‘All right.’
‘Do you mind?’ She sensed danger, especially in speed, and on the motorway. The needle rarely showed less than eighty. Her hands shook. The wreck of the safari-wagon had been a little too close.
He grimaced, as if he did mind. I do and I don’t, his expression said. ‘The motorway ends in a few miles, in any case. One day I expect it’ll go right to the Channel. Maybe even under it in three hundred years.’
He liked the thrusting forward along the great wide road that would get him quickly back to the English water. On the other hand she was right: it would be more interesting from the point of view of scenery and navigation to go slowly along minor roads, forgetting any notion of time or a schedule for reaching home. As long as they were pointing generally north nothing else mattered, though the course would be modified from time to time. ‘We’ll go north-west for a while, and get into the valley of the Loire, then head through the beautiful belly of France and curve around Paris to the west. Schlieffen in reverse. We’ll zig-zag through Normandy, and cross from Dieppe.’ If the car came to pieces on a Route Nationale, and there was no knowing that it might not let them down, they would find a couple of days extra added to their time. Speed not only killed, it wore the car out, and that was worse, he jested, telling himself that a rear-tyre blow-out at seventy could mean coffins for them both. Off the main roads there seemed less chance. But he was going to miss the excitement of the solo cavalry charge along the broad road, the tension of high speed and the hazard of so many overtakings a minute.
When he drove at such a rate he was hard to talk to. She felt the intensity of his concentration and didn’t want to break it. On an ordinary road he would go slowly and they could talk. It would be more human. Also, she said, it’ll be much cheaper not having to pay tolls every hundred kilometres. Well, he replied, so it will. But there’ll be an extra night or two on the road, though that should be a pleasure for us both.
The green and wooded hills rolled into a central French fairyland of châteaux and self-contained villages. In one they stopped at an épicerie for food, and bought bread from next door. She left him in the car and stammered her bit of French, pointing when that failed.
They parked among chestnut trees. The place was wet and she avoided mud on stepping out. The air was dank, and she reached into the back for a sweater. Tom primed the stove and made tea on the blue flame. She pulled the long bread apart with her fingers and forced Camembert in between. ‘This is the best of being on the road. I feel like a tramp. Nothing in life matters, because I’ve got nowhere to go, and there’s nowhere for the moment I want to go. I certainly never thought this feeling was part of me.’
Could he still love such a person? Wouldn’t much matter. Couldn’t matter. She loved him in so far as it didn’t interfere with her being herself and doing whatever she wanted to do. Travelling not only broadened the mind, as it was said, but opened it where all had been closed before. If somebody loved you, and she believed him when he said he did, they loved you in spite of you being yourself. They saw something more mysterious than yourself to be in love with. She felt the same with regard to him. There was an equality in a relationship that cemented them in spite of all surface imperfections, of which she sensed there were many.
He was busy, and didn’t care what she thought. Even when her speculations were spoken aloud he did not seem to concede their importance.
She felt less sleepy after food and tea. ‘Tell me if anything’s coming. I’m going behind that bush.’
He repacked the stove, then himself went to piss.
She said: ‘When we set off, I want to do some driving.’
He gave her the keys.
She began slowly, going barely thirty miles an hour. The road was curving, undulating, and in places narrow. He sat with the map on his knees, and she felt that every mile seemed like ten to him. ‘You don’t need to worry. I’ve driven ever since George got his first car. Not all that often, because he never liked me using his precious possessions, but I can drive all right.’
At this rate, she saw him thinking, we’ll be a week on the road before landing anywhere. ‘I can look at the scenery for a change,’ he said.
‘Well, do it, then.’
But he observed the road as if he were still driving. He’ll get used to it, she thought. He worked out every gear-change and brake tread, looked in the (for him) non-existent rear mirror whenever she needed to move out and get by stationary cars in a village. At junctions and crossroads he looked to see if it was clear.
‘I’m not nervous at all,’ she said, ‘and I’m the one who should be. So don’t you be.’
He laughed. ‘You caught me out.’
‘Hard not to.’
It began to rain. ‘Which switch works the wipers?’
He reached across. ‘That one.’
‘Thought so.’ A few miles further on she said: ‘Where do we stay tonight?’
‘Wherever we land. Most places have a hotel of sorts, and I expect they’re pretty much the same.’
So they could drift. Just as well, at the rate I’m going. It was more interesting, and in a way more relaxing, to drive instead of twiddling your thumbs as a passenger in the cabbage seat. ‘You just tell me when you’ve had enough,’ she said. ‘Then we can find a place to eat and sleep.’ A car coming from the opposite direction flashed its headlights. ‘What was that for?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘he’s either warning you to slow down because there’s a police speed trap ahead, though I don’t think that can be the reason, or you’re just a shade too far to the middle of the road.’
‘You’re so bloody diplomatic.’
‘It’s my nature.’
‘Just as well.’ On a straight piece she increased to fifty and overtook a 2CV van. He tried to count the trees as they went by, but they rippled along his vision like a washboard. The chaussée was certainly déformé, but she seemed not to have noticed. Or it didn’t matter.
At seven o’clock she drove into the square of a large village. The blonde middle-aged landlady of the Hôtel des Charmettes showed them street-floor accommodation across from the hotel. All other rooms were taken. He went back to fill in the passport form. They walked before dinner, sharing an umbrella along streets of grey houses that were mostly shuttered and seemingly minus inhabitants, despite the Michelin’s claim that the village had eight hundred. She liked the clean air and occasional touches of rain when a corner was turned. ‘It’s marvellous to be in such a place,’ she said, ‘and know we’ll be gone in the morning.’
A mildewed statue to a local philosopher of the last century glowed with the sheen of sunlight between showers. ‘I’ve turned you into a sailor,’ he said.
‘I always was one, perhaps. And maybe you always weren’t.’
‘I think I’m tired of continually wondering what I was, and trying to find out who I am. I don’t think it much signifies. I don’t know, and don’t want to know. Or I know, and don’t care. Whatever happens will happen, and that’s all that matters.’
Each word was an ache to his spirit. Confusion was never far below the surface, and he couldn’t stop indications of it breaking through. To that extent she had ruined him, or humanized him, though the turmoil would have been there no matter what childhood he had gone through, or what life he had led. Whatever he wanted he hadn’t yet found, and she suspected he knew very well but wasn’t capable of discussing it. He was lost, more lost than she had ever been. His tightrope of despair underfoot had turned into a razor-blade. He did not want to speak because he felt that changes were coming over which he would have no control, and that whether good or bad came from them they would be better by far than the perilous uncertainties that embroiled him.