After the Spanish trip Wilf returned home with a heavier heart than ever. His front door wedged itself against a dam of bills, catalogues, offers and free papers. When he finally managed to squeeze inside he found a small mound of his clothes on the living room floor, where he’d discarded them in a last-minute re-pack. The usual chill of desertion had settled around the house. In the corner the answerphone flashed its remonstration. Wilf pressed ‘play’.
‘Hi, Wilf, me old china. Paul. Just to say welcome back, and don’t forget I need your disk on the fifth and not an hour later.’
A message from his sister in Stockholm.
A machine telling his machine that he might have won a timeshare in the sun.
No message from Aggie this time. She’d gone her own way, sprinting to catch her train at Victoria, hurrying back to Hisham. He couldn’t follow her any further. Wilf still had the scent of her in his nostrils, still held the rise and fall of her voice in his head. Still, he consoled himself, there’d be another joint trip, when Paul’s next commission came along. Maybe Wilf could spend the rest of his life that way, travelling with Aggie, keeping an eye on her, sharing everything with her except himself. Maybe that would be enough.
He let his backpack thump to the floor and picked up one of the free papers at random and looked at the headline without interest.
‘”Disappearances may be linked to alien sightings”—Security Minister’. He turned the page to a huge picture of a woman’s bleached face. ‘Reverse the ageing process in only two days!’ As he threw the paper back to the floor the phone rang and he pounced.
‘Hi Wilf’ said Paul, repeating the exact intonation of his recording. ‘Glad you’re back. Come in and tell me all about it. And then knuckle down and write it all up, there’s a good lad. Then we can talk about France’.
20
The France trip was different from the beginning. Wilf had arranged to set off with Aggie from London, but she called on the eve of their departure. She had some stuff to sort out, she said. She’d meet him a day later than planned. She sounded distant, sullen, even. Wilf said,
‘That’s OK—I’ll change the tickets.’
‘No, don’t’ she said. ‘You go ahead. I’ve just got to see someone first, that’s all’.
‘Who?’ asked Wilf, disconcerted.
There was a short silence, then she said, ‘Hisham. It’s nothing major. I’ll see you in a couple of days’.
They met outside the Musée d’Orsay. Wilf was early. He watched the bunchings and trails of people, the couples and families and faster-striding individuals, relishing the fact that one of them, soon, would be Aggie. It had been raining, but the sun was out now. Drops and rivulets shook away from coats and closed umbrellas and flashed in the light. They had weeks of travel ahead. Wilf was happy. But as soon as he spotted her he could tell—from the angle of her face, the rhythm of her stride—that something was wrong.
‘Bonjewer’ he said, and immediately wished he hadn’t. She refused to meet his eye. She said,
‘Did you find a good place to stay?’
She shifted the weight of her rucksack. She looked so small under it, like a tortoise with an outsize shell, but when Wilf reached out to take it from her she took two unsteady paces away and snapped:
‘I can manage’.
There was no joy in Wilf’s writing this time. He gave up asking Aggie questions, or trying to engage her interest, after a couple of days. From then on, when they spoke it was only to discuss timetables or meals or other logistics. She wanted to split the itinerary between them. She said it would speed things up if they parted ways for three days, taking a different string of towns and train routes each. Wilf refused.
‘Paul’ he said ‘would sack me if I let you go off alone’.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ she snapped, ‘I’m not a child. I don’t need a guardian’.
Wilf shook his head. ‘Sorry. You’re stuck with me’.
She folded her arms and glared in another direction.
At Narbonne they went to a museum. Aggie was impatient and fidgety and—partly as a counterbalance, partly to provoke her even more—Wilf took his time, lingering to read every label and muse over every exhibit. Each gallery had its own curator—sitting in a corner, standing, strolling about. Each curator greeted everyone who passed through—’Bonjour, ‘sieur’, ‘bonjour, ‘dame’—as the visitors landed momentarily at each display before fluttering on to the next. But Wilf refused to be rushed. He refused to succumb even to Aggie, who dawdled behind him, scuffing her feet like a child. He was determined to absorb the museum’s tranquility and mull over every item, conjuring its previous life, when it had been merely a comb or a pin or a thimble, too commonplace to deserve such rapt attention. He stood before a 10-foot board covered in jigsaw fragments of Roman wall-paintings and later layers of 15th-century hunting scenes. Behind him, Aggie ruffled the air.
‘Museums! What’s this got to do with anything? Chunks of old plaster and bits of old tat in a glass case—is that what we’re telling our readers about?’
A curator padded behind them like a prison guard in the visiting room. Wilf waited for him to pass before answering:
‘I thought you were interested in history’.
‘Yes, but not this! Aggie bit her words and chopped the air with her hand. ‘Not scraps of crap, all arranged in a line to make the tourists feel cultivated. What’s this got to do with the real past of real people?’ Seeing Wilf’s embarrassment, she deliberately turned up the volume. ‘Everyone creeping about in this reverential way, as if we’re in church, or something—I mean, why? There’s nothing mystical or admirable about the past. It’s the overworked and undernourished, struggling to get from one day to the next, and a handful of lucky sods with pretty beads, and, and jewel-encrusted daggers…’
A child stopped to marvel at Aggie’s rant and was dragged away by her mother. Wilf moved on and tried to concentrate on displays of Roman graffiti and medieval church paintings. Scrawled records of sexual conquests and jokes and curses and identities. A host of painted angels raising their hands to God. Aggie went on grumbling and Wilf went on studying the scratched names and daubed thumbprints of the dead. After a while he became aware of a new calm, and turned to see that Aggie had gone.
‘Oh, shit’, said Wilf, for the umpteenth time. He paced the platform again. ‘Oh, shit, shit, shit’. Paul, he told himself, is going to kill me. He swivelled round for another length. They were meant to be moving on, catching a late afternoon train to Perpignan. When he scoured the streets outside the musem without luck, Wilf banked on her being at the station. The train rumbled in early. He usually loved this moment—admiring the engine, somehow so much more authoritative and impressive than any British train; taking his seat and noting the decor, the passengers, the sounds and smells before another new journey began. Not today.
He took his phone out again and rang her number. No reply. He started to dial Paul’s number, then changed his mind. She’ll get here, he told himself. She’d never miss a train.
The carriage was nearly empty but he sat at the first seat he reached, opposite a woman with a sky-blue scarf tied over her hair. He saw the way she gathered herself together, ready to move if necessary. Every few seconds he was back on his feet, pretending to check something in his backpack, then pressing his cheek against the window to scan the whole length of platform. The woman opposite shifted in her seat. He sat down again, folded his arms and dropped his chin onto his chest. What if Aggie didn’t turn up? Of course she’d turn up. She’d catch a later train. He’d wait for her at Perpignan. Problem solved. And if not … Wilf raised his head and realised from the scarfed woman’s expression that he must be wearing a wild look. He closed his eyes. Of course Aggie would turn up. He’d given her no reason to run away.
A voice near his ear made him yelp. A high-pitched, comedy-mockney voice:
‘Mind if I sit ‘ere, mister?’
Aggie unholstered her rucksack, propped it in the aisle and flung herself onto the seat next to his, sending up a small tornado of dust and crumbs. The blue scarf woman lost her patience, got up fussily and made her way further down the carriage.
‘God’, said Aggie, ‘I’m boiling’.
She was leaning against him, her spidery hair tickling his neck. Wilf wanted to ask her where she’d been but was afraid of damaging this precious new mood. She began to chatter, complaining about the heat, about their tame commissions—’Europe!’ she squawked, flapping her hands to shoo the continent away, ‘Could you get any safer?’
‘Nothing wrong with safe’ ventured Wilf. ‘Safe is what tourists want—’
‘Tourists!’ She hurled himself at him again, knocking him against the window. He caught sight of the scarf woman in the parallel glass world, sitting tightlipped four seats down.
‘We’re not writing for tourists. We’re writing for travellers. They don’t want intercity services and hot and cold running water. They want what we keep promising. Cutting edge’.
‘You said every place on earth had a cutting edge’ Wilf reminded her, ecstatically.
‘I don’t remember saying that’.
‘I do’.
She raised her eyebrows.
‘Do you remember everything I say?’
She was flirting. Wasn’t she? Wilf was sure this was flirting.
‘Burma’ she announced. ‘That’s where we should go’.
We.
‘Or the Congo. Or—’
‘There’s a limit to how far we can physically travel’ said Wilf, ‘given the borders and the—’
She was staring at him now. As his words petered out she said,
‘I’m not seeing Hisham any more’.
Wilf felt the blush begin somewhere around his belly and rush up his chest and shoulders, neck and face.
‘We had a long talk’, said Aggie. ‘After the Spanish trip’.
Wilf’s hands were locked into fists on his lap. Don’t assume anything, he warned himself. Don’t hope. It might be a trap.
Aggie looked past him through the window. The train was mustering its strength and moving off. People on the platform glided past, holding up goodbye hands or turning, adjusting, preparing to go.
‘Thing is’ said Aggie, ‘we were sort of thrown together, after Naima’.
The train was gathering speed, finding its rhythm. Aggie said,
‘That’s what the bomb did, see. Blew us together’—she smacked her hands once—’then sucked us apart’. She looked straight into Wilf’s eyes. ‘We needed each other for a while. Not now’.
Wilf’s neck was stiff. His head twitched.
‘Now’, Aggie went on, ‘it’s not enough. Naima’s not enough. To hold us together’.
‘So it was … amicable?’ asked Wilf, with difficulty. His tongue stuck like velcro to his palate.
Aggie reached up with her right arm, looped it casually, balletically, around the back of his head, and drew him down to kiss him. He allowed himself to respond only after seeing her quick, preparatory lizard-lick of her lips. He closed his eyes and thought: you won’t get away from me now.
21
‘You’re spoilt, Paul, that’s your trouble. We all are. Spoilt by all this’.
Aggie tossed her head to indicate their surroundings, then mimed apology at the waitress who started towards their table. Paul inhaled dramatically and gave his Grande americano a languid stir.
‘You’re probably right’ he said. ‘And long may it last’.
A waft of roasting coffee mellowed the conversations in the café’s vaulted spaces.
‘But that’s the point’ Aggie insisted. ‘It won’t last. It’s more fragile than you think’.
‘Cities crumble, empires fall’ agreed Paul. ‘And tourists keep on trucking, bless their deck-shoes.’
Aggie’s head lolled back in exasperation.
‘I thought Cutting Edge guides weren’t for tourists’.
Wilf laid a hand on her thigh and saw, from a minimal shifting of Paul’s eyelids, that the gesture had been noted.
‘You can’t carry on’ said Aggie ‘doing Cutting Edge France, Cutting Edge Spain, Cutting Edge Bloody Benelux—’
‘Benelux!’ said Paul. ‘Now, there’s an idea!’
‘These aren’t Cutting Edge guides. They’re Comfort Zone guides. It’s a joke’.
Paul pouted.
‘People are buying them, Ags. That makes them deadly serious’.
Aggie twisted away, jerking her leg free of Wilf’s hand.
‘If it’s all about sales’ she said ‘we might as well go back to the usual old pap. In fact I’m not so sure we ever left it’.
‘Listen’ said Paul, suddenly clipped and stern. ‘The war’s creeping closer all the time. There are only so many places we can go. And if we can’t go there, neither can the masses, however intrepid they may be.’
Aggie was resting her feet on the bar between her chairlegs now, propping her knees against the table. She never could sit still or arrange herself conventionally on a chair.
‘The Discomfort Zone is still a zone of buffer states’ she protested. ‘Yes, I know they might go up at any minute but then let’s make the most of them! Nobody else is doing it—think of it as a niche!’
There was a pause. Aggie’s left knee jiggled up and down compulsively. She picked at her fingernails. Paul looked from her to Wilf and widened his eyes.
‘So I take it you two are a permanent team now?’
Wilf couldn’t resist a smug beam, but Aggie ignored the question and muttered:
‘Before we know it we’ll be dragged into the war and that’ll be it. End of travel, end of café culture, end of everything. We’ll all be at each other’s throats.’
Wilf touched her elbow, willing her to acknowledge their intimacy.
‘We’ll never be at each other’s throats’ he said.
Paul groaned. ‘Oh, please, you two’.
Aggie turned to Wilf, her whole body taut and earnest.
‘But, Wilf, that’s the point. We will. If push comes to shove—that’s how it goes. People turn on their friends, their neighbours, their parents—’
(Say ‘lovers’ thought Wilf. Say it.)
‘—if it’s life or death, really life or death, we’re all savages. That’s the truth of it.’
‘Not the only truth’ said Paul, smoothly. He was examining a loose button on his cuff. ‘There are heroes as well as villains in life, you know. And we’re all on the same side. Aren’t we?’
‘We’d find excuses not to be’ said Aggie. ‘It’s like football teams. Them and us. Any excuse to hate’.
‘Why would we hate each other?’ whined Wilf. He wanted her to stop. He hated that look of veiled triumph on Paul’s face. Stop playing the firebrand, he thought at her. Stop proving his point.
‘I don’t know why we’d hate each other—because I’m Scottish, because Paul’s black, because, because you’re called Wilf—whatever!’
Immediately she was seized with guilt and extended a conciliatory hand to touch his face.
‘Whatever’ she repeated, smiling at him.
Paul said, ‘To return to the matter at hand, where exactly did you have in mind?’
Aggied snatched her hand back and focused on Paul again, rattling off her list of countries on high alert. Paul raised his palms against the roll-call, capitulating.
‘All right, all right. We’ll talk about it’.
One of his lifted hands slid easily into a summons, and the waitress veered towards them again.
‘More coffee for everyone’ said Paul, ‘while civilisation survives’.
22
Aggie moved to scratch her arm and Wilf returned to his present self. He didn’t know how long he’d been in his reverie, floating in a layer of infinity above and beyond this place. Now he too adjusted his position, tightened his arms around her, shuffled his buttocks on the uneven stone. They were on the upper tier of the ruined amphitheatre, looking out through a haze of heat and muck over the city’s wavering planes and blocks. Aggie was resting against his chest, using him as her armchair, and had drawn her knees up to reveal the brown calves under her baggy trousers. This is it, thought Wilf. This is what it’s all been for—the pretending and the panicking, the watching and the guessing. This is the defining moment of my life. He closed his eyes to the sun but retained the image of her legs, of the tiny, soft hairs and the fine crackling that had started to break the skin’s surface. If they stayed here long enough they would harden, petrify, become part of the site, a tourist attraction for future generations. And on your left, ladies and gentlement, the couple who turned to stone. Wilf already felt removed from the life around him, the guide’s commentary, the stumbling and murmuring of visitors, the hum and blare of traffic far below. Remaining here forever, keeping Aggie close and safe, seemed a distinct possibility until he became aware of the first pleasant purrs of hunger drawing him back into plans and intentions. Sooner or later they’d get to their feet, he’d lose the extra warmth of her body, they’d pick their way back across the site and return to the roar of streets and stalls, find somewhere to eat, go back to their rooftop. Wilf hadn’t expected to love this land. War had already touched its edges, but here in the city, and through most of the country, everything functioned much the same, affecting not to notice. He was smitten with it all—the desert, the ruins, the frantic, fuming towns and the spicy roadside snacks, the nights on a concrete hotel roof, under headlight-smeared skies. Aggie sighed and said something. He dipped his head to hear, without opening his eyes.
‘Empires fall’ she said ‘and cities crumble. I bet they never thought it would end—the people who sat here when it was new’.
Sharply she straightened, breaking his embrace.
‘Oh, Aggie’, he moaned, ‘not yet. A few minutes more…’
‘This is ridiculous’ she muttered. She was swivelling around, getting ready to go. ‘Here we are, finally in the thick of things, and look at us! Still slouching around with the coach parties, admiring the views. We might as well be in the Lake District.’
‘Well, what do you want to do?’ said Wilf. She was up and balancing on one foot, smacking her sandal against the ancient stone and slapping dirt from the sole of her foot. Wilf said again,
‘What do you want to do, Aggie? We’ve got the edgy destination. We’re doing the route you chose. Let’s leave it at that. We can’t help it if the war hasn’t caught us up.’
She aimed a look of rage at him over her shoulder.
‘Don’t be obscene. You think I want the war to spread?’
Wilf couldn’t answer. He could hardly say what he thought—I’m not quite sure. Aggie returned to the business of leaving, and added:
‘I just think we’re too soft, that’s all. Too used to the special treatment.’
‘We’re sleeping on a roof’ offered Wilf. ‘That’s not special treatment’.
‘Only because it’s cheaper. Not because we have to. For us it’s a treat’.
Wilf bridled with pleasure. He watched her scrape her hands through her hair and force it back into a stumpy ponytail, looping a ring of elastic rapidly around and around. He waited to bring her back, to find the correct response. Weakly, he tried a new tack:
‘Do you want to change the itinerary, then?’
She spun to face him, her face clear and eager again, her hands reaching for his.
‘Don’t you reckon? Not much, I mean, we’ll still follow the basic route. Just wander off the main trail for a bit. See what’s going on. Towards the border. See what it’s like’.
Wilf took her hands and let her pull him to his feet. Keep her happy, he thought. Play along and keep the rest of the day safe. By tomorrow she might have changed her mind.
23
An empty hut. Mountains tearing an orange sky. The smell of scorched dust and human sweat. The first heaviness of heat was beginning to press down the cooler dawn. They’d wasted time, good travelling time, and soon it would be too hot to make progress. Aggie was furious. They stood outside the shepherd’s hut, where they’d bedded down the previous night on a hard earth floor. Their backpacks were propped against the hut wall, Wilf’s pack spurting towels. The land around them was wide and still and quiet. The only movement for miles around was Aggie’s flailing arms, the only sound her voice.
‘We might never have this chance again’ she was saying.
‘You don’t have to shout’ said Wilf, though his own words were amplified in the silence.
‘Wilf,’ she said, ‘look at that road. Look at it. There’s nothing there. no one. Look.’
She took two long, deliberate paces backwards, and declared:
‘I am now on the border. One more step and I’m in the Discomfort Zone. I haven’t been struck by lightning. I haven’t been shot. I haven’t even been asked for my passport. THERE IS NOONE HERE’.
‘That’ said Wilf ‘is the whole point. Noone else comes here. They wouldn’t be mad enough. It’s empty now, but you never know what’s going to rumble round that corner any minute’.
He squinted towards the horizon as if the sentence might summon a truck bristling with weaponry.
‘It’s just a road’ said Aggie. ‘You’d have to walk eight miles through the desert to get to any real fighting’.
Wilf said, ‘In that case there’s not much point in going any further, is there?’
She gave a cough of exasperation. ‘Wilf, we’re meant to be telling people the truth. Warts and all. We can’t do that by shuffling round the edges of unpleasantness, then hightailing it back to a four-star hotel’.
‘A four-star—!’ Wilf croaked with indignation. He could feel the skin dragging at his eyes and the stubble dragging at his cheeks. He could feel last night’s hard earth and Aggie’s hard voice pressing against his skull.
‘I just stayed the night in a bloody shack’ he said. ‘I’m now standing on the verges of war, in full view of any passing sniper, on some god-forsaken track in the middle of nowhere, because you insist on ditching a perfectly good itinerary and going walkabout. You can’t accuse me of settling for the easy life’.
She stared at him. She tucked those flyaway hands into the pockets of her jeans. She was standing with her legs slightly apart, like a soldier, a gangster. She was wearing her padded waistcoat, with all its zips and pockets, despite the crescendo of heat, and her battered old walking boots, barely contained by the frayed and straining laces. Her hair was trying to free itself from its elastic band. Wilf wanted to go up to her, put his arms around her, kiss her ear and her neck, give in to her again, follow where she led him. But Wilf was scared. Truly scared. He really did see the distant flowering of dust, really heard the grumble of wheels, felt the hatred of approaching enemies. His throat locked, his gut loosened, his muscles shivered with the effort not to run and hide. He might throw up, or cry.
Aggie said, ‘You agreed to come’.
She spoke more calmly, but her words still rang across the void. ‘I didn’t force you. You agreed’.
‘I gave in’ he corrected. ‘Just like I’ve given in on everything so far.’
‘But not this time?’
‘Not this time. I’m a travel writer, Aggie. A guide-writer. I’m not a foreign correspondent. I’m not a hero or—I just travel. I write. That’s all.’
‘About the pretty things’ she sneered.
‘No… No. That’s not fair. I do try and tell the truth. It’s just … the truth isn’t always black and white. It’s complicated. There are two sides to…’
A slight jerk of her head indicated her scorn. He struggled on:
‘You have to draw the line. Entering a war zone is where we draw the line.’
For a moment they stood there in silence like a couple of gunfighters. Suddenly Aggie walked towards him, right up to him, almost touching. Automatically he lifted his arms to embrace her, but something in her stance made him stop. She said,
‘People are dying. Children. Crushed in their homes. Under tanks. Blasted by rockets. Children, Wilf.’
‘I’m not denying it’ said Wilf. ‘There are terrible things going on. Tragic. Desperate. But people know that—from newspapers, from the TV. Not from travel guides!’
‘Are you kidding?’ She tilted her head back, smiling, to read his face. ‘Are you serious? Have you seen the papers lately? Fashion advice. Bitching about celebrities. Blah-blah-blah about the latest books and sit coms and who made what slip of the tongue in the Commons Tea Room. International crisis? What international crisis? Oh, that small print, the bit you’re meant to skip, between the Westminster gossip and the rugby results’.
Stop, though Wilf, staring as if he could control her words with his eyes. Stop now. Change your mind. If only she would let this go and take his hand, everything would be all right.
‘Even so,’ he said, still holding his gaze level, ‘even so. We’re being paid to write about a travel destination. Not global warfare’.
Another silence. Then Aggie started a fresh approach.
‘Naima used to tell me I had blinkered vision’.
Wilf set his jaw. Naima again. He couldn’t compete with Naima. Aggie went on:
‘She used to say, with me it was all theory. Not feeling’.
‘You?’ said Wilf, raising his eyebrows. ‘You’re the most sensitive person I know’.
‘But, but—what she meant—’ Aggie checked herself, and Wilf could see her rearranging her thoughts. She started again: ‘All over the world there are bullets flying, bombs exploding—we know that. We switch on the telly and see it. Women wailing, children baffled and broken, men hauled through streets, through their own blood … But the women are in strange clothes and the buildings are sandy and the streets are dusty, and it’s all somewhere else, isn’t it? Somewhere foreign. Part of our background. We know it’s all terrible, but—’
‘In theory’.
‘Yes’. She stepped towards him. ‘And that’s what Naima was on about. And that’s why I wanted to do this series…’
‘And that’s why that mad bastard blew himself up on Bay Bridge’ said Wilf. She looked as if he’d struck her. Wilf was trembling. He resented her for dragging his opinions from him like a surgeon pulling out his innards.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked him, in a kind of gasp.
‘I mean, whoever it was, the bloke who set off his belt of explosives … I mean, in his own twisted way, didn’t he think he was taking us out of theory? Shaking us out of our complacency? Making us feel as well as think?’
Her face crumpled into furious incredulity. He thought she was about to speak. Then she swivelled on her heel and went to retrieve her backpack. Wilf watched her busying herself with the straps and shouldering it on.
‘You can’t go on your own’ he said. ‘Not here. Don’t be an idiot’.
‘I wasn’t planning to,’ she said, ‘but apparently I’ve got no choice’.
Wilf threw his last plea at her back.
‘Aggie, don’t go. I love you.’
She turned to face him.
‘No’ she said. ‘We’re too far apart for love’.
Now the contractions in his throat were almost uncontrollable. He sniffed violently. He clenched his fists and his voice broke out in a wail.
‘It is love!’
She considered him with sympathy. She moved her back, redistributing the load. She said,
‘Not really. People who love each other share the same thoughts. They believe in the same things. We’re not like that’.
‘We are! We’ve done all this together—’
‘It’s not enough, Wilf. We should spark off each other. Delight in each other’.
The phrase caught him unawares. Even in his wretchedness, even in the heat, in this barren, menacing place, Wilf was struck by its incongruity. She sounds like a schoolgirl, he thought. Like a Mills & Boon. But he heard himself answer:
‘I do delight in you’.
It sounded so feeble that he expected her to laugh, but she just repeated:
‘It’s not enough.’
And she walked away, over the invisible border.
Despite his fear Wilf called after her.
‘What are you going to do? Put it all right? Bring Naima back?’ She walked on. ‘What good will you be to anyone?’ he roared, as she merged into the haze. His voice filled the space between them, collided with the mountains, clashed against the sky. Wilf began to follow her. He knew that was what he had to do. But Wilf had never pretended to be a brave man. After a few yeards he gave way to his terror, leapt for his backpack and half-ran away from the border and back to safety.
24
He finished the guide without her. Visited all the villages, mountain shrines and grey industrial centres left on their itinerary, took diligent notes, worked his slow way back through grades of poverty to grades of wealth. From the empty border shack he walked six miles back to the crumbling settlement they’d passed through the previous day. From there he wangled a lift on a cattle truck to the nearest market, and from then on it was a rambling, stalling five-week journey: on coaches, crushed against men with accrid pipes and women carrying baskets of ducks and flea-ridden chickens; on the back of a youth’s moped, trailing black exhaust fumes; in a death-defying taxi, skimming the edges of precipitous mountain roads; on trains with wooden boards for seats. Presently he was back in the suburbs, where all prospect of war was swallowed by the everyday din. From an internet café he sent Paul a message: Heading home. Phones out of range. Will call later. He’d have to tell him eventually. He couldn’t bear to think how Paul would react. He couldn’t bear to think about any of it at all. When he did, he was overwhelmed with fury. Fury with Aggie, for being the way she was. Fury at himself, for loving her.
His phone was useless in a place like this. He gave up trying to get a signal; Aggie certainly wouldn’t be within range, wherever she was. She might as well be lost in space. Sometimes Wilf reassured himself that she’d probably turned tail within the hour; that she was just making a point. In fact, she was probably on a train right now, heading for the airport, beating him to it. He spent his last night in the city on a bunk in a backpackers’ hostel. He couldn’t face that filthy, fume-choked, gnat-infested rooftop. He spent the evening repacking his rucksack and replaying their argument. He mimmicked her words in a splintered falsetto—‘We should delight in each other’—as he pushed the tip of his penknife along the inner rim of his thumbnail and watched a tiny tide of muck build ahead of it. ‘It’s not enough. It’s not love’.
‘Sorry, mate?’ A tall, bearded Australian peered in through the dormitory door. Wilf said,
‘No—just talking to myself’.
‘Yeah, that’s the trouble with travelling alone. Messes with your head’ said the man, and loped away.
‘I’m not travelling alone’ protested Wilf under his breath. ‘I’m with her’.
And where was she? Bound and gagged, shot to pieces, or sitting at a camp fire, chatting away to some bearded militia man?
Wilf saw the Australian again at the airport, the following day, as he killed time shambling past neon boutiques and ‘rustic’ eateries. He saw him filing through the security gates, between police officers cradling guns almost as big as themselves, with a group of companions, all grimy and high from their travels. Wilf slipped back into the duty-free and skulked among the wines and spirits and foil-wrapped chocolates. He wasn’t in the mood to talk.
*
‘What do you mean?’
Paul frowned over his Grande americano.
‘I mean, she buggered off. Without a backward look’.
‘Into the war zone’.
‘Into the war zone’.
Wilf’s eyes dropped away from Paul’s incredulous stare.
‘On her own’.
‘I begged her not to go’.
‘Wilf, that is not the point. You should have gone after her. You should have—!’ His sentence disintegrated like a deflating balloon.
Wilf searched for something positive to say.
‘If it was the war zone,’ he offered, pathetically. ‘Maybe our map was wrong. Maybe the border’s changed. I mean, they’re changing all the time. It looked pretty quiet. No guards or checkpoints, nothing like that. Just a road you wouldn’t want to go down. Like Dalston on a dark night’.
Paul was still staring. Wilf shifted his chair to make room for a woman balancing a small dog in the crook of one arm and a coffee in her free hand. Paul said,
‘In that case, why in the name of … of everything didn’t you GO—’ his eyes flicked to the side, registering the presence of other customers, and he reduced his voice to a hiss—’after her?’
‘I … I don’t know. I’m sorry. Because I’m crap’.
‘Yes’ said Paul, simply, ‘you are’. He finally looked away. ‘More fool me, I suppose’ he said ‘for employing you in the first place. Excuse me—’ His arm shot out as the waitress skirted a nearby table. ‘Could I get some more milk here please?’ He gave Wilf a quick look of assessment. ‘So—what did you do?’
‘I finished the guide’ said Wilf. He caught the gleam in Paul’s eye before it could be doused.
‘You’re kidding me’ said Paul.
‘Well … I didn’t really know what else to do’.
Paul nodded gravely.
‘OK, well … that’s something, I suppose …’.
The waitress appeared between them and handed Paul a small jug of milk.
‘Cheers’ said Paul. He poured milk into his cup, moving the jug up and down to alter the stream. ‘So … when you say you’ve finished …’
‘I mean finished. Done. Background, route directions, map data, the lot.’
For the first time since he’d greeted Wilf at the café Paul allowed himself a smile.
‘Good’ he said. ‘Good. That, at least, is true professionalism.’ Then the smile contracted, the brow furrowed, and his voice dropped to a murmur. ‘Let’s just hope and pray Aggie makes it back from her walk on the wild side, and we can pick up where we left off’.
Wilf swayed in his chair, caught by a fresh wave of misery.
‘Do you think she will?’
‘No doubt about it, old mate’ said Paul, with a hint of sympathy. ‘Whatever else she might be, our Aggie is tough little cookie’.*
25
‘The sun always seems to find this room’ says Lambert. ‘Make yourself comfortable, old boy’.
Wilf sinks back in the wicker chair and stretches his legs. No papers on the floor this time: only a square of glorious heat. He moves his bare toes. He’s too full of food, too windblown and too soothed by sunlight to care about propriety. In a corner of the conservatory his discarded boots and socks harden inside their shell of mud. Wilf tries to remember where he is and why he’s there. His thoughts swim in the warmth of the sun. Lambert says,
‘How about a pair of slippers? Mine are on the roomy side for you, but my aunt’s might be a neater fit’.
‘No, thanks…’
The words are clear enough inside Wilf’s skull but ooze from his mouth like treacle.
‘I’ll hunt them down while the kettle’s boiling’.
Lambert lopes away and Wilf surrenders to the sun and the far call of gulls.
Upstairs, Lambert forages among the shoes beached at the bottom of the wardrobe. All have been separated from their partners, all stretched and worn to a similar, squarish shape, bulging around the toes. Her feet must have been swollen to stumps, poor old dear. Brown shoes, navy blue, beige and black: Lambert sweeps them aside, uncovering a couple of sharp-edged shoeboxes, still lidded and apparently brand new. He lifts the lids quickly to check, though knowing he won’t find what he’s looking for here. No: these are her party shoes, her promise of slimmer, swifter feet and gold-edged invitations. One pair of red, wedged sandals with plastic flowers at the toe; one gleaming pair of court shoes—both as shiny and stiff as the day they were taken from the shelf. Lambert replaces the lids and pats them, quelling a surge of compassion. He’s about to give up on the search when he spies a sugar-pink tuft and pounces on it, freeing it from the rubble of footwear and lifting one fluffy slipper like a fish on a hook. After unearthing its companion he gets to his feet and casts a look round the room. Her bed is stripped, her bedside table clean and tidily arranged with an empty jug and tumbler, a book and a pair of reading glasses. He never uses this room himself. He’s not a delicate man, but he couldn’t bring himself to occupy that bed. For the first few weeks, he made do with a small sofa in the next room, which is actually bigger and brighter and has a better sea view. Eventually he acquired a bed. There was a radio by the sofa when he moved in, and a large box of materials, wool and a half-finished embroidery. He imagines she must have used it as a sitting room and saved the downstairs for best. There are photographs there, too: a wedding, a couple with a baby, but his guess is that these are distant relatives. Certainly there have been no concerned phone calls or visitors since his arrival, and Christmas cards have been the only personal items of mail.
Her name was Josephine Walker. Never Jo or Josie on her envelopes or documents. Most of the Sunbeam regulars refer to her as Mrs Walker; some only as ‘her on the cliff’. They all accepted his version of events without interest. Presumably nobody except Mrs Walker ever ventured up this unlit clifftop route. When Lambert turned up on a wet winter’s evening with his suitcase and his broken umbrella, the smell was detectable from the road. A putrid, vegetable smell that he recognised immediately. He tried the front door without luck, fought his way past a chubby privet and through an open side door into the back garden, and found the conservatory unlocked. He had to wrap his scarf taut around his nose and mouth to go in search of the source. In fact, when he reached her little bedroom he was able to pull his scarf down again. The worst of the stench had filled the rest of the house, but she was beyond gas and liquid, virtually beyond flesh, and entering the drier, cleaner stage of decomposition. Her skin had shrivelled and blackened, revealing lengths and planes and segments of bone. She lay on her bed, her head at an improbable angle on the pillow, what remained of her feet poking out beyond the coverlet. One arm had contracted, pulling her hand up into a casual wave. The other jutted over the edge of the bed. Her book lay in a shaggy pyramid on the floor, her glasses sprawled over its spine.
‘Good evening’ Lambert said. ‘Please excuse my intrusion’.
He approached her body and tentatively raised the coverlet. There was a crackling noise as the skin of her chest came away with it, and Lambert let it drop back into place. He stood over her for a moment, unsure what to do.
‘Allow me to introduce myself’ he said. ‘Lambert Stokes. History teacher. Rather in need of digs, but rather short of readies. Would you mind awfully…?’
He dealt with it himself, out there in the garden, in the rain, with a spade he recovered from the open tool shed. It took him three hours to dig a sufficiently deep hole. The catch of the spade alternated with the clap of waves below. Afterwards, he opened all the doors and windows and emptied a cannister of ‘Spring Day’ air freshener. Once the house was bearable he heated a tin of tomato soup from the kitchen cupboard and ate it in the conservatory, while sprays of rain brushed the glass and fanned across the wooden floor.
26
She sounded subdued. Timid, even. Wilf squeezed the phone against his ear and delivered the phrases he’d been rehearsing for a week.
‘There are things to discuss. Practicalities.’
Where had he picked them up? There must be a stock of relationship clichés stored away in the brain for emergency use. ‘No pressure’ he said. ‘We just need to sort things out’.
She wasn’t arguing. All that assertiveness he’d practised splashed around too heavily on the bad line, and from far away her voice said,
‘OK. Where shall we meet?”
They met at her favourite café. The hippy place, they called it: pine tables and community notices on a big cork board. She was reading them when Wilf arrived. Her elbows were angled behind her, hands in the back pockets of her jeans. Salsa classes, transcendental meditation, sign up here for our barter system, organic veg for sale … She wasn’t really reading, he could tell. Just waiting. He knocked against a chair and she swung round. She seemed pleased but wary, unsure of his mood. Wilf liked that. It made a change for Aggie to be monitoring his response. He suppressed a smile, didn’t touch her, indicated a table and said,
‘What can I get you?’
They sat opposite each other, hunched over their drinks. Wilf’s coffee tasted of oats. He let it go cold. He said,
‘I finished the guide’.
She raised her head and her eyes travelled round the room, glancing off his face but failing to settle.
‘I shouldn’t have left you to it’ she said. It was as close as she would ever get to ‘sorry’.
‘Doesn’t matter’. He didn’t want to ask about her experience, didn’t want to acknowledge it at all, but he knew it would have to be done.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Was it … How was it?’
She blew air through her mouth and shook her head.
‘I’m such a cretin.’
Wilf said, ‘I should have gone with you’.
‘I wasn’t there long’ she admitted. ‘I turned back’.
Shame and relief prickled Wilf’s scalp. She’d turned back. And he’d already gone. She didn’t seem to be accusing him, though. She wouldn’t have expected him to wait.
‘What did you see?’ he asked. She shrugged.
‘I suppose I expected to cross a line, between one life and another.’
‘War and peace?’
‘Suppose so.’
She was craning her head back, reliving a memory, and he was looking at a scratch on her neck and telling himself not to reach forward and touch it, not to touch her skin. She doesn’t love me, he reminded himself. We’re too different. She doesn’t love me.
A family fell into the café with a fanfare of commands from the mother, hooting noises from a small boy and a high-pitched whine from a toddler. The pushchair reared and stamped its way between tables.
‘Sorry—sorry—’ said the mother. ‘Toby! Toby, shall we look at the cakes?’
Aggie watched their progress and Wilf watched Aggie. When the family was out of earshot she said,
‘Give Toby a couple of years and he’d be nursing a machine-gun out there.’
The little party crowded round a glass display of cakes and puddings. Aggie said,
‘I wish to God …’ then stopped. She had tears in her eyes.
Wilf formulated a question and tested ways of asking it. Tenderly? That would be pretty mature; that would give him the high ground. But suddenly the prospect of showing his emotions made him feel physically sick. Aggie said,
‘It was so quiet. At first. That’s what was weird. I mean, that used to be a main road, didn’t it? A major trade route. Now it’s just a road into trouble’.
‘So what did you see?’ asked Wilf again.
‘I went on walking for a while,’ she said, ‘and then this dog started barking at me. It was guarding something on the other side of the road. A pile of something. So I go sidling past, and look back, and it’s gone back to it, eating it. Snout right in there, worrying at it. And there’s a face. It’s a person. A dead person’.
She stared towards Wilf’s chest, into some distant scene.
‘You know how they identified Naima?’ she said. ‘Her bracelet. She had a silver bracelet with her name on it. That’s all they had. For a while we kept hoping she’d been somewhere else’.
Wilf waited. She added: ‘You were right, Wilf. What good was I doing to anyone?’
He tried not to show his intense satisfaction. I knew it, he thought. I knew she’d come back. Aggie said again, with awe:
‘A person. Being eaten by a dog’.
Wilf couldn’t help himself: he said,
‘Well. It’s a war zone’.
‘Yes, but fuck it—!’
They sensed a tightening among the family group and Aggie turned and said ‘Sorry’. The mother ignored her; Toby fixed her with unblinking fascination. Aggie lowered her voice.
‘What I’m saying is, when you see it—I mean … You think, it can’t be real. It’s a set-up. A film. I don’t know … You know it’s there, but you don’t believe it’.
‘It’s a war zone’ Wilf repeated., and she gave the table a little push.
‘I know. I know. And I see one dead man and it freaks me out. Pretty bloody pathetic’.
‘I didn’t say that’.
Aggie’s hand was shielding her eyes now, pressing them shut. She said,
‘The thing is, I was expecting … you know. Chaos. Noise.’
‘Action’.
She nodded without removing her hand.
‘And instead it was just a road. And a dead man being eaten by a dog’.
‘And then you turned back?’
It took all Wilf’s self-control to keep his voice neutral.
‘No. Not then. I went on. And I got to this—village, I suppose. Well, I say ‘village’—not really a village. More a kind of … I don’t know. An encampment.’
‘Refugees?’
‘I suppose so. Only they weren’t on the move, they weren’t running anywhere. Just sort of dumped on the road, with a load of stuff laid out on blankets, and carts, and a few donkeys … Like they’d been shoved a little way, ahead of the war, and then ran out of steam and just stopped.’
‘What did they make of you?’
‘Nothing to begin with. Barely gave me a look. And when they did it was that deadeyed look, that doesn’t really see anything. There were kids playing footie with a tin can. And there was this … atmosphere.’
‘Menace?’
‘Lethargy. Boredom. I don’t know—hopelessness. A kind of absence’.
On the other side of the café the family was arranging itself boisterously around a table. ‘Toby’, the mother was saying, ‘don’t pull Victoria’s hair, there’s a good boy’.
‘Then a jeep went by’.
‘A jeep?’ He sat bolt upright and she nodded, eyeing him from under her spiky fringe.
‘Yeah. Full of kids. With guns.’
‘Kids?’
‘Really, kids—I mean, 10, 12 years old, some of them. Teenagers. Shouting, and firing in the air.’
‘Shit’.
‘But honestly, they were just like normal kids who drive round shouting “get your knickers off”—you know?’
‘No’.
‘Only, with guns. And then they drive off, and there’s a bit of a kerfuffle, and there’s a woman on the side of the road, and she’s been shot.’
‘Killed?’
‘Wounded. I mean, really—’ Her faced knotted at the recollection. ‘I didn’t know what to do. Some boy was yabbering on and crying, and he grabbed my sleeve, and I couldn’t understand what he was saying. So I gave him my water bottle, and he tried to give her some water, and it was spilling out, because—’ Her hand waved around to show him a sight she couldn’t describe.
‘Choccy!’ shouted Toby. ‘Choccy-ch0ccy-choccy cake!’ and his mother echoed him, two octaves lower: ‘Choccy cake, that’s right. Yummy yum’.
‘Her insides were … it stank… You know, all those accounts of Bay Bridge, all those eyewitnesses—noone mentioned the smell. Anyway … this boy—it might have been her son—he was trying to pull her skirt down. Protecting her dignity.’
Aggie sniffed loudly, raised her head with an effort, and pinched the bridge of her nose.
‘I didn’t know what to do. I wanted my mum.’
Wilf touched her, finally; touched her wrist, once.
She cleared her throat and sat up straight, and took on a brisk, conclusive tone. ‘Anyway. There was nothing I could do. This boy was grabbing at me, trying to stop me going. So in the end I said, I’ll fetch help. He probably didn’t understand me. But I said it anyway. I’ll fetch help. And sort of pointed. And then I left. Back the way I came’.
‘Like you said—there was nothing you could do’.
Aggie’s mouth smiled.
‘One dead, one dying, and I went to pieces. What would I have done if I’d found Naima? Promised to help and then legged it? Impressive, huh. Real cutting edge’. Her fingers drummed on the table. ‘I hadn’t thought it would be so quiet’.
There was a minor commotion as Toby dropped cake on the floor and trod in it. Wilf waited. He could tell Aggie wasn’t going to say any more. But she didn’t show any signs of wanting to go. He took the plunge.
‘On the border’ he said, ‘when you said—’
Aggie made a violent little movement of her head and said,
‘I didn’t mean it’.
Wilf drew in a long, wide breath. He wasn’t sure he believed her, but it didn’t matter much. She needed him, and that would do.
‘Come on’ he said at last. ‘Let’s go home’.
27
Wilf opens his eyes from a vivid dream already forgotten, and he can barely see a thing. A grey smog presses against his face and fills his lungs. Through it he begins to make out speckled forms and muffled speech. He concentrates, gathers his senses, looks and listens as hard as he can, and he creeps forward into the sitting room, inch by inch. Gradually a scene emerges and the movement arranges itself into several discrete bodies. Some are clothed, some naked. He understands that one is at the centre of the scene, arms extended; others kneel or bend around it, busy, at work: it’s a crucifixion, he thinks, or a medieval martyrdom. He recalls a painting he and Aggie saw in Bruges, of a saint—he forgets which one—being skinned alive. Medieval horror flicks, she’d remarked, and then she’d stepped closer to examine the brushwork. The figure at the centre of the sitting room rears and wrestles and issues a feral cry that halts the blood in Wilf’s veins. The cry rises and narrows to an inhuman scream, and he shouts back:
‘Aggie! Aggie!’ and wakes to the ring of Lambert’s phone.
The ringing stops. Somewhere in the house, Lambert is speaking. Wilf sits in the wicker chair, waiting for his heartbeat to subside. The sun’s gone in and he’s cold to the marrow. He wonders whether he really called Aggie’s name, or whether it was trapped inside his nightmare. He leans forward, trying to hear Lambert’s voice. But all he hears is,
‘Toodle-oo!’ and the click of an old-fashioned phone carriage, and then Lambert is there, ambling through the sitting room, and Wilf’s on his feet, startled by soft warmth between his toes. He’s wearing pink fluffy slippers. He can’t remember putting them on.
‘That was Gwennie’ says Lambert, ‘enquiring about numbers’.
‘Numbers?’
Wilf coughs away the hoarseness in his throat.
‘For dinner. I took the liberty of booking a place for you. And for yours truly. Gwennie’s evening meals are the stuff of dreams’.
Wilf massages his forehead.
‘Dinner? You mean … supper dinner?’
He tries to gauge the time of day. Lambert is bemused.
‘That’s right, my dear. Thought you might want to pass on lunch, after our double helpings, though if you need refuelling …’
‘No. NO!’ Wilf staggers, steps out of the slippers and looks at his watch. Ten past two. ‘God, no. Lambert—thanks for the … the tour. Of the house. I’d better go and … write. Write something.’
‘Of course, old lad. My pleasure entirely. Look forward to reading the end result.’
Lambert indicates Wilf’s boots. ‘Don’t forget your footwear. Won’t be pleasant I’m afraid. Should have tended to them, I suppose’.
Wilf retrieves one of the crispened socks.
‘See you at Rosehill’ says Lambert. ‘Seven sharp’.
Wilf spends the rest of the afternoon in the town library writing about Hestyn House. He feels better for it, for doing the job he came to do, and he starts plotting the rest of the itinerary again, delving into local maps and timetables, cheered by the library’s gentle industriousness. He focuses on drawing a general map of the area, then a diagram of the house, and the effort exorcises some of the effects of the secret room, and takes the edge off his nightmare. By the time he limps back to Rosehill he’s ready to tackle another meal and a meeting with the mysterious Martha Crick.
*
Not what he expected. Martha Crick is tall and bony and has the slightest suggestion of a squint. She rises from the dinner table as he enters the room and towers a good three inches over him. There’s something bizarre about the whole encounter, about its old-fashioned formality and role-reversal. She extends a great shovel of a hand, which swamps Wilf’s own, and he notices that her feet too are unusually large, though she stands gracefully in fifth position. The possibility occurs to him that Martha Crick was once a man.
‘Nice to meet you’ she says ‘at last’, and the voice is high-pitched, piping, with a chorus-girl lisp.
The hair’s right, thinks Wilf. Yes—very Martha Crick hair. Short, pert and fair, with a side parting and what looks like a Marcel Wave. In fact, if it wasn’t for her height and those enormous hands and feet she’d be straight out of a 1930s musical, with her flowery dress bouncing round her knees in the wake of every movement.
They take their seats around two tables pushed together.
‘I thought we’d make it a proper meal,’ says Gwennie, signalling places, ‘an occasion, to celebrate my first full house since … oh, I don’t know when’.
Wilf and Martha are placed opposite each other. Lambert watches their small talk, turning from one to the other with a benign, parental air. Martha asks about Wilf’s guide, about other books he’s written, about other places he’ll visit, and Wilf gives bland replies.
‘It must be so interesting’ lisps Martha, ‘seeing new places all the time’.
‘It should be’ says Wilf, ‘but you’re always in a rush to get on to the next one’. He blinks rapidly and adds, ‘In fact I should have been on the move already…’
‘All in good time, old chap’ murmurs Lambert, and ‘Very glad you extended your visit’, with an ecclesiastical dip of the head.
Wilf asks about Martha’s line of work.
‘I cheer places up’ says Martha Crick. Wilf can’t stop studying that squint. Just a whisper of a lazy eye. Quite appealing. Martha tells him she works for the Redevelopment Board. She uses terms like ‘resource-efficient’ and ‘landscape uplift’ and Wilf’s soon lost in a fog of jargon. Presently Lambert chips in:
‘Do I take it your role is to tour our world-weary communities giving them the woman’s touch?’
Martha grins, revealing a narrow gap between her front teeth.
‘You could say that’.
‘So you visit new places all the time too’ says Wilf.
‘Yes!’ She nods emphatically and a snaky strand of hair falls over her face. ‘But I’m always looking for ways to change them. You see them as they are.’
‘What improvements have you in mind for our humble corner?’ asks Lambert. His left hand wraps itself around the handle of his silver knife.
Martha’s huge palms spread out on either side of her face.
‘Oooh, lashings of hanging baskets, tree-planting, who knows … But actually I’m here on holiday’.
‘Oh, really?’ asks Wilf. ‘In Hestyn? Why here?’
The door opens and a magnificent aroma billows in. Meat, a crisp edge of something roasted, a speckling of herbs … Wilf had thought he’d never be hungry again, but now he has to work his stomach muscles to control the rumbling.
‘What brings you to Hestyn?’ he persists. ‘Specifically?’
Martha doesn’t seem to hear. She’s too busy praising Gwennie’s culinary talents. Gwennie is trying not to smile too proudly as she dishes up. Slices of beef, impossibly succulent, with gravy of precisely the right consistency, rich and dark as chocolate, smooth as wine. Roast potatoes with skins that crackle like meringues and cloudily soft innards, golden carrots brushed with a tang of butter. Martha licks her lips and says,
‘Mrs Price, you’re an artist. That’s the only word for it. I’ll bet your family never wanted to leave home, did they?’
Gwennie simpers and Lambert says,
‘I have to say, Gwennie, even you have surpassed yourself this evening.’
‘Did you have a huge family to feed?’ asks Martha. Wilf notes her persistence, but he can’t divide his attention, not with one of Gwennie’s meals to savour. Lambert shuts his eyes in ecstasy as he eats his first forkful, then says,
‘Where did you get these carrots, Gwennie? Truly, they are carrots from heaven’.
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