The Tall Girl from Somerset 13

THE ROAD EAST

“Travel, change, interest, excitement!  The whole world before you, and a horizon that’s always changing.”

 “The Wind in the Willows”

“I never knew a town that didn’t look better looking back!”

                             “I was born under a wandering star”.

Your journey may be to Ilford or it may be to India, but once you are moving, once you are on the road, all problems fall away: the report you have to finish, the fridge door that won’t shut properly, the speech you have to write, the best place to keep the front door key, the tax return, the leaking tap, the next dental appointment, the neighbours’ radio at night.  They all dissolve once you leave home and start the car. Your bag holds all you have, you are self-contained, you are on the road, and the road never ends.  

That’s not quite right, about the road never ending, I mean. There was a strange idea Harvey had had in childhood.  He had longed to find a road that started off normally and then, after an hour or so, just stopped.  It would just finish, just stop and come to nothing.   A strange wish.  Of course, roads do stop, but they end officially. They are labelled ‘No through road’ and give you due warning.  Harvey had never found the road that led him on unsuspecting, that had speed limits and road signs and roadside hoardings, and then just came to an end and petered out.

Harvey left England with Jake in a large, white Ford van on a rainy morning in October.  They planned to drive from Manchester to Madras.

Jake was a carpenter from County Clare in the west of Ireland.  He was cheerful and big with long, curly hair and a massive beard.  He was working on a building site in Manchester and had met Harvey in a pub in Rusholme. They both had plans for doing the journey overland to India.  So many people in their twenties had that plan at that time.  It was the moment for young people to pack up and go east. There was even a bus which left London and stopped in Delhi. While its homely companions stopped in Lewisham, New Cross or Greenwich, and turned round and came back again, this bus just carried on till it reached Delhi.  Those were the days!  It couldn’t be done today. Harvey and Jake bought a second hand van and a tent.  They packed the van with food and started out.   The first objective was the south coast of England and then the hovercraft across the channel to France. Now there would be no more sea until India. Overseas, that was it.  Overseas. That was what travel meant for people from Britain and from Ireland.  You had to go over the sea, and so over the sea they went.

In France, on the long straight roads lined with trees, little by little, Harvey and Jake contracted that underestimated virus, the travel bug.  The guidebooks to overland travel don’t mention it.  They deal with malaria, yellow fever and typhoid, and all the corresponding vaccinations and precautions, but they do not mention the most virulent disease of all, the need to move.  Harvey and Jake soon found that they had it in a fairly extreme form.   Little by little it took control.  The further they went, the stronger the hold it had.  ‘Vires acquirit eundo.’ It gains strength as it goes just like Virgil’s rumour.  It is a gentle addiction to start with, as all addictions are, while the tentacles are feeling their way before taking hold like limpets, but then it asserts itself: this need to be on the road, this need to be moving on, this feeling of being uncommitted to anything, just taking in the sight of the trees and the towns going by.