10
Later in the summer of 1971, DT and I took off overland in a Mini to Istanbul with another couple from London, whom we had met working at the hospital. Both were students at Birmingham University and the chap, whom we codenamed Rupert, was the owner of the said Mini. I’m not saying that he was a car owner ‘who loved too much’ but heavy breathing could often be heard coming from under the bonnet as he drooled over the engine beneath. It was always best to knock before entering his garage and pages of his What Car? magazine were frequently found to be mysteriously stuck together. He was one of those car anoraks who spent all his free time sniffing around underneath the vehicle, twiddling and tweaking, and although DT was meant to share the driving with him, Rupert could never quite bring himself to let him take the precious wheel. People often refer to their cars as ‘she’, but somehow when Rupert did it had a greater resonance. Interestingly, he called his girlfriend, who did all the navigating, by her surname, firing orders at her as we went along.
‘Henman? Passports!’ or ‘Henman? Chewing gum!’ or ‘Henman? Consult map, please!’
Almost as an omen, and after Rupert had spent days fiddling and ferreting under the bonnet in preparation for the trip, one of the wheels began to wobble free as we drove off down the Balham High Road, just minutes into the first leg of our big adventure.
We went through France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece and finally Turkey, with Rupert driving as if a homicidal maniac were in hot pursuit. DT and I were squashed into the back seat with assorted belongings crammed in around us. Convinced that it would prevent the engine from overheating, Rupert insisted that we had the heater on inside the car, which became unbelievably stifling almost as soon as we crossed the Channel. I’m not entirely sure when we discovered that we might have made a mistake embarking on that trip, but it was probably on the Balham High Road.
In Rumania we travelled through the High Carpathians, where bears are meant to roam and where huge mountains on either side of the road almost touched in places, leaving just a tiny blue crack of sky above us. We set up camp in a borrowed tent that was slightly superior to the one we had used in France, and at night we listened to the sounds of wolves howling. In the little towns, the local people crowded around the car, stroking it, with Rupert darting about to check that they hadn’t left any mark. They were saying its name, incredulously, over and over again, almost chanting with wonder, ‘Owstin Meenee!’
It was like an incantation, with Rupert joining in each time it was said, and nodding in confirmation.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, Austin Mini, yeah, that’s right, mate, yeah, yeah, don’t touch the windscreen wipers, mate. Yeah, yeah.’
One man, who had stroked virtually every inch of the car as if it were a flying saucer newly arrived from outer space, spoke a little English.
‘You are from London?’
Rupert was straight in there, polishing with his cuff where the man had put his hand.
‘Yeah, that’s right, mate, well, I am, me and Henman are. These two are your bloody Northerners.’
‘I know Londoner.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yes, Derek Brown . . . Do you know Derek?’
‘Never heard of him, mate.’
The people simply couldn’t believe that we had travelled all that distance, from London, England, and by this time neither could we. When we passed through the border between Hungary and Rumania, Rupert surpassed himself with his tactful cockney charm. As the Hungarian border guards were walking around the car, one of them signalled for him to open the boot. Rupert swaggered around to the back to flip it open and, as they rooted through, he pointed at the contents and said with a smirk, ‘Yeah, bombs! Yeah, there’s bombs in there, mate! Yeah, that’s it, bombs!’
If DT and I could have slid down our seats and disappeared, we would have, but as the cramped conditions in the back of the car prevented it, we were forced to cringe, sitting up in full view of anyone who cared to look. Clearly thinking that these men couldn’t speak English, Rupert made an exploding sound, blowing his cheeks out and throwing his hands into the air, as a rather excellent visual aid, just so that they got the full picture. Whereupon the guard, in perfect English, of course, said, ‘Take everything out, please.’
We were there for hours as they emptied the contents of every single container out on to the ground: soap powder, washing-up liquid, shampoo, orange squash, etc., all of which we would have to replace. By now DT and I were furtively discussing where we could jump ship.
However, we stayed the course and arrived in Istanbul, needing to stretch our legs but relatively unscathed. On our first day there we were walking down the main street when we heard a familiar cry. It was another couple whom we vaguely knew from Manchester Poly, walking along on the other side of the road. Rupert immediately introduced himself but we made our excuses, dived down a side alley and got away. We spotted them some two hours later, the four of them sitting at a pavement caf’, Rupert holding court, the guy slouched in his chair with a white sunhat pulled down over his face and the two women nodding but with a glazed look in their eyes.
On our return journey, the plan was to take a ferry from Igoumenitsa in Greece to Otranto in Italy. When we arrived on the dockside our boat was there waiting for us. Smaller than we had imagined, it was called The Rumba. This name turned out to be more appropriate than we could ever have anticipated. We sat there in the boiling, airless Mini, wondering where on earth the cars were meant to go, when a hole appeared in the side of the ship and all became clear. Once the car was sardined in on the little deck below, we scrambled up to the top deck so as to secure a place to sunbathe. It was a perfect Mediterranean day, with a cloudless blue sky and a sea that barely moved, and people were stripping down to their swimwear and stretching out on towels on the hot wooden deck. After the cramped, sweaty conditions of the car, I have to say it felt like the QE2.
Everything was perfect until we pulled in at our only port of call, which was Corfu Harbour. A few passengers embarked and then as we pulled out a wind came, seemingly from nowhere, to tickle the untroubled surface of the sea. To begin with this was a welcome relief from the relentless sun but, as we left the harbour behind, it began to pick up speed and white horses were starting to pop up everywhere around us. The water became choppy and turbulent, and people were putting their clothes back on. Within minutes it became very difficult to stand or walk about the deck as The Rumba lurched from port to starboard and then from bow to stern, shoving its windswept, laughing passengers into drunken little scurries to grab hold of whatever solid thing they could. This, I thought, was the Mediterranean Sea; this could not be a storm of any note; and surely it wouldn’t last that long?
Four hours later, when we should have been halfway through our journey, we had barely moved, The Rumba now being lifted up almost vertically, first on to one end and then the other, by huge dark waves and 80-mph winds. The deck was virtually deserted, everyone having taken refuge in the cramped little bar below, where apparently the floor was already covered with vomit that slid from side to side and aft to fore with every lurch of the boat. The only people left up on deck were a couple of young blokes, hardly able to stand, hanging on to the ship’s rail for grim death and retching over the side, blizzards of vomit flying on the wind; and me, lying on the deck, no longer in my bikini, but wrapped, shivering, in my sleeping bag, wretched and weak from continuous nausea.
Soon the blokes disappeared too, having staggered off to join everyone else, and I was alone, not daring to shift in case the vomiting should start again. DT had gone off to find somewhere for us to shelter, so when I felt a hand upon my shoulder, I thought it was him, come to get me and take me below.
‘Oh, missy! Blue sleeping bag - green face!’
It was one of the Greek sailors.
‘Come, I take you to lie down.’
‘Oh . . . oh . . . I don’t think I can move. I feel so sick.’
He had a kind, weather-beaten face, with a black hole in his mouth where a front tooth was missing, and I was too weak to argue.
‘Come.’
And with that he scooped me up in his arms and carried me down some stairs into a small cabin that smelt of oil and TCP, which immediately made me gag.
‘Come, you sleep here, the captain’s cabin.’
He lowered me gently on to a bunk, made me drink half a tumbler of water, pulled a coarse blanket up over me and stuck a piece of cotton wool in each of my ears. The blanket stank of a combination of diesel and a sharp, citrus aftershave, but I managed in my exhaustion to fall heavily into a deep sleep.
I had no idea how long I’d been asleep when an icy hand pushing back the hair from my forehead woke me up. I opened my eyes and it was pitch black; there was a smell of garlic, French cigarettes and that citrus aftershave. A face that I could barely make out, but I knew didn’t belong to my sailor friend or DT, was almost level with mine. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see the outline of a big, round face with a full beard.
‘I come sleep with you. This . . . my bed. I sleep now.’
And with that he began to get into the narrow bunk. I still felt very sick and my head was pounding as he squashed himself in beside me and began to kiss my face.
‘No, please . . . I am sick . . . please.’
‘It is OK. You are like daughter.’
I quickly turned my back on him, praying that this wouldn’t make matters worse.
‘I am very sick.’
When freezing fingers fumbled under my sweater and around my waist, I felt panic begin to rise, bringing with it a fresh wave of nausea. I shifted on to my back, trying to shove his hands away.
‘Is OK. I sleep with you . . . like daughter.’
Poor bloody daughter! I bet she doesn’t look forward to you coming home from the sea! The hands slid downwards.
‘Please, no . . . Stop it!’
Then it came to me, a trick I’d learnt at school. I took in a very deep breath, swallowing a good portion of the air, forcing it down into my stomach and then let out a long, loud, resounding burp. It stopped him in his tracks. Then I sat up, my head reeling with dizziness, and, partly leaning in his direction, I did it again.
‘Oh, I’m . . . going to be sick . . . sick . . . Please, sick . . . sick . . .’
He jumped from the bed and switched on the light. My assailant was a huge man wearing nothing but a Guernsey-type pullover and a very grubby-looking pair of powder-blue Y-fronts stuck into the crack of his not insubstantial bottom. With his back to me, he was rummaging through a heap of clutter on top of a small cabinet.
‘Wait, wait! I have . . .’
He turned to me, offering up a shiny, pink, conical-shaped paper party hat with a broken elastic chinstrap dangling from it. Then just as I was thinking that I couldn’t possibly have anything more to bring up, the water that the sailor had made me drink when he put me to bed came shooting up like a fire hydrant. As I grabbed the party hat in what turned out to be a futile gesture, the water spurted out of my mouth, forming a perfect arc over the top of it, to land, hot and splashing, on the bare feet of the man. He instantly jumped back, muttering something in Greek and, grabbing his shoes and trousers, he left, saying simply, ‘I go now.’
Yeah, you do that. And too weak to get up myself, I flopped back down in the bed and slept until morning.
Thirteen hours later, making it a journey of seventeen hours, we arrived in Otranto. The same bloke who had tried to molest me came and woke me up to disembark.
‘We here now. We in Italy. We in Otranto.’
He was wearing a big smile as if we had both been on a long and jolly journey to a favourite holiday destination and now, wasn’t it heaven, we had finally arrived. I got weakly to my feet, whereupon he gave me a huge hug and kissed me on the forehead.
‘You like my daughter.’
It took me days to recover, but needless to say I did and I have never really suffered from motion sickness in quite the same way since. Up until this point, a rowing boat on a fairly placid pond would send me staggering for the sick bag, but I guess where there’s adversity. . . .