Mary Watson, Sutherland Place, London, May 1978. In the summer of 1977 I traveled to France with my friend Hugh Marks. At the time I was reading literature at Oxford and I was living on a tiny scholarship. Hugh was on the dole. We weren't lovers, just friends. The truth is, we left London together that summer because we'd each been through a bad relationship, and we knew nothing like that could ever happen between us. Hugh had been dumped by a horrible Scottish girl. I had been dumped by a boy from university, someone who was always surrounded by girls and whom I thought I was in love with.
Our money ran out in Paris, but we weren't ready to go home, so we made our way out of the city somehow and hitched south. Near Orléans we were picked up by a camper van. The driver was German and his name was Hans. He was heading south too, with his wife, a Frenchwoman called Monique, and their little boy. Hans had long hair and a bushy beard. He looked like a blond Rasputin, and he'd been all the way around the world.
A little while later we picked up Steve, from Leicester, who worked in a nursery school, and a few miles on we picked up John, from London, who was out of work, like Hugh. It was a big van and there was plenty of room for all of us. Besides-I noticed this immediately-Hans liked to have company, people he could talk to and tell his stories to. Monique didn't seem quite as comfortable having so many strangers around, but she did what Hans told her to do and anyway she was busy taking care of the boy.
Just before we got to Carcassonne, Hans told us that he had business in a town in the Roussillon, and that if we wanted he could find good work for all of us. Hugh and I thought this was fantastic and we said yes straightaway. Steve and John asked what kind of work it was. Hans said we'd be picking grapes on land that belonged to one of Monique's uncles. And when we had finished picking her uncle's grapes we could go on our way with plenty of money, since while we were working our food and lodging would be free. When Hans finished we all agreed that it sounded like a good deal and we turned off the main road and made our way through one tiny village after another, all surrounded by vineyards, down rough tracks, a place like a labyrinth, I said to Hugh, a place (and this I didn't say) that in other circumstances would have frightened or repelled me. If, for example, I'd been alone instead of with Hugh, and Steve and John too. But I wasn't alone, luckily. I was with friends. Hugh is like a brother. And Steve and I hit it off right away too. John and Hans were another story. John was a kind of zombie and I didn't like him much. Hans was pure brute force, a megalomaniac, but you could count on him, or that's what I thought at the time.
When we got to Monique's uncle's it turned out there wouldn't be any work for a month yet. It must have been midnight when Hans gathered us all inside the van and explained the situation. The news wasn't good, he said, but he had an emergency solution. Let's not split up, he said, let's go to Spain and pick oranges. And if that falls through, we'll wait, but in Spain, where everything's cheaper. We told him we had no money and hardly anything left to eat. There was no way we could last for a month. At most, we had enough for three more days. Then Hans told us not to worry about money. He said he would cover our expenses until we were working. In exchange for what? said John, but Hans didn't answer. Sometimes he pretended that he didn't speak English. To the rest of us it really seemed like something heaven-sent. We told him we liked the idea. It was early August, and none of us wanted to go back to England just yet.
That night we slept in an empty house that belonged to Monique's uncle (there were at most thirty houses in the town, according to Hans, and half of them were the uncle's), and the next morning we headed south. Before we reached Perpignan we picked up another hitchhiker, a slightly chubby blond girl from Paris called Erica, and after a few minutes' discussion she decided to join our group. That is, come along to Valencia, work for a month picking oranges, then head back up to the Roussillon village in the middle of nowhere and work in the grape harvest with us. Like us, she didn't have much money, so the German would have to pay her keep too. Once Erica joined us, there was no more space in the van, and Hans told us he wouldn't stop for any more hitchhikers.
All day we drove south. Our group was cheerful but after so many hours on the road the main thing we wanted was a bath and a hot meal and nine or ten hours of solid sleep. The only one still going strong was Hans, who never stopped talking and telling stories about things that had happened to him or people he knew. The worst place in the van was the front passenger seat, meaning the seat next to Hans, and we all took turns there. When it was my turn we talked about Berlin, where I had lived the year I was nineteen. In fact, I was the only passenger who spoke some German, and Hans took the chance to speak his native language. We didn't talk about German literature, though, which is a subject I find fascinating, but politics, which always ends up boring me.
When we crossed the border Steve took my place and I took one of the back seats, where little Udo was sleeping, and from there I went on listening to Hans's endless talk, his plans to change the world. I think I've never met a stranger who was so generous to me and yet whom I disliked so much.
Hans was maddening, and an awful driver too. We got lost a few times, and spent hours driving all over some mountain, not knowing how to get back to the road that would take us to Barcelona. When we finally got there, Hans insisted that we go and see the Sagrada Familia. It was late, and we were all hungry and not in the mood to gaze at cathedrals, beautiful as they might be, but Hans was in charge and after driving in countless circles around the city we got there at last. We all thought it was pretty (except for John, who didn't have much appreciation for any kind of art), although we would certainly rather have stopped at a good restaurant and had something to eat. But Hans said the safest thing to eat in Spain was fruit, and he left us there, sitting on a bench in the plaza looking at the Sagrada Familia, and went off with Monique and their little boy in search of a fruit stall. When he hadn't returned after half an hour, as we watched the pink Barcelona sunset, Hugh said that he was probably lost. Erica said that the chances were just as good that he'd abandoned us. In front of a church, she added, like orphans. John, who didn't say much and when he did usually came out with something stupid, said that it was perfectly possible that at that very moment Hans and Monique were eating a hot meal in a good restaurant. Steve and I didn't say anything, but considering all the possibilities, I think it was John's theory that struck us as closest to the truth.