True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole (8 page)

A guitarist in the beach bar was serenading a German family with the ‘birdie song’; the father joined in, he was tone deaf. His wife and children looked embarrassed and tried to cover the discordant noise he was making by singing very loudly. But the guitarist did a cruel imitation of the father. Everyone laughed, including me, I’m ashamed to say. I swam and sunbathed and noticed lone men dotted amongst the greenery on the slopes of the cove. They were fully dressed and staring down at the young topless lying on the beach. One man scrambled down and began to take photographs of the girls. A German father objected violently and the man ran back up the slope. I stayed on the beach until the sun went down, then I ran back up the pathway and got the bus back to Palma where Spanish children were running amok with garlands of sweets around their necks. A Saint’s Day celebration. I got happily lost for two hours then went back to the hotel and after passing the Fattest Man in Spain, who was checking into the hotel, I went to my room and to sleep.

Sunday November 1
^st

The Fattest Man in Spain has a thin, beautiful wife; she goes to and fro between the hotel breakfast buffet and her husband’s mouth. She brings platefuls and bowlfuls and cupfuls and glassfuls until, eventually, he is satisfied. She then helps him to his feet and they leave the room.

He, she and me, together with thirty-four other people, are booked on a coach tour. We are going to see the Pearl Factory in Manacor, the Caves of Drach near to Porto Cristo, and an Olive Wood Factory. Our guide is young and handsome and cynical. He tells us in bitter tones that there were eleven million ‘traffic’ passing through Palma airport this year. He means tourists. He is also distressed by the convoluted olive trees we pass. “Look at them,” he cries. “Awful! The peasants don’t know how to look after them! Old, dirty!” On the road we pass a bar, now called ‘Reagan’ but previously called ‘Carter’ and before that ‘Kennedy’. Will it one day be called ‘Quayle’?

After only twenty minutes of travelling, the coach stops outside a mega souvenir shop and sherry warehouse. I like a shop as much as the next woman but there is nothing, nothing I wish to buy here. We next stop at the Pearl Factory in Manacor, but it is Sunday and apart from two sad-looking employees, nobody is working. We file past empty work benches where the girls’ aprons are slung just as they left them, no doubt in their eagerness to get away from the pearls. We are encouraged to go into the huge retail shop but I don’t buy anything, pearls are too redolent of the Queen and Mrs Thatcher. I sit outside in the sun instead.

We drive on to Porto Cristo and are told we should eat in a certain restaurant (lunch is not included in the price of the excursion). I decide not to eat there and instead go round the corner and have what the waiter recommends, which turns out to be a huge fish with more bones than flesh. Remembering the Queen Mother’s misfortune I abandon the fish and go to look for the sea. I spend the next half an hour sitting on a headland surrounded by sweet-smelling thyme. The sea is far below. It is perfectly quiet and very lovely. I sit and dangle my legs over the edge of the cliff and there is nobody there to tell me to “Come away from the side!” Then I go to see the Caves of Drach. The floors and steps are wet and very slippery; an old man in front of me falls and bangs his head, his son kneels over him with touching concern. Of the cave I will say very little. A cave is a cave is a cave.

I didn’t buy anything at the Olive Wood Factory either. Can this be the same woman who was ordered at gunpoint out of the Duty Free Shop at Moscow airport? Yes, it is. I’ve learned my lesson. Travel light. Olive wood is very heavy. I ate dinner in the hotel dining room.

“Solo?” asked the Maître D.

“Yes,” I reply. It seems like an admission of failure. I sit behind a pillar and watch the Fattest Man in Spain eat his dinner. He has a lovely face and a Rolex watch.

Monday November 2
^nd

I wait for a bus to Calvia. A man draws his car alongside me. He says, “I am Antonio, what is your name?” Foolishly I answer. “Susan.”

ANTONIO:

“Good now we are friends. Now Susan get into my car.”

SUSAN:

“No, Antonio, I won’t.”

ANTONIO:

“Yes you will Susan, get into the car.”

SUSAN:

“I’m going on the bus.”

ANTONIO:

“Where, Susan?”

SUSAN:

“I will not tell you, Antonio.”

ANTONIO:

“You are stupid, Susan.”

SUSAN:

“So are you, Antonio.”

ANTONIO:

“Goodbye, Susan.”

SUSAN:

“Goodbye, Antonio.”

♦

Calvia is a lovely green-shuttered town surrounded by mountains. It was four o’clock when I arrived. Nobody was on the steep streets. The shops were closed. According to my guide book the inhabitants of Calvia habitually indulged in loud communal conversations. It took twenty minutes to walk around the little town, including a visit to the Cathedral, which is distinguished by having a clock on each side of its tower (none of which shows the correct time). At five I was ready to leave. I stood at the bus stop in the main square. At six I was still there. It got cold. An old Englishman with a walrus moustache approached me and inexplicably asked me if I needed water. “I’ve got ten ten-gallon drums in here,” he said, proving it by lifting the boot of his car. I thanked him but declined the water. He then offered me a lift ‘half-way’ to Palma; again I declined. I was still sitting by the bus stop at half past six. By now the streets were full of chattering Calvians. A slow-witted young man was lurching up and down the main street uttering inarticulate cries. He came up to me, pulled me to my feet, and gestured towards the bottom of the hill. I sat down, he pulled me up. I sat down again. Eventually he gave up and lurched off. At seven-thirty I was told by an ironmonger that the bus was not coming to the square. On its return journey it left from the bottom of the hill just as the slow-witted man had tried to tell me. I braved entering an all-male bar and asked the barman for help. He kindly rang for a taxi and then gave me a Cointreau and ice on the house. Calvians are exceptionally nice people.

Safely back in Palma I ate in a Chinese restaurant. Jimmy Young was singing, ‘They tried to tell us we’re too young’, in the background.

I’ve changed my hotel room. I now have a balcony which overlooks Palma Bay. The view is magical.

Tuesday November 3
^rd

At breakfast I sit surrounded by at least twenty empty tables. However, an English couple choose a table so close to me that I have to move my chair in order to accommodate them. They both have braying upper middle-class accents.

SHE:

“Is that all you’re eating, fruit?”

HE:

“Yes.”

SHE:

“Did you see the boiled eggs?”

HE:

“Boiled eggs?”

SHE:

“Yes, they’re in a little basket next to those roll things.”

HE (
obviously lying
):

“I saw them but I don’t want one.”

SHE (
astonished
):

“But you always have a boiled egg, Clive.”

HE:

“I don’t want one today.”

SHE:

“Aren’t you well?”

HE (
angry
): “I’m perfectly well.”

SHE:

“Shall I get some coffee?”

HE:

“Not if it’s real.”

SHE:

“It is.”

HE:

“Then I shan’t have any.”

SHE:

“For the whole fortnight?”

HE:

“Yes, for the whole bloody fortnight.”

SHE:

“Oh Clive, don’t be like this, not on the first day.”

HE:

“Just because I don’t want a bloody boiled egg!”

♦

He was wearing black socks and sandals. If I were an airport official I would have confiscated Clive’s socks at customs control.

I lunched in Palma in the Plaza Major. A violent wind blows up suddenly and sends the parasols and tablecloths and tourist menus (475 pesetas) flying across the marble floor. While I am eating my paella an old man asks me if I want my shoes shined – he shows me a tin of black polish. I demur; I am wearing blue suede shoes.

In the old part of the city I see a beautiful leather bag. I buy it. It is so wonderful that I plan to throw it open to the public: admission £1. Sundays only. No dogs. No children. No photographs.

I have a drink in the hotel bar before dinner. An Englishman, who looks like a cartoon crook, asks me if I like the song, ‘As Time Goes By’.

“Of course,” I say. “Who doesn’t?”

“I’ll get the band to play it for yer, when you’ve ‘ad yer dinner,” he says.

As I leave the dining room I hear: “You must remember this…” being crooned into a microphone. I scuttle to the lift before crook-face can get off his bar stool.

Week Two

Wednesday November 4
^th

Porto Soller

Manuel, the hotel receptionist, tells me that the train to Porto Soller, on the west side of the island, leaves at 1pm. However, the taxi driver who is taking me to the railway station lies and says, “No more trains today, winter service. I take you, very cheap, 2,700 pesetas.”

I am known for my gullibility, so I agree and we embark on a most exciting mountain drive, during which the driver points out interesting sights such as an occasional car at the bottom of the chasm. However, he drives very carefully on the mad, convoluted roads and acts as my guide and Spanish teacher; he also asks me if my husband is dead. “I hope not,” I say and laugh, rather too loudly and for too long. I am missing laughing and talking.

“You have children?” he asks.

“Yes, four,” I reply.

“Not possible,” he says, politely.

Only
too
possible, dearie, I think.

After half an hour we start to descend and the driver tells me that the large town in the valley before us is Soller and was built inland in an attempt to avoid the nuisance of attacks by pirates. We then drive one and a half kilometres to the coast to Porto Soller, and I immediately like this small holiday resort with its palm trees and its clean beach and its out-of-season booted German hikers carrying long walking poles. A lovely tram rattles between the Port and the town through orchards of orange and lemon trees and lush back gardens. The tram stops outside the prettiest railway station in the world. Amongst other delights it has a vine-covered bar, an accurate station clock and spanking green and gilt paintwork on the platform.

I seriously covet a pair of gilded angel’s heads I see in a shop window near to the station, but I am never to find the shop open again. The inhabitants of Soller are stomping about in wellingtons because a light drizzle is falling. I buy a kilo of mandarins complete with green leaves, 175 pesetas. I have coffee, 100 pesetas, and catch the tram back to Porto Soller. I overhear two English business women talking. One says, “The trouble with David is, he uses too many commas.”

“For a finance manager,” says her companion.

Thursday November 5
^th

The sun has gone to my head. I’ve just gone into a bank and asked for 10,000 pizzas.

“You must go to a restaurant,” says the cashier, laughing, before giving me my 10,000 pesetas. I swim and sunbathe on the beach and then return to the hotel and wait for the photographer who is flying out from England today. I hope he won’t constantly whine about ‘the light’, like most photographers do.

Friday November 6
^th

The photographer, Barry, is extremely nice, he doesn’t whine once, he isn’t a bore, and he is enthusiastic about Porto Soller. He charms people into helping him. A lugubrious Frenchman is seduced away from his sunbed and asked to hold a portable light, and the deckchair man, Pedro, poses happily. He tells us not to come in the season, “Children cry, sun hot hot hot. Many people, disco noise all night.” According to the deckchair man the best months are May and September.

Saturday November 7
^th

Barry and I drive to Valldemosa, the monastery retreat of Georges Sand and Chopin. Ms Sand was hoping for a
grand amour
, but Chopin immediately fell ill, the weather was appalling, and the local people took against her and her entourage. They were unused to seeing a trousered cigar-smoking female in the vicinity. Her description of Valldemosa and the surrounding countryside as written in
A Winter in Majorca
is so perfect that I cannot equal it, but only urge you to read the book and visit Valldemosa for yourself. The high-walled gardens behind each monk’s cell are a special delight.

Sunday November 8
^th

The rain is pouring down, disconsolate Germans sit about in the hotel, twiddling their sticks. Barry leaves for England and I decide to hire a taxi for the afternoon and go to Calobra to see the Torrent de Pareis, a natural phenomenon, where the sea enters between massive cliffs and forms a river. Apart from a thin strip of sand the beach consists of small, sharp pebbles. The Torrent is amazing but the drive to it is quite incredible. We pass desolate wildernesses, mountain top reservoirs, and fields of petrified trees which look like creatures from
Fantasia
. The taxi dodges falling rocks, sudden springs of water, sheep, deer and goats, shaking foreign drivers in hire cars, and, once, a car pulling a
caravan
. ‘Give that man a medal’, I thought, as I watched the driver navigate around a crumbling hairpin bend, while my heart did a fandango and Mrs Caravan shut her eyes. These are serious roads. As a woman said in the car park at the bottom of the mountain, “I couldn’t have stood another minute.”