A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar (13 page)

She had met him, Nathaniel, five years ago now, as they both stood droopily in a dripping marquee at a folk concert. A young woman was singing terribly as she hacked at violin strings. He had turned and said, ‘This is one of the most awful things I have ever witnessed. You must have a drink with me in the beer tent, now.’

Cider with chips followed and the night ended in his tent, both of them trying to squeeze into one sleeping bag, he miraculously discarding her clothes as she wriggled in. Rain on the tent all night, and in the morning Frieda awoke naked except for a pair of woolly socks, with him running his finger in circles around her belly button saying, ‘You’re like something from a film.’

Breakfast was an extortionately priced omelette and bacon baguette and, as Frieda ripped open a packet of white sugar and tipped it into her tea, he had said, ‘This is the kind of breakfast my eldest loves.’

Of course. Children. Wives. All of that.

Nathaniel coughed loudly, banging his fist on the bar with each bark, in time, as if the force of his banging contributed to the dislodging of whatever solids were causing the blockage in his internal system. Frieda turned away until he had finished coughing. She wanted so much to explain to him how she’d been feeling – dislocated, rootless – but here he was, drunk, so it was pointless. She kept looking at her bike, worrying about the owl, but it wasn’t making any noise.

‘Margaret’s been re-filing all of her payslips in plastic wallets and, for some totally unknown reason, bulk-buying bikinis off the internet – about fifty different versions of the same ones, at twenty quid a pop – and the house has been full of those hideous NCT women waving organic celery sticks at me.’

Frieda stared at the bottles on the wall behind the bar. Nathaniel looked at her, catching her hand in his.

‘What?’ he said.

‘I didn’t actually want domestic details, funnily enough.’

‘I know, I am sorry. You are right.’

It used to be that the thought of his wife heightened it. The visits to his bicycle shop on Broadway Market. Frieda popping in, pretending to be a customer, and sometimes, there she was, Margaret, on the phone. She was always inordinately well groomed in an earthy, functional sort of way with short hair and homespun clothes, a casual, arty tastefulness. Frieda running her finger along the handlebars of a Pashley bike, smiling a small smile; hearing the sounds of his blood shooting and smelling his skin from across the shop floor. The bell of the door ringing. Looking in from outside, a slight nod. Coming back later when she was gone. It was vile. They were disgusting. Hands up her skirt in the back room, thumb circling her, thigh pushing between her legs. A wife could come back in at any minute; the twist and tug of a nipple and Frieda, slowly kneeling in front of him, breathing on him, not looking up yet, mouth close.

Frieda had been taught that all love was valid and boundaries were for the sullen, the half-dead and the half-wit. Marriage was an anachronism, outdated and dead. It was her duty to pull it apart, unpick its edges and bring out the real. She had, after all, walked in on her mother, when she, Frieda, was what, aged six? A year or so before she left. In bed with the American Arthurian specialist who was living in one of the caravans: Frieda’s mum’s legs sticking out of the bed and American Bill’s legs wrapped around them. Later her mum said, ‘Love is free, Frieda sweetheart. It’s better that way. I love Daddy too.’

This was when Frieda had first discovered that it was possible to run away on a bike. Cycle, wheels fast, move fast, keep moving, go go go until you are far away. She had been taught that she should be above the crass rules of those who troop along in lines, getting married, pretending at monogamy, falling apart, getting divorced, starting again. Her mother and American Bill and her father’s subsequent collapse had fully illuminated the important life lesson that marriage was a farce. Frieda remembered answering the phone, standing barefoot on the cold kitchen lino early in the morning, everyone else asleep and a woman’s voice: ‘Who’s your mum in bed with?’ But there was something unconvincing about this free love idea, and Frieda was left with a feeling that they were all in a wilderness somewhere, and it seemed important – her survival depended on it, in fact – that she get away from it, to find some shelter.

Keep riding, riding away. If you cycle fast enough you fly.

Frieda locked her bike to the railings next to the Peabody entrance and untied the string. It was sevenish in the evening. Gently, she pulled the birdcage out of the basket and holding it in front of her, arms wrapped around it, she walked towards her building. Wine-warmed and flushed, she had let Nathaniel kiss her just outside the door of the pub, even though the distance between them was getting as swollen as the Thames.

Now, at the top of the staircase, she wondered what she was doing with this owl. She had things to get on with. Her career; reports; expense claims. When, at the age of eighteen she had told her dad that she was going to university to study International Relations and Politics he had looked at her in horror.

‘But surely you would rather be a poet in Paris?’

She had seen something in his eyes that looked distinctly like shame. It didn’t even taste so good in the end, to have become so proper, her own pathetic rebellion. But she was stubborn, and she kept at it. Working hard for years at real and concrete and meaningful things, understanding issues that were important and relevant, embracing various causes (the Kurds, the Palestinians, the Tibetans, the Saharawi tribes and so on) with the full vigour of the ardent young, leaving her parents’ cosmic radiations behind. She did not need to be rummaging through an old woman’s memories. She should hand the owl over to someone, the RSPB.

The swirls and seagulls were still there, of course. She opened the door, leaving her bag on the step and put the cage on the kitchen table. She pulled the bin liner off and two enormous, disconcerting eyes looked at her. Clear eyes. She peered into the cage.

‘Hello owlie,’ she said, ‘what do you eat?’

From the fridge she pulled out a cold sausage, cut it into pieces and tried to poke it through the bars, but it was too big so she opened the cage door. A draught curled around her ankle, and she realised that her bag was still holding the front door open. She went to kick the door shut but it resisted. A sharp pain shot through her toe and she hopped back into the kitchen and pulled off her boot to examine the damage. As she did, she felt a flap and a whoosh near her head: a flush of brown feathers, a flutter against the concrete wall. The owl was out the door before she could even think. She ran to follow it into the hall, spotting it perched up near the ceiling on an exposed pipe. It seemed entirely unconcerned, blinking once, twice, then once more.

What the Bicycle Does:
Mounted on a wheel, you feel at once the keenest sense of responsibility. You are there to do as you will within reasonable limits; you are continually called upon to judge and to determine points that before have not needed your consideration, and consequently you become alert, active, quick-sighted and keenly alive, as well to the rights of others as to what is due yourself.

13.
A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Notes

June 26th

Great excitement this morning: two Kashgaris on horseback arrived carrying three sacks of mail. Our first post since Baku. Even Millicent sat happy as an infant, tearing open the packages. They were in a pitiful condition, ripped or emptied and some nearly destroyed. Most date back at least three or four months and I marvel to think of the journey they have been on. There are such complexities, limits on weight, additional costs, not to mention censors at various points. Bibles emerged, along with posters, books, newspapers, Inland Mission reports, articles. Lizzie held up a number of copies of
The Times
, completely out of date, of course, but a joy to read none the less. I held the paper to my nose and fancied I could smell England.

A good many packages had nothing inside, their contents long-since looted. A letter from Millicent’s friend in Moscow had been so brutally censored with scissors that it was now an unreadable paper-doll chain. Lizzie sorted everything into piles and I was pleased to see that there was a small pile for me.

The first parcel contained uncontaminated Allenbury dried milk and dried food packages for Ai-Lien, an estimated eight months’ worth, although a handful of the packages appeared to be destroyed and milk powder covered everything. Equally importantly, I saw that Lizzie has received her supply of medicine. I watched as she carefully put the medicine tins to one side, so that Millicent, who was engrossed in a long letter, did not see them. I hope this will mean an end to the vagueness that has come over her.

Joy: two letters for me, one from Mother. I stood up, leaving the others to sort through the enormous pile for Millicent and went to the courtyard and sat under the shade of one of the knotted fig trees. The paper is thin, ripped in places, but mostly intact. She writes of Father and of the terrible weight of missing him; of Elizabeth, her health, her medicine, her strength.
Unlike you, Eva, dear, I do not think that Lizzie has the constitution for travel
. In the spaces between the words it is possible to see Mother sitting with Aunt Cicely, a widow of thirteen years – two women with nothing in common living together next to an unfriendly sea.

Poor Mother. Even after the liberal and continental childhood we enjoyed – the artists who came to stay, the anarchists, suffrage women, painters, musicians – two of her three daughters have chosen the Church, and a life of service. She expected something different, that one of us might bring poetry into the world, art or music. She wanted beauty, always more beauty. Perhaps this is why she agreed to buy the most expensive camera for Lizzie? Or why little Nora, our youngest sister who stole our mother’s love, has been allowed to live in Dublin where we hear that she has become a liar who cavorts with artists and consumes gin.

Just before leaving I almost confided in Mother about my pretence, the real nature of my so-called faith, but ultimately I decided not to. She wanted so very much for us not to go that if she had known my secret I am sure that she would have convinced me to stay. My supposed calling was my only weapon. As we prepared for our journey she looked at me, puzzled. Lizzie she could understand, she had always had a transcendental element to her personality, but me? She was suspicious, but I pushed on, to be away, to keep running. Those men who visited her, contesting for her attention, who brought her gifts, who listened to her talks at the university in Geneva, none of them would be with her now.

‘Could you not’, I remember her saying, ‘simply go to Umbria?’

‘No, mother; Umbria would not do at all.’

I folded the letter and placed it on the low wall that surrounded the fountain in the courtyard. As we left Geneva for England she’d said to me, ‘It is still my time, Eva.’ A curious thing to say.

The second letter was from Mr Hatchett:

Dear Ms English,

I hope that this letter finds you well settled and comfortable in your Great Eastern outpost. I have thought of our meeting and conversation often. I do hope you will be understanding about this, as I could not reach you to confirm that this course of action is preferable to you, but I endeavoured to formally put a proposal to the board here at Hatchett & White for the publication of your Lady Cyclist’s Guide to the desert. I am very pleased to inform you that we would very much like to publish your suggested Guide and impressions of this unknown region. With great pleasure we offer you an advance of £150 for the Guide and, although we are unsure as to your return date, we look forward to receiving the manuscript in due course.

May I also add that it was a very great personal pleasure to make your acquaintance and I hope that we shall become good friends. I pray that you remain safe in your chosen location.

All kind wishes,

Francis Hatchett

What do I remember of him, this Mr Hatchett? His beard was gingerish, lightly trimmed. Cousin Alfred described him as an Oxford man, uneasy in Cambridge company. This, of course, is how Alfred assesses the world: one college versus another and everyone else in the mire. He had an uneasy way of sitting as we talked, his hands a little shaky, yet, at the same time, a confidence – the sort that comes with breeding and wealth. Or, what I mean is, I suppose, he did not have the unbearable atmosphere of the English middle class about him: the dowdy, the greedy, the endless concern about what others think, the ghastly parochialism. Yes, he is beyond all of that, though certainly I could not imagine him comfortable in the cafés of Geneva. Despite it being April, it was cold and blowy in that house in Hampstead. I crouched near the fire in the green, book-lined room and looked up at him, smiling. Where was Lizzie? Over with Alfred and that friend of his, the one who talked relentlessly at a woman all looped in lace and froth whose name I forget. I daresay Mr Hatchett was polite. I don’t recall his words, but I do remember his encouragement, which was charming, and I remember him picking up my glove and that he is not at all old.

I watched several small lizards disappear into the courtyard wall behind a white, fragile flower that was so pervasive it seemed it must have been responsible for the dry, bitter cracks in the earth. It smells far too strong and sweet for its colour. I returned to Millicent. Packages and envelopes were in a mess across the room and then I saw that Millicent looked grim.