Are We Nearly There Yet?: A Family's 8000 Miles Around Britain in a Vauxhall Astra Read online

  ‘Bum still in the air?’ Dinah asks back at the table.

  ‘About a foot off the ground.’

  She laughs.

  And, as the restaurant empties, and the city boys roar home to barn conversions in their Porsches and BMWs, and we learn that Nick Hewer turns out to be an innocent Mr Watson enjoying a birthday meal with his wife, we drink a toast.

  ‘To the trip.’

  ‘To the trip.’

  We clink glasses. And, for some reason, looking at Dinah I feel quite emotional. About what? I’m not quite sure. That Dinah agreed to all this when initially she hadn’t wanted to. That the kids are both safely asleep. And, of course, there’s my dad.

  Dad and my step-mum Mary had driven down to Brighton with a picnic hamper and a bottle of champagne to celebrate my birthday a couple of weeks ago.

  ‘I won’t kiss you. I’ve got a bit of jaundice. It might be a virus,’ Dad said on the doorstep.

  ‘He’s gone a bit yellow,’ said Mary.

  ‘You look yellow,’ I said.

  ‘I’m yellow,’ said Dad.

  He walked inside and, in the kitchen, I’d lifted his sunglasses. The whites of Dad’s eyes were yellow.

  ‘Yellow,’ said Dad.

  We ate the picnic outside. Dad had ordered it from the deli in Chalfont St Giles. Salami, chorizo, olives, Roquefort, pumpkin and cream cheese delicacies. We said how lovely it was. Dad gave me my birthday present – a Rand McNally road map of Britain and a cheque for £100: ‘To get the car serviced with.’ On this map we showed Dad and Mary our proposed route around the country. They gave the kids a present each. Then back at the table we chatted – about Dinah’s job, about Pen, my sister, and Buster, but Dad wasn’t quite there. He read an article in The Times, his head held low. On the doorstep, leaving, he said he’d call after seeing the doctor. His hug was no stronger nor weaker than the one he’d given me when he arrived. I kissed Mary goodbye but, in her eyes, as they walked down the path, I saw something – a communication of fear.

  Two days later Mary answered the phone. I asked for news. Mary said, ‘It’s bad.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘I’ll pass you to your dad.’

  ‘My darling,’ Dad said. ‘I have written this down because it’s too difficult to say.’

  He started to read a letter he’d prepared. He’d seen the doctor, who’d referred him to a specialist. He’d had a scan. The results were not good. The specialist told him he had a massive tumour in his liver. There was evidence it had spread to his lungs and his abdomen. It was inoperable. Chemo would be useless. He’d asked for a prognosis and been told months, months in single figures. He realised this was a shock. It was a shock to him too.

  ‘From looking slightly yellow to this in three days,’ he said.

  Mary and he would spend the night working out what to do next. He’d have a biopsy. We’d speak then. He talked about quality of life, decisions to be taken, but my head felt too tight to take in any more.

  I was in Hove Park with the kids. I called Dinah.

  ‘Oh, love. Where are you? I’ll come and get you.’

  I called my sister, Pen. ‘It’s not good,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me.’

  I told her.

  She cried.

  I called Buster. The phone was engaged. Pen was telling Buster. I called Pen again. She’d spoken to Dad, was angry, didn’t want to see him suffer like Mum, couldn’t bear all that false hope.

  She’s getting better.

  No, she isn’t.

  I leant on the metal fence surrounding the play park and I remembered standing by the stone wall outside the Chiltern Hospital talking to Dad about Mum when she was dying. ‘Pace yourself,’ he’d told me. ‘Don’t come home every weekend. I’ll need you more towards the end. Pace yourself, my son.’

  I tried Buster again. He sounded numb. We wondered how Dad would play it, couldn’t imagine him dying, couldn’t imagine saying goodbye. I called Dad back. He was drinking a twenty-five-year-old bottle of red wine. ‘This is how I’ll play it. Nothing will change. I will carry on as before and hope the momentum takes me over the line.’

  And in the play park afterwards I couldn’t stop hugging the kids. It was a strange genetic love chain. Dad was dying so I hugged my children, his grandchildren.

  CHAPTER 3

  Draft Copy for Guidebook: Stratford-upon-Avon puts you in the forsoothing home of the world’s most celebrated playwright, William Shakespeare. Sitting on the River Avon, the town is a pretty, time-capsuled monument to the Bard where you’re never more than a codpiece away from an Elizabethan pub he supped in or a thatched cottage he gadzooked at. There are five properties owned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust that it is imperative you visit. Do not skimp and only go to Shakespeare’s Birthplace. Do not think you can whip around Ann Hathaway’s Cottage, poke your nose in Mary Arden’s Farm, and then tell everyone you’ve done Stratford-upon-Avon. Get in there, do it properly and go to all the attractions, even Hall’s Croft, owned by a friend of a friend of Shakespeare’s uncle who wasn’t really even his uncle but a family friend who once bought a glove from his dad or something we can’t quite remember. Up to your neck ruff with the quill-scratching fiend? Take a family outing to nearby Warwick Castle, where admission includes a host of activities including archery and falconry demonstrations, as well as the firing of a colossal mediaeval trebuchet, all of which are perfectly timed so, if you rush madly between them,

  alternately bribing and scolding your children to hurry up, you can still just about miss every single one. For an extra £2.75 in the Ghosts Alive Exhibition actors in period garb will jump out at you when you least (most) expect it shouting chilling words like ‘murder’ and ‘killed’ and ‘Sir, can you move your bag – we need to keep the thoroughfare clear.’

  The first town we’re blitzing is Stratford-upon-Avon. We picked it for no other reason than Ettington Park Hotel on its outskirts was the first hotel we blagged. Or rather that Dinah blagged, because she’s been blagger-in-chief. Whereas I have tended to cave in on the phone, and lose my bottle, listening to Dinah, a seasoned travel journalist, over the last few weeks knocking off the 150 free nights we’ve needed for this trip, sweet-talking hotel chains, coaxing PR companies, and talking us up to publicity departments, it’s been like observing a slightly less glamorous long con on an episode of Hustle. I say blagged, although, of course, it’s more complicated than that. Because our Frommer’s contract stipulates we aren’t allowed to promise reviews in return for freebies, something that could compromise the impartiality of the guidebook, we’ve only been allowed to promise that a hotel offering a free room will be considered for a review. Also, a complimentary stay we’ve had to make clear doesn’t guarantee a favourable review. It’s made Dinah’s efforts even more sterling. We had a calendar on the wall and every time she scooped a free room Dinah would raise a hand mid call for me to slap her a silent high five. I’d cross out the day and, if it was a particularly good hotel with grounds, twin rooms, a parking pass, maybe an evening meal minus drinks thrown in, when she came off the line, we’d conga into the garden to do a victory circuit round the clothes line prop.

  ‘She’s blagged it, she’s blagged it,’ I’d sing holding her arm aloft. ‘She’s only gone and blagged it.’

  ‘I’ve blagged it, I’ve blagged it,’ she’d sing, as we kicked our legs out, ‘I’ve only gone and blagged it.’

  It was only later, blasé, spoilt and bloated on her success, I began to churlishly ask, after these celebrations, things like, ‘But you did ask about a complimentary meal?’ Or, ‘Oh, so the rooms aren’t interconnecting, then? That’s a shame.’

  Ettington Park is the former home of the illustrious Shirley family, whose ancestors fought with Henry IV and include the last nobleman to be executed for a felony in England. The house, with 40 acres of grounds, is also where the recipe for toad-in-the-hole was apparently invented, and helped inspire Shakespeare, a regular hunting visitor, to write his balcony scene f
or Romeo and Juliet. We have a two-bedroom suite with dinner and are about 10 miles away from the country house hotel, approaching the twenty-four-hour Tesco in Wroxton, when it suddenly comes upon me.

  ‘You’ll have to pull over,’ I tell Dinah, ‘I don’t feel well.’

  Now, my wife, Dinah, is lovely. She’s understanding, patient, and innately kind. She’s clever and has a great sense of humour. She’s also my best friend and has been for the eighteen years we’ve been together. But if she has one flaw, it’s her bedside manner.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think it’s that pan-fried duck last night. I feel terrible. You need to pull over.’

  ‘Really? We’re nearly there.’

  Thick beads of sweat break out on my forehead. I’m going intermittently hot then cold. My stomach’s pulsating like an electric current is passing through it.

  ‘Please, don’t make me spell out what’s about to happen.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ she says. ‘But we’ll be late for the butterfly farm. And if you’re going to be sick, open the window. We’re going to be spending a lot of time in the car.’

  She swings into the Tesco car park, finds a space and raises an eyebrow as I hurriedly undo my seat belt and make an unseemly dash for it.

  ‘I told you,’ she shouts, after me. ‘We didn’t need that extra carafe. Honestly, Ben! On our first night.’

  After a sorry episode in the disabled toilet, Dinah upgrades my condition.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve got a bit of food poisoning,’ she says, when I return to the car, ashen-faced. ‘Although I’m fine and we had the same thing. Have you got that window open? You stink.’

  We planned to drop the bags off at the hotel and drive to the Stratford Butterfly Farm and then visit the various Shakespeare attractions, but a few miles further on, I take a turn for the worse and I’m forced to ring ahead for an early check-in at Ettington Park while Dinah keeps the children abreast of developments.

  ‘Guys, I’m afraid Daddy’s not feeling well.’

  They’re busy watching Finding Nemo on our new cheapo Argos DVD player that disconnects from the cigarette lighter socket and sends the film back to the beginning every time the person in the passenger seat so much as scratches their leg.

  There’s no response. Dinah leans over me and pauses the movie.

  ‘Guys, listen to me. Dad’s got a poorly tummy, so there’s a problem with the butterfly farm, OK?’

  A big ‘Awwwwwwww’ from the back now.

  ‘But if you like we’ll drop Daddy off at the hotel where he can carry on being sick and I’ll take you.’

  ‘HOORAY!’

  There’s still a slim chance I’ll make it in time until Dinah takes a wrong turn a mile from the hotel, confusing the A3400 with the A429. ‘Oh, that’s strange – there’s supposed to be a right turn here.’ ‘DINAH! PLEASE!’

  As she pulls into a lay-by, rings Ettington Park for directions and becomes frustratingly embroiled in a conversation about the precise timing for high tea, I cannot even swear at her. Incapable of full sentences, my entire being is focused on maintaining control of what I’m fast losing control over. Instead I punch my upper thigh in the passenger seat rhythmically with a clenched fist and, like a heavily pregnant woman whose waters are breaking on her way to hospital, implore her, ‘Faster, faster, faster!’

  Dinah finds the driveway to the sixteenth-century mansion, but just 200 yards from the sweeping gravel entrance I’m compelled to spring from the still-moving car and dash for the trees, scrambling up a steep grassy bank to relieve my front and back ends ignominiously behind an oak tree like a sick animal.

  As I climb back into the car, Dinah says ‘Oh, Ben!’, as if I’ve just done something on the same incorrigible par as maybe neglecting to recycle a wine bottle.

  In the room I run a deep bath and am left mercifully alone to equalise my blood sugars with pints of Coca-Cola whilst halfheartedly reading about experimental new jams in Cotswold Life magazine. It’s in here that I overhear Phoebe telling room service staff arriving with more Coca-Cola, ‘My daddy ate some meat that wasn’t cooked properly and did a poo in the grass. I’m making him feel better by stroking his head.’ Although actually what she’s doing is just wandering into the bathroom occasionally to stare at me and ask with curious detachment, ‘When are we going to the butterfly farm, Dad?’

  When Dinah leaves for Stratford-upon-Avon I discover the staff are mostly slightly po-faced East Europeans. Sample conversation:

  ‘Sorry, do you have any more blankets – I’m cold.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Could I get some sent up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe I should ring the manager.’

  ‘That is up to you. This is my first day.’

  But eventually I fall asleep. When I do I dream about my dad.

  CHAPTER 4

  As a kid when I couldn’t sleep my dad would lie next to my bed. When I cried he’d dab my eyes with his hanky and make me laugh. I loved the smell of his aftershave when he kissed me on the forehead in the dark early mornings before he left the house. My dad was a ball of competitive energy and good humour, who did everything 10 per cent more noisily, better, and 10 per cent more showily than anybody else. He’d slap imaginary dust from his legs like a cowboy when he walked. Choosing a wine from the drinks cabinet he would cuddle the bottle like a baby and stroke the label like it was a beautiful face. He performed imaginary rowing strokes with his arms and shoulders when pleased with himself. He was always immaculately groomed but always in incredibly bright, ill-matching clothes, the more garish the better – multicoloured jumpers, green suit jackets, yellow trousers, pink sweaters, socks with Dennis the Menace on them. He wore Dr Who scarves, novelty ties and braces and spoke like he was reading the news; great pauses for emphasis, like Brian Perkins. He also had the best laugh in the world. When my dad laughed he’d lean so far forward he’d nearly fall over and have to grab your arm to stop himself. He’d throw his whole head back and roar like a bear.

  ‘Ben, what are you doing?’ says Dinah.

  I’m sitting on a chair at the end of the bed doing my laces up.

  ‘Going on a run.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And to take pictures.’

  ‘It’s six in the morning!’

  ‘We missed a day yesterday.’

  ‘And what are you wearing?’

  ‘You forgot to pack my trainers.’

  ‘I forgot!’

  ‘One of us forgot. I’ve got nothing else.’

  ‘They’re suede, you’ll ruin them.’

  She bangs her head back down on the pillow.

  ‘No, Dinah,’ she says to herself. ‘Don’t get involved. OK. Just go, then. Go on. But please don’t wake the kids slamming the door.’

  I drive into Stratford-upon-Avon. I park, and run round photographing as many attractions as possible, while casing the town for later. I run up Henley Street and snap the thatched Shakespeare’s Birthplace museum. I snap Thomas Nash’s half-timbered house. I snap almshouses, swans on the River Avon. I snap anything that looks vaguely historical and wind up on the banks of the River Avon at Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was buried. It’s 8 a.m. and a Sunday holy communion service is in full swing. I want to look at the bard’s tomb and photograph it to tick it off my list, but something tells me it might be disrespectful to wander past the reverend mid prayer to snap it. Instead I sit at the back of the church. There are about thirteen pensioners in here and I start to feel conspicuous. Since Dinah forgot to pack my trainers and also my running shorts (whilst remembering ALL her shoes) I’m in suede brogues, nylon swimming shorts and, because I didn’t want to wake the kids rifling through bags, the T-shirt I slept in.

  Sweating lightly from my run, I start to feel a great whirr inside me. It’s like a great turbine starting up.

  My dad always used to tell me – whatever it is you do for a living, be the best you can at it. ‘That’s all you can do. Talent will out,
my son.’ At the time I was the McChicken Sandwich station monitor at Chesham McDonalds in charge of ensuring the correct proportion of shredded lettuce and mayonnaise was added to the breaded chicken meat patty, so it didn’t mean that much. I was dismissive of him. But he carried on telling me the same thing throughout the years I struggled to make it as a novelist. It helped me carry on believing. I picture my dad now, the yellow whites of his eyes, Mary’s look of fear on the doorstep, and, as I listen to the creed, I feel a sort of epiphany. My dad’s father, Raymond, was a vicar. My Uncle Dick was one too. Maybe it’s something to do with these connections. And churches always make me think of Dad. I close my eyes and try to feel the spirit of Shakespeare within me, to be moved by the Lord, communicated with in some way, but all I sense is the sweat running down my back. Instead, I make a pledge in the church where Shakespeare lies buried – this is how I’ll compensate for not being with Dad for the next few months. What I’ll do is write the best guidebook I can. I’ll write the best guidebook that’s ever been written. I’ll revolutionise guidebook writing. I’ll turn guidebook writing into an art form. The guidebook won’t only contain practical advice about admission prices, it will include personal stories about what happened to us. It will tell a subtle, truthful yet inspiring story, between the reviews and the plonky detail about ticket admission prices and the availability of baby-changing mats.

  Back at the hotel I bully everyone up. Dinah protests.

  ‘I haven’t got my lenses in yet. Slow down. What’s the matter with you?’ But I brook no opposition. We must see things and record their child-friendliness right now. After a frustratingly slow breakfast (‘He’s two – he can’t eat scrambled egg any faster without choking, Ben. And that tablespoon’s far too big for his mouth.’) we check out. I drive us to our next hotel, Alveston Manor, in the centre of Stratford-upon-Avon and frog-march us to Shakespeare’s Birthplace, where we hear an impromptu Shakespeare Aloud soliloquy from Macbeth in the courtyard, tarnished only slightly by Charlie wiping an eggy hand down a pair of MacDuff’s pristine white tights. We move to Nash’s House, where Phoebe develops a kleptomaniac tendency to snatch information leaflets on other attractions featuring anything in cartoon form or showing an animal from every display case we pass. She carries them in her Dora the Explorer rucksack that, finally too heavy for her by the time we reach The Shakespeare Experience, she hands to me.