Riding the Iron Rooster

"The ones in the straw hats are the Watermules, from San Diego. Lovely couple. We still get Christmas cards from them. That was the Galápagos trip. They're grandparents now. That's their son, Ricky. He's very big in semiconductors."

Americans also went on these tours to shop. Shopping seemed to be the whole point of their travel. I honestly had not known that. It seemed as good a reason as anything else, and much better than going to Russia to get drunk. And there were Australians, but wherever you see Australians in the world they always seem to be on their way home.

The other thing about tours I had not known was their utter lack of privacy. It was all swapping names and information, almost from the first moment, and if you forgot their names they reminded you. It was mostly couples—the Cathcarts, the Scoonses, Cyril and Bug Winkle, the Westbetters, the Wittricks, the Gurneys; and the single people, who all seemed a little sad and uncertain and too eager, Wilma Perrick, Morris Least and his friend Kicker, an old Californian who called himself Blind Bob, a smiling cockney called Ashley Relph and a man known only as Morthole. There was Miss Wilkie, who stood no nonsense: she was from Morningside in Edinburgh. There was the leader, Mr. Knowles. He was Chris. I was Paul. They preferred first names and never asked me my surname.

In London Ashley Relph said he was dead keen to get to Hong Kong, and blinked, and whispered, "I hear you can get a life-sized latex model of your dick somewhere in Hong Kong. One of these Chinese places. Costs about a fiver."

Morris Least was from Arizona, traveling with his old army buddy, a loud-voiced man who urged us to call him Kicker. Kicker had been in the war. He had a metal plate in his skull. Morris and Kicker had matching jackets and shoes. They wore the same sort of crushproof hat. The two American veterans were in their late sixties, and although they were bad-tempered, they agreed on everything. It seemed to me that these two men had entered into a profound sort of marriage.

Kicker said, "I've never been to Europe before. Amazing, huh? Like I was in the Marines for twenty-two years and never saw Europe. I was in China, though. Back in forty-six. Chingdow."

He had crooked teeth—a cruel smile. I asked him what he wanted to do most in Europe.

"See the Mona Lisa," he said. "And try the beer."

"I hear China's clean as a whistle," Rick Westbetter said.

Miss Wilkie said, "I've heard it's filthy."

Hoping to please her, Rick said, "But London's clean!"

"London's a shambles," Miss Wilkie said, and reminded him that she came from Edinburgh.

"London looks clean to us," Rick said, taking his wife's hand. Her name was Millie. She was sixty-three and wore track shoes. They were one of those oldish hand-holding couples who you're never quite sure are being happy or defiant.

"Of course it looks clean to you," Miss Wilkie said. "Americans have lower standards than we do."

Bella Scoons said in her Western Australian whine, "How far are you going, Miss Wilkie?"

"Hong Kong," the old lady said.

Then everyone thought: Ten thousand miles and six weeks of this. Good lord.

At least I did.

The Scoonses were from Perth—the other side of Australia. Bella always measured distances by comparing them to the trip to Kalgoorlie. The distance from London to Paris was to Kalgoorlie and back. The trip to Berlin was "To Kalgoorlie, and back, and back again to Kalgoorlie." Moscow was seven trips to Kalgoorlie. And once I heard her mumbling, working out the distance to Irkutsk, in Siberia, and I heard her finish, "and back to Kalgoorlie."

When we set off from Victoria Station that rainy Saturday in April, Bella said to her husband Jack, "It's less than to Kalgoorlie." She was referring to the distance to Folkestone.

We had eaten breakfast at the Grosvenor Hotel. The Americans sat together, and the Australians were at another table; the British were at two tables, and three old men were silently eating alone. At a solitary table there was a couple in hiking gear—knapsacks and sling bags and cameras. I was eating my breakfast thinking: Is this a mistake? One of the old men was staring at me. It made me very uneasy, the way he was gaping, but then I noticed that his glasses were very thick, and thought that perhaps he was not staring at me, but only looking out of his glasses, the way people look out of windows on rainy days.

When we got on the train, I sat next to him. He said, 'This trip is kind of a big thing for me. My oculist told me I'm going blind and if there was anything I wanted to do before I went blind I should do it this year. So I'm going to China, and boy am I going to keep my eyes open. I figure, hey, it's my last chance, and hey, I'm going to enjoy it."