Ibiza Surprise (3 page)

‘What does he know about Gilmore Lloyd?’ I inquired.

‘Spoiled, rich and beautiful. What we all know already. Now. Sarah . . .’ said Flo.

‘Oh, I know,’ I said. Flo will make out that I’m overeager. But if you don’t put yourself across, who’ll do it for you? And you might not get a second chance.

At the beginning of Easter week, I flew to Ibiza alone.

I don’t mind flying. Except when I’m out with a new boy, I have a very strong stomach, and the Trident from London was full of middle-aged businessmen. I opened a magazine and looked up my horoscope.

I’d been in Spain once before, with Mummy during the school holidays. It must have been just before she got fed up with having an alcoholic society husband with no money, for she used occasionally to take out Derek or me to toughen our cultural muscles: the rest of the time we were foisted on aunts, or other parents, or even on decent old helps in the house. Daddy, I believe, wouldn’t have minded seeing much more of us, but once he’d got us, he simply didn’t know what to do. You can’t drag an eleven-year-old schoolboy to impromptu late-night parties full of wags and wits and bunches of brainy sophisticates, and expect him to mix. Or if you do, and he is totally silent, or even worse, sick, then you simply don’t take him again. Derek never understood that. And later on, when he was grown up, he had missed out on the training: he hadn’t the address or the nous to keep in with Daddy’s lot.

I might have done. I suppose I could have had a pretty marvellous time, but by then it wasn’t my scene. The sort of people who wanted a tame titled jester and didn’t mind if he drank, weren’t my sort, and I didn’t enjoy watching my father sing for his supper. He was neat and witty and relaxed and so easy-going it just wasn’t true. I don’t think I ever heard him say an unkind thing in his life: even about Mummy, even about the fat stockbrokers whose villas he stayed in. He sold them his company because they had money, and he needed money to live on. He didn’t seem to despise them.

But I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t go to the Lloyds’ and expect to live on their handouts. They meant to be kind, but I’d made that quite clear before I left London. If I went to Ibiza, I would earn my board and my ticket, by cooking. And after a lot of pricey phone arguments, Mr Lloyd had agreed.

I turned over the magazine. The little plastic food trays had come and had gone, and I had the feeling that someone was watching me. I think that’s always exciting.

Anyhow, I was wearing my hair up, and this beret, and this little baker-boy suit with long patterned stockings, and sitting in a first-class seat beside a window that wasn’t full of dribbling wing, for which Janey’s father was entirely to be thanked, when this man came and sat down, thump, beside me and somehow I knew at once who had been looking.

He smelt American. He was big and broad-shouldered, with that super kind of Swedish suede jacket in Sahara-sand colour and a long white polished tie and hair growing downward, like Jacques Tati. He had a big gold watch showing the seconds, the hour, the day, the date, the month, the moon phase, and the telephone number of his stockbroker; and a gold signet ring on his right hand. Nothing on his left.

‘I’m terribly sorry, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid you’ve got half my seat belt.’

He was from Minnesota, unmarried, and his father had been a senator with big real estate interests. He had three Cadillacs and an antiques and art-dealing business, with branches all over the place. He even had a shop in Ibiza, called Gallery 7. I asked him what he sold.

He said: ‘Well, Sarah, maybe you think this is just a sleepy little island full of sleepy little peasants selling straw shopping bags and cheap castanets to the hundred-dollar package-deal holiday trade. But I can tell you, I don’t sell ballpoint pens made up to look like banderillas. Have you heard of St Paul de Vence? Biot? Rocque-brune?’

‘They’re all artists’ colonies, aren’t they?’ I said. ‘On the Riviera.’

There wasn’t any fizzy stone ginger, so he had bought me a large sherry. I bought myself a pack of duty-free cigarettes to give to Janey’s father. I had six pounds left in my bag. It wasn’t much.

‘That’s right,’ said Austin. He was called Austin. I was praying he was also called Rockefeller or even Woolworth, but we hadn’t got beyond Christian names.

‘And that’s what’s happening right here in Ibiza. The weather’s good, the living’s cheap, and any guy with talent who’s not too fussy can find a hole somewhere to work and a ready-made market in summer. Sure, they’re shoving up concrete hotels on the beaches and selling urbanisation parcels like peanuts, but the place is still full of snazzy villas in nice discreet corners owned by big names who want to get away from it all. Singers, businessmen, politicians, actors. You name ‘em. In a year or two they’ll move on, but Ibiza isn’t Majorca just yet. That’s my market.’

I said: ‘You mean you buy paintings and stuff from the colony and sell it all in your shop?’ I wished, for the first time, I had really listened to Mummy laying off on the topic of new advanced art. It gave Daddy hysterics.

‘Sure. Or Gregorio, my manager, does. We sell carvings and oils and ceramics and jewellery, and mix it all with antiques from the mainland. We have a workshop of our own for repairs and a bit of repro work, and we tour exhibitions as well. I’ve got one in the gallery right now of North American Art in the Round that’s travelling right across Europe. You know what I mean? Caro? Volten? Philip King?’

‘I’d love to see it,’ I said. The only Art in the Round I’d ever heard of was a strip show in Soho that George had told us about. ‘But I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I’m just visiting a girl I was at school with.’

‘Come tomorrow,’ said Austin. ‘Bring your friend. Where are you staying?’

‘Near a place called Santa Eulalia,’ I said. ‘At the Casa Venets with the Lloyds.’

His big, scrubbed, handsome face glowed with delight.

‘You know Tony Lloyd? But of course, you’ll be the same age as Janey. Well, whadda you know?’ He thought of something I ought to know. ‘Maybe you haven’t been to the Casa Venets before. But when you get there, you’ll find half the antiques are from Mandleberg’s.’

‘That’s the name of your business?’ I said. He seemed awfully simple. But then, I used to think George was simple, and Flo used to get furious.

‘Austin Mandleberg, that’s me,’ he said. ‘Go right up to the city wall and climb through the old town to the Calle de San Guillermo, No. 7. That’s my gallery.’

‘My name’s Sarah Cassells,’ I said. ‘I’ll come tomorrow. I’d adore to see all your things. Are you going to stay long?’

‘Oh, a few weeks, maybe. I get around,’ said Austin Mandleberg. ‘I’ve another gallery in Seville. Ever been to Seville?’

‘Only once,’ I said.

That had been the term I was Poppy Phillip’s best friend. The parents were always keen for me to come with them on holidays. If Mummy arranged it, she usually saw I had decent clothes but forgot to give me enough spending money. If it was Daddy, he didn’t do either. I loved the lush hotels and the big cars and the foreign boys fighting to get you out on the beach after midnight, but I hated the pauperdom.

‘You must come again,’ said Austin Mandleberg. ‘I’d sure like to show you Seville.’

He didn’t seem to have heard of Lord Forsey, sitting on the horse-winch with his throat cut. I wondered what he’d think, when he got to Ibiza and heard the latest sensation. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Pyrenees poke through the clouds. They were snowy, like one of Flo’s batches of tea cakes whose royal icing had run.

‘Where do you stay, when you come to look after business?’ I inquired.

It was a pity, rather. There was a house over the shop. I wondered if Gregorio cooked.

I couldn’t quite make out his annual income in dollars, but by the time we were circling over Ibiza, I knew quite a lot about Austin Mandleberg, and I’d told him about Daddy, too, in the end. He was very quiet and intense about it and held my hand for the last half hour, and I could feel my head swimming a bit, with the Dry Sack and the chatting up and the fact that we were flying on our ear for ten minutes awaiting permission to land. I like my horizons horizontal. I always have.

Then we came in very low over a little network of runways set in a waste of flat scrub. A man in a straw hat was bent over weeding or something in the middle, his mini-scooter propped on a stump. He didn’t look up as we shaped up to land. I was sorry. I always feel if the undercarriage doesn’t come down, at least they could jump up and point.

The undercarriage must have come down, for we landed on it.

I was first out of the aeroplane. It was warm, and there was this super smell I’d forgotten, made up of cigar smoke and palm trees and dry dust and strong scent and olive oil and something I thought must be orange blossom. I’d looked at Lord Luck before we left London, and he said it was a good day for sport, but I must control my impulses towards evening. Celeste, on the other hand, had said Mars was moving through Scorpio and should give me the energy and determination to carry out my plans. I couldn’t see Janey. I turned on the aircraft steps and said to Austin: ‘When is your birthday?’

He said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ and then we got it worked out that he was Virgo. He didn’t seem worried about it, but I wished I’d looked it up before coming. Celeste hadn’t said anything about Virgo.

I took a long time to cross to the airport buildings with Austin. If Janey was waiting, which I doubted, there was no point in depriving her of the view. Beyond the other planes and the red-and-white Campsa tankers rushing between them, the land stretched flat as a pancake to a lot of green woolly hills with Martini hoardings and windmills in front of them. If you turned back, you could see more hills on the other side of the airport, with a sheet of water before them, divided into sort of dikes. There was a long, low white thing, like a thin clip of paper.

‘Salt,’ said Austin. ‘Those are salt flats you see. They ship out thousands of tons from that anchorage. Let me carry your coat.’ And we walked up the slope beneath a flowery lattice and between paths edged with cacti and small palms and purple bougainvillea and red climbing geraniums, and into the airport.

Janey wasn’t there, and there were no messages. That was no surprise: Janey never yet got anywhere on time, and it just meant that something more interesting had turned up, and I would have to wait.

I didn’t altogether despair. The place was modern and airy and full of taped music, mother-in-law’s tongue in long boxes, and well-set-up soldiers in clean grey-green uniforms, with cross straps and big black leather holsters on their left hips. Or maybe they were just policemen. There was one with a nice smile.

My case took ages: they had to send out and look for it. By the time Austin tracked it down there was still no sign of Janey. Outside on the tarmac was a line-up of bright-coloured buses: Lunn-Poly, Global and Fit; and two taxis, and a beaten up Seat 600, and a Cadillac. The red-and-silver Iberia bus had gone off already.

I turned to Austin.

‘It
has
been fun,’ I said. ‘And you’ve been sweet to help me so much. Janey won’t be long now. May I say goodbye until tomorrow?’

He held my hand.

‘Now what makes you think I’d leave a nice girl like you standing alone at an airport? We’ll just leave a message here for your friends, and then I’ll run you to Santa Eulalia.’

It was a super Cadillac. We swept away from the muzak and the noise and the long breathy hoot of planes standing waiting, like vacuum cleaners stuck on a carpet. I took my baker-boy hat off and let my hair whip behind, and the spring flowers and lemon trees and green fields and white houses with shutters all flashed by, and the signs for Pastis 51 and Tio Pepe, and the windmills, like spider’s webs spinning with fishtails, until Austin said: ‘Look.’

Above the treetops far ahead was a little wedge-shaped pink hill full of houses, with a sort of clock tower on top. In the setting sun, it looked like a bride’s cake. I crossed my fingers and said:

‘It looks like a bride’s cake,’ and Austin agreed. To hell with Celeste.

‘That’s Ibiza,’ he said. ‘The town Ibiza, I mean. The clock is on the cathedral tower. My gallery is a couple of lanes further down. You’ll love it.’

‘I know I shall, Austin,’ I said.

We went through Ibiza to get to Santa Eulalia, but we didn’t go up to his gallery. We turned through a sort of boulevard with shops and cafes and trees at the foot of the hill, and then out to a dazzle of ships and blue sea and a long line of boats queuing neatly right along the main road. A square white-masted building showed up on the right, just past a boatyard with someone’s old ferryboat high up on the stocks, and Austin nodded his head as we passed.

‘The Club Nautico. The yacht marina and boatyard.’

I looked back, just as he said: ‘My God, Sarah, I’m sorry.’ It was the boatyard, I suppose, where a week or two back, Daddy was found on the horse-winch. I gave a brave smile at Austin, but it didn’t upset me, not then. In fact, in a funny way, it made me feel more at home.

At the next corner, there was a notice saying Santa Eulalia 13.5, and a long, straight avenue of leafless trees leading north. Austin let out the Cadillac just as the sun disappeared. Ahead of us, the sky had a few little pink clouds, but all the colour had gone from the roadside. I shut my eyes and let the wind carry my hair.

It was a good road. I felt the drag as Austin slowed down and took a bend sharp on the right, and then we picked up speed again in a long rising course. I opened my eyes and saw the new lights of a road cafe slide behind, and a dark field full of goats. On the right, the road crumbled into a sort of dusty red ditch, overhung by a little wood with a lot of juniper undergrowth and an old car with no wheels at one end. Austin turned into the dirt and drew up. At last.

It wasn’t even off the road: not properly, but I’d forgotten how soon it gets dark. My hair settled all over my face, like Brigitte Bardot, and I pushed it back, carefully, with my hands, which cleared the way for Austin’s Sahara suede cuffs to go right round my back.