But I knew that one day my perfect pitch, an ability I never realised I had, would come in more than just useful, and so it has proved. It may in the event have saved my life.
E059, Anagrams, Acrostics, Acronyms And Anecdotes For Cold Winter Evenings, was the experience that introduced me to the power of words. I caught the bug and for months I made word puzzles out of everything. I worked out, for instance, that anagrams of the names of the last four Tory prime ministers are Smears A Docile Ghoul, The Death, Grim Hatchet Age and John Major. The crossword clue - HIJKLMNO (5) - was also a great favourite, as was the eternal joy of knowing that ghoti rhymes with dish. I won’t go on. I did at the time and Suzie threatened to leave me.
It’s because of this propensity that I knew from the moment I met her that Goal would be a significant word. I could not resist its obvious anagram and, once I had seen it that way, it became a complete obsession. How or why Goal should have ever taken up with an hombre two years older than myself was a question that defeated my intellectual abilities. I was convinced that someone younger would better suit her needs. I wasn’t wrong.
I was out cruising one day a few weeks ago when Suzie was at The Castle. It was a beautiful day. A cloudless blue sat quietly over the mountains and fell to press against the flat of the sea. My vantage from the end of the Sierra Bernia road above Altea La Vella was breathtaking. It was one of those inspirational moments in life that makes you want to write a book.
But as I turned to survey the distant vista, I looked diagonally away from the coast to locate the promontory where Mick Watson’s mansion crowned a low hill. I mused, as one does on such reflective occasions, just how a Kiddington layabout like him could have bought, for no less than milliards of pesetas at the time, a mansion created by a lunatic Dutch builder, assuming, of course, that there are other kinds. Business was unusually good, Mick had told me, but I still could not imagine how profit at that level could be levelled even from Paradise, which on closer inspection seemed rather small.
I mounted my Raptor that morning and rode down the mountain, pausing on the way to inspect some of the handiwork that I had completed on the way up. You might ask what I was doing biking up the side of a mountain just after sunrise, at the kind of time when the only people out are last night’s stumbling disco-goers.
Well, I’ve taken up a new pastime, a passion no less and I had been indulging myself that morning. I have founded a group called No Molesta. It’s short for No Molinos, Està, no windmills, finish! According to Pedro there’s no decision yet on building wind farms on the mountains that ring Benidorm. But I don’t believe him. I reckon there’s money changing hands and deals being struck.
So No Molesta has taken things into its own hands. Our symbol is a windmill, an old-fashioned sort with sails. But the mill is white and the sails are red, arranged in front as a cross to indicate rejection. No Molesta has undertaken a project to paint these logos on every road, roadside rock, tree, fence, bridge or wall across the Sierras Bernia, Aitana and Guadalest. We are painting to protect and it was such work on behalf of the group that I had been doing on the way up that morning. No Molesta is not a big group, but we are hoping to have enough members soon so that we can legitimately employ the plural.
Back at ground level, I decided to meander my way across the campo, exploring the minor roads and back lanes that connect all the old farms and fincas between the mountain ranges. It seemed to be no time at all before I found myself, unexpectedly, as I convinced myself at the time, in Urbanisation Montesinos and, with Raptor revving beneath me, at the foot of the hill below Mick’s mansion.
Now there are times when you want to be noticed and times when you don’t. Riding around on a Raptor quad with a doctored exhaust might not be the best way to achieve anonymity, however. It’s even more impossible to be discreet when you are wearing a magical helmet, a helmet that raises you onto another plane!
For Donald and Susan Cottee the helmets that both created and transmitted such power were found on ebay, a matching Matchless pair. They were black, with tinted visors but no trim, snug fit, but with side pieces that covered the ears. And, crucially, their decoration was hand-painted, original, and not transferred. On either side of both helmets there was a flying M, making them Matchless. Wearing them, we are beyond compare, cannot be bettered for style.
They were offered for sale by a vendor in Punslet, an elderly rocker who had been banned from riding his bike by a retiring son. When I contacted him, I found the seller knew Benidorm well and had been a regular at one of the Hell’s Angels bars along the prom when he came here on holiday back in the eighties. He was happy they were going to a good home. And he was happy to accept my offer, which was generous. I know quality when I see it.
Now riding a quad bike is a pretty high profile thing to do. You are going to be noticed, especially when, like I have done, you have doctored a silencer to create a little more presence along the street. But when you have the right dome on top, it amplifies the magic you make. The kudos gain is massive. A pair of flying silver Ms flashing past really gets noticed.
So when Suzie and I mount our Raptor we can don our magic helmets. It’s a double joy. Not only are we both astride Mick’s power, though only loaned now unmistakably ours, we are also displaying, via our logos, a power of memory, a reminder of a past that Mick would surely prefer to forget. It was Mick and his Matchless that left Suzie La Manca, but Suzie, of course, has no recollection of the brand of the bike. All she remembers is what happened to it. So the magic is mine and mine alone. Every time Mick sees us astride his power, I allow myself a little smile, knowing that the point has hit home again. When my helmet flashes past, Mick knows again that his power is no longer between his thighs.
But when I admitted the mischievous thought of entering Mick’s house for a nose around into my schemes, I realised the limits of the dome’s magic. A quad bike passing by is noticeable enough, but a quad bike ridden by the most original and unmistakable helmet along this coast is simply unmistakable. There are times, it seems, when a dose of humility achieves more than an assertion of superiority. For the purposes of this escapade, I took off my Matchless dome and placed it in the box under the seat. I had to risk being ordinary for a while.
As my mind drifted from one imagined image I might present to another, I admitted what was my true motive. It was time to pursue my goal. It was the subterranean cavern, the nuclear shelter built by the mad Dutchman that interested me. Call me a nosy parker if you wish, but someone living the life of Riley had to be up to something and that was surely the best place to do it. Mick had given me the key for the lower garage along with his loan of the Raptor, just in case I needed to bring it back at short notice so I could even let myself in.
Thus when I rode up the curving road that skirted the lower part of the mansion’s hill, I paused to check the lower garage door. It was locked. I continued up to the top, the last steep approach drawing copious deliberate decibels from my quad’s low gears. If there had been anyone at home, something would have stirred. Nothing did. So it was with some confidence that I turned around and freewheeled back down to the lowest garage.
As expected, all seemed quiet. I let myself in with the remote that I knew Mick kept in a holder on the wall beside the door, and closed the folding doors behind me. Once inside, I paused for a while to play a couple of games of pinball on the machines that Mick kept permanently powered for his pleasure. The commotion of their operation sent whizzes, wheezes, whoops and whooshes into the fabric of the house. Still nothing stirred so the place seemed to be confirmed as truly empty.
I knew the code for the entrance of the subterranean shelter, of course, because when Olga showed us around the first time I had automatically registered the four digits of her finger movement when she used the keypad to open the door.
The entrance was not exactly visible, because it was tiled over to resemble just another piece of
wall. There was a clear gap in the grout identifying its rectangle, but you would have to know where to look to locate it and would have to connect its appearance with the keypad a couple of metres away to recognise it as an entrance. I entered Olga’s code. I suspected it might be the year of her birth. I was soon to discover I was right.
The digits released the door, which opened only a few centimetres or so. I had to lip my fingers round its left edge and pull quite hard against a strong spring to open it. I simply do not know why I never considered that the spring might close it behind me. I stepped inside, took a pace forwards into the shaft of light I had introduced to the void and whoosh the heavy door shut tight behind me with a rubber on rubber thud and the accompanying vortex of a near-airtight fit. I was in total, utter, complete, numbing darkness. It was not the darkness where after a moment or two your senses accommodate the change so that an eye can register newly-appearing points of light, skin can sense draughts and an ear can discern activity. This was the darkness of zero light, the quiet, near-perfect insulation married to the tranquillity of complete imprisonment.
I waited for a minute or more. I lifted my hand so that it was right in front of my eyes. I could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing. I had not moved my feet, however, since taking that one step, so I knew if I turned through one hundred and eighty degrees, the door should be one step ahead of me. I turned, took a pace and hit my nose against the wall, just to the left of the door. I could feel a heavy-duty hinge along an edge that ran from floor to ceiling, indicating that the door probably was as heavy duty as its closing thud suggested, and raising the possibility that its movement was powered.
I stepped to the right towards its opening side and felt for a light switch or handle. I felt my way methodically with fingertips and palms for a couple of minutes, but found neither. I explored further along the wall to my right. It was apparently blank. I moved back to the left and made wide sweeps with flat hands across the back of the door. It seemed completely smooth. I moved further left again and explored the wall on that side, but my fingers sensed nothing more than a smooth, cool, plastered surface with the granular roughness of emulsion paint. I dare go no further and felt my way back to the middle of the door.
As I shuffled my feet around the corner, my left hand again traced the vertical captured cylinder of the hinge. I stumbled a little and pressed forward for support. As my hand touched a lower part of the hinge, there was a sound, a musical sound. I paused for thought. Then I ran my fingers down the hinge, applying more pressure than a desire merely to sense would demand. I could feel divisions in the metal, junctions where door and jamb fittings met. Not all, but some of these sections sounded notes when I pressed. I concluded that the hinge had a keypad built into it, a number of sections that probably carried a small electrical charge which, when earthed by a finger, recorded a digit, a digit that was associated with a sound, obviously so it could be operated in the dark!
I ran my hand down the hinge. The sounds started roughly at head height and finished near the knee. There were ten different tones, running high pitch to low from top to bottom, starting low down on a C and completing a diatonic scale to the E above the octave. The tones were soft, but clearly audible, almost booming against the contrasting internal quiet. It was a keypad, the low C maybe a one and the top E a zero. That would make the year of Olga’s birth, the entry code from outside, CDCD, with the two C’s and D’s octaves apart. I tried it. Nothing moved.
My next idea was to imagine the keypad starting at zero and running up to nine, thus rendering Olga’s year as DEDE. Still nothing. I had to try several times, of course, because I could only locate the switches - none of which actually moved - by touch, and a brush against another along the way would of course destroy the code.
I tried the first few notes of Jingle Bells, God Save The Queen, the Coca Cola advert. I tried Mick’s birth year and then his birth date, in British, American and Japanese formats. I tried a chord or two and soon I was sounding like a cross between Karl-Heinz Stockhausen and Cecil Taylor in my cage. I was fast becoming nothing less than a virtuoso on the musical hinge when, to my amazement, the door clicked open, quickly followed by a dull thud. I had not cracked the code, but I had clearly cracked my head as the door then literally flung itself against me, knocking me off balance against the wall. Looking up from the floor, I was presented with a vision of heaven. I could see straight up Olga’s skirt as she stood back-lit in the doorway.
She looked down at me and paused. Then she finger-pressed keys set within the edge of the door and, lo and behold, lights came on everywhere. She let the door close and the lights stayed on.
“What the paroxysm are you doing in here?” she asked.
“Trying to get out,” I replied, getting up from the floor, my gaze still fixed on the location of interest.
“How the efficacious did you get in?” Her tone was assertive.
“I have the key to the garage. I came in to see if you had a soft cover for the Raptor so it doesn’t get wet in the rain.”
“You fornicating liar”. She clearly sensed she was on strong ground. “How did you get in here?”
“I’m not sure. I came into the house to try and find a toilet, pressed the keypad in the corridor and must have got lucky. The door opened, I came inside and then it closed behind me. Then I couldn’t see anything.”
“Olga’s manner seemed to change, abruptly. I am not sure whether it was a result of relief that I had merely stumbled upon entry or whether it was a sudden, calculated tactical change on her part, an attempt to sweeten me to find out what I knew. Something told me immediately, however, that I should play along.
“I think you are looking for your private little cave”, she said, approaching significantly closer than I expected. “What you want is a small dark place where you can find a little piece of excitement...”
“Well, actually...” I backed away, but I was hard against the wall.
“I can tell when a man is searching,” she said, doing a little searching of her own. “I can tell from the angle of his eyes, when his gaze falls on a curve or cleft of a woman’s body.” She was now almost pressed against me, uncomfortably but not unpleasantly close. “What is it you search for? Is it for the gold hidden away in my vaults? Is it a garden of earthly delights? Or do you want a dominatrix with a whip to torture you? Or maybe your taste is for straps, buckles, belts and studs? Or perhaps something a little more dangerous fires you up? How about a knife at the throat or a loaded gun at your head? Is that what you want? What are you looking for, Don Cottee, a private kingdom of pleasure?” It was at this point that she grasped my left hand and started to stroke it along the inner part of her thigh. “Or perhaps you need mummy’s shoulder to cry on?” My head was duly pulled towards her cleavage... “Or maybe you want your own little girl, a quiet, soft little girl who will do just what you want and whenever you want it?” She then collapsed into my chest, dipping her head beneath my chin and pressing hard against me.
“Actually, I was looking for a toilet,” were the words I tried to say in order to repeat my lie, but my feigned disinterest was suddenly contradicted by a spectacularly immediate and significant reflex reaction caused by Olga’s proximity, a reaction that she sensed, because she then did everything to encourage it.
“Let’s let Donkey Wonkey inside his cave...” she dribbled, pouting, as she led me a few steps along the corridor to the first of the doors. It opened to reveal a small but immediately comfortable room, minimally but sufficiently furnished like a cheap hotel. All Olga wanted to demonstrate, however, was the quality of the bedsprings.
I hesitate to offer much more description. The word ‘cave’ played a significant role, as did the word ‘goal’, the latter being achieved upon exploration of the former. We weren’t inside long, however. It’s many years since I came close to a stunningly beautiful, twenty-some-year-old woman who wanted me, apparent
ly more than I wanted her, if that was possible. Something didn’t quite add up, but it very nearly multiplied.
I felt I should be wearing one of the t-shirts you have printed in Benidorm, the ones that say ‘I’m not sixty-four, but twenty-four with forty years of experience’. That afternoon, however, it was Olga who should have worn the t-shirt. Not, of course, that she was wearing anything by the time we got down to business. To say events took me by surprise would be considerable understatement. To say that I was pleasantly surprised... You don’t need me to tell you how pleasant it was.
It was probably no more than fifteen minutes later that we were both again at the door. She gave me a kiss and then turned round to face away from me, so her body covered and hid the hinge that she faced. She was deliberately hiding the fall of her fingers from my gaze. They played their little tune in a deft allegro, the eight digits, unfortunately for Olga’s clear plan, each producing their own little tone, perfectly pitched. I realised immediately where to place the zero on the scale, because the last four were again the year of her birth. No wonder I couldn’t get out earlier. So it was four to get in and eight to get out. Someone around here was seriously into security. I now knew, in musical tones, her exact birth-date in US format. She bundled me past her into the corridor and then followed. It was her delicate gentle hand that led me decisively into the garage to locate the Raptor.
“Donkey by name and donkey by ... nature,” she said, lasciviously locating the object of her interest. “Olga’s little cave might be open again one day soon if Donkey brings his toy.”
And with that she placed me on the bike and took the four paces needed to retrieve the door remote from the wall as if it had all been rehearsed. The garage door began to whine open. When the Raptor’s starter engaged, the noise in the enclosed space was deafening, but Olga’s blown kiss as I passed would have been silent anyway. I rode home that afternoon on lightened suspension. I had achieved my goal. I had penetrated the cave. I had found the way in and perfect pitch had taught me the way out. Surely there were more riches to be encountered there!
A Search for Donald Cottee Page 29