WELL-ANCHORED IN MY wheelchair on this steamship’s juddering deck, scarfed and gloved and wrapped and alone, I gaze at those famous white cliffs, as grey on this late January morning as is the sea, the sky, these circling gulls. The air is bitter and cold, filled with the groan of engines and the smoke and salt they churn in their wake. There will be no last glimpse of England—I realise that now—just this gradual fading.
Like so many other things I have done in my life, my departure has proven surprisingly easy. I could detect no resistance as my driver ferried me about Oxford and I withdrew my funds and made my travel arrangements. In any event, the number of stamps and passes required to leave this country are greatly reduced. There have been no footsteps behind me, and the glances at my tickets and papers as I took the train for the last time down to London, changed at Kings Cross, then travelled on to the docks at Dover, have all been perfunctory. I do not think I have seen a single member of the diminished KSG, or even of the local Constabulary. No voices called me back as I was carried up the gangplank to this ship, the SS Tynwald, bound for Calais.
The voices that I have heard from the crew, the stewards, the other passengers, are French, Spanish, Dutch, German, American. Here, as we plough across the narrow stretch of water that separates the rest of the world from England, we are all foreigners. Back in Oxford, I suppose, Allenby will have found my note by now, and passed it on to Cumbernald as he tidies his desk and prepares to leave the college. My letter, posted to London the day before, will probably also be waiting in a pigeonhole for Miss Flood. Of course, there will be concern about my semi-mysterious disappearance, but that will soon be followed by weary, head-shaking amusement at the thought that I still had this one last act in me.
Thus I travel, ill, wealthy and alone. My precise plans, as the maps and the possibilities widen in my mind, remain vague. Long journeys hold no fears for me now: if you are rich enough, there are always people who will give you what you require. All I know is that I want to end my days somewhere far from England, where the climate is dry and warm, where there are lizards on the walls and the stars are different. From Calais, I shall continue east and south for as far as this body will take me. First Class, and by train. Preferably by sleeper.