The A-Z of Us (4 page)

Trevor nodded, with a smile, and squeezed his wife's arm. I smiled back, wished them luck with their living room, and departed. Behind me, the door to the hall swung shut, the dull bell clanging loudly.

I'd made one small mistake. Just one. Not out of malice, or laziness. Out of greed maybe, but not big greed, not
the kind that makes you rich, but the petty kind of greed that makes you take small risks, like not admitting that a shop assistant has given you too much change. Or writing about a place you've never actually been to.

My trip to Venezuela had gone so well, until the end. I'd managed to get ten writing commissions, spread across four-and-a-half weeks' travelling, earning me my biggest one-trip haul yet – roughly £6,000 net. I was almost done, into my last week, when I slipped getting off a bus in Mérida and broke my ankle in two places.

I sprawled in the rusty dirt, writhing in agony. The passengers stood around me, as if witnessing a death or a miracle. One Japanese tourist snapped a photograph, before someone called an ambulance.

One slip. A second amongst countless seconds that have made up my thirty-one years on earth. It was so stupid, so unnecessary. Why do things like that have to happen?

I was furious. The broken ankle meant there was no way I'd be able to make my final destination – the sleepy seaside village of Choronì. I sat on a trolley in the cockroach-splattered waiting room of the small district hospital and fumed. My tenth and final article, the final element of my masterplan, was scuppered. I would have to say goodbye to £500, plus £150 expenses.

And Choronì was a good story – a tiny fishing port that attracted a quarter of a million tourists each year – flocking to see the weeping statue of the Virgin in the main square. The statue had in reality shed tears on only one occasion, on the November day that Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas (a ‘coincidence' that had ensured a steady, and
lucrative, influx of American catholics over the decades).

So far, in forty-one years, there had been no more Virginal sobbing. But this didn't stop the pilgrims coming, in particular South America's vast population of black-clad grandmothers under the height of five-foot-two. Many people, I thought sadly, need something other than themselves to believe in. Which was fine by me, as long as I could make money writing about it.

As I lay in the Mérida hospital while the plaster shackle set firm and solid, I decided to do something I'd never done before. I would write an article about Choronì without actually going there.

I limped to an internet café and printed out three recent articles on Choronì by other travel writers (one American, one British and one Mexican, whose Spanish I understood only sketchily). These sources, added to the extensive research I'd done before flying to Venezuela, convinced me that I could write a credible piece. I could make up a few funny quotes, attribute them to fictitious locals, and collect my £500, plus expenses based on receipts I'd already amassed.

It would be a gamble, I knew, and I was notoriously bad at gambling, but there was a high probability that I would get away with it. Wasn't there?

I wrote the article on my laptop from my hospital bed. The nurses kept me supplied with platefuls of sliced mango, whilst giggling intermittently at my clumsy Spanish.

The article appeared on page six of the
Daily Times
travel section the following week, just before my return from South America. It was this article that Father John
Norton, priest of St Peter's Church, Stockport, cut out and photocopied, shortly before he was due to lead a group of his parishioners on a two-week trip to visit the New Word missionary project they were supporting in the slums of the industrialized Venezuelan city of Maracay.

And it was this article that the thirteen devout catholics in Father Norton's charge (ranging between nineteen and sixty-seven years old) re-read with some disbelief when, after a gruelling seven-hour drive in a spluttering minibus, they arrived from the mosquito-infested, cloud-soaked mountains to the sea, only to discover that the ‘
santissima statua de la Virgen
' had been moved to the capital, Caracas, four months previously by the newly elected Venezuelan President, Miguel Tavarez. The thousands of pilgrim-tourists had vanished along with it, leaving ‘the somnambulant strange little paradise' (as I'd lovingly described it) with a failing fishing industry, teenage prostitutes and an impressive crack cocaine problem.

Two of the Stockport catholics were mugged in the first hour, whilst the priest himself was offered oral sex and amphetamines before he got off the bus.

I knew this, because the
Daily Times
travel editor, Martin Foster had, this very morning at 9 a.m., read Father Norton's letter of outrage to me with barely contained fury. The catholic priest had included a photocopy of my article, adorned with sections highlighted in red, ecclesiastical pen.

‘“The delicate little roadside cafes…” “the little old ladies who dream of God and long-lost teeth…”' Martin Foster repeated, bitter sarcasm injected into each syllable.
“‘… the gentle lap of waves as children sing folk songs at the feet of the Madonna…'”

I didn't try to defend myself.

At the end of the thirty-minute meeting, Martin Foster informed me that I'd never work for the newspaper again. He added that he would do everything in his power to ensure that I'd never work as a travel writer anywhere again. His secretary cut up my press card in front of me, with a pair of pearl-handled scissors that seemed reserved specifically for this task.

Standing in the middle of Gutter Lane, EC
₂
, I realized I needed to call Molly. I needed to see her. I dialled her mobile.

‘Hi, just wondering if you've time for a quick coffee?'

‘I'm a little up to my eyes, babes. Something the bank calls work. I don't know if you've heard of it, but I thought I'd give it a go, you know, see what all the fuss was about.'

Normally my girlfriend's caustic jokiness made me smile. But not today.

‘Come on. Just a quick coffee. I haven't seen you all week.'

I knew I was sounding whiny, and Molly was particularly averse to whining. This surprise call on her time went against the basis of our relationship, which was all about detachment, ease and a lack of demands. But for once I didn't care. Somehow, I knew, her smile would make me feel a little better.

I never planned to be a travel writer. I just loved travelling – the thrill of departure, the anonymity of flight, the
freedom of movement. During my second year at university I started writing comic accounts of my vacation travels, one of which I submitted to the
Daily Times
on a whim. They called me back and published it the following week – a story about surfing with ex-Sandinistas in Nicaragua. I earned £250 and never looked back.

I was excited at first – the world was mine. It baffled me that airlines, hotels, car rental companies, even restaurants, gave me things for free because I was writing about them. I could call up airline PR companies and they would seem delighted to fly me to Rio de Janeiro, ‘and of course we've put in a request for an upgrade'. It was the best job on earth. Once I flew KLM first class to Buenos Aires – I was undoubtedly the poorest person ever to have sat in the seat.

But as I visited places that I'd once considered so mystical – Marrakesh, Madagascar, Mount Fiji – I realized that everywhere was now accessible, nowhere was new. I began to wonder if this was a cause of our twenty-first century apathy – the sense that there is nowhere left to go, nothing original left to do. I got annoyed at some of my fellow travel writers, who tried to pretend they were real explorers. Much as I would have loved to have been born two hundred years ago, hitching a ride on the
Beagle
or Shackleton's sled, I was realistic. All I could do was to try and write about places in a different way, to present my own imaginative impression of destinations everyone had already been to.

I was good, I knew, because I was organized. I mapped out my trips, I planned them intricately, to maximize my chances of covering everything and getting a good story.
I created folders with maps, lists, newspaper clippings. I booked ahead, arranged for tourist boards to show me around. I ensured that everything went smoothly, allowing me space and time to come up with good descriptions, witty one-liners, and authentic sounding dialogue.

My ‘talent', or so several editors told me, was capturing ‘the quirky reality' of what a destination had to offer.

I'd never broken a bone before. I'd never made up a sentence. I was always careful. Honesty and authenticity were my trademarks.

Until now.

I stopped at my flat near Paddington Station. I'd been renting the small one-bedroom apartment for three years, with its fabulous view across six feet of concrete to the back wall of the Peking Garden Chinese Restaurant, run by a large Pakistani family from Lahore. Its major selling point, as far as I was concerned, was its cheapness and proximity to the train that could whisk me in fifteen minutes to my favourite part of London – Heathrow Airport.

I didn't like London. Apart from the fact that my best friend Gemma, my girlfriend Molly (Gemma's sister) and most of my limited social circle lived in London, and it was easy to get a flight from there to almost anywhere in the world, I would happily have lived elsewhere. London made my body ache. Maybe it was the incoherent mess of buildings, or the scrappy rubbish everywhere, or the embattled faces of the pallid inhabitants. Or maybe it was the dampness that gnawed at your bones like an old dog.

It's a tough city, there's no doubt about it. To survive
London, I thought, you had to map out your territory. I had my own landmarks – my flat, Molly's ‘loft', Gemma's new house in the far-flung, newly cool breeding-zone of Victoria Park, and the Starbucks on Praed Road next to Paddington Station. It was like a personal
A to Z
street guide, containing only the pages you needed. Or in my case, an
A to B
.

A few years ago, I actually photocopied selected pages from the London
A to Z
, marking in a black felt-tip pen my personal landmarks and the short cuts between them. I debated for several days whether laminating these pages would be going too far, and then I did it anyway.

As I stumbled up the curry-spotted stairs, past the London Underground map (free from any London Transport office), my plaster leg clunking at each step like a punishment, I cursed loudly.

‘Bollocks! Bollocks!'

I cursed my broken bone. I cursed my stupidity. I cursed the slippery buses of Venezuela and the Virgin Mary who pretended to weep in order to hook her deluded disciples.

While I was in the tiny cramped toilet, trying to zip up my trousers, the doorbell rang. In my hurry, I fell against the wall, my arm flailing out and knocking the neat line of mini shampoo bottles from a dozen luxury hotels around the world into the toilet bowl, one by one, followed by my last remaining toilet roll, which bobbed in the water like a drowned marsupial. I cursed again, then wondered, for an instant, if Molly was at the door. I was hopeful (maybe there would be a chance of quick afternoon sex). But I knew this was unlikely for two reasons:

Reason 1. When we first got together, Molly took one look, or more precisely smell, at my bedroom and told me that she wouldn't sleep within a mile of the place.

Reason 2. We'd been going out just over eight months now, but since I'd got back from Venezuela I'd hardly seen her. We hadn't even had sex. In four and a half weeks. If I was honest, it was starting to bother me a little. I wanted her. I needed her body.

Of course the person at the door was not Molly. It was the antithesis of Molly. Standing on the step was my landlord, the potbellied, gingery, chain-smoking Mr Vincent Henderson.

The news, as I quickly surmised, was not good. London landlords do not visit to offer flowers, glad tidings or bowls of fruit. Vincent Henderson was dogmatic.

‘I gave you notice five weeks ago. In writing.'

I did remember the envelope, vaguely. It was lying in a pile of oppressive looking mail I'd been managing not to open since my return from South America.

‘I'm selling, Mr Thompson. Clear and simple. I'll get two hundred grand for this place.'

‘Two hundred grand? The flat isn't worth that.'

The flat wasn't worth that. It was worth a visit from Westminster Council Environmental Services.

I couldn't believe it. First the Choronì article, now this! You saw days like this at the beginning of films, in which screenwriters had only a few minutes to bring a character's comfortable existence crashing down around them, and thus set up the main thrust of the plot. But days like this didn't happen in real life. Real life was structured. You had control.

‘You wanna buy it?'

Vincent Henderson viewed me with narrowed, fatty eyes that had undoubtedly seen far worse during thirty-plus years in London debt and rent collection.

‘The flat?' I looked a little more panicked than I'd intended.

‘Naw. You couldn't come close, could you?'

I glared at Vincent Henderson. Of course I couldn't come close. Sometimes I felt jealous of my contemporaries from university, who were far wealthier than me, thanks to jobs in the City or top London law and media firms. But the way I saw it, they were simply following someone else's map, down a route marked ‘Job, Marriage, Kids, Retirement, Death' that welcomed a million visitors a year. I had other ideas. I was drawing my own chart.

‘Travel writer, ain't you?'

I nodded, only half listening. I wouldn't buy a flat like this. I would buy somewhere nice, with a garden, where I could write and grow things. Like tomatoes. I liked tomatoes.

‘The fing is, Mrs Henderson wants to go to Greece.'

I couldn't move. Not right now. I hadn't planned for this.