Border Crossing

by Rosie Thomas

  'You're very quiet this morning,' I said to Phil.

  'Tired,' was all he would admit to.

  'Tired enough to need me to drive?' I tested.

  'We have had this conversation.'

  So he carried on driving, and I prodded the distances out of the Terratrip. It was crossing-the-Alps day. The tiny scale of Europe was even more apparent. One minute we were in the green-gold country around the Italian Lakes, the next we were high in the Alps and crossing into Austria. The sky thickened with cloud and icy rain fell, on the edge of snow. We passed through St Anton and I craned to see the slopes where I had skied, and then we were climbing through long snow-tunnels over to St Christoph, and a time control. Sleet splattered across the windscreen before turning into proper snow, white-dusting the grey mountainsides. We were rolling up towards the Arlberg Pass when we saw the officials' Frontera at the side of the road. It was supposed to be one of the sneaky passage controls, but it wasn't quite sneaky enough because everyone had seen it. On the control, Greg motioned me to wind down my window and I was fool enough to do as he asked. Trev and Rick and Jingers leapt out of hiding and dumped armfuls of snow into the car, so I sat for the rest of the day in a melting snowdrift.

  We shot through Lech and another time control at Schwarzack, and onwards to the German frontier.

  One last stage to drive to Überlingen, 70 km away on the Bodensee – Lake Constance. Less than 48 hours to Paris.

  We passed Dave Bull with his Rover jacked up at the roadside. Angela was standing looking perplexed and Helen's face peered out at us through the rear window.

  'Bearings have finally gone,' Dave said miserably.

  'What are you going to do?'

  'Drive on, very slowly.'

  There was nothing we could do to help him out. Not much further on we came to one of the Peykans, down on its offside axle at the roadside. We saw Mohsen Eijadi running away from his car and then, with a double-take once we had passed, we realised that he was chasing his rear wheel as it bowled away down the steep hill. One of the other Peykans was right behind us, so we drove on once more. When the order was published that night we saw that Mohsen had managed an impressive roadside repair, although the time he lost cost him a drop from third place into eighth.

  We stopped for fuel as dusk fell, and fooled around in the garage shop buying chocolate and drinks and a present of a chamois leather for the Amazon.

  'She deserves a present,' Phil said tenderly.

  Almost as soon as we were moving again I looked at the trip reading and then at my watch.

  'We'd better get a move on. Bugger it. Why did we waste all that time at the garage?'

  It was soon dark, and it was raining, we had 50 km to drive and 45 minutes to do it in, and the road ahead was an unbroken stretch of roadworks, traffic lights, and crawling queues of commuting Mercedes and BMWs.

  'We're not going to make it,' I suddenly realised. 'Not in this traffic.'

  All the way from Istanbul in twentieth place, and now we were going to blow it on the last day but one.

  'Yes, we are going make it,' Phil snapped. He stamped his foot down and pulled out into the empty opposite lane. With his thumb on the horn he overtook a long line of traffic, and swung back to take the head of it just as the light turned green. This manoeuvre was greeted with a fusillade of angry hooting.

  'Phil, for fuck's sake . . .'

  'Watch this.'

  This time he swung the wheel the other way. He churned up the grass verge and narrowly missed a shrub bed as he skidded past a couple of trucks and whirled back on to the road.

  'Phil . . . stop it'

  He looked happier than he had done all day. Thumb on horn, foot hard down, yelling imprecations at the law-abiding German motorists as we raced past them. When I glanced round I saw that there was a ribbon of rally cars behind us, all of them doing exactly the same thing. Everyone was chasing their times. The wet night became a dazzle of flashing lights and sliding metal.

  This lasted for 15 long minutes.

  Then we saw a lone, bedraggled figure sheltering under an umbrella at the roadside. A little arm flagged us down. The face of Colin Francis, Clerk of the Course for Istanbul–Paris, appeared in Phil's window.

  'This stage is cancelled,' he told us in his Welsh singsong. 'Just make for Überlingen in your own time.'

  Phil slumped back in his seat again. He lit a cigarette and blew a disparaging cloud of smoke.

  Time allowance too short for the distance and road conditions. Another cock-up.'

  'You were enjoying yourself.'

  'Too right I was.'

  Later we learned that so many motorists and passers-by had telephoned the police to complain about the rally drivers that the police had insisted to the organisers that the stage be cancelled.

  We drove on, through the murk, to Überlingen.

  Some members of the Feit family were there to meet us. Each of the cars wore a fluttering black gauze ribbon in acknowledgement.

  The last night but one. There was one more view from another bedroom window, another black lake with chains of light reflected in it.

  Everyone wanted to cling together. All of our tight little group went out to dinner, and we sat in a noisy circle around a big table. Next to me Greg shook his spiky head and blinked wonderingly behind his specs.

  'I have had the best time. Just the best time of my life.'

  Back at the hotel, the Bulls were just arriving in the cab of a low-loader, with the Rover on the back.

  They had driven on a short way after we passed them, and then there was a terrible bang and a grinding crash as the rear right-hand side of the car hit the road. They were on a downhill slope, without brakes now, and Dave managed to slow and finally stop the car by dragging the wheels against the kerb. When he got out, shakily, to inspect the damage he saw that the wheel, brake drum and half-shaft had broken off and disappeared, presumably down the ravine on the other side of the road. The end of the differential tube had nothing coming out of it except a plume of burning oil.

  Once the car and the crew finally reached Überlingen, Dave began ringing round Europe, with David Drew's help, to try and locate the necessary parts to enable them to continue – a complete half-shaft, hub, brake drum and brake anchor plate. It was David Drew who finally tracked down what they needed.

  In Vienna.

  A Rover enthusiast called Michael Meyer-Harting didn't actually have the parts himself, but he knew that his friend Joseph Unger did. At two in the morning Michael woke Joseph and they went round to the garage together and dismantled a car, so the Bulls could make the last lap to Paris. The only problem remaining was how to convey the parts over the 650 kilometres between Vienna and Überlingen. The solution that finally presented itself was a light aircraft that flew between Vienna and Altenrheim, a little airport near the end of the Bodensee. The next flight would arrive at Altenrheim at four o'clock the following afternoon. If all went well Dave could transport the car to the airport on a truck and strip the axle down ready for the moment when the parts came off the plane. He could then fit them, and make the dash for the last stop at Reims. If he and the car could make it to the start line on the last morning and drive on to Paris, they would still win a silver medal.

  It seemed that Phil and I had been lucky to escape with a mere all-nighter in the garage at Rimini.

  Fittingly, I was having my last signpost conversation of the trip, as well as the first, with Chris Taylor. We were back in the bar at the hotel, but reluctant to go to bed. We shared another bottle of wine, and tried to unravel for each other what all the days and all the distance had really meant.

  It was a bit late in the evening for anything intelligible to emerge.

  Upstairs, real Phil was already in bed.

  'Night,' he said when I came in, and slid into the familiar coma.

  'Goodnight, Phil.'

  I listened to his breathing. After a few minutes, I fell asleep too.

  The last day's rallyin
g. We had 565 km to travel, through the Black Forest and across the Rhine into Alsace, and from there on across to Reims. We left on our minute, 8.03 a.m. Beep. Just over 28 hours to the finish line.

  It was a cold, sunny morning. Our road climbed steadily through vineyards and meadows and then entered the forest, where dense black conifers alternated with patches of broadleaf woodland. The leaves were changing colour in sheets of flame and gold, and blue-grey patches of snow lay between the trees. There were broken sheets and crusts of snow at the roadside too, and we began to pass little ski areas with a couple of lifts and a cluster of wooden huts.

  When we left the trees behind we came out into a wide, white expanse of snow with a handful of buildings and a church with a slender green spire. We were at the day's first time control, at the top of the Kandelpasse. The light was blinding, striking diamonds out of the snowfield. The cars were pulled up at the roadside or tracking dangerously into the snow, and the crews were out taking photographs and throwing snowballs. It was fun, but a big mistake to drive into the snow. Dan almost burned out his clutch trying to reach the road again, and I had to balance my weight on our rear bumper while Phil steered his way out. Maladroit to the last, I fell off on my head when the car bounced and slewed. I lay in the snow for a minute, dazed. Phil didn't look back.

  He had been very subdued all morning. His entire attention had been fixed for so long on Paris, just on getting the two of us and the car safely to Paris, but now even monofocal Phil was obliged to look beyond that. He had given up his job with Exodus, he didn't have a home of his own to go back to. No wonder he was thoughtful.

  'Do you want to drive?'

  We were waiting at the time control. I looked at the black snake of road bisecting the banks of glittering snow, and the view across the distant valley into France.

  'Yes.'

  We changed places. Phil handed over the road book for stamping and zeroed the trip.

  I didn't stall the car, or run into the back of the Noors in front of us. Everything felt startlingly loose and sloppy, the gears and the brakes and clutch and steering. The poor old Amazon was worn out, but I made it move forwards and then I was nudging it down the hairpin bends into the valley. It wasn't a test of personal adequacy after all – it was just driving.

  'Not too fast on the bend. Brake now,' Phil said.

  I looked straight ahead, watching the dapple of light and shade on the tarmac.

  'Good. You're doing really well. How does it feel?'

  'It feels okay.'

  I drove us out of Germany and on to Riquewihr, in Alsace. It was a medieval wine village, enclosed within walls, pretty and over-restored and tourist-ridden. As a special dispensation the rally was allowed to pass through the fortress walls and up the narrow cobbled street to the time control, and then out again through the great portcullis at the top. Phil agreed that it was probably best if he negotiated this himself, so we resumed our accustomed positions before the entrance gate.

  With Phil in the driver's seat we rolled onwards towards Reims, through open pastureland and vineyards and orchards.

  'Three ks. Turn left at roundabout, signpost Bruyères.'

  'Okay.'

  We listened to our familiar music and exchanged information about the route, but otherwise we hardly spoke.

  I felt tired and flat, and also sad, and I suppose Phil was feeling the same. We had come a long, long way.

  Dan and JD were in front of us, and Melissa and Colin behind. Phil stuck his arm out of his window and made winding up gestures to Dan; faster, go faster. We had done all of this so often, and after tomorrow it would be finished.

  There was another time control in a place called Wassy, and a final stretch of 123 km to Reims.

  The city was busy and clogged with traffic, and there was a punitive one-way system that took us in a great loop because I missed a turn in the route notes. We were tired and stretched when we reached almost the last time control, TC number 95, at the Reims hotel. I handed over the book and it was stamped, due time 19.02, actual time 19.02, '90th anniversary PEKING to PARIS. SURVIVOR'.

  The film crew who had been covering the event saw us and the director came and pushed his furry microphone into my face. The cameraman pressed up alongside. I had a brief flashback to the night at Quetta and the media lights shining into our eyes.

  'Rosie, how do you feel?'

  I muttered something about elated and triumphant and very relieved.

  'And how has it been, travelling with Phil.'

  I said that it had been wonderful, marvellous. He had been the best possible driver and companion. It was what I finally felt.

  The furry mike shifted in Phil's direction.

  'How about you, Phil? How do you feel about it? Were you a good partnership?'

  'Yeah. I did some navigating today, you actually do have to concentrate quite hard.'

  'And what are your plans after this adventure?'

  He gave his camera smile, straight into the lens, and swept back his hair. 'More adventures,' he said, and went on to list what they might be. Afterwards the interviewer thanked us both, with a little lift of the eyebrows at me, and moved on to his next victim.

  It was all in the heat of the moment, but it was entirely and maddeningly predictable. Phil hadn't thought to praise me in return or to thank me for playing my part in our enterprise. And it was just as infuriatingly predictable that I minded so much. Anger bubbled up in me all over again, but it had been a long day and it was the end of a long trip, and I said nothing. We went silently into the last hotel and up to the last bedroom. There was no view from here. There were elaborate drapes and nets but the window was blind.

  Phil sidled away at once, not even stopping for a shower. I had mine, and changed my clothes, and then looked at my watch. It was dinner-time. I tried to override my feelings but I felt temporarily too prickly and hot with uncried tears to go downstairs. It was stupid to feel so hurt by a moment's thoughtlessness, and I longed to tell someone outside the claustrophobia of the rally, but Caradoc and the children and my best friends were already on their way to Paris to meet me. There was no one to talk to.

  Instead I reminded myself about what I had learned on the road, about the differences between Phil's perception of me and my own, and the importance of not relying on other people to prop up my faltering sense of self-worth. Of course there would be no little harbour restaurant, and we would never drink to our joint achievement nor wrap it up for each other with the ribbon of mutual admiration. That was all sentiment, and fantasy Phil was exactly that. Real Phil was an adventurer, and adventurers are hard people. He had got what he wanted out of me.

  I acknowledged all of this as coolly as I could. Then I applied a lot of lipstick and congratulated myself on having been a fine navigator and a tenacious travelling companion. And finally I went downstairs to the bar and ordered a bottle of Reims' finest.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Prince Borghese reached Paris via St Petersburg, Warsaw and Berlin on 10 August 1907, exactly two months after leaving Peking. His remaining rivals, the two de Dion Boutons and the Spyker, were a full twenty days behind him. It was raining as the triumphant Itala reached the finishing line outside the Le Matin newspaper office, just as it had been when the cars left Peking, but the bad weather didn't dampen the enthusiasm of the crowds or the warmth of their welcome. There were cordons of soldiers to hold back the press of people, and mounted patrols of the Republican Guard rode at the front and rear of the procession.

  The Parisians waved their hats and umbrellas and handkerchiefs in the air, and their shouts of 'Vive Borghese' rolled and thundered ahead of the car with a noise like waves breaking. At last, the car came to a standstill at the entrance to the newspaper offices. For a long, confused moment Borghese and Barzini and Guizzardi, the chauffeur and mechanic, sat motionless, unable to comprehend that the incredible journey was over at last.

  Barzini, the journalist, described the emotions of the Itala crew just before they re
ached their goal.

  'The last few hours seem everlasting. They are hours of joy, but also of anguish – of a sudden, vague, inexpressible anguish, which makes us silent and gives us all the appearance of disappointed men.'1

  This was the first time the journey had been completed since 1907. We had come by a different route from Borghese and his companions, and unlike the pioneers we had had maps as well as roads – of a sort – for most of the way, and satellite phones and laptop e-mails instead of the occasional telegraph offices. But there were similarities too, mostly in the ambivalence of our feelings as the end of it all came within reach.

  Car 82 left Reims at 9.10 a.m. on 18 October, with only 160 km to travel. We were luckier than Borghese in yet another respect – it was a brilliantly sunny morning, with a pale-blue sky laced with vapour trails and all the trees in the Reims boulevards turning to October gold and amber.

  Dave Bull and his wife and mother-in-law also crossed the morning line on their designated minute. Their Rover parts had arrived in Altenrheim airport at 5 p.m. the previous evening, where Dave was waiting with the car all prepared to receive them. By 5.35 p.m. they were ready to roll again, and they headed for Reims via Zürich, Basle, Colmar and Nancy. At 3.30 a.m. on the 18th they were in the last hotel with all the rest of us, not much shorter of sleep than anyone else and definitely more sober. They deserved their silver medal.

  As Adam and Jon pulled away from the Reims start line, a black bin-liner water bomb plummeted from a balcony of the hotel and exploded neatly and drenchingly between them.

  It was an easy last drive, that morning, through slow weekend villages and lush farmland and past quiet war cemeteries.

  I felt as sad as Barzini had done, and we were just as silent as the trio in the Itala ninety years before. The appearance of disappointment clung about us too: we had done everything we aimed for, we were coming in to Paris in 20th place overall and the gold medal was ours, but there was more than a simple sense of melancholy that everything was over. I hadn't driven my share of the distance, and Phil and I had in the end misunderstood each other. There wasn't time to bridge that chasm now – we would have to wait until we were back in England, in our separate lives, to see whether we had after all made a real friendship out of our journey or whether proximity and necessity had been the only glue that held us together.