got a bit of a headache,’ I tell Ama. ‘I’m fine.’
She doesn’t answer. She digs her nails into the fabric of the front seat and picks furiously at the thread of the seams.
The trickiest thing about travelling from England to France or Belgium and back is the Channel ferry. You have to join endless queues of cars well in advance and have a ticket with an arrival time that is an hour behind or in front of where you are coming from. The last bit of the drive to the port is always silent. There’s nothing to say, except that Pado hates having to be early for a boat and Ama can’t stand the smells and noises of the ferry. She checks the trees on the roadsides for the slightest sign of a storm at sea. We look with her, waiting in dread, for the cutting rain, the litter-carrying gusts, the dance of cars, from side to side, along the motorway in the wind.
The signposts to the ferry seem to change constantly and Pado’s shortcuts lead us to areas where there’s never a shop to buy fresh bread or a place to fill up with petrol. We’re always running late. When we ask someone the way, no one can understand Pado’s distorted French and he drives on frustrated, leaving passers-by in mid-sentence, mouths wide open, until he finds a person who can answer him properly. Duccio normally reckons he’s worked out the route anyway. Pado is sure he’s recognised the road ahead.
‘It’s this way,’ he says.
‘But that last man told us it was in the other direction!’ Ama protests.
‘He wasn’t from around here,’ Pado insists.
‘How the hell do you know?’
‘I do, that’s all. It was obvious.’
Duccio quietly folds his map back together. He turns the top of the page inwards, just in case.
‘Thanks all the same,’ Ama reassures Duccio, loud enough for Pado to hear. She curls her arm behind her seat to touch Duccio’s knee. He hesitates a moment, then edges away, abandoning Ama’s hand to itself.
We pass at least five public lavatories, but we’re not allowed to stop because Pado assures us his Italian university book on venereology is still a reference. He has it with him at all times.
‘Page forty-one,’ he says, pointing to his case.
Ama opens the book and scrunches up her face as she reads that ‘virulent germs and potential diseases are everywhere, particularly in places of scant hygiene such as public toilets’. Then she turns the pages quickly to avoid looking at the photographs too long.
‘How hideous!’ she winces. ‘Is that what happens in acute cases of gonorrhoea?’
Pado nods and, from over Ama’s shoulder, I can see pictures jumping out at me, like squashed animals on the road, stuck between people’s legs. Giulio says he doesn’t care about the photographs or any disease or anything, but he is going to burst if he doesn’t get to a loo soon.
Pado tells him to quieten down: ‘Men can hold on.’
Ama is sure that it is harder for women and then that’s it because Pado says: ‘How come everything is so much more difficult for women?’
‘That’s not what I meant at all,’ Ama protests.
‘Then why say it like that?’
It all comes down to the fact that Ama was brought up in England and it’s not a place to live because people don’t speak their mind and have to make little, snide comments instead. It’s not as if you can’t make little comments in Italy though.
In fact, we used to have a potty, but that ended when Giulio made it overflow. He was telling Duccio to move over, and not looking, and then it was too late. Streams of pee were flooding the car and Ama was screaming ‘Get out!’ in English, French and Italian all at once. The pee made a stain on the floor and layers of antiseptic wipes won’t make it go away. If the days are hot and the car is warm, a faint smell rises in your nose.
Ama likes to find her own quiet spot to pee. As the only woman in the car, she tells us she has a right to be alone. She points at trees and behind bushes, forces us down lanes. Pado always has a different spot in mind.
‘Here’s perfect! Perfetto.’
‘No Gaspare, not here, please.’
‘Why, it’ll do fine.’
‘No, not here.’
‘For goodness’ sake, who cares?’
‘I do!’
‘I’m going to stop here.’
‘No, go on a bit.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s someone coming.’
‘Where?’
‘There, from behind that house.’
‘I can’t see a house.’
‘There!’
‘That’s not a house.’
‘What the hell is it then?’
‘It’s a barn.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Please drive on! Look, there is somebody coming.’
‘That’s a fucking cow.’
‘Don’t get angry with me. I can’t believe this.’
‘You can’t believe what?’
‘I simply want a pee, you idiot.’
‘Don’t call me a fucking idiot.’
‘I didn’t, I said idiot.’
‘Come on, out you get. We’re all waiting.’
‘Carry on further! I’m not going anywhere near that cow.’
‘What? Why the hell not? It’s behind a fence.’
‘I know. I just don’t like it. I’m sorry, I’m not doing anything in front of that cow! Forget it, just forget it.’
‘Right. I’m stopping here, behind this tree.’
We stop under a tree, down a lane. The air is cold, and stripped, desolate farmland stretches all about and around. Pado turns the engine off. Ama won’t budge. She refuses to look at Giulio who is tapping her shoulder from behind. Then Duccio and I tap her on the shoulder too, ‘Go on, Ama, please have a pee! It’s all right here.’
‘Will you all stop getting
