The inventory of equipment and supplies was such that Lepporello would have run out of foolscap, and on boring stretches of mainroad or motorway he ticked each item, knowing that in one box was a highway atlas of Europe, with Blue Guides for civilized places and Lonely Planets for the rough. Treating the car as his desert island, there was a King James’ Bible, the single volume Shakespeare, a dictionary, Herbert Read’s poetry and prose anthology for soldiers in World War Two called The Knapsack, and the stubby little SAS Survival Guide.
He’d make sure there was a radio with short wave and plenty of spare batteries, in case he felt a pang to know whether the world was still going, or even to hear the current equivalent of the Goon Show, should he be so lucky, which would be little different to the news.
A supply of Partagas cigars would create a satisfying cloud of solo bonhomie in the evening, or send mosquitoes away coughing fit to die if they strayed too close. (Mustn’t forget half a dozen boxes of matches.) The serpentine tubes of a water purifying kit, which he didn’t know how to use but hoped would serve him well when he stopped at dusk by a scum surfaced pond to make safe liquid for a brew up was also carried.
Once a year he put up the Marechal bivouac tent and crawled in with a flashlight to be certain the moths hadn’t got their incisors into its canvas, a tent he had used years ago on taking his children camping in the New Forest. A safari bed that fitted inside would also go in the car.
A pocket barometer would warn of foul weather, and combine as an altimeter to tell the height of Dracula’s castle while exploring the Carpathian Alps, though scientific observations wouldn’t distract him long enough for a vampire bat to lock on to his throat because he’d wear a woollen scarf and a string of fresh garlic around his neck.
A compass was necessary in case he had to abandon the car and make his way over desolate moors, or go through a ride-less fairy tale forest, and beam onto the nearest small town where a snug hostelry smelling of delicious roast meat (a nubile young serving girl to welcome him in the doorway) would glow from all windows in the main square.
Should he cross a desert other than the one in himself a thermometer would measure the heat of his heart before it burst. A pair of binoculars would pick out distant figures homing towards him with malign intent, or would scan the heavenly meadows of a Shangri-La he’d always hoped to make real from his dreams.
With an electronic calculator and pamphlet of mathematical formulae he would reckon how far he had travelled after going round and round in the same circle, during hours of loneliness when he would wonder why the hell he was where he was. Or he could actuarially predict the time remaining which he had to live, or tell how much money was left for his self-indulgent wanderings, and even how many miles and kilometres back to Calais. Otherwise the calculator could pass the hours (having finished the Bible three times and Shakespeare twice) while stranded by flood or snowfall in some outlandish candle-lit flea-bitten caravanserai of the Balkans.
A camping stove slotted neatly into its metal container would fry bacon-egg-sausage in the peace that may or may not pass the hallmark of understanding in the tent at evening, followed by coffee and powdered milk under a storm lamp to read by when on his last nightstop before the Coast of Bohemia. Or he could use the signalling attachment should he be stricken by a strangulating hernia, a massive cardiac arrest, snake bite or broken limb.
For sustenance in emergencies, if all shops were shut or empty, and there was no room at the inn when he wanted a bath, he stored (apart from soap) half a dozen tins of sardines and anchovies, cans of baked beans and corned beef, steam puddings and a tin of pineapple chunks, some marmalade, packets of soup, a jar of Mrs Ellswood’s gherkins — and a Leatherman tool to get everything open. Every so often he took the supplies into his flat to check the sell-by dates, to replace any that had elapsed or were about to.
Eating-irons and a tin plate were wrapped in a tea towel, with a metal mug, a small kettle, a teapot, and a mess-tin kit picked up from Laurence Corner. Rolled blankets, sheets and a sleeping bag, a spare sweater, oilskin trousers, Wellingtons (green) and a long cape, would keep him warm and dry in the worst of weather.
Tangled jump leads would help to rescue anyone whose car battery was spent, preferably a young woman with the magic of Edith Weston (maybe the very woman herself) stranded by the roadside, and his expertise would be so appreciated that she would accept his offer of dinner at the next town, and they would spend the night having delicious sex in bed.
On the other hand the jump leads might be useful in the frosts of Transylvania, or the damps of the Danube Delta, should his own car be as uncooperative in coming to life as a dead dog, and he shivering for an hour before a motorist stopped and transferred enough power to get him back on the road.
A toolkit, already stowed, included an axe sharpened by Arthur, in case he ran out of camping gas and needed to chop wood for a fire on which to cook his supper and keep the wolves away if stranded in a forest. An entrenching tool would dig the wheels out of sand or snow, or be used for self-defence against violent peasants when he slaughtered a gaggle of poultry driving through a village or, slithering along a road of grey mud, hit and killed a grey donkey.
Cartons of cigarettes from the duty free were to hand out as gifts in repayment for minor favours when money would be insulting or the local currency worthless. A brace of full whisky bottles lodged in a box would raise the spirits, toast a meeting, repay hospitality, or get him quietly sozzled over supper before zipping up the entrance to his tent and saying goodnight to the world and himself, the entrenching tool at his feet in case animal or human marauder thought to disturb him.
Or maybe his car would be the only one in the main square of some Moldavian backwater and, within locked doors of the car, he would make his way through both bottles in good old English being-abroad style, then stagger out blind drunk for a bit of mayhem among the local riff-raff or gilded youth, a seventy-year-old in the lock-up putting the town into The Guinness Book of Records.
Fitting into two or three cardboard boxes, such supplies took up little space in the ample back of his estate, the list endlessly checked, a hand-held tape recorder-notebook on the spare seat should anything need to be added.
He could set out for the mainland and support himself on the road for as many months as he cared to take, with the assurance that if the world ended while on his travels there was enough material on board to begin civilization all over again. With such foresight, why hadn’t he so far done it? One day he surely would, become one of the landboat people in a vehicle that might crash but not sink.
SEVENTEEN
Beyond Saxondale Crossing Brian turned left for Lowdham, over the River Trent yet again, a glance at wide and placid water, dull grey today, always a sign of getting home whichever of the four bridges he went over.
He walked through drizzle to the front door and shouted in his roughest voice: ‘I’ve come to collect the rent!’
‘Mam isn’t in,’ Arthur bawled, ‘so fuck off, and see if you can do better next door.’ He was no longer the pitprop he’d been as a young man, but still straightbacked and alert, more middle-aged than elderly, an aspect helped by short hair and a clean shave.
They embraced in the hallway. ‘You look so well I thought I’d come to the wrong house.’
‘Well, it’s no use crying, is it? It’s funny, though, I still imagine her voice in the next room, that she’s dozing over her sewing machine, or I’m waiting for her to come back from the supermarket.’