Two Steps Onward

by Graeme Simsion

  After we dried and dressed—I had little to wear that wasn’t wet and what I did have wasn’t warm enough, so I grabbed a blanket off the bed—I stood on my boots and they spurted water.

  ‘That’d be funny if you didn’t have to walk in them tomorrow,’ said Martin.

  ‘There was a pile of papers,’ I said. It was the standard treatment for wet boots when there wasn’t a good heat source available—and a good first step even when there was. I figured Signora was used to walkers needing them and they were cheaper than a heater. Six pairs of boots ate most of the newspapers.

  Camille disappeared to talk to our hostess but returned looking perplexed. ‘She has vanished.’

  I was already standing when Sarah said, ‘I’ll come with you.’

  She smiled at Sarah: ‘It is okay, Zoe and I will do this.’

  I felt an unreasonable sense of victory. How old was I again?

  We were in another ghost hotel—it would have made a great setting for a horror movie. The hallways stretched out, empty room after empty room. Finally, on the ground floor, we spotted a light coming from beneath a curtained door.

  Alessandra handed over the dinner supplies. Not exactly generous. Pasta, a single jar of sauce, bread, lettuce. Two fillets of chicken. And a single bottle of wine.

  ‘Mon Dieu,’ Camille muttered as we left. ‘I do not think she has enough money to buy more wine.’

  ‘Did she say her husband had died? Our timing may be bad.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Camille. ‘He died when the hostel opened. The same day.’

  ‘Hell.’ No wonder it was so depressing. ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Six years.’

  Sitting on the table as Camille prepared our meagre fare was one of the newspapers we had stuffed our shoes with, front page removed. I recognised our hostel on page three and looked closer. It was the day it opened, and there was Alessandra and her husband. All the newspapers were from the same day.

  I took out the papers from my shoes but no amount of ironing out was going to restore them.

  50

  MARTIN

  Zoe had filled us in on our unwitting use of our host’s precious memories to stuff our boots. Rather than leave the newspaper to be found, I’d shovelled it into my pack and pockets. I unloaded at the first public bin.

  ‘Shit,’ said Zoe, ‘I put mine in her trash. I’m the one who tried to do the right thing, and it’s my paper she’s going to find.’

  ‘How will she know it’s yours?’

  ‘I’ve got to go back.’

  We waited, eating a warm pastry from the panetteria, while Zoe returned for her wet newspaper. I was feeling pretty good, considering. I’d slept in my thermals and been warm enough. A break from drinking had done me no harm, either. The wine had opened with a hiss, and Gilbert had initially announced a secondary fermentation, then, on examination of the label, explained that it was deliberate. Frizzante, lightly sparkling red. I guess you could get used to it, if you had to. We each tried a small glass and left the rest to Gilbert.

  In the morning, the moka pot had delivered good strong coffee and the pastries were a big step up from the day-old bread at the previous night’s albergo.

  Zoe returned, not in a great mood. She’d had to make up a story of leaving something behind to get back in, and our host had hovered over her suspiciously while she failed to find it. The wet newspapers were still in the wastepaper basket.

  ‘Do you want me to get you a pastry?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ve finished yours?’

  ‘I would have saved you some but…’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘Sorry—it was rather good. I said, I’ll get you another one.’

  ‘Don’t bother. Tell me where we’re staying tonight. So I can get used to the idea.’

  ‘Last night wasn’t so bad. You were warm enough, weren’t you?’

  ‘After I got to bed. The kitchen was freezing.’

  ‘Toughen you up for Yorkshire.’ Probably shouldn’t have said that. ‘What about you, Camille? You want to buy that one?’

  Gilbert flashed me a look that was undeserved. I was giving Camille a dose of reality to balance her fantasies of rural bonhomie.

  ‘It would need repairs, but…’ Christ, she was thinking about it.

  Zoe interrupted. ‘No. Just no.’

  ‘You okay?’ I asked her when we were clear of the others.

  ‘Not particularly. That place was dismal. And you guys have all got dry boots. I’ve got cold feet.’

  It was another tough day in the mountains. But there were rewards: moments of sunshine illuminating our path; the remarkable black-and-yellow lizard we nearly stood on, so good was its camouflage; purple mountain flowers; huge spider webs with tiny water droplets and orange inhabitants.

  Zoe and Camille did an extra climb, to the church in Barbagelata, while the rest of us waited.

  ‘Extraordinary! It was très moderne,’ said Camille.

  ‘Locked,’ added Zoe.

  ‘Technically, our hardest day since the Alps. In kilojoules expended,’ Bernhard said, consulting his smart watch when we arrived at our accommodation.

  ‘Is this it?’ said Zoe, and I guessed that the answer she was hoping for was, ‘No, this is just a derelict pub on the way to the Hilton around the corner.’

  ‘Only option. And usually closed on Mondays. They’re only opening for us because Camille told them we were pellegrini.’

  ‘Where are we eating?’

  ‘Right here,’ I said with a flourish, as a rough-looking chap in torn jeans and boots opened the door to reveal a bar, albeit one with only a couple of bottles on display.

  It had been drizzly again and we were all a bit damp. Zoe’s mood, which had lifted for a while, was now flat again. I was just praying for a functioning heater.

  Our man led us upstairs, and my prayer was answered: a wood-burning stove that must have been going for a while, as the entire level—a bedroom, bathroom and bunk room—was warm. Not tidy—I had the feeling that the bedroom had become a storeroom through lack of guests and the bathroom wasn’t exactly pristine—but definitely warm.

  ‘This is better,’ said Camille, again casting a buyer’s eye over the property. ‘You and Zoe can have the bedroom.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I began to say, then thought better of it. ‘Thanks—we owe you one.’

  ‘Vino?’ Gilbert asked as we sat to dinner, and it didn’t occur to either of us that the previous night’s fizz had been anything but an anomaly until we heard the tell-tale pop.

  ‘Do you have anything flat?’ said Gilbert, making hand signals, then attempting some Italian. ‘Non gazzo?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s like the Wild West,’ said Sarah, and she’d nailed it: the combination of our hirsute Levi-ed host, the basic saloon bar and his attractive but solid partner in her peasant dress making occasional appearances from the kitchen. And we were indeed in the west of Italy. Gilbert might have done better to order whiskey.

  ‘More like the Appalachians,’ said Zoe. ‘How much longer are we in Liguria?’

  ‘Through to Aulla,’ I said. ‘Just another week or so.’

  Dinner was good rustic Italian food. Better than good after a tough day. The downstairs fire was burning too, and we had the place to ourselves. But in the narrow bar, there was none of the sense of emptiness that we’d had in the old hotels.

  ‘Like a pub in Yorkshire,’ I told Zoe, and, based on her reaction, decided I’d go easy on references to our future home for a while.

  We began with a huge platter of antipasto—admittedly not exactly vegetarian-friendly—then porcini pasta (fully vegetarian and enough for Zoe to eat as main course as well), wild-boar alla cacciatora, green salad, cake.

  By the end, I was beginning to develop a taste, or at least a tolerance, for the fizzy red. Gilbert, Camille and I finished with a glass of firewater grappa.

  The others had preceded us upstairs and Gilbert paused at the top, raising
a finger to his lips. The lights were off, and Sarah and Bernhard were lying in front of the fire, illuminated by its light, Sarah’s head on Bernhard’s chest.

  The door handle on the fire had come off, and after they went to bed, I made it my evening repair project. It took longer than I’d expected, but I used the time to reflect. I didn’t know how handy Gilbert was, but I could see him behind a bar, lighting a fire, even serving the meals as our host had tonight.

  In his position, I’d have probably seen Camille’s suggestion as pretty attractive—something to do in the difficult years ahead beyond being a live-in nurse. I was almost envious. Maybe I was just craving a clearer plan for Zoe and me.

  She was asleep when I went to bed.

  51

  ZOE

  CARTOON: The hotel looks like a set for a 1950s Western. Outside, Alberto, stubbled chin and broad hat, is carrying a shotgun in one hand and logs for the fire in the other. Through the open door, a barrel of home-brew beer can be seen on the bar. Perlita, hair escaping from the scarf around it, is in the kitchen, pounding bread dough while something on the stove behind her is boiling over and three cats wind around her legs hoping for scraps.

  STORY: When they bought the hotel, they had only been married a year and had scraped together everything they had, with help from both families. Their families moved and died, and the children they dreamed of never came. The hotel is paid off, but they no longer have dreams. Each year blurs into the next. The same people come week in, week out, for a drink, or a meal. Only when a pellegrino arrives are they reminded of their younger selves and see that they have turned into old people without realising it.

  In keeping with the fantasy, I’d been half-expecting sausages, bacon and eggs, and gallons of coffee for breakfast. We got the coffee but had to settle for leftover cake for the protein.

  Before we left, after a few minutes of agonising, I used the wifi—the first in a while—to send my cartoons off to the Chronicle. It wasn’t quite what I had pitched to them: not the upbeat pilgrim story I had anticipated, but there was a lot of heart—and heartbreak—in them. Whatever else the Chemin had done, it had inspired me, aged forty-eight, to produce my best work. This was what I could continue doing in Sheffield. In the cold pea souper.

  The last cartoon stayed with me as we walked along the valley floor, beside and then across the river that divided it. When Martin had come to bed last night, I hadn’t been asleep, but I didn’t want to deal with his English cheerfulness when I was feeling like I was in an Italian West Virginia. Circa 1950. I’d left the backblocks of Minnesota for a reason.

  As morning turned to afternoon, the pale sun disappeared and we were walking again through forests in fog. The smell of maple trees made me think of pancakes and I felt a little homesick. For the neighbour saying have a nice day, the clanging of the cable cars and the salt in the mist as I walked to the store.

  The maples gave way to other foliage and the path was hard to see because the forest floor was thick with brown leaves. But we weren’t going to get lost. The Chemin overlaid another trail; we were following three super-visible yellow circles on trees and rocks, and regularly intersecting with roads. Whenever we did, we saw cars parked in every available space. The forest was full of middle-aged and elderly men with baskets.

  ‘Porcini,’ said Gilbert.

  When we arrived at the hostel in Pratomollo (‘soggy fields’), we were up high—in soggy fields—in the middle of nowhere. A two-storey rectangular building looking out onto…fog. No pellegrini, as usual. But having a late lunch were maybe twenty or thirty porcini gatherers. And hunters. I wondered how they managed not to shoot the porcini guys.

  The upstairs rooms were basic and without heating—and we would probably have been in dorms if we hadn’t been the only people staying. But downstairs had an open fire and our hosts were congenial.

  Dinner was antipasto (same as last night, except all meat, so salumi would have been a better description), porcini pasta (fine, but same as last night), wild-boar stew (same as last night again, no vegetarian option) and cake (same as we’d had for breakfast, though it was good). How hard was it to keep some preserved vegetables and vegetarian secondi in the freezer?

  ‘If Camille had her hostel here,’ said Martin, ‘the porcini season would supplement the income.’

  Camille had gone upstairs to take a shower—and I’d caught Gilbert taking up a plastic chair from the garden, which I guessed was for her to sit on. Just tired, I hoped. I looked at the other three.

  ‘Guys, we need to put our heads together. Camille wants to run a hostel and Gilbert is prepared to do it, but…’

  ‘She doesn’t think she needs him and doesn’t want him,’ finished Sarah.

  ‘Which is short-sighted,’ Martin said. ‘I doubt she could do it alone. Certainly not into the future.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Sarah. ‘If she doesn’t want to be with him, it’s not up to us to try to change that. She may have some cognitive issues, but she’s clear about what she wants, and we’ve got to respect her wishes. And not take advantage of them to…engineer what we think’s best.’

  ‘What if what she wants is based on a delusion?’ said Martin. ‘One that’s almost certainly a result of those cognitive issues? You want to tell the story, Zoe?’

  I told them about the red underwear and the refrigerator.

  Sarah nodded. ‘She needed an explanation for why she and Gilbert split. And she’s sort-of pulled together bits and pieces of what really happened.’

  ‘Do you think she really believes it?’ asked Martin. ‘What I mean is—could she be talked out of it?’

  ‘You could ask a neurologist. But I guess Gilbert’s already tried.’

  Martin pushed back. ‘I can see her not believing Gilbert. But convincing her it didn’t happen is the simplest way forward. And the most honest.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’

  ‘I hear you…I don’t want to deny her agency, but it seems crazy for her to let go of him, considering everything. Especially her desire to run the hostel. Which is more important?’

  I’d already arrived at the place everyone was still getting to, but it was interesting to hear Martin and Sarah talking as adults rather than father and daughter. Maybe something good was coming out of this.

  ‘I think,’ I said, ‘that we need to get Camille to forgive him. But Gilbert can’t ask her to, because—Martin?’

  ‘Integrity.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Sarah, and I had to agree.

  ‘Okay, then, how do we convince her to forgive him?’ asked Martin.

  Bernhard had been quiet. ‘We could help Gilbert make up a story that explains what she thinks she saw. His pants fell down and she was…’ Maybe being quiet was a good thing.

  Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘Just because her story’s a bit crazy doesn’t mean she’ll believe someone else’s.’

  I waded in. ‘Maybe if we got someone else to flirt with him…’

  ‘Keep it simple,’ said Martin. ‘We’re not trying to write a sitcom and we have to live with what we’re doing.’

  ‘Keep reminding her of the things she’d need help with in a hostel,’ said Bernhard.

  ‘Which is basically what we’ve been doing. Plus, point out his strengths,’ said Martin.

  ‘Maybe a bit more subtly than you guys have been doing so far,’ said Sarah. She did what I guessed was an impression of Martin’s voice. ‘He’s such a brilliant chap.’

  ‘Remind her that God expects us to forgive and to take in sinners?’ That was my contribution, but religious advice wasn’t going to work coming from me.

  Maybe it needed to come from the Pope.

  52

  MARTIN

  The rain had disappeared for the time being, and we were becoming accustomed to the more spartan conditions and demanding walking, much of it on the Alta Via. Despite both it and the Chemin d’Assise being listed as major European trails, in the comfortable walking month of September the only hikers we s
aw were just out for the day.

  We’d got into the habit of walking in pairs, regrouping every hour or so to make sure nobody had got lost. The phone signal was patchy at best, the markings variable and, as we descended through rocky forest, the path was often hard to discern.

  Sarah and Bernhard had stopped to let the rest of us catch up, and, when we did, it was Sarah who called for silence.

  ‘What can you hear?’ she said after a minute or so.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ said Camille.

  ‘That’s the point. What can’t you hear?’

  ‘Birds,’ I said, beating Zoe to it. Maybe she wasn’t used to the sound of birds in San Francisco, but here we were, miles from any habitation, in quite dense forest, and…not a bird to be heard.

  ‘They said Silent Spring would never happen,’ said Zoe. ‘But…wow. You’re right, Sarah.’ It was possibly the first time I’d sensed a connection between them.

  We sat and listened for a while. I was thinking not so much about our neglect of the planet as the more local sense of loss that Zoe had obviously been feeling, and that I’d been deflecting with my determination to enjoy the trail and hospitality for what they were. Except that in a few years, when the old hotels followed the birds into oblivion, the only pilgrims would be those hardy adventurers prepared to tote tents and stoves.

  Bernhard broke the silence. ‘It’s not spring. It’s autumn. Fall. Some will have migrated. The rest are not mating—they’re hiding from predators. Birds don’t sing without a reason.’

  Maybe. I couldn’t remember being in woods and not hearing birds.

  Sarah and I walked on together, after letting Camille and Gilbert get a head start.

  ‘So, how’s it going with you and Zoe?’ she said.

  ‘Pass. I think that’s the right reply, isn’t it?’ Then, because I didn’t want to convey a negative impression, I added, ‘All good.’

  ‘Seriously, you don’t have to answer, but…I don’t want you—anyone—to get hurt.’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about us.’ Was I being defensive? Too right I was. I wasn’t accountable to my daughter.