It's Not You It's Me (10 page)

‘Yeah. Better not tell anyone, though. Think it’s a bit of a secret. Not even sure I was supposed to know,’ Jas blurts out, then goes to pass the microphone back to Shane. But Shane says something to him and Jas takes the microphone back again. ‘Right. Sorry. As I was saying, I’m Jas and…I’m from New Zealand where I…er…farm sheep. A lot of sheep. On a…er…sheep station. It’s very green where I live and…that’s about it.’

‘Tell us about your woolly girlfriends!’ an Australian pipes up from the back.

Jas runs a hand through his hair. ‘Funny. I don’t sleep with the sheep. Well, only with Barbara, but she’s special.’

There’s a moment’s silence before everyone laughs, realising he really
is
joking. Jas gives the microphone back to Shane, fast, then makes his way back to his seat looking a bit the worse for wear.

I can’t stop laughing. When he sits back down, I pull him closer to me by his jacket. ‘A sheep farmer on a sheep station…?’

‘Shhh,’ he says.

But it’s too late. I’m on a roll now. ‘It’s very green? Have you even
been
to New Zealand?’

‘Nope. Had to dredge it up from what I’ve seen on the tourism ads on TV.’

I start laughing again. ‘And Justin Fox? Or should that be Justin Fox and Hounds? At least you didn’t come out with something like Justin Time. Now, that would’ve been good. And Barbara? I’d love to meet Barbara!’

Jas gives me a look and I know enough to shut up. We settle back to listen as the microphone is handed from person to person.

T
he drive to Dover takes over two hours, and it’s gone eleven before we’re able to get off the bus and stretch our legs around the ferry. It’s a good feeling, finally being able to move again. It’s as if I’ve been cooped up for weeks. First on the plane, now this. And there’s more to come. Plenty more. I’ve got no idea how I’m going to last till we arrive in Munich in the early hours of the morning.

‘Don’t get seasick, do you?’ Jas asks as we climb the stairs up to the top deck.

‘No. Why? Do you?’

He shakes his head. ‘Just checking. Seen enough vomit for three lifetimes.’

‘There’s a bit of vomit on the road, is there?’

Jas nods. ‘The boys of Spawn aren’t exactly into clean living.’

We lean on a railing and watch the White Cliffs of Dover as the ferry pulls out of the dock. ‘It’s beautiful,’ I say to Jas,
trying to change the subject away from vomit. ‘I didn’t know Dover was so close to London.’

‘Where’d you think it was?’

I laugh. ‘I
told
you I got a C.’

‘Um, hi,’ someone says then, and both Jas and I turn around to see who it is. ‘I’m Sharon.’

‘Right. From the bus,’ Jas says, not needing to.

Sharon. Likes pubs,
Big Brother
,
Survivor
, her cat, Blackie and hates working as an admin assistant. I remember from her turn at the microphone. Not to mention the fact that her ‘it’s Zamiel’—‘you’re Zamiel’ harpy-like screeches are still ringing in my ears.

‘Sorry about that before. I just got a bit carried away. I’m a big Spawn fan.’

‘Yeah. Me too,’ Jas says.

I try not to laugh at that one. ‘Me three,’ I pipe up. ‘Though I hear their manager’s a bit of a dickhead.’

Sharon and Jas both glance at me. But Sharon’s attention returns to Jas quick-smart.

‘I must’ve looked like a right idiot.’ She laughs.

‘Course not,’ Jas says.

‘I went to their concert. The last one in London. It was great.’ She turns slightly with this, as if to angle me out of the conversation altogether. I spot her friend then—Tara, I think her name is—over near the cafeteria, watching us.

‘Was it?’ Jas takes a step to the side, holding onto the railing now. He obviously wants out of this conversation, and fast.

‘You said you’d met him? That you’d met Zamiel?’

Jas nods.

‘That must’ve been fantastic. He’s so…’ She takes another step round, really forcing me out.

‘Sexy?’ I say, and Sharon looks over at me. ‘Oh, I know,’
I continue, hamming it up. ‘I mean, when you see him, don’t you just want to run your hands all over that leather?’

She nods at me. ‘Yes!’

‘And his long hair! I’d give anything to run my hands through that…’ I keep going.

‘Oh, I
love
his hair,’ she says animatedly.

‘And those boots. Wouldn’t you just love to take them off and, well, sniff them?’

This makes her pause. She gives me a strange look, but doesn’t know what to make of my comment, so goes to Jas instead. ‘Well, um, anyway—I just wanted to say I’m sorry about the fuss. I’ll see you around.’

‘Sure,’ Jas says.

We both watch Sharon walk off in the direction of the cafeteria.

Jas waits till she’s well out of earshot and is talking to Tara. ‘What the…?’

‘A girl’s allowed to have a few fantasies, isn’t she?’ I laugh, and we both turn back to the view again.

When there’s nothing left to see but water, we go inside and get a cup of coffee. I slide into the window seat of one of the tables and pull out the paper bag from my backpack. ‘Another pear drop?’ I say, offering Jas the packet.

‘Not in this lifetime.’

Sharon walks past our table and gives Jas a small wave.

‘She’s going to find out it’s you soon enough,’ I say when she’s gone.

‘The Justin Fox thing should put her off for a bit. Hopefully.’

I suck away. ‘She’ll figure it out. She’s not Einstein, but she’ll figure it out. One sexual favour in Shane’s direction to see what kind of sheep you farm and you’re a goner,’ I
say. ‘Don’t think he won’t oblige. He’ll be relatively cheap too, I’d say. A hand job would probably do it.’

‘Charlie, that’s disgusting.’

‘What? Shane, the hand job, or the pear drop?’

‘All three.’

I shrug. I’ve been known to be disgusting from time to time. This shouldn’t come as such a big shock to Jas. ‘You’d better eat something. Remember we’re not stopping for lunch till after two.’

‘All right, all right! I’ll eat something, Mother,’ Jas says, and gets up to see what they’ve got.

As I watch him go, I spot Sharon at a nearby table. She eyes Jas all the way to the counter, or as far as her vision will let her without actively turning around and being obvious about it. She sees me observing her after a while and goes back to her coffee. Still sucking away on my pear drop, I shake my head. I’d bet my life on the fact that on his way back to the table it’ll be all hands on deck to check out his butt. I turn my attention to Jas and—not that
I’m
checking out his butt—notice that his mobile and pager are fastened onto his belt, ready to be reached for at a moment’s notice. I wonder absentmindedly why he’s still wearing them when they’ve been switched off the entire trip. Force of habit, I guess.

All too soon we’re back on the bus and heading for Reims—during which time I realise a coffee, a Coke and half a bottle of water was probably a mistake for both caffeine and toilet-trip related reasons. For the first hour or so I fidget in my seat, intermittently jumping up to make trips to the bathroom. I wonder again how I’m going to make it to Munich. Or even
if
I’m going to make it to Munich—the way I’m going, everyone will probably get sick of me and drop me by the roadside somewhere in France.

As we head east, Shane tells us a bit about the Champagne region. ‘It’s got a bit of everything, this place,’ he says, reading from a sheet of paper. ‘Rolling plains, lakes, water meadows, dense forest, hills…’

‘What’s a water meadow?’ someone pipes up.

‘Dunno, mate,’ he says. ‘It just says water meadow here, right on the sheet, so that’s all I know. I’ll find out for you, if you like, when we get to Reims.’ He returns to his sheet of paper for a moment, then looks back up again. ‘Oh, yeah. I almost missed the most important bit. You’ll be pleased to hear that the Champagne region is, of course, famous for its
booze…’

There’s a mighty cheer from the Beer-drinking Society as Shane says the magic word.

‘And there’s a cathedral too, if you like that kind of thing.’ He crumples up the sheet of paper and pushes it into the driver’s seat pocket.

‘Not me,’ I say to Jas.

‘But now we get to the fun bit,’ Shane continues, reaching over into his own seat pocket and pulling out another piece of paper and what seems to be a tape. He sticks the tape into the bus’s tape deck. ‘We’re going to learn a true-blue German beer-drinking song.’

There’s a cheer. I’m starting to wonder if there’s a sign up somewhere I’m just not seeing that says
Cheer Now
.

‘Each tour I teach a different song, so even if you’ve been on this trip before, like Damien, the right honourable president of the Beer-drinking Society, who happens to be on his fourth bender—’ he points out a guy near the front of the bus ‘—you won’t know this one.’

Jas and I look at each other. People have done this trip four times?

‘The one we’re going to learn’s called “There’s no Beer
in Hawaii”. Mind you, that’s not really true. There’s plenty of beer in Hawaii. I happen to know because I drank most of it once, when I was there for ten days, but we’ll just have to pretend there isn’t, eh? OK, here we go. We’ll listen to it once in full, then we’ll start to learn the words, right?’ He glances up. ‘Right?’

‘Right!’ we all say back this time.

Shane goes around the bus, handing us each a photocopied sheet of the words in both German and English. We spend the next half-hour or so singing along to the tape.

The lyrics are, um, interesting. And, I notice when we finish up, probably engrained on my long-term memory. Before I can try to delete them, Shane’s up at the front of the bus again.

‘OK, now that’s out of the way, there’re only two more things you have to learn in German to get by on this trip and they never change. What are they, Damien?’ Shane points to the president of the amber fluid drinkers.

‘Zwei Bier, bitte!’
Damien yells out rather too loudly. Rather as if Shane is a drill sergeant and he’s on parade.

‘Und?’
Shane says.

‘Wo ist die Toilette, bitte?’

‘That’s right, my friend. For those of you that didn’t catch that, Damien just said the two most important phrases in the German language. He said,
“Zwei Bier, bitte”
—which means “Two beers, please”—and “
Wo ist die Toilette, bitte?”
which means “Where’s the toilet, please?” That’s all you need to know, kids.’

We spend the next ten minutes repeating these two phrases over and over.

Just as I’m getting a headache, Shane gets us to stop. ‘Now, you’d better remember those two German lovelies, because if you don’t and someone hears you say one of them in En
glish—’ he picks up a large tin that looks like a Fosters beer can ‘—you’ll have to pay a few euros into the kitty. We spend what we’ve collected out on the town during our last night in Munich, so you can be sure it all goes to a good cause. Your livers.’

There’s another cheer.

‘So, what do we say?’ Shane says.

Everyone pipes up in unison,
‘Zwei Bier, bitte! Und, wo ist die Toilette, bitte?’

I think I want to cry. But as I can’t seem to squeeze a tear out, I send up a silent prayer instead. Please, God, let it be over soon.

Jas taps me on the arm. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Just tell me one thing. Were we like that as students?’ I know what his answer is going to be—a solid no.

Jas grins from ear to ear. ‘Hell, yes!’

O
ver the next few hours I start to feel a tiny bit sorry for ocker Shane. On paper, his job sounds cruisey—guide a bus-load of people through a five-day booze-fest—but in reality it’s something akin to babysitting.

He seems exhausted already, only half a day into the tour, and I have to suppress a giggle when he pops in a video for us all to watch—
Ten Things I Hate About You
dubbed in German with English subtitles—and sinks down into his seat with a sigh in exactly the same way Kath’s mother friends do seconds after they push
The Lion King
,
The Wiggles
,
Pocahontas
or whatever’s the go this week into the VCR to satiate their two-year-olds. After a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit they’re usually a bit more ready to face the rest of the day. Shane settles for a muesli bar.

Poor guy, I think. He’s not going to get his cup of tea. So, to give him a break, I watch the video quietly, like a good little tourist, while Jas reads.

It isn’t long, however, before Shane’s on his feet again.
‘OK, guys and beer wenches.’ He stands up at the front of the bus as it slows to a stop. ‘We’ve got an hour here in Reims, and I reckon you should make the most of it as we won’t be stopping again till eight. So, off you go…’

‘Off like what?’ Damien pipes up.

‘Off like a fifteen-year-old at a nudie bar, pres,’ Shane answers quickly, and everyone laughs. ‘Oh, and remember to go to the toilet
before
you get back on the bus. You don’t want it to get backed up like it did on the last tour, believe me.’

Jas and I get up and file out of the bus like everyone else. When we’re outside, I hand my bag over to him as we start off along the street. I want to pull my jacket on as it’s surprisingly chilly and I don’t want to catch a cold. I take a deep breath in, which makes me cough, and my hands immediately go up to feel my throat. Maybe I’m already catching a cold, I think, poking and prodding my glands. No. It’s just the cold air. I continue with pulling my jacket on. I’m just being silly.

‘You OK?’ Jas asks.

I nod. ‘Fine. It’s just cold.’

It isn’t until I’ve got my jacket on, taken my backpack from Jas and fiddled around putting it on my back again that I pay attention to what’s around me. But when I do, I stop, my throat forgotten. ‘Wow. Look at that.’ I point out the structure at the end of the street to Jas.

‘It’s been there the whole time. Believe me.’

‘Is that so? I take it that’s the cathedral?’

‘I’d say so. Yeah.’

‘It’s gorgeous.’ I stand in silence for a moment, staring at its white frothiness. ‘All that detail—it’s just like a wedding cake.’ I keep standing and staring. After a minute or so I pull back in surprise as I realise that my sculptor’s eye kicked in
for a while there. One minute I was standing and admiring the place, the next minute I was looking specifically at things like light and shade, curves and lines. And I really am surprised.

A few years ago I couldn’t do the washing-up without seeing things through my sculptor’s eye. I’ve heard other artists say it too. I once read a piece a photographer had written about how he saw the entire world, every day, through a viewfinder he couldn’t shut off. I was never that bad, but I have to admit that since I stopped sculpting, almost two years ago, I’ve noticed a difference—the way I see things has been changing back to normal. Especially over the last year, my eyes have begun to see things, like the cathedral in front of me, for what they simply are.

I walk up to the cathedral, drawn to it, completely forgetting about Jas, who trails along behind me in silence. I don’t walk up to the door and enter, however, but move off to the left-hand side.

‘Hey,’ Jas says. ‘Don’t you want to go in?’

I look up above me at the façade. There’s a row of angels and I stare at the folds of their skirts, mesmerised. They’re amazing. I reach out and touch the stone in front of me—cold and smooth. I run one hand over it, then the other, before my eyes move back up to the angels again. ‘Come here.’ I turn around and beckon to Jas, who’s waiting a few steps behind me.

He comes on over.

‘Give me your hand,’ I say, still with one of mine on the stone. He gives me his right hand unquestioningly and I take it and run it over the surface beside mine. Then I stop, my hand still over the top of his. ‘Now look up.’ He turns his gaze to the angels above and I watch as I see the realisation dawn on his face that someone, some time, somewhere,
made the angels come out of the same stone. He moves his gaze back down to me.

‘Pretty amazing, isn’t it?’ I smile as I slowly let my hand drop.

Jas runs his over the wall one more time before letting it fall to his side.

‘Want to go inside?’ I nod my head towards the door.

‘Sure.’

When we exit the cathedral fifteen minutes later, we both squint as the bright sunlight hits our eyes. A child walks past us with an ice-cream and we stop, letting him cross in front of us.

‘That reminds me,’ Jas says.

‘Of what?’ I glance up at him.

‘I’m hungry. Starving.’

‘That’s what happens when you knock back people’s perfectly good pear drops. Come on, we’ll have a walk around and see if we can find something to eat. Where did Shane tell us to go again?’

Of course neither of us has listened to a word Shane’s said.

‘Follow that guy.’ Jas points out a man crossing the street when we’ve decided we’re officially lost. ‘He looks hungry.’

And, funnily enough, the guy must be, because a few streets later we’re where we were supposed to be about half an hour ago.

We walk around for a while, taking a look at all the food on offer, before Jas stops. ‘What about here?’ he says, pointing up to one café’s sign. ‘
Café le Paris.
We’re only setting foot on French soil for about an hour. Better go somewhere that actually sounds French.’

‘What,
le
McDonald’s isn’t French enough for you?’ We’d passed one a while back that I’d pointed out to him before
I’d remembered how much he used to hate the place. Obviously he still does, by the expression on his face.

Jas pulls out two nearby chairs from a table and we take a seat. We peruse the menu and decide to share a pizza, of all things, then pick out two strange little bottom-heavy orange drinks that have French writing all over them—our one concession to actually being in France. When we’ve ordered, we sit back in our chairs and take in the view—the fountain with people milling around, some sitting on its stone base, stretching their legs out and enjoying a moment or two of sunshine, the cream-coloured buildings surrounding the square, sandwiched together like Monte Carlo biscuits.

Yep, I could sit here for quite a while, I think. But it’s quiet at the café and the food comes reasonably quickly.

‘Great,’ Jas says, suddenly looking all too like a starving dog.

As a big whiff of pizza smell hits me, I realise I’m starting to get pretty hungry as well, even after my big breakfast. I eat two of the large slices of pizza and pick at a third one as I watch Jas. I’d forgotten how much he used to eat. I guess you have to when you’re that tall. There’s just more of you to feed, isn’t there? He finishes his half of the pizza in no time.

‘Eat the rest of mine,’ I urge him. ‘I’m not going to. Just do it slower this time, or people will start asking about the last time I fed you.’

‘Too long ago,’ he says, and starts in on the rest of the pizza.

I sit back and take in the view, sipping on my orange drink while Jas polishes off the pizza. It’s lovely here. It’s a shame we have to pass through all these places so quickly and miss out on exploring them properly.

When he’s finished, Jas leans back in his chair as well, with a contented sigh. We sit in companionable silence for a while, taking in the atmosphere. I catch a glimpse of the cathedral in the distance and Jas cranes his neck to see what I’m looking at, before leaning back once more with a ‘hmpf’.

‘What?’

‘Ah, nothing.’

‘No, what is it?’ I can tell that he’s thinking something. Something about me.

Jas shrugs. ‘You just surprised me back there before.’

‘Surprised you how?’ I put my drink down on the table.

He shrugs again. ‘You used to be a bit more blasé about what your mother did for a living. That’s all.’

Did I? I look at Jas for a second, then back at the cathedral. I don’t know what to say to this.

‘We’ve got to go. Three o’clock, Shane said. Yeah?’

‘Mmmm,’ I say, checking the time.

We get up and start to stroll back in what we think is the direction of the bus, but manage to get a bit lost again.

‘You’re supposed to be good at this directional stuff.’ I point a finger at Jas a few streets later.

‘Why? Because I’m male? I get lost better than anyone else I know.’

‘Now, there’s a claim to fame.’ I stop now, trying to get my bearings. ‘Oh.’

‘What?’

‘Um, hang on a second, I just have to, um, go somewhere,’ I say, and run a few steps down the street and straight into a shop that says ‘Chocolatier’ in large letters above its doorway.

It takes a few moments for Jas to realise what’s happening and catch up with me. But not before I’ve spied some
choice-looking nougat. ‘You know you’ll get hungry later,’ I tell him as I buy a few bars.

He gives a short laugh as I stuff the bars in my backpack. ‘Nice to know you’re always thinking about me.’

The lady in the chocolate shop gives us directions back to the cathedral, from where we think we might just be able to kick our poor directional skills into action and find the bus again.

A few minutes later we round a corner and the bus comes into sight. We head up the street towards it.

‘Charlie, look out!’ Jas grabs my arm.

‘What?’ I glance down to see I’ve just missed the pile.

I move my gaze back up, a big smile on my face. An evil smile, which grows even more depraved as I recall more and more about the floor three rule at Magnolia Lodge. One of the residents on our floor—Mrs Harrow, an invalid—owned a Chihuahua. A not-very-well-house-trained Chihuahua, who sometimes escaped out of her flat and left messes in the hall. Small messes, but messes all the same. Mrs Harrow’s home help didn’t think anything outside of Mrs Harrow’s apartment was her problem, so the floor residents came up with a solution. Whoever saw it first cleaned it up. Once, Jas and I had alighted from the lift at the same time to find a neatly deposited pile right in our line of vision. We’d spent the next half an hour chasing each other around the Lodge, arguing about who’d seen it first.

Now, I slowly bring my finger up to point at Jas. ‘You saw it first!’ I start walking backwards towards the bus.

He grins back.

I walk a bit faster.

His grin gets wider. ‘No, you saw it first and pretended not to see it.’ He points back.

I turn around and start running. ‘Prove it!’ I laugh. And I don’t care who’s watching, I just keep running. All the way to the bus, where I stop and lean against it, exhausted.

‘I
hated
finding it first,’ I say to Jas, still laughing when he catches up.

‘I think we all did.’ He leans on the bus as well. ‘But hang on…’ Jas pauses, turning his head.

‘What?’

‘Can’t seem to remember what we were just talking about. Ah, that’s it—the fact that
you
saw it first.’

‘Don’t start.’ I use my last stores of energy to push myself off the bus and poke him in the chest. ‘I’m too weak.’

Jas watches me puffing away. ‘You really need to go to the gym more often.’

The gym. As if. I used to love going to the gym, but haven’t been for over a year. I just sigh in reply and make my way up the stairs of the bus. Jas follows and Shane, standing up the top of the steps, winks at us as we pass.

When Shane’s done the head-count, and it seems no one’s gone AWOL in Reims, we set off. He picks up the microphone. ‘Anyone got to pay up? Any money due in the kitty?’

Everyone’s attention turns to the last couple of rows, where there’s something going on. Eventually one guy stands up.

‘There’s always one,’ Shane says. ‘We’ll forgive you this time, because we’re in France, but as soon as we hit Germany that’s it, fellas. No excuses, right?’

There’s silence.

‘Right?’

‘Right,’ we say in unison, starting to get the hang of this now.

‘That’s
ja
, to you. In a few hours, anyway,’ he says. ‘And
don’t you forget it. Oh, and I found out what a water meadow is. It’s a bit of grassland next to a river that farmers flood artificially. But only at certain times of the year.’

‘What times of the year?’ someone pipes up from the back.

Shane gives the guy a dirty look and then laughs. ‘Now you’re just starting to piss me off. Right, another vid then, shall we?’ He pops one in, then turns the microphone off and sits back down.

This time it’s a Mel Gibson movie. I watch about the first ten minutes before I fall asleep, my head on Jas’s shoulder. Three-quarters of the way through the movie I wake up and watch ten minutes or so of Mel running around like a headless chicken before I fall asleep again. And when I wake up the next time there’s a Meg Ryan movie on. I realise that we’re alternating—chick flick, boy flick.

We stop in Karlsruhe before long, as planned, and Jas and I eat something nasty and fried in a
Biergarten.
When we’re done, we stretch our legs a bit, and soon enough it’s time to get back on the dreaded bus.

‘I don’t want to go,’ I whine at Jas as we walk back to our seats. ‘The bus sucks.’

‘You’re just going to go back to sleep. What’s the difference? Here, give me your bag.’ He takes it when I pass it to him and opens the zip, moving one hand around inside. ‘Now…’ He passes me something that I can’t quite see in the dark. ‘Quit whining. Eat some nougat.’

This doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, so I do. And he’s right, of course. Not about quitting whining—nothing could make me do that—but about the sleeping. Because half an hour later I’m asleep again. It only takes me that long because the Beer-drinking Society has started up a rousing rendition of Slim Dusty’s ‘I Love to Have a Beer with Duncan’ and they just happen to know all five verses off by heart.