Another thought struck me. What if I lost the pieces of paper and all those important words? I wrote my addresses on another sheet—my London address and my Adelaide address, just in case.
I was frightened. Something had happened to me. I didn’t know what, but I thought I would be safe if I was inside a sleeping bag. I tried to get into my little shelter, but it collapsed. I had to find somewhere else where I would be safe.
I thought of the Citroën, which had protected me before, but the roof was rolled back and I didn’t want to sleep exposed to the dark sky. There was a solid looking tent nearby. I crawled inside. In the faint moonlight, I could just make out a sleeping bag. I wriggled into it. There was someone else in it. I couldn’t see who it was. It was two sleeping bags zipped together, so there was room for me. The other person was muttering something to himself in a language I didn’t recognise. It sounded like a prayer. Respecting each other’s privacy, we didn’t speak. I wasn’t afraid.
I hugged the sheets of paper to me. They were so important. The man next to me was crying softly. I didn’t know what was going to happen the next day. I couldn’t be sure that the sun would rise again, but at least I had those words. They would help me. I don’t know how long I lay there staring at the fabric of the tent, while my mind travelled to places familiar and unknown, and filled with words I didn’t understand. Finally I rode a down escalator that led to a garden like the one outside my bed-sit in Maida Vale, only without the weeds. And I slept. I dreamt of the safe suburban sea at Semaphore and my flowery suitcase floating on the waves always out of reach.
Fourteen
The Next Day
The sun did rise. The inside of the tent was like an oven. My night-time companion was gone. My head felt like a delicate china cup and my fingers had gone to sleep. What had happened to me the night before? I got up on one elbow and looked at the sheets of paper, crumpled and grubby, still clutched in my hands. They were pages from my folio. The important things I was so desperate to remember the night before were scrawled across my design sketches in red Biro. The words looked like they’d been written by a five-year-old or someone using their wrong hand. I couldn’t read a lot of it because I’d written things one on top of the other. There was stuff about Val, something about being in direct contact with John Lennon. The last page was the clearest. (Figure 14.1)
Figure 14.1
That was it. That was my world-saving revelation. It had made sense the night before, and the meaning was still there on the edge of my memory, if I could’ve just got hold of it, but it slipped away and faded completely. The words were meaningless. I’d ruined my folio. For nothing.
My ankle bracelet tinkled as I crawled out of the tent and breathed in the cooler air. I looked around for Val. The Danish guy was the only one in sight. He’d relit the fire and was making coffee. We had both survived the devils of the night and emerged to travel another day. We shared a look of understanding, but didn’t speak about it. The smell of coffee made my stomach turn.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any tea?”
He rummaged around in the back of his car and pulled out a small tin. He sprinkled a few tea-leaves into a mug and poured boiling water on it, then handed me the mug.
I picked off the floating tea stalks and sipped the tea. It tasted like burnt wood.
“Lapsang Souchong,” the Danish guy said.
Perhaps nothing would ever make sense again.
I looked at my ruined sketches and tried to find some meaning in what had happened. Ulla’s theories had had an effect on me. Why had I destroyed my drawings? Perhaps it meant I should start again, create new designs—some of them were almost five years old. Or maybe it was a sign that I wasn’t meant to be a fashion designer at all. I’d never allowed myself to think about giving up on my dreams before. Had I aimed too high? Maybe I’d have to be content with being a cutter or a sketcher.
One thing was certain—I wasn’t going to show those drawings to André Courrèges.
I hemmed my skirt while I waited for the others to wake.
Dolf eventually emerged from his tent. He looked worse than I felt. His blond curls were in knots. His lacy singlet was no longer white. He opened the boot of the Citroën, pulled out the last carton of chocolate milk and drained it. He took the jar of appelstroop (which I now knew was apple syrup ) as well, but there was no bread, so he ate it with a spoon from the jar. The Danish girl came back from the shower block with wet hair. Val appeared from the bushes. I was half expecting Ulla to be right behind him, but he was alone. He drank the remains of the coffee while the Danish couple packed up.
“We’re going to split,” the Danish guy said. “Perhaps we meet again.”
I waved goodbye as they drove off.
“Where’s Alun?” I asked.
Val shrugged. “In the tent, I expect. I stayed up all night.”
He looked at me and half-smiled. “You survived?”
“What happened last night?” I asked.
“Acid,” Val said. “Ulla put acid in the meal. She told me.”
“Acid? I saw her putting sugar in the vegetables.”
“That was it. LSD absorbed into sugar cubes.”
I don’t know what sort of an explanation I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.
“Why did she do that?”
“She said it was a gift.”
“Some present!” So it was Ulla’s fault that I’d wrecked my folio. “Where is she?”
Val shrugged. “She’s probably sleeping.”
“She does not sleep in de tent,” Dolf said.
Val stood up and looked around. “The Mercs have gone.”
Dolf went over to the Citroën and made a strange little strangled sound.
“Her sack is not here. Ulla is also gone.”
“You knew she was going to go with the Pakistanis,” I said, trying to comfort him. “She decided that last night.”
Tears welled in his eyes. “She doesn’t say goodbye.”
Val came back from his tent. “Alun’s rucksack has gone too.”
The three of us stood there stunned for a moment, waiting for Alun or Ulla to jump out of the bushes. We checked the showers, the toilets, asked other people. They weren’t there.
“But where could Alun have gone?” Val looked panicky.
“He goes in de Mercedes too,” Dolf said. “He wants to be wid Ulla, isn’t it?”
That had already occurred to me. Ulla could have realised what a lovely person Alun was. She could have been attracted to his intelligence and generosity.
“What are you talking about? He wasn’t interested in Ulla,” Val said. “He wouldn’t go to Iran. He was homesick. He wanted to go home!”
“He must have gone with the Pakistanis.” I couldn’t think of any other explanation. “He did love that car.”
Val turned and looked at me like I was a complete idiot.
“So he’s headed off into a country with squat toilets and some of the highest mountains in the world, just so he can have a ride in a Mercedes cabriolet? He hates being in foreign countries, he’s terrified of heights and he’s a shocking driver. He’s only driven three times since he got his licence—and he had an accident each time! He’d never go. Not voluntarily.”
“Lots of strange things happened last night,” I said.
We had coped with the weirdness of the previous night, survived a journey into our own heads, only to wake to a reality that was just as incomprehensible. Except this was worse because it wasn’t going to wear off in a few hours.
Val was convinced the Pakistanis had kidnapped Alun.
“That’s ridiculous.” I was searching for a harmless explanation. “Perhaps they just went for breakfast.”
Val shook his head. “He wouldn’t have taken his rucksack. Everything of his has gone, everything but this.” He held up Alun’s copy of Twrch Trwych like it was indisputable evidence. “Ulla had already decided she was going to go, but the Pakistanis needed another driver.”
>
“So dey take him by force?”
“That’s what I think, and he left his book as a sign,” Val said. “He’d never leave it behind.”
“Someone would have heard something if there was a scuffle,” I said, still trying to be the voice of reason.
Val thought about this. “Maybe not by force, but they must have taken advantage of the fact that he was tripping.”
That was a possibility. If he’d decided to go of his own accord, he would have left a note for Val. And he wouldn’t have willingly been parted from that book.
“He wouldn’t have gone without telling me.” Val put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the dice.
“We should tell the police,” I said.
“We’re in Istanbul, not Islington, Jackie,” Val said. “Do you think they’d care about one missing Welshman?”
He threw the dice on the ground. They showed a double two.
“I’m going to try and find him.”
“I go wid you,” Dolf said.
“But Ulla would have gone of her own free will,” I said.
He ignored me. There was no talking the two of them out of their crazy scheme. My quick, cheap ride to Amsterdam evaporated, like drops of water in a hot pan.
The boys pulled down the tents and packed everything into the Citroën. I drove to the car park outside the Blue Mosque, which was where the bus to Amsterdam left from. It only departed once a week, and by some fluke it was leaving that morning. It was early and I was hoping the bus was still there. I didn’t want to spend another week in Istanbul, sleeping in a makeshift tent, breathing in the pollution, with no one to keep me company.
You couldn’t miss the bus. It was an English double-decker, but purple, not red, with faded flowers and peace signs painted on it and Istanbul or Bust on the front where it usually said Hampstead or Willesden Green. People were still loading bags and boxes onto it. Luck was on my side for once. It should have already left, but the driver told me it would be another half an hour before they’d be ready to go.
“This is going to be an express run,” the driver said in a Scottish accent. “No sight-seeing.”
That was okay by me.
His girlfriend was pregnant. “Due next week,” he said. “We’ll be in Amsterdam in seventy-two hours.”
I could hardly believe it. In four days I’d be back in my bed-sit.
I parked next to the London taxi to make sure Alun hadn’t somehow ended up with the Vestal Virginians. He hadn’t. They emerged from the taxi blinking, like they expected to find themselves somewhere else.
Vanessa was in tears. “I wanna go home.”
I guess their acid experience hadn’t been good.
Val was in a hurry to leave. The Mercedes couldn’t have been gone more than four hours. He took my suitcase out of the Citroën.
“You’ll be all right,” he said. “The bus is safe.”
The fact that I wouldn’t have enough money to eat didn’t seem to bother him.
“Please take dis to my moder,” Dolf said.
He handed me a piece of paper with Mw. dr. E Tranberg and an address in Amsterdam written on it.
“Okay.”
Val was about to disappear, to vanish into the East. I would never see him again. I realised that I didn’t like that idea.
“Have you got a phone number?” I asked. “In England? So I can find out if Alun is okay?”
He didn’t have a phone number. “Ring my mother’s restaurant. It’s called Lentilissimo, it’s on—”
“Kensington High Street,” I said. “I used to have lunch there every Wednesday.”
It seemed so far away in time and space, I could hardly believe that Kensington High Street, Marks & Spencers and the Number Nine bus still existed. Val kissed me on the cheek. I had to stop myself from grabbing hold of his pink grandpa shirt and begging him not to go. He got into the passenger seat of the Citroën. “Come on, Dolf.”
“I have no rijbewijs,” Dolf said.
I didn’t know what he meant. Neither did Val. Dutch wasn’t one of his languages.
“Permis de conduire,” Dolf said.
I understood that. He didn’t have a driver’s license.
“I’m learning for one month only. Val, you must drive.”
“But you’ve driven the Citroën,” Val said.
“Only when Thomas is with me,” he said. “Except when I leave him behind, and then I only drive for one half hour.”
I realised that I’d never seen Dolf driving the car.
“I can’t drive,” Val said.
“You can’t drive?” I said. It was like he was saying he couldn’t tie his shoelaces.
“I never needed to.”
Dolf turned to me.
“Don’t look at me!” I said. “I’m going on that bus.”
“You can do it, Dolf,” Val said. “I’ll keep an eye on the traffic.”
Dolf was single-minded. Instead of getting on the bus that would have taken him practically to his doorstep, he was going to drive off into the unknown, even though he could barely drive. He got into the Citroën and pressed the start button. It lurched forward. I had a feeling I’d never see either of them again. The car bounced about fifty feet and then rolled to a stop. If I needed any proof that the LSD hadn’t left me with any special insight or wisdom, that was it. I ran after them.
“What’s wrong?”
“It doesn’t go,” Dolf said.
“You stalled it.”
“De engine still goes but de car doesn’t.”
I made him get out. I sat in the driver’s seat and floored the accelerator pedal. Nothing happened. I knew what was wrong straight away.
“The clutch has gone,” I said. “You’ll have to get it fixed.”
Val was already out of the car. “That’d take at least a day, probably longer.”
Veronica and Vanessa had come over to see what was going on.
I was looking anxiously at the bus. I only had about ten minutes before it left and there was nothing I could do to help them.
“How much do you want for the taxi?” Val said to Veronica.
I thought he was joking, but he took out his wallet and counted his money.
“I can give you fifty pounds.”
My mouth dropped open. Val must have had more money in his pocket than I had in the whole world. Veronica and Vanessa looked at each other like prisoners unexpectedly getting let out for good behaviour. “You got a deal,” Veronica said.
The girls were searching for a piece of paper. Since I didn’t need my design drawings anymore, I gave them one to write on. They wrote a sale note on the back, signed it and gave it to Val.
“The insurance papers are in the glove box.”
It was done. The girls were throwing things into their bags. They were packed and running off to the bus.
“Wait for me!” I said, grabbing my suitcase.
“I cannot drive dis,” Dolf said. He looked tiny alongside the big taxi. “It is too big. De steering is on de wrong side. And de ... gear stick comes from de floor.”
The bus was pulling away. Veronica and Vanessa waved it down. They climbed aboard as if it were a life raft.
Val grabbed my arm as I turned to follow them. “Don’t go, Jackie. You drive. Please.”
The voice in my head was saying, “In your dreams, pal. I’m going home on that bus.” But my mouth was saying, “Okay.”
Veronica was leaning out of the bus window, her face alight with relief. I handed her Dolf’s letter to his mother and then I took out the crumpled design that I’d scrawled my Maida Vale address on and handed it up to her.
“You can stay here when you’re in London,” I said. “Tell the Irish lady next door that I’ll write to my bank and get them to send the rent.”
The girls waved.
“Take good care of Gertrude,” Vanessa shouted.
I watched the purple bus drive away.
Fifteen
Off the Map
&nb
sp; It took ten minutes to get to Asia. The Bosphorus was less than a mile across. Gertrude had been on her second ferry trip, this time on a boat with a funnel and smoke pouring out like a steam train. I’d left Europe behind.
I felt bad about abandoning the Citroën in the Blue Mosque car park and I already missed it. Driving the London taxi was like driving a ute loaded with cement and the steering wheel was on the wrong side for Europe.
Across the Bosphorus, there was a whole lot more of the city. It was a couple of hours before we left the charcoal atmosphere of Istanbul behind and I had the brain space to think about what I’d done. There was a lot to think about. I gave myself a mental check up—no pounding heart, no cramped stomach, no sudden urge to go to the toilet. I’d just made a reckless decision. I’d given up an opportunity to go home. I don’t know if it was because I still had traces of LSD in my system, but I was completely calm.
No one had much to say. I was busy concentrating on the road. Dolf was lying on the mattress in the back, strumming his guitar and singing all the sad, slow Stones’ songs, like “Heart of Stone” and “As Tears Go By”.
Val was like a wound-up spring. “Can’t you go any faster?”
“This isn’t a sports car, Val. Gertrude’s maximum speed is about forty-five miles per hour. If I go over that, the engine strains and the temperature gauge starts climbing. I can go faster, but we’ll end up walking.”
There was silence, apart from the miserable strains of “Paint It Black” sung at half speed.
“Anyway, even if the Pakistanis want to travel fast, Alun isn’t going to be speeding, is he?”
Val bit his lip and shook his head, like a child who’d been told off.
Once we were clear of Istanbul, the rounded yellow hills reminded me of the back of the Adelaide Hills during a hot summer. There were a few trees, some animals grazing, the odd farm building, but the trees weren’t eucalypts, the animals weren’t sheep, and there was no corrugated iron. We drove through small towns of stone buildings with whitewashed walls and thatched roofs where women were wearing long skirts sewn along the bottom with holes left at the edges for their feet to fit through.