Better Than Fiction 2 (26 page)

R
ay wasn’t a soldier when I met him. That happened afterwards, when I was already in love, and all the misgivings I felt about becoming a military wife no longer stood tall in the face of love. Nothing belittles long-held opinions quite like it.

But not long after the wedding those misgivings rose up, helped along by the declaration of war against Iraq for the second time. Ray was given a three-week leave of absence before he was due to report to RAF Brize Norton, to fly to Basra on a C130. He would be away, this first time, for six months. He broke the news to me quickly, and then said, ‘But three weeks off, quick, get in the car, let’s go. Somewhere. Anywhere.’

We took a ferry from Dover to Calais and bought camping supplies from a
hypermarché
, one of those palaces of modern convenience that contain both foie gras and thermos flasks. We
threw a tent, a sleeping bag for two, a stove, crockery and cutlery, tins and bottles, into the largest size of shopping trolley, and formulated a plan. First we would head downwards, in search of spring sunshine, which must surely be lurking on the Riviera. Then we’d go back up through Italy, and over the Brenner Pass into Austria. Germany, Holland, Belgium, back into France... How far could we get in three weeks? How much could we cram into this little car?

That first day we travelled and talked, driving down quiet roads lined with tall, straight poplars. We were filled to bursting with plans for the rest of our lives, due to start as soon as the six months were up. We did not speak about what the next six months might hold, except for a moment when he asked me, over a crunchy baguette at a service station, ‘What will you do while I’m away?’

I told him I would do nothing. Nothing would happen. I would wait, and everything would remain exactly the same. I pictured those months as dark water that must be softly, slowly waded through, leaving no ripples, in order to reach the glittering beach of our future on the other side.

That first night we found a cheap hotel at Laon. In the morning light there was the surprise of the cathedral, rising up through the mist, and a
pain au chocolat
from a tiny bakery on the road. It brought a reality to the journey. We were someplace new, and there was so much further to go – and higher, too, climbing the long backbone of the country.

The car struggled up hills that turned into mountains, and the roads twisted around themselves, leaving all straight lines behind. The occasional patches of white grew more common and knitted together into blankets, and still we climbed. At the end of the afternoon, past Grenoble, we spotted a blue sign for camping
at La Grave, which led us to a sheltered spot in the shadow of a most impressive mountain. There was a washing block, just a hut really, and a small stream hiccupping along nearby. And one tent: the old-fashioned kind that formed a point and looked just big enough for one person, if they tucked their legs up when they slept.

We pitched our tent, learning as we went, and it looked sturdy enough by the time we finished. It smelled of new plastic and looked curvaceous, like a series of dips and rises in contrast to the mountain above us. The sun had already fallen behind it, turning it black and brooding, and so high; it was difficult to look all the way up to the jagged teeth at the top. I stared, and shivered. The air was turning colder.

‘Food,’ said Ray.

He got the stove working, and the ring produced a hissing but dependable blue flame. From the selection of tins I chose cassoulet, and poured it into our cheap saucepan. Beakers of red wine followed, as the smell of the beans and sausage chunks in their sugary tomato sauce intensified. It warmed and bubbled in the pan.

By the time it was ready to eat, the owner of the pointed tent had returned from what must have been a long and serious hike, judging by his backpack and sturdy shoes, and had set off to the small washblock with a towel thrown over his shoulder. He returned as we ate and raised a hand in greeting. Then he towel-dried his hair with his back to us, looking up at the mountain too.

I’ve never been a fan of beans, but that evening they were delicious, and so was the black instant coffee with squares of dark pistachio chocolate that followed, broken from the packet in turns until the entire bar was gone. The man continued to stand
there, not more than twenty feet away. It grew colder still. I could picture the freezing air rushing down from the tip of that great black mountain, over the icy stream, to us. We got out a pack of cards and played, sitting on our travel rug, until it seemed ridiculous to not speak. Ray called to the man, and he turned, and came over to us as if that had always been the unspoken plan.

He was older than us, although not much more than forty. Any age looks old to the young. His walking boots had long red laces that had been knotted in elaborate loops, and his beard was trimmed, close to his face, so neat in comparison to his tousled hair, still damp. I liked him straightaway, although maybe that was the effect of the wine.

‘What are you playing?’ he said. His accent was Scandinavian, maybe.

‘Rummy,’ Ray said. ‘Do you want to play?’

‘No, no, but I’ll watch, if that’s okay.’ He folded his towel on the grass and sat beside me. I poured him a beaker of wine, which he took and nursed without drinking much, as we talked and played our cards, one after the other, without much thought.

‘You’re not skiers,’ he said. ‘You’re on a walking holiday?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘A trip around Europe. We just decided to go, and here we are. You?’

‘Just here. I come here every year, in the quiet time. I used to come with my wife. Every year. Now it’s just me.’ He started to talk about La Grave, and I realised we hadn’t simply fallen upon a quiet place to pause in our travels. For some people, this was the end of the journey.

The mountain had a name: La Meije. It had been thought unscalable, and was the last major peak in the Alps to be climbed. Off-piste skiers and ice climbers came to it, looking for
danger. Many of them found it, and deaths were not rare. The man told us these facts without emotion, or interest. It was as if he had said these words many times before, if only in his head.

Had his wife died here, while skiing or climbing? It was too difficult a question to ask. Perhaps nothing so terrible. It could be she had simply tired of him, and his existing obsession with the mountain. It was impossible to know which had happened first: his love for her, or his love for La Meije. Or maybe it wasn’t love when he looked up at those sharp points, so high above. It was the fear you feel for something that lives and cannot be willed out of existence. It was the shark, in the deep, that needs to be watched, watched, watched. If you turned your back, it might bite.

‘You are a lovely couple,’ he said. ‘I hope you have a good holiday.’

Ray thanked him, and I shifted position on the rug. The cold was eating at my fingers and toes, and yet I couldn’t stand the thought of crawling inside the tent and lying there, alone, under the mountain. Perhaps Ray read my mind, because he got up, stretched, and said it was getting late, and he needed a quick wash before turning in.

‘Of course,’ said the man. ‘Of course, you are travelling onwards tomorrow. You have a long way to go?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think so.’

I watched Ray fetch his washbag from inside the tent, and walk down to the block, in the last moments of light. I wanted to call out to him, to make him turn around. How ridiculous I was; how needy.

The man smiled at me. ‘You seem a little sad,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult, when you’re a couple. You have to be...’ He searched for the word. ‘Vulnerable. But it’s a good thing, really.’

It didn’t feel like a good thing, not at that moment. He must have seen my feelings in my face.

‘No, no, don’t mind me, don’t think about me,’ he said. ‘I must stay here; it’s the only place where I know how to – because this was her favourite place. Then she was gone, and I stopped...’ He moved one hand over another, forming a wheel, a continuous circle of motion. ‘But you have your lives ahead.’

Sometimes the strictures of society part, and a gap is left in which two people, strangers, can see each other. I saw him then, and he saw me. We shared, in that look, the knowledge that every journey must end.

Ray returned, the gap sealed up, and the man wished us both a good night. ‘If I see you in the morning, before you go, I’ll make you some good coffee,’ he promised. We crawled into our tent and unrolled the sleeping bag. It was a double, the material flimsy, better suited to the Riveria than to the Alps. It would have been stupid to undress; instead we ended up putting more clothes on, and huddled together. The cold was intense and the presence of the mountain was strong, worse somehow for being on the other side of the tent’s curved sides. I shivered and pressed myself against my husband, in the absolute dark. I let all my fears take hold of my imagination, and rob me of all my good intentions. I could not be brave. I could not go back home, and tell him goodbye.

It’s funny how everything is different in the light of morning. I awoke, and Ray was already up and about and had made coffee. I uncurled my aching limbs and stretched, reaching up my hands to the sun. It had reappeared, in a gap between the mountains, and everything had shrunk in comparison to its shining face.

Ray nodded towards the tent, and shrugged. Maybe the man was already out walking, or maybe he was in there, thinking
his own thoughts, not wanting to be disturbed. We packed up our gear, vowing to get a warmer sleeping bag at the next opportunity, and drove away.

A month later, Ray was far away, fighting a war that I could not imagine, and he did not want to describe in our short telephone calls. That was the best thing for both of us. ‘I’m here,’ I would tell him. ‘I’m waiting.’ Then we’d talk, not of the future, but of our holiday: the ice cream houses of the Riviera; the bikers roaring around our car over the Brenner Pass; the watercolour canals of that last-minute stop in Bruges. And of the man at La Grave.

‘It’s weird,’ said Ray. ‘I feel like he might still be standing there.’

The television was an enemy, keen to spill its bad news every day. I took to avoiding it, and instead poured myself into books, fighting down waves of nervous sickness. But the sickness got worse, until I had to face the fact that something was wrong. I was changing inside; I could feel it.

It did not occur to me, until the doctor said the actual words in a kind, quiet tone of voice, that I was pregnant.

I don’t remember the walk home from the surgery. I remember taking a bath, and while lying in the water I pictured La Meije, that giant mountain, towering over me. ‘You have your lives ahead,’ the man had said. He could not walk away from the blackness, but I could.

I sat in the bath, in the house where I had wanted to do nothing but wait. But we don’t always get to choose whether we wait, or we move. We try to stay so still, and yet our bodies are always travelling, travelling.