Five Bestselling Travel Memoirs Box Set

by Twead, Victoria

  It must have been an hour later before I finally dozed off with my head full of spiralling images of creatures at ascending levels in the food chain. Then without warning Joy let out a scream. As we both sat bolt upright she screamed again and head-butted me on her rapid evacuation from the room. With a throbbing temple, swirling confusion and not a little fear, I raced after her.

  ‘Something just fell on me. Something heavy. Go and see what it is,’ she blubbered.

  With one hand rubbing my forehead and the other holding a not very menacing toilet brush, I edged back into the bedroom with Joy peering over my shoulder. Expecting a puma to leap out or a rabid bat to fly at me from any angle, I menacingly flicked the loo brush back and forth epée-style. It became quickly apparent in the sparsely furnished bedroom that whatever beast had ventured in had also ventured out again. It was only on closer inspection of the bed that we realised what had actually attacked Joy was the fitted undersheet as it pinged free from the mattress. I added the toilet brush to my arsenal at the side of the bed and we recommenced what was left of a fitful night’s sleep. Tomorrow we had to learn how to pay back £165,000, and we had four days of tutoring in how to do it. We’d both slept better.

  CHAPTER 4

  The sun filled the bedroom with an unearthly resonance that demanded we wake. I had one of those split second ‘where am I?’ moments before the rabid butterflies began to gnaw on the inside of my stomach. A new life began today. Not a trifling matter to ponder before even a bowl of cocoa puffs had passed my lips.

  At 7.45 a.m., the sun was already baking the pine furniture in the lounge, releasing an unusual warm-wood odour, a substitute for the damp plaster smell that I was accustomed to in Bolton. I filled the kettle with warm water from the cold tap and removed the jar of Carioca coffee from a plastic bag containing a basic welcome pack from el presidente. There were two cans of San Miguel beer, a bottle of water, a carton of semi-skimmed milk and a jar of apricot jam. No bread, just the jam. Eating was out of the question anyway and after showering and putting on shorts and t-shirts we set out for the bar in anxious silence.

  We decided to take the scenic route, walking around the perimeter of the complex down past the sea and back up what I breathlessly dubbed Cardiac Hill. Two or three florid bathing caps bobbed in the gentle wake a hundred yards from the rocky beach where neatly folded towels lay waiting like faithful pets.

  For the last few working days at the market, a vision of early morning dips in the warm ocean provided a constant distraction from my ice-cold fingertips and interminably damp feet. It was one of many anticipated pleasures but for now it would remain just that.

  The supermarket was already busy with holidaymakers clutching cartons of milk, sticks of bread and yesterday’s editions of the Daily Mirror and the Sun. One man dressed in knee-length, green Hawaiian shorts and with a white T-shirt tucked in at one side only shuffled across the car park reading the day-before-yesterday’s sports news. An open-top Porsche narrowly missed him as it screamed past in first gear. The young, blonde driver acknowledged the close call with the barest of sideways glances whilst the oblivious sports fan carried on reading.

  It was nine in the morning and Mario, one quarter of the previous partnership – in ownership, not in bulk; he made up four-fifths in that department – was already slicked in sweat as he carried two crates of empty Dorada beer bottles to the outside store cupboard.

  Mario was the kind of man that casting directors would have hunted high and low to play the part of an archetypal ice-cream vendor. His chubby face was decorated with a handlebar moustache and two other tufts of hair protruded above his ears like upturned question marks. His hairy belly poked out from between a grubby white t-shirt and an inadequately-sized pair of blue shorts. ‘It’s flickin’ hot,’ he smiled, ‘You gonna love it,’ he added with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice. The worry fairies set to work.

  ‘I show you how for four days, then you on your own. Piece a cake. I tell you who’s trouble and who’s OK. OK? OK, let’s go.’

  In a kitchen obviously never designed for such a large gathering, the three of us pressed together as Mario demonstrated the correct place to hit the fridge door so that it would open; the culinary implement most suitable for turning off the gas in an emergency (a pair of tongs); which knife he used for chopping salads; which he used for paring fruit and which he used for slicing meat (the same knife as it happens). He also exhibited which cloth to use for drying dishes, holding hot pans and wiping sweat off his face and fat belly – as feared, the same cloth for all tasks.

  You may have gathered, as we had by this early stage, that the health and hygiene efforts of the Smugglers Tavern were a little deficient. Joy and I gave each other panic-filled glances and at every new revelation her nostrils flared in horror. We made mental notes for sweeping changes.

  After an hour the heat was unimaginable. We may as well have been swimming. Perspiration turned our clothes several tones darker. Mario was still moving around with an uncanny speed considering his bulk and I guessed the temperature was something that we would also eventually get used to.

  He showed us how to prepare the local spud accompaniment, papas arrugadas, or Canarian potatoes, using a pan that could house a family of four, and a kilo of sea salt. Then, after an interactive tour of the general workings, we trailed our mentor to the cash-and-carry where a juggernaut-like trolley was piled with such goodies as 24-packs of tuna, beans and corn.

  When we returned, David and Faith were inside the bar with Jan, Mario’s wife. Jan was humming to herself, flicking a feather duster at the mirrors and bottle shelves that occupied the back of the bar area. David and Faith sat on tall bar stools ‘testing’ the beer.

  ‘How’s Mal?’ I asked, sensing from Faith’s face that all had not gone to plan.

  ‘He’s been detained,’ she replied frowning, ‘in Madrid.’

  Apparently the reams of paperwork in his personal flight bag were not sufficient to warrant a smooth transition from Salford to the sub-tropics and he had been bound over by a zealous customs official in Madrid until the missing form could be located and faxed through.

  A succession of phone calls had indeed located the necessary piece of paper and all being well Mal would be enjoying some in-flight Whiskas on the last leg of his journey tomorrow.

  ‘Well, it’s all ours now,’ I said looking round as Jan took her humming and flicking outside. The bar hinted at mock Tudor. Between the black painted beams, the white ceiling was turning a grubby yellow. Horse brasses behind the bar and on the walls looked absurdly out of place in this sunny clime.

  ‘They’ll have to go,’ said David. ‘And those.’ He nodded towards two fluorescent yellow posters that had started to curl off the two floor-to-ceiling windows either side of the main door: ‘Tonites specal – leg of labm – 750ptas’; ‘Open 6 too midnite’. They looked like they were written by a 2-year-old dyslexic during an earthquake.

  Bench seats around the walls were complemented by a mixed array of black, wooden chairs that surrounded eight rectangular tables. They were protected by faded pink tablecloths which were in turn enveloped in thick sheets of clear plastic. This top layer had acquired a patchy adhesiveness due to two years of alcoholic spillages. Sweat was rolling off our arms leaving small pools of water on the surface.

  This stickiness was nothing compared to what carpeted the terracotta floor tiles behind the bar. For some reason this region seemed to have been a mop-free zone with the previous owners. The bar area was overrun with gas bottles, soft drink canisters, beer barrels, fridges and drink coolers. Thin yellow tubes ran in all directions, looping around each other like a treacherous roller-coaster before disappearing into the many black recesses. All this in an area not much bigger than a double bed. What clear floor space remained was tar-black. Every step involved a ‘schlup, schlup’ to free footwear from the glue-like texture.

  We drew up a long list of all the cleaning jobs that needed doing over the next few days
. We also decided on a work rota. As we were going to continue Mario’s opening hours – 6 p.m. until midnight – until the busy summer season began, we decided that we could work in couples, one night on, one night off. Daytimes would be spent cleaning and removing much of the tack that sullied the bar. We’d made the decision that once the summer season got underway we should open for lunch as well but we would deal with that once the initial shock had subsided.

  It was during this first meeting-session that one of the biggest shocks to our business partnership was revealed.

  Joy had set about sweeping behind the bar amassing an impressive collection of bottle tops, cigarette ends and spent matches. Faith was just about to help herself to a Fanta Orange when suddenly she screamed, ‘Daaaaaviiiiid!’

  ‘What’s wrong? What have you done?’ We all fussed round her expecting our first use of the woefully inadequate first-aid box.

  Faith, not bearing the most continental complexion at the best of times, had turned Arctic white. Her eyes were aghast with horror, her lips trembled.

  I followed her frightened gaze to Joy’s refuse collection anticipating a severed finger or a dead rat but there was nothing that you wouldn’t expect to find behind a particularly grubby bar.

  ‘Faith’s got a phobia about matches,’ muttered David, somewhat embarrassed.

  There was a short period of silence while we waited for the punch line. None was forthcoming.

  ‘Matches?’ we both queried in unison. I couldn’t contain a slight smile.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ said Faith. ‘I’ve always had it. If I see a match in the street, David has to go and get rid of it.’

  David nodded in confirmation.

  ‘Is it just burnt matches or any matches?’ I asked half sarcastically.

  ‘All matches... and matchboxes... and ashtrays.’

  ‘Ashtrays?’

  ‘Sometimes I don’t have to see one, but if I think there’s a match inside a matchbox or an ashtray I get a panic attack,’ explained Faith. ‘My brother’s got a phobia about wet wood,’ she added, as though this reduced the oddness of her own fear.

  ‘That’s going to be kind of awkward if you’re working in a bar, isn’t it?’ said Joy.

  ‘Everybody will have to make sure all the ashtrays are empty and check the floor before I come in,’ said Faith.

  ‘We’ll have to tell people to use lighters instead of matches,’ suggested David, keen to play down the potential seriousness of this revelation. ‘We’ll get some Smugglers lighters made up and give them out whenever we see someone lighting up.’

  ‘Sell them you mean,’ I interjected.

  ‘Either way, we’re going to have to make this a match-free zone,’ he added.

  I could see this was going to be an ongoing problem. I sneaked a glance at Joy. She raised her eyebrows and flared her nostrils and we carried on our tasks without further discussion of the subject.

  Bearing in mind Faith’s match aversion, it was decided that on our respective shifts she would do the cooking and David would work out front. Similarly, I was to be the chef in our team with Joy using her outgoing nature to placate the customers out front. But, thankfully these roles were not set in stone.

  The following day, our routine was repeated with cleaning and shopping sessions during the daytime and cooking lessons with Mario for a few hours during the evening. It was obvious from the number of customers who poked their heads into the kitchen to say hello that Mario was a popular figure in the community. Knowing this merely added to the pressure. Understandably, we were going to be continually compared to the previous owners on all accounts, from the quality of food to the friendliness of service. I wondered how could we compete when Mario had almost two years’ head start on making friends.

  It still seemed surreal to be standing in a commercial kitchen surrounded by all manner of adult culinary equipment. The knives looked natural in Mario’s huge mitts but felt cumbersome and awkward when I picked them up. The biggest blade I had ever used was a serrated bread knife. The largest in our set of black-handled weapons was the size of a cutlass.

  Being the proud owner of a dozen matching condiment sets felt strangely uneasy. I was a drummer, a market worker. What authority did I have to be responsible for 12 condiment sets?

  ‘Is all flicking easy,’ Mario said, sensing my worry. He was tossing various ingredients into frying pans whilst simultaneously pushing buttons on the microwave and chopping greenery for the salad garnishes. ‘Is all in the timing. You start with what takes longest and cook it in order. You just got to know what takes longest. No problem. No?’ We nodded, unconvinced, dreading the time when Mario wasn’t around to instruct us in ‘a little bit of this and a lot more of that’. That day came sooner than we anticipated. A lot sooner.

  On the morning of the following day we were a little taken aback to hear that Mario thought the time had come.

  ‘OK. I go to Santa Cruz. You carry on. I back sometime today. Cheerio.’ And he was gone.

  Terror struck. We had flipped a coin and Joy and I were going to be first to fly solo with David and Faith on standby just in case we had to make an emergency landing.

  ‘Shit,’ said Joy succinctly as we watched Mario’s car disappear along the shimmering tarmac. The mountains in the distance seemed to close in, the sea swelled up ready to swamp us in a deluge of incapacity.

  ‘Right, well... I suppose I’ll get shopping, you do the salad prep... do you think?’ I drove off in our red Renault 5 that we had taken on long-term rental. Five minutes later I was back. ‘What do we actually need?’

  ‘I don’t know, look in the fridge and see what we haven’t got.’

  I made a list and headed off again, returning after two hours with enough tomatoes to open a ketchup factory, four big boxes of what I thought were hamburgers but were in fact meatballs and enough toilet rolls to keep an army of little Labradors playful for years.

  Joy in the meantime had managed to cut just the tip of one finger off and upon my return was standing pale-faced and wide-eyed with her hand under the cold-water tap.

  ‘Had a bit of an accident,’ she explained unnecessarily. Splashes of blood on the table gave the game away.

  The cut wasn’t as bad as was feared and soon the flow stopped although Joy’s usually dark complexion was still several hours away.

  Despite an early start, we were still chopping meat and preparing the bar at 5.45 p.m., 15 minutes before our advertised opening time.

  ‘You carry on in here, I’ll stick some music on and put the chairs outside,’ said Joy. I would have been happy drying the same pan for the rest of the night if it meant putting off baring ourselves to the public for the first time.

  At 6.05 p.m., the sound system announced that REM were losing their religion. I was losing my nerve even quicker. By 6.25 p.m. we hadn’t had a single customer and I was beginning to think that this wasn’t so bad after all. Then they arrived. Not one, not even one family, but one huge crowd descended on us. Rather naively I had envisaged a comfortable gap between one customer’s simple request and the next. At our present level of capability half an hour would have seemed fair. But that great legislator, Murphy, had other plans. Daylight disappeared as about 20 people surged through the wooden doors clamouring for our attention. I wanted to get back to my pan, but it was too late.

  We both stood behind the bar, gulping audibly, as we faced the inspection committee.

  ‘So, you’re the new ones, are you,’ boomed a thick Yorkshire accent. ‘I hope you’re not bloody well going to put the price of ale up!’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. We’re not going to change much to start with.’ I assumed that Mario and his partners were popular landlords and it was best not to veer too quickly from their style.

  ‘You can change what you like s’long as you don’t put the prices up,’ countered Yorkshire. ‘I’ll have a pint of El Dorado and half a shandy for Eileen.’

  Eileen was two feet behind, and two feet down, sm
iling shyly up from his elbow. Yorkshire could see I was a little shocked at her stature; ‘She might be small but she’s got a helluva voice. You want to get her singing here one night. I won’t charge you much,’ he winked.

  ‘Yeah, I just might do that,’ I lied, as Eileen tottered off, two hands steadying her glass of shandy. ‘Who’s next?’ I asked the crowd as my confidence began to grow.

  ‘Pina Colada and a Tequila Sunset.’ The confidence ran for shelter.

  ‘OK. What’s in those exactly? I asked the young couple in matching Coventry City football shirts.

  ‘I don’t know. You’re the barman pal. New to the job, are you? You won’t last long here if you can’t make a cocktail. Ask the bird over there,’ he said, pointing at Joy.

  I didn’t want to make any enemies just yet so without fuss I asked Joy if she knew the ingredients. Joy had her head in the beer fridge looking for orange juice.

  ‘There’s a cocktail book down there on the bottom shelf. Check in there.’

  I picked up the book and dozens of baby cockroaches scattered in all directions as the roof was lifted off their commune. With a knotted stomach, not wanting to draw attention to the fact, I turned round to face the couple and was just about to rest the book on the bar when I spotted two hairs sticking out from between the pages. Then the hairs started twitching. Before my brain could register why this book would contain dancing hairs, it suddenly became alive with scuttling roaches searching for an escape from their flying island. I tossed it on the floor and out of the corner of my eye saw a riot of roaches emerge from the pages.

  ‘How about I fix you both the new house special? It’s twice as strong and because it’s our first night you can have two for the price of one.’

  The Coventry team was eager so I filled two tall glasses with generous shots of whatever came to hand, namely Peach Schnapps, Triple Sec, Cherry Brandy and Galliano, topped up with a blast from each of the fizzy soft drinks – Sprite, Fanta Lemon, Fanta Orange, Coke, Tonic Water – and a squirt of spray cream to top it all off.