East of Croydon

by Sue Perkins

  Night had fallen and the wind was up. The porters took to their bed, lying side by side, five or six to a bed, like bobble-hatted sardines. They were in one room, the crew were in another, and Vicky and I had the last room down the corridor.

  I went in to say good night to the lads. We all looked shrunken, our lips cracked, our eyes hollowed. Fred was shivering under the blankets, his face cadaverous in the gloom.

  ME: You seen the mice, Fred?

  FRED: One or two. Sweet, aren’t they?

  Fred was patently not going to help me with this one. I turned to Luke, the cameraman, in the vain hope he’d volunteer to get up out of bed and Pied Piper the shit out of them down the mountainside.

  ME: You seen them, Luke?

  LUKE: Yes. Bloody everywhere, aren’t they?

  ME: Have they been bothering you?

  Please say yes. Please get rid of them.

  LUKE: No, it’s fine.

  At which point one ran straight across his luxuriant beard, availing itself of a drive-by crumb as it did so.

  Olly was motionless in the corner. He could no longer stand and had not spoken for six hours. We would occasionally go up to him and check he was still breathing. His smart watch was listing his heart rate at around 150 b.p.m. It was clear he was going to have to head back down the pass at first light next morning.

  None of us slept a wink. Outside, the porters had erected tents, and the tarpaulin sides billowed and shrank with each one of their cavernous snores. If the noise wasn’t enough to keep us awake, then some clever clogs had decided to take all our empty plastic water bottles and burn them outside our window, so a sweet toxic fug filtered through the ill-fitting casements all night long.

  Some of the boys had started taking acetazolamide, the altitude-sickness drug. It’s a diuretic, which means that you constantly need a piss. That set the routine for the night: the sudden glare of a head-torch, a floorboard creaking, a waterfall of urine, and so on and so forth in a loop.

  I tiptoed through the mouse motorway and got into bed. The damp blankets had now frozen stiff in the cold. I downed what was left of the Rescue Remedy and cracked open a new bottle for good measure. Cheers, all. Night night!

  Vicky got into bed opposite me, and we turned out our torches.

  I’ve got to be brave, I thought. Everyone must be so sick of my endless cowardice.

  I heard the skittering of tiny claws on the wooden planks beneath.

  Just breathe. Just breathe. In. Out. In. Out. You can do this.

  For hours, I counted sheep, meditated, and did my deep-breathing exercises. Finally, at around four in the morning, my body relaxed enough for me to drift into unconsciousness.

  Thirty minutes later I was wide awake again. Vicky had switched on her head-torch – and the beam shone directly into my face.

  VICKY: Sorry! I need a wee.

  ME: That’s OK.

  VICKY: How you feeling?

  ME: OK. I’m actually feeling a bit calmer about the mouse situation now.

  The moment I said that, there was a faint rustle to the left of my ear.

  VICKY: That’s great.

  I detected a slight edge in her voice.

  VICKY: Really great.

  ME: What?

  VICKY: What?

  ME: What’s that?

  VICKY: Nothing!

  It remains one of the most unconvincing responses I’ve ever heard.

  VICKY: Don’t you worry. It’s absolutely nothing …

  The rustle again, this time louder.

  ME: There’s something here, isn’t there? Here by my head …

  My heart was racing. I reached for my head-torch and turned it on.

  VICKY: Honestly, it’s nothing. And anyway – they’re fine, they’re busy – they’re not interested in you.

  They’re fine. They’re busy. Oh, God. Busy doing what?

  I turned to my left, and there, silhouetted perfectly in the beam of my torch, was a family of five mice sharing one of the energy bars I had been storing in my jacket.

  This was now a worst-case scenario. Not only did I have mice capable of rummaging in my clothes and dragging out food, these were mice that had just eaten an energy-boosting power-ball of nuts, seeds and goji berries. These thieving fuckers were going to be up for days …

  MOUSE 1: Mandy, I don’t know what the hell was in that woman’s snack bar, but I am buzzing my nut off …

  MOUSE 2: Tell me about it, Gaz. I am well lit. What even are those berries?

  MOUSE 1: Goji, innit?

  MOUSE 2: Goji?

  MOUSE 1: Yeah. From the Amazon and shit.

  MOUSE 2: Course. Amazon. Wow, I am buttered, bruv.

  MOUSE 1: I feel you, mate. Totally buttered.

  I drank the remains of the second bottle of Rescue Remedy, zipped my sleeping bag over my head and began humming random show tunes while rocking gently back and forward.

  After all, who needs sleep when you have Barry Manilow’s back catalogue?

  32. The Summit

  The next day, as the donkeys settled down for a straw and bubble-wrap breakfast, the porters began loading the equipment for the final stage of the trek. Olly was helped outside, groin-lifted onto his mount, and sent back down to base camp. His headache was so severe he could barely even talk.

  Without Olly, I felt vulnerable – like a storm-stricken vessel without a lighthouse. You can do this, I thought. You’re nearly there, just five kilometres left. You have to do this. You have to.

  And yet, within two hundred metres, I was struggling. Seriously struggling. What made it worse was that nothing seemed to help – not tulsi, not oxygen, nothing. I was not going to make it.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, I heard a voice in my ear. Calm and clear.

  Take it steady.

  No. Not here. No way. You’re hallucinating, Sue. Shut up and get on with this walk.

  Then again, that voice.

  Take it steady.

  No. I said, no. You are not going there. You are not. You are going to lock that shit down, right now. You have a contributor to meet. You have a sequence to film. You, quite literally, have a mountain to climb. Get your head together and let’s go meet that holy man.

  One of the great joys of returning home after a long trip is looking back over the show’s ‘Bible’ and seeing what could have been. The ‘Bible’ or Editorial Specification Document, to give its fun title – is the extensive scene-by-scene brief given to the channel by the production company. It charts, in detail, all the extraordinary adventures that I am going to have, all the amazing people I am going to meet, and the overall itinerary of the trip.

  Casting an eye back over it when I return, of course, lends a different perspective. It becomes a document about all the extraordinary adventures I could have had, the amazing people I could have met, and the sort of itinerary we would have had if we hadn’t got sick, got lost or fallen over.

  Here’s how the Bible saw this next sequence playing out, versus the reality of how it actually went down.

  Bible Version

  Every day for the past 28 years, Nirmal Baba has dragged ten bags of rocks up from the riverbed as part of his service to the gods. Sue will help Nirmal Baba build his ashram for the day.

  Reality

  We get to the ashram. Nirmal Baba isn’t there. In fact, it turns out Nirmal Baba is five kilometres further up the mountain, chanting by a bonfire and goggle-eyed with weed.

  Bible Version

  Nirmal Baba has given up sex, as this is a great drain on his energy.

  Reality

  Nirmal Baba spends the vast majority of our chat together with his hand on my knee and his eyes focused on my jugs. Perhaps that is less exhausting for him than actual sex.

  Bible Version

  Nirmal Baba will provide some parting words of wisdom that Sue can take with her on her journey.

  Reality

  Nirmal Baba’s farewell gesture is to blow his nose on his sleeve and give the internationall
y recognized hand gesture of ‘Get lost now, you’re getting on my nerves.’

  But there was no mention in the Bible of a blackbird: a blackbird that had begun following me the moment I took my first faltering steps that morning, a blackbird currently diving in and out of the flames in front of me, desperate for my attention.

  I didn’t need the Bible to tell me what that was, or what it meant. I already knew.

  Don’t let it in, Sue. Not now, don’t let any of it in. Do you hear me?

  I arrived, bent double, at a vast boulder beside the path. In the distance, I could make out the blue tongue of the glacier, jutting forth from the mountain’s mouth. This was Gaumukh. Finally, we had reached the source of the Ganges and our film could truly begin.

  Fred was now our de facto soundman. He pinned the mic to my jacket (now heavily nibbled by mice) and I opened my mouth to start my grand opening piece to camera. I had wanted to say something profound about beginnings, but found I could think only of endings. My eyes filled and my throat seized. I started swallowing heavily.

  LUKE: Camera speed.

  ME: Sorry, guys. Sorry. I just …

  VICKY: It’s OK. Just take your time.

  My throat tightened. Within moments I found myself sobbing uncontrollably, howling on that white rock in a foreign place in the middle of nowhere.

  ME: I’m sorry. Guys, I’m so sorry.

  And right in front of me, on an outcrop of rocks, that blackbird.

  33. The Blackbird

  In October 2015 I published my autobiography, Spectacles. The final chapter contained these lines:

  The kitchen door swings open and Dad stands in the doorway. Behind him hangs a grey plastic mask that looks like something out of Halloween. It’s a relic of his radiotherapy sessions for yet another bout of cancer – this time in the throat, poor sod. He is looking a little worn, and his voice cracks when he speaks, but amid the agony of recuperation there is an unexpected gain – Dad is joyful again. Finally, after endless dances with death, after sixteen years with the black dog, he wants to live.

  Before publication, around August time, I received the first proofs, and duly sent them to my family to make sure they were happy with everything. All was fine.

  In reality, things at home were shifting, getting darker. Mum was increasingly unhappy. She said Dad had changed. On bad days she said she wanted to leave him, though we all knew she wouldn’t. On better days, she would cry with guilt at having even thought such a thing. She loved him, you see – and, much as we may avoid it, there is a part of true love that’s obligation and graft; a part that’s about walking the hard miles.

  Dad had taken to falling over, down stairs, across thresholds, even over his own bloody feet. As a result, Mum felt she couldn’t leave his side. This made him ratty – he didn’t want a bloody carer. This made her ratty – she wanted a semblance of her life and old freedoms back.

  I headed down to Cornwall. Increasingly it had been a hard place to visit, a six-hour slog towards sadness. That particular visit, Dad seemed cheery, if a little older and more unsteady than I remembered. I had barely had a chance to take off my coat, before Mum whisked me into the kitchen, put the kettle on and started to talk.

  MUM: I think it’s Alzheimer’s. Do you?

  She was stage-whispering over the sound of the boiling water.

  ME: Mum, I have just arrived. I have literally just stepped out of the car. I don’t know. I don’t know any of the specific symptoms. And shut up because he’ll be able to hear you.

  DAD: I can hear you!

  MUM: I think it is.

  DAD: Ann!

  MUM: I think it’s the beginning of dementia.

  DAD: Ann! I can still hear you!

  MUM: He’s different, you know.

  No, I think. Not possible. Not Dad’s brain. There can’t be anything wrong with Dad’s brain – it’s a source of wonder. This is the man who can add long lists of numbers in his head, who polishes off a couple of fiendish Sudokus before breakfast, who stores data better than an IBM mainframe. Yet this, too, is the man who has spent an entire life trapped in his own mind, a mind at war with itself. His brain is a battlefield on which the armies of self-doubt have raged for over seven decades. Now it appears they have won – that he has given up, that he is too tired to mount a challenge.

  I took Dad for a stroll around the garden that afternoon. At some point, I became aware that I was holding his hand, supporting him.

  Dad is leaning on you. He is leaning on you. He can’t walk properly on his own.

  I hadn’t realized. I hadn’t realized it was this bad.

  I settled him back down in front of some sport (Dad didn’t care what the sport was: as long as the television was full of people hitting things or kicking things he was happy) and I went over to the barn next door to see how Emma and Georgie were getting on.

  Emma is one of my oldest mates and, through no fault of my own, I had ended up going on her and Georgie’s honeymoon. This would be awkward in and of itself, but I am also Emma’s ex-partner. Super-boke. For her and I to be involved in anything of a romantic or sentimental nature, even by proxy, is the stuff of nightmares.

  On my way down to Cornwall, they’d given me a call. It turns out that the charming cottage in Somerset that they’d booked to stay in for their post-nuptials had been slightly mis-sold. The front garden did indeed contain a well-stocked array of cottage plants with wooden furniture and barbecue set – but what the owners had failed to disclose was what was in the back garden.

  The M5.

  Literally. As you sat in the sunlounger you could see the tops of the lorries as they sped towards Taunton.

  I dropped in on them on my way down to Mum and Dad. Their instructions were certainly easy to follow – ‘Get on the motorway west, come off at J25 and THERE YOU ARE.’ I could see them waving as I turned off at the junction.

  I won’t lie, it was a strange choice for a honeymoon. Not only was it situated on the slip-road of one of Britain’s busiest motorways, but it also appeared to be a disused spa, with many of the ground-floor rooms containing stainless-steel trolleys laden with plastic sheets, waxing equipment and, in one suite, liquid nitrogen. It was a niche market for sure, catering for those lovebirds who fancied a mini-break, a Brazilian and a light freeze for two. After all, nothing says I love you like couples cryonics.

  It was settled. I couldn’t leave the pair of them in a haunted motorway Champneys, so they came down, thank God they came down, to Cornwall with me.

  Our arrival meant that Mum could leave the house – just for an hour or two, she wouldn’t want to be gone that long. Just an hour or two where she didn’t have the background hum of worry, where she didn’t need to keep one eye permanently fixed on Dad’s whereabouts.

  DAD: I’m fine, I don’t need looking after.

  MUM: Yes, you do. Will you be all right, Susan?

  ME: Yes, we’ll be fine. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.

  MUM: Don’t let him out of your sight.

  Dad rolled his eyes, and I laughed. There he is. There he is.

  As soon as the rumble of the car had faded into the distance, Dad made a bid for freedom.

  DAD: I thought we might go for a walk. You know, like we did yesterday. I liked that.

  ME: Of course, Dad – you sure you’re up to it?

  It was a pointless question: he was already getting his boots. Then there was the waterproof coat, scarf and bobble hat. Dad is nothing if not prepared.

  He shuffled along to the front gate, his arm hooked in mine. Once onto the track, he started to pick up speed.

  ME: Easy there, Dad – we’re not in a hurry.

  And yet still he sped on, careering sharply.

  ME: Dad, you need to slow down – I can’t hold you.

  My back strained as I tried desperately to support his weight. He was now almost running, his body twisted, head leaning forward.

  ME: Dad! STOP!

  I couldn’t hold him any long
er, and at that point Dad swung sharply to the left and dived headlong into the bank alongside the path. As he fell, there was a moment when everything stopped – when the birdsong fell silent, when his boots left the crunch of gravel. All I could hear in the entirety of the universe was a single voice, my voice, which said, simply but clearly: Your dad is dying.

  Dad tried to raise himself. His forehead was cut and he was bleeding profusely. I desperately tried to pull him up, but he was a dead weight. I ran to get Emma and Georgie, and they came to watch him while I ran back inside and called for an ambulance.

  It was then I realized how remote we were, how isolated and cut off. It would take the paramedics forty minutes to get from the main hospital, plus they’d have no idea which unmarked track was ours. In the end, Georgie ran up the lane and waved them down. Emma stayed with Dad, and I monitored the phone.

  All of this had happened while I was supposed to be in charge – in the brief window when I had been made the responsible adult. Dad fell on my watch. It was my fault.

  For a long, long time I thought it was all my fault.

  Mum had left us happily eating biscuits and watching telly. She returned to a scene of pure chaos. Dad was sitting on a chair in the middle of the dirt track, his face lacquered with blood. Two paramedics stood either side of him, jollying him along while the ambulance made its way along the A30. I couldn’t help laughing – the whole thing looked like a tea break on the set of Holby City.

  The ambulance eventually followed. By this time, Dad was able to stand, so I got in with him and headed to our local A and E. The hospital was one of many savaged by government cuts. As I entered, I got a sense of a building folding in on itself, taking all those who had loved it, and had worked hard for it, along with it.