PART SIX
Adrift
1
He packed the car as if it were a small boat in which they would be going around the world, with few ports of call from which to get provisions. He had filled an alphabetical notebook with lists of what was to be taken, and had assembled separate collections of cases, kitbags and cardboard boxes on the living-room floor. All feasible preparations had been made. At five in the morning he carried stores and luggage to the hall. He made many trips down the stairs, and needed no help.
The last item put into the car was his sextant.
‘What do you want that for?’
‘The Lord only knows,’ he said. ‘But I’ll take it.’
He was a star-gazer, but with his feet firmly on the earth. She did not ask when they would be coming back. He said they would be away some time. She replied that as far as she was concerned it could be for ever. Already boxed, the sextant was wedged with newspapers into a separate carton.
I’ll go with you, she had said, adding that by so doing she would be accompanying herself like a jailer, because there was no other way to stay in the world and prevent a return to George. Once a change begins, alterations never stop. If you stop, you begin to retreat. You are lost. So no half measures. She liked that. She might find what she had always wanted, but which up to now she hadn’t known that she had wanted: a destination without salt or tears, wherever it might be. She was his ally in the adversity of having been born and, at her most tender, felt sensations that made all areas of love seem unexplored.
She slept and dreamed till six o’clock. No sense in both of them getting up, he said. Stay awhile. She sank under water and earth, but could only clamber on to a gaudy fairground roundabout that spun too quickly and made her feel sick. The booth of the headless woman was flashed now and again into her sight. She rushed to the bathroom just in time. Childish to be so excited over a bit of travelling. You look like the miller’s daughter, her face said from the mirror, while she wondered what food of the last few days had made her vomit. A hand scraped around the inside of her stomach as she got on to her knees at the toilet bowl. She went back to bed till he called, and in her sleep knew she was dreaming, till she forgot there would ever be a time to wake.
It looks as if we’ll need two cars, not one, to shift this lot, she had said. He kissed her. ‘It’ll fit in. Means a bit of judicious packing, that’s all. Balance the weight, to keep the car stable on turns and bends.’ He had already washed the car, and cleaned it inside. She got food, to last a few days. ‘There are restaurants,’ he said on seeing so much. ‘And cafés.’
She had premonitions of being unable to find a hotel, of dusk creeping down on a road that ran through a gorge where they would stop the car and hear silence but for icy water speeding over rocks. The road was crumbling in places, dangerous to continue in such bleak twilight. Near a wide part of the road, too close to rushing water to feel easy, they would open the back of the car to get at the primus. While he erected the tent under a tree she would open a few tins and slice bread for an evening meal. Or she would put up the tent, and he would do the cooking. Wolfish noises would sound over local music plinking from the radio. But they’d fill mugs with red wine to swill down what they ate. They were on the road and the road led wherever they wanted it to, whether hairpin or straight. Day after day they would pay less attention to the tattered maps, and on parking by the roadside would notice a tin thrown away on last stopping at that spot. They were going round in circles, and would soon get weary. The moon would disappear, never to come back. They would not have the will to continue, nor the energy to return. There would be nowhere to go, and nothing to look for any more. They had been everywhere, yet had arrived at no recognizable destination. When wolves threatened, and it seemed death to take another step, the Wandering Jew would call to God and become strong again. Or would he?
No hotels would accept them. They would park in a field and bed down in the car, no water to wash with and no food to speak of. The land, ordinary enough except when not pretty in its pastoral way, was inhospitable, and without accommodation. It would rain. The earth, smelling of soil and water, would soften into mud. The car would sink to its axles. They would get out. They had feet: they could walk. They had legs: they could abandon everything and move. With travellers’ cheques, even at walking speed, they would eat and pay their way. But they might lose the cheques, or be robbed in their sleep. Deprived of protection and sustenance, they’d be collected into a group of similarly bereft travellers and left to perish, or deliberately killed for what possessions they still had. They would die without anyone either knowing or caring. Or if they did know, the other people of the world would be glad they had been put out of the way, because they wouldn’t then be a bother with their problems any more. Yet if they were murdered they would cease to torment themselves, which would annoy the world even more, no matter how aggravated the world had been by their existence, because as long as they were present the world could torment them. You couldn’t win. They travelled, and had no country. What business had they to travel, and have no country into the bargain? If they had no country they shouldn’t travel. If they travelled they shouldn’t be without a country. If they stayed where they were they should move. If they moved they ought to have stayed where they were. The only answer was to have a country, and they would have one to hold forever, but at this moment, before the matter was rectified, they were chased through a forest in which it was muddy underfoot. The menacing breath of deadly hunters close behind was like the noise of an animal as high as the sky and about to pounce.
He kissed her forehead. ‘My love, everything’s in. It’s a quarter past six.’
She hadn’t slept well. On her various holidays it had been impossible to get much rest the night before departure, either going or coming. ‘Are we really leaving?’
‘We have tickets, passports, money and a loaded car. I seem to feel we are.’
She sipped her coffee. ‘How’s the weather?’
‘The sea will be calm.’
‘I’ve never been on a ship.’
‘You’ll enjoy it. Can you eat scrambled eggs for breakfast?’
‘I’d rather have bread and jam. I feel queasy.’
‘Excited at leaving?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘So am I.’ But he wasn’t. All travelling was going home, and she was coming with him. It was as simple as that – on one level. Where they were going seemed hardly to concern either of them. The move couldn’t be said to matter to him, being part of his mechanism that no longer needed attention.
They would get to the mainland and wander. She felt at peace with herself and in no way worried at what was to happen. She relinquished the knowledge that she loved him. The word had no meaning anymore. They were together, and she was free, hoping he felt the same.
He drove carefully so as to accustom himself to the load. By eight o’clock they were half-way to Lewes. A letter on the table explained to Judy where the rubbish was to be put, how to work the central heating, and what ought to be eaten first from the provisioned refrigerator. He was systematic. The lists were prominent and legible. ‘It’s not much trouble,’ he said, ‘and makes life easier for everyone. Judy will be glad of them, I’m sure she will.’
Could one live without advice, information and instructions – iron orders couched in the velvet glove of a request? She supposed not. She could figure no alternative to giving such help. Perhaps he knew Judy better than she ever could.
A cheque for five hundred pounds lay on the piano top, and a note that his solicitor would pay her every month now that she was caretaking the flat. A van hired by him had been sent up to London to move her goods, and three railway tickets had been posted in a registered letter.