by Rudd, Matt
And he’s not there.
And I haven’t brought a pen to leave a note.
And no one stops when I thumb for a lift.
So I have to walk back down again.
And the stupid Porsche won’t start.
And it’s already getting dark.
So I stagger back to the teashop to ask about accommodation.
But the teashop’s shut.
And so is the pub.
And obviously I have no reception on my phone.
So I walk back to the Porsche and huddle down for another desperate night.
Thursday 26 April
‘Morning, love,’ says the tea lady. ‘Sorry to have kept you.’
‘Morning. You didn’t tell me I could drive to the ranger’s house.’
‘Oh, it’s you again. Sorry, didn’t recognise you. All you English look alike. Hahahahahaha. Cake again, is it?’
‘Is there a mechanic in the village?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have his number?’
‘I told you yesterday, he doesn’t have a phone.’
‘Not the ranger, the mechanic.’
‘Same man, dear. Same man. Did you find him, then?’
‘No.’
‘Went to his hut?’
‘No, his house.’
‘Oh, he’s always in his hut.’
I won’t let these people break me. I have come for my wife.
It takes two hours for my clothes to dry on Ceri’s one tiny gas fire. It takes four minutes for them to get soaked again as I set off for the hut.
Three hours later, I’m standing outside the ranger’s hut. I have a cold. I have blisters. There is no sign of the only man who knows (a) where my wife is and (b) how to fix the stupid Porsche.
I decide to wait on the deck. And wait. And wait. And now that I’ve waited this long, I wait some more. Then it starts getting dark again. And I start to panic. I can’t walk back to the village in wet clothes in the pitch dark. I’ve seen the headlines.
STUPID MAN DIES BEING STUPID IN MOUNTAINS
The body of a stupid man has been found at the bottom of a ravine by potholers after rescue teams called off the search for William Walker of London Town four days ago. It is thought Walker went missing last Thursday after attempting, stupidly, to wander down off a mountain in the dark.
‘He was ill-equipped for the conditions,’ said Gwill Gwyn, landlord of the Leekcutter’s Arms, who led the rescue attempt. ‘That’s the trouble with these townies. They’re stupid. Very stupid.’
‘Very stupid indeed,’ agreed Ceri Hughes, tea lady and head of the local police force who coordinated the search.
Walker’s wife, Isabel, was too embarrassed to comment.
I have no option but to stay at the hut because I’m damned if I’m spending a third night in a leaking Porsche. So I smash the smallest window I can find in order to break in. Unfortunately, the window is too small to get through so I have to smash another one. There is a stove, a small camp bed and some Kendal Mint Cake. It is better than a five-star hotel.
Friday 27 April
I wake with a start. Well, actually, I wake with a furious short, red-faced man with a moustache poking me with a stick.
‘What do you think you’re doing, boy?’
At first, I have absolutely no recollection of what I’m doing. Then, I remember.
‘Are you the ranger?’
‘Yes, and you are coming with me to the police station, you vandal.’
I explain my logistical predicament, and he’s still furious.
I explain my matrimonial predicament, and he starts to calm down.
I explain my Porsche-related predicament, and his face lights up like a short, red-faced boy with a moustache in a sweet shop.
‘What year is it?’
‘I don’t know, it’s not my Porsche.’
‘I wonder if it’s a seventy-three. Best car ever made.’
‘Right, anyway—’
‘Can I have a go?’
‘You can if you can fix it.’
‘It’s a deal.’
‘Now, about the dry-stone wallers.’
‘Oh yes, great job they’re doing. No one round here cares about those walls but, for some reason, you English love them.’
‘Great. Can you just tell me where they are?’
‘Oh right, they’re camping up by the old fort. It’s a good three hours from here. Or ten minutes in your Porsche. If it worked. If there were any roads. Hahahahahahaha. I would come with you but I’ve got to fix these windows you smashed. And then I’ve got to fix my Porsche.’
‘My Porsche.’
‘Right.’
By ‘good three hours’, he meant five. Plus one for getting lost. And another for getting lost again. I’ve never done so much walking in all my life.
In the gathering gloom, I see the fort. Then I see a half-finished dry-stone wall with some tents tucked in beside it. My first thought is that the wall is very straight. My second is that I’m only a minute from finding Isabel. And the third is that I’m terrified; so terrified that I register a complete blank in the part of my brain that had until now contained The Speech to Win Back My Wife.
‘Hi, I’m William. Isabel’s husband.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the nearest girl, standing up.
‘What?’
‘I’m afraid she left yesterday.’
Saturday 28 April
The girl is called Cassie, which is just the sort of name you’d expect to belong to someone volunteering for dry-stone-walling duty in this soaking, sodden, hilly, horrible part of the world. She and Isabel had become bestest dry-stone-walling buddies. Last night, Cassie told me that Isabel had been pretty upset when she’d arrived (which I already knew). And that she’d just got more and more miserable as time passed.
I had explained that I would have been pretty miserable too if I’d been stuck on a Welsh hillside in the rain with only wall-building to keep me busy.
Cassie said Isabel had said I could be a bit of an arse—and that I often said the first thing that came into my head. And now she could see what she meant.
I said, ‘Oh.’ Which was the first thing that came into my head.
She said the reason Isabel was miserable was because she was missing me. And that this was a problem because it wasn’t the sort of missing you always feel when you break up with someone you loved. It was proper missing. Missing that wasn’t going to go away.
I said I had been an idiot.
She said she knew. She’d tried to convince Isabel she’d done the right thing by leaving me.
I said, ‘Cheers.’
She said what did I expect? I’d subjected Isabel to a year of paranoia, stress and general obsessive-compulsive nuttiness. Which isn’t ideal for a first year of marriage.
I pointed out that two people had been intent on ruining everything.
She pointed out that Isabel knew that. And that she loved me, even if I was an arse. And that she had gone home to tell me that she wanted to work it all out.
I said brilliant.
She said, ‘She really loves you. You should go and find her.’
‘What do you think I’m trying to do? I’m not here to help with the bloody wall.’
Which is why I then trekked back down the rain-sodden valley, water sloshing around in my inappropriate footwear, my inappropriate pockets and my Tuesday underpants, determined to stop being an idiot for the first time this year. And didn’t bludgeon the tea lady when she said an English girl called Isabel had been in but she’d forgotten to mention I was looking for her. And stood in the rain waiting for the ranger to bring back my/his Porsche. And only expressed gratitude that it was working again, and ignored the fact that the exhaust was shot and the fourth and fifth gears didn’t work.
And why I drove through the night, in third gear, to get back to the girl I will always love.
Monday 30 April
When at last I get home and walk into the k
itchen, my first reaction is that Isabel is not there; that the whole Welsh misadventure was a dream; that she is still in Llllllanlllandudllandyfenlladono building walls. Then I hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs and she walks down, looking tired.
‘I saw the wall you built. Very…straight.’ It wasn’t the grand opening line I’d planned.
‘Thanks.’ It’s all she says and, for a minute, I think she’s still in a huff. Then I notice her hand is clutching the banister tightly, and that she’s shaking. I notice how tired she looks. And how beautiful. And vulnerable. And I feel like an oaf.
I try to say something, but I can’t. I reach around for that Speech to Save My Marriage, and I realise it no longer exists. It is lost forever on that rain-sodden Welsh mountain. I want to tell her that everything is going to be all right. That I will never, ever let her go again. That I may have ruined the first year of our marriage (with a little help from our friends), but there will be many more that I won’t. And that she may not believe me now, but I know it, I really know it: we will live happily ever after.
Nothing comes out.
And then it becomes obvious what should happen next. I walk forward, I grab her and we hug. Nothing is said but, in that tight, desperate hug, we understand how close we came to losing each other. It is enough.
With tears streaming down her face, Isabel does what all Englishwomen do at times of great emotional strain: she puts the kettle on. And I do what all Englishmen do in response: I get the mugs out. And after another eternity of seconds, I finally regain the power of speech. ‘You were wrong, you know. You’re still the love of my life. Always will be…We were just having a blip.’
‘Are you sure it wasn’t a trend?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Happy anniversary, darling.’
‘Err, happy anniversary.’
‘You’d forgotten?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Well, you did forget my birthday.’
‘Errr…’
‘It’s okay. Just don’t forget the next one.’
As we embrace and I think about how I’m going to sneak out to buy anniversary flowers as well as a belated birthday present and how everything feels a million times better already and how I must buy a birthday book and how I’m overwhelmed at my luck in life and how this moment really deserves a full string orchestra accompanying it and how a petrol station is definitely not going to do for this bunch of flowers, Isabel has one other tiny thing to add.
‘Oh, and by the way, I’ve just done a test this morning,’ she whispers as nonchalantly as she can. ‘You’re going to be a father.’
Which comes as a bit of a surprise.
Acknowledgements
This isn’t the Oscars and I’m a man so I’m not going to burst into tears even though I feel like it. A first novel is like a first born…long and difficult. You have to write it in your spare time. You have to convince an agent that it’s worth touting. Then he has to convince a publisher that it’s worth printing thousands of times. Then they have to convince bookshops to sell it. It’s indulgent enough to want to write a book but to expect others to get behind it is bordering on insanity. So thanks must go to my relentlessly upbeat and determined agent Euan Thorneycroft at A. M. Heath, as well as my even more positive yet hawk-eyed editor at Harper-Collins, Annabel Wright. Despite being a Canadian, her red pen is like Zorro’s sword…in that it’s very accurate, not in that she only ever writes ‘z’ on your copy. It is too early to tell whether I should thank Taressa Brennan, Ben Hurd, Lucy Howkins, Elspeth Dougall and the rest of the sales team at HarperCollins for forcing, sorry encouraging, people to buy my book. If you’re reading this, chances are I should, so I will, just in case. Thank you, chaps.
The Sunday Times has been marvellous in the oh-my-God-seven-years-already I’ve worked there. If you’ll forgive the brief teacher’s-pet-ness, gratitude by the bucket load goes to Christine Walker, my supportive and instructive boss, as well as and in no particular order Susannah Herbert, Tiffanie Darke, Nick Rufford, Andrew Holgate, Helen Hawkins, David Mills, Alan Hunter and Eleanor Mills for printing my stuff, sometimes without taking all the jokes out. John Witherow, the big boss, has tolerated and even encouraged my ramblings and I thank him too, despite his personal insistence that I go on a second EasyCruise when one was surely cruelty enough.
Now, about that ‘writing in your spare time’…This isn’t done without sacrifice. Not mine. I’m the one pursuing my dream to write a novel, remember. It is friends and family who are required to help for no reward. So thank you to Anne, Phil, Charlotte, Tim, Chris H, Brian, little sister Megan, my parents (who are still having to read my homework 25 years after I left school), my parents-in-law (who aren’t even related to me by blood but have to read my stuff ) and all the others who chipped in opinions, told me pub stories I could nick and insisted on apostrophes.
Thank you to Simon Spilsbury for his drawings.
Thank you to Mehmet, the coffee guy on platform one of Sevenoaks station.
No thanks to Martin.
And lastly (Christ, I’m sorry, this is like a wedding speech), thank you to Harriet who, if I was Picasso, would be my muse. Except I’m not Picasso. So she has to put up with wife jokes rather than nice paintings. And I bet Picasso’s muse didn’t help do the actual painting. Unlike Harriet, who made the whole thing better while at the same time tolerating me writing every time we went on holiday over the last three years. She is a total inspiration, a partner in crime, a perfect wife. Except she still won’t let me have hot baths.
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published by HarperPress in 2009
FIRST EDITION
Copyright © Matt Rudd 2009
Matt Rudd asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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EPub Edition © AUGUST 2009 ISBN: 978-0-007-34103-0
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