The secretary appeared, calling for the dog. ‘Come on, Rumpus.’ The dog came, but only because she was holding out a treat for him. As she led the animal away towards the embassy building, she waved at Sam. ‘Have you heard from Steffie?’
‘A few days ago.’
‘That’s good. We had a postcard from somewhere in West Germany and Angela got one from Henley or wherever she is. But nothing more. Give her my love when you write.’
‘Of course I will.’
A curious concept: love as an asset to be packaged in an envelope and passed on to a third party. Linda sends her love, even though she lets the ambassador’s dog crap in the flowerbeds.
But does Sam also send his?
‘Write it up,’ Harold told him. ‘For my eyes only. Everything that happened – it’s all grist to the mill. Shame you didn’t get more photos.’
‘Someone,’ Dorothy said when Sam got back to the office, ‘has got to do a bag run.’ She looked up at him over her spectacles, as though he might be able to organise such a thing even if her boss couldn’t. ‘There’s all this stuff to go.’
‘Nuremberg?’
‘Munich. The consulate-general.’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘I thought you were ever so busy.’
‘I am, but I’m prepared to make a sacrifice to get you out of a hole.’
She blushed faintly. ‘Do I book you a hotel for the night?’
‘Surely you’re not suggesting that I can do there and back in one day.’
V
18
It’s the random element of hitchhiking that appeals. Like the tossing of a coin, your progress depends on the workings of pure chance. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for life, then – random encounters, random occurrences, random partings on to which you try and impose the logic and thrust of a narrative. Thus they reach the border at a bridge where the River Saar converges with one of its tributaries and where they move from Germany across the border into France as much by the machinations of chance as through any conscious choice. A cursory examination of their passports on the German side is followed by a sharp, officious one on the French side where the uniformed official handles their documents with the manner of a health worker handling clothing contaminated with anthrax. He asks, ‘Where are you going?’ as though staying put was certainly not a possibility.
Ellie plucks a name out of the air. ‘Strasbourg.’
‘Paris,’ he suggests.
‘J’ai dit Strasbourg. On va à Strasbourg.’
He sniffs. He knows their destination is Paris, where they will cause mayhem on the Boul’ Mich’. Turning to James he demands his rucksack, and for a few minutes rummages through the chaos of things inside, finding nothing more offensive than old socks and worn underpants. Then he points to Ellie’s pack, flipping his middle finger upwards in a gesture that is almost, but not quite, obscene. ‘Ouvrez.’
Ellie unslings her rucksack and begins to take out her scant possessions – rolled T-shirts, folded underwear, a wash bag, the battered tin of Gold Flake, a couple of paperback books, a small towel, not much else – and lay them out. The policeman prods them thoughtfully before tapping the Gold Flake tin. ‘Ouvrez.’
James’s heart lurches. Ellie does as she is told, levering open the lid to expose golden, mossy shreds of tobacco and a packet of cigarette papers. The policemen raises the tin to his nose and sniffs while Ellie smiles beatifically at him; only James recognises the true message behind that smile. It says, as plain as a raised middle finger, ‘Fuck you.’
Thoughtfully, the policeman hands the tin back and contemplates the pair of them with distaste. Then he cocks his head dismissively. ‘Allez, filez.’
And so they move on into the vasty fields of France – Eleanor’s quotation, of course – and go where the lifts take them. But lifts are rare. The road is their world, the verge their environment. There are wild flowers amongst the grasses – peas, vetch, catchfly. Bees hum around them, butterflies flicker in the sunlight like scraps of foil blown by the wind. It is a kind of idyll, despite their rucksacks and their sweat-stained shirts and blistered feet. They feel both free and captive, trapped by their straps and the load of their packs and the distance they can walk, yet unburdened of all other encumbrance – parents or work or any obligation except to themselves. And gradually – this is the absurd thing – James comes to feel an enormous gratitude towards Eleanor for bestowing on him this sensation of detachment and contentment. Just the delight of being there in the midst of this vast and peaceful countryside without any bonds between himself and home. It is as though he has been transformed into something entirely new – ageless, careless, indifferent.
‘You know what?’
‘What?’ They sit on the verge watching an empty route départementale stretch away into the distance in either direction. She is lying back against her rucksack. Her eyes are closed and the sun has caught her face, smacked her cheeks pink, given her a dusting of pollen. Her T-shirt is splashed with a tie-dyed sunburst, damp with sweat in the armpits. He thinks, because he is an incorrigible romantic, that she looks entirely lovely. And, although instinct tells him how dangerous this thought is, how vulnerable it leaves him, he thinks also that he may be in love with her.
‘I feel really happy.’
She opens her eyes and smiles. ‘How sweet,’ she says. ‘Naive, but sweet.’
So there they are, Eleanor and James, by the roadside in the midst of the peaceful and bucolic delights of a countryside, a country, a continent, apparently, although not actually, untouched by political dispute. Fando and Lis on the road to Tar, Lis at the moment unfastening the waistband of her jeans and reaching her hand inside her underpants to pull out the stash. Fando watches in fascination as she rolls, with that fluid-fingered dexterity, a joint, lights it, drags meditatively on it, holds the smoke inside her head and then slowly, reluctantly, like someone surrendering to the inevitability of death, lets it out.
‘Here.’ She hands the joint to him. And he wonders, as he takes it and draws the cloying smoke inwards, whether there is going to be a repetition of what happened two days ago in the cherry orchard. Could it happen even out here in the open air, his hand pushed down the front of her jeans where she hides that other, infinitely delicate, infinitely supple and surprising stash?
You never know your luck.
Lying side by side they smoke, passing the joint back and forth, watching the sky and the hills. Slightly zonked out, slightly high, laughing at things that probably aren’t really that funny, he imagines, remembers, sees shapes in the clouds that remind him of —
She leaps to her feet.
‘Hey, what you doing?’
‘A lift, you twit.’ She yanks out her thumb. The vehicle – a battered van, one of those ugly Citroën things that looks like a pig – grows larger in the perspective of the tarmac, flies past them at some speed, before skidding to a halt fifty yards down the road.
Ellie pinches off the glowing end of the joint, snaps the dead remainder away in her Gold Flake tin, grabs her rucksack and gives James a kick in the side. ‘Come on, shift your arse.’ He shambles to his feet and struggles after her, fighting a vague hilarity within, the sense that this doesn’t matter, this striving after progression, feeling instead that things are what is really important – the flowers buzzing in his brain, the ant crawling up his arm, the clouds gathering in the sky above, the warm declivities of Ellie’s body that have gathered in his imagination.