Twenty Something

by Iain Hollingshead

  Alas, just as one bodily function began to function properly, another went spectacularly wrong. I have been taking Diamox to help me cope with the altitude. As well as giving you extremely unpleasant pins and needles, this makes you pee incessantly. This would have posed little problem had I not taken a loo-less night bus from Arequipa to Puno (on shores of Lake Titicaca).

  Despite taking nil by mouth for the entire day in preparation, there was no way I was going to last the distance. By 3am I could take it no longer. Even Death Wish IX couldn’t distract me from the constant pressure in my bladder. I took myself off to a quiet seat at the back of the bus and tried to relieve myself into an empty bottle of Inca Cola. As some of you know, I have a huge and unwieldy penis. I was doing the best I could on the bumpy roads when I looked up to see the bus conductor looking down on me.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I think he said in one of the few indigenous dialects which I haven’t yet mastered.

  ‘I am having a piss with my huge and unwieldy penis,’ I replied in fluent English.

  At which point he decided to throw me out at the next stop, and I had to wait by the side of the road for twenty-four hours until the next bus came along. It is these little events that make travelling in a foreign country such a mind-expanding and varied experience compared with the humdrum routine of daily life back home.

  Since then, I have been to Puno (small ming-hole), La Paz (big ming-hole and capital of Bolivia), Copacabana (beautiful), Isla del Sol (stunning) and back to Puno (small ming-hole) again. Off to Cusco for the Inca Trail next.

  I would tell you more, but you all lead such drab and meaningless lives in your capitalist sweatshops that it would only make you jealous.

  Just off to watch the sunset over Lake Titicaca (translation: ‘Lake Breasty-poos’). Hope you’re all enjoying London and don’t get stuck on the tube for more than a couple of hours today.

  Love Jack

  PS I did an S-shaped poo today. Perfectly formed. Quite extraordinary. Remind me to show you all the photo when I get back. I am thinking of entering the Turner Prize next year: ‘My travels across South America’, which will consist of a photo collage of my bowel movements. A dead cert at the bookies, I’m sure you’ll agree.

  PPS Lucy, sorry to hear that Rick thought gelato con pistachio was a Renaissance painter.

  Saturday 24th September

  From: Jack Lancaster [unemployed@hotmail.com]

  To:

  CC:

  Subject: South America V — Wayne ’n’ Dwayne

  Hola, those of you who haven’t blocked my emails,

  Some of you have been expressing concern that I might be rather lonely travelling all alone. You needn’t worry; I am perfectly capable of keeping myself entertained.

  For example, when someone comes up to me and tries to sell me a crappy trinket, I find it hilarious to smile nicely at them and say things like, ‘You must be absolutely off your rocker, me old china plate, if you think I want to part with my hard-earned sausage and mash for that crappy piece of overpriced tack.’

  ‘Si, signor, si signor, very good.’

  Yes, I am rather good, aren’t I?

  But there are times, I admit, when it’s nice to have some company. For example, when I bought some jam that went by the brand name of ‘Fanny’, I longed for a chirpy Flatmate Fred by my shoulder. ‘Pass me the Fanny when you’re finished, Jack.’ How we would have chortled.

  But I have met my fair share of travellers. There were the Israelis who went for an early-morning naked swim every day in Lake Titicaca and then jogged up the nearest hill before breakfast, arguing loudly the whole way. There have been Australians heading east en route to Earl’s Court and Kiwis heading back west in the other direction. There have been a couple of British city workers trying to ‘get away from it all’ and a fair number of loser hippies who can’t face up to real life. I have met French and Dutch travellers who speak better English than Rick, and Americans pretending to be Canadian.

  I have collected dozens of email addresses and made hundreds of promises to stay in touch. I intend to keep none of them. I mean, it’s all very well when you’re wearing grotty clothes and talking about bowel movements in a South American jungle. But meeting up back in London? Please.

  But two people who really have stood out are Wayne ’n’ Dwayne. Wayne Buchanan-Dunlop and Dwayne Bernard-Carter, to give them their full names. Both from Essex, both with Burberry backpacks, both on their gap year, both about to start at the Polytechnic of the West of England.

  Wayne was born Wayne Dunlop. His cousin was born Dwayne Carter (on the same day). When they were seven years old, their grandmother (Tracey Bernard) won £10 million in one of the first National Lottery jackpots. Wayne Dunlop became Wayne Buchanan-Dunlop; Dwayne Carter became Dwayne Bernard-Carter. Both were put down for Eton. Both should have been put down at birth.

  I first came across them in the backpacker town of Cusco, debating whether to pay $100 for a repulsive ethnic jacket.

  ‘There’s no point bartering for it, Wayne. We’ve got so much money. Let’s just offer the nice little indigenous chap double.’

  ‘That’s not the point, Dwayne. It says here in the Lonely Planet, aka the Bible, that they expect you to barter. They’re offended otherwise.’

  ‘Listen, Wayne. Papa’s house has more bidets than a man can shake a cane at. Let’s just pay the dough and go.’

  ‘But it might clash with your Burberry rucksack.’

  I stepped in and told them that the jacket was worth $5 at the very most. I also warned them that they would never be seen dead in it back home. From that moment on, I was their firm friend. They looked upon me as some sort of travelling god who knew the price and the value of everything.

  So we decided to do the Inca Trail together. Wayne wanted to do the five-star version with little men who run on ahead with indoor loo tents and heated face flannels. Dwayne wanted to carry all his own pots, pans and tent poles himself. I persuaded them to go for a happy medium.

  It was brilliant. Well, apart from meeting half the Home Counties on their gap years, getting overtaken by most of the Israeli army and almost dying from altitude sickness, it was brilliant. On the last day we were woken up by our guide at 4am to walk to the ‘Sun Gate’ where we sang ‘Where the fuck is the sun, do, dah, do, dah’ by the Beatles as our promised view of Machu Picchu was entirely obscured in the morning mist.

  ‘Two dollar, please,’ said our guide.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For showing you the Sun Gate.’

  ‘What’s the Spanish for “sod off”?’ said Dwayne.

  ‘Soddus offus, with a lisp on the “s”.’

  Now back in Cusco. Off to get drunk on Pisco Sour in the Irish Bar.

  Love Jack

  PS Buddy, that wasn’t very nice, was it?

  PPS Jasper, I bumped into someone who knew you at university. Guy called Crispin MacLean. Absolute wanker. ‘Small world, isn’t it?’ I said to him. ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘There’s probably a higher statistical chance of me bumping into a friend of Jasper’s on the Inca Trail than bumping into Jasper in the library at Oxford.’ As I said, absolute wanker.

  PPPS Yes, Leila, I do keep a diary normally. But no, it’s not nearly as fruity as these emails, so don’t worry!

  PPPPS Sorry for not replying personally to more of you. The internet cafés here are crap beyond belief. The computers are powered by small, unfit hamsters on treadmills. These beastly rodents often delete my emails before I’ve sent them. Please keep on writing, though.

  Tuesday 27th September

  From: Jack Lancaster [unemployed@hotmail.com]

  To:

  CC:

  Subject: South America VI — mugged

  Hola gilipollas,

  Yesterday I was mugged, beaten up, threatened with a knife, stripped in sub-zero temperatures and relieved of all my current possessions. At least now I can make an
honest insurance claim.

  Wayne, Dwayne and I were all at a bar called Uptown in downtown Cusco. Both of them were chucking daddy’s credit cards around, tossing their floppy fringes and flirting with everything in sight. They were doing little to draw attention away from themselves.

  In the early hours, someone came up to us.

  ‘You want shit?’ he whispered conspiratorially.

  ‘Er, no thanks. I’ve already had the shits.’

  ‘No, you want good shit? Hashish, cocaine, heroine, coca leaves? Can get women, too. You like? Five dollar sucky-sucky.’

  ‘What’s the charming little chappie saying?’ asked Wayne.

  ‘He’s offering us drugs,’ I said.

  ‘Oh super,’ said Dwayne. ‘That sounds like such a genuinely travellerly experience.’

  The little chappie asked us to follow him round the corner, where a gang of eight huge chappies jumped on top of us and held knives to our throats.

  ‘What’s this, what’s this?’ said the biggest of the chappies.

  ‘That, sir, is a knife. Please fuck off.’

  ‘Dwayne, shut the fucking fuck up. This is serious. Just do what they say.’

  ‘You can’t really find yourself until you’ve been in a genuinely life-and-death situation,’ retorted Wayne.

  ‘Oh yes,’ chimed in Dwayne. ‘This is such a really genuine experience. Such a real opportunity to meet the locals.’

  The locals enjoyed meeting us, too. We were strip-searched at knifepoint and they took our wallets, our money belts and our passports. Then they kept the other two hostage while three of them escorted me back to our hostel to clear out the rest of our stuff. And then they beat us up for good measure.

  Fortunately, Wayne had a tri-band satellite phone secured in the hostel safe and rang his dad, who wired through a couple of extra thousand pounds, so I am now clothed again. No passport, though — which is gutting, as I had collected a nice range of exotic stamps — so have to head back to the embassy in Lima.

  Hope London is slightly safer and you are all well in your heated offices and insulated apartment blocks.

  Love Jack

  PS Fred, could you be a legend and ring my parents and tell them I love them and I’m eating properly, etc. My phone card hasn’t been working for the past week and I’m not sure that they do email.

  Friday 30th September

  From: Jack Lancaster [unemployed@hotmail.com]

  To: Buddy; Claire; Flatmate Fred; Jasper; Katie;

  Leila; Lucy; Mel; Miranda; Mr Cox; Rick; Rupert; Susie

  CC:

  Subject: My father

  Dear All,

  This is to be my last email from South America. It is possible that some of you have already heard the dreadful news. My dad passed away in the early hours of Thursday morning. I found out just now by email from my mum. I am at an absolute loss for words.

  I hope to catch a flight home tomorrow.

  I have nothing more to say.

  I love you all.

  Jack

  OCTOBER

  Saturday 1st October

  I’ve never seen anything like my mother’s email. It seems an inappropriate time to be making jokes, but I think she thought she was writing a telegram charged by the word.

  ‘Jack. Stop. Your father died early Thursday. Stop. Am so sorry. Stop. Please come home. Stop. All love. Mummy. Stop.’

  And there it was. Stop all the clocks. Stop everything. Stop my world spinning. Full stop.

  But now I’m sitting in first class on British Airways on my way home and I’ve got absolutely no idea what to think. I feel like I can cry no more. But then I can’t put a stop to the host of inappropriate thoughts running through my grieving head:

  (1) Isn’t it nice to be upgraded for compassionate reasons?

  (2) Is it wrong to take advantage of the compassionate upgrade and have more than one Kir Royale?

  (3) The air hostesses are so much more attractive in first class.

  I am in a state of complete and utter limbo. I don’t belong to any time zone. I don’t believe my mum’s email any more. England is thousands of miles away; it seems like a million. There must be some mistake. The last time I saw Daddy he seemed fit and healthy. Was he run over? Was he murdered? There are a million unanswered questions. And they are trite and horrible and nowhere near the real point.

  But then some inner reflex kicks in, and suddenly I understand. My father — who means more to me than anything else in the world — died two days ago. I will never see him again. I am flying home to his cold and lifeless body. He will not be there at the airport with a friendly squeeze on the shoulder. While I was pissing around in South America like a selfish prat, he passed away. While I was composing stupid juvenile emails, he disappeared for ever. I will never ever see him again. And he died ashamed of his eldest son.

  Something inside me snaps and I’m crying black floods of hell. I’m pummelling the seat in front of me with my fists, raging against the dying of my light. Everyone is looking at me, but I just don’t care any more. When did their fathers die? All is black and dark and alone. An air steward asks if I’m OK. I shout at him. I’m angry with him for being alive. I run to the loo and crumple to the floor, wrapping my arms around the seat, grateful for any contact, human or otherwise.

  It has taken me two free champagne cocktails to understand the awful truth. I hate myself. I am an unworthy piece of inconsequential matter. I require alcohol to connect with any shred of human decency. I don’t deserve to be called my father’s son.

  All is cold and black and dark and very, very alone.

  I want the plane to crash.

  Sunday 2nd October

  The plane didn’t crash. I walk through customs at Heathrow and there’s a small delegation there to meet me: Flatmate Fred, Rick and Lucy, Katie, Jasper, Claire and Leila.

  I try to be strong, but this touches me more than anything else in my life. They’ve travelled down by tube and organised a car to take me back to Berkshire. They’ve all made a three-hour round-trip to see me for ten minutes so that I don’t have to walk the Arrivals gauntlet alone. I break down into their loving arms. These are my friends. This isn’t Love, Actually. This is real life. Bless them all to heaven and back.

  Later I head out west on the M4, alone in the car. I look out of the window. 1500 people die every day in the UK. Some of those lives will have touched thousands. Some will have passed almost unmourned. Some will be remembered for decades; others, for a couple of hours. But this still means that over 10,000 people are grieving every day in this country.

  I feel a sudden connection with this communal sense of loss, this great well of tears. I want to reach out and touch them all, dry their eyes and say, ‘Yes, I too understand.’ It puts my own loss in proportion. We are all just numbers in a ridiculous cycle of expectation and disappointment.

  But I don’t want proportion. I’m jealous of the sheer scale. ‘One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.’ I don’t want my dad to be a statistic. And I feel that his death is more tragic than all the others put together.

  But the tragedy doesn’t really sink in until the car pulls into the drive at home. I can already sense the absence. My parents have lived here all my life. There is his car which we washed together. There is the wheelbarrow which he would push around the garden. There are the peeling windows which he never got round to painting. There is a confused dog, wondering why no one has taken him for a walk. He is everywhere, but my dad isn’t here any more.

  Brother Ben comes out and hugs me. We stand there silently on the drive holding each other, shuddering quietly into each other’s arms. There are no words. They’ve lost their meaning.

  And then Mummy comes out, her face lighting up to see her two grown boys. We open our circle to include her. The three remaining Lancasters, shaking quietly in the October gloom.

  The dog whines and pushes into the middle, and we all fall about his face, hugging him and telling him what a good bo
y he is.

  Sometimes it’s easier talking to an animal than discussing a loved one you’re never going to see again.

  Monday 3rd October

  Daddy had been ill for ages. I’m livid that I was never told, but I’m more angry with myself for not realising. There I was completely wrapped up in my own little world of inconsequential testicular lumps and minor career and girlfriend problems while he’d had terminal cancer since February.

  But I can’t be angry with Mummy for keeping it from me. She’s a changed, softer person. I can sense that she’s shredded to pieces inside, but some of Daddy’s raw goodness seems to have passed on to her now that he is gone. I feel awful for all the horrible things I once wrote about her.

  I look at her and see the woman who fell in love with him thirty years ago, the woman who fell for a man not much older than I am now. I would have loved my father even if he had been a bastard for the trite and simple reason that he was my father. But she chose to love him. She dated him. She fell for him. She married him. She bore his children. She knew him as an adult for five years before I’d even learned to say his name. Whatever shattered emotions I am feeling, she must be experiencing a million times over. I will never find another father, but I will hopefully fall in love, find a wife and have my own family. For her, there is nothing now. Just her two sons.

  My father is dead. My mother’s love is over. Death did them part.

  Friday 7th October

  Funeral.

  We wanted to have a small, family affair, but our mailboxes and telephones have been jammed with people who knew and loved Daddy as we did. The village church is packed to the rafters.

  ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we shall carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,’ intones the vicar to signal the start of the service.