The Gran Tour

by Ben Aitken

  I read the New Testament at dinner. I look up passages to do with pain while I wait for my mushrooms, but there’s nothing practical about the relief of face pressure. I turn to Ecclesiastes during my hotpot, which is the book that’s meant to be full of wisdom. From what I can tell, the message from Ecclesiastes is basically to be a hungry caterpillar – get stuck in, have a nap, spread your wings. While I get stuck into my crumble, I look up the passage that Mary has marked as her favourite. ‘But Jael, Heber’s wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died.’ Wtf, Mary?

  The hotel’s maintenance man is the evening’s entertainment. His name is Mark and he’s dressed as a clansman, a Highlander. He’s got a kilt, a shield and a broadsword, and he hasn’t cut his hair since 2014 for the occasion. If you saw him in Tesco you’d call the police, let’s put it that way.

  Mark wants to show us how to make a kilt, or how to fold one rather. He picks a lady called Jenny to be his volunteer. Mark says he’s going to dress Jenny in a tartan plaid kilt. Jenny doesn’t fancy his chances. That’s what her face says. Mark says first of all, he’s going to get Jenny to lie on the floor. Jenny really doesn’t fancy his chances. That’s what her – ooh, hang on, I talk too soon, her face tells a lie: Jenny is on the floor. Mark tells Jenny to stop looking up his kilt. Jenny says he’s not to worry as she’s not got her glasses on. There’s a comment from the audience: ‘If it’s as long as his sword, you won’t need glasses!’

  As Jenny gets turned into a Highlander on the floor, I get a whisky for my face and sit down with Mary. She says she saw me reading at dinner and was pleased. I ask her about the passage and she says she just did it for a laugh. She says her mum played the same joke on her once. She remembers it well because her mother wasn’t usually one for mucking around. She was a tough woman; could scare the life out of you. But Mary loved her all the same – not that she can remember ever telling her as much. She wishes she’d told her, wishes she’d told her more than once, once a month even. Not that her mother ever told Mary. No chance. You just had to assume – or hope rather. ‘But it was different then,’ she says, ‘it was more formal, even between mother and daughter. We didn’t have the words they have now – or if we did have the words, we didn’t have the same ease with them.’ Just as I’m about to say, with as much ease as I can muster, that if her mother had any sense she would have loved Mary immensely, Mary says, somewhat off topic, that her daughter withdrew sex until Jeremy did more around the house.

  ‘Who’s Jeremy?’ I say.

  ‘Well, he’s not the gardener,’ says Mary.

  ‘Your son-in-law?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘And was it effective?’

  ‘Sort of. He bought a dishwasher the next day.’

  36 I later discovered that the village of Dull is in a relationship with Boring, Oregon. Some of the news headlines when Dull and Boring first hooked up are enjoyable. ‘Boring group makes Dull decision: Partnership official with Scottish village’. (The Oregonian, August 2014.) ‘Dull, Scotland, makes Boring, Oregon, more interesting’. (BBC News, August 2014.) ‘Dull Residents In Scotland Hope For Boring Link To Town In The US’. (Huffington Post, May 2012.) You can see that the headline writers responsible for the above got into the spirit of things. The same can’t be said for the person who wrote a BBC headline in June 2012. ‘Boring in Oregon votes to pair with Dull in Perthshire’. From a country that has given the world Monty Python, this headline shows a contemptible lack of imagination and effort. Whoever wrote it should be submerged in the Pool of Muckhart and then taken to Powmill to be repurposed.

  37 As the Lord is our shepherd, let me be yours: don’t do it.

  38 Two summers ago, I went to the funeral of my friend’s mum. At the end of the service, people were invited to come up to the front of the church and say a few words – a sort of open-mic eulogy. About a dozen people went up, and despite Jane Dobson having plenty of strings to her bow, all they wanted to remember was her kindness.

  25

  I can’t just sit here and wait for the rain to stop

  I watch the D-Day commemorations in bed. Operation Overlord. That was the name of the Normandy campaign. June 6, 1944. The idea was to get 150,000 men across to France and turn the tide. A 95-year-old veteran is wheeled into view. He can’t have been much more than a boy when Churchill told him to fight on the beaches. Dan Walker of BBC Breakfast asks the veteran if he’s pleased to see all the politicians here. ‘Politicians?’ says the vet. ‘Why should I be pleased to see them?’

  I sit with Flicker and Mary for breakfast. We natter through a fry up. Mary says she doesn’t remember much about D-Day. Says she was still in Scotland at the time and probably hadn’t even heard of France. She asks after my face. I say it still hurts. I say it feels like the inside of my head no longer fits. Mary says she doesn’t think she’s ever had a headache. She asks if Gaviscon would help. When I tell her probably not, Mary admits she’s often off the mark when it comes to prescriptions. She once gave a sandwich to a lad sat on the floor outside a shop. ‘He was waiting for his mum!’ she says. It’s difficult to know what people need, says Flicker, placing a paracetamol next to my coffee cup. I swallow the pill watching Monica convey her toast and tea on the seat of her walker. She’s done that before.

  There’s no morning excursion so I plan to linger in the lounge and move along with my book. I’m reading Diana Athill’s Somewhere Towards the End, which she wrote in her 80s. It’s about her life, basically, and the prospect of its completion. She thinks that as we age, we get more pessimistic with life generally because our own details are worsening. A remedy for this insidious pessimism, she says, is the company of younger people, because they serve as reminders that one is part of something bigger.

  Speaking of something bigger, here’s Malcolm in his trunks, announcing to the lounge that he’s going down to decant the swimming pool. And here’s Kitty from Liverpool, calling me over to sit with her and Monica and Alice. I sit on the edge of the couch at first, on the armrest, but within five minutes I’ve moved down and across and am practically sat on Monica’s lap. They’re an entertaining trio. Of the three, Monica most fits Diana Athill’s pessimistic description. Not only were the berries wrong and the platform change typical, she also doesn’t hold much hope for the young, for Labour, for the afternoon’s weather. She’s lovely with it though; she carries the negativity well, but it’s there nonetheless. Kitty is the opposite. She’s an optimist and a rampant one; she barely stops talking and seems impossible to upset. Alice is the quietest of the three. I’m told she misses her husband.

  Monica asks me to help her send a text message. I tell her I’m probably the wrong man for the job, but she reckons I’m bound to be better than her. She dictates to me. ‘Woken up this morning by a clansman who came to fix the telly.’ When I’m still struggling with the predictive text five minutes later, Monica finally agrees and gets Alice to do it. Once Monica’s message has been sent, talk turns to the text message Kitty just got from her granddaughter Scarlett, who’s studying History at Cambridge. Kitty makes a point of the whereabouts.

  ‘She did go to private school though,’ says Monica.

  ‘So what?’ says Kitty.

  ‘Well, that’s how it works. It’s money that gets you there.’

  ‘It’s talent that gets you there,’ says Kitty. ‘She’s a bright girl.’

  ‘She’s bright because her parents bought her a better education.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘It perpetuates privilege is what.’

  ‘Does it heck.’

  Kitty wouldn’t have minded being bought an education. She wouldn’t have minded being bought anything. Her parents died when she was young. She was brought up by her uncle and aunt. She says her uncle was a lovely man, but very much a man of his time, which is to say he expected a dinner each evening and spent week
ends at the pub. He was working class but voted Conservative all his life. Kitty also votes Conservative but not because her uncle did – at least she doesn’t think that’s the reason. Monica is Labour through and through but voted for the Lib Dems last time. She says she thinks the Labour leader is dangerous, but not because that’s what the papers say – at least she doesn’t think that’s the reason. Kitty says what we need is Thatcher back. Monica says what we need is Attlee back. Alice says she doesn’t bother with politics and hasn’t for a long time. She lived in Spain for 30 years and it all went over her head out there. She moved back to England when her husband died, to be near her daughter. Alice admits she’s finding the transition hard, and not only because of the weather. And you can tell she’s finding it hard. You can tell that something’s up. Monica and Kitty might bicker and tussle, but they do so lightly and with energy and humour. Their minds aren’t elsewhere – they’re on the matter at hand, whether it’s private education or political leaders. Comparatively, Alice has been somewhere else since the moment I saw her. Alice says she’s grateful for her neighbours though, meaning Monica and Kitty. They’ve been good to her, she says. She looks at them now, bickering about whether bus passes should be means tested, and then at me and says softly, and with a smile, ‘I bet you’ve twice a headache now, Ben.’

  Somebody puts the D-Day commemorations on the telly. It turns heads. Monica remembers the noise of the planes and the bombs and seeing Plymouth red with fire. She says one time, their cat refused to go into the air raid shelter with them, and when they came out an hour later, the house was in bits and the cat was in the oven, safe and sound. Monica has never doubted the intelligence of animals since.

  Then Monica says that her dad was on the Prince of Wales battleship when it was sunk by the Japanese off the coast of British Malaya. Monica was six at the time. It was 1941, 10 December, lunchtime. It’s the only history question Monica can answer without thinking. The news on the radio said the ship had been sunk and all on board had been lost. Monica remembers the telegram boy. She remembers his hat. The family were gathered around the wireless when he knocked on the door. Monica was sent to open it because they thought it was a neighbour. He’d swam away. Her father had. In the South China Sea. Away from the sinking Prince of Wales. He didn’t want to be taken prisoner by the Japanese. He didn’t think that would be a hell of a laugh. He was picked up by an Australian boat a day later and eventually made his way home. Monica and her son went to Portsmouth a few years ago to have a look at another of the ships her dad had served on – the M33. Monica found her dad’s initials scratched into the frame of a bunk bed. Monica had a tear in her eye then, and she’s got another one now. When they got off the ship, a woman said to Monica, ‘Can I give you a hug?’ Monica really appreciated that hug. Of course she got a hug off her son but it’s nice when people you don’t know sense how you’re feeling. She asks if I know what she means.

  I walk in the rain with my hood up and a book in my pocket. My purpose isn’t noble. I toss a piece of orange peel in a stream and watch it run away, which is probably unethical. The rain is a gloss on the local stone and flowers. I turn right on Strathview Terrace and then right on Golf Course Road. I pass a pond and then continue uphill. Still the rain falls.

  The clubhouse roof is obvious against the wet green fairways. It’s the colour of strawberry, that’s why. I borrow an 8-iron and hit 40 balls into a field. It’s nice to think about getting my hips out of the way, keeping my head still, transferring my weight. The thoughts are so unimportant, they’re helpful. They don’t have fathers who fought in wars. They don’t have opinions. They haven’t had cancer. It’s nice to hit towards the distant sheep and a lonely whitewashed house. When I return the 8-iron, the professional says I need to think less about my technique and more about my target.

  I have lunch in the clubhouse: a bowl of ‘stovies’, which is beef, potato, onion, cabbage, gravy and mustard. It’s basically whatever’s left from a Sunday roast – whatever’s left in the stove. It’s decent. The extra time has done it some good. I eat it watching tourists tee off in borrowed blue coats. I read some more of Athill. She’s saying that the thing about death is its abruptness. That’s what scares her about it, scares us about it. ‘The difference between being and nonbeing is both so abrupt and so vast that it remains shocking even though it happens to every living thing that is, was, or will ever be.’ That’s it, isn’t it? It’s that complete and utter abruptness, that unthinkable difference between on and off. Someone just managed to hit their ball backwards. Their mate’s on the floor laughing. I can’t just sit here and wait for the rain to stop.

  I won some chocolates in a raffle last night. I didn’t mention it at the time because the raffle wasn’t the most scintillating hour of my life, and if I accounted for every minute of this holiday then my publisher would be sued for criminal extent. The raffle was in aid of a local Alzheimer’s hospice, and the clansman did his best to keep it lively. But this lot couldn’t have been less interested if they tried. I suppose their thinking was that if they’re going to throw money at a hospice, it might as well be a hospice in their own backyard – a sort of investment, or timeshare. Anyway, there was a raffle, and I won some chocolates. I collect them from my room now and take them down to the lounge. Pauline takes two honeycomb logs which is a bit annoying. Tom takes something soft on account of his mouth cancer. Mandy’s okay, but the Hungarian receptionist – Adrienne? – isn’t: she has two. Zoltan doesn’t mind if he does, and nor does Basia. Monica and Alice insist they’re fine, that they don’t want one, before taking about three each over the next half hour.

  ‘Where’s Kitty then?’ I say.

  ‘She’s gone to have a look at the salmon ladder,’ says Monica. ‘I said to her, “What’s interesting about a salmon ladder?” And she said, “I haven’t seen one before. That’s what’s interesting.” I told her with that attitude, she’ll never get a rest. She’s 85 but goes around like a two year old. Have you seen her outfit today? Red boots, green trousers and a yellow top – she’s a flipping traffic light.’

  ‘Has she always been so lively?’

  ‘No,’ says Monica. ‘Certainly not.’ She looks at Alice, who knows what’s coming. ‘She took flight after Keith died. He was bossy and impatient and – well, we barely saw Kitty. I hate to say it – and she certainly wouldn’t – but she’s better off without him. It’s like she’s finally … I don’t know, being herself. Which is lovely. Of course it is. But it’s also tiring. She wanted to do sambuca shots at lunchtime. She got cross when I said I wouldn’t and it turned into an argument. We can argue, Kitty and I.’

  ‘I’ve noticed,’ I say.

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Well, yeah.’

  ‘Thing is, I don’t know where she gets her ideas from. Out of a cracker most of the time. We were watching the D-Day stuff, weren’t we, Alice, and Kitty said there were too many foreigners. And I said what, in the world? And she said no, in the UK. And I said if it wasn’t for foreigners, we wouldn’t have won that bloody war, Kitty. Of course she said that if it wasn’t for foreigners there wouldn’t have been a bloody war, Monica, but she was missing the point. She’s just a textbook Conservative, that’s all, and a Scouse one at that. You don’t get many Conservatives in Liverpool so she’s accustomed to fighting her corner. But it’s the wrong corner. It doesn’t suit her. She’d do anything for anyone – and I mean anyone – and yet to hear her sometimes you’d think she was heartless. She’s one of those people whose deeds are better than their words. She says there’s too many here and yet she’s been treating the waitress from Italy like a granddaughter. She needs to stop reading the Daily Mail. I’ve a mind to intercept the paperboy. My son – Martin – bought me this crossword book when he found out I was getting the Daily Mail one off Kitty. He’s thoughtful, is Martin. He thinks of others – refugees, the disabled, Welsh people. And yet sometimes he forgets to feed his own cat. Weird. Anyway, he’s always been good with me. I thought
of him when you said you’d carry my walker across the bridge. You didn’t make me feel like a burden. You made me feel important. He does that. Martin does that.’

  ‘Is he still with that Malaysian girl?’ asks Alice.

  ‘He is. Sweet as anything, she is. She bought me a lovely present when they went on holiday recently, so I’ve got her some biscuits.’