All the European and Asian countries were squashed together in the middle of the map. Australia was in the bottom right-hand corner, surrounded by ocean, separate from the rest of the world. In primary school Mrs Aujard had taught us to draw a map of Australia. She’d told us that it looked like a rabbit—Cape York in the Northern Territory was its ear, Eyre Peninsula in South Australia its front paw, and the North West Cape in the West its tail. The rabbit’s mouth, the indent below Melbourne, was about to take a bite out of the carrot Tasmania. On the map Australia looked so familiar, so friendly, so unforeign.
“I’m almost half-way home,” I said.
I lifted my blouse and pointed at the fleabites on my stomach. I’d had a feeling there was something significant about those bites. There were five of them four big ones and one smaller one—and they were arranged in the shape of the Southern Cross.
“It’s a sign,” I said.
I realised I’d been thinking a lot about home lately. For the first time since I’d left Australia I was homesick—not for my pokey bed-sit in London, but for my room in our house in Semaphore, for my family, for the smell of the seaweed piled on the beach, for a pastie with sauce. I wanted to go back to Australia. I traced my finger back along Brenda and Dan’s route. If I just kept going I’d be home. It wouldn’t be easy. There were at least half a dozen more hot and hostile countries I’d have to battle my way through, and according to Dan and Brenda the hard bit was yet to come. I didn’t have nearly enough money. I was torn. My head was telling me I should go home, my heart wanted to stay with Val.
Alun looked at me. I think he knew what was going through my mind.
“So, things don’t seem to be working out, you know, between you and Val,” he said after the others had left.
“He’s gone to the British Embassy. To see if he can get some money for Ulla, or at least that’s what he said.”
“That’s a good idea. The people there are earning a British wage. They’re rich enough to donate a few quid.”
“I don’t think that’s the real reason he’s gone,” I said. “I have a feeling he’s going to get in touch with his dad. I think he’s planning to bolt.”
“He’s just in one of his moods. Listen, Jackie.” I knew he was being serious when he called me that. “Val can be a moody bugger who’s used to getting his own way, but he’s always been a good friend to me. He’s never let me down.”
“Yes, but...”
“Has he ever left you in the lurch?”
“He left me by the side of the road in France.”
“So did I. We hardly knew you then.”
“And then in Tehran he ... he gave up on you.”
“I disappeared into the night without a word. I was the one who betrayed our friendship.”
“He didn’t know if you were dead or alive.”
“Leaving it up to the Embassy to track me down might have been the most reliable way, really. I mean, traipsing around the Middle East on the off chance that you might run into me wasn’t exactly the most efficient way of finding me.”
“It worked.”
Alun reached over and gave me a hug. “It did, but would you have come after me if Val hadn’t suggested it?”
“No.”
“There you go.”
“Anyway, he’s disappeared on me. He doesn’t want to be with me. He’s going to take the easy way out.”
“I think you’re wrong. No one knows Val better than I do,” he said. “In the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him commit to any girl before.”
“We’ve been together for less than two weeks!”
“A couple of weeks on the road, is like a couple of years at home,” he said. “I know that from experience.”
“He’s not speaking to me.”
“People have let him down. Including me. It takes a lot to earn his trust.”
I slept alone that night.
Thirty-four
Ricochet
Val finally turned up while I was having breakfast with Alun and Dolf. He’d washed his hair and he was wearing a clean shirt that I’d never seen before.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“The Embassy. I told you.”
“You didn’t say you were going to be there all night.”
Alun looked like he’d rather be somewhere else. “Did you get any money out of them?” he asked.
“Almost fifteen quid.” Val handed a pile of torn and grubby Afghan notes to Alun. “I also rang my father.”
I gave Alun an I-told-you-so look.
“I’ve booked a flight home.”
My stomach did a somersault. It was what I’d expected, but now that he’d actually said it, it hurt more than I’d thought it would. I had to bite my lip. Val took an airline ticket out of his pocket. He was not going to make me feel stupid and pathetic.
“While you were away, I decided that I’m not going back to England,” I said. “I’m going to continue on to India and then home to Australia.”
I’d done enough following. I was going my own way. Val paused for a moment and then went on with his story. Mentioning the de Lacey name had had some influence at the Embassy. They’d let him use the phone to ring Tehran and he’d told his father he’d had a change of heart, and was willing to go back to University. His father was wiring the money for the plane ticket.
Val handed the ticket to Dolf. “It’s for you, man.”
“Nice one,” Alun said.
I didn’t know what to say.
Dolf opened the ticket. “It is to Frankfurt,” he said.
“That’s as close as I could get to Amsterdam. You’ll have to phone your family when you get there. Get them to come and pick you up.”
“But it’s in your name,” I said.
“Yeah, he’ll need this as well.”
He handed him a red passport with a white cross on it. It was Swiss. It had a photo of a startled looking kid about fifteen years old.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s me,” Val said.
“But you’re not Swiss.”
“He was born in Switzerland,” Alun said. “He’s got dual nationality.”
Dolf looked confused.
“Westerners all look the same to them,” Val said. “You just have to say you’re me, man. They won’t question it.”
Actually the photo looked more like Dolf than the cheerful young man with the blond curls in his own passport.
Dolf was staring at the ticket, managing to look pleased and terrified at the same time.
“It’s okay,” Val said. “You won’t be travelling alone. Ulla will be with you.”
Val had somehow managed to convince a staff member at the BEA office to reissue Ulla’s plane ticket—the one she’d been planning to use to smuggle drugs out of the country.
Now it was Alun’s turn to look at me. I felt my face burning.
Alun added up the money we’d collected, which was a motley pile of worn and torn notes, and coins in five different currencies. He got Wasim to do the conversion. We had the equivalent of about nine thousand afghanis. Val still had most of the money he’d stolen from his father, he chipped in over five pounds to make it up to ten thousand afghanis.
“I’m sorry I doubted you, Val,” I said when the others had all gone. “But you could have told me what you were doing.”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? You’ve made your own plans.” He got up and walked out into the street. I wasn’t sure I’d made the right decision.
Ulla sat down to eat with us two days later. It was hard to believe she was the same person I’d travelled with through Yugoslavia. The whites of her eyes were a sickly yellow, her fingers were stiff from poor blood circulation. She looked fragile, hunched over as if the air was weighing her down. All her arrogance and superiority had gone. The king’s doctor had visited Ulla and told her she was only allowed to eat rice and fruit. Dolf was sitting next to her spooning rice onto her plate, giving her apricots and grap
es.
Wasim’s aunt had prepared quite a feast—chicken, salad, eggplant, rice. Alun came in carrying a covered dish.
“Since this is our last supper,” he said, “I’ve made something special.”
“ You’ve made something?” I said. “I thought you couldn’t cook.”
“There is one thing I can cook.” He lifted the lid. A pile of golden strips glistened on the plate.
“Chips!”
He’d also managed to get a bottle of tomato sauce from somewhere. We hoed into the chips, groaning with pleasure at the familiar taste. Dolf looked a lot better and he was eating again. He said the chips would have tasted better with mayonnaise, which is how they eat chips in Holland apparently.
“Wasim’s family were a bit suspicious of a man who cooked,” Alun said. “I told them in Wales all men cook chips. In fact it’s a sign of manliness!”
Alun had taught Wasim’s aunt how to make chips so they could be on the Shangri-La’s menu.
“This hotel will be the top travellers’ hotel in Kabul in no time,” Alun said.
After the meal, we sat sipping tea. We were back together again, just for that night and then we would all be ricocheting off in different directions again.
“We should sing one more Rolling Stones’ song,” Alun said. “I know exactly which one it should be.”
Dolf couldn’t play his guitar with his arm in a cast, but Val knew enough chords to strum along as we all sang “The Last Time”.
“What will you do when you get back to Amsterdam, Dolf?”
“Go back to school,” Dolf said without hesitating. “Then I will study medicine at university.”
I think after everything he’d been through, having some medical knowledge made a lot of sense. He was looking forward to having his mother take care of him and Ulla.
“And doctors earn a lot of money, isn’t it?”
Ulla was still adamant that she wasn’t going back to Sweden. “I will get well in Amsterdam, then I go to India.”
She still wanted to find a guru and join an ashram. “Following a western guru was a stupid idea,” she admitted. “I will find an Indian one.”
Alun looked at Val and I. “What about you two?”
“I’ll hitch back to England, I suppose,” Val said.
“Adelaide?”
“I’m going home.”
“To Australia?”
“Yes.”
Val was reading through the BIT notes. He read out the entry on Australia.
“‘One of the dullest countries en route, a barren emptiness encircled by suburbia.’ Doesn’t sound very appealing.”
Ulla had swapped almost everything she owned, including her embroidered jeans, for food while she was in jail. All she had left was her sewing tin, her passport and the secondhand clothes she was wearing. I offered to make her a knee-length skirt out of my split skirt and gave her my singlet top and platform shoes. I’d washed Dolf’s clothes and mended his torn jeans.
“You can’t go on a plane without any luggage,” I said. “It’ll look suspicious. You can have my suitcase.”
I unpacked my belongings and searched the pockets to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. I pulled out my folder. There were a couple of my designs left in it—my Marsupial Collection and my Galah Coat. I’d missed them when I’d torn up the rest.
“Let’s have a look, Adelaide.” Alun took the pages from me.
“Very... unusual,” he said. “Where are the rest of them?”
“I burned them.”
I glanced at Val.
Ulla looked at my sketches.
“I don’t like them,” she said. “But perhaps somebody will. You must be true to your own style.”
It was embarrassing having everyone look at my designs. I kept searching through the pockets in my suitcase. I pulled out a paper serviette. I held it up to show them where the Frenchman had written bon chance. Something fell out of its folds. It was a hundred franc note. A gift from a stranger.
Wasim gave Dolf one of his mother’s little carpets as a goodbye present. It was a marriage carpet. I wondered if she’d got the wrong idea about Dolf and Ulla’s relationship. Alun had bought Dolf an Afghan shirt. They packed their few things into the pink and orange suitcase.
“You keep this,” Ulla said and handed me her sewing tin. “I do not need it any more.”
Dolf gave me the Rolling Stones’ song book. “Perhaps you will need this on your journey.”
I knew I’d never again hear a Stones’ song without thinking of Dolf.
Alun, Val and I went out to the airport to see them off. Ulla was wearing Val’s sunglasses so that no one would notice her yellow eyes. We waved as they walked across the tarmac to the plane. My clothes hung loosely on Ulla’s skinny body. She leaned on Dolf’s good arm, more for support than a show of affection, I suspect. Dolf looked older. He walked confidently. I was pretty sure Ulla wouldn’t stay with him, but there they were on their way to Amsterdam together. Who knows? I’d been wrong before. Ulla was the one we’d all thought could look after herself, but if Dolf hadn’t persisted, she would more than likely have died in Kabul Jail.
I was worried someone would examine their documents too closely, stop them boarding, but no one did. We stayed and watched the plane take off.
I looked at Alun as he waved goodbye to Dolf and Ulla, looking completely comfortable in his felt hat, Afghani shirt and baggy trousers. I’d been worrying about him ever since Istanbul, but it was the rest of us who had come to grief on the road. He had breezed through without a hitch, as if he was born to live in Afghanistan.
“Hard to believe they’ll be in Frankfurt by tomorrow,” Alun said as we rode back to Kabul in a horse and cart taxi. He looked at me. “Are you envious?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to go in that direction.”
“And how about you, man?” Alun said.
Val shrugged.
I’d been living in England for too long. I’d developed the British trait of not talking about anything directly, not wanting to make a fuss, not showing my feelings. I was Australian. It was time to be honest. I turned to Val.
“I know you think you’ve reached the ends of the earth, but you haven’t. There’s more to see. Come with me,” I said.
“To Australia?”
“Why not? I’ve been wandering around the world for weeks without a clue where I was going. Eventually I figured it out.”
“It’s not much of a system for planning your life.”
“It worked. The world has shown me what I need to do.”
“You sound like Ulla.”
Val pulled something out of his pocket. It was his dice. Alun reached over, took them from him and threw them out of the taxi.
“If I can change direction on my own, I’m sure you can.”
Val didn’t say anything.
We reached the Shangri-La and climbed down from the cart. I was willing to give Val one last shot.
“I’ve trailed after you for hundreds of miles.”
“You were looking for Alun.” Val turned to walk away. I grabbed hold of his shirt with both hands and pulled him back round to face me.
“No, I wasn’t.”
Alun smiled to encourage me.
“Val, I’m not like everyone else. I’m not walking away from you. You’re staying behind. There’s a big difference.”
“Is Australia really like the BIT notes say?” Alun asked.
“Pretty much, but it doesn’t get too cold, there are beaches, and wages are double what they are in England, but food is cheaper.” I paused. “And I’ll be there.”
Val considered these bonuses for a moment.
“Come on,” I said, “you don’t have to be sensible all your life.”
He smiled. It had been a while since I’d seen the dimple.
“Okay, I’ll come with you,” he said.
I slid my arms around him. I didn’t care if people passing by were staring with disapproval.
> A couple of days later we were at the bus station, just the three of us.
“This is for you, Adelaide.” Alun handed me the scarf he’d bought in Istanbul. “You might need it in Pakistan. I hear they’re not so laid back about foreign women as they are here.”
“But you bought it for you mother.”
“Wasim’s family is making a rug for me to give to Mum.”
He’d already given me his rucksack. He said he was going to buy a tribal bag he’d seen in the bazaar.
Alun turned to Val. “Listen, man, I’m sorry I left Istanbul without saying goodbye or anything. It wasn’t really the acid. I just didn’t have the balls to tell you to your face. I didn’t think you’d approve.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have back then.”
“I want you to keep this.” Alun handed Val his copy of Twrch Trwyth.
“Thanks.”
I could see Val wanted to say more, but he couldn’t.
“I expect a postcard from every country you go to,” Alun said.
Val started to walk away, then he turned back and gave Alun a hug. “Take care.”
They’re British. For them that was a very emotional farewell.
“Try to stay out of danger, will you,” Alun said as we walked towards the bus.
Val was wiping his eyes on his sleeve. He didn’t look back.
“I’ll see you again, you know, even if I have to go to Australia,” Alun said.
I turned to wave a final goodbye.
“Oh, and, Adelaide, when you get to Australia, will you send me some Georgette Heyers?”
Thirty-five
East
Val is holding my hand beneath the folds of my skirt. We’re on a bus to Peshawar in Pakistan. My things are packed in a rucksack with a small Welsh flag sewn onto it. My money is now in a beautiful embroidered purse that I bought on the way to the bus station this morning—my only real souvenir.
The BIT notes say it’ll take a month or two to get to Australia and we’ll need eighty pounds each just for the fares. We haven’t got half that, but I’ve written to my bank in London and asked them to send money to Delhi. Dolf said he’d send some too. I’ve also written to Mum and Dad and told them I’m on my way home, but not to expect me before Christmas. That’s the plan, but who knows?