The Gran Tour Page 6

  The boat’s commentator – up in the crow’s nest with a megaphone – is a droll fellow. All these guides and escorts must come out of the same finishing schools, because their humour is of a kind. This one directs our attention to a castle put up by Henry VIII, the Penryn Job Centre, and then a distant baroque mansion, which, according to him, ‘is where all the Shearings drivers live’. There is no sign of Bryan and Yvonne. And I didn’t see them at breakfast either. Perhaps that red wine last night did them in. Perhaps they’re recuperating in bed, watching Escape to the Country.

  I fetch a coffee for Marie (glasses, hair up in a bun, red anorak). We got chatting up on deck, going past the oyster dredgers and mussel farms. She’s from near Bradford. She used to be part of a travelling theatre company. They’d go all over the world, adapting the classics for younger audiences, bringing theatre to the people. Russia, Mexico, Colombia, even Burkina Faso. (‘Bingo?’ ‘Never heard of it.’) A truly itinerant theatre company.

  ‘And was that fun, Marie?’

  ‘Fun? It was more than fun. It was food for the soul.’

  ‘In which case you must miss it?’

  ‘I do. I’d still be out there on the road if I hadn’t mucked up my spine coming down a mountain. I’m not full of regret though. I mean, I got up the damn thing, didn’t I?’

  As we approach the end of the Fal Estuary, our audio guide points out another mansion. This one’s owned by a local Viscount. It’s certainly a nice-looking house – and the land attached to it is considerable, about 4 per cent of Cornwall. ‘I wonder how they got all that?’ I say to Marie. ‘Piracy,’ she says, without irony. ‘Pure and simple piracy.’ I suppose you don’t spend 30 years travelling the world with a troupe of actors and not acquire any opinions. ‘They should be forced to relinquish the land,’ she continues, dusting off an old record and dropping it on the turntable. ‘It’s ill-gotten. You know, I used to be a revolutionary, but I had to give it up because of my blood pressure.’

  Another significant landowner locally is Prince Charles. As well as Prince of Wales, he is Duke of Cornwall, and custodian and beneficiary of The Duchy of Cornwall, which is a part of the Crown’s estate. The Duchy was created with the purpose of providing income to the heir apparent to the throne. The Duke of Cornwall nets around £20 million annually. This has been going on since the 1300s, when Edward III set the whole thing up. In total, the Duchy owns 0.2 per cent of UK land, and hundreds of holiday cottages. Apparently, the holiday cottages are managed directly by the Duchy. I like the idea of Charles manning the phones. ‘Now then, let’s get to the bottom of this, you’re saying your egg came with insufficient soldiers?’

  Megan’s not spoken to me for an hour. She’s sketching a group of three sat gossiping at the back of the boat. I eavesdrop on the group a while. The talk is pretty bawdy. The biggest culprit is a tall man not unlike Prince Philip. He must be at least 90. He’s sat cross-legged, and taps his crutch on the deck gently as he talks, unless he wants to make a point, in which case the crutch comes up and is poked meaningfully into the air. He’s currently letting the other two in on a secret. Namely, that since his wife died, he’s started watching pornography. ‘I can’t say it’s been entirely effective,’ he says.

  The couple Prince Philip is sat with – perhaps twenty years his junior – are lapping up his sauciness. After one of Philip’s bon mots, one of the couple says: ‘I love old people. They’re ever so interesting.’ Prince Philip allows himself a rueful laugh, then says, ‘Then my dear, you clearly haven’t met enough of them.’ She asks if Philip wants a tea. ‘No, no,’ he says, ‘I’ve had quite enough of that. My wife was an incessant tea-maker. Whenever she doubted whether she’d done the right thing in marrying me, she’d make a pot of tea. I’d drink it for her sake, though I never liked the stuff. It must be the most overrated thing in the annals of man.’ To this the younger woman replies, in an affected accent, ‘Well I’m pleased to say I know bugger all about the annals of man.’ They all laugh at that, and then Philip says: ‘Oh go on then. Get me a tea.’ I hope Megan’s sketch includes speech bubbles.

  I go below deck. Everyone’s pressed against the starboard window – there’s been a dolphin sighting. There’s one lady not making a fuss. She couldn’t give a monkey’s about dolphins. She’s dressed formally, properly, nicely, and is looking out the window on the other side of the boat. In effect, she’s got her back to the stage, and such postures attract me, so I go over and say hello. Her name’s Chris, and she’d been wondering when I was going to introduce myself. Well, pardon me, Mrs Robinson. She reminds me of Angela Merkel and Ziggy Stardust. She’s somehow between the two. She’s in a cream, cashmere trench coat and heels. (And other things besides, but those are the highlights.) She must have struggled down those slippery steps. She probably found the captain’s arm for support. She says she used to be in politics but now she wants to write.

  ‘Write what?’ I say.

  ‘Only my demons,’ she says, ‘Won’t you sit down?’ I will sit down. ‘Now,’ she says, ‘let me tell you something: there’s no civilisation, only animals.’

  Megan and Marie (glasses, hair up in a bun, anorak) join us. Marie and Chris are familiar with one another. They both came on this trip alone, and have been taking their meals at the same table. Marie wonders what we were discussing, and Chris says, ‘Oh, I was just telling Benjamin how awful the world is.’ Marie sighs knowingly, and then counters that as far as being a woman is concerned, things have never been better. She remembers her mother and what she had to contend with. ‘It was a double shift that never ended. From one workplace to another. And what did she get for thanks? A clip round the ear.’ Then Chris asks Megan if she feels free. Megan says she knows enough about how things were for women in this country before (and how things continue to be for women elsewhere) to know that she’s well placed now. Indeed, Megan can’t remember ever experiencing an explicit disadvantage because of her sex. ‘Perhaps it’s unfashionable to say so,’ she says, ‘but I’ve never met a cruel man in my life, just stupid ones.’

  15.00. I wake up from a nap, splash my face, drink an instant coffee sat on the windowsill. I enjoy the view. There’s a palm tree, part of a beach, a piece of the Celtic Sea. I’m overlooking the foreground of course – a row of parked cars. One’s getting a ticket. The owner appears in a panic. ‘I’m delivering something,’ she says. ‘Yeah, and so am I,’ says the warden.

  Megan’s nowhere to be seen, so I go through to the lounge with my book. A woman is sat on her own in a bay window, her fingers laced, her expression serious. I sit down next to her, and look where she’s looking.

  ‘That’s the lighthouse Virginia Woolf wrote about,’ she says.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Well it was the last time I was here.’

  ‘What happens in that story again?’

  ‘To the Lighthouse? Gosh, now you’re asking. I ought to know, we did it for O-level. Doesn’t she get murdered by a fisherman?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to say.’15

  Debra is from Newark, which is Lincolnshire way. She reminds me of Victoria Wood, the actor and writer and comedian and dinner lady. There’s something effortlessly maternal about her, something conspiratorial, something endearing. She makes me feel like the two of us have been sat here gossiping for years. It’s the way she screws her nose up sometimes, and turns to me and says, ‘Here, have you …’ She moved to Cornwall twenty years ago and it was the best thing she ever did. But then she went back to Newark, to help out with the grandkids. The grandkids have since flown the nest, meaning she’s stuck in Newark more or less on her own. ‘I work in Asda. But only as a cleaner. When I told my colleague I was coming to St Ives on holiday, she said, “Make sure you come back!” She’s put an idea in my head, I don’t mind telling you.’ At the end of our conversation, when I get up to resume my search for Megan, she says, quietly, ‘Have a nice day, love,’ as if I was going off to school.

  I’m at the bar getting a couple o
f drinks to take through to dinner. Kieran’s at my side. By way of a greeting, he says it’s been lovely seeing me. I take this on the chin, though I can’t say his use of the past tense isn’t slightly unsettling. It’s like Kieran knows something I don’t. It’s like he’s arranged for my demise later this evening.

  We swap positions at the table, so Megan has a view of something that isn’t me. She has the soup and the hake, while I have the whitebait and the special. I tell Megan she looks nice, because she does, and then add: ‘Nicer than the whitebait anyway.’

  ‘You always do that,’ she says.

  ‘Always do what?’

  ‘Almost be nice.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It’s okay to adore me, you know. You are allowed.’

  I give this some thought, because it bears thinking about, then ask if she’s having a good time.

  ‘Yeah. It’s nice sitting on this side.’

  ‘No, I mean overall.’

  ‘I love it. I feel like I’m actually on holiday. I like not making decisions. And I’ve enjoyed sketching. That man on the boat was funny. And Imelda is sweet. What time’s bingo again?’

  Kieran says we’re to sit with them for the evening. He fetches some chairs especially. During the bingo, Kieran amuses himself by heckling as the balls come out. Forty-nine – ‘My age.’ Ninety – ‘Imelda’s age.’ Fifty-three – ‘When I lost my virginity.’ None of us win, and none of us mind.

  After the bingo, Kieran leans into a Joycean, Woolfish, highly-carbonated stream of consciousness. ‘I was 27 and in London. I went along to an Irish dance in Kilburn there – do you know the place? – and who did I find? This one, looking lovely. It was Halloween and I was half-cut so I asked this girl for a dance. When she said yes I swear to God I couldn’t believe my luck. I did some Hail Marys right there on the spot, twenty of the feckers. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Hail Mary, full of grace—” She said, “I didn’t say I’d marry you. I only said I’d dance with you,” but she didn’t understand, she couldn’t see what I could see – which was her. I asked for a second dance and she said: “You should go off and find someone who isn’t a widow with two children.” I said I don’t want to find any eejit else, and we got married six months later. Will you have another lager, Megan?’

  Kieran returns with three pints of lager and something soft for Imelda. Then Kieran asks where he was, where he got to. We say you just met Imelda at the dance in Kilburn. He resumes: ‘Her mother didn’t make it easy, mind. She was a hard woman. She’d knock your head off and think nothing of it. She was wary of me. She didn’t want me adopting the kids, didn’t want them taking my name and so on. But after about 25 years she came round, did she not, Imelda? It took her that long to warm to me. Same can’t be said of Imelda here. She’d warmed to me by the time we’d got to Willesden Junction. I’ve loved her every minute since I met her. Not so much as a tea break.’

  The singer is from Southend. She’s good, sassy. Between songs, she tells a few jokes. I’ve got Kieran in my ear so don’t catch them all, just the punch lines really. ‘You’d better dig a big hole because I’m sat on a donkey.’ ‘There’s a man sat outside with no trousers on – it was his wife’s idea.’ ‘I nibbled on her ear and she farted and flew out of the window.’ It’s not easy to work backwards from these, to trace the setup, not least because there’s no let-up in her material, no time to think. She’ll deliver a punchline – ‘And so I hit him with a shovel!’ – and then go straight into ‘A Teenager in Love’ by Dion and the Belmonts, after which she’ll say, ‘Come on then – who’s in love? Put your hand up if you’re in love.’ Oddly, nobody puts their hand up. In the end I put mine up, if only to break the silence. Miss Southend spots me and says, ‘At least someone can be bothered. Who you in love with, pet?’ I point to Kieran and she says, ‘Well better luck next time.’ Then she’s straight into a joke about Viagra, then there’s an announcement she’ll be selling chutney after the show, and then it’s ‘Single Ladies’ by Beyoncé. When she calls for all the single ladies to get up on the floor, just one or two creep forward. When she calls for all the ladies that want to be single, a dozen are on their feet, Megan and Imelda among them. Kieran looks at me. ‘It’s been lovely seeing you, Ben.’

  With the ladies on the tiles, Kieran leans in for a man-to-man. He gets his index finger out for the occasion, then gets it somewhere up near my nose. It’s like a Cumberland sausage. ‘It’s been lovely seeing you, Ben, sure it has, but you’re to let Megan do what she wants, do you hear? You’re to feed off each other, not stifle each other. I’ve loved Imelda every minute since I met her. Not so much as a tea break. But believe me, some minutes were longer than others. It’s imperative that you open the content of your minds – the two of you. And if you really want my advice? Sure you’re better off without it.’

  Imelda and Megan return. He gives Imelda a kiss and says he loves her. Then he looks at me as if I’m meant to do the same. He tells Megan to sit down for a minute because he wants to talk to her about her painting career, what’s going to happen, what she has to do. He says she’s never to sleep with the brush under her pillow, and that she’s to do what she wants, even if that’s going off for six months somewhere to paint and leaving me to fend for myself. Then he turns to me and asks if I play football, because when Megan goes off for six months I’ll be wanting to get myself out of the house, sure I will, and he manages a team, St Augustine’s, down in Kilburn there, so do I play football or not? I say I’d be happy to play if he was short, but he’s already having second thoughts. He wants to see the size of me. I stand up and he says, ‘And where’s the rest of you then? You’re a folk singer if you’re anything. I’d sooner have St Augustine himself on the pitch than a wee fella like you.’ No, he says, he couldn’t do it to me, I’d go and hurt a finger on my debut and that would be my folk career finished, sure it would. ‘Now have you seen Mama Mia?’ he says. ‘Now that’s a good film. It looks lovely in Greece there, and Meryl Streep is grand. Sure the second one’s not as good, when the baby comes along, not by a long shot. Ghost is another one. That’s a deadly film. Your man comes back from the dead to look out for Demi Moore there. I cried my eyes out. Bejesus, Imelda, it’s just occurred to me – we’ve not checked on the dog.’

  It’s past midnight. We’re the last ones to leave the lounge. Kieran’s not finished his pint, so he’s taking it up to bed with him. I ask Imelda if she ever drinks. Before she can answer, Kieran says, ‘No she doesn’t. We can’t afford for the both of us.’

  15 She doesn’t get murdered by a fisherman, and the titular lighthouse is actually on the Isle of Skye, although it was this one (Godrevy) that gave Woolf the idea for the novel, whose dramatic highpoint is when a professor snaps at a poet for requesting a second helping of soup, or so Megan tells me.

  7

  Older people should be exploited

  I’m standing on the front steps, waiting for Megan. Debra (Newark, Victoria Wood) and another lady (Dawn, I think) are coming up the hill. When Dawn spots me standing on the steps she says, ‘Flipping ’eck it’s Poldark!’ I know he’s not, but I ask if Poldark is in EastEnders. Dawn says, ‘He’d be in my bedroom if he knew what was good for him.’16

  Megan appears. She’s been chatting to someone.

  ‘Old people are therapeutic,’ she says.

  ‘That sounds patronising.’

  ‘They say things and they have weight.’

  ‘I think that’s just historic phlegm.’

  ‘You know what I mean. They’ve more substance. More words. They shouldn’t be allowed to retire.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘They should keep going.’

  ‘Yeah, but they might be knackered.’

  ‘It’s just a shame.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘I don’t know. For me. For them. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was 80? If the barmaid was 80? If the pilot was 80?’

  ‘The pilot?’

  ‘Or
if the person collecting tickets on the train was 90? Why is there never anyone really old on Top of the Pops?’

  ‘Because Top of the Pops doesn’t exist anymore.’

  ‘Older people should be exploited. They’ve got all that wisdom. All that skill. All that grist in the mill. Think of the all the flour they’d come out with if you started winding them up.’

  ‘Can I write this down?’

  ‘They should be put in a room – a nice room – and told to come up with ideas, make things, figure things out.’

  ‘It’s called the House of Lords.’

  ‘It just seems like a waste.’

  ‘Have you run these ideas by anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do so tonight, okay?’

  We go down to Porthminster Beach – the one beneath our hotel window. There’s a fair bit going on. Dogs are chasing balls, spades are filling buckets, adults are going in goal, while some are out in kayaks and others are surfing. A few fishing boats, laid up like ducks out of water, look proud and dumb on the sand. We walk across that sand, and around a corner, to what they call Harbour Beach, where two piers enwrap the water like arms. We enter a harbourside restaurant and get a window table that offers a view of the beach and all its mellow drama. I have monkfish and it doesn’t taste of much. I say so to Megan.

  ‘It’s delicate,’ she says.

  ‘Which is another way of saying it doesn’t taste of much.’

  ‘You’re never happy.’

  ‘I’m often thinking this about white fish. It’s overrated.’

  ‘You shouldn’t generalise.’

  ‘There’s nothing to them. Cod, haddock, plaice, sea bass.’

  ‘You’re a philistine.’

  ‘Meg, it’s a fish. Not an opera.’

  ‘You lack sensitivity.’

  ‘Look. It’s Imelda.’