I needed a holiday - badly. When a man's marriage breaks up, he loses his job and his home all in the space of six months he needs a holiday. I wanted to go somewhere I hadn't heard of - somewhere about which I wouldn't have many preconceptions. Somewhere beyond the fields we know, to quote Dunsany. Of course I couldn't afford to go anywhere really off the beaten track. "I'd like to go to the end of the world really" I told the serious young lady in the travel agency. "But I'm more or less broke."

"I'm sure we can sort something out." She said - "just bear with me a moment please."

She left her desk and opened a small cabinet on the wall behind. I watched her trim black-clad figure as she looked at the contents. She was a little like my wife. I only had myself to blame for my present solitude. I'd always had an idea a man needed to go beyond a one-woman relationship - go farther afield. She had forgiven me once. But the second time she had been stubborn. "You promised; it was a one-off you said. Just an adventure in the next field. But it wasn't. Now this is the end of the road, you cant go back!"

In the past, on every issue she had been reasonable - persuadable. But not that time. I was stunned. But sure enough she packed up, put the boys in the car, and was gone, leaving me in a gloomy limbo. I had no heart to try new relationships.

"There! This should suit you sir."

I came out of my soliloquy to find the young travel agent showing me a brochure. A town I'd never heard of in a country which had, until lately, been off limits politically. A country with pleasantly grotesque myths in its mountain ranges. "For the man who wants to go that one step beyond" it announced. The weather looked good, the countryside looked good and the town itself very appetising, glorying in new found prosperity.

"I'll go!" I announced, when she told me the very reasonable cost.

"I think you will enjoy it." She said, her dark eyes friendly, but unsmiling. "Just take it for what it is - don't look a gift horse in the mouth you know!"

I wondered what she meant, but I soon forgot her remark. On the plane I determined to regard the end of the holiday as the end of an era. Only then would I worry about my job, and how I would live. I had spoken to my wife, and the boys on the phone. I vaguely hinted that perhaps there might be a reconciliation, but she made it clear that there was no going back.

"You enjoy the greener grass on the other side of the fence," She said. "But now you've found it, there's no going back."

She almost echoed my bosses words when I had lost my job. Each advance I had made, each new office, each new company car, and each new privilege - each had been a glow of happiness. Yet within a few months it seemed a humiliating sideline, the office smaller than those of the men I admired and respected, the car lower in specification - and power - than theirs, and my assistants fewer. Finally I made that incredible and transfiguring step onto the board. At last - beyond the fields I knew. But things went wrong. My whole career had been spent in getting on. The only skill I had was in anticipating my superiors' every whim and appearing to endorse the company's policies with the zeal of a fundamentalist religious fanatic. On the board I had to make decisions, and I was judged on their results. There was no scapegoat to hide behind, no escape route to a promotion before the results of my incompetence became manifest. There was no ill will, no opportunity to make alliances, or assassinate the character of a rival. Just a cool, almost wry assessment of my failures, first one, traditionally forgiven, then another, and oblivion. No route back existed to the cosy world of salaries, company politics and promotion. I had made the final step beyond the end of the old road and fallen off the new one. I couldn't go back.

The holiday exceeded my most extreme hopes. I made friends - real friends, not just tourists. I met a woman who, whilst maintaining some distance, seemed anxious to form a lasting relationship. The town was a fairy tale. Everything was very cheap, the wine was excellent, the food new and exotic. The country around was very picturesque, and I returned to an old habit of mine, painting in water-colour. My skill returned, and I occupied each day in my new hobby, and each night socialising with my new friends. All around I could see a never-ending supply of subjects, getting better and better toward the green distant hills in the east.

A friend I had made, an old but vigorous and intelligent man, was sufficiently impressed with my work to offer to sell it at a cafe he owned. The project was so successful that I found I could maintain myself on the shared proceeds. From a friendless, jobless drifter I became, in three weeks, a fully functioning member of a new and balmy society. The official process for transferring my residence to my newly adopted home was a little lengthy, but straightforward and soon I was a resident of the white-rendered blue-skied city that I had had the luck to find.

For a month after the change I was ecstatic, but one or two small clouds came on to my horizon. First were the "Spectres". These were a group of people, men and women, who one saw in ones and twos around the town dressed in light casual clothes of a sort of washed out black. I asked my friend about them but he shrugged his shoulders, and said only "things don't change all at once". Disturbingly I found that they showed a deal of interest in me - often looking almost insolently at me as I passed. And they were very strange people - with eyes that had an almost mesmeric effect Once or twice they had beckoned at me, but had done nothing when I pretended not to notice. I took them to be some sort of internal spies left over from the old days. The name was obviously some sort of mnemonic for a branch of secret police. I wasn't sure how it was spelt - but I thought of it as being Spectre as in English.

The other problem was my attempts to paint the beautiful high country and villages I could see to the east. Every effort I made to get within reasonable painting distance failed. The roads marked on the map were not there - and since the map had been produced before the second world war this was not a surprise. The invaders had punished severely those who did not acknowledge their sphere of influence and whole valleys had been bombed into oblivion. The marks of those cruel days were now covered with aromatic pastel-coloured herbs and stunted parasol-like conifers; the roads and paths of former times were quite lost. Always I got almost to the point I wanted, but never exactly, and the resulting works, whilst saleable, never attained the qualities of which I dreamed. Always at the range I attained, the whole eastern landscape had a heavenly, almost unreal look - yet too far for my rather literal brush to capture.

I asked my friend if he knew the best way to get to these appetising uplands, but he seemed unsure. "In any case", he said, "There is nothing so very attractive up there - its an illusion of distance. If you come with me one morning I can show you the best this surrounding country can offer!"

For a while the new things he showed me satisfied my artists eye, and I had a new surge of success. My new relationship burgeoned, and I seemed to be set in my new life. But in the background the hills beyond were provoking my old need to go on. I began again to explore the country to the east. My friend seemed concerned. "They do not like it" he said, waving at two of the Spectres. And indeed, I had noticed that the nearer I got to my goal, the more of them I saw. I asked my friend if there was a military installation, or some such thing up there.

"No, but its further into their sphere of influence" he said. He often used the phrase 'sphere of influence', which I only associated with the arrogance of European nations in the period before the Second World War. I told him that the only sphere in my geopolitical firmament was the earth, and it belonged to everyone or no one - at his choice. He smiled wryly. "My boy, you have much to learn about spheres - and about the one you mention, you are better in ignorance. Enjoy what you have - don't try for those hills" And he would say no more on the subject after this cryptic and disturbing message.

I became more and more determined to visit these mysterious hills. And I began to find ways to get closer to them. I took a compass, and when the hills sank behind local features, as I approached, I was still able to move along minor roads and villages in the correct direction. I found that it was an elusive direction, and the slightest deviation from the direction last measured on the compass would throw me in the wrong orientation completely. Nevertheless, by taking great care, noting my route carefully, and resuming each day at the place I had reached previously, I was making slow but steady progress. The closer I got the more perfect they looked. But things still worked against me. One day I found a village whose main street went in the exact direction I wanted, which now seemed north. But even as I looked at the beautiful landscape visible at the end of the road, I saw a very unpleasant collection of local youths congregating in the middle of the road and looking menacingly at me. Two produced knives, and smiled wolfishly. I had gathered that some youths, products of the recent struggle for freedom, were acting like the brigands of former times of which one had heard much in the traditions of the region. As I hastily fled back down the street I seemed to notice one of the Spectres watching the scene from a doorway. The same thing happened in other villages which stood in my path. Or there would be a checkpoint in the street where some morose official would shake his head over my papers, and I would be sent back for no reason I could fathom.

In the end I grasped that I would never get through one of the villages that seemed so frequently to block my path. The problem then was that the only bridges over a raging mountain torrent, which certainly had to be crossed, were in these unfriendly places. But one day, through my binoculars I discovered a place where a rock-fall had split the river into manageable streams. And after much difficulty, late in the day I reached it. I was surprised to see a large thickset dog standing on the opposite bank. It looked at me with baleful eyes, yet I saw no menace in it, so I scrambled across and found myself beside the creature in the lowering gloom. It let out a strange growl, and seemed almost to place itself in my path to prevent my advance. But I like dogs, and I merely patted it, and passed on for a little investigation of the path ahead. It was too dark to see much, but I felt an exhilaration to have discovered what I felt was the final answer to my quest. I could just see the path ahead, and it went straight as a die to the hills I sought. I knew it was to late to go further, and in any case I had no painting equipment with me. I turned to go back, but found the path rather difficult, each of the rocks which I had easily mounted on the way across the stream seemingly at a particularly awkward angle for the return. Indeed at one point only the near presence of the great dog enabled me to scramble onto the central rock, by using his strong shoulder as a handhold. He showed great pleasure at my painful return, and I left him wagging his tail as I hurried back along the route I had so tortuously unravelled over the weeks.

I met my friend, and the woman I have mentioned, in a cafe that evening after a good dinner. I was in the highest spirits, ready for my great step "beyond the fields we know". Neither of them shared my pleasure in the least. She bemoaned her bad luck in finding herself so enamoured of one with what she saw as a self-destructive urge to quickly tire of things that he had lately found so pleasurable. My friend too saw futility in my quest.

"Why must a man go to the end of the earth to find a subject to paint when there is so much beauty nearby?" he asked. I told him how sensational the eastern hills appeared in the evening light.

"They do not look so to me." he said. She shook her head vigorously. "You see only your own vanity!" she said - the first time she spoke censoriously to me. My friend asked me about the dog, and the river crossing. He wanted to know if the dog seemed quite normal. In spite of the trappings of modern thought that he displayed there was a primitive superstitious side to him, and I supposed that here, as at home there were myths concerning solitary dogs encountered in the wilderness. "No, it wasn't a magical dog" I said. "Just a big strong one, probably owned by one of those cut-throats that I have seen in the villages up there. He had none of his masters vicious nature, if such he was."

The next day I took my best watercolour materials and left at dawn. I took no leave of my friends, not wishing to offend them by ignoring their kindly meant advice. I passed no one as I headed for the crossing, except one Spectre who seemed to spy on me from a high point. The sun was warm, the sounds and smells of the country were perfect - and ever ahead were those inviting hills of paradise. I would return with a painting to silence their carping once and for all.

There was no dog at the crossing and I easily crossed into the promised land. Each step I took made the woods, houses and hills look more like a masterpiece of Dutch landscape painting. Only an artist of omnipotent ability could truly produce such an image. I saw no one ahead, although way off to the side I seemed to see tiny figures who peered steadily at me - spectres, I was sure. The walk became easier and easier, and the effect of hills seemed to have been a sort of illusion. As I looked back it almost seemed as if I was coming from hills - the whole town seemed above me. I knew enough of the effects of perspective to know that such optical effects were common in hilly territory, and I pressed on until I seemed to be on the threshold of the promised landscape.

But then something happened which brought a great uneasiness over me. I had reached a cottage only to find that it was a sort of decoy - like a wooden aeroplane painted to look like a real plane, to waste the guns and bombs of enemy attacks on an airfield. And as I puzzled over the phenomenon I noted that other features of an artificial nature were observable. Brilliantly though it was all fabricated, I suddenly realised that the whole area where I faced was a huge stage backdrop. Flowers, trees shrubs, cottages, barns, rocky outcrops, all seemed to be made of a wondrous substance that could be formed into any shape or colour, however complex. I had strayed into some giant project where no doubt serious security measures were in force. I thought to move away to safer places, and walked along at the same level, but constantly found only the false and now almost menacing landscape of the project. Worse, whatever I did I seemed always to be further in to the backdrop. Behind me what had seemed at first downhill, then flat, then slightly uphill now towered away so that the town seemed perched high on a green plateau above me. And it looked like at least a days effort to attain the town once more. But with rising unease I began to try do so.

Suddenly I knew that there was nothing in these hills that I wanted! I scrambled back up the slope which had been so easy to descend but the material of which it was made now displayed a new quality - it was almost impossible to move upwards - it slid and crumbled to a fine dust which had no adhesion whatsoever. After an hour I had gained no more than a few feet. I fought off an attack of panic when I imagined my dried bones in this lifeless desert, victim of a ridiculous accident. I threw away my painting equipment, and made the hard - but only possible decision - to go on down the slope, hoping to reach a more normal terrain further ahead. At first I felt sure that the false landscape - which I now knew to be of immense proportion - was the result of some insane totalitarian land forming project. But as I went on I found my blood chilling as I looked back. The terrain behind me now towered up, higher with each furlong I went. First the town appeared perched precariously amid the haze of an alpine mountain chain. Then as it faded in the thickening mist, it was as high as the Himalayas. Finally it became a cyclopean range such as is not known on this earth - and I cowered beneath it as it overhung me, an insane landscape over my head, casting a shadow that added gloom to the horrific power of the optical illusion. And worse, the slope was steepening ahead, and soon I was staggering, trying to control my pace, until at last I fell, bumping and grazing shouting for help. Finally I was brought to rest by a jarring blow against something hard.

I had been caught by a metal bar right on the edge of a precipice which I could sense from the total absence of any landscape beyond what was a perfectly straight line going off in both directions either side of me - an abrupt end to the false landscape. I could not yet see into the precipice as I was not in a good position to do so. The slope I had come down was now vertical in its final twenty feet. I had been lucky to be caught by the metal bar, else I must have plunged over the precipice in my fall. I had no means of going back, but even so I took some time before lifting my head from the prone position to peer over the edge of the gargantuan structure where I now was. I was already afraid, as one might be, clinging precariously to a niche in a strange landscape, but as I peered over the parapet I went dizzy with panic. I was looking down a straight drop of a thousand feet or more into an ocean of black oily water, which stretched out in all directions from the towering wall at whose top I was perched. The whole atmosphere below me was dank and chill and above the sky was steel grey. The bar on which I sat was in fact the securing of an iron ladder which went vertically down the slimy black wall into the horrific ocean of turgid water which lurked in the murky gloom below. I could see other such ladders at intervals along the wall, which went as straight as a die to horizons on each side of me. How long I remained clinging to the bar I cannot remember - I cried out for help - despairing wails, which went unanswered. Finally, after hours - or days for all I know I set off in the only possible direction - down.

Down the iron ladder I went - hanging in space hundreds of feet up, fighting off panic and vertigo. At first the ladder seemed very sound, and I was able to control my fear by holding tight and stepping cautiously from one rung to the next. But further down the ladder was rusted and rotten and rungs bent and gave under my weight. Some were even missing. But I kept going, with pounding heart and twisted innards, never looking below, until I seemed to have been on the ladder for hours. Then one section suddenly shuddered and creaked - and for a moment I thought I was about to plunge to my death. I screamed as I felt the section above me break loose, and fall away, leaving no possibility of return. For a moment I was clinging on to members which were palpably bending under my weight, until the ladder hung out from the wall hanging on by the fixing of one side. I dared not look down, for fear that vertigo would claim me. I only stepped carefully down until I was ready to gain the next hopefully more secure section. But my foot searched and found only a shifting, disintegrating tangle of corroded iron. The slightest weight and it began to give. Waves of terrible panic surged through me - I think I screamed. I could feel even the piece to which I clung creaking and slowly moving. I looked up - always up. I knew if I looked down now I was lost. I feared the dizzying drop, but I feared the black oily water even more. I remembered my wife and children, my old life and job, then my new friends. I decided to let go, rather than await the collapse of the rotten ladder which still supported me.

"Get in". A voice sounded from nearby - I looked down and saw one of the Spectres in a boat on the black waters. I had finally reached the bottom!

"Where the devil is this place?" I said as I scrambled to get into the boat, still trembling from my horrific experience.

He smiled - the first time I saw a Spectre smile. "Why its the end of the world, as you might have guessed."

"There's nowhere like this!" I stuttered out - before falling silent.

"It is nowhere" he said.

* * * * *

I live simple life now. And I'm not looking for the next territory. I had a second chance, and I took it.

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