by Jeremy Page
By the time he adds the bicarbonate of soda and lets the mixed batter rise a second time, his mouth is watering. As a result, he’s impatient with the griddle, not waiting till it’s spit-hot, not greasing the biscuit cutters he tends to use, so the first couple of crumpets he pours are too dense and too brown when he turns them. Gull food. But the next ones are perfect. The batter is soft as he spoons it in, and the bubbles rise calmly, bursting across the top in a gentle honeycomb pattern till they set. He turns them and runs the flat of a knife across their burnt golden underside, such a punctureable skin, with its thin lip where the batter has seeped below the edge of the cutter.
He melts cold butter on to the hot crumpets and, when that vanishes, he adds more butter till discs of it cover the surface, softened, like snow on wet wood. Then he adds honey, plenty of it, rich and dark, a sugary slippery taste in his mouth, hot from the griddle, cold from the fridge, sour from the soda and sweet from the honey.
After finishing up the batter he wraps half-a-dozen of the crumpets in a bag and rows the inflatable over to the Falls of Lora. He writes Thanks for last night on the bag, and ties it to the aluminium cockpit rail, reaching up in a pirate’s manner, thinking of them asleep, still, somewhere in the boat, Marta in her husband’s cabin, on one side of the bunk even though the whole bed’s hers, and Rhona, no doubt in a mess of bedclothes and hair and an arm hanging off the bench in the saloon. Sexy in her disarray.
Back on the Flood Guy makes a coffee, licks the cooled butter and honey off his breakfast plate and looks at his navigation map. The Deben estuary. One of Suffolk’s tongueless mouths, flowing into the North Sea. Time to move. But instead he gets the other map out, the Hildebrand’s Travel Atlas of America. As a rule, he doesn’t write the diary during the day - but he wants to see them, right now, he wants a glimpse of what they’re up to. It’s the taste of these crumpets, he thinks, a sugar-kick, compelling him on, he wants to know where to, where is his family right now?
They have just crossed the state line into the north-east corner of Alabama. Somewhere below Chattanooga, driving fast on a back-road, as it dips and stretches like a glorious ribbon in the bright afternoon sunshine. Judy has her window down and her sunglasses on, and has been singing along to a bluegrass CD. It has a great rhythm, when the banjo kicks in, and Guy’s been driving the car like it’s part of the music, trying to get the engine in tempo. Even Freya’s been joining in from the back, for once putting her music player to one side, sitting forward in the gap between the two front seats to be closer to them. It feels good, this sense of well-being, this motion and sunshine too, and an empty road. America is rolling by, under the wheels, their third state already, Florida, Georgia, and now the top corner of Alabama - A-la-ba-ma, he thinks, everywhere that’s on the map round here is in the lyrics of a song.
Judy changes the track, puts the volume up, and announces in her best Dolly impression that Thish here nexsht song’s the Muleskinner Blues. Yee haah! That high and low answering rif on the banjo as it starts, fast like the cog of a machine turning, turning, setting the tempo too fast it seems, too fast but it’s an invitation, right there, to tap your foot, to go-get your guitar, to go along with it and after four bars or so you can do nothing but go along, the rest of the music kicking in - the session sound of the lead guitar doing something more ordinary, a little wayward in fact, a tall upright sound doing a humorous answering call, and then that extraordinary sound - a wolf-whistle followed by that real live whip crack - has Dolly really got a whip in her hand? - just the once, and a whey-up-there from Dolly like she’s just loving that sound, laughing through it, chasing the music like it’s the best sound on earth and, right there, you have to agree with her, she’s in the best mood on the planet and you’re totally with the rhythm and swept up by it. And she strikes into the song with the most extraordinary opening line, Good moorrrrrrrrrr-nin’, captain, dragging the high note out for a full ten seconds - how does she do it? - before coming down to Good morning to you, sir, heh, heh, then a cheeky yeah while other whip cracks go off in the background, like fireworks. Do you need another muleskinner? she goes, and you drive on, drive along, loving every last note of it.
They pull off the road near a large sign saying DOUGHNUTS, under which there’s a giant red arrow pointing to a much smaller shop. Such clear signage, in America, it seems to be written for the planes.
‘Just how many doughnuts do you think I can eat?’ he says, provocatively. Freya’s up for it. ‘I’ll match you, Dad,’ she says. ‘My metabolism can take it better than yours.’
‘You’re on, and you’re gonna lose.’
Freya’s excited about the doughnuts, at the sheer indulgence of a business that only sells them and nothing more, she can’t be delayed, and when they step into the shop they are hit by a hotly overwhelming smell of sugar.
‘Twelve types,’ Freya sums up, efficiently. They’re in a great mood, bamboozling the assistant with their excitability, and their sheer Englishness, their strange accents which must sound like royalty out here. They order half the range, change the order, add and subtract various blends of blueberry and crème, then take four greasy bags outside to sit under an awning at a plastic set of table and chairs.
‘Oh, these are great. I love the blueberry ones,’ Freya says. ‘Try the blueberry one.’
Judy smiles, thinly. She’s going to go slow and let the others have the lion’s share. ‘Guy, do you think they’d do us some boiling water?’
‘For tea?’ he says. They carry tea bags with them, from England. Judy’s always had proper standards when it comes to tea. ‘I’ll try,’ he says, hopefully.
He goes back into the shop and asks for three cups of boiling water. It’s one of those moments when America seems more than a mere ocean away. The assistant, who’s young, with a perfect smile that can’t have been the result of eating the doughnuts, just can’t get why anyone would want boiling water. She is shown the tea bags, and finds that endearing. Real cute, she says, smiling and nodding and looking at the tea bags, before getting some hot water from the coffee percolator. It’ll have to do, Guy thinks.
Through the window he looks at the dumbshow of Judy and Freya, eating the doughnuts. Freya’s making an extra effort to keep things light. She’s clearly not sure, without her father’s presence out there to ensure a light-hearted majority, whether her high-spirits will last, and is showing that instinct again, an awareness that something’s not quite as it should be between them. And he wonders. Why should the mood be slipping like this? After all that great music and driving? What is surfacing? What has Freya picked up on that he needs to get up to speed with? He can’t help thinking that this little framed tableau of eating the doughnuts might have the appearance of a last supper for them. A moment of sweetness which he will someday need to savour.
‘Snap out of it,’ he whispers to himself, taking the Styrofoam cups of not-quite-boiling water out to the others, the thin bleed of the tea bags promising an acceptable, if not perfect, cup.
‘I had some problems,’ he says. Freya looks relieved he’s back.
‘I’ll go next time,’ Judy says, kindly, but she has a look in her eye he doesn’t quite get. Sometimes, at night, her eyes look darker than they are, and she has this quality about her now.
‘How far to Nashville?’ Judy asks.
‘Three hours,’ Guy replies, always the authority when it comes to distances.
‘I should let Phil know,’ Judy says. She reaches into her bag and gets out her mobile. ‘There’s a signal here.’ Her doughnut is left half-eaten on the plate.
‘Are you getting nervous, Mum?’ Freya asks.
‘What about?’
‘The recording.’
‘Not really,’ Judy says, abstractly, as she texts a message.
‘How many have you had?’ Guy asks, lightly.
‘Three, Dad, and I’ve got plenty of room.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I could eat the whole display counter,’ Freya drawls
in a gruff voice, putting on a cross-eyed look. It’s one of her characters - Guy recognizes - the monster one, full of appetite. She has several characters.
Guy responds in the way his daughter wants, becoming the father-monster - the one with no morals at all. ‘I’d eat the display counter, the shop-girl, if she was dipped in sugar, I’d eat you too.’ Freya laughs.
‘You’ve had enough,’ Judy says, curtly.
And Freya’s voice snaps. ‘Get you! I’m not a kid,’ she says.
Judy gives her a withering look. ‘Yes you are. You are a kid and you’ve had enough.’
‘Judy,’ Guy says, trying to intervene, trying to calm the hotheadedness between these women.
‘And you’ve had enough too,’ she says, not entirely joking.
‘Well you don’t eat enough!’ Freya pipes up, rashly. ‘You eat like a bird and you’re way too skinny - all you do is drink coffee.’
Judy gets up, not willing to be lectured to. Oddly, she glares at Guy, as if it’s all his fault, how easily her family starts to argue. He puts his hands up in surrender, and let’s her make her own way off.
‘She’s a nightmare,’ Freya huffs.
‘She’s not.’
‘Except she is.’
‘OK. You’re right.’
‘See.’
‘Don’t get wound up,’ he says, watching Judy leaning against their hire car. It looks like she’s just got a text back. He imagines Phil spending his days gazing at his mobile, waiting for the texts to appear. He sees Judy’s expression darken and he knows there’s trouble. Damn that Phil. ‘Your mother’s probably on edge about having to do the recording. Be easy on her,’ he says, wondering why he always has to be the peacemaker.
‘Why do I have to be the peacemaker?’ he asks.
‘You’re dumb enough to take the job.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yep. You were born dumb.’
‘So were you. I remember.’
He looks at Freya as she licks the sugar off her fingers. She used to be a messy baby, when she ate, he remembers trying to feed her with a soft rubber spoon and how he used to open his own mouth every time he wanted her to eat. He sees glimpses of that baby in her face, even now.
He reaches across the table and gulps down Judy’s half-eaten doughnut. He grins at his daughter. ‘I win,’ he says.
They walk back to the car. Judy’s in a state. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she starts, ‘Phil’s been trying to get through - he says the recording’s rescheduled.’
‘Meaning?’ Guy says.
‘We don’t have to be there today. Tomorrow’s better.’
Guy tries to hide his unexpected sense of relief. ‘But it’s still going ahead, isn’t it?’
‘Sure,’ she says, sounding American, sounding like Phil actually, who always wanted to be American. ‘So what do we do?’
For a moment Guy pictures his family in a new light, suddenly without anchor, in the middle of Alabama’s nowhere, a family divided by various pulls - of him wanting to be with them, and Judy, her shoulders deflated, really wanting to be in front of a mic in Nashville. ‘I’ll look at the map,’ he says.
He leans against the car, looking at their page on the Hildebrand’s Travel Atlas, searching for clues in the cross-hatching of roads and rivers and mountains where they might be happy tonight. It’s like a mysterious code he has to crack.
‘I’ve got it,’ he says, pointing out a state park in nearby Georgia. ‘Amicalola. It has a waterfall. How about it?’
‘Makes no odds to me,’ Judy says, resigned.
‘Freya?’
‘Whatever.’
Guy finishes writing, missing his family and its petty squabbles. Usually the diary empties his mind, calms him, but not this time. He has the sense that his journey had once been quiet and personal but now has become something else. More complicated. Not of his choosing. You just can’t keep a story pure for long - it’s always heading for compromises and turns and you’re the last person to see them coming.
Writing about those doughnuts has reminded Guy of an occasion from his childhood, where tensions had similarly lurked under a seemingly innocent moment.
‘I want to show you something,’ he remembers his father saying, as he led Guy out to the silver BMW. With a great flourish he had produced the keys to the car and opened up the boot, the holy of holies, the centre of his life. Guy was only six or seven, the boot seemed an impossibly big space, and it was full of dimpled aluminium flight cases and cardboard boxes with Japanese writing on them.
‘Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Olympus,’ his father said, like the words were names of gods, gesturing towards the boxes with a casual wave of his hand. ‘Olympus OM-2. A marvel - you have there the first camera in the world with automatic exposure through the lens, both on the shutter and on the film’s surface. Integrated auto-flash. ’ His father paused with salesman’s pride. ‘It’s nice.’ He eased open a small cardboard box with his fingernail. Inside, he pulled out a dark black lens. ‘Smell that,’ he said. ‘What does it smell like?’
Guy sniffed the lens. ‘Like a leather belt?’
His father took the lens and smelled it himself. ‘Not quite. You know, to me it smells of glass and metal and oil - it’s my favourite smell in the whole world.’
‘Better than chocolate?’
‘Much better. Women like chocolate. Men like glass and metal and oil.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m only joking,’ his father said, with that legendary smile of his. ‘Here’s something special.’
At the back of the boot was a locked metal safe box. Guy had never known what was kept in there, but he saw on that day. Inside the box was a series of foam compartments, each holding a dark metal camera or lens. They looked like an assassin’s rifle, broken down into bewildering parts. ‘I’m going to teach you a foreign word today. Hasselblad. That, Guy, is a Hasselblad - it’s worth more than the car.’
Guy stared on, mesmerized, totally in awe of his father’s treasure. ‘Is it yours?’
‘I wish,’ his father had said, laughing. With practised skill he assembled the camera, which didn’t look like a camera at all - it looked like a part of an engine, square, with handles sticking out of its side, and smooth chrome edges. ‘Hold it - and for Christ’s sake don’t drop it.’
Guy nervously held the camera, immediately thinking he really was going to drop it - it was so heavy. It tipped awkwardly in his hands, as if it wanted to get away from a child like him. ‘Here,’ his father said, nipping a button on the camera and like a jack-in-the-box the whole top of it flipped open as four sheets of metal sprang up on their edges.
‘Wow,’ Guy said, looking down on to a strange glass screen.
‘Yes. Wow,’ his father repeated, close in Guy’s ear, while he turned the mysterious pattern of numbers on the lens. Gradually, parts of the garden lifted into focus on the grains of the glass, the garden, but magically reversed, with sunlight falling beautifully through the trees along the road. ‘Through that,’ his father said, ‘is the best-looking world you’ll ever see. Everything’s like a movie on that screen. It’s like there’s a whole new type of sunshine in there. It’s perfect. When the astronauts went to the moon, that’s the camera they took with them, exactly like that model you’ve got in your hands.’
At that moment Guy had seen something move on the screen. It was his mother, coming out of the house. She seemed small and fragile and strangely lit. ‘There’s Mum,’ he whispered, transfixed by the little image moving the wrong way round towards him. ‘She looks like a film star,’ he whispered. Then louder, Guy had called to his mother, ‘You look like a film star, Mum!’
Guy’s mother stopped on the path and pulled a strange expression, pretending to be famous, grinning in a way he’d never seen before, it almost looked like she was in pain.
‘Dad - can I take a photo?’ he asked, aware that his father had gone silent.
And his father had reached back for the camera.
‘Have you any idea how expensive film for this is?’ he said, looking humorous but sounding anything but.
Marta and Rhona visit the Flood in the late afternoon, just as Guy has been watching a tower of thunder clouds building up over the shore to the west, threatening a downpour.
‘Looks like we’ll get wet,’ he says, helping them up the ladder. He feels both their hands in turn, Rhona’s, quick and warm and twisting in his grip, and Marta’s steadier and dryer, and holding him more securely.
They stand a little awkwardly on deck before Guy realizes it’s his role to be host.
‘Right, this way then,’ he says, a little embarrassed, sliding open the door to the wheelhouse on its old brass rollers. The women walk in, impressed at the barge’s sheer size, the heaviness of its bulwarks and fixtures, its unavoidable solidity.
‘Like it,’ Rhona says, climbing down the steep ladder from the wheelhouse into the saloon. When Guy follows them in there, he sees Rhona standing in the middle of the room on the red rug. Surrounded by the old dark timber planking she has the appearance of a dancer, in the studio, with Marta and Guy naturally forming the audience. He’s shy in their company, after spending the day wondering whether he might have said too much at the meal last night, or said too little, or somehow disappointed them. It’s easy to replay an evening, re-light it, re-cast it, till you get a new scene entirely.
Rhona’s wearing a knitted black beret and is wearing a short grey kilt. She’s on show here, it seems, and is at ease in the centre of a room and at the centre of attention - the barge’s sheer size has excited her, whereas with Marta he can sense the boat’s brought out a new politeness. Marta’s in a nondescript jumper - but it’s strange that both women are dressed in black and grey. When he went to their boat for dinner, they’d both chosen green.