by Rosie Thomas
'Romantic Rosie Going Nowhere' might fill a quarter page in the dog days at the end of August.
There was a stunned silence on the other end of the line. Then a disbelieving laugh, and some angry spluttering followed by a click. He'd hung up on me. I dialled again.
'I don't want to hear any more. That's it. Goodbye.' Click, again.
A few minutes later a fax slid out of the machine.
RO wished me to know that he was making no further attempts on my behalf to obtain a Chinese visa. He drew my attention to the official regulations – visas were the individual competitor's responsibility (oh yes? so why was I paying fees to Visa World, and why the patronising advice to sit still and shut up and leave the important negotiating to RO and Lord Montagu?). Furthermore, any competitor who put the event as a whole into disrepute or disrupted the organisation was liable to have his or her entry cancelled with no compensation. I was on final warning. And my arrogance, lack of appreciation and general ingratitude were offensive.
My breath was quite taken away. These people had only trousered a little more than thirty grand of my money in entry fees and other costs, and yet I wasn't entitled to ask questions that took up a couple of minutes of their time, or to have my panicky anxiety about not being able to take part in their rally allayed, or at least heard and understood. The fax wasn't an intemperate gesture fired off in the heat of the moment, either. Hard copy of it arrived by post the next morning, presumably in case I had been too obtuse to take the point the first time around.
The one bright spot was that I really was now responsible for achieving my own visa to enter the People's Republic of China. I telephoned the director of Visa World immediately. Mr Abrahams was everything RO had not been – he was available, lucid, and sympathetic. And at last here was someone who was ready to impart some information.
There had been a cock-up by the organisers. As experienced and well-regarded tour operators in China, Exodus Travel had been retained to make all the travel arrangements for the Chinese section. But unfortunately their experience was all in the tourist trade, not in the pre-organisation of major sporting events. They had neglected to send the visa applications for inspection and approval by the China States Sports Council, or to obtain separate authority from the Tibetan Government. Delays and confusions had multiplied, to the point that it was not until 18 August that all the passports were finally lodged at the Chinese Embassy for processing.
With these mistakes in mind and the pressure being placed on them, it was small wonder that the Chinese officials were making objections in individual cases.
I also learned that Iran visas had not yet been applied for. The rally organisers had retained an Iranian national in London to be their agent in these arrangements – but this individual had now disappeared, leaving no trace. I wondered if he was the same joky chap who had teased us at Brooklands about how it would be easy for us all to enter Iran.
Mr Abrahams told me that his company had now been asked to take on responsibility for all the Iranian visas as well. So he was withdrawing my as yet unauthorised passport from China and sending it to Iran while deliberations went on in Beijing. It was 22 August, bank holiday Friday. I was to keep my fingers crossed, with all the other entrants, that the Iranian procedures would go smoothly. He also kindly broke the rules and gave me the name and direct line number of the Head of Visa Services at the Chinese Embassy.
Mr Zhang answered his telephone at once. He was extremely courteous and took care to explain the exact situation. It was a matter of going by the book. Travellers declaring certain occupations – such as writer, journalist, photographer, et cetera – could not be granted routine visas over the counter in London. These applications had to be referred to Beijing for checking. This was not in his hands, did I understand? But he did not foresee that there would be any problem.
Of course I understood.
It was frustrating, in that Rosie Thomas novels are not exactly ripe with political subversion, but perfectly clear and comprehensible. I would have to wait to be checked out and that was that. I mentioned the letters from senior British publishers that RO was to have presented on my behalf, and Mr Zhang sounded surprised. Of course, if I faxed them to him he would convey them to his superiors in Beijing. I did as he asked.
Bank holiday weekend came, with wind and rain, as August bank holidays traditionally do. Poor Mr Abrahams worked on processing Peking to Paris visas all the weekend, and took the trouble to ring me from his home on the Monday morning. The news sounded good. China would release the remaining visas on Tuesday or Wednesday, and in the meantime Iran had processed both mine and Phil's without any problems.
Tuesday came and went without any news, and on Wednesday afternoon I took Flora to Brent Cross to buy new school shoes and pencil case and ring binders: the traditional signal that summer is over. I had made up my mind that when I came back there would be a message from Mr Abrahams to say my visa was ready. I rushed to the answering machine but there was nothing, and when I rang him he could only tell me that the five passports were still being held at the embassy. His courier would call again in the morning, in the hope of being able to pick them up.
Despair. It now seemed certain to me that the authorities wouldn't refuse to grant the visas – they would simply go on delaying until it was too late for us to get to the start line. It was a bad night.
In the morning I waited by the telephone until Mr Abrahams rang. The news when it finally came was not good. His courier had called at the embassy yet again, but the five visas were not ready. The next morning, Friday, was the last possible chance.
'What can I do?' I groaned.
'You could try going down there yourself. They close at midday, could you make it?'
It was 11.30. 'I'm on my way.'
I drove down to Portland Place like a demon and slammed the car on to a yellow line. It was ten to, no time to search for a meter. The visa section room was a huge, high-ceilinged and slightly dingy place with two ticket-office windows at the far end, one for travel agents and groups and the other for individual travellers. Two long lines of weary-looking people threaded away from the counters.
I have the typical authority-stamped British reluctance to queue jump, but today there seemed to be no alternative. I pushed to the front of one of the lines, past disapproving frowns but no outright challenges.
'Mr Zhang, please can I see Mr Zhang? Just for a couple of minutes? He knows about me.'
The clerk blinked. I repeated myself, slowly, feeling sweat prickling under my arms. It was a humid day, with dispirited rain darkening the pavement outside.
The clerk slid off her stool and went behind a screen. Caradoc came up behind me. He had abandoned his office and leapt into a taxi to come and meet me. We were motioned to one side and told to wait. After a few minutes a door opened and a man's head popped round. He beckoned us into a side room, rather incongruously furnished with a moquette sofa and armchairs and a glass-topped coffee table laid with tourist brochures and a bowl of flowers. Mr Zhang was quite young, and humanly harassed-looking
He listened while I repeated my pleas. He took the two Rosie Thomas paperbacks I had brought, and bemusedly examined them.
'Shall I sign them for you?' I asked, idiotically going into author mode.
He asked me again exactly when I was due to fly, and shook his head sympathetically.
'Very urgent,' he agreed. 'This is small, small problem, you know. You go to China, you must behave well.'
'Mr Zhang,' I said solemnly, 'you have my word.'
His gaze moved to Caradoc.
'Your husband not going?'
'No. His work, you know. And our children.'
Thank goodness Caradoc had come with me. I was plainly an anxious and harmless wife and mother, not a subversive of any sort.
We all shook hands. I wrote down my home number for him and he promised to call me as soon as he had any news.
Whatever Mr Zhang might achieve, with only two days le
ft it was becoming clear that I wasn't going to be on Saturday's flight. We went home again and I rang my travel agent to book myself on two later ones, including the following Thursday's – which would just about deliver me to the start line in time, with no margin for delays en route.
It was time to make serious alternative plans. Phil came up that afternoon and we sat down with Caradoc for a difficult meeting.
All the financial investment in the enterprise had been mine; Phil's input had been in time and expertise and so was less measurable in money terms. But if I was going to be unable to take part in the rally, I would have to think about trying to get some compensation – from my insurers or maybe the organisers (the latter seemed rather unlikely). Caradoc and I simply couldn't afford to tell Phil that it was okay, he could recruit a last-minute co-driver from the support team and take the trip as a present from us.
He considered this for a minute and then agreed. Without rancour. I found myself liking him more and more, and also trusting him.
There were other possibilities to discuss too. Maybe if the visa did belatedly come through I could take a later flight, and fly or get a car onwards to catch up with the rally somewhere across the breadth of China or Tibet. At the very worst I could fly to Kathmandu instead, and get myself to the Tibetan border to meet the cars as they crossed the Friendship Bridge into Nepal. We talked reasonably about each compromise while all the time there was a dismal hammering in my head and heart that told me if I couldn't do the entire route, and try to do it in the best time and the best way, then there wasn't really any point in doing it at all.
Maybe the visas would still come through by noon on Friday morning, which was close of business time in Beijing, the very last possible opportunity as the authorities believed I had a pre-booked and non-transferable air ticket for Saturday afternoon.
More waiting. I pushed aside the half-assembled pile of clothes and went to bed early, to try to sleep.
In the middle of the next endless morning, Caradoc called me from the office.
'Lennie Goodings just rang me from Little, Brown. Rosalie Macfarlane, their publicist, has had a brilliant idea. What about trying Ted Heath? The Chinese love him. I'm going to call Gail Rebuck at Random House to see if she can help.'
'Thank you,' I said.
A little later Gail telephoned me
'Any news?'
'Still waiting. The courier has gone back to the embassy. He's there now.'
'Look, Simon Master knows Ted Heath and he's going to give him a call and see if he can intervene with the Chinese for you.'
'Thank you,' I said again.
Minutes later, Mr Abrahams rang once more. No joy. That seemed conclusively to be that. The day was at an end in China, and now the weekend intervened. There was no chance of getting a result out of Beijing until Monday at the earliest.
Weeks before, imagining a calm and stately departure for the great adventure, I had booked myself a facial and some beauty treatments for that Friday afternoon. Now my thoughts fixed with irrational intensity on this interval of pampering. I knew I looked terrible, completely haggard and frown-faced. I wasn't going to cancel this treat, at least. I went down to the Harrods salon with my mobile phone.
I was lying in a towel on the couch, with hot wax coating my moustache, when the phone rang. Stiff-lipped as Prince Charles I answered it.
'Helleh?'
'This is Sir Edward Heath's private office at the House of Commons. Your visa is ready for collection from the Chinese Embassy.'
And there were two other messages in rapid succession. One from Gail, with the same news, and the other from Mr Zhang himself.
'Ah Ms Thomas, your passport here, no problem. Visa World collecting now.'
All five visas had been granted.
Owwwww. The wax was ripped off, with the usual eye-watering agony, but I was so happy and relieved I hardly noticed.
Maybe the delays had been unavoidable, and approval had indeed just come through from Beijing. Given the circumstances, the Chinese could hardly be blamed for the tight timing. Maybe they had been flexing their muscles in some way, and had always intended to hold out to the last second just to prove that they could. Or maybe a single word from on high had changed everything.
I still believe it was the latter. Thank you, Ted Heath.
I didn't relax until the passport was couriered around to me from Visa World. I yanked it open and there was the Chinese stamp. It didn't look much, after such a battle. Now we really were going. Phil took the view that we'd had our share of hassle. The rest of the trip would be plain sailing.
Chapter Five
After using up so much effort and energy in getting there, I shouldn't have been surprised to find that Beijing was an anti-climax.
It took precisely twenty minutes to clear customs and immigration. Bored officials in their glass cubicles waved me through without even a glance at the visa, let alone a body search or a trawl through my baggage for surveillance equipment and anti-Communist pamphlets. Phil had flown out three days earlier, and he was in the arrivals hall to meet me. He did a double-take at the sight of my luggage trolley. There were two kitbags, one medium-sized, one small. And a square box containing my laptop and papers.
'Sorry,' I stuttered. 'Um, couldn't fit everything into the one bag.' As it was, I had left behind two pairs of shoes I knew I couldn't manage without.
'No worries. Really. We'll find room for it all.'
We took a taxi into the city. Exactly 44 hours remained before the start of the rally. It would have to be a concentrated sightseeing programme.
With the gummy threads of jetlag beginning to drag at my facial muscles, I stared out at the view. There were all the bicycles, just like in the pictures. Millions of them flooded every intersection and billowed down the arterial roads like clouds of spiky insects. There were cars of course, dense, crawling columns of them, and bicycle rickshaws and ancient crowded buses and more modern diesel ones, and huge trucks, but the bicycle was definitely the king of the road. They had their own special lanes, while the rest of the traffic hooted at itself and crawled and belched wicked fumes into the grime-yellow air.
The buildings lining the way were mostly rectangular blocks in brutal concrete, although some of the newer ones were dressed up with awkward pediments and escarpments in a nod towards Hong Kong style. Others had pagoda roofs and pillars of twisted gilt and crimson, with scowling stone lions on guard in front of them. It was visual tedium minutely spiced with the exotic.
The Beijing Hotel stands just two minutes from Tiananmen Square. It was huge, with well over a thousand rooms, and until recently had been Government-owned and run. Apart from its size it was most reminiscent of one of those gamely modernised railway-terminus hotels in one of the larger British provincial towns – Edinburgh, maybe, or Leeds. There was the same line of blue-suited receptionists and bank of marble-lined lifts, the same smell of distant food. It was an odd sensation to have struggled so hard to be in China and to have travelled no further than the Trusthouse Forte Grand.
The blue-jacketed floor führer stationed in the corridor outside our room handed over our key and Phil hauled in my luggage as ostentatiously as if I was travelling with three steamer trunks and a nest of leather hatboxes. The room might have been anywhere in the world, but I would have guessed at Birmingham: twin beds under green candlewick, brown laminate cabinets setting them chastely apart, thick net curtains, television and mini-bar. His minimal belongings were spread on one bed, his camera gear laid out on the low table.
We didn't look at each other, even to acknowledge that we were disconcerted by this sudden proximity. The hotel package we had all prepaid months ago provided a twin room per crew, and the degree of intimacy or otherwise between crew members was presumed to be their own concern.
'I'll, er, leave you to freshen up,' Phil said, and went.
I lifted the net curtain and peered down at the crawling traffic five floors below. Forty-two hours until the start.
In the hotel foyer was a vast red banner, PEKING TO PARIS 1997. Also in the foyer, and milling in the lifts and restaurants and coffee shops, were rally crews. There seemed to be hundreds of us, mostly wearing name badges and blue rally polo shirts and busily carrying navigator's packs and sheaves of maps. An early point of agreement between Phil and me was that we weren't uniform or name-badge people. Dan Orteu and JD from the other Amazon weren't wearing any either when we met them later for a fried noodle lunch. They had both had No. 2 bristle cuts before coming out to China, and now looked even younger than their real age, like a pair of Charlie's mates or escapees from a Camden Town rave club. Nor did their new friends Adam Hartley and Jon Turner have badges, probably because they were charming and funny enough to be once seen and always remembered. They were the same age as Phil and JD and Dan. If it hadn't been for the evidence of all the grey heads and paunches importantly bustling past our table, my early fears about being twenty years older and staider than all the other competitors might have seemed to be coming true.
Adam and Jon, Phil told me, were driving Adam's 1929 4½ litre Bentley VdP le Mans. All the cars were in a secure park at the Beijing Agricultural Museum, several miles away. Phil had spent most of his time there, since collecting the Amazon from the docks. He knew a lot about the different crews and vehicles, and kept pointing significant blue-shirts out to me.
'They're in the Buick. Oh, and they're in the 1934 Roller, sponsored by The Financial Times. The car's painted the same pink. And there are two of the Iranians.'
'Yes?' Jetlag was fast overtaking me and I bit the inside of my cheeks to stifle a yawn, worried that it might look as if I was bored by the car talk. 'Shall we do some sightseeing this afternoon?' I thought I could manage the Forbidden City before passing out.
Dan held up his hand vertically and then rotated the flat palm through a narrow arc, a characteristic gesture that he coupled with a dimple indent.