Border Crossing

by Rosie Thomas

  I sighed. Another two hours in the car park in prospect.

  We had plenty of company out there. Adam's clutch plate had finally sheared and he and Jon had the Bentley completely stripped out. Spiky-haired, oily and intent on their job, they both looked about fourteen years old. I peered inside and they showed me what they were doing, and the broken plate. I suddenly saw how strong and simple and logical the fine old car's workings were and for the very first time I felt a shiver of acquisitive, petrol-headed admiration. I stepped back quickly, knowing that the last thing on earth I needed was to develop a taste for vintage Bentleys.

  In the morning the rally streamed eagerly towards the border, 276 kilometres away. We were as eager as anyone, but everyone was passing us. Dave Bull roared by with a merry toot on the horn, and the Dangerfields and the land crab and the Iranian Peykans.

  Phil's face was a mask of gloom. He hated to be overtaken.

  'What's up?'

  'Don't know. The power's right down. Listen, she's missing all the time. Must be the crack in the distributor.'

  We drove for 100 km in tense silence, dropping further and further behind.

  Okay, I thought. Get ready for it. This is China all over again. We're going to break down, lose time, miss our gold medal.

  I'd become blasé, taking for granted the car's imperturbability and Phil's sure touch with it, and now I was going to learn just how lucky I had been all the way from Tuotuoheyan.

  'Shit. We'll have to stop. I'm going to try and buy another cap.'

  We were passing through a grubby little town and the road was lined with tyre outlets and mechanical workshops. I rummaged for my purse, ready to go and buy one more knobby brown plastic cup. Phil hoisted the bonnet, and then he started to laugh.

  'What's funny?'

  'Come and see.'

  I looked, and saw that one of the leads had worked loose. The car had been running all morning on three cylinders. We clapped hands, and leaped into our seats again. The Amazon streaked forward like a foxhound with her nose to the scent. We were back in our proper position by the time we reached the border.

  The queues for the emigration formalities were familiar now. I mooched along the line with paperwork and passports in my hand. David Brister was doing the same thing.

  'Keith and I may be a pair of daft old buggers,' he mused, 'but what is this thing about yellow cars? Whenever you get someone cutting you up or jumping the queue or mucking things up, it's always a yellow car.'

  I agreed that proper consideration ought to be given to the semiological significance of yellowness as associated with cars and crappy behaviour.

  We passed out of Iran, and drew up in the Turkish compound. Very slowly and very deliberately I took off my veil and tore it in half. It made a satisfying rending noise. Phil offered to go and change our rials for Turkish lira with one of the hard men doing currency deals before the barrier, so I gave him a thick wad representing about two hundred and fifty dollars. Quite soon he came back again.

  'Did a good deal,' he announced. 'Big notes. I've got literally millions of lira here.'

  I gave the money in his hand a suspicious glance.

  'How many millions, exactly?'

  'Um, one, two, three.'

  'About twelve quid, then. He saw you coming.'

  Phil was enraged. He was already jumping out of the car. 'I'll go back and sort him out. That's him, look.'

  The man had four days' growth and a leather jacket, and plenty of mean-looking cohorts. I didn't think I wanted to run around trying to enlist David and Keith and Richard Dangerfield to back Phil up in a fist-fight against a currency shark. I grabbed hold of his belt and hauled him back into the car.

  'Don't even think about it. You'll get your hair in a mess. And your face, probably.'

  He glared, and then we caught each other's eyes. It was always good when we made each other laugh, and we laughed now all the way across the border and out into Turkey.

  We headed west past Mount Ararat. The mountain stood up like a great seamed tooth against a pink-tinged sky.

  I felt unaccountably drowsy, maybe with the sensuous satisfaction of baring my head and arms in the sunshine, maybe with delayed relief after the morning's mechanical alarm. For the first time in our journey I fell fast asleep in the navigator's seat. Phil drove uncomplainingly, with the route notes on his lap, all the way up the long, steep climb to our day's destination. It was Palandoken, the Turkish ski-resort, near Erzurum. I woke up when we pulled into the car park in front of the single big hotel. There was a view of snowy summits in the distance and in the foreground green slopes and the familiar wiry apparatus of towbars and chairlifts. It was like any one-season ski-resort before the snow falls, bare and morose and scribbled over with machinery. But we didn't care much about the scenery.

  Sarah Catt and Paul Brace were stamping road books in the lobby.

  'The bar's thataway,' Paul pointed.

  As we crossed the border we had gained an hour and a half. It was still only lunch-time . . .

  The hotel was like ski-hotels everywhere. There were wooden floors, not yet dripping or echoing with the clump of ski-boots, and a vast, empty ski-room, and a wood-panelled kitschly decorated bar-restaurant that might equally have been in Mürren or Méribel. Thomas Noor, wonderful bonhomous Thomas whom not even Iran had managed to subdue, was already in place at a table with Maria and Melissa. He held up a bottle of red wine by the neck.

  'Rosie! Have a drink!'

  You bet.

  The day tilted gently sideways into a warm bath of booze.

  After a long lunch I can only remember a series of snapshots, although they must have been connected somehow.

  Swimming in the hotel's cup-sized pool. Phil singing in the shower. Taking a siesta and somehow waking up raring to go again. An even longer dinner with florid speeches, sitting next to Adam and trying to explain to him what doing the rally had really really meant to me. Having a bit of trouble finding the mot juste, for some reason.

  Then the wooden Bierkeller pretending it looked out on a snowy street in Kitzbühel. Where were we?

  Yeah, Turkey somewhere. Doesn't matter. Never see anything anywhere, in any case. Lovely wine, though. Maybe one more glass.

  Bar packed with people, roar of noise and laughter. Werner Esch from the black Merc, number 54, and his beautiful daughter Sylvie. The Ashbys, father and son, from the, erm, Delage. Mick Flick and his partner Felix. The two sharp American girls from the media crew.

  We were going to make it to Paris, all of us.

  I kept feeling a goofy grin splitting my face. We were all friends, best friends. Wonderful. Seen and done so much together.

  The young on their way down to the disco. Going to complete their social and sexual negotiations in a blur of beer and Turkish disco-pop.

  I could go too. Hey, it was still early.

  Bring the watch-face into focus.

  Oh dear. Not early at all. In fact, hideously late. Too old for disco. Too old for anything except bed.

  In the time it took to cross the bar and ride up in the lift, propositioned twice, separately, by two elderly gentlemen. Both with lovely, wonderful cars parked outside. Hmmm, why not?

  Two thousand reasons, only.

  Good to be asked though.

  Head on pillow. Much, much too much red Buzbag wine in system.

  Downstairs, distant roar of shouting and stamping and occasional breaking glass. Rally crews larging it. Thank God, not me.

  Bad enough as it is . . .

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was just a little roadside café at the midday time control, with a terrace and a couple of tables with parasols, but it felt like heaven on earth. We had re-entered a comprehensible world.

  I sat with my hangover, sipping Turkish coffee and watching Phil eat. I was having a small fantasy about restaurants. Specifically, I was imagining a little place on a harbour wall somewhere, maybe in Greece but more probably Italy. There would be that holiday smell
of the sea and wild thyme and grilling fish just tainted with diesel oil from the fishing boats bobbing on the black water. There would be a white starched tablecloth and dignified place settings, a candle burning steadily within a glass mantle, and a luminous moon overhead. The restaurant would be laid-back but, of course, very very good.

  Phil and I would be having dinner à deux. There would come a moment, maybe before or maybe after the peerless tiramisu, when he would lift his glass and touch it to mine. He would smile at me, his affectionate admiration tinged with tenderness.

  'You have been the best partner anyone could have wished for. I will remember making this journey with you, sharing this great adventure, for the rest of my life.'

  And I would smile modestly back at him, serene in my achievements and confident of my mature powers.

  'Thank you,' I would murmur, 'you were the best, too. We have been a good team, haven't we?'

  'How long have we got?'

  Real Phil had finished his chicken and chips. I came back to earth, to a roadside café between Erzurum and Nevsehir, half-way through the longest day's driving of the whole rally. Cars were revving and chugging all down the endless road.

  'What?'

  'How long?'

  I looked at my watch. 'Er . . . 17 minutes.'

  'Right then. I'll go and check her over.'

  The marshals summoned Adam and Jon over to the checkpoint, indicating that there might be a problem with their timings. As they leaned obediently over to check the details, two buckets full of water sloshed over them. John Vipond's revenge. The Bentley boys had been threatening Phil and me with a sanitary bag bomb filled with warm milk, but we stayed well out of range. Exploding milk would be too much to deal with on a Buzbag hangover.

  The time control stamp clapped down on my book and I folded myself into the rally seat for the hundred thousandth time. We had driven 433 km today and there were another 306 to go.

  The question of driving had come up again.

  'Do you want to?' Phil asked, reasonably.

  We reprised a conversation we had had before.

  'Only if you are tired. You have to say, "I'm too tired to drive any more. Please will you take over?" Then I will, of course.'

  'But I'd never say that.'

  He couldn't admit a weakness. That took a certain strength.

  It was a long, beautiful drive across Cappadocia. I sat and admired the scenery.

  At last, we reached Nevsehir. Tired and stiff and desperate for a shower, I flung my door open. Too far, too hard.

  Clang. The flange that held it in place popped out of the socket. And at the same time, with a despairing rattle of broken chain, the window glass slid down and disappeared within the door panel.

  Fantasy Phil would have smiled forgivingly and maybe remarked fondly that I was so clever that it made up for my clumsiness.

  Real Phil made a noise like a waste disposal unit swallowing cherry stones. Once, trying to overtake the driver we most hated who was deliberately balking us, he had muttered that he felt like ripping off his head and shitting down his neck. I knew that my neck was on the toilet seat right now. I took the road book and tramped into the hotel to hand it in. Of course, we were billeted in the dump down the road.

  Nevsehir was only 9 kilometres from Goreme, a place of miraculous geological formations called fairy chimneys which were a big tourist attraction. The hotel was reportedly full because there were several busloads of Japanese there to admire the sight. I very much wanted to visit the chimneys too. Cellophane-wrapped miniature plaster replicas of them were being handed out to crews as they checked in, a gift from the local tourist authority.

  The American driver in the line ahead of me accepted his gift with great enthusiasm.

  'CHOCOLATE!' he cried.

  'No, no. Is a replica of our local tourist site.'

  'A tourist replica? I thought it was chocolate.'

  'No, not chocolate. Is chimneys.'

  'Not chocolate?'

  Et cetera.

  When I came back, Phil was still trying to lever the rogue flange back into place with a crowbar. I held the door at the wrong angle and the metal tongue obstinately refused to bend back into the slot. After several attempts he threw the crowbar on the ground and walked away.

  Dan and JD sidled over. They coaxed the door into usable shape for me before Phil came back again. We drove a silent kilometre down the road to the bad hotel – which looked truly bad – only to discover that we weren't on the list there either. The nightly hotel hassle had swelled suddenly beyond mere irksomeness to rage-inducing proportions. I was very angry.

  Back at the HQ hotel Sarah Catt discovered that the Turkish hostess was using the wrong list, and we did have a room there after all. Why not, I wondered furiously, make sure that the Turkish hostess had the right list in the first place? Then our 739 kilometres for the day need not have been pointlessly extended to 741.

  It wasn't just me who was angry. The smaller tooth-brushless woman was having an apocalyptic tantrum at the desk. The scale of it was so impressive that it gained her a double room in the good hotel, which was sworn to be full to capacity.

  With the hotel question finally solved I said hopefully, ingratiatingly, to Phil, 'It's only 9 ks out to the fairy chimneys. Look, here's a plaster model of them.'

  I held it up enticingly but he failed to take the hint. He propped the bonnet open instead and stuck his head underneath. I went up to the hard-won room, ran a bath and lay in it with all the vodka miniatures from the mini-bar lined up in front of me. Afterwards, I called home.

  Flora answered. 'Mum,' she sighed. 'You have been away such a long time.'

  She reminded me that I had fastened a little silver chain around her neck before I left for the airport.

  'I haven't taken it off since you went. The teachers at school keep telling me to, and I just say yes, and keep it on.'

  'I'll be home soon. We'll have a good time in Paris.'

  After we said goodnight and hung up the thought of the warm throat, and the silver chain and the significance she attached to it made me cry. I missed them all so much.

  Last night, carousing and cherishing unsuitable propositions. Tonight, sobbing in a steamy bathroom. It was all Rally Syndrome. I wouldn't be sorry when it released its hold.

  Downstairs after dinner I met Dan, looking wry and empathetic. He and JD had been out to Goreme while we were shuttling between hotels. He gave me a hug and I nearly cried again, just because he was being kind to me.

  'This trip just makes me feel that I'm hopeless at everything. I can't even open the car door properly.'

  He patted my shoulder. 'You are too eager to please. Just remember that you are the reason Phil's able to be here at all.'

  'I really wanted to see the fairy chimneys.'

  'You should have said, "If you're not coming, give me the keys".'

  I should have done, but I never would, any more than Phil would have said that he was too tired to drive. That was the way we were, and the way we were was incontrovertibly different.

  I went and sat as close as I could to Richard Curtis, who was looking particularly Caradoc-like again. He and Idris told me about Humpty Dumpty's adventures.

  'Why is it called Humpty Dumpty?' I asked.

  Jingers the mechanic had worked on restoring and preparing the Model B. They took it apart, Idris explained, and then put it all back together again.

  It was an unforgettable day's driving across to Istanbul. I fed Pergolesi's Stabat Mater into the golden mouth of the tape machine, because that was what I felt like listening to.

  We had almost as far to travel as the day before, but even these long distances were much easier than the tedious and isolating business of crossing Pakistan and Iran. The weather was cool and settled, the sky was blue except for a few towering silver clouds, and the light was soft and clear. Before this I had only visited Istanbul and spent a couple of beach holidays on the Mediterranean coast, and I had no idea that this gre
at, broad backbone of central Turkey was so beautiful. I could see the ribbon of road undulating in the far distance, perhaps as much as 20 kilometres ahead of us. The vast fields and folded hillsides were buff and cinnamon and pistachio green, with occasional rectangles of intense viridian. In the hollows of the land there were sprinklings of villages. The ochre-walled houses with red tiled roofs and shuttered windows looked almost Tuscan, but then the slender exclamation point of a minaret would deny the familiarity. There were stands of poplar trees with leaves turning gold, and low bushes at the roadside burnished mulberry red by the oblique sun.

  The angle of the sun and the leaf colours and the smell in the air were autumnal, and this renewed evidence of the seasons' logic was intimate and natural and reassuring after the moonscapes we had driven through. I thought I had never seen anything so welcoming or so lovely. It made me construct a chain of scenes in my mind, reaching all the way back to China, and I knew that the biggest impression this wild trip had made was of the physical connectedness of the landscape and the peoples who seethed on its face. You skip across land masses in an aeroplane and there is no impression of the knuckle and shoulder and hip that mountain ranges and plains and valleys make as they fit together. Nor is there the sense of ethnic precision married to global largesse with which Chinese features meld into Mongolian, into Tibetan, into Nepalese and Indian and Iranian and European. There was a solidity and a munificence about the terrestrial world that I had never absorbed before.

  I remembered the thin and daunting yellow line on the wall maps back at Brooklands. That line had thickened and flowered and burst into a million images.

  From being a threatening place, the world – briefly, I knew, and fancifully, and probably illogically, yet still it did – seemed to have become fathomable and friendly, because we had crossed nearly half of it.

  The Amazon ate up the great spaces of Turkey and those two days we spent driving the width of it were amongst the most memorable of the trip.

  There was one time control in the morning, at a fuel station where we could also buy good coffee, and grapes and sweet melons at the roadside – all the things we had missed for weeks – and then the afternoon's control was demoted to a passage check, without a time restriction, so we pressed straight on towards Istanbul. The countryside lost its yellow-gold splendour as we moved west on empty motorways, around Ankara and down to the sprawl of petrochemical plants and pollution edging the Sea of Marmaris.