George could feel himself being rapidly swept under a rising tide of dejection. If even Charles was losing faith in their plan, they were done for. The click of the kettle made Charles jump. He poured the tea in silence. Without looking up from the cups, he finally spoke.
‘I know we’ve already talked about this but, George … are you sure you can’t tell your daughter and granddaughter?’
‘No, no, definitely not, let’s not get into that again, for Pete’s sake! If Françoise found out … you’ve seen what she’s like, Charles. She’ll put me straight into an old people’s home where I’ll get needles stuck in me every fifteen minutes and be escorted to the loo to take a piss, you can be sure of that. She’d have me preserved in formaldehyde if she could. She ought to be halfway up a mountain as we speak and she promised me, y’see, promised me, she drummed it into me that she wouldn’t be able to call me at all for two months. So that’s that, and so much the better. Now Adèle, being the clever girl that she is … we mustn’t fool ourselves, she’ll find a way. And then, and then, with a couple of clicks on the internet, bam! I’ll find myself with a squadron of nurses on my tail. No, Françoise can’t find out about this, not from me, not from you, not from Adèle. And that’s that. Pass the tea.’
He lifted the cup to his lips and put it down again before continuing his rant.
‘You see, for you, it’s simple. None of this bothers your wife at all. She even encouraged you to do it, to go off for two months. I’ve got to tell you, Thérèse really surprised me there. Ah, Charles, I suppose we’ve only got ourselves to blame for the way our kids turn out!’
Charles smiled, but he looked deflated. The two men drank their tea in silence. The ticking of the clock became almost deafening in their ears. George was the first to speak.
‘Come on, show me what you’ve got.’
Shyly, like a child who had just been told off, Charles pulled out his leather satchel and retrieved the printouts and travel guides, spreading them over the wipe-clean tablecloth.
‘What’s all this, then?’ asked George. ‘Ah yes, of course, Sauveterre-de-Comminges, between Lannemezan and Foix. Stage eleven, that’s a good one, that.’
These were the undisputed highlights of the evening visits, when the tea-drinking ritual was enlivened with a sense of adventure. Poring over the guidebooks and running their fingers over the dog-eared atlas, the two men sat surrounded by hotel reservations and colourful brochures, going over their route again and again, suddenly feeling thirty years younger. In seven days, they would embark on the Tour de France.
Chanteloup (Deux-Sèvres)
‘The Tour de France?’ exclaimed the young postman, somewhat taken aback.
‘That’s right,’ George replied proudly.
‘Blimey … But, um … you know … with your bad knee and everything, isn’t that going to be a bit, um, you know, a bit of a challenge?’
‘What makes you think that? Our feet are barely going to touch the ground!’
‘Well, exactly! That’s what’s worrying me! Three thousand five hundred kilometres on a bike, that takes some muscle!’
‘Oh, no, no, no … We’re doing it by car,’ replied George, disappointed that he had to correct this rather appealing misunderstanding so quickly.
‘Oh, I see! Gosh, you really scared me there!’ said the postman, laughing. ‘I get it now. You had me worried there for a moment. There was I thinking—’
‘Well, it’s still going to be a long trip. Twenty-one stages and forty-nine villages. It’s going to take us about two months, all in all.’
‘Yeah, but, well, it’s not like doing it on a bike, is it?’ The young postman seemed to have lost interest now and he was just about to change the subject when George said:
‘Yes, but even so, I can assure you it’s taken a hell of a lot of organising. See, me and Charles, we’ve been working on this for months. He’s been on the internet and everything.’
‘Oh right,’ said the postman politely. ‘Well in that case, let me know what you want me to do with your post.’
There was no point pushing it. It was not the first time this had happened. He could have explained that they would be going to far-flung places, some of them dangerous, or even downright foreign (Italy!). He had sometimes found himself regretting that they were not in fact going by bike, just to see the look on people’s faces. It got him down when people seemed to think his grand plan was worth peanuts. After all, even in a car it was still three thousand five hundred kilometres.
George sighed and got out his old orange notebook.
‘Yes, right, you can give my mail to Thérèse … from the twenty-fifth, so this coming Thursday until … wait, let me see … until 24 November. That’s a Monday. If we end up taking longer, Thérèse will tell you, alright? Well, you’ll work it out with her.’
‘Great, I’ll do that then. And the same with parcels? Oh that reminds me, one came for you earlier. Here you go.’ He held out a small package about the size of a shoebox that was covered in what looked like home-made wrapping paper. George had been waiting for this for quite some time; it had not been easy to come by.
He went home and put the package into his suitcase without opening it. He had even left a space for it. Just as he was closing his rather sad little case, he was overcome by the absurdity of the whole project. It now seemed ridiculous, far-fetched and pointless. He returned to his armchair, wedged a few cushions behind his back, picked up the remote control and switched on the television. As he had done every lunchtime for years. It was just so easy to stick to a familiar routine. And here he was getting ready to start the Tour de France. Madness.
Why had he agreed to go with Charles? He of all people, who had so rarely left the bocage, even when he had been in the peak of good health. Why, at the age of eighty-three, had he suddenly caught the travel bug? His last chance, that was probably what everyone was saying. Go on, Grandpa, have one last go at it for your pride, buck yourself up and make yourself feel invincible one last time, pretend you’re getting stronger, not weaker. ‘Realising a boyhood dream at his age, isn’t that great?’ they’d say. Oh, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like the idea of getting people talking; he still had his pride, after all. But the whole thing made more sense for Charles, who was still young and healthy, relatively speaking, and had a large and happy family to boot. Things were so different for George. People were right, it was his last chance. It was his last chance to make a grand exit. It didn’t even need to be dramatic, his exit. Just dignified. Standing.
His patched-up body was holding up, admittedly with a little discomfort, but holding up all the same. But the man inside had been in bad shape for a long time. Having more or less admitted defeat, he had sat back and waited for the doctors’ prognoses to come true, for the statistics to be proved right and the odds to catch up with him. But they never did. So he had decided to go out and face the odds head on. Eighty-three years old, one set of aching limbs, three thousand five hundred kilometres and a two-month expedition. What it all added up to was so blindingly obvious that he had been surprised at Charles’s insistence he go with him. And yet he had to complete this epic circuit, before the army of paramedics descended upon him to unleash an assault of well-intentioned humiliation and take every last freedom away from him.
But all this was by the by. These were all things he had told himself before, when he was still feeling brave. In those mad moments of enthusiasm, bravado and unbridled determination. But in the last few minutes, that had all gone out the window. Enthusiasm, determination and bravado had all deserted him. All that was left were the voices in his head. Those damned voices.
No, he wasn’t losing the plot. The voices were of the common or garden