A Surrey State of Affairs (44 page)

I’ve made it to Hotel Sierra Nevada in El Calafate, and it certainly is not the Hilton. The carpet is threadbare, my room is small, and the walls are flimsy. There is a conspicuous lack of fluffy white pillows. But it will do.

I shudder to think of the cost, but I called Harriet from my room to check that she had gotten Sophie to Bristol without mishap. Apparently, Sophie had cried when Harriet refused to let her put Fergie in Edward’s Land Rover along with a case of 1998 champagne, but then perked up again when the student union reps greeted her at the halls of residence with a welcome pack containing paracetamol, Red Bull, and a tub of pasta sauce. How different it was in my day, when the best you could hope for was a library card.

Harriet asked me if Jeffrey and I were enjoying ourselves on our little jaunt, with a sarcastic edge to her voice. I said that we were, very much, thank you, then eased the telephone cable out of the socket while exclaiming loudly about the dreadful foreign phone networks. After that I went to the tourist information office, just a few minutes from my hotel, and booked a trip to the Perito Moreno Glacier for tomorrow. I will be picked up by minibus at eight, then driven up to the mountains and given crampons
and a training session before a five-hour trek across the ice. It will make quite a difference from my usual stroll to the village to buy the newspaper. My only regret is that I left my thermal underwear at home.

  
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

I am alive. I have walked on a glacier, and survived. It was “awesome,” in the parlance of the American youths who also took part in the expedition.

Black rocks reared up into the sky; the cold air scoured my lungs. The ice—twisted and ancient, veined with bitter blue—reminded me of Jeffrey’s heart. I trampled on it.

  
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28

I was woken up early this morning by a phone call from Rupert. It was strange to hear his voice, tinny and distant, as I lay in my narrow little bed with the swirly pink and purple polyester cover, looking out the window at gray peaks and gathering storm clouds.

“Dad called. He’s worried about you. How come you aren’t with him? What’s going on?”

I told him he should ask his father that.

“I did! You know what he’s like. He said he was learning polo and he thought you were holed up in the Hilton. But when I called the hotel they said you left two days ago. I’ve been so worried!”

I told him that I was in Patagonia and rather enjoying myself.

“Patagonia?! What about Dad? What’s going on? What are you going to do?”

“Penguins,” I said, my eye drifting over to the cover of the guidebook by the side of my bed, which I’d picked up from the airport. “I think I’ll go and see the penguins.”

Then I told him to take care, and pressed the little red button to cut him off.

  
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

Readers, I have traveled by bus! Bus! I, who had always agreed with Margaret Thatcher’s view that you were one of life’s failures if you set foot in one of them after the age of twenty-five. It seems that you can’t get anywhere without them here, and that Lady Thatcher’s opinions are not generally held in high esteem. Fortunately, a friendly French girl at the Sierra Nevada explained how the system worked, and even helped me to buy a ticket. The journey wasn’t nearly as ghastly as I had imagined. I booked the most expensive seat, which reclined to almost business-class flatness and came equipped with a cushion, a curtain, and a box of biscuits. If it wasn’t for the woman next to me snoring, I would have been quite comfortable. Who would have thought that the Argentineans would succeed where National Express (so I am led to believe by occasional sightings on the M25) has failed?

And so here I am, in a snug hotel in Rawson, with the tang of the Atlantic reaching through to the rather threadbare lobby every time the door opens to let in another group of young men from New Zealand wearing superfluous woolen hats.

  
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1

Today I saw penguins, real penguins, honking and waddling in a seething mass of black and white as the wind buffeted the smell of seaweed across the beach. It was like I had walked right through the television screen and into a nature documentary—I almost expected to see David Attenborough hunkering down to explain the feeding patterns of these wonderful creatures, and Jeffrey sitting on a rock scowling at the remote
control. The penguins themselves, with their neat little monochrome costumes, clumsy movements, and jovial expressions, reminded me a little of Reginald. The thought made me homesick for a moment, but then I distracted myself by asking a courteous fellow tourist from South Korea to take a photo of me with the camera I’d bought especially for the trip. On the credit card, of course.

When I got back to the hotel, I sent Sophie a text message to ask how it was going at Bristol. She replied, several hours later, with one word:
wikid.

Then I texted Boris to check that the house was okay, and he replied immediately:
All in order, boss.

  
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2

Have spent the day walking on the beach and reflecting. Argentina is not entirely what I had expected. In fact, I’m not sure what I did expect, in the sudden whirl of booking our tickets and packing our bags, but I believe it featured dirt, cacti, shacks, and a dearth of civilized things such as breakfast cereal. Instead, I find that even relatively small towns like Rawson have skyscrapers, office workers in suits and ties, neat pavements, cash machines, supermarkets, and pharmacies that glow green and white in the evening. Of course, this pattern is not uniform, and some of the things I had vaguely imagined do indeed crop up. I snagged two cardigans on flowering cacti in the botanical gardens of Buenos Aires. On the bus over here, as soon as we pulled out of the center of El Calafate you could see the buildings deteriorate into ramshackle tower blocks with patchy lighting and groups of boys playing football in dirt clearings.

I expect I shall see more tomorrow, as I start a twenty-hour trip back up to the center of the country and a warmly recommended estancia near Cordoba. I wonder what Miss Hughes
would say if she could see me now? I suppose that would very much depend on whether she managed, for once, to locate her spectacles.

  
MONDAY, OCTOBER 6

This is the life. The air is clear and crisp, the terrain rolls away in gentle, undulating hills; it reminds me a little of a holiday in the Welsh valleys, except with better weather and food, and more thorn trees. I am staying at a small estancia, or working ranch, which is also very comfortably decorated for guests. I have a lovely little bedroom with a wrought-iron bed frame, smooth creamy walls, dried lavender standing in iron pots, and a beautiful French window with blue curtains sweeping down to the floor and a view out onto grazing cattle, trees, and, at night, millions of undimmed stars. There is a sense of space here that quite eludes one in the Cotswolds. We are one hour on a dirt road from the nearest village. There is no human settlement as far as the eye can see, no noise; just green hills, and the fluctuation between silence and birdsong. I am going to rest, read, and think. Then perhaps darn the hole in my hiking socks.

  
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7