Travelling Light (9 page)

“No,” said Mr Connaugh, “not mineral water. Drink your whisky with plain water like the Scots. My father came from Scotland.” I hurried to the bathroom and filled my toothmug, stumbling a little in the doorway, which had an unusually high threshold. “Ice?” I asked.

He shook his head. When he’d poured a little water into his whisky, he leaned back and drank. My voyage had suddenly been altered and my peace destroyed. I was sure he wouldn’t go to bed for hours. “To you,” he said. Everything repeats itself. “To you,” I said.

“Journeys, journeys, forwards and backwards. And you know exactly where you’re going, every time. Home and away again, away and home again.”

“Not necessarily,” I objected. “There are times…” but he interrupted me.

I’d thought of telling him that, so far as I was concerned, I hadn’t booked any hotel and had no idea where I was going to end up. I wanted to give him a fairly adventurous picture of my new, virtually self-centred freedom, but he’d already launched into an account of his worries: wife, children,
grandchildren
, house and dog, the last-named having clearly died in very distressing circumstances. I closed up completely. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I
effectively
managed to shut off that dreadful compassion which has given both myself and those round me such fearful trouble. I use that word deliberately: fearful. Now perhaps you can understand why I started on my journey? Perhaps you have some idea of the depth of my fatigue, of my exhaustion and nausea in the face of this constant need to feel sorry for people?

Of course, one can’t help feeling sorry for people. Every single one of us is afflicted by some secret,
insurmountable
disappointment, some form of anxiety or shame, and they sniff me out in no time. I mean, they know, their sense of smell leads them to me… Well, that’s why I cleared off.

As I half-listened to Mr Connaugh I felt an enormous, and for me unaccustomed, anger gradually creeping over me. I emptied my glass and brutally interrupted him by saying, “Well, what d’you expect? Clearly you’ve driven them away by spoiling them. Or by scaring them! Why not let them be free to do what they want?” Maybe it was the effect of the whisky or whatever, but I added firmly: “Let go of them. The whole lot. And the house too!” But he was hardly listening and the photographs in his pocket book had appeared again.

Sometimes all manifestations of human anxiety seem very similar to me – at least, the everyday matters that people continue to worry about when, so to speak, rain is no longer coming in through the roof, there is no shortage of food and no one is being physically threatened – if you understand what I mean. Over and above factual catastrophes, miseries of one sort or another seem to repeat themselves with rather monotonous regularity so far as I’ve noticed: he or she is unfaithful or bored, someone’s no longer enjoying their work, ambitions or dreams have gone out of shape, time’s rapidly getting shorter, one’s family is behaving in an incomprehensible and frightening way, a friendship has been totally poisoned by something trivial. One is frantically busy with inessentials, while what is important and irreparable goes from bad to worse, duty and blame nibble away at us and the whole syndrome is vaguely labelled angst, a spiritual malaise one seldom succeeds in defining or even tries to define. I know. One’s opportunities for feeling ill at ease in life are countless and I recognise them; they constantly return, each affliction in its own little compartment. I should be familiar with this state of affairs and by now I should have found the right answer to the problem, but I haven’t. There is no practical answer, is there? So we just listen. And anyway, it seems no one is really interested in practical solutions; they just go on talking, they come back and talk about the same thing again and again, they won’t let you go. And here I was now sitting with Mr Connaugh, desperately trying not to feel sorry for him. It was going to be rather a long journey. At that particular moment he was holding forth about his misunderstood childhood.

The boat had begun to roll, but not too badly. I never get seasick, but I announced very clearly, “Mr Connaugh, I don’t feel very well.”

“Not Mr Connaugh,” he said. “Albert. Didn’t I say you should call me Albert? Well, that angst I was talking about…”

“Albert, I’m afraid I’m going to have to go up on deck. I need a little air; I’m not feeling well.”

“No problem,” he said. “What you need is a straight whisky now – instantly. And you can have all the air you want.” He attacked our window – you know, the sort of cabin window they screw down firmly with goodness knows what kind of screw apparatus – but he got it open and a violent and extremely wet rush of ice-cold air took my breath away and blew the curtains horizontal while my glass fell to the floor. “Not bad,” he said, much revived himself. “I’ve fixed it. Did you know I once dreamed of being a boxer? Now you’ll feel better.”

I reached for my overcoat.

“Albert,” I said, “what is it you actually do?”

“Business,” he answered shortly. My question had clearly depressed him again. There was a long silence. We raised our glasses to each other. Every now and then, salt spray drenched the table. I tried to say something funny about getting extra water in our drinks but it fell flat. To my horror I noticed Mr Connaugh’s eyes were full of tears and his face was distorted. “You don’t know,” he said. “You don’t know how it feels…”

It’s when they start crying that I’m done for. I promise them anything – my friendship for life, money (though naturally not in this case), my bed – to undertake the most disagreeable tasks, and if it’s a big strong man who’s weeping… I get desperate. I leaped up and proposed God knows what – the nightclub, the swimming pool, anything – but the boat rolled, making me lose my balance so that I was flung violently against Mr Connaugh. He grabbed me like a drowning man and leaned his great head on my shoulder. It was terrible. From many points of view my position was extremely awkward. I’ve never known anything like it. Luckily the boat gave an enormous lurch at that moment and a lot of water came in through the window. Moving with lightning speed, Mr Connaugh rescued his bottle and set about screwing down the window as best he could. I rushed out into the corridor and escaped in blind flight through the bewildering open spaces of the boat.

When I eventually stopped, utterly exhausted, I was almost alone and it was completely silent. I looked in through an open door. Deck-places. Of course, a large room full of low chairs, most of them already tipped backwards for the night. A large number of deck
passengers
lying asleep rolled in blankets. I went in, very carefully picked up a spare blanket and chose a chair as far off as possible, against the wall. Wonderful. To be able to sleep and sink into silence, oblivious of
everything
… I’d developed a terrible headache and I was very wet, but that was nothing, nothing at all. I pulled the blanket over my head and vanished into a total
disinterested
peace.

When I woke I had no idea where I was. Someone was trying to pull the blanket off me and kept saying that it was her chair, it was number thirty-one and it was her chair and she had a ticket to prove it… I sat up, dazed and confused, and began saying, “Excuse me. I mean, it was a misunderstanding and the lighting’s so bad, I really am very sorry…”

“Don’t mention it,” said the woman sourly. “I’m used to misunderstandings, that’s exactly what they’re always called.”

My headache had got even worse and I was freezing cold. As far as I could see, nearly all the chairs were already occupied by sleeping people, so I just sat down on the floor and tried to massage my neck. “Haven’t you got a ticket?” asked the woman severely.

“No.”

“Have you lost it? This part of the boat’s full, too.”

I said nothing. Perhaps they’d let me sleep on the floor.

“Why are you wet?” she asked. “You smell of whisky. My son Herbert drinks whisky. Once he fell in the lake.”

She sat and watched me with my blanket up under my chin. She was a bony little grey-haired woman, tanned and with small sharp eyes. She’d put her hat by her feet. She went on: “My suitcase is over there. Please bring it here if you can. It’s best to have your things close beside you in a place like this. Mind the cake-box. That’s for Herbert.”

Afterwards, more people came in, looking for their chairs. The boat was rolling violently and not far off someone was being sick into a bag.

“It’ll be different in London,” said the old woman, pulling her suitcase nearer. “I just need to find out where Herbert is right now. D’you know where you have to go to find out people’s addresses?”

“No,” I said. “But perhaps the purser…”

“Are you going to sleep on the floor all night?”

“Yes. I’m very tired.”

“I can understand.” She added, “Whisky’s expensive.” And a little later: “Have you got any food in you?”

“No.”

“I thought as much. There was food in the grill. But it was too expensive for me.”

I huddled on the floor, buttoned up my overcoat and tried to sleep. It didn’t work. How could this person go all the way to London without even knowing her son’s address? And they’d be sure to stop her when she landed; these days you had to give references and prove you had enough money before they’d let you in… Where was she from? Somewhere in the country… She’d baked a cake for that son of hers… My God, how helpless and
unpractical
can you get!

I slept for a bit and woke again. She was snoring and had thrown an arm over the edge of the chair, her hand looked tired, a wrinkled brown hand with broad wedding and engagement rings. Now lots of people were being sick here and there round the room and the stench was frightful. I decided to go up on deck. My old dislike of lifts came over me at that moment, so I went up the stairs and passed the grill. People were still sitting and eating there. I hesitated a moment, then bought several large sandwiches and a bottle of beer and went back down the stairs and managed to find the place I’d just come from. She was awake.

“No, but that was really kind,” she said and
immediately
attacked the sandwiches. “Won’t you have half?” But I wasn’t hungry any more, and sat thinking about how much money she might need to be allowed to land. Wasn’t there some sort of Christian hostel that looked after confused travellers? I must find the purser; perhaps he would know…

“My name’s Emma Fagerberg,” she said.

The person lying on the next chair emerged from under a blanket and said, “Shut up! I’m trying to sleep.”

The other pulled out her handbag from under her pillow. “You’ve been so kind,” whispered Mrs Emma Fagerberg. “I’ll show you some photos of my son. This is what Herbert looked like when he was four. The picture’s a little blurred, but I have several others which are much better… ”

W
EST OF
A
LICANTE
, one day in February, Professor Viktoria Johansson arrived in the mountain village where she had arranged to stay at her goddaughter Elisabeth’s house. The village was small and very old, with narrow close-built houses that climbed up the side of the mountain just as they did on the picturesque
postcards
Elisabeth sent her from time to time.

It had been a long, tiring journey. Viktoria was a little disappointed that Elisabeth wasn’t there to meet her at the airport as agreed. Perhaps not so much disappointed as astonished – they had been planning this trip for so long, and with such great anticipation. There was no doorbell. Viktoria knocked but there was no response, except that two multicoloured cats slunk down from a wall and meowed. So she took Elisabeth’s spare keys from her handbag, unlocked the door and went through into a patio. Not a large one, but it looked exactly the way a patio should – a yard paved with stone, plants in neat rows of bulging clay pots, and over her head a roof of light greenery. Viktoria put down her bags and said to herself, “Aha. A patio.” It was reassuring. It precisely matched her dream of this remote foreign country. As Elisabeth wasn’t at home, Viktoria unlocked the next door. The room seemed very dark after the strong sunshine. Its single window was small and framed a view of bright green leaves and oranges. You could lean out and pick one, thought the weary Viktoria – if, in fact, it really was Elisabeth’s tree and not the neighbour’s. There was total silence. Now she saw that the room was in great disorder – clothes, papers, the remains of a meal, everywhere signs of anxiety and haste – and in the middle of the table, a letter.

She read it without sitting down: “Dear Godmother, Just heard that mother is seriously ill, catching a plane immediately. Hope you can manage, terribly sorry to leave you like this. If the gas canister runs out, José at the café in the square can help, also with firewood, he speaks a little French. In haste, love Elisabeth. PS Would have written but it wouldn’t have reached you in time.”

Poor child, thought Viktoria – with Hilda going and falling ill right at this moment. But she was rather frail even all those years ago. The hills were too much for her, that time we went to Scotland. That must have been 19… Anyway, we were very young. Such a whiny companion. We used to talk about going to “the land where the lemon-trees bloom”, or to Spain. I’ll write to her. And to Elisabeth. But there’s no rush, one thing at a time. I wonder how you light the gas.

She took off her hat. Sitting on a straight-backed chair in Hilda’s severe whitewashed room, she tried to remember more about her childhood friend. But Hilda grew hazier and hazier, hardly more than a little prick of conscience. She lit her third cigarette of the day and busied herself studying the window with the oranges.

Viktoria Johansson had been a very popular teacher in her day. She had known how to hold people’s attention. Her sudden silences had nothing to do with
absentmindedness
; they indicated the shaping of some idea that needed to be presented with absolute clarity. Later, too, at the university where she lectured on Nordic Philology, she commanded great respect, despite her mildness and total inability to find fault or control her papers and notes, which she was constantly losing or leaving behind. Perhaps what disarmed her students was her impractical helplessness and the invariable benevolence that misinterpreted every attempt at opposition or mockery. Even at a distance she inspired a sense of security, a small stable figure approaching calmly in snub-nosed shoes. She liked to go about in a trench coat and roomy,
comfortable
clothes, though she did have a chinchilla evening cape and real pearls. She would wear her pearl necklace whenever students came to visit her at home.