‘I thought you’d only bought one,’ Nina said.
‘And have you miss out on all the fun? Here, fill ’er up.’
Nina didn’t need telling twice. ‘I’m going to get those little shits back, if it’s the last thing I do,’ she vowed.
‘That’s my girl!’
Their driver, sensing the mood of his passengers, hared off up the road with his foot to the metal, and with a complete disregard for health and safety or the speed limit, racing to catch up with the truck. Nina had assumed their little convoy of three jeeps were the only ones doing this excursion, but she’d not made allowances for the numerous other tour companies who all had an assortment of jeeps and trucks on the road, and a kind of war had broken out with rival “gangs”.
The truck, heavier and slower, ground up a hill, it’s speed dropping off in direct proportion to the steepness of the incline. The occupants of their own jeep whooped and hollered, Nina joining in without realising. As the jeep gained ground and drew level, Nina primed the pump on her gigantic gun and let fly with a jet of water aimed at the mother’s head. It slapped the woman in the chest instead, and she squealed, her thin top soaked in seconds, prompting the husband and all the little trucklets to lay down return fire.
Within a couple of minutes everyone, including both drivers, were drenched, the cannons were out of ammo, and each side were hollering that they’d won.
‘I’m laughing so hard I think I might have peed myself,’ Flossie announced. ‘Can’t really tell.’ She pulled her dripping shift dress away from her lap and grimaced.
‘Surely you know if you’ve wet yourself?’ Nina asked, crossing her own legs in case of a similar unfortunate accident.
‘Not when you get to my age, you don’t,’ was Flossie’s reply.
When they arrived at Tlos, Flossie opted to stay in one of the little make-shift bars at the base of the steep hill.
‘My old legs won’t make it all the way up there, especially not in this heat,’ she said, so Nina set off alone, trying to ignore the numerous other tourists who’d been brought to the ancient site in a variety of different vehicles, coaches seeming to be the most favoured mode of transport. Those tourists were easily recognisable – they were the dry ones, but Nina found she didn’t resent their air-conditioned comfort. She’d actually had fun, she realised as she tackled the start of the path.
The lower slopes of the citadel weren’t too steep, but as Nina followed the zig-zag track to the crumbling fortress on the top she wondered whether she would have been better off staying with Flossie and a cold drink. It was an awful lot steeper than it appeared from the bottom and the heat was fierce.
Made it! The view of the Xanthos valley was breath-taking but not as impressive as the ruins themselves. Nina ran a hand across the warm stones, awed by the knowledge that the site had been settled over four thousand years ago, and had been inhabited in turn by the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Ottomans. She sat on one of the walls and let the atmosphere soak in. With the valley below and the mountains as a backdrop, it was impressive. She tried to imagine it as it had once been – a living, thriving community, where people lived and loved and died.
This was why she loved the past so much, it was the basis of everyone’s present, and so much could be learned, if only people took the time to listen and to see, and not just tick the site off their must-visit list.
She stayed as long as she dared, ignoring the other sweaty, puffing tourists, even though she was one herself, she acknowledged reluctantly. Conscious of the time (it had taken her longer than she’d anticipated to reach the summit) and not wanting their jeep to leave without her, she hastened back down, but couldn’t resist stopping now and again to admire the rock tombs carved into the face of the hill. She wished she had more time to explore and that she’d had the foresight to have purchased a guide book. As she trundled back down, sweat coating her back and dribbling disgustingly between her boobs, she would have loved to know which tomb belonged to the fabled Belleraphon and to have been able to see the lion carved on the rock inside the tomb for herself.
After a quick and very welcome cold drink, it was then on to Saklikent Gorge and lunch. Nina was hoping for another water-fight along the way – anything to cool her down!
Wow! Just wow! Suddenly Nina was very glad indeed that Flossie had talked her into coming on this trip. She’d never seen anything as magnificent as that gorge. Cut into the side of a huge cliff face, it appeared out of nowhere – an intimidating cleft in the rocks, narrow and deep, towering above them for hundreds of feet, a boiling churning river at its base. Where the river calmed as it flowed out of the gorge, pontoons floated on the water, decked with low tables and cushions. It all looked so very Turkish, and very inviting.
‘I wanna see the inside of the gorge,’ Flossie announced as soon as they left the jeep, with strict instructions to meet at a nearby restaurant in an hour and a half, where lunch would be provided.
Nina halted outside the entrance to the gorge and read the warning signs with trepidation.
‘We can go so far, Gran, but then it looks like you have to wade through waist-deep water.’ It would be more like neck-deep on her diminutive grandmother.
A wooden walkway hung off the rocks on one side of the gorge and Nina stayed close behind her grandmother, ready to catch her if the old lady slipped on the slick, wet wood. Nina shuffled along the balustrade, clinging on with white-knuckled fingers and eyeing the churning water below with trepidation, while her grandmother strode ahead, as sure-footed as if she was in her own living room.
Without warning there was a scream, and Nina saw a splash out of the corner of her eye. Someone had fallen in! Another plummeting body followed the first, and another. But why were the voices around her sounding so happy and unconcerned, and why wasn’t anyone sounding the alarm?
A brown head bobbed to the surface, followed by the rest of his body, and Nina let out the breath she’d been holding. At least one of them was still alive.
Then she realised – the fallers were actually jumpers, and they seemed to be enjoying the experience immensely. Young boys, not one of them older than about fourteen, their bodies nut-brown from the sun, water cascading off their skin and hair as they climbed nimbly out of the river and up the rocks, laughed and chattered – and did it all over again.
Nina admired their bravery. They seemed fearless, invincible. With the arrogance of youth, they believed nothing could touch them, because from where she stood all Nina saw was a sickening drop, the roaring river, and sharp rocks.
An unexpected pang shot through her – had she ever been as carefree and as courageous as these otter-like, monkey children, who were equally at ease climbing up wet rocks or plunging into raging cold rivers. Hell, she couldn’t even remember climbing a tree.
‘If I was ten years younger…,’ Flossie said.
Thank goodness, she wasn’t, Nina thought, with visions of Grannie plunging off the side never to be seen again as the thundering, swift-flowing river swept the old woman downstream and out to sea, playing through her mind.
Her relief was short-lived. When they got to the end of the walkway, Nina was dismayed to be confronted by a mass of water-drenched, slime-covered rocks. There was no way her grandmother would be able to negotiate that. People were gingerly walking over them, ankle deep in water in places, and every so often someone would slip and fall.
‘That’s it, Gran. This is as far as we go.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘You’re not walking over that.’
‘There’s a café over there.’ Flossie pointed.
‘There are cafés on this side too, outside the gorge. We could sit on one of those floating pontoons. I’ll even buy you a vodka.’ Nina didn’t want to encourage her grandmother to drink, but she would buy her one if it meant Gran behaved herself and didn’t insist on trying to break her neck. Nina felt a bit like a parent trying to distract an unruly toddler.
‘I can buy my own vodka, tha
nk you very much, and stop treating me like a child.’
Nina rolled her eyes. ‘If you fall don’t blame me.’
‘Oh, give it a rest. If it happens, it happens.’
‘Not if I can help it, not on my watch,’ Nina muttered then spoke a little louder. ‘Yes, but I’ll be the one picking up the pieces.’
Aside from physically manhandling her grandmother and wrestling her to the floor, Nina had no way of stopping her, and Flossie was determined. Nina vowed her mother would have to accompany Gran on any and all future trips; she washed her hands of the daft old bat.
‘I help,’ a firm voice declared, and a boy of about eight-years-old took her grandmother by the arm. Another appeared on Gran’s other side, and between them they grappled her over the rocks, their bare feet gripping the slippery surface with confidence. Nina prayed their self-assurance wasn’t misplaced. One wrong foot and all three of them would be on their backs like upended turtles. Gran would have to be stretchered out!
Safely on the other side (though the ground was still wet and you had to be careful), Flossie instructed Nina imperiously, ‘Pay them. They don’t do this sort of thing for nothing.’
Nina gave the boys a five lira note each, trying to calculate the exchange rate in her head – was it enough? Too much? What was the going rate for escorting old women over small waterfalls these days?
Flossie, meanwhile, had trotted off to the kiosk and was on her way back with two cans of cola and a cross expression.
‘No vodka. No alcohol of any kind. Only beer. Beer makes me fart,’ she said loudly and Nina cringed.
Lovely! Nina took the can with a feeling of relief. She hadn’t been looking forward to dealing with a half-cut Flossie, because as sure as god made little green apples, her grandmother would not have stopped at just the one drink.
They sat on a wooden bench to sip their drinks and watched the incredible and rather amusing sight of people wading through deep water and only keeping their feet by hanging on to a rope which stretched from one side to the other. The main body of water gushed out of a cavern on the right of the gorge, whilst the river flowing through the gorge above the cavern was little more than a shin-deep trickle. She could see people paddling through it with confidence once they’d braved the torrent and reached the other side. From the looks of it, the river bed was actually dry in places, and Nina wondered how much rain fell in the winter months; quite a lot if the tide mark on the rock walls were anything to go by. Head tipped back, she gazed up at the top of the canyon. The walls narrowed as they got higher and the sky was a cerulean strip high above them. The sun wasn’t visible from where they sat, and mist from the water cooled the air to a more comfortable level.
Voices chattered in so many different languages that Nina lost count and there was constant traffic back and forth. So many people that she wondered how much more of the gorge was traversable.
Little did she know it but she was about to find out.
When she lowered her gaze from the top of the gorge, feeling like an ant with all that towering rock above, Flossie had disappeared.
Chapter 13
Nina’s first thought was that Flossie must have wandered off in search of the loo. Her next, and more accurate, thought was that Gran had taken it upon herself to go exploring. Nina narrowed her eyes, pushed her sunglasses further onto her head, and studied the people both at the river’s edge and those wading across.
There she was!
Bloody hell! The woman was only being carried across like Lady Muck, in the arms of a strapping young man and was smiling up at him brightly.
Nina threw her drink can in the nearest bin and ran as if a swarm of angry bees were after her. ‘Gran! What do you think you’re doing?’ she yelled, wading in up to her knees, the tug of the fast-flowing water bubbling around her legs.
She took another step, feeling for the bobbing rope, slipped, and lost a flip flop, watching helplessly as it floated off at a rate of knots. ‘Bugger.’
‘Wait, lady,’ one of the seal-children said, with a huge smile. He threw himself headlong into the water and Nina cringed; if he was to drown because of her stupid shoe she’d never forgive herself.
Reaching down carefully so as not to overbalance, she slipped off the other shoe and held it tightly. Her grandmother had already reached the other side and had been placed back on her feet. Pulling at his shoulder, Flossie urged her rescuer (or should Nina call him “the idiot who her gran had managed to coerce”) to come down to her level. Nina watched as she said something in his ear, then both of them turned to look at Nina, and the bloke waved at her.
‘Wait there,’ he mouthed, miming wading back through the water.
No way! She was not going to be carried over the river like a helpless female. Besides, she wanted her grandmother on this side with her, not both of them on that side. Nina shook her head and pointed at him, then at her grandmother, then back at him again, making walking movements with her fingers.
Flossie, one step ahead of her, smiled sweetly, turned around, and picked her way up the shallow stream, leaving Nina no choice but to wade through the rushing water if she wanted to keep an eye on her stubborn grandmother.
‘You’ll be the death of me,’ she muttered at Flossie’s back, throwing her a venomous look, and stepped into the flow. The temperature took her breath away. Within seconds she couldn’t feel her feet. Where was this water coming from, the Arctic?
Gasping, she waited, thinking her body would become acclimatised, but when the only thing to happen was for her feet and legs to start to go numb, she took the plunge. Not literally of course, for there was no way she was going to immerse herself in freezing water, but as the river crept higher up her legs, she wondered just how deep it was going to get.
She wasn’t quite half way, with her attention on the frothing water and the slippery too-thin rope, when she bumped into a naked chest.
‘Sorry,’ she said, not looking up. One rope with lots of people all trying to hang on to it, made for awkward fumbling and close body contact as everyone skirted around one another, whilst trying not to be swept downstream. Really, it shouldn’t be allowed. It was far too dangerous. There should be a proper bridge, or not let anyone go across at all. Somebody was going to drown, and Nina was worried it was going to be her!
‘Eek!’ she squealed, as two very hard arms lifted her off her feet without warning. Nina found herself with her nose squashed into a broad chest. She was so startled she nearly dropped her remaining flip flop.
‘Put me down!’ she yelled.
‘I will, as soon as we’re on the other side.’
Scared he was going to fall, she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung on with the desperation of a small child, and didn’t release her death-grip until the water level dropped to her saviour’s knees. Not that she’d needed saving – she was quite capable on her own – but it was rather nice to be held by a strong man, and he smelt nice, too, all coconutty with an undertone of deodorant. When her grip lessened, she was free to lean back a little and look at him properly.
Oh my. Bronzed, muscled, chisel-jawed, smiley mouth, chocolate eyes, and far too young for her. He was at least five years her junior, maybe more. Still a boy really.
But a treacherous little voice said in her head, boys aren’t usually built like this, and his voice, when he spoke, was deep and rumbling, and not boy-like at all.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Can I put you down now?’
‘Oh… er… yes. Thanks.’ Damn it! She’d been enjoying that.
Then she remembered the reason it had been necessary to be carried in the first place – Gran. When she caught up with Flossie, she was going to give the old woman a piece of her mind; not that it would do much good, but it would make Nina feel better.
Smiling her thanks, she shot off barefooted, stones and pebbles cutting into her feet. Flossie was nowhere in sight – she must have gone around the bend in the gorge. Nina followed, cursing under her breath, to fi
nd the other woman calmly sitting on a rock, sandals off, dangling talon-like toes in a slow-moving, shallow eddy.
‘You do realise we’ve got to cross that thing again?’ Nina cried, as she drew closer. ‘What were you thinking of?’
‘I wanted to experience it for myself,’ Flossie said. ‘Not watch from the side-lines. Anyway,’ she waited until Nina dropped onto the rock, ‘it was worth it to be manhandled by such a fine young man. Didn’t you think he was handsome?’
‘Yes, Gran.’ Nina massaged the soles of her feet.
‘It would be better if you put your shoes on,’ Flossie said. ‘Those stones look sharp.’
‘They are,’ Nina growled. ‘I lost one of them.’ She waved the remaining flip flop under Flossie’s nose.
‘How did you manage that?’
‘Crossing the damned river.’
Hunk and Co – yes there were more of them, and all made out of the same mould, but painted in slightly different colours – passed Flossie’s rock and smiled. Nina thought Hunk may have winked, though it was difficult to tell with the sun in her eyes. It was now directly overhead and blasted down into the floor of the gorge. The temperature rose alarmingly; it was what Nina imagined it would be like if she was an ant and some sadistic little boy tried to burn her with a strategically-angled mirror. In this instance, the trickling water was the mirror, as it bounced the light around the rock walls and directly into her face. Nina reapplied her factor fifty with haste.
‘Have you seen what you wanted to see?’ Nina demanded.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Flossie replied, primly, as if she’d been asked whether she’d enjoyed a meal rather than being asked about a death-defying plunge into an ice-cold, raging torrent.
The journey out of the gorge was less exciting, though just as cold and frightening. A stringy Turkish youth, who was clearly much stronger than he looked, carried Gran. Nina had to wade. Sopping wet, probably looking like a drenched scruffy bag-lady, minus the bags and hopefully without the smell, though she did have a hint of l’eau de river about her, Nina scrambled towards the exit, and they made their way back along the scary walkway, out of the gorge, and crossed over the river via the road bridge.
Summer on the Turquoise Coast Page 9