The Traveller's Guide to Love

by Helen Nicholl

  As Ellie and I followed Finn down the hall, picking our way between bicycles, gumboots, and assorted piles of recycling, a door opened and a small vision in violet dungarees and a floppy hat stitched with sunflowers came flying towards us.

  ‘Granny Finn! Ellie!’ Pippa flung her arms around us. ‘Mummy’s in the garden but first you have to come upstairs and see your room!’ She pulled us along behind Finn, who was climbing the stairs with our bags, and danced ahead into a tiny room with a sloping ceiling. Two narrow beds stood on either side of a rag rug, with just enough space for a slightly rickety chair between them; there was an ancient chest of drawers, a jam jar full of daisies, and a tie-dyed curtain looped back from the window with a bootlace. There was also relatively little dust, and, pinned to the wall, a large banner reading WeLcum!

  Pippa surveyed her handiwork with satisfaction. ‘Doesn’t it look nice?’ she said. ‘I did it nearly all myself. I even did sweeping.’

  Ellie picked her up and hugged her. ‘It’s gorgeous!’ she said. ‘Better than staying at the Ritz! And I love your outfit – did Mummy make it?’

  Pippa nodded, beaming, and Finn said ‘Marta’s been branching out into children’s clothes: she’s selling as many as she can make. But she can tell you all about it herself. Come on down now – I’m starving.’

  At the back of the house there was a lovely overgrown patch of lawn with apple trees and a hammock, and there we found Marta, setting out a picnic supper.

  ‘We thought we’d eat out here, just the five of us,’ she said, after hugs and kisses had been exchanged. ‘It’s such a lovely evening, and anyway Raj and Sophie won’t be back until much later, and Leila has gone to visit her mother. There’s so much to catch up on, we don’t want to share you with anyone else.’

  This was something of a relief to me: meals in that house were strictly communal, and as cooking was done according to a weekly rota, the standard was variable but tended towards lentil stews and vegetable casseroles made from whatever produce remained unsold. A previous visit had coincided with a glut of turnips and I had made a mental note to stay away in winter.

  But on this occasion we feasted on summer vegetables and Raj’s mother’s celebrated samosas, along with homemade dips and elderberry wine – and in my case, mercifully non-organic gin and tonic. Sitting there in the long, summer dusk, we caught up with all the news: Pippa had a great deal to tell us about her first year at school, Ellie and I touched lightly on our very different travels, and Finn and Marta were happy to report a modest growth in the gardening business, as well as an unexpected demand for the children’s clothing which Marta had begun as a sideline, but which now threatened to expand into something a lot more time-consuming.

  ‘But profitable,’ said Finn, with his characteristic crooked grin, and I thought how well and happy he was looking. He has his father’s dark looks but is slighter, and inclined to push himself too hard; now though, he looked utterly contented and relaxed. As for Marta, I had never seen her looking better. Her normally wraith-like presence seemed suddenly rosy, and unusually substantial – and when she stretched up an arm, I thought I saw the reason why.

  ‘Marta! Am I imagining it or are you …’ I let my eyes rest on her stomach, and she blushed, and then both she and Finn began to laugh.

  ‘We were saving the best news until last: Pip is going to have a little brother or sister in the New Year. Are you pleased?’

  ‘Pleased? I couldn’t be more pleased!’ I jumped up and hugged her, and then my son. ‘What wonderful news! We should be drinking champagne!’

  ‘We will,’ said Ellie. She had thrown her arms around Finn in delight and was now sitting beside Marta, stroking her long pale hair. ‘Oh, Marta, what brilliant news. I’m going to be its very favourite aunt.’

  ‘In that case you’ll have to stick around,’ said Finn. ‘You can’t be a favourite aunt if you’re always off to Ulan Bator or Patagonia.’

  ‘Oh yes I can,’ said Ellie. ‘I can send back exotic presents and turn up once a year on a camel. I might stay a bit closer to home though – I’ve been thinking of Spain as it happens. At any rate, I’ve had enough of South America for the time being.’

  There was a little silence, then Marta said softly, ‘I’m really sorry, Ellie: Carlos is a moron. But it’s nice for us to have you back.’

  ‘Why don’t you come back to London for a while?’ Finn suggested. ‘You can have the room you’re staying in now for as long as you like, and you’re bound to get work: supply teachers and tutors are always in demand.’

  ‘Or you could help out here,’ said Marta. ‘We always need a hand.’

  ‘Oh please come!’ Pippa beseeched her. ‘I want you to live here more than anything in the world!’

  ‘In that case,’ said Ellie, ‘how can I refuse?’

  Soon after we returned to Belfast, Ellie went back to London and I found myself once again on my own. September was a cold, wet month, and the stormy grey waters of the lough were a sad reflection of my mood. I missed my children terribly, but I was delighted that Ellie was putting her life back together again. Tiger Lily, who had obviously been well looked after in my absence, had seemed surprisingly pleased – for a cat – to have me home again, and Fred was often to be found curled up with her on my sofa. Sticky Wicket had indulged in an orgy of cat-flapping while I had been away – there was now a flap in his door upstairs, as well in my front door, so both cats were free to come and go at will. And in those lonely days, I found their presence an unexpected comfort.

  Of course, I went to work, and I had the odd meal upstairs with Archie, who seemed to think I needed feeding up. I did my weekly stint in the Good Intentions Bookshop, and I walked for miles along the shore, and tried very hard not to think about Albert. I also caught up with Rita.

  She had rung to invite me for an after-work drink in yet another newly opened little bistro, and I was pleased to see that it looked a good deal more promising than the previous one. I was less pleased to see that she was not alone.

  ‘Johanna, I don’t think you’ve met my colleague, Campbell Pearce? He’s got an hour to waste before he has to catch his train to Dublin, so I invited him to join us.’

  It was a set-up, of course. I knew it the moment I laid eyes on him, because he was about my age, and no lawyer has an hour to waste, unless there’s the possibility of turning it to some advantage.

  ‘Do you live in Dublin?’ I enquired, as he handed me my drink.

  ‘No, I’m based in Edinburgh, but I come to Belfast and Dublin regularly.’

  His voice had a nice Scottish burr and he was certainly presentable – and attentive. I could see Rita smirking complacently as we discovered mutual interests, and I have to admit that an hour passed very pleasantly before he glanced at his watch and said, regretfully, that he would have to go.

  ‘But I hope we can do this again sometime. I’ll be back in Belfast in a fortnight. It’s been a great pleasure to meet you, Johanna.’

  ‘Well?’ said Rita, the moment he was out of earshot. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Very nice. For you or for me?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, he’s far too old and civilised for me.’

  ‘True. But what makes you think he’s right for me?’

  ‘You’ve got a lot in common,’ said Rita. ‘You’re roughly the same age, you’re both single, and you like music and travel. What’s not to like?’

  ‘He’s not Albert.’

  ‘Too right he’s not. From what you’ve told me, he’s got a lot more hair, for one thing. And at least Campbell has actually divorced his wife.’

  I sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Rita. He seemed a really nice man, but he’s just not my type.’

  ‘And what exactly is your type, Johanna?’ Rita snapped her fingers for the waiter. ‘So far you have shown a predilection for tall, dark and handsome criminals, and tall, bald and dithering academics. Apart from their height and nationality, the only thing they seem to have in common is their unreliability
.’

  There was a temporary lull while Rita instructed the waiter to bring us another carafe and a plate of meze, but that done, she returned to the attack.

  ‘Look, Johanna, I know you’re still yearning for your useless Albert, but it’s time you moved on. And here’s a lovely, sensible, successful Scot who’s obviously taken with you – why can’t you give him a chance?’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s too soon.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Rita. ‘It’s never too soon. Oh well, Campbell will be snapped up by someone else, and you’ll end up resorting to internet dating.’

  ‘What’s wrong with internet dating?’ I looked at her in surprise. ‘Doesn’t everyone do it? I thought it was considered perfectly respectable these days.’

  ‘They do and it is,’ said Rita. ‘But they all tell lies about themselves. They put up photos taken twenty years ago and then turn up with hearing aids and paunches and want to talk about their divorces. You’ll see.’

  ‘No I won’t,’ I replied, ‘because it is not something I am ever going to do. Anyway, how did you meet …?’ I struggled to remember the name of her current toy boy.

  ‘Vladimir? I spotted him in a wine bar and was immediately attracted. So I went straight up to him and said, Excuse me, you’re not Algernon Woodcroft, by any chance?’

  ‘Why Algernon Woodcroft?’

  ‘I thought the answer was unlikely to be yes.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He said he wasn’t and I said, what a pity, I was hoping it would be you, but I’m so late he’s probably left by now. To which he replied, why don’t I buy you a drink instead? Voilà!’

  I gazed at her with unbounded admiration. ‘I could never do that! You’re so … focused!’

  Which just went to show why Rita was a top-flight lawyer with an endless supply of adoring men in tow, while I was an impoverished part-time seller of dodgy antiques and second-hand books, with only the prospect of seedy internet Romeos to comfort me in my declining years.

  Chapter 16

  It wasn’t long before I was starting to regret my refusal to consider getting to know Campbell. The weekends in particular were a desert of emptiness. I took myself to the cinema, went for long walks, and eked out cups of coffee in cafes where everyone else seemed happily attached to friends or family. And one Sunday, with nothing better to do, and no particular aim in sight, I drove myself up over the hills and down to Dundonald. Turning east, a colourful mural of a dolmen caught my eye, and I suddenly remembered that there was one somewhere close at hand that Albert and I had always meant to visit.

  The Traveller’s Guide to Ancient County Down was still tucked away in the glove compartment, so I followed the directions of M. Heaney and found the Kempe Stones without much difficulty. They are basalt, and when excavated in the nineteenth century, were found to contain human bones. Rooks were cawing in a stand of high trees, the sun was shining fitfully on the surrounding fields, and it was a perfectly respectable dolmen – but I felt no pleasure at all. Somehow all the joy of the hunt had gone: without Albert, I felt empty.

  So I turned my back on the Kempe Stones and drove towards Bangor, then on through the little coastal villages of Groomsport and Donaghadee. According to M. Heaney, there was a holy well in the grounds of one of the churches at Donaghadee, but I didn’t have the heart to look for it. Instead I spent some time sitting on a bench and gazing bleakly out to sea, before I turned back inland and drove home in the late afternoon through Greyabbey. But as I retraced the route that I had so often driven with Albert, along the shore of Strangford Lough, I was suddenly so overcome with grief that I had to stop the car. Drawing off the road into a deserted lay-by, I buried my head in my arms and wept.

  I cried until my sleeves were soaked, but in the end I straightened up and looked at myself in the mirror. ‘Johanna,’ I said, ‘this will not do. Grandmother van Heerden would be ashamed of you, not to mention Great-Granny Daubenton who was famous for defending her farmstead against a whole battalion of soldiers. You must pull yourself together.’

  Frederika had been right, I thought: the best possible cure for my misery would be to throw myself heart and soul into some new project. The question was, though, what should it be? And at that precise moment the sun broke through the clouds. It illuminated the far side of the lough, and the distant Mournes, and all the little hills and hummocks of County Down, and the answer came to me as clearly as if Grandmother van Heerden had spoken the words herself: ‘Don’t let your present unhappiness sour the memories of your journeys. Turn them to good account, Johanna: celebrate them – write them down!’

  And that is when I decided to write my own book: part travelogue, part memoir and part guide to my adopted country. I would begin with County Down and when that was done I would explore the other five counties, one by one. It was exactly the sort of long-term project that I needed, and I didn’t need anyone’s help: I would do it on my own.

  Of course the story of my love for Albert was painfully entangled with the account of my early travels, but the work involved in mapping out and recalling all our journeys proved to be wonderfully cathartic. I couldn’t yet bring myself to revisit the places we had so happily discovered together, but I have a good memory, and I had my notebooks, not to mention M. Heaney’s guide to help me. Once committed to the task, I became so driven that I thought of little else. And on the days that I worked in Archibald’s Antiques, I threw myself into such a frenzy of dusting, tidying and reorganising that Archie eventually begged me to stop.

  ‘Johanna, if you go on like this, no one will recognise the place! Can’t you go back to reading? Or take up some inoffensive hobby – embroidery perhaps?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Archie. I know I’m a bit frantic at the moment. Perhaps I’ll pop down to Good Intentions and buy myself a couple of good books.’

  So with Archie’s blessing I took myself off down the street and was pleased to find Sybilla in the bookshop.

  ‘Sybilla,’ I said, ‘for reasons too painful to go into, I need something totally absorbing to read. Have you any suggestions?’

  ‘Crime,’ said Sybilla instantly, and I remembered that she was addicted to the genre. Dolores had once suggested that Sybilla must be reading all those thrillers with a view to working out how to murder her loathsome husband Roger, but sadly that was not the case. ‘A good bit of noir is what you need,’ she continued. ‘Here, try this … and this … and this.’ She picked out half a dozen books, charged me the princely sum of five pounds and thanked me for my enquiries after Percy the parrot, whose health had recently been troublesome. ‘And don’t forget that we can always use a bit more of your help in here if you have any time on your hands, Johanna – especially on a Saturday.’

  I suspected from this last remark that she already knew about my broken romance, although up until then only Archie and Sticky Wicket had been told the reasons for Albert’s absence from my life. But that is one of the hazards of living in such a small and interconnected community: secrets are very hard to keep, everyone knows everyone’s business, and it is hard to go anywhere without bumping into someone you know – often the person you least expect to see.

  The truth of this observation was confirmed when I came out of Mulligan’s – I had noticed a special offer on my way back to Archie’s: three bottles of acceptable Chenin Blanc for ten pounds – and found myself face to face with my ex-husband.

  ‘Socrates,’ I said, without enthusiasm. ‘What are you doing in Belfast?’

  ‘Oh, just a bit of business,’ he responded mysteriously, while craning his neck to see what was clinking in my carrier bag. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your trouble, by the way – Ellie was telling me that you’d parted company with that Albert fella. Can’t say I took to him myself, but I’m sorry to hear he’s let you down. It must have been a shock.’

  Almost as much of a shock as the first time you disappeared without a word for several weeks, I might have said, but the same thought had probably occurred to hi
m, because he hurried on: ‘If there’s anything I can do to help, you know you have only to say the word.’

  ‘Good heavens, Socrates, I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of calling on you at once! Now I wonder what you could think of that might possibly help?’

  ‘Well, I could go round and give the bastard a good kicking,’ he suggested.

  I closed my eyes briefly while several rejoinders chased themselves through my head, but in the end I didn’t bother. I just stepped round him, clinking, and continued on my way.

  A week later I happened to find myself working in the Good Intentions bookshop with one of the volunteers whom I hadn’t seen for several months: an attractive, energetic, but terminally interfering young woman called Susan.

  ‘Johanna!’ said Susan, clasping both my hands tightly in hers the moment she saw me. ‘My dear, how are you?’

  There is something remarkably irritating about being addressed as ‘my dear’ by a woman who is a lot younger than you are, but as her intentions were probably kind, I did my best to smile.

  ‘I’m very well, thank you, Susan. And how are you?’

  ‘Oh, my dear, I can see that you’re putting a brave face on things, and I do so admire you for your courage! But you don’t have to pretend with me – I know that you must be going through a truly dreadful time.’

  The shop was empty, apart from Professor Humphrey, who was completely uninterested in anything other than the more obscure branches of Ecclesiology, besides being as deaf as a post. Susan, however, continued to speak in the hushed tones more usually reserved for addressing the recently bereaved.

  ‘The breakdown of any relationship is such a dreadful blow, at any age, and you must be absolutely devastated! I just want you to know that there are those who care about you more than you might realise …’