Tachenlampen

Inside the church again, peering at inscriptions, Lucy asked if I had a torch in the car.

"There's a small one in the glove box. What for?"
"I just realised that there's few of these inscriptions under the pews, the benches. A torch would help. Could you get it for me?"

Even after just a few minutes inside the church, it was a surprise to step out into the heat and light of the day again. I didn't walk fast. Reaching into the witheringly hot interior of the car, I recalled another occasion when a girl had asked to borrow a torch.

Back when we were still close, about two years after I'd left home to go and do my own thing, Dave and I went on a brief trip to Holland. We stayed in a campsite outside Amsterdam and wandered around for a couple of days, not really sure what to do with ourselves. I think left to his own devices, Dave might have gone into a few of the naughty clubs, but I was never interested in that kind of thing. I always imagined that the stripper would come out onto the stage, take her clothes off, hurt me, then go offstage again.

We were booked to travel home on the ferry from the Hook to Harwich, and we arrived in Rotterdam a day or so early. The weather was good, so we spent the time in a campsite in the dunes, sitting on the beach and watching the girls. One afternoon, we got back to our tent to find a young German couple had pitched their tent close to ours. They were on a motorcycle tour of Europe, though we never got much more than that out of them because they didn't speak English and we didn't speak German. The bike was one of those huge Honda Goldwing things, and I remember thinking it strange that they weren't the usual fat type of people you see on those bikes.

The boyfriend was a decent type, with sandy hair and freckles, and eyes that crinkled when he smiled. His girlfriend was a tall, slim, brunette, with perfect skin and a beautiful smile. I was mostly in love with her as soon as I set eyes on her. That night we sat outside our tent and smoked and talked and drank wine. It was a great evening, made more special by dint of the fact than none of us understood what the other was saying.

Dave and I had collected some exotic cigarettes in Amsterdam. When I say exotic cigarettes I mean, the kind of cigarettes you never saw at home, non-global brands. I had some menthol ones, which featured a cute picture of a polar bear on the packet. I can't remember what he had. And we had some pipe tobacco, which we'd been smoking in liquorice Rizla papers.

It was the kind of thing we did. Starting with tea in the school common room, we'd always been looking for something different to smoke, though we never tried very hard to get marriage-hana. The pipe tobacco was sold to us by another gorgeous girl in the Luton pipe shop (the owner's daughter). She sold us black cherry flavour, and chocolate. We tried it in a pipe, but it was too strong, so we took to making small roll ups. I guess they smelt exotic enough to attract the German couple, and another pair of German girls, who came over from their tent and joined the fun.

I never knew her name, the Gorgeous One. We were all swapping cigarettes, and she took one of everything, but refused one of mine, pointing to the polar bear by way of explanation. Her guy, bless him, was a lightweight, and passed out after a few plastic cups of wine. Herself, she became brighter and lovelier and flirtier as the night wore on. I felt that the refusal of the polar bear cigarettes was a sign that she liked me, and there was much eye contact.

At the end of the evening, with all the alcohol gone, we helped her get her boyfriend in the tent. She asked for our Tachenlampen. She spoke loudly, slowly, repeated herself patiently, and kept requesting the Tachenlampen, but we didn't know what she as talking about. We laughed at her a lot and imitated what he words sounded like to us.

In the end she threw up her hands and crawled into our tent, wiggling her bum from side to side, and came back with our torch.

I'll never forget her.

When I got back to the church, Lucy was talking to a priest. He was tall, thin, middle-aged. He gestured at me to remove my hat, which I did. Then I stood there, turning the torch on and off with my thumb.