Travelling in a Strange Land Read online

  TRAVELLING IN

  A STRANGE LAND

  To James and Sophie

  with a father’s love

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Oranges from Spain

  The Healing

  The Rye Man

  Stone Kingdoms

  The Big Snow

  Swallowing the Sun

  The Truth Commissioner

  The Light of Amsterdam

  The Poets’ Wives

  Gods and Angels

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  A Note from the Author

  The photographer must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveller who enters a strange country.

  Bill Brandt

  I am entering the frozen land, although to which country it belongs I cannot say. Sometimes I see it as from a drone, so down below unravels a snow-smothered terrain of mountains, ravines and lakes, forests that suddenly rear up and brush their whitened branches against my eyes. At other times I am sunk knee-deep in its depths with no horizon visible, struggling to continue on a journey whose purpose is unclear and I do not know where I’ve come from or where I’m going. The world is covered, its life slowly suffocated like the sheep trapped in deep drifts against ancient stone walls and which I cannot pull free. Everything is hidden, even the secrets that I hug tightly to stop them finding the light, and the world stretches so infinite that I can’t reduce it to a single frame and when I narrow my eyes it is only to shut out the wind-driven snow. All things must have a purpose and I must find mine or yield to this frozen land’s urging that I should surrender to my weariness and rest my head on the soft pillow of its snow. Bruegel’s trudging hunters who return from foraging for food in the wilderness beyond the village are also weary, but the people sporting on the frozen lake don’t rush to greet them or understand anything of what they have endured. The Revenant returns to take revenge on the man who killed his son.

  Everything must have a purpose. So what is it brings me on this journey?

  I stumble snow-blind, fearful that at any moment I might fall into some gaping crevice or step off the cliff face into a sudden shock of space, hands flailing as they try to clutch something on which to hold. Something to stop the endless drop. And then I’ve reached the edge of the lake and my eyes are clear again so I see the scree of ice trembling under the sheen of moonlight with its scatter of frozen crystals mirroring the stars. Stars whose coldness seems to burn holes in the arching darkness.

  There on the far shore stands a house. A house with a light burning. In the house are stairs that I know I shall have to climb. But how do I reach it except across this frozen lake? And who will take my hand? Who will guide me now? I look behind me but hear only the wind as it seethes through the trees, smoking spindrift and making the whole world shiver.

  Together we scoop the thick wedge of snow from the car’s windscreen. On the surface it’s still soft, suggesting that more has fallen during the early hours of the morning, but when our gloved hands finally reach the glass they find a frozen smear that I spray with de-icer. Before opening the door to start the engine and blow hot air against the windscreen I scrape as much snow as I can from the side and back windows, while Lorna uses the long-handled brush to clear the bonnet and roof until grey metal slowly appears. Our breath forms opaque speech bubbles on our lips even though no words pass between us as the early-morning light begins to work itself inside the surface of the snow so that it seems to pulse. But no trace of any form of life is warmed into being and the silent fields surrounding the house are marked only by the skittering night tracks of some creature in a confused pursuit of food.

  When I open the car door, the lock grinds in a semi-frozen complaint and a little spray of snow falls on the driver’s seat and I try to brush it away with my hand but only succeed in turning it into dark spots of water. Lorna gets in the passenger seat and we sit in the iced car as if in an igloo, blind to the world, and for just a second it feels safe, as if we are protected from everything that lies outside.

  ‘This is crazy, Tom,’ she almost shouts over the blast of the heater.

  ‘What choice do we have?’

  ‘Perhaps the planes will start flying soon. I think this is too dangerous,’ she says as she tilts the blower vent against her window.

  ‘We can’t leave him there. We have to bring him home.’

  We sit and stare at the windscreen. A widening strip clears closest to the vents. The sound of the blower roars in my ears.

  ‘You’ve set the satnav?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve got everything?’ she asks, glancing over her shoulder at the back seat. ‘I’ll bring out the flasks and the food in a minute.’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ and I mentally itemise the amateur survival kit we’ve put together the previous night – the spade, the sleeping bag, the warm clothing, the torch, the pile of CDs, and my camera of course will be there, as it always is. In the boot a plastic canister of petrol and, for some bizarre reason I can’t quite fathom, our ten-year-old daughter Lilly’s brown canvas wigwam complete with painted horses, moons and stars. She had insisted even when I told her you could spit through it and I had no energy to argue any further. Her snowman still stands sentinel in the front garden like a nightwatchman.

  ‘You’ll keep in touch,’ Lorna says for about the fourth time. ‘And you’ve got the phone charger?’

  I nod as another patch of windscreen clears.

  ‘A watched kettle never boils,’ I say, moving my head towards the glass as if my breath might speed the process.

  ‘What time does the boat go?’

  ‘Seven thirty. Should be plenty of time,’ and then I add ‘all being well’ because, with unprecedented falls of snow and the whole country frozen into immobility, nothing seems quite certain any more, and not just the relationship between time and distance but everything that makes up the world as we once thought of it feels like it has been knocked out of sync.

  A small hole appears on the glass and if I were on my own I would put my eye to it, stare into the milky light through this little lens. It’s how I spend my days, how I look at the world. Round it the ice is loosening and turning slushy. Light seeps in. There have been days recently when I’ve thought I’m not much more than some little pinhole hoping for the world’s image to finally form into permanence rather than this wavering unpredictable flux I feel inside. Growing impatient I turn on the wipers but at first nothing happens before they reluctantly shudder and scud across the screen.

  ‘And you’ll be careful. Drive steady,’ she says, turning her face to look at me.

  Her cheeks are flared red after her exertions with the snow and a little wisp of hair pokes out from under her woollen hat.

  ‘I’m going to be really careful. Just get there safely, however long it takes, and bring him home.’

  ‘We can’t risk leaving him there on his own over Christmas, especially this one,’ she tells me but I know she’s talking to herself as much as to me. ‘Not even at the best of times, but when he’s not well … we have to get him home.’

  ‘We have to get him home,’ I echo and in the iced-up car the words have nowhere to go and so they hang until frozen into silence.

  Our son Luke is stranded in Sunderland with three days to go to Christmas and Newcastle airport closed. He’s at university and living in a rambling, decrepit Edwardian house whose five other students have all decamped for the holidays. So he’s on his own and he’s not well. What’s afflicting him has not been entirely clear from his phone calls but he’s got a temperature and symptoms that suggest flu. He’s already
dragged himself out of his sickbed twice to make the journey to the airport only to find his flight cancelled. Subsequent flights are fully booked and his mother has tormented herself by translating the vague telephone descriptions into things more serious than flu. So perhaps he has pneumonia or, most terrible of all, meningitis. And although she has gone online and then put him over the symptoms like a catechism there is little that can be said to reassure her. Perhaps that’s understandable when she has her own insight into the fallibility of the flesh to deal with, and that’s another reason to bring him home because he has to be with us at this time, not far away in a world of strangers.

  The windscreen is almost cleared. Instinctively I want to squirt water on the remaining fragments of ice but know it will freeze again. We look at each other and she rests her hand on my arm then tells me I’m a good father. It’s not a claim I’d ever make for myself but I think that, if I bring our son home, in my own mind it might just help – even tip the balance, however temporarily, in my favour.

  ‘I should be going.’

  ‘I’ll get the food and the flasks,’ she says and when she opens her door a little seam of snow unravels inside the car. I watch her plod to the kitchen door and suddenly she looks frail inside my hill-walking coat that is several sizes too big for her. She’s wearing it over her pyjamas and the pink bottoms froth over the top of her boots. After I’m gone she’ll go back to bed and I hope I’ve left some heat in it for her. I inspect the pile of CDs but can’t decide with which one to start the journey.

  When Lorna returns I almost smile when I see that she’s put everything into the coolbox that is usually reserved for summer picnics. She places it on the passenger seat and straps it in, then takes off the lid to reveal enough provisions to cover every emergency.

  ‘I’ve put the flask of coffee at the top along with the sandwiches and here are the Lemsips and aspirins,’ she says, handing me a plastic bag I recognise from airport security and which is now filled with every medication our home can muster. ‘Keep these separate and make sure when you get him that he takes some of the drinks. We need to get his temperature down.’ Then she stretches her hand across the seat and I squeeze it gently before she shuts the car door and I start the engine.

  It’s a Toyota RAV4 and it’s never let us down, not once through the eighty thousand miles on the clock, but I listen intently to it in case this might be the first time. It hasn’t moved in three days but I’ve turned the engine over each morning and when it kicks in I pat the steering wheel in gratitude. We cleared the curved driveway down to the gate the previous day so it’s bordered by banks of snow and looks like a chicane. I can feel my back grind its own gears as I turn the wheel and understand why clearing snow is a popular precursor to a heart attack. The new fall of snow has been lighter than anything that has gone before so it doesn’t represent a problem but I take it slowly, staying in second gear, feeling the way. At the road I pause both to look to see if anything is coming and to do a final inventory of everything I need, patting the inside pocket where the printed boat ticket is, then set my phone in the drink holder beside the handbrake. I can tell from the pristine snow that mine will be the first car on our side road where the jagged hedgerows are momentarily rendered smooth and in the rising light gradually blooming with spangled frost.

  I make the left turn and start up the slope – it’s not a particularly steep incline but I only get halfway before the wheels spin and the car starts to slip. I put the handbrake on but know I’m not going to make it up, so carefully I let the car roll gently backwards towards our gate. I’m glad Lorna has gone inside and can’t see what’s happened. There is always a thin rivulet of water running off the field behind the house and down the side of the slope in a narrow tract that some winter mornings reveals itself as black ice. If I am to get traction I need to stay in the middle of the road. For once I wish that some heavy vehicle from one of the surrounding farms has careered along the road and made tracks but the snow only bears witness to my first failed attempt. I try again and almost reach the crest but, when I instinctively press the accelerator to ensure I make the final yards, the car suddenly slithers sideways and then despite everything I do it’s sliding slowly down the slope at a crazy angle to the world. Everything is wrong, nothing is in the right place, and I am powerless to affect its trajectory. All my frantic turning of the wheel and pressing of the brakes only seem to exacerbate what is happening and then there is a curious split-second moment of calm, of an almost welcome recognition that this, as you always suspected, is the way the world truly is, and there’s nothing for you to do but wait and see what happens.

  The car ends up sideways at the bottom of the slope facing the gate it’s just exited, as if already admitting failure and seeking to return to its parking spot at the house. It’s not a good omen for the journey and I consider abandoning it before it’s really even begun but I think of our son and know I can’t let him down, can’t walk back into the house five minutes after setting out as if I’m giving up without really trying. I hunch over the wheel and then understand that I can’t get up the slope from a standing start. Getting turned isn’t easy because there isn’t much room and when reversing I bump the hedgerow and in the mirror watch as a small flurry cascades against the car’s rear glass. But eventually I manage it and head along the flat stretch of road that leads in the opposite direction to the one I want to go until I reach the entrance to a neighbouring house and am able to turn once more. Keeping the car in second gear I build up more speed than I have been able to do before and, taking the slope at a steady pace, avoid touching the brakes. I’ve made it and the rest of the road that will lead me out to the main one is passable with care. There are more snowmen in front gardens and in my euphoria at surmounting this first obstacle it feels for a second as if they are forming a guard of honour, their black coal eyes fastened on me, wishing me well. I turn on the radio and catch the weather forecast. The voice says that more snow is likely but this time it’s the turn of the south of England and ends by issuing warnings against making any but essential journeys.

  There is no journey more essential, I inform the voice, than bringing your son home, bringing your sick son home for Christmas, and then as I reach the main road and find it ploughed and gritted I pat the steering wheel once again and switch the radio to the first CD, then tell myself that ghosts leave no prints in the snow.

  Music is important in our house and its absence in the last few months has been as dark a marker as anything else. So I’m glad in the privacy of the car I can play it once more without feeling insensitive. Lorna loves Motown and female singers like Dusty Springfield and Adele. And music has been one of the places that Luke and I have been able to come together. We’ve even been to a couple of concerts – Neil Young in Dublin and The Gaslight Anthem in the Limelight. I felt a bit old in the Limelight but the music was good and no one seemed to mind my presence or make me feel like the oldest swinger in town. In the car I have the music I’ve chosen for the long hours that stretch ahead – Robert Wyatt, Van Morrison, REM, John Martyn, Nick Cave.

  I’ve also got the Great Lake Swimmers that Luke gave me for my birthday. I’ve made a point of bringing some that I know Luke likes as well that we can play on the homeward journey – Ash, The Smiths, The National, Neil Young’s On the Beach. Luke’s always played the guitar and in school had a little group on the go until they all went their separate ways to university.

  Because it’s early and the schools are on holiday the roads are mostly clear of traffic and I make good time. As I enter the city it feels like it’s still shut in a slumber, not quite ready to face the day or shrug off the frozen covering that’s settled during the night. The Christmas decorations are not yet switched on and the snow is coloured only by the lights of the few cars I meet and the lit foyers of those buildings in which early-morning workers have already started their day. The city looks like one of its sleeping homeless, huddled against the cold and layered in borrowed clothes.


  At the docks it seems impossible for the boat to take the number of trucks that are being loaded. One after another they disappear into the bowels of the cargo deck, the air frazzled and momentarily chivvied by their exhausts. A late driver comes scuttling towards his cab with a paper under his arm and a takeaway tea or coffee in the other, hauls himself inside and cracks the engine into noisy life, the folded paper flung against the windscreen. I realise that such journeys are part of a daily ritual of commerce I know nothing about and almost experience a sense of intrusion as I wait in the queue.

  As well as the cars and trucks there is a long line of foot passengers I presume are heading home via boat and train now that the airports have let them down. Going home to their families. I wonder how everyone is going to get on, whether my ticket actually guarantees me a place, or is it similar to the way airlines regularly overbook in the belief that a number of their prospective passengers aren’t likely to turn up. But before long I’m driving up the ramp, directed into a parking place, and when I get out there is a smell that is instantly recognisable – a mixture of diesel, brine-washed metal and some ingredient to which I can’t give a name. Many of the cars I sidle past still have snow on them and in some back seats are carrier bags with presents wrapped in Christmas paper. Following other drivers I climb the stairs and heads towards a passenger lounge.

  I remember making the crossing as a child when it felt you were on something akin to a cattle boat. Now it’s got a certain plushness and comfort with shops and restaurants, soft seats instead of torn plastic and hard benches. There’s even a Christmas tree and piped carols. And I’m being greeted by staff as if I’ve just walked into a hotel, with the earlier smells replaced by those of food and coffee. The lounge however is already filling up with people using their bags to stake territorial claims, hot drinks in one hand, phones in the other, informing their listeners that they’re on the boat, that they’re coming home. I send a text to Lorna letting her know that I’ve made it and the roads weren’t too bad.