On My Way to Samarkand: Memoirs of a Travelling Writer (38 page)

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We flew out of San Francisco to New York. Ellen Datlow and Alice Turner, the two lady editors who stayed we me in Hong Kong, were expecting us and Alice was kind enough to put us up for the week we stayed in the mighty city of dreams. (Ellen would have done so, but her apartment was only big enough for one human being and one small cat!) Alice lived in the heart of Greenwich Village, so we got a real taste of cultural New York. We covered the usual sights: Statue of Liberty, Chrysler Building, Twin Towers, Central Park, museums and art galleries, and travelled on the subway. John Gotti, the mafia boss of the Gambino family of mobsters was on trial at the time.

New York was vibrant and exciting, but seemed a little run down during 1992. The police cars looked old and worn and the streets were potholed, but I guess if an American went to London he might say the same thing. One tends to notice these things when visiting, rather than when living in a city. I was asked by a large angry man if I wanted my brains sucked out of my skull through my eyesockets. It seemed I had been ‘looking’ at him. Actually I was probably staring into the middle distance thinking about my next story, as is my wont.

After New York, we flew to our last destination, Quebec city. There, in April’s subzero temperatures, with the St Lawrence still bearing six feet of ice on its broad shoulders, we stayed with our archaeologist friends who we met in Greece, Philippe and Doris. We had exchanged letters ever since we had met on that small Greek island of Tilos. Now they welcomed us with wonderful hospitality and showed us much of Quebec. We saw waterfalls hurtling down crevices and wild open country. We saw the beautiful and very French city of Quebec. There is of course one of those language battles going on, as with the Basques and Catalans, the Welsh and the Newcastle Geordies, where the main language is an anathema to the locals and public signs in that language are peppered with buckshot. But though I do not speak French I must look Quebequois, because everyone chatted away to me in Canadian French without reserve and did not seem to mind when all I did was look simple, smile and nod my head occasionally.

The highlight of our visit was a maple syrup party in the forest. There was a large hut in the snow-bound woodlands where the syrup was drained from the trees, like the sap from rubber trees. Then the raw viscous fluid was processed in the hut. At a maple syrup party you pour the stuff on everything you eat – egg and bacon, potatoes, apple pie, whatever – and look as though you’re enjoying it. Outside were troughs where you could leave maple syrup to freeze into ice lollies. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the music which was a bit like Cajun music, and the dancing, in fact everything about it.

Luckily too there was a coachload of school teachers whose first idea was not ‘let’s string up these English-speakers from the nearest maple tree’ but who wanted to talk with us in English. Philippe did confess to me that he was a little worried that we would meet someone who might be rude, but if you ever met my French Canadian friend – big, dark-bearded, tough-looking – a man who could pass as a lumberjack at any maple syrup party, you would think twice about being rude to his guests. Just to be on the safe side though, we thought it best not to mention General Wolfe and the Battle for the Heights of Abraham, just as it’s wise not to praise De Gaulle and his speech containing the words ‘Long live free Quebec!’ to English-speaking Canadians.

We have since returned to Quebec in more clement weather and enjoyed seeing Doris’s wonderful garden in full bloom. The wooden houses of the Quebequois are stunning buildings. They look like something out of a fairy tale, with their elaborately carved eaves and colourful exteriors. You really feel that you live in a culture that has survived a foreign onslaught and is still blooming in its old and original form without too many changes having occurred.

Doris and Philippe have been to see us in England a number of times too, the last was a visit to York, the place of my birth. Now there’s a city with a thousand museums and a Shambles down which to wander. They were, I think, as impressed with York as I had been with Quebec city.

And so, to England.

When we arrived back at
Wychwater
, Rick was surrounded by big boxes. They were in the living-room, bedroom, even in the kitchen. These were our purchases in Hong Kong. We furnished the whole house with oriental chairs, tables, tansus, cupboards, sideboards, vases, lamps, antique lunch boxes, chests and ornaments. Thirteen bamboo bird cages had to go somewhere. Five antique clocks. Even the drawers of the Chinese medicine chest were full of curiosities like jade carvings, Indonesian bibles made of bark, bamboo calendars from Borneo, small brass figures of warriors and dragons – plenty of dragons – and a whole crate full of porcelain, my purchases from Overjoys during the three years of our expatriation. Rick was looking harassed from lack of sleep, since there was not a spare place to lie down and rest one’s head.

While we had been away he had had a party at the house. We had stipulated that this could take place so long as the party-goers stayed out of our bedroom. Rick was now thirty years of age and back at college. He took our request seriously and we found an enormous padlock on our bedroom door that Houdini would have found challenging.

He had wanted the party so that he could invite a girl he rather fancied but did not want to ask out directly. He had just had a rather long and harrowing affair with another young woman and I believe was feeling rather vulnerable. He need not have worried. Julie McKenzie was just as keen on him as he was on her.

The pair were married not long after we arrived back and a fine wedding it was too at Julie’s church in Hadleigh, Essex, where her father Joe was a lay preacher. The ladies of the church seemed to organise the whole wedding between them. Rick’s Best Man was Taz, one of two brothers of West Indian origin. The other, Daly, was the photographer for the event. Taz has an art degree and is a talented sculptor, while Daly is a London teacher of mathematics.

All I can remember now from Taz’s speech, apart from his story about getting stopped by the cops for speeding on the way to the church, is the bit about him giving Rick the nickname ‘Snake-hips Kilworth’, which is very apt, since Rick has been wiry-lean from the age of ten and can dance like an anaconda with its tail on fire.

Rick and Julie have since added to our collection of fine grandchildren, making five in all, which we would keep on our mantelpiece if our kids would let us. Alexander came along first and then Chloe. Like his dad, Alex is a brilliant runner, dyslectic, but has been determined to become an engineer from the age of four. At eight he brought a big book of aircraft mechanics to me to read to him and asked, ‘Tell me how the brakes work on an aeroplane, grampa.’ Grampa did his best, being an effete writer with very little real knowledge of hydraulic braking systems. Alex is now at engineering college in Somerset. Chloe has wanted variously to be a dancer, playwright, doctor and pop singer. So far as I’m concerned she’s eminently qualified to be all four, but then I’m a bit biased. As the only girl of her generation a grampa is blinded by the dazzling feminity of her gender. I am convinced my granddaughter will one day be something wonderfully Chloe.

Once married, Rick took yet another diploma – he had by that time qualified as a chef, hairdresser, computer analyst and tractor driver – and finally settled into the job that he seems made for – social work. He and Julie moved to Somerset and there they have an isolated farmhouse nestling under the Quantock Hills. Rick is observed mostly driving across the heights of Exmoor seeing to the needs of elderly people in remote dwellings. Julie, now a qualified nurse, often follows him into the same houses, to attend to the medical needs of her patients, who naturally give her the smug news, ‘Your husband’s been to see me just an hour ago.’

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My son-in-law Mark was promoted rapidly in the bank for which he worked at the time, eventually leaving to join United Bank of Switzerland. I used to tease him, asking what his bank had done with the Nazi gold. Mark and Shaney, and the three boys, were sent to Toronto, Canada, for three years. We visited them twice, once for the millennium celebrations. They took us the Niagara Falls and once to Ottawa in the dead of winter, where we all skated on the Rideau Canal that runs through the city.

From Canada they were sent to my old love, Singapore, and were there for four years. Naturally we visited them many times and were always made wonderfully welcome. It was on one of those visits that we went up into Malaysia, to Taman Nagara, the densely-jungled National Park in the centre, reachable only by canoe. A Chinese couple who had never been out of Shanghai before, clamped themselves to us like limpets, terrified of the natural wilderness in which they found themselves. We also met a young Australian couple with whom we played cards to while away the time. We were walking along a beach on a revisist to Langawi Island on our way back from Australia, fourteen years later in 2007, when we bumped into the same couple. After a reunion meal we promised to meet them again in another fourteen years at another Malaysian venue to be chosen by Fate.

On a separate trip to Malaysia, Annette and I, and a Swedish lad of about nineteen, hired a guide to take us into the southern end of Taman Nagara. We went in with just a small backpack and a rush mat each. The guide took a day to lead us to some caves deep in the rainforest where we slept on the rush mats for two nights. Annette thought she saw elephants passing the cave at dawn, but only I believed her.

The Swedish boy was terrified of snakes and had asked if he could sleep in between Annette and myself, a request which was immediately rejected. I’m sure his intentions were honourable but Annette is a jealous wife and would not sanction such an arrangement. One amazing pool we came across on that trek, the sun dancing through the canopy and creating a magical scene on the clay-red waters, had at least three dozen kingfishers swooping and diving on the fish. The guide also taught us how to eat rainforest fare, but alas I’ve lost my notes and if my plane crashes in the jungle today I will probably starve.

From Singapore my daughter’s family went to Australia, to St Kilda, Melbourne, and yes, we visited them there also, once for a whole six months. Mark is an amiable and generous son-in-law who I very much admire, not only for his prowess at banking, scuba diving and six-a-side football, but for his ability to put up with his parents-in-law foisting themselves on him for long periods. He is always most welcoming and eager for us to enjoy ourselves whenever we descend upon his household. We are fortunate indeed with both Julie and Mark, our in-laws, who have always treated us with the utmost kindness and hospitality.

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Our kids settled in their jobs and marriages, Annette decided to do her Masters degree at the University of East Anglia. Her subject was ‘Third Culture Children’, these being the offspring of expatriates whose children are raised in a society not that of their parents, so they emerge into adulthood having not been entirely immersed in either culture, but a mixture of both. My own childhood is a case in point. I was born and bred partly in England, but also spent teenage years in South Arabia and Singapore. Christian and Muslim influences are intermingled. We have met many third culture kids raised in Hong Kong, Singapore, Kenya, others. Annette’s thesis, written after interviewing many of these children made interesting reading. In essence it was what you might expect. The subject kids were highly confident when faced with change – change of geographical location and lifestyle – and able to make new social connections easily. However, they were often restless and
required
change when forced to follow routine for too long.

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One day during the ’90s, while still at
Wychwater
, I received a letter from the head of one of the families we had corresponded with and sent money to during the apartheid years. Wandile Dayile, like Nelson Mandela, a Xhosa, was no longer in fear of going to prison of course, but he asked me if I would assist him with sending his eldest son, Vuyisa, to university. No one in the family had employment, due to the situation in South Africa and not because they were reluctant to work.

‘If we can just get one of us out at work,’ he told me, ‘the family can start to get on its feet at last. A university degree would ensure that Vuyisa could obtain a government job . . .’

After discussing it with Annette, for the cost would go into thousands of pounds, I wrote to Wandile and told him we would do it. However, he had suggested we take Vuyisa through to his Masters degree and I had to tell him we could not afford that, but we would fund him through to his Bachelor degree and try to get funding from a charity elsewhere to get him his Masters. Vuyisa did indeed get his first degree and eventually managed to obtain his Masters. He’s now in a good job, married with two children, and helps to support the wider family. Wandile still writes to me. His latest letter tells me that he himself is now in work ‘for the Department of Correctional Services’ as a parole officer.

Just before the millennium we got a phone call from a woman who called herself Valencia who had come to England to work for the Social Services. Her real name is Nozuko, but presumably she chose Valencia in order to make it easier for the British tongue. Valencia told us she was the sister of Wandile. We met Valencia several times, a delightful lady, who even came to a Beetle Drive at a Suffolk village hall with us, though she had never been to anything like it in her life before. She tried to teach me some Xhosa and went into hysterics at my attempts with the clicking words in the language. Valencia now works in one of the London boroughs and calls us occasionally to give us news on the family back in the South African township.

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My writing during the ’90s was in several different genres. I was producing a young adult fiction novel every year.
The Brontë Girls
got me my second short-list for the Carnegie Medal, but was beaten by Philip Pullman’s famous trilogy. I did six ‘Welkin weasel’ books, which are humorous novels in which the world is run by stoats and weasels, the first three were set in Medieval times, the second trilogy in Victorian times. Collectively they have been my most successful kids’ books, selling up to forty and fifty thousand copies each.