He had always found work when he wanted it and so he had managed to save enough money for his year travelling without touching the £21,000 that had appeared in his bank account on his 21st birthday. It was a lot of money and, he felt sure, that it must have come from Max.
He had enjoyed those jobs. He loved to read and to learn different skills. His main hobby was playing his guitar and he had a Spanish acoustic one that a waiter at one of the restaurants he had worked at had sold to him for peanuts.
There was much of his father in him but he had inherited his determination, his sense of enquiry and logical mind from his mother.
It was a very attractive, well-balanced and thoroughly likeable young man who set off to hitch hike around Spain and Portugal to find the battlefields of the Peninsula War.
On the last Sunday in May 1967 Carl sat in an empty carriage waiting for the early morning train to leave Charing Cross station he opened his notebook and began to make a list of all the things he hoped to achieve in the next few weeks. By the time the train was hurtling down through the tunnel under the North Downs and out into the fields and oast houses of Kent he had filled two pages in neat small handwriting – he wanted to keep all his thoughts in this book and he wasn’t going to waste space with his usual scrawl. He hoped to learn a bit of Spanish, possibly even Portuguese. He planned to see as many of the places Wellington’s armies had marched and fought that he could. He wanted to experience the places that for years he had been seen in his imagination as he had studied them.
At Dover with his bag over one shoulder and his guitar over the other he walked through the town and onto the ferry. He added to his list sitting on the deck looking back as England’s white cliffs receded into the haze. Sleep rough and in posh hotels. Play the guitar better.
At Calais he found his train for Paris delayed and when he arrived at Gare du Nord he didn’t have enough time to get the bus that circulated between the main railway stations of the city so he broke one of his self-imposed rules and spent money on a taxi. “Gare d’Austerlitz s’il vous plait Monsieur” was just about the limit of his spoken French. He read it very well, much of his study had been of French texts, but the spoken language was a different matter. He opened his notebook as the taxi braked sharply, turning right onto the bridge. “Improve spoken French”. “Combien? Merci.” He would just have time to buy his ticket and get onto the train.
He hadn’t planned to spend several hours sitting on his rucksack on the shifting plates in the space between carriages, unable to get any sleep as people pushed past him first one way and then back again. It was the middle of the night when they all had to get down from the French train and cross over the platform to get onto the Spanish train at Portbou. Saying a silent Thank You to those military experts long ago who had insisted that Spain had a different railway gauge from France, imposing a train change at the border, Carl sat down in a proper seat for the first time since Paris.
As the train made slow progress down the coast, with dawn lightening the sky over the sea to his left, Carl got his first opportunity of the summer to practise his Spanish on the fellow occupants of the compartment. He found that the French for what he wanted to say came to mind far more easily than the Spanish, but by a combination of sign language and the patience of his companions he gradually began to converse in the correct language.
It would be a few months before he would speak English again.
At Valencia he walked through the city towards the dusty road to Madrid. As the buildings grew fewer and farther between he stood to face the oncoming traffic and stuck out his thumb. It was a summer of joy for Carl.
He went where he wanted, when he wanted and he gradually ticked things off in the list in his notebook. He saw the battlefields – or what was left of them – and he was able to understand far more of the strategies and genius or stupidities of the generals he had read and written so much about.
He tramped the miles as the armies of Wellington had done. He felt the same heat, crossed the same rivers by the same bridges, marched along the same roads past the same fields and hillsides. He visited many towns and cities that had been besieged, stormed and destroyed in that war 150 years before.
He improved his Spanish and his Portuguese so that, although he couldn’t speak those languages without an accent, he could make himself understood – and could understand others – in all regions of the country.
He bought tomatoes, bread and cheese with cheap wine whenever he needed food. When he found himself in the countryside at night he would sleep rough, when in a town he would find a cheap hotel or a room above a bar.
As he had promised himself at the beginning of his trip, on more than one occasion he would use some of his carefully hoarded supply of travellers’ cheques to buy some new clothes and treat himself to the luxury of a Parador, the government run luxury hotels springing up around the country at this time.
The receptionists of these establishments would be wary of the dusty unkempt, unshaven, young man but, impressed by his manners and his ability to speak their language, wouldn’t turn him away. On those nights he enjoyed the luxury of soaking in a hot bath, anticipating the adventure of getting a table at dinner, enjoying a proper meal and then the prospect of sleeping in a large bed with clean and starched sheets.
On those occasions he would admit to himself that although he didn’t need that luxury all the time he did enjoy the finer things in life.
He was equally happy getting into conversation with old men sitting on benches around town squares at the end of hot days, or drinking warm beer and eating tapas leaning against the bar in smoke filled cafes.
Wherever he slept he would always find time to write up his thoughts and impressions of the day in his notebook, filling in the narrative around the diagrams and sketches he had made.
During the long days on the road he came to have a target in mind. To be in San Sebastian on 31st August, 154 years to the day after Wellington and his army had taken the fortress there. He decided that that would be a suitable place to end his summer.
And he made it.
At noon he sat at a pavement bar eating fresh fish and enjoying a carafe of wine in commemoration of the bravery of all the men who had fallen attempting to reach the spot where he was sitting, all those men who had fought so hard to breach the walls, who had died in their hundreds in the few yards which had taken him only a few minutes to stroll along, and the equal bravery of all the men who had died trying to stop them.
He silently raised his glass to the souls of those men, if there were any around, which he felt there were.
31st August, it would be Susie’s birthday tomorrow, her 21st.
That afternoon he spent on the beach, bottle of wine to hand, reading though his notebook. He had most of the things he had set out to do, he felt a sense of achievement but he knew something was missing. Although a self-contained, positive thinking young man he succumbed that afternoon to a rare bout of self-pity. It wasn’t that something was missing it was someone.
He didn’t often allow himself to think about her. But he did now.
It was such a long time ago, she would have her own life, she wouldn’t be thinking about him. She will have gone to Cambridge – one of the reasons he had chosen to go to Sussex as he couldn’t have borne meeting her at University. She would have done well, independent, loved and …… He felt the pain he always felt when he thought of Susie.
He decided to send her a message through the solicitors, he wasn’t sure they would pass it on but it was the only way he had to get in touch with her.
He sat on the beach imagining a glittering 21st party, probably in the Adelphi. It would be a large gathering of her friends and family, but also the great and the good of the area. Everyone would be in evening dress, Arnold and Kathleen standing in line at the door to the banqueting hall welcoming their guests, putting on a great show even if they were completely broke. Would anyone remember him? There would be a band playing, people dancing. Su
sie would dance every dance energetically, her long hair spilling over her bare shoulders. Did she dance every dance with the same man? Did she spread her favours around? Did she have a boyfriend? Of course she must have. He would be a very clever – only a First would be good enough – very good looking, rich, soon-to-join-his-father’s-firm-in-the-city type.
Or had she managed to break away from her family’s expectations.
He had heard nothing of Susie since he had left Hoylake, he wouldn’t contact her. He could not be that cruel. He imagined what he did not know. But it was his way to look forward and to resist being maudlin about the past so he began to make plans for the future.
He would go back to the Forster’s for a short visit and then his plans for the rest of his year off were to travel to West Germany, north Italy, and Austria. His Spanish and Portuguese were now much improved, if he wanted to be able to read all the texts he would need to read he should address his German.
It was dusk and more and more lights were being reflected on the ever darker water when his thoughts were interrupted.
“You look lonely.”
A girl who had been watching him as he sat almost motionless had come and sat down on the sand beside him. She had spoken in English.
“Not really.”
“Want some?” as she tried to share her roll-up with him
“No thanks. I don’t.”
She laughed, “Everyone does.”
“Not me.”
“Sorry.”
Years later he used to tell people that he had been at University in the ’60s and not even smoked tobacco let alone anything else that was on offer. After his near misses with Susie in the coffee bar in Hoylake he had kept away from the drug scene and, although he’d had flatmates at university who did, he’d never indulged, thinking drugs a complete waste of time and money.
She didn’t go away and after a few minutes repeated her opening shot “You look lonely.”
“Not much chance of that.”
He hadn’t meant to be rude but he did want to be alone and he didn’t want to get involved with drugs.
He hadn’t had much experience with girls since Susie. He wasn’t comfortable with them. He wasn’t sure how to speak to them and he felt uncomfortable.
“I’ll go if you like.”
“No, you stay here, I’ll go. I really don’t need any company.” He went to get up. Putting his hand hard down on the sand to take his weight he accidentally leant on hers.
“Ouch! That hurt.”
“Sorry.” He regretted his churlishness, he took her hand in his, rubbing it “That better?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
He looked at her for the first time seeing a small very tanned face framed in long straggly blond hair.
“Sure you don’t want some?” She inhaled deeply and breathed out the aromatic smoke very slowly.
“Absolutely sure thanks.”
“Sandie, my name’s Sandie.” She giggled, picking up a handful of sand and letting it slip through her fingers. She took another long drag.
“Carl”
“That’s a nice name. Carl, Yes that’s a nice name. Where do you come from Carl?”
“London, well yes London I suppose.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“Well I come from near Liverpool but I’ve been living in London.”
“Liverpool! Oh it must be absolutely fab coming from Liverpool – have you seen the Beatles live?” She began to sing All you need is love, love as she put her arm around his neck and tried to kiss him.
“Hey! Stop that.”
“Cool, that’s cool – if you want to we can, otherwise we could just talk. Would you like to talk?” She took another long draw on her roll-up and he began to talk.
When Carl talked about that night some years later, he said it was rather like being on a plane journey. You told the person sitting next to you all the secrets of your life because you knew you would never see them again. No fear that anything you said would ever come back to haunt you.
So Carl had talked about things he had not put into words for years and Sandie had listened.
Carl talked about how he had loved this girl since they’d both been children, how she was everything he ever wanted in a girl, what she looked like, how she laughed. How circumstances had meant he had to leave her and how he hadn’t seen her for years but knew she would always be the one for him.
When Sandie had asked what had gone wrong Carl found himself able to tell her about that last weekend – how they had been to the cinema, she laughed when he told her what film it had been – how they kept getting close to going all the way but hadn’t – how he had this suspicion that maybe their families weren’t as they appeared to be – how his father had died the year before and how his mother hadn’t cared – how she had taken them to live with the man who turned out to be his real father – how they had told him that the girl he loved was his sister – how he had run away because he couldn’t bear the pain.
“Are you sure the girl is your sister? Just because that man said she was doesn’t mean it’s true. It sounds like they’re all lying through their teeth. I mean, if I were your father, I mean, I’d lie all the way. I wouldn’t believe a word I said.”
She stood up abruptly, “Gotta go. I bet I’m right. They’re all lying. That’s what parents do to their children, they lie.” There was such bitterness in her voice.
Carl was left feeling a complete idiot. Not only had he not asked anything about her in the hour or more she had been with him, he had just told her things about his life he hadn’t even admitted to himself.
Susie and he hadn’t kept their relationship that well hidden. They couldn’t could they? His mother and Arnold must have seen what was going on and they didn’t stop it. They had thrown the two of them together since their earliest years. He thought back to all those visits to Millcourt, of the occasions without number they had spent days and weekends, even before his father – he corrected himself – before Henry had died. They had obviously wanted to spend the time together, it was just unfortunate that it meant he and Susie were thrown into each other’s company so much. Or were they just so self centred and wrapped up in their own lives that they didn’t care what was happening to their children? They must have noticed something and come up with this brilliant excuse to separate them. And it was a brilliant excuse. It had stopped the relationship in its tracks hadn’t it? They couldn’t have said ‘never see each other again’ because a) they lived in the same house and b) they would still have seen each other behind their backs so absolutely, what a brilliant way to bring the relationship to an end. He found he had been scribbling his thoughts on the final page of his notebook, the first entry in English for a long time.
As dawn broke over the mountains behind him Carl had decided what he would do until the Spring.
He would find Susie’s mother. He would ask her what was the truth. He would find out whether there was any truth in what they had said, he would find out if there was any real reason why he and Susie couldn’t be together. There was absolutely no way he was going to ask Kathleen. He didn’t believe she would tell him the truth now anyway.
He walked along the beach, back towards the main town, past a group of people including Sandie who were lying on the sand. All were intertwined as if someone had picked up their bodies and plaited them together. They were all sound asleep as the transistor radio by their side playing all you need is love, love, love is all you need, love is all you need, love is all you need.
“Thank you Sandie, if that’s really your name.” He whispered as he flung his rucksack and his guitar over his shoulder and made for the town.
“I’ll do the bank, then the railway station, but first the postcard to the Solicitors.” The tune banging away in his head love love love, love is all you need, all you need.
Time to go home.
It was the next Monday morning when he left the Forsters. They had been away when he had ar
rived home, but the neighbours had let him in. On the door to his room was a note.
“This is still your room you know!”
That was nice.
On his desk was a note from Jeff saying when he got home they needed to talk, some postcards sent in early July from Benidorm and a large envelope with forms to complete to formalise his place from next Spring which he completed and put in their self addressed envelope to post.
On the long train journey back through France he had filled up the final space in his notebook with a list of things he knew about Susie’s mother, and things he didn’t. He hadn’t seen her for nearly 10 years. She had watched them playing in the garden – she thought they hadn’t seen her but they had. He had seen photos of her, Monika had kept one in the nursery, a young woman in a summer dress feeding a row of black labrador puppies and there were many of her in the scrapbooks that had kept the nursery busy for years. Susie had spoken of her a few times, but had not given much away.
Though there were always Susie’s letters and the cards she had sent to him every time she had been away with her mother.
He rummaged in the back of his cupboard and found the small box that contained his memories of Susie. In it he kept all the photographs he had of her, small mementoes and the letters and postcards she had written him when she had been away with Charles visiting their mother. He re-read them all, looking for clues about where Alicia might have lived. But they had never visited her at her house, they had always met on neutral territory.
In one letter Susie wrote Mother doesn’t talk to us, she just talks at us, she’s always complaining about her house and how small it is. She didn’t say where the house was. He looked through the postcards, there weren’t many, and found two that stood out as different – all the others had beaches or blue sea. The odd ones were photographs of rooms in what looked like a large country house. He read the details on the back of the card ‘Polesden Lacey, near Great Bookham, in Surrey’. One had the message Sorry about the postcard, I couldn’t get one of where we are in darkest France so this is one Mummy gave me. Yuch! The second, a year later, Where does she get these cards from?
The Last Dance Page 24