Woodfield Publishing Limited

[Editor's note: Paul Stanton is a pen-name of bestselling author David Beaty, a former RAF pilot whose many books about flying earned him a worldwide reputation]

IT BEGAN after fifty-five minutes of driving. It always began after fifty-five minutes of driving. I could have set my watch by it. I used to listen out for it, as one would wait for a knocking in the engine, or for an unwelcome telephone call, or for flak to come up from the target.

The bickering at the back.

This particular session began fifteen miles south of Montluçon, on the second day of the drive home from the family holiday in Spain.

‘Jane … you’ve got all the seat!’

‘Cathy … you’re standing on my foot!’

‘I’m not.’

‘You are.’

‘Move over then!’

‘I am moved over!’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Yes, I am.’

And then the inevitable.

‘Mummy?'

‘Yes, dear?’

‘How much longer before we get there?’

At this point, I gripped the wheel. I trod hard on the accelerator. I glanced at a signpost whizzing past. I halved its score to Paris, and before Debbie had time to work it out on her Michelin map, I snapped over my shoulder,

‘Only another hundred miles … we’ll be there in time for dinner. Now sit still!’ And I vowed that never, never would I bring Jane (aged seven) and Cathy (aged five) on a foreign holiday again – not even to get the sun in Spain, the moon in Venice or the snow in Switzerland. Not ever. And under my breath, I hissed to my wife, ‘Why can’t they just sit back and enjoy the countryside like normal human beings?’

After all, it was the only thing I asked them to do. I would have given – if not exactly my eye-teeth, at least the odd molar at the back – to have been expertly driven on this early September afternoon through the Massif Central, with the trees still a heavy dark green and the cornfields beginning to deepen into gold – to have been able to glance around me, drink it all in, spin the holiday out a bit longer, instead of huddling stiff with tension over the wheel, watching out for the hazards of the French roads, doing battle with maniacal Citroen drivers, keeping half an eye out for unintelligible signs, supervising Debbie, who is a flustery, inexpert navigator, and listening to my two daughters squabble, squabble, squabble at the back.

‘Look at that castle right on the top of the hill,’ said Debbie. ‘Doesn’t it look like something out of a fairy story ?’

They glanced out. They said it did. Then they pushed each other again.

‘Look at that dear little wayside shrine. Did you see someone had put flowers in front of it?’

They glanced out. They said they had. Then they pushed each other again.

‘Look at that bullock and cart. Did you notice how clean it was?’

They glanced out. They said they did. Then they pushed each other again.

This was Phase One – Debbie ecstasising over places of marked disinterest to the children, while I got hot under the collar. It was as we were passing through Montluçon, with its market stalls of lace and aprons and cotton caps, that we saw an old woman selling nougat, and at least a quarter of an hour ahead of schedule we went bang into Phase Two.

‘Daddy … can we stop and get some?’

‘It might be an idea, Paul. For presents and suchlike.’

I stopped the Morris, and in no time at all we had taken on a load of pink and white bars of goo, thickly dotted with almonds and pistachios. The last house of Montluçon had scarcely disappeared before Phase Two was well on its way.

‘Mummy, can we try some?’

‘I don’t see why not. D’you, Paul? It looks wholesome.’

I did see why not, and the last thing it looked was wholesome, but once in Phase Two there is little one can do except get carried along by the current. Life goes in cycles, phases, what-have-yous. I’m a psychologist, and I should know. I spend my working days explaining just that phenomenon to the parents of problem children.

‘All right, dears. Just one bar, mind.’

‘Let’s have the pink.’

‘No, let’s have the white.’

‘I don’t like the look of the white.’

‘I don’t like the look of the pink.’

‘I don’t like the smell of the white.’

‘I don’t like the smell of the pink.’

When my shoulders began to hunch tighter and the speedometer crept up to eighty, Debbie said tactfully, ‘I shall try the pink and you two try the white.’ There was the sound of sticky paper being unwrapped and dropped on the new carpet at the back.

‘Put it tidily in the ashtray,’ Debbie said. ‘Like I’m doing.’

There was the sound of nougat being broken.

‘You’ve got more than I have.’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Yes, you have.’

‘Measure then.’

‘You’ve bitten some of yours.’

‘Darlings, what does the white taste of? The pink tastes of … mmm … yes! Turkish delight.’

Cathy said the white tasted of asses’ milk, and Jane said Cathy had never tasted asses’ milk so how did she know … and anyway she was dribbling.

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are. Look… there’s a dribble! A big dribble. On the back of Daddy’s seat.’

Cathy said sorry.

‘Now you’ve gone and let another dribble out. That was on him.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t keep saying sorry! You let it out when you say sorry. Keep your mouth shut.’

Cathy kept her mouth shut. So did Jane. So did I. For ten kilometres the milky-white goo acted like a gag. I heard more paper being torn off. I still kept my mouth shut. We passed a small farm. They were cutting the corn already. Women in bright aprons and headscarves paused and waved at us. Momentarily I was lulled into thinking that the natural law would be suspended. I took one hand off the wheel, and touched Debbie’s.

‘Been fun … the holiday … hasn’t it, darling?’

‘Blissful!’ Her nice hazel eyes enlarged and misted over. Her lips made a kiss. ‘Perfect!’

But natural laws are never suspended. Phase Two proceeded as inevitably as that song There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza …

‘Mummy?’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘That nougat stuff was nice … but it makes you thirsty.’

‘Does it?’

‘It’s made me thirsty.’

‘It’s made me very thirsty.’

‘Mummy? Can we have a drink?’

So Phase Two proceeds. Debbie fumbles under the seat and pulls out the picnic basket and tries to unscrew the lemonade bottle. There is something about these plastic-topped lemonade bottles that makes them virtually unscrewable. So Debbie can’t do it. So we have to stop. So at last I get the top off. So we’re fifteen minutes late on schedule. So we can’t stop for tea. So the girls will just have another bit of nougat.

‘Mummy?'

‘Yes, dear?’

‘Isn’t it hot in here?’

‘Then open a window.’

‘Mummy, it’s too cold.’

‘Mummy, that stuff was very nice, but wasn’t it a bit sickerly?’

‘Was it dear?’

‘Mummy.’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘That stuff was very sickerly.’

‘I didn’t think so.’

‘Mummy?’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘I feel sick.’

After all that build-up, Debbie always contrives to sound surprised.

‘If you’re going to be sick,’ I said, ‘I’ll stop. Just give me warning … and I’ll stop.’

‘I am giving you warning.’

‘Not here.’ We were in a biggish place with crossroads and a gendarme. ‘Wait till we get outside the town.’

‘Daddy will drive slowly… and we’ll open a window… and you can sit on my knee… and I’ll tell you a story.’

We shuffled around. I drove very slowly. Debbie told some long, involved story about animals – it always had to be about animals – till Cathy felt better and scrambled to the back again.

But now there was a funny taste in her mouth – you know how it is after you’ve stopped feeling sick. Water is needed – good plain clear cold water to wash that taste away – and water was produced from the picnic basket. I heard the gurgles as it went down both throats – if there was anything going, they both had to have it – and I knew that Phase Two was galloping to its inevitable end.

‘Mummy?’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘I need the pottie.’

‘So do I.’

‘Can’t you wait till we get to a town? Then you can go in a proper place.’

‘I can’t wait.’

‘Neither can I.’

It was the only time they ever agreed.

I put my foot down hard on the therapeutic accelerator. The engine roared out what I was feeling. I was particularly anxious to get into Paris before the rush hour began.

‘I think we’ll have to stop, darling. It’s not good for them … not to.’

I braked sharply.

‘Not here, Daddy! There’s a house.’

I accelerated – then I slowed down again.

‘There are people in that field…’

I accelerated – then I slowed down again.

‘Darling … but this is all nettles!’

Finally I stopped beside an ancient horse with a sort of bushy clump behind him. I am not a psychologist for nothing. They got out without demur. They scrambled over the low wall. They hopped over brambles. I saw their small forms modestly dwindling to where the bushes thickened.

I sat with my hands on the wheel. I stared straight ahead, and raised my eyebrows at the deserted road. I said, ‘You know, something’s got to be done about those children. They seem incapable of travel. They’re simply born un-travellers. When I was their age, a car ride was a treat … a real treat!’

I love travel. I always loved travel. But we have nowhere we can park the children and I saw days of untravelling stretching ahead of me. Summer holidays spent at Brighton, like old Turnbull, my fellow commuter on the 8.10, has to put up with. Or perhaps sharing a cottage in the Cotswolds with Baines, my opposite number in the Cavendish Clinic.

‘They’ll grow out of it.’ Debbie has an unfortunate habit of unconsciously quoting the maxims I lay down at the Clinic to parents.

‘Yes, but when?’ I fell inevitably into the role of echoing the exasperated parents.

‘Oh, soon…’ Her eyes had taken on their middle-distance look. Already she was scanning the wood for the sight of the returning children, almost visibly cocking an ear for argumentative voices. ‘They’re an awfully long time.’

‘They show no consideration whatever. They’re probably looking at that dashed horse.’ But when I craned my neck to see, the horse was still standing in the corner of his field in splendid and elderly isolation.

‘They won’t have fallen down a ditch or anything?’

I knew Debbie really meant a hundred-foot quarry with water at the bottom.

‘If there’s one available,’ I said, ‘they will have done.’

‘Maybe I should have gone with them. They’ve been nearly a quarter of an hour.’

‘You women and your worries!’ I laughed to show that I had none. All the same, I wound down the window and cocked my ears hopefully for the sound of an indignant yell or an ouch. But none came. In fact, I saw them before I heard them, and that in itself was peculiar. They were walking towards us very slowly – soft-footed, softer-voiced.

‘Hurry up!’ I shouted. ‘We can’t wait here all night!’

‘Sssh!’ They put their fingers to their lips. Then they stood still and glanced over their shoulders.

I thought at first it was Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane. A shadowy bush moved forward, then another, and then another. The shadowy bushes took on a more horizontal shape. Four legs, large heads. Through the afternoon air came the sound of feet, small feet, walking through woody moss.

One donkey … two donkeys … three donkeys following my daughters, picking their way daintily, their ears pricked forward in curiosity. The girls climbed the wall, and held out their hands. The first donkey nuzzled their fingers.

‘So that’s where you’ve been all the time!’ I said, half grim, half amused, wholly relieved.

‘Daddy, aren’t they sweet? They just came up to us. They let us stroke them.’

‘I think they’re poor starving little donkeys,’ Cathy said, ignoring their rounded barrel-bellies. ‘So we fed them grass and hay, and only a few of the nougat bars because Jane said it would be bad for their teeth.’

It’s said (and I believe it to be true) that the great ideas of one’s life come unawares. One does not recognise the moment they are born. I know I didn’t recognise that moment for what it was, though I like to think that I had a feeling, a sudden aura not so much of well-being, but of well-being to come.

Certainly well-being came – and not so much later either. About half an hour to be precise, after the last of our tea had been eaten and after the last piece of nougat (despite Jane’s gloomy prognostications) had disappeared down the grey donkey’s throat.

Then a new and hitherto unknown Phase began – amicable agreement in the rear.

‘Jane?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which donkey did you like best?’

‘The brown one.’

‘So did I.’

‘Which did you like second-best?’

‘The grey.’

‘So did I.’

‘The sandy one was pretty, too.’

‘Yes, sweet.’

‘Hadn’t they lovely faces?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you see their dear little feet? I could have got one in my hand.’

‘And their big kind eyes!’

‘And did you feel their soft little noses?’

‘They seemed to like us, didn’t they? They liked you, Cathy.’

‘They liked you, Jane.’

Their voices went on, soft and mellow. The miles slipped under my wheels. I actually sat back, driving with my finger-tips. I saw a castle of very fine eighteenth century architecture. We reached Orleans and I stopped on the bridge to watch the reflections in the waters of the Loire. Beside me, Debbie was away in some mellow maternal daydream. Behind, the girls chattered softly about donkeys. I felt myself quite well disposed towards the creatures. Faintly from the back of the car, I could distinguish their smell clinging to the clothes of my daughters. It’s a warm and quite indescribable smell, half like a clean elephant, half like the scent of expensive velvet. Anyone who has ever been in contact with donkeys will know exactly what I mean; anyone who hasn’t can’t possibly imagine it.

I have always found Orleans a fascinating town; a beautiful, bewitched, exciting place. It was appropriate that enlightenment should come to me there. I remember the moment quite distinctly. I had just driven into the square, slowing down by the fine equestrian statue of Joan of Arc.

‘I’d like a horse like that,’ Jane said, totally ignoring the statue’s artistic qualities.

‘I’d rather have a donkey,’ Cathy said.

Here they go again, I thought, back into their quarrelling stride, even over Joan of Arc…

Then: ‘So would I,’ said Jane.

‘I’d rather have a donkey than anything else in the world.’

‘So would I.’

‘Daddy?’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘Jane and I would do anything to have a donkey. Anything in the world.’

‘Yes, Daddy … absolutely anything.’

Anything, absolutely anything. Like motoring to Spain or Italy or even Greece … and sitting still. Never wanting to eat or drink or talk or stop or bicker or quarrel. Suddenly my mind began to revolve dizzily over entrancing far-flung prospects…