by Sue Townsend
This island, dear Readers, is Majorca.
Santiago Rusinol.
Using my ‘optic organisms’ I see many taxis passing by with signs behind the windscreens saying ‘libre’. I flag one down and ask for Palma Nova. I have a reason for wanting to visit Palma Nova; my daughter and her friend spent two weeks there in July. They have dined out on it since. A hotel barman had stripped all his clothes off, then run into the lift and shouted, just before the doors closed, ‘Who wants me?’ Nobody – as it turned out. Then there was the incident of the quarrelling honeymoon couple who had a fist fight in the hotel dining room (he ordered her to sell her horse on their return to England, she refused saying that she loved the horse far more than she loved him).
Worst of all were the battalions of drunken young European men who kept up a twenty-four-hour chant of ‘’ere we go, ’ere we go’. As some fell asleep, chanting, others rose from their beds and carried on. Remember this was in July.
On the October afternoon I was there the loudest noises came from the construction gangs singing as they worked on the new buildings. The beaches were deserted, as were the cafés and bars. The shops were devoid of any customers. A few elderly people strolled along the promenades. I went for a paddle; the sea was clear and warm. Unable to resist it I went for a swim. I hadn’t brought a towel but it didn’t matter. I lay on the sand and was dry in ten minutes. Both sides.
When the sun went down, promptly and spectacularly at 6pm, I caught a bus back to Palma. This took me into the city centre where I got lost. In my opinion it is essential to get lost in a new city, that way you are forced to walk about and discover places at a proper, natural pace. But you must have the taxi fare home, and it helps if you can remember the name of your hotel.
I wandered into the old part of the city and began a happy exploration of the winding alleys and steep narrow streets full of shops. The smell of leather filled the air. Palma has almost as many shoe shops as Leicester, so I felt quite at home. Eventually the jewelled espadrilles began to pinch so I flagged a taxi down on Jaime III, which is Palma’s equivalent to Regent Street, and went back to the hotel.
I dined in a Chinese restaurant which had no chopsticks on the premises. Everything came covered in Lee and Perrins sauce. A Chinese man stood at the door shaking hands with incoming customers. He had the sense not to attempt the same with outgoing customers. When the kitchen door opened I could see the Spanish cooks toiling over their woks.
Thus ended the first day.
Friday October 30th
I walked thirteen miles today. It took me eight hours. I set out to look at the Cathedral, a magnificent building which dominates the bay. As it happened the nearest I got to the cathedral was sitting on the terrace of a café opposite. I felt disinclined to miss any of the hot sunshine so I walked along the promenade admiring the flowering shrubs and trees. I stopped for a swim on an empty beach closely watched by three ancient gardeners who were sprinkling and watering grass seed onto the verge of the road.
They shouted encouragement as I swam (I think it was encouragement) and waved goodbye when I collected my things and headed away from them. At this point a little white dog joined me. I am frightened of most English dogs owing to their unpredictable tempers, but Majorcan strays displayed nothing but good-natured curiosity – they fought amongst themselves occasionally but I never saw them bother humans apart from butchers, whose doorways they haunted.
I talked to the mangy dog as we walked along the very edge of the bay. I told him that I was also alone and hadn’t spoken more than a few words to anyone for over thirty-six hours. He looked sympathetic. Together we crossed irrigation channels, and bridges. We detoured up side roads passing shut-up holiday villas. For some alarming miles we walked along a busy dual carriageway until we found a route back to the sea. We stopped at a restaurant and I ordered an excellent paella. I was the only customer. The dog sat under the table begging for scraps for a while, and then went to sleep. The proprietor forced me into having a drink with him – he wanted to tell me that he’d visited London several times and thought it was ‘very good place’. He asked me if my husband was ‘dead’. I told him ‘no’. He asked if my husband was ‘gone’. I told him ‘no’. Eventually I extricated myself from him with some difficulty and, leaving the dog asleep, I walked on without stopping until I came to C’an Pastilla which is a seaside resort blessed with wide sandy beaches, numerous shops and cafés, and conveniently placed pedestrian crossings. I mention the crossings because a dual carriageway runs along this part of the coast. Two elderly English women strolled along the beach, arm in arm, confessing lifelong resentments: ‘John was tetchy for forty years.’
‘So was Ron, for forty-one.’
It gladdened my heart to see so many elderly people in the autumn sunlight. You could almost see arthritic bones mending, backs straightening and complexions tanning. There were many pensioners swimming in the sea and sunbathing on the beach, and, later that evening, getting very drunk in the bars.
I journeyed on and at some point C’an Pastilla merged and then became Arenal, and as night fell the sound of the dreaded electric organ began to drift up from basement bars. Arenal belonged to the German elderly. They strolled along the pavements, hand in pudgy hand, trying to decide where to eat. I ate on the terrace of an Italian restaurant; 1,000 pesetas for soup, bread, salad, tagliatelli, two glasses of Torres, dry white wine, one bottle of mineral water, three cups of café con leche. The night was warm and the food was good, and I decided that I liked Majorca. I caught a bus back into Palma (75 pesetas) and was in bed by nine-thirty.
Saturday October 31st
Today I went in the opposite direction, to Illetas. I caught a bus behind my hotel in Palma and twenty minutes later I got off the bus and found myself in Paradise. Illetas is where the rich spend their holidays. The villas and hotels are magnificent and the foliage is even more abundant.
I walked up and down a hilly road until I came to a sign which said ‘to the beach’. I then walked through a gate and into the Garden of Eden. I passed a woman cleaning the shutters of a holiday villa with a wet sweeping brush, then I walked down a twisting path shaded by palms and hibiscus through which could be seen the unnaturally blue sea. Ahead of me I saw a youth – whom I took to be a young gardener pruning a bush; the leaves were shaking and scarlet petals were falling. The youth saw me approach and stepped from behind the bush. It was not a pair of secateurs in his hands, he was holding something quite different. I stood very still. He sat down on the raised edge of the pathway. There was nobody else about.
‘Put it away,’ I said in brisk English tones. He took his hands away and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, ‘You can see the state I’m in, what can I do?’ I shouted ‘Senora!’ to the woman cleaning the shutters. She didn’t turn round, perhaps she was a senorita. The youth continued his urgent manipulations. I didn’t know where to look but I was too scared to turn my back on him, and I was damned if he was going to stop me getting to the beach.
‘Bad boy,’ I said.
Suddenly three little children ran down the path. Before I could stop them they saw the youth. They turned back. A little girl began to cry. I was furious then. I shouted to the youth, who ran away holding his jeans in one hand, and himself in the other. He ran past the children, who screamed.
An old gardener came trudging up the path. He saw the fear on my face. I tried to explain. The gardener gave a spirited mime of what he thought had happened (rather too spirited in fact), then he saw the youth and ran towards him shouting violently. I carried on down the glorious pathway and found a perfect cove at the bottom.
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 l
one 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 1st
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 2nd
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 3rd
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 4th
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.’