Two Steps Forward

by Graeme Simsion

  ‘Louise cooked an excellent saucisson. Tonight—’

  ‘Tonight I am staying at the gîte.’

  ‘I have a better option. This afternoon I will see the other walker and find where he is going. You can share a room with him. For free. Zero.’ He made a circle with his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘What other walker?’

  Bernhard frowned. ‘You know him. Buggy Man.’

  Great. Sharing with a French shoplifter—I’d probably wake up without my passport. It was awkward enough with Bernhard, but at least he spoke English and was safe.

  ‘No—I need to be alone.’

  Bernhard finished his coffee, and took off toward the next village and its madame.

  18

  MARTIN

  Despite the tracks in the snow and reports from Bernhard, I had not seen Zoe since I passed her on the church steps outside Le Cergne. But I did not want for companionship. I had abandoned lonely hotels in favour of chambres d’hôte, which were mostly run by women. My evening routine consisted of washing my clothes, sharing a home-cooked meal with the proprietor, checking emails, a blog entry and as many phone calls as were necessary to secure accommodation three days ahead. It hadn’t become dull—but I still had a long way to go.

  I made up names for my hôtes. Without some handles to hang my memories on, the days might have merged into one hazy experience.

  There was Madame Damp, a woman of perhaps sixty whose demeanour was in keeping with the unlined shed that served as my bedroom on a rainy night. Drying my washing on the radiator can’t have helped.

  Madame Miserable I dubbed not because she seemed sad—though the sun hardly shone from her countenance—but because she was miserably tight. French bed-and-breakfast establishments were regulated—no surprise there—and there was a consistency in certain things: the glass of cordial on arrival, the quarter-litre of wine with dinner, the stamp for the credencial. Dinners were simple but well executed and generous. There were only two possible answers to the question: what do you want for breakfast? Tea or coffee. Bread and jam were standard and sometimes supplemented with fruit, yoghurt or croissants.

  Madame Miserable delivered what must have been the bare minimum to pass inspection. After twenty-four kilometres walking in the cold, a single sausage, a few strands of spaghetti masquerading as a vegetable and a carafe of anaemic plonk did not a meal make. Dessert was an apple. Even my towel was undersized.

  And, perhaps inevitably if one does this kind of thing long enough, there was Madame Chaud Lapin. Hot rabbit: an expression from my book of French colloquialisms that I was never going to risk in actual conversation.

  She was perhaps early forties and quite attractive—black fringe, big brown eyes, nothing of the gaunt look so common in Parisian women of her age and beyond. Chatty, quick to laugh and interested in my personal story.

  A bottle of Saint-Amour replaced the usual quarter-litre of anonymous Gamay and she opened a second as she served the cheese. Décolletage is a French word, and the amount showing in the overheated room could not have been an accident.

  It had been almost a year since I’d split with Julia and I had no reason to feel guilty, no one to be accountable to except myself. Tomorrow, like the subjects of so many popular songs, I would be on the road, moving on. I had held the moral high ground with Julia. Sleeping with the Hot Rabbit would mean letting go of some of that superiority. Moving on.

  We managed only half of the second bottle, but the Hot Rabbit poured marc and invited me to call her Aude. We were well on the way. A hand on my shoulder confirmed it, and marked the last point where I could have politely declined.

  We adjourned to her bedroom and matters followed their expected course. It wasn’t the best night of my life, but it was by no means the worst, and any shortcomings were on my side. Tired, drunk and sated, I fell asleep in her bed, and was woken by the sound of her preparing breakfast in the kitchen. In the morning light, I took in the room properly, and realised that I was not the only person to have shared it in recent times. On my bedside table was an alarm clock—fair enough, except that there was one on Aude’s side as well. I opened the drawer: coins, pills, cufflinks. A quick look in the armoire confirmed my suspicions—dresses on one side; shirts, jackets and trousers on the other.

  I needn’t have bothered with the detective work. Over breakfast, Aude invited me to stay another night. Her husband would not be back until late the day after. Had it been like this for Julia—wild sex followed by practicalities? Martin’s working late again tomorrow? Cup of tea before you go?

  I loaded my cart and Aude appeared with my filled thermos, a packed lunch and a look that managed to convey that the previous night had been less about lust and more about some deeper need she’d seen in me. I walked into what remained of the snow feeling distinctly sad.

  Mid-morning, I stopped for a breather after a tough ascent. The wind was blowing hard, and I was focused on pouring my coffee, so by the time I saw my cart moving of its own volition, it was out of reach and gathering speed on the slope. I sprung to my feet, splashing hot liquid over my jacket, then set off after it, back the way I’d come, downhill in snow in heavy boots. I thrust a stick in front of me and almost snared the cart as it seemed to slow over a bump, then stumbled and lost it again. If anyone had been watching, they’d probably have found it hilarious, in a slapstick sort of way.

  There was someone watching. At the base of the hill was Bernhard, making no attempt to disguise his mirth. The cart came to a halt just a few metres from him and I duly joined it.

  Bernhard pulled a paper bag from the inside pocket of his jacket and offered it to me. The croissant was still warm but I waved it away. ‘You should install a brake,’ he said, and crouched by the cart. ‘Here…to lock the wheel.’

  ‘I’m sure I can work it out,’ I said, then, realising I was sounding churlish, changed the subject. ‘Where did you stay?’

  ‘I slept with a woman,’ he said, grinning. ‘How much did you pay for your chambre?’

  ‘Forty-six euros.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘What do the hostels charge?’

  ‘We are finished with hostels. We go to the mairie. We choose villages where there is no hostel open.’

  He explained his technique, which Zoe had also embraced. The previous night she had extracted not only a bed but a restaurant meal from some lonely middle-aged mark.

  ‘If you can afford forty-six euros for a room, you should invite Zoe to sleep with you. She can pay you maybe ten euros—maybe five, it doesn’t matter. It costs you nothing and…’ He shrugged.

  ‘You’ve run this idea past Zoe?’

  ‘Better for you to ask. Why would she have a problem?’

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t want to share a room with a man she doesn’t know.’

  ‘It’s the way of the Camino. I told you, I slept with her already.’ Grin. The little bugger knew exactly what he was saying, and was doing it to get my goat. ‘Young people understand this. We meet, we share a room, no problems. You talk like my parents.’

  I decided I was close enough to being in loco parentis to give him a bit of a serve, at least about the exploitation of generous villagers. We parted on frosty terms when I stopped for another break and he pushed on.

  19

  ZOE

  The Montverdun gîte was located in a ninth-century priory. The Ami of the priory, in the information booth at the entrance, gave me the key as she closed up. ‘There is only you tonight. In the morning, drop the key in the box if you leave before I arrive.’

  I creaked open the huge door and stood in awe. There was something about the worn patchwork of brown and black stone walls and the eeriness of having this ancient place to myself that transcended religion. I thought of all the monks who had walked the stones, the pilgrims who had come in sickness and despair, and rejoiced at how blessed I was.

  After I’d dropped off the groceries in the kitchen, with its big cooker and long tables that could ha
ve sat thirty, I made my way to the church itself. It seemed to be several degrees colder inside, but I paused under the inner dome and looked up to a faded painting and wondered about the person who had painted it, and all those to whom it had given solace.

  I was pleased to have a break from Bernhard. But it was not Bernhard I found myself thinking about.

  When Keith first asked me out, I had been divorced from Manny for six years. He came into the vegetarian restaurant where I worked occasionally. I said no. A month earlier I had been dating Shane, an Australian studying games design at UCLA. He had returned home but we had planned to vacation together in Bali. If it worked out, I’d be thinking about packing up the girls and going to live with him in Perth.

  After Shane left, I had doubts. He was younger than me and hadn’t had a real job. Manny wasn’t much of a father, but if I took the girls to Australia they would never see him or his parents. His mother had been a big support from the moment I had found myself pregnant, early in the relationship. The more I thought about it, the more Shane seemed a risk—and too much like Manny.

  On the last day that I could buy a cheap fare to Bali, Keith tried again, and I said yes. Writing an email to Shane turned out to be harder than I expected.

  Then the Bali terrorist bombings happened right when we would have been there. Fate had delivered me a safe choice at every level. Keith had inherited the shoe business when his father died. He supported the girls and insisted I stop working to pursue my art. His mother welcomed me into the family.

  Pre-teen Lauren was not so accepting. ‘Mom, you don’t need him!’

  And, incredibly, Camille: ‘But your Australian? I thought you were in love.’

  I loved Keith too, but our relationship was only briefly passionate. He was an average-looking, average-living guy who was happy with being…average. He wanted a wife and kids, and, though we never managed to have children together, he happily took on Lauren and Tessa, never wavering through Lauren’s teenage tantrums and never badmouthing Manny. He was the guy every woman should want. But I came to realise that he had wanted to rescue me.

  The solitude of the priory was a relief. A few of the dried chilli peppers I’d been carrying since the supermarket in Charlieu, along with my hard-earned hunger, turned my penne con ratatouille into a solo feast and I felt calm and centred after a glass of cider. I had to dash along corridors and across the square in the icy wind as I went between the heated kitchen, bathroom and dormitory, but there was something magical in history’s whispers.

  My life in LA seemed a world away. I rubbed my hands over the rough stone walls and willed them to tell me their secrets; instead, they told me I was in danger of freezing. Once again I was being forced into practicalities. But as I lay in the bunk I’d chosen beside the heater, under three blankets, the only person in a dormitory that slept ten, I knew I could do this myself, without anyone’s help.

  20

  MARTIN

  I was an hour past Montarcher and descending what I hoped would be my last hill for the day when I saw, off to my right and below me, a small figure. She—and I knew it was she, because no one else on the Chemin wore a white hooded jacket—was perhaps half a kilometre away. Heading in the wrong direction.

  On the road into Montarcher, the GR3—one of the Grande Randonnée hiking trails that criss-cross France—overlays the Chemin, but then the GR3 goes ahead while the Chemin deviates right. Zoe had missed the turn.

  It had been snowing off and on all day, and I was trying to make the most of a break in the weather. I had just two and a half days to go on the Chemin de Cluny before I reached Le Puy and joined the busier Chemin du Puy, where I could expect a wider choice of accommodation and food. The previous night, my bed-and-breakfast host had directed me to the bar for dinner, where I dined alone—again—on the pilgrim’s menu of charcuterie and potatoes. No complaints about the quality, but the only green component of the meal had been the complimentary verveine liqueur.

  I would never catch Zoe while I was pulling the cart, so I parked it—securely—and took off at what I hoped was a sustainable jog. For the last hundred metres, I was yelling, but she didn’t hear me until I was almost on top of her.

  ‘You’re going the wrong way,’ I said.

  She just stared at me. Was she that confident in her navigation or just amazed that I had appeared from nowhere, sans cart?

  ‘You…speak English.’

  ‘I’m quite good at it. Comes from being English. You didn’t know that?’

  I could see her casting her mind back to the outdoors shop, the café with Monsieur Chevalier and my tent at Grosbois, when I had been conscious of her speaking to me in French and had not enlightened her.

  ‘Surely Bernhard told you…’

  ‘We don’t spend all our time talking about you.’

  And, having finally established that we had a language in common, she didn’t deign to say anything further.

  She looked back at the hill, facing the same situation as I did—a climb she could have avoided. I could see that she was pissed off, presumably with herself for taking the wrong turn. No doubt discovering I was an Englishman, the current nationality of choice for villains in American movies, added to the effect.

  ‘The marking was hopeless,’ I said. Actually, there had been a bloody big sign.

  Climbing without the cart was easy and I offered to take her pack. Scowl. I smiled inwardly. Where, I thought, was Monsieur Chevalier—the Knight of Cluny—when she needed him? Where was her German confidence man? Where was help of any kind, except in the form of Martin Eden of Sheffield, England?

  We walked together, quietly, in the snow until I reached the turnoff for my bed and breakfast.

  ‘How far have you got to go?’ I asked her. ‘You could maybe stay—’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

  ‘No, seriously, the weather’s pretty shitty.’

  ‘I can manage a mile by myself,’ she said. And kept walking.

  I realised I was smiling.

  21

  ZOE

  I reached Le Puy by literally opening a door to the city. Pèlerins enter a garden at the top of the hill through a wooden door in a stone wall, then wind down a path through woods to catch the first glimpse of a city dominated by two huge rocks: one topped by a monastery built by a monk returned from the Camino, the other bearing an oversized Madonna and child, like Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio. If you forgot about the Madonna, Le Puy was a pretty town nestled in a picturesque valley.

  I had completed the first big stage of my journey, but there was more than double that distance to come. My money was not going to last another week. Not exploiting the mairies’ hospitality the previous two nights had meant a gîte in the boonies and a hotel room in Bellevue la Montagne.

  Why not finish up in Le Puy? After fifteen days, I had nothing to prove, certainly not to a Brit with a buggy and his smug ‘you’ve got yourself lost’. And the French masquerade, which Bernhard must have been in on.

  As the trail weaved between the two rocks, I was drawn to the monastery perched above me. I marvelled that anyone could be inspired to undertake such a difficult construction in the days before cranes and heavy machinery.

  Was this the sort of inspiration I was looking for? My experience of the last two weeks was of finding comfort in the simplicity of the daily routine, of having no time to think about anything but staying on the path, finding somewhere to sleep and washing my change of clothes—not even having to choose what to wear. I had rediscovered the pleasures of food, and of sleep that comes from exhaustion and leaves no room for rumination. The Camino existed on a different frequency to the rest of life—but part of me relished the difference, embraced it like a lost friend.

  Le Puy was modern enough to have a cybercafé. I had been out of touch with my daughters—and Albie the accountant and the mess I had left him—for two weeks. I was surprised at how long it seemed and how little I had missed home.

  There were sever
al emails from Lauren and Tessa—Where are you? Are you okay? Albie had sold the cars but the house might take a while. Camille wanted to know when I would be back—and had I met anyone interesting? If I needed help, I must call. Promise me.

  I told Camille I was enjoying the walk and replied to the girls: doing fine, no need to worry. I had hit send before I realised I still hadn’t told them about the Camino.

  The hostel in Le Puy was bigger than any I had stayed in, and I was not alone. There was a photography student, Amaury, beginning a two-week project on the Chemin, and some Germans who had walked from Geneva on the Jakobsweg route. They would be back next year to do another two weeks. Four women I never saw had taken over the room beside the dormitory: Brazilians, the manager said, starting their Camino. They were at Mass—apparently, there were still religious pèlerins.

  It was an early night for most of us but I had my first taste of communal sleeping. The Brazilians came in late and kept us awake with loud chatter until after midnight. Nevertheless, I felt a sense of being a part of something.

  In the morning, I decided I would walk until my money ran out.

  22

  MARTIN

  Thirteen days and 320 kilometres after leaving Cluny, I descended the winding road into Le Puy en Velay, home of green lentils and meeting point of three of the Chemin feeder routes, arriving only minutes before the tourist office closed for the day. I bought the thick Miam Miam Dodo guidebook for the five-week section to St Jean Pied de Port and discarded my orange booklet. Stage One down.

  If my cart and I could survive this far, over the toughest terrain on the route, there was no reason we could not keep going for another sixty-six days. I was running to budget and there would be more hostels from here on if I needed to economise.

  I had booked a mid-range hotel and felt out of place as I arrived in the mirrored foyer, with its reception desk and registration procedures. At the cheap hotels between Cluny and Le Puy they would throw me a key on arrival, and sort out the bill and a stamp on my credencial when I left. No passport required, cash preferred.