Just go, she said, drive north.
This was two months after leaving home. They still had no aim but getting away. Liz concentrated on not looking back, passing the mints, lighting the cigarettes, and turning the tape over. Forty-one, she thought, and still running away from home.
In a car park between mountains she took advantage of the pause to touch up her make-up. Dabbing grey on to her evelids in the rearview mirror, she caught sight of the valley they had driven through. It was like she could see all the way back to Avcliffe, the yellow council house and the teenage daughter she had left behind.
She saw her lover Cliff at the edge of the car park, pitching stones into a crevasse. His black hair whipping about in the wind, his shirt sleeves rolled. She hoped no one was down there. Sometimes he was heedless. It was he who had begged her to come away like this. Over dinner in the Around-the-world restaurant under the translucent dome of the Metro Centre, she had at first laughed in his face. “I can’t run away with a bus driver!”
"Why not?”
“I have a child to look after!”
“She’s seventeen. She'll look after herself.” He reached across the table and grasped her hands in his. She felt his legs nudging aside the heaped carrier bags under the table. His knees pressed into hers. "I need you to come away with me,” said the bus driver earnestly, and he was so ridiculous Liz had to give in. She was tempted to see if she really could just walk away from her life. And here she was. Up a mountain in January with mist all around the same dove grey as her eyelashes.
But look at Cliff there. He had stolen a bus for her. The bus he usually drove in pointless, intricate loops around Aycliffe and Darlington. One day in November he’d shook both himself and his lover free.
I didn’t ask him if this was the highest we’d been up. I thought it must have been. He pointed out the moon, how we could see it coming up in the east and I said this was the blackest I had ever seen the skv. Look at the lochs, he said. We’d driven this long way especially to see them and now it was too dark. They had even smaller islands afloat on them, just tussocks of grass clumped in their middles. I said they look like bowls of stew and dumplings, that’s what they look like in the night. Cliff didn’t laugh. I think he’s a real country boy at heart. He comes from Yorkshire and takes nature very seriously. Me and nature…I can take it or leave it. Coming over the glens I just wanted to sleep. You can only look at the yellow moon for so long.
Beside a black cut-out of a perfectly triangular mountain we found a hotel. Cliff had been here before, when he skied. He’s sporty, too. I can’t, abide anything sporty. This would do us for the night, he said. We could have a proper dinner in the bar. I pulled a face, knowing this meant scampi in a basket with the locals. Probably karaoke. We could take the bridal suite, he added, as we got out of the car. It’s right above the bar and quite sumptuous. Bridal suite indeed. As we hurried into the porch of the hotel, I said, don’t push it, sunshine.
But I like him sorting things out like this. Though I feel old enough to be his mother, Cliff’s taken charge of everything, this trip, my life. Funny I let him.
The foyer was empty and smelled musty. Stuffed Otters. They had those glass cases on the walls, the ones everyone's got up these days, full of dried flowers, fruit and shells. They do them in Ikea. Before I ran away I was thinking of getting some for our hallway, and putting things in them.
Dinner last night was in the car, watching mist come over the sea, or a loch or something. I don’t know what it was, or how open to the sea we were. I’ve lost all sense of direction.
We got ourselves a takeaway from the only Indian in Oban. Cliff’s been flash with his money. “I’ll get this,” he always says. Buying this old car in Kendal for cash. And we’re eating out every night. This place wasn’t cheap. A restaurant with two tables. Two very young couples having an anniversary. “This must be a busy night,” Cliff whispered.
Waiting for our food we crossed the main street and walked into the waterlogged grass that fronted the town and met the sea. I was in my heels and soon I was sinking. Mud smarmed between my toes. Cliff laughed at me and I was yelling. I only had about three pairs of tights with me. Back on the road, three or four lads were laughing too, as we traipsed back from the quagmire. That must be all the youth round here had to do, I thought. Stand along the roadside, looking for strangers. It was worse than Aycliffe. "What are you lot staring at?” I cackled as we went back to the Indian. They looked at each other like I was foreign.
I was so hungry by then, I didn’t care about mucky feet. I’d make Cliff clean my shoes later. It was his fault.
We got the food and drove off to a picturesque spot across the bay, as twilight came on. We’re always seeing sights in the dark.
I used his book of maps as a table mat. That caused a row later. It was too dim in the car to tell, but the brown grease from my Rogan Josh was spilling slowly over a lip in the tin foil tray. It bled into maps, page after page, orange and blotting out the north worst of all. But it was a tricky business eating with a plastic spoon and still managing to
