William G. rang up. Thursday would be the day. He spoke as if it was all really real and we were real people who were simply going to go ahead and do what we’d said we’d do. Had I in fact said it? That first day at lunch I’d talked in code, talked about hauling bananas. Had I ever said turtles? Yes, my very first words to him in the shop before we went to lunch. And then that awful Saturday morning when I went to his flat we talked about the turtles before I left. Perhaps I could still back out of it. But there was his voice coming out of the telephone and I said yes, Thursday would be all right. He asked if he could pick me up on his way to the Zoo with the crates and we’d have dinner before setting out. I said that would be lovely, yes of course and I’d be ready at half past six.
I looked at the telephone after I’d put it down. Sly thing, getting words out of me I’d no intention of saying. This was Monday. Tuesday Wednesday Thursday. Oh God, more than two hundred miles each way. I’ll pack sandwiches and a flask of coffee but how much time will eating sandwiches and drinking coffee get us through. The whole thing is quite likely to end in disaster with the van and the turtles and us overturned in a ditch somewhere in the middle of the night, all blood and splintered glass, groans and whimpers. Maybe we’ll be killed outright, and all for some stupid notion long since gone out of my head. Oh shit.
Blankets. We’ll want a bit of a rest before the drive back. Pillows. Surely he won’t book hotel rooms, it isn’t that kind of thing. No, no, just let it be done and out of the way as quickly as possible. Towel and soap, toothbrush, toothpaste. Have a wash in the public lavatory before starting back. Wear jeans and a shirt, take a cardigan. Cigarettes, mustn’t run out. Has he got maps? He looks the sort to have maps, torches, compasses. He’s the anxious type and I know we’ll get lost.
The tide. Will it be in or out. What’s the use of bothering to find out. However it is is the way it’ll be. I wonder if they’re still killing oyster-catchers at Penclawdd. They must be.
I asked Webster de Vere to feed Madame Beetle, left him a key and the remains of the lamb chop she’s been living on for the last week. I still haven’t posted the letter to Harry Rush.
And here’s Thursday.
31 William G
Thursday. Grey and rainy. That was a help, sunny blue-sky days always look like bad luck to me. Harriet wanted to know where I was going but all I said was that I had things to do.
‘There’s no need to make a mystery of it,’ she said.
‘And there’s no need to ask me either,’ I said.
‘Look,’ said Harriet, ‘you’re perfectly free to do whatever you like …’
‘Thanks very much,’ I said.
‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ said Harriet. ‘You don’t have to treat me like a stranger just because you’re going to be with someone else.’
‘Everything isn’t sex,’ I said. ‘There are other things that are private.’ I hadn’t minded telling Mrs Inchcliff and Miss Neap but I just wasn’t willing for Harriet to know everything about me. She walked away looking reproachful, had very little to say to me for the rest of the day.
After work I went to pick up the van. It was a Ford Transit 90, 18 Cwt, huge, smooth, bulgy and white, not a dent or scratch on it. I couldn’t believe I’d get it there and back intact. They gave it to me with no hesitation whatever. VANS 4-U Van Hire in big black letters on both sides.
The man at VANS 4-U said the petrol tank held thirteen gallons and the van would do from fifteen to twenty miles to the gallon. I thought fifteen more likely than twenty although the engine certainly sounded economical, I wondered if it would go up hills with two people and three turtles. I filled the tank, later I’d fill my five-gallon container as well. On the map our route looked like about two hundred and fifty miles, and at night I couldn’t count on petrol stations being open. If the van did fifteen miles to the gallon that was one hundred and ninety-five miles on a full tank and seventy-five miles more on the extra five gallons in the container, so we ought to be all right even if there were no stations open.
It felt strange sitting up so high with all that van around me. The gearbox was at least an ordinary four-speed one. The width of the thing was appalling. I was behind a bus when I first pulled out into the street and I was only about six inches narrower than it. I kept going up on the kerb with my left front wheel when I thought I was a foot away from it.
The rain was still coming down gently and steadily. I drove to my place, loaded on the crates, the trolley, the petrol container, the rope, torch, map, road atlas, an eiderdown to lie down on, an old blanket to put under it, a couple of blankets to cover us. Us? I didn’t think either of us had any hanky-panky in mind and we’d have our clothes on. Couple of pillows. Thermos flask, we could probably fill it and get some sandwiches at one of the services on the M4. I felt very jumpy the whole time. Cigarettes. I took four packets. I couldn’t think of anything else. I went to the loo twice, got into the van and drove off, mounting the kerb from time to time when I made left turns and getting angry looks from pedestrians. I stopped to fill the petrol container, then headed for Neaera’s place.
She was waiting by the front steps when I drove up. She looked doubtful. Her basic look, I realized. Dora had looked angry, Harriet reproachful, Neaera doubtful. Not that it mattered in a permanent way, there was nothing between us except the turtles and there wasn’t likely to be anything. Why not? I don’t know, I think we have too much in common. We’re not complementary, she doesn’t fill in the blanks in me nor I in her. Both afraid of the same things maybe. We don’t fit together. What if we did? There’s a cheap little toy one sees at various shops, a little flat wooden clown hanging from strings between two sticks. You squeeze the sticks and the clown somersaults. His body and face are in profile and he’s made so economically that one cut shapes the back of him and the front of the next clown to come from the same piece of wood. There he is with the back of his head indented by a nose-and-chin-shaped space. Looking at him one wants to fit the one behind into him and him into the one ahead. And if one fitted fifty flat wooden clowns together in a line the one at each end would still be out in the cold, one with his back and the other with his front. Fitting them together in a circle solves the problem I suppose. Then they’d just keep going round in circles.
Neaera had sandwiches and a flask of coffee in a carrier bag, pillows and blankets as well. She seemed about as nervous as I was.
‘I’m not used to the width of this thing,’ I said. ‘It would be a help if you’d tell me when we’re too close to the parked cars or the kerb.’ We started off for the Zoo.
‘Too close,’ she said about every two minutes. I nodded and swung away, trying to think of anything I might have forgotten. There were meant to be a spare tyre, tools and a jack somewhere in the van but I hadn’t thought to ask where they were. Never mind. The rain was a nice little bonus, just enough of it to make the windscreen wipers work smoothly. I liked that, it was cosy.
George Fairbairn was on the lookout for us at the works gate, we left the crates with him and drove to a kebab house on the Finchley Road. They always play Greek music there but not too loud, just a pleasant background sound that gives privacy. I hate those places where there’s a shouting kind of silence in which people make display conversation for the people listening at the other tables.