Google Maps fails us. It’s the first time on this trip that this has happened.
We’re in the middle of a long stretch of uninterrupted country road when it announces, unexpectedly, that we have reached our destination.
I bump the car up on to the snowy footpath and proceed to clamber with difficulty up the steep bank to our right, closely followed by Jess, who with her Dr. Martens has considerably less trouble doing so than I.
When we reach the top we scan the horizon. The countryside is sprinkled thinly with snow. There’s a glimpse of sea to our west, and a copse of trees above us to the east. North and south, the road continues, uninterrupted by junctions or side roads, and entirely devoid of hippy communes.
‘Maybe it’s an invisible hippy commune,’ Jess says; an attempt, I think, at cheering me up.
‘More like they gave a false address so that no one can find them,’ I suggest, my breath rising like steam from a locomotive as I speak. ‘Jesus, it’s cold in Scotland!’
‘You’re right,’ Jess says. ‘It’s arctic.’
‘There was no phone number for this one either, was there,’ I say, a statement of fact, not a question.
Jess shakes her head. ‘Pretty, though,’ she offers.
‘Yeah, well,’ I say, ‘I didn’t drive all the way up here for pretty.’
‘Jude,’ Jess says, stepping closer to me and stroking my shoulder. ‘We’ll find it. Don’t worry.’
‘I’m not sure how,’ I tell her despondently. ‘The address we got is right here.’
‘I vote that we find our gardener’s cottage and light a fire and . . .’
‘It has a fire?’
‘It does! So we can light a fire and cook some food and guzzle down a bottle of wine. And then, once we’re too drunk to do anything properly, we can have another look on the internet. Maybe there are two roads with the same name. And maybe you have to be drunk to find the right one.’
‘OK,’ I say, thinking that, right now, wine and warmth sound perfect. ‘Let’s do that.’
But as I turn to climb back down the bank, the tenuous grip of my leather-soled shoes on the frozen grass fails and I slip on to my arse, then slither uncontrollably and, judging from Jess’s reaction, hilariously, all the way back to the roadside.
‘Your bum’s covered in mud,’ Jess tells me, once her laughter has abated enough for her to join me.
‘It’s not funny, Jess,’ I say. ‘These are my only jeans. And I’m soaked.’
‘We can wash them,’ Jess says. ‘Relax, we can hand-wash them when we get to the cottage. It’s only mud and grass. I think there might even be a washing machine.’
I’m stretching and twisting to look at my behind. ‘Ugh!’ I say. ‘If I sit in the car, I’ll dirty the seats. And then bang goes the deposit.’
‘God, you are grumpy since we got to Scotland.’
‘Jess, I’m not grumpy,’ I say. ‘I’m covered in mud!’
‘Yep. So you’ll have to change,’ Jess says. ‘Just put on your posh trousers. Where’s the problem?’
I run a finger across my muddy back pocket and then raise it to my nose. At least it doesn’t smell like dung. ‘I guess that’s my only option,’ I admit.
And so, at the side of the road, in minus three degrees and surrounded by a sudden flurry of snowflakes, I hop from foot to foot as I change.
At the exact moment I’m down to my underpants, an Eddie Stobart truck drives past. The driver honks repeatedly, causing Jess to wave and blow him a kiss before bursting into a fresh bout of laughter. ‘I think you’ve pulled!’ she says. ‘He was actually quite sexy, too!’
It’s just after 3 p.m. when we arrive at our rental.
It’s a two-bedroom cottage set at the bottom of the walled garden of a country mansion, itself set in the rolling hills above Portpatrick.
We’re greeted by a Viking of a Scotsman with a shaggy red beard and freckles. He’s so tall he has to duck to get through the perfectly standard-sized door of the cottage. The decor is tasteful, and the place has been thoughtfully furnished with quirky antiques throughout.
Once he has given us a tour of the lounge, kitchen and bedrooms, he leaves by the back door, heading across to the large stately home in the distance.
‘It’s really nice,’ I tell Jess. I pat the top of a funky wingback armchair. ‘I love this chair, don’t you?’
‘Yes, it’s nice,’ Jess says. ‘But it’s bloody freezing. We need to get that fire lit. You any good at that? Lighting fires is supposed to be a boy thing, isn’t it?’
‘I’ll light the fire if you wash my jeans,’ I say. ‘The washing of jeans being, of course, a “girl thing”.’
‘You’re so sexist!’ Jess says, glaring at me with mock anger, one hand on her hip.
‘Um, I think you started it, actually,’ I tell her, grinning. ‘But you can light the fire, and I’ll wash the jeans if you prefer. If you want get all modern about it.’
‘Oh, all right,’ Jess laughs. ‘I’ll wash your jeans, darling. That fire had better be a good one though, cave man.’
Sadly, and despite my very best efforts, the fire is not a good one. Though, technically, it works, it provides about as much heat as a couple of candles.
‘I think those peat things are designed to burn gently for hours,’ I tell Jess as she hangs my jeans over an electric storage heater. ‘Whereas what we need here is a towering inferno.’
We tour the rooms, turning the heaters up to the max, but it’s quickly apparent that this isn’t going to be enough to warm the thick stone walls of the cottage. My guess is that it hasn’t been heated for weeks.
‘What we need is proper wood,’ I tell Jess.
‘Shall I phone him and ask him?’ she suggests. ‘It’s kind of their responsibility, after all.’
I wrinkle my nose. ‘We’ve got to go out for food and wine anyway,’ I point out. ‘I’m sure we can find something to burn. Let’s go see Portpatrick before it gets dark.’
It’s a five-minute drive to the village through pretty rolling hills spotted with deep-frozen sheep. I wonder if they’re dreading sundown; they must be so cold, the poor things.
Portpatrick turns out to be a cute fishing village nestled in the cleft of the hills. Surprisingly, it hasn’t snowed down here.
As I park the car on the almost deserted seafront, a gap in the clouds appears, lighting up a patch of sea on the horizon with visible beams of golden sunlight.
‘Wow!’ Jess says. ‘Selfie! Quick! Before it goes.’
We cross the road and turn our backs to the sea, and by crouching down comically, we manage to take a photo with the fishing boats to my left and the golden patch of sunlit sea above Jess’s right ear.
‘You look like the heavens have opened to beam you up,’ I comment.
As the sun slithers towards the horizon, we walk along the dockside looking at the colourful fishing boats and stand on the seawall and peer out to sea. ‘I’m guessing that there’s nothing out there till America,’ I say.
‘Aren’t you forgetting Ireland?’ Jess asks.
‘I think we’re too far north for Ireland,’ I tell her. But a quick check on my phone proves that I’m wrong. ‘So I’m guessing there’s nothing out there till Ireland,’ I say, sotto voce.
‘Do I look like Kate?’ Jess asks, raising one hand to her forehead. Seeing that I have no idea what she’s talking about, she says, ‘Kate Winslet. In Titanic? Hello?’
‘Oh, you look exactly like Kate,’ I tell her. ‘In fact, I’ve rarely seen a black girl who looks more like Kate Winslet than you do.’
There are very few shops in Portpatrick, but we manage to find a bakery for bread and a village store-cum-post office for everything else. Jess puts the ingredients for a minimalist vegan chilli in the basket and I grab two bottles of Chardonnay.
‘And the wood?’ Jess reminds me, once the cold outside reminds her.
So I duck back into the store to ask for directions to a petrol station, figuring that�
�s where one can generally buy bundles of wood.
The cashier tells me that the nearest one is in Stranraer, fifteen minutes away. I must look disappointed because she asks if that’s a problem. ‘Running low, are you?’ she says.
When I explain that it’s not petrol that I’m after but wood, she leads me to the rear of the shop. ‘We don’t have wood as such,’ she says, ‘but we have these.’ She opens a door revealing an overhang beneath which are stacked packages of the useless peat briquettes, but also compressed-wood heat logs.
‘Great,’ I tell her, grabbing a pack from the pile. ‘If these burn better than those, then it’ll be fine.’
By the time we get back to the checkout, Jess has returned from outside. ‘It’s waay too cold to wait out there,’ she says.
‘Aye, and snow tonight,’ the cashier declares.
‘Really?’ I say. ‘The forecast says sunshine.’
‘Sunshine tomorrow, but snow tonight,’ she insists. ‘You can smell it in the air.’
‘I have a question,’ Jess says, as the cashier hands me my receipt. ‘You don’t know where Siochain House is, do you? It’s supposed to be in Portpatrick, but we can’t find it.’
The woman’s demeanour changes instantly. Her face, previously open and welcoming, shuts down. ‘Aye,’ she says. ‘You won’t find anyone round here who doesn’t know it. And it’s pronounced shee-uh-harn, not see-oh-chain. It’s Gaelic, dear. It means peace. Which is what I suppose you might call ironic.’
‘Could you explain how to get there, maybe?’ Jess asks, powering through the woman’s clear dislike of the place. ‘Or show us on the map thingy on my phone?’
‘I could,’ she says, emphasising the conditional nature of her reply. ‘But I cannae see why two nice folk like yourselves would want to get involved with that lot.’
‘We’re just trying to track down my sister,’ I explain. ‘She’s gone missing, so . . .’
‘His mum . . .’ Jessica starts, but I raise a finger and shake my head.
‘Sorry,’ Jess mutters, looking confused.
‘Aye, well, it’s up behind the Dunskey Estate,’ she says. ‘Between the Old Loch and the coast.’
‘The Dunskey Estate?’ I repeat. ‘And if we head for that, will we find Siochain House – did I pronounce that right?’
‘Aye,’ the woman says. ‘Just head for Dunskey and then keep on driving. If the road turns to potholes you’ll know you’re on the right track. Just follow the trail of burned-out cars and the caravans they’ve dumped.’
‘Burned-out cars and dumped caravans,’ Jess comments, once we’re back out on the street. ‘Otherwise known as how to seduce all the locals.’
‘Yeah, it sounds a bit grim, doesn’t it?’
‘Anyway, what was the thing with your mum? Aren’t we using that excuse any more?’
I shake my head. ‘Sorry, but it makes me feel uncomfortable,’ I explain. ‘Like we’re tempting fate or something.’
‘Oh,’ Jess says, nodding. ‘Oh, I see. OK. Sorry.’
‘It’s fine,’ I tell her. ‘I came up with it, after all. But if we could come up with something different now, then that would be great.’
The next morning, our attempts to find Siochain House do not get off to a good start. Though we can see where the Old Loch is on Google Maps, there are precisely zero roads that go out there. So we drive past the Dunskey Estate (‘Tearooms, Terrace & Maze – CLOSED’) repeatedly, glancing sometimes to our left and other times to our right as we pass by.
We turn down potholed tracks and find ourselves in front of farmhouses, or cattle grids, or dead ends. We see very few people we can ask, but those we do interrogate seem less than willing to help, either telling us that they’ve never heard of the place, which seems unlikely, or giving us vague or impossible directions.
But it’s a beautiful sunny winter morning and, feeling rested after our evening in front of the fire, we attack our quest good-naturedly.
‘I feel a bit like I’m in an adventure game, don’t you?’ Jess says, at one point. ‘Trouble is, I always get stuck on the first level.’
Once we’ve driven up and down often enough to be sure we haven’t missed a turning, we start to widen our search, heading as far north as the turning to Killantringan Lighthouse and as far east as the main road to Stranraer, but still we find no burned-out cars or caravans, and not even a tiniest hint of a hippy.
Finally, more bored than upset, I suggest that, for now at least, we admit defeat.
‘Can we go to the lighthouse, then?’ Jess asks. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen one for real.’
The road out to the headlands is simply stunning, cutting through snow-dusted hills and offering glimpses of white-capped waves beyond the cliffs. Wispy clouds are scooting across a pale blue sky, casting fast-moving shadows on the waters of the bay.
We edge the car through a group of sheep who have straggled from the herd and park in an empty, windswept car park before buttoning up and heading for the lighthouse, which we can see peeping over the top of a hill.
With the sea breeze it’s truly too cold for comfort, but there’s something magical about the moment, too. It’s the light, perhaps, or the sounds of the waves crashing below. Maybe it’s the smells of the countryside mixed with the iodine perfume of the sea. Or perhaps it’s got more to do with Zoe, with this sensation that she’s so close, and yet so far. Whatever it is, I’m starting to feel raw, edgy and unexpectedly emotional.
It takes ten minutes to walk to the highest point, a walled second car park around the base of the lighthouse, and on arrival we make our way to the furthest sea wall, where we lean, looking out at the Irish Sea.
‘Isn’t this great?’ Jess asks, shouting against the noise of the buffeting wind. Her hair is whipping around in the sea breeze and, I notice, starting to frizz quite seriously.
‘It is!’ I agree. I swipe at a tear on my cheek and Jess somehow detects that the cause might be other than the icy wind.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says concernedly as she takes my fingers in her equally freezing hand. ‘We’ll find her.’
‘It’s not that,’ I tell her, leaning in close so that she can hear me. ‘At least, it’s not just that. It’s . . . I don’t know. It’s this,’ I say, gesturing at the seascape before us. ‘I just feel a bit weird. I feel . . . I don’t know.’ I shrug and smile at her.
‘Alive?’ Jess asks.
‘Yeah,’ I admit. ‘Yeah, I suppose that’s it. It’s just being here, and the wind and the sea and the clouds and the light, you know? It’s being here, right now. It’s being in this weird place with you.’
Jess laughs.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘I love you too,’ she says, grinning broadly and squeezing my hand in hers.
In that moment, I really want to tell her that she’s right. I really want to say that yes, that’s what I’m thinking: that I love her. That I love this lighthouse, and this wind, and that cloud spinning across the sky, and yes, Jess too. But even now, I still can’t say it. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter. After all, Jess has just told me that she’s understood. Instead I turn and kiss her. It’s the best that I can do.
When we get back to the car, she says, ‘I want the top down.’
‘Um, I think it’s just a tad windy for that, Jess,’ I say.
‘I don’t care,’ she tells me. ‘I paid the supplement and I want the top down.’
‘OK. Then at least wait till we get inland a bit. I’m worried the wind will rip it off if we do it here.’
Still feeling raw and unusually present in the moment, I drive us back to the main road and then south towards Portpatrick until I find a suitable siding where I can pull over.
‘You’re sure about this?’ I laugh, as I crank up the car’s heater and place my finger over the button.
‘I’m sure, Mr Bond,’ Jess says. ‘Press that button.’
With a click and whirr, the top glides open, lifts and then vanishes magically int
o the boot.
‘Wow,’ Jess says. ‘How cool is that? That’s well worth a fiver a day.’
‘Um?’ I say. I’ve been distracted by something I’ve spotted at the roadside. ‘Look,’ I tell Jess, pointing.
‘What?’ she asks, releasing her seatbelt and standing to look over the windscreen. ‘Oh, the windmill thing?’
Just a few yards in front of us, planted at the corner of what looks like a farm track – actually, calling it a farm track is perhaps overly generous – is a battered pinwheel in faded rainbow colours, spinning erratically in the breeze.
‘Hippies do famously love a rainbow windmill,’ I point out.
‘So do kids,’ Jess says. ‘So does every kid on the planet, actually. Plus, the Old Loch’s on the other side of the road, isn’t it? I thought it was nearer the coast.’
‘Maybe she got that wrong,’ I say. ‘Or maybe she was feeding us duff information.’
‘Try it,’ Jess says, sliding back into her seat. ‘If you think you can do it without getting stuck, then go for it, Mr Bond.’
I bump the car off the road and up on to the track, following it through a wide gap in the hedgerow and along one edge of a snow-dusted farmer’s field. I can immediately tell that this isn’t right, but seeing a wider stretch further down, I continue in order to turn the car around. However, just as I reach the spot where it opens out, Jessica points and says, ‘Look!’
I turn in my seat and follow her gaze to a gap in the hedge. Behind it, in the next field, is a caravan with a flattened roof. My guess is that it failed to withstand the snowfall one year and simply got abandoned.
‘Well, it’s a caravan,’ I say, ‘but it’s hardly a hippy encampment.’
‘Not the caravan,’ Jess says. ‘Look behind it. Well, behind that bush now.’
I slip the car into reverse and move backwards, and there, barely visible through the gap, behind a distant copse of trees, is an extremely large house.
We climb out of the car and clamber around the caravan to look. I note that my suit trousers have got caught on the brambles and will probably never be the same again, but I say nothing. I’m too excited about the house to care.
The Road to Zoe Page 16
