Two Steps Forward

by Graeme Simsion

  ‘This buggy,’ she said, ‘it is not a cart, with one big wheel?’

  ‘Oui,’ I replied, and Camille started laughing. ‘My God, you’re in love with the crazy Englishman from the ENSAM. Of course! After Jim, I was going to ask him to dinner next. But I think he is too serious. Am I right?’

  ‘Partly,’ I said. ‘I’ll email you when I get to Santiago, but I’m using someone’s phone…’

  Ken and Marcie wouldn’t take any money from me.

  When I returned to Boente in a taxi with the welding apparatus and the box of parts that looked like stuff you’d put out for the junk collection, Martin was not around. His cart was sitting in the covered driveway and I left the pile there. The albergue owner gave me the room key. Martin was out cold on the bed. He didn’t look good, but he was breathing steadily. Alcohol and painkillers, I guessed. Plus the exhaustion of dealing with the pain. On the desk was a sketch of what seemed to be modifications to the cart. I decided to let him sleep and took the sketch to the bar to see if it had any connection with the stuff Bernhard had identified.

  I didn’t have to: Bernhard was there to do it himself.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said.

  ‘Walking the Camino.’

  Bernhard pulled the plan from my hands. He frowned, grunted and finally nodded.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Asleep.

  ‘We start without him. But first we fix the design.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘The design has…problems.’ I could see him struggling to quell his arrogance. ‘He did not know what materials were available.’

  Bernhard spent an hour and a half sitting in front of the cart and the hardware, sketching on the drawing paper I brought him.

  Then he got to work. He seemed to know how to use a welder, and he worked quickly, in safety glasses, motioning to me to pass items and to hold things steady. The albergue owner came running out, accusing us of wanting to set fire to the building.

  Bernhard looked at him sternly. ‘You will stop a dying man getting to Santiago for absolution?’

  The owner stuck around and started handing Bernhard the tools.

  We worked all afternoon, with no sign of Martin. When we were done, the cart looked like a stretcher on wheels.

  ‘Here,’ said Bernhard, pointing to steel tubes extending from the back. ‘I made handles. For once, the single wheel is an advantage. Space on the sides.’

  ‘Will it work?’

  ‘Of course it will work,’ said the man who had told me it wouldn’t. ‘But the extra handles are for a reason. You will not be able to pull this alone.’ He threw the welder in the box and went to the bar for a beer.

  The albergue owner offered to send the welder back to Melide. Saving a man’s soul probably rated higher at the Pearly Gates than walking to Santiago. Maybe even saving an atheist Brit with a sore knee.

  70

  MARTIN

  I woke and it took me a while to register that it was 6 p.m. and not 6 a.m. And where I was and why. And that my knee was still stuffed. And that Zoe was lying on the bed next to me.

  She must have seen me stir. She jumped up, and the look on her face told me that my plan had not worked out.

  ‘No joy?’ I said.

  ‘No, I mean yes, but it might not be what you want.’

  Half of me had been hoping she wouldn’t find the tubing or the welder. It was going to take me hours, using unfamiliar kit, with no guarantee of success. The mechanics of doing the work was going to play hell with my knee.

  Zoe led me to the carport. It took me five minutes to get there, using my sticks as crutches.

  Christ. The job had been done—or at least a job had been done. The result resembled my design only in the most basic sense; the welder had decided, as tradesmen do, to do it his own way. I silently cursed Zoe for not waking me, and myself for not giving her clearer instructions.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Zoe was standing, watching me, obviously hoping for a positive reaction. I couldn’t manufacture one. I managed, ‘Give me a few minutes to look at it.’

  ‘Would you like a beer?’ she said.

  I didn’t think my stomach could handle one. ‘Just water,’ I said.

  Calm. I was as much upset at the vandalising of my cart as anything. And that would have happened even if the welder had followed the design.

  I had a look at the welding first. Professional job. At least rural-repair-shop professional. That, I could have expected. But the design?

  One way to test it. I gingerly lowered myself onto the stretcher. The straps held. The structure held. I shook myself a bit. Still okay. I bounced, simulating the pounding it would take on the road. I was still bouncing, mentally as well, when Zoe returned with the drinks.

  ‘Strong enough?’

  ‘Cart is. Don’t know about you.’

  71

  ZOE

  Over dinner, we didn’t talk about the cart or about walking. Instead we talked about what the Camino had taught us.

  ‘I’ve learned to accept help,’ Martin said. ‘Regardless of what happens tomorrow…thank you.’

  ‘Let’s have a toast.’ On my way to the bar, I made a detour to his room—our room—and pulled out the blue dress.

  It wasn’t something that any of the past versions of Zoe Witt would have worn and I was not sure that a future one would either, but there had been no doubt about Marco’s reaction to it and it had made me feel good about myself.

  Though I might not have been worldly in the way Camille was, I had two wonderful children and a lifetime of experience with men I had loved as much as I could. If my sex life had died away in recent years through familiarity, middle age and what I now understood was Keith’s being in a bad place, it did not negate the years before. My body had shown it was capable of walking twelve hundred miles, and a marathon distance—carrying a backpack up and down hills—in a single day. Over the next two days it would pull Martin to Santiago and I was proud of it, blemishes and all. Right now, it was giving me a very clear message, and I listened.

  When I walked into the bar, Martin looked so blown away that I nearly lost my confidence. But the bartender’s grin and low whistle did the job of taking me back to being in my twenties again for a moment. I stood in front of Martin, trying to play it cool.

  ‘It really isn’t hostel gear,’ I said.

  ‘Marco like it too, did he?’

  I felt like a pin had burst the balloon of my self-confidence: you idiot, what were you thinking, you’re going to be a grandmother.

  I stopped myself. I knew this man now. I’d seen his reaction when I walked in. He was jealous. But more than that, he was doing what he always did. Sabotaging himself.

  I knew how to deal with that, with him. Just like I’d dealt with Keith going to bed before me and not eating cauliflower. Tonight could be the first step in changing myself to suit Martin.

  Instead, I said, ‘Actually, yes, Marco did. He liked it a lot.’

  And after I said it, I realised that being true to myself worked the other way too. And that wasn’t so easy.

  I thought of what I had said to Renata, about how my anger had built a wall between my mother and me, when all along I had the option of offering an olive branch.

  ‘Marco’s a nice guy,’ I said. ‘We had a lovely dinner. To be honest, it felt wrong wearing the blue dress, but I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again, and…’

  ‘You look great in it.’

  ‘It was—is—a symbol of a new beginning,’ I said. ‘One you were a part of.’

  ‘Were?’

  He couldn’t help himself. Nor could I. ‘The walk’s supposed to change you. I’m happy you’ve forgiven your ex-wife, that’s very big of you, but you’re still sitting in judgment on women. You weren’t planning to see me again; what the hell should it matter to you if Marco—’

  ‘Hey, hey, I hear you. Let me get a word in. I’m sorry, I just reacted—’
<
br />   I realised I was standing. ‘He kissed me goodnight,’ I said.

  ‘Seriously, I’m sorry. You’re right—it’s none of my business.’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you that when he kissed me, all I could think of was you.’

  Martin stood awkwardly, pulled me to him and kissed me. Whatever it might mean beyond today, in the moment it felt right. Synchrony.

  The bartender brought us over two glasses of something strong—he looked relieved.

  We downed them quickly, and we walked, slowly, to our room, where I slipped into the bathroom, heart racing for all my supposed maturity. I didn’t have a negligee, and I stopped and stared at my flushed face in the mirror. Did I dare? I thought about it as I prepared in the bathroom. I had never been a femme fatale and I was hardly that now. But still…

  I tried several different poses in front of the mirror. I might have been proud of my body but I wasn’t crazy. Having your arms above your head does wonders for gravity, and, as I wasn’t wearing a thing, in front of a man who had never seen me naked except through a frosted screen in a hotel room weeks earlier, I thought first impressions were important.

  My impressions of him weren’t my first. Well, not from the waist up, which was all that was showing. He looked great. Slimmer and fitter than Keith had been when he died, and with all the desire Keith had when we first got together.

  I stood in the doorway, trying to look nonchalant.

  ‘It’s a queen bed and no cartoons on the curtains,’ I observed, but he wasn’t listening.

  ‘You’re going to have to come over to me,’ he said.

  I slipped under the sheets next to him and silenced him with a kiss. Making love never quite works the first time, and I was concerned not to hurt his knee, but the connection was there in the way he cared about how I was dealing with it, in the concern for what I wanted. For me, his physical response was gratifying, and for the first time I felt I saw the vulnerability behind his mask. We fell asleep with our arms wrapped around each other.

  72

  MARTIN

  When I woke in the morning, Zoe was not there, and for a moment I thought she might have done a runner again, but she appeared with coffees—black and no sugar for me—and I thought: she knows how I take my coffee. Bet she wouldn’t have known what to get for Marco. By way of further assurance that she wasn’t regretting the previous night, she kissed me, and then we got to work on the business of getting to Santiago. I was in no hurry, still basking in the afterglow. With drink and painkillers on top of the injured knee, I hadn’t been at my best, but Zoe didn’t seem to notice.

  We dumped everything we no longer needed, right down to Zoe’s bedroll, and set out to finish what I had started eighty-seven days earlier, and Zoe eighty-nine: to walk to Santiago. I’d have been happy to stay another night or three in our shared room but, by my calculations, Zoe was already going to miss her flight by a day, even if we reached Santiago in the two days that it would normally take.

  I tried the knee in the faint hope that it might have recovered enough for walking, but a jolt of pain made it clear that we would be staying with Plan A.

  We were on the road at 5.30 a.m., in the pre-dawn light. I wanted to allow as much time for breaks as possible. Our goal was the same as the previous day: A Rúa. If we made it, we would have to repeat the distance tomorrow to make Santiago. Zoe was brimming with energy. She was going to need it.

  It was quiet on the track so early in the morning. We’d left it till this close to the end to experience the sun rising as we walked.

  I soon established that the flat position on the cart was more comfortable for my knee than sitting upright, though it made me feel helpless. We compromised on about thirty degrees of elevation. The home-made hinge worked.

  The first stretch of road was wide enough that my head was not at any risk of being swung into anything. In any event, the rear handles offered protection. I was beginning to feel some admiration for the welder from Melide.

  Zoe moved along at an impressive clip until the road sloped upwards, then her pace fell off. The suspension was doing brilliantly, and even over stones the shock absorbers did a better job of insulating my knee from jarring than I would have expected. That much was unchanged from the original cart.

  ‘Take a break,’ I called.

  ‘I’m okay. I’ve walked as far as you have, remember? More than you now. And still walking.’

  Not for much longer, she wouldn’t be. The problem wasn’t the cart’s design; it was the simple physics of the slope and my weight.

  The road tilted down for fifty metres or so and Zoe picked up; then we rounded a turn and faced a real hill. She couldn’t possibly haul me up it. I could tell she knew it too.

  And at the bottom of the hill, sitting under a tree, watching our fools’ errand end—again—was the insufferable Bernhard, drinking from his thermos.

  ‘Do you want some help?’ he said.

  We needed the help. Even with Zoe on the front handles and Bernhard pushing from behind, it was hard going. They pulled and pushed for an hour, taking breaks every fifteen minutes.

  At the second break, Zoe said to Bernhard, ‘Tell him.’

  ‘You can tell him if you want.’

  Zoe gave me the story of the cart’s redesign and construction. I was lost for words.

  An hour later, we hit another big hill and I could see Zoe was exhausted. She was almost in tears. She pulled her pack off and threw it to the side of the road. More symbolic than practical.

  ‘Enough,’ I said. ‘You’ve given it your best shot.’ Then she did cry.

  Bernhard stood looking awkward. He couldn’t do this by himself either.

  ‘Fuck. I stop asking the universe for help, and take responsibility myself, and this happens. I’m not stopping.’ Zoe took the handle again.

  At that point, the universe answered.

  A group of four walkers—two men and two women—caught up with us. They were Spanish, mid-twenties.

  ‘Where are you come from?’ asked one of the women.

  ‘Cluny,’ said Zoe, leader of the expedition. ‘In France. Two thousand kilometres. Bernhard has come from Stuttgart.’

  According to my GPS, prior to becoming a passenger, I had walked two thousand and twelve kilometres. ‘Cart tested over two thousand kilometres of the Camino’ would have been a more than adequate headline, had anyone been interested anymore. Perhaps it would boost the sales of the Swedish–Chinese knock-off.

  The woman looked gobsmacked. ‘Like this?’

  Zoe laughed. ‘Only since this morning.’

  Without further consultation, the two men took a rear handle each and began pushing.

  73

  ZOE

  In the end I believed not just in fate, with all its capriciousness, but in the special power of the Camino. It reminded me that sometimes there are things we cannot do alone. Martin had needed to learn to accept help, and not just from me. And, as it turned out, not just from Bernhard. I had hoped I might get Martin to Santiago in three or four days, and worry later about immigration, deportation and not having a ticket or any money to buy one. But the universe had its own plans.

  The path became everything that the scallop shell had promised when I held it in my hand in an antique store in Cluny a lifetime ago: not just a new beginning, but the love that the birth of the goddess Venus heralded. A universal love. We had forgotten that this was a pilgrims’ path, that many were doing this for spiritual and religious reasons, and that all of us were united in a common goal. It seemed that at each moment I was ready to give up, someone—man or woman, young or old, from Irish to Koreans to Hungarians—stepped up and helped get Martin to Santiago. At each point where we stopped for our sello, the man or woman looked at us all and stamped everyone’s credencial—including Martin’s.

  ‘You have walked two thousand kilometres. We will not argue now.’

  ‘People do this in wheelchairs.’

  ‘If he is working less, then
you are working more. Is the same.’

  I was hugged, encouraged and sung to. I felt like I was floating. Maybe God wasn’t with me—but I felt Keith was, giving me his blessing and wishing me well with whatever life sent me.

  ‘How far do you go today?’ asked an elderly woman as we stopped for orange juice and another stamp at the side of the track. Thanks to the early start, we had covered twelve miles. We would make A Rúa easily.

  I looked at Martin and he looked at me. But it was Bernhard who said what we were both thinking.

  ‘Santiago. We are going all the way.’

  Even as Bernhard said ‘Santiago’, and there was again the possibility of me making my flight, I wondered whether there would be enough walkers to help us later in the afternoon, when most pilgrims would be done for the day. But as we came into A Rúa, thirteen miles out from the finish, we saw a sight that belonged to the Middle Ages. Six pilgrims, dressed in what looked like sackcloth robes, all with hoods, single wooden sticks and the distinctive pilgrim hat, were approaching, shuffling out of an albergue or its café to join the parade.

  The two volunteer haulers who had taken the baton about half an hour earlier stopped so we all could get a look. About fifty feet from us, the six pilgrims pulled up their robes to hide their faces and, as they drew alongside, their heads were down, sombre in their religious duty.

  Then, as one, they ripped their head coverings back.

  ‘Marteen! Zoe!’

  It was Margarida. Her companions were the other Brazilians—all of them—and Monsieur Chevalier.

  ‘Paola!’ She had taken my scallop shell past Melide. Or was it the other way around?

  She smiled. ‘Do you think I would leave my daughter on the Camino with this man?’ She glared at Bernhard.