Rich in Small Things – Chapter 1

PART ONE

Chapter One
At The Start

1600hrs, Saturday July 19th 2008
Hyde Park, London, England

As Julia finally turns the key in the ignition I fumble with the large silver envelope just passed to me by one of the rally officials. Around us hundreds of competitors rev their engines and the thickly humid air, already heavy with the smells of onions and grease, fills with petrol fumes and dust. The leaves of the trees in the park clatter in the stiff winds as if applauding, cheering us on our way.

Julia slips the jeep into first gear and I flip open my penknife and slide the blade under the flap of the envelope, neatly slicing through the top. Our windows are open and the hooting and whooping mauls us. Julia and I sit in our small puddle of silence, nervous and serious.

I pull the card out as we trundle across the Serpentine, lovers rowing casually about, goose-pimpled, jackets flapping as the dark storm clouds continue to gather threateningly overhead.

Julia glances in the rear view mirror. ‘The weirdo students are behind us,’ she comments. I read the card out loud.

‘”Challenge the first,” – it’s a route one -  “Arrive at Prague Castle at 1900hrs Tuesday 22^nd July or earlier. Value: 100 points. 25 points deducted for each 12 hours’ tardiness. Party 23^rd July from 2000hrs.”’

‘Okay,’ Julia interrupts, ‘that’s as expected.’ I nod and continue.

‘And then, “Challenge The Second – Photograph a purple sea of Lavandula at Sarah Cracknell’s organ.”’ Bingo, I think and I smile. Julia frowns as she turns right into the Bayswater Road. ‘That’s worth one hundred points,’ I tell her.

‘Okay,’ she says flatly, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel at the traffic crawling up to Marble Arch.

‘And number three: “Bring us sweet Bacchus from the caves of Venice.”’

Julia’s phone rings and she snatches it up from the dashboard, squints at the screen, tuts, and hits the decline button. ‘David.’ She spits his name out like it tastes bad. ‘How many points is that last one?’ she asks.

‘Also a hundred,’ I say, twisting and reaching round behind me to the case of maps we have and pulling out the one for France. ‘There’s a fourth one:

“Bring us a bottle distilled in nails”. A hundred again.’

I don’t read the note in small print at the bottom to Julia. It says: ‘Reminder of qualification rules: All photographs must be time stamped and include a copy of that day’s newspaper and an appropriate signpost. All objects must be accompanied by a receipt detailing time and location of purchase.’

‘So, what are you thinking?’ she asks as we head down Park Lane, the hotels opulent and lazy on my left. I wave at the Dorchester thinking about that afternoon tea with Babu just a few weeks before, the day I first met Henry. I remember how at the time he seemed like a promise and wince at the threat he is to me now. I dismiss him from my mind and focus on the job in hand. If we can win this rally, I’ll pay him off and then I’ll never have to see him again.

‘I’m thinking we have a dilemma,’ I answer Julia. ‘If we head straight for Prague, we’ll pick up a hundred points easy. But, if we take a detour, we could pick up three hundred but it could cost us all of the route challenge points.’

‘And we’ll miss the party,’ Julia adds. I look at her sharply. I am not here to enjoy myself. She knows this.

‘To make it worth it,’ I continue, ‘we’ll need to solve at least two of the clues.’

‘Well, none of them meant anything to me,’ she huffs.

‘The first one’s easy. Everyone should get it. It’s about lavender fields, obvious from the “purple seas” and you don’t need to know much about herbs to figure out that “Lavandula” is lavender,’ I reply and unfold the map of France. ‘Which means we’re heading down to Provence. Any idea who Sarah Cracknell is?’ I ask her.

‘Yes,’ she says, tackling Hyde Park Corner and heading south towards the Thames, ‘Saint Etienne’s front-woman. Don’t you remember, from school?’

‘No,’ I reply, shaking my head. I did very little other than study at school. She might have been out smoking pot in the fields with the boys from the boarding house up the road, but I was busy getting top grades.

‘IPod,’ she orders, clicking her fingers, and I scrabble around in her bag and hand it to her. She scrolls through her tunes as I watch the traffic in front of us. I gasp and she looks up and bangs on the brakes as the car in front, a Land Rover Defender, TombRaider edition halts suddenly. There’s a little screech of rubber behind us and some furious hooting. I turn in my seat, straining against the safety belt to see the students who were next to us in the park before we left, soundlessly shouting at us through their darkened windscreen.

One is tall, taller than me, and almost very good looking, but a little too shy and stooped to properly pull it off. The other is shorter, not as good looking but thinks he’s all that. They had tried to talk to us earlier, to chat us up even. The tall one had made no sense, barely a word. The other one had more confidence but over egged it. Julia had shot him down in flames. They have the same make of vehicle as ours but theirs is black. I give them a little wave.

‘Nerds,’ says Julia, smiling widely and falsely into the rear view. The guys in the Defender in front seem oblivious to the dinky drama playing out behind them. ‘Glad I didn’t hit them,’ says Julia. ‘That would have been embarrassing. And the driver’s pretty hot. Did you notice him in the park?’

‘No,’ I say taking the iPod from her hand and shaking my head. ‘Saint Etienne, you claim.’ She has found them in her artist list and I plug the iPod into the stereo and switch it on and then resume my inspection of the map. Some of what sounds like French radio plays and it seems to be all about football. I am confused and then a melody begins and the atmosphere changes. It almost feels like fun. The sun is right out in a gap in the thick, scudding clouds and Julia and I are on an adventure. We are escaping. For a moment I forget what from and when Sarah Cracknell sings “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” I want to fall in love, I want to break my heart. Julia is swaying in her seat as we cross Vauxhall Bridge and head towards Camberwell and Peckham.

I locate St Etienne on the map and show Julia. I’m not totally sure it’s in Provence, but it’s near, on the way or on the edge at least, and actually, there seem to be a number of St Etienne-of-somethings near Avignon, the main city in Provence.

‘Let’s look at the other clues too,’ I suggest. ‘”Sweet Bacchus in the caves of Venice.”’ I say it slowly and thoughtfully as Julia bobs her head to the music. ‘Bacchus is the god of wine…’

‘Jesus, we’re not going to have to go to Venice too, are we?’ Julia complains.

My heart tightens. That’s a big detour. We wouldn’t have a chance of making it to Prague in time. It’s around seven hundred miles from London. A little less to Avignon and around seven hundred again from Avignon to Prague. We’d have to be pretty sure of at least one of the clues to not be at a big risk. ‘Sweet wine…’ I muse, wishing I drank more. I know nothing about wine.

‘David might know,’ says Julia as Canary Wharf comes into view to our left as we speed along Shooters Hill. It seems strangely unfamiliar, foreign. I can’t quite believe I had lived and worked there for a third of my life. ‘I really don’t want to speak to him though. He does sometimes order sweet wine, Muscat he calls it, with pudding. It’s surprisingly nice, tastes like peach nectar. You might even like it. What’s it called though, the brand he likes…’ I surreptitiously try to work out how far it is from St Etienne to Venice and then back to Prague on the map. I calculate the Provence detour will cost us at absolute minimum a day’s driving and therefore fifty points. We’ll definitely lose all the points if we go to Venice. And we’ll still have to go to Prague to check in at the checkpoint there and pick up the next challenge card.

‘That’s it!’ Julia chips into my conscious. ‘Beaumes de Venise,’ she says. ‘That sounds a bit like Venice.’

‘It does,’ I agree, scanning the Provence region on the French map again. And there it is, not all that far from St Etienne and certainly in Provence. I show Julia excitedly. She grins at me.

‘What about the third one?’ she asks.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘This one is really tough. “Distilled in nails.” It makes no sense to me.’

‘Me neither,’ she says. ‘Those bloody geeks are still behind us by the way.’ I notice the Defender has gone.

‘Probably taking the same ferry. I imagine a few of us are.’

‘Well, I hope they don’t follow us off down to Provence,’ she says. I lean back happy that she is accepting my plan.