking ridiculous. Of course I can't fire you. You're coming with me to Paris because that's the only way we can go on competing.'

  Only touring entrants were allowed to make crew changes; sporting competitors had to keep the same team all the way and Phil knew that perfectly well. He wasn't really expecting me to dump him, he was just saying it to test the water – but I played with the idea of saying all right then, he could bugger off and I'd take Lord Montagu on board as co-driver. He had reached Kathmandu via a series of lifts from other competitors and was still looking for a permanent ride. This comical notion must have thawed my icy expression a little because Phil unbent a fraction in response.

  'You see, the car is my responsibility. It's my job to get it and you safely to Paris. You have to understand what that means.'

  Get me to Paris? I thought.

  'So I have to look after it, and that includes the way you drive.'

  Women drivers. This banality was partly what was at issue, and it was a shame that I hadn't been able to attack the old cliché on behalf of my gender by driving with unrivalled brilliance, but it was also funny enough to make me want to laugh. It occurred to me once again that Phil and I were going through a motoring paradigm of a marriage, right down to every couple's petty niggles about changing gear and folding the map in the right creases. We'd been through the courtship and the honeymoon period, and now we were discovering each other's flaws and powers to irritate.

  But beyond the comedy of gender clichés the violence of Phil's reaction, so much at odds with his usual bland good humour, had opened up a new perspective. I began to understand that he too was less confident than he appeared. He was probably all too aware of the windy spaces between us. It slowly dawned on me that he felt the differences in our age and status and purchasing power more acutely than I had realised, and was over-asserting his abilities with the car as a way of compensating for all that. He was much too proud to allow anyone to see him as an adjunct, or a hired hand – even me.

  Being deficient in confidence myself, I was too easily convinced by Phil's aura of general infallibility – especially in all the practical areas at which I was so inept. Our different needs and clashing temperaments guaranteed that we constantly misunderstood each other. It was an inflammatory mixture. Just like at Golmud, I had been expecting too much of him – not only to nurse the car, but also to understand my need for reassurance and encouragement.

  Awkwardly, I reached for his hand. We sat there on our intimate sofa, poised between split and reconciliation, hands clasped like a parallel of a pair of quarrelling lovers. I tried to restate the terms of our bargain.

  'All right, Phil. You be responsible for the car. You drive it, you service it. I'll navigate and I'll concentrate on making my notes and writing my diaries and selling features about the trip. Doing all the things that are paying for us both to be here, in other words.'

  If he was going to make me feel bad, I was going to start retaliating.

  He took this open reference to money without flinching.

  'Fine.'

  Everyone had gone to dinner.

  'So, are we friends now?'

  'Yeah, we're mates, aren't we?'

  This wasn't quite what I had meant, but I let it go. I had a daring driver and a capable mechanic. I couldn't expect a soul-mate as well.

  Around the dinner table everyone had heard about our disagreement – rally gossip travelled faster than light. Dave Bull made a grinning, fists-up gesture as I slid into my place.

  'We're the best of friends now,' I said primly. It was certainly time for a new cast on the relationship.

  It was a big evening. Everyone dived head-first into the drink, first in the hotel bars and then in Phil's favourite Kathmandu hang-out, Tom & Jerry's Bar. Three hours into the party I looked around and saw that the whole dingy place was heaving with drunken competitors and support crews, draping arms around each other and describing all over again the combination of rock and pot-hole that had almost done for the diff. I found a corner with Richard Curtis, Prince Idris's co-driver, because he was looking more than ever like Caradoc and alcohol enhanced this tenuous link until it seemed eye-wateringly precious. We were having a rambling conversation about which five of our possessions we would choose to have with us on a
desert island. Richard's were all this Lucie Rie pot and that Persian rug; mine were photographs and my wedding ring and locks of baby hair. Another gender cliché. Chris Taylor swam up out of the throng, clearly having a good time. No one had been debating literature but he roared,

  'Kafka? Kafka? They should put him on the National Health, mate. "Can't sleep, Mrs Jenkins? Here, read this and come back in a week."'

  When the bar closed we retreated to the hotel again. I shared a bicycle rickshaw with Dan and teased him about which of the women to choose. He sighed and let his eyes close, doing the hand rotation.

  'None of them. It's all far too complicated.'

  Melissa was having a party in her extensive suite. Sarah Catt and Phil were in full flow, ordering room service and opening bottles of champagne from the maxi-bar.

  'Nice bloke,' Phil was saying about one of our fellow travellers who was gay. 'Just a bit low in the leapfrog.'

  I had never heard this picturesque expression before. I caught myself laughing so uproariously that I knew I had overdone the champagne and the Kathmandu draw. It was time for bed.

  Phil never made it. He claimed that he and Sarah had passed out on Melissa's sofas.

  Chapter Ten

  We were leaving Kathmandu in 48th place.

  We had only had two days' rest, but even after such a brief resumption of normal life – going shopping, wearing clean clothes, eating decent foot in civilised surroundings, and sleeping without jolting awake at hourly intervals in fear of missing the morning start – it was hard to get back in the car and zero the trip and begin all over again.