Travelling in a Strange Land Read online

  But what it’s like to carry a child inside you for nine months and how that affects the way you think of them for the rest of your life is something I can’t ever know because I’m a man and all I’ve contributed was when the moment’s desire expelled a million sperm and all I’ve done is buy a conception lottery ticket, let nature pick the winning number. Some of the mothers-to-be are embarrassed when the moment comes but others are flirtatious and when they remove the dressing gown that I’ve asked them to bring and get them to wear while we work out positions, sort out lighting, they do it with a theatrical flourish as if they’re on set. I always feel obliged to say something to hide the fact that I’m usually the one who’s embarrassed and so I generally use ‘Looks good. Hold it there’ because it suggests I’m talking of the photo’s composition but leaving the possibility that it might include them as well.

  I hit a part of the road where for some reason less snow seems to have been cleared so the traffic slows to a crawl for a couple of miles. The car is stuffy and I open my window and feel the rush of cold air against my face. Thirty seconds later I close it again and eat one of the sandwiches Lorna has made. Then the traffic starts to pick up speed and before long I find myself with a lorry in front and a lorry behind that’s too close which feels like it’s impatient, pressurising me to go faster than I feel is safe. I’m glancing constantly in my mirror but can’t see the driver and suddenly it seems as if I’m in that Spielberg film Duel only this time we’re not in a Californian desert but in a winter landscape that’s underwritten with treachery and I think if the lorry in front comes to a sudden halt I don’t have braking distance and I could end up sandwiched between two forty-tonne vehicles. Starting to get television images in my head of those crashes which so disturbingly undermine your belief in the supposed strength of metal, I look for a turn-off, but nothing offers a safe escape and so for another couple of miles I reluctantly stay in convoy trying to gradually lower my speed to create more distance between me and the lorry in front. The one behind feels so physically close that I think if I have to stop suddenly it would simply roll over the top of me. And suddenly it’s not Duel I’m driving in but Ice Road Truckers with its hale and hearty drivers, talking up the danger, all fired-up on their private image of themselves as the Pony Express delivering the mail across distant and dangerous frontiers. I watch late at night when the house is silently sleeping and the stop-start hum from the fridge, the wallop of weary hot-water pipes, transmutes into the groan of the ice as I imagine the fissures spreading like lightning forks. All that weight of truck and cargo plunging into the lake’s dark waters and I read enough books to understand that it’s a metaphor for all our journeys. Before I go to bed I look in at Lilly, let the sound of her breathing seep through me until I’m washed clean, feel a new steadiness in my silent steps. And when I sleep I try not to have that recurring dream where I’m walking out across a frozen lake. Further and further.

  Waiting for the sudden crack. Sometimes seeing a face I recognise below the ice.

  When people tailgate me I feel the temptation to hit the brakes, let them learn their lesson, but of course I never do because that’s mutually disastrous regardless of who’s in the right. Drive for six point four miles. More than anything I’d like to be weightless, to walk across whatever ice stretches out ahead and never again to hear that splintering sound. When we were kids we’d break ice puddles, make the ice tear and screech, smash the thicker surfaces with the heels of our wellingtons. A rule-keeping child’s timid substitute for breaking windows and perhaps it’s my imagination but despite the music playing in the car I’ve started to become conscious of the slushy sounds coming from below my wheels and know if it freezes again the surface will be like glass. I keep looking for a turn-off road where I can remove myself from a potential disaster but the side roads all look choked with snow and seem to offer limited prospects of a turn back to the right direction. Then just when I’m thinking of flicking on my hazards as a kind of warning to the driver behind, she tells me At the next roundabout take the second exit and I understand that this is my best chance so as I enter the roundabout which is laden with a mass of dumped snow I pass on the second exit and do a circle of it to bring me back on the right road, but this time behind the second lorry. And I settle down again to a speed I feel is safer. Safer only on the outside because the after-echo of Daniel still lingers, reluctant to fade back into the music even though it’s one of my favourite songs, so I put it on repeat and listen to Van Morrison’s ‘Snow in San Anselmo’, trying to place myself inside the different parts of the story with the waitress telling me snow is coming down for the first time in thirty years; a pancake house that’s open twenty-four hours; some madman looking for a fight. The choir, his voice, the moment. Just the moment. But Daniel’s voice is a descant over the top of everything and the echo doesn’t fade but instead returns to the very instant of its release.

  A son so full of shit that it leaches to the surface of his skin and finds expression in pitted blemishes like some piece of bruised fruit. The fruit of my loins, that’s what they call your child, so this is to be my life’s harvest. This is what has been brought to fruition and as always there’s the same question, repeated over and over, as to how you tended that growth, how well you protected it from disease. I tell myself that the world is filled with infected spores, that they blow where they will, carried on currents invisible to the eye and so impossible to repulse. But none of it convinces and I am shackled to that inescapable burden of guilt and, despite knowing I must somehow find a way to glimpse even the beginning of absolution if I am to survive, I don’t know how that can be done so all there is for me to do is keep the car on the road, keep covering the miles and bring Luke home.

  A sign for Lockerbie. A burning plane falling out of the sky. It makes me shiver. Presumably the landscape is healed with all the signs of devastation long cleared away, replaced by memorials and lives destined never to return to the way they were. I can’t be sure but I think it happened on a day close to Christmas. Maybe even as close as this very day. I can’t remember either whether it fell into snow before it scorched the earth black. But as I strain to think about it I remember a father whose daughter was on the plane, campaigning to find the truth of what happened and then coming to believe that the man who ended up in prison was not the guilty one. And I’ve started to wonder if there is always a truth that’s given to us so we never discover other, more inconvenient ones. I’m not someone who believes in every conspiracy theory but when you’ve lived through a period of the Troubles it gradually begins to dawn on you that we’ve given up on facts. Partly because they’re in dispute but mostly because they’re deemed unhelpful to a future based on agreement. So now there’s only what they call narratives and we’re all allowed to have our different ones, even if I think my narrative is the one that’s true and yours is make-believe. Anyway, what’s it matter because unless you’ve had someone blown to pieces or their throat cut on account of the road they were walking on – it’s a narrative, just another story. Washed up in the wake of our history your story doesn’t even belong to you any more – someone else can claim ownership of it, make it part of theirs.

  I pass a man on skis, both poles working like pistons as he snow-walks to wherever the hell he’s going. I know that I have to hold Daniel’s story close, not let anyone else find a different narrative, impose a different reading, because I’m the one who needs to make sense of it. I’m still trying every day, every single day to do that, and perhaps in time, even though I can’t easily imagine it, it might become a story that can be shared because I don’t need a shrink to tell me that holding it so close will be corrosive and stop me being fully what I need to be for my children. These are things I know in my head but have not yet felt in my heart, or being, or wherever it is you need to experience them.

  I’m travelling in a strange land. The world outside the car is snowbound, utterly changed – so much snow that everywhere looks deeply buried. Mostl
y what I like about driving is that it allows you to drift into an internal cruise control where even mechanical actions are instinctive and largely unregistered, so sometimes you can suddenly look out and momentarily grasp where you are, without having any real memory of how you got there. But now although the snow seems at first to homogenise the world I am sensitive to every vibration of the car and register everything I see as if they are markers guiding the way – a snow-blistered stone wall, a particular shape of tree that looks like it’s wearing a wind-shivered wedding dress, road signs that are layered with white. And outside the world of the car there are people missing on mountains, remote villages cut off, farmers getting drops of fodder for their animals. Grounded flights, the country frozen into immobility. My son unable to get home. There’s something they’re not telling us about the weather. I buy into global warming but I think there’s other stuff they’re hiding from us. And what I don’t understand is why when the world is getting warmer last summer was a washout and why this winter has produced more snow than we can handle. I pass landscapes that seem to beg for a photograph but right now I know that the result would be nothing more than a cheap calendar shot for December. Snow for December, autumn leaves for October and lambs for spring – I did one for a local bank once. That was what they wanted. Not exactly Ansel Adams. Devoid of all mystery. No Thundercloud, Lake Tahoe; no Aspens, Northern New Mexico; no Oak Tree, no Snowstorm – the images that are lodged in whatever creative memory I still have left. Landscape living in the eye, transmuting itself until it can only be seen through some dream of the imagination, so that the image is both itself and something new that can’t be described in words. And that feels like it’s out of my reach because whatever part of me needs to be alive to make it happen is also frozen into immobility.

  Children sledge in a field ploughing white furrows behind them. Luke has an eye. I saw that early and tried to encourage it without making a fuss. He did good work for his A-level art portfolio – pictures of old and derelict buildings in Belfast. Getting harder to find them but round North Street and one of the old entries offered opportunities. I went with him, just to drive him and keep an eye on him and did my very best not to get in the way or be the advising voice on his shoulder, because it’s one of the paradoxes of parenting that most of the time things work best when space is offered and there’s no surer way of sending your children spinning into some far-off orbit than to try and hold them tightly inside your gravitational pull.

  He managed to put together a visually interesting collection, focusing on textures and decay, letting the camera find the stories, using shade and light to capture a sense of the city’s older materials, sometimes effectively juxtaposing the old and new that exist cheek by jowl. Afterwards he did some photoshopping, some of which I liked and other bits I wasn’t so keen on because it seemed to me that the subject matter spoke out loudly for itself and didn’t need any tarting up. But it was his call and I saw enough to know that he has a talent so all I can do is encourage him and share any technical knowledge that he might need. But I’ll let him do the asking. And what I worry about with Luke is that apart from music he never seems able to stick with one thing for very long. So during his teenage years he’s gone through a range of hobbies – judo, cycling, rock climbing, even fencing – but never focused on anything for more than about six months and his wardrobe and our garage are lumbered with the subsequent debris of discarded equipment. His mother has offered to sell his stuff on Gumtree but he seems reluctant to give her the go-ahead even though like all students he could do with the money. Perhaps there is some part of him that believes he might retrace his steps, isn’t sure what might be needed and what might not.

  There’s a garage open and I pull in to top up with petrol because despite my three-quarters-full tank and the small canister in the boot I harbour a paranoia about running out in some wilderness. I also want to call Lorna. They’ve managed to clear the entrance and exit and access to two pumps. Everywhere has been gritted and outside they have sledges for sale. They’re nothing much more than thin red plastic with a string attached at the front but they’ll do the business and I decide to buy one for Lilly. We’ll have to find a slope somewhere – I think maybe we could go to the grounds at Stormont, put it to some honest use for once.

  ‘Where are you now?’ Lorna asks.

  ‘On the way to Gretna Green.’

  ‘Have you found someone to run away with you?’

  ‘I’d be so lucky. Any word from Luke?’

  ‘Haven’t spoken to him. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not allowed to ring him.’

  ‘Of course you can ring him but maybe not quite so often. If he’s in diffs he’ll let us know.’

  There is silence on the end of the phone just long enough to let me know that I’ve said something stupid so I try to get back on track by asking how she is.

  ‘So-so. I’m a bit tired. Don’t know if it’s in my body or in my head. There’s always something else to get done before Christmas Day. Something you’ve forgotten no matter how well organised you think you are.’

  ‘You need to take it easy, not overdo things. No one’s going to worry if everything’s not perfect.’

  Another moment of silence before I hear her irritation say, ‘I want it to be perfect. For Lilly and Luke. And if not perfect then as good as we can make it. And I need you to help.’

  I start to outline the ways I’ve already helped – the running around, the completion of multiple lists, two nightmare visits to Smyths toyshop at Forestside, where the atmosphere amongst parents desperate to procure the final must-have craze was at best sharp-elbowed and at worst cut-throat, but she insists, ‘That’s not what I mean. What I want from you is for you to be there and part of it, not standing on the sidelines and looking for some hiding place until it all blows over. This year more than ever. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  I could say I don’t then take defence in simulated confusion but the truth is I fully grasp what it is she means and that knowledge is accompanied by a pulse of shame that my previous efforts have fallen so short.

  ‘Absolutely. I’ll be giving it my very best shot. Doing whatever needs to be done.’

  ‘But I don’t want you doing that because you have to. I want you to do it for yourself as well as all of us. And Lilly wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Hi, Dad. Are you still in Scotland?’

  ‘Yes, but not for much longer. Are you going to track Santa’s journey on the computer like you did last year?’

  ‘I was only nine then.’

  ‘So you’re too old now for tracking Santa,’ I say, realising that while she’s on the cusp of knowing the adult truth, she’s still not sure and is hedging her bets.

  ‘Why does Santa come down the chimney?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lilly. Why does Santa come down the chimney?’

  ‘Because it suits him. Do you get it?’

  ‘Yes, I get it.’

  ‘But you didn’t laugh.’

  ‘I didn’t laugh but I’m really smiling, smiling ear to ear. It was a good one.’

  I tell her to put her mother back on and we talk for a few more minutes and I try to sound as if I’m bringing back both our son and a new enthusiasm for all that lies ahead. Tell her I won’t be a fun sponge. I understand now that we’re going to try and fill the spaces that have opened up in our lives with a collective attempt at happiness, that we’re to come close together, closer than ever before, and replace our emptiness with festive cheer, and I’m suddenly scared that we won’t be able to pull it off, that we’ll be papering over the cracks. The house is already awash with decorations, a real tree and outside lights on the front garden’s cherry blossom. I had asked if she really wanted those lights up and she had looked at me as if I had just defiled something and never answered a single word so I got them up and switch them on each night so they shine outside our house and link us to all the other houses on our road with their Santa-climbing chimneys, illuminated re
indeers and guttering festooned with icicles that blink.

  I think it’s these lights, ours and those of all the other houses, that are the closest this time comes to retaining any religious impulse. Setting aside the competitive element that drives some, or the desire to say look at me, for most it’s the star they’re following in the hope that even in the darkness of winter these few days might lead them to somewhere they can rekindle joy. That’s what we’ll be trying to do but I don’t know what the prospects are of success. We’re lucky to have Lilly and I want to believe we’ll get through by focusing mostly on her.

  In the garage entrance my feet crunch on grit the colour of brown sugar. The woman behind the counter is wearing flashing reindeer ears and when she says, ‘Desperate weather,’ I feel encouraged to tell her that I’m going to Sunderland to bring my son home from uni.