“Can you really be bothered, Jean? All that upheaval, taking our clothes out of the wardrobe, going down to Reception and having to argue that we’re not happy with our room. If you and Milly want to, that’s up to you, but I’m pleased we’ve made it. You know what I’m like flying, it’s not my favourite pursuit.”
The toilet flushed in the bathroom and their cousin Milly, joined them in the bedroom. She had heard their conversation while she was sat on the toilet and wasn’t bothered either way.
“Let’s go and have lunch, eh? You’re probably tired, Jean, and things always look grim when you’re tired. Once we’ve had a feed and your carb’s start kicking in, you won’t be worrying about the accommodation. Just be pleased you’re not on the checkout at Safeway.”
“Aye, you’re right, I’ve been saving for this holiday for a long time,” Jean said. “I should be grateful I’ve got you two to come away with, now that Larry’s passed away.”
“Now, Jean,” said her sister. “ We said we wouldn’t mention any sad things, not only did your Larry pass over remember, but so did our mother, God rest her soul. No. we’re here to enjoy ourselves and we’ll leave our problems behind in good old Blighty. Let’s get off and order a bottle of wine with our meal, that will perk our spirits up.”
The three women set off down the corridor, after carefully making sure that their door was secure. They meant to take advantage of the security safe in their bedroom, as Doreen and Milly had brought a few nice pieces of jewellery and at the moment were hiding them in their cosmetic bags.
Doreen, the single elder sister led the way. She was quite a tall sturdily built woman in her late fifties, big boned her mother used to say. She wore a loose lilac and cream paisley kaftan and her brown hair was cut short with a few highlighted pieces in her fringe. Doreen liked to feel smart as she was Manageress of a bridal shop and was used to wearing clothes which would her larger appearance
Jean, on the other hand, having recently been bereaved, felt that she couldn’t dress so flamboyantly as her sister. She wore a short sleeved cream Peter Pan collar blouse and a plain brown skirt with flat cream sandals. Those colours had always suited her now faded coppery hair. Her round face though, had a permanent look of worry since she had been left to fend for herself by a husband, who had been self employed. Money had been tight, even when he found work as a gardener in the area where they lived and she had been forced to take work as a checkout “girl”, once their son had left home and taken his wages with him.
Milly, their cousin, had no such worries. She had a nice bungalow in Harwood, a suburb of Bolton, a husband who worked as a lecturer and two children in their mid twenties who had made good marriages. There was no shortage of money in that household, as when Milly’s parents had passed on they left her a farm as her inheritance. She had quickly sold it and now enjoyed three holidays a year, as well as having paid for lavish weddings for her two daughters. Her clothes were bought at an expensive department store in town and she had her softly curled auburn hair washed and set each week.
She usually went on a cruise with one of her friends from the Flower Arranging club at this time of the year. Her husband didn’t do cruises, but her friend had developed MS and was advised by her doctor to rest. Still, she was glad to be here in the sunshine with her cousins and leave her husband to get on with it.
They walked down the stairs to Reception, where Doreen asked where the restaurant was and how much it cost to use their security safe? She was directed to another flight of stairs, that they hadn’t seen when they were booking in and informed that lunch finished at two thirty and the hire of the safe cost one thousand pesetas per week.
“Plenty of time to relax, have a glass of wine and then I suggest we go walk about and have a look at the facilities, unless of course you want to grab some sun loungers,” she said to the others. “I fancy having a look at the beauty room, I forgot to put some polish on my nails.”
Jean and Milly agreed that they would like to look around after their meal, so they continued down the stairs to the lower floor.
***
It was very full in the fifty eight covers restaurant. They just managed to get a table, when some other guests had finished their dessert and moved out onto the patio with their coffee.
“This is nice,” said Milly, looking around the airy room, where two waiters and a waitress speedily removed empty plates from the white paper covered tables. “Do you and Jean want to go and choose your food while I wait here, so that no one pinches our table?”
The sisters agreed that they would, then a waiter came over and asked Milly could he get her a drink from the bar?
“A bottle of medium white or do we order by the glass here?,” she asked the dark eyed waiter, whose name badge said he was called Miguel.
“Usually people have a glass of wine with their luncheon, Senora, then order a bottle at dinner time,” he replied.
“Then we’ll do as the other people do, please bring three glasses,” she said.
Milly looked about her, trying to spot anyone that had come with them on the plane from Manchester. Yes, there was that dear little boy with his mummy and grandparents. He was sitting in a high chair chewing on a sausage and waving his fork about in the air. God bless him, what a pity he didn’t have his daddy with him. I don’t know, these young girls nowadays. Oh and there was the elderly couple. My word, he had his plate piled high. There was at least two slices of black forest gateau, a fruit filled pastry, a piece of apple pie and a dollop of icecream. He was certainly getting his moneys’ worth.
“Well, there’s plenty to choose from,” said Doreen, as she came back to the table with a salad at the side of a pork chop, a portion of lasagne, three roast potatoes, some broccoli, a spoonful of spaghetti bolognaise and a freshly warmed roll. “I don’t know how I’m going to eat it all, but I’m certainly going to try.” Jean’s plate was similarly filled and by the time she got back to the table, so was Milly’s.
***
“What do you fancy doing, Cheryl?”, asked Paul, after they had their lunch and were sitting out on the patio having a drink at the pool bar. “What do you kids want to do? Would you like to go and have a look at the Kid’s club, or do you want to get changed into your swimming gear and play in the pool?”
“I would like to go to the Kid’s club and see what that is all about,” Annabelle replied. “I might make some new friends there. I can’t play with Jack all the time.”
“And Jack, do you want to go with Annabelle?” Jack nodded his head vigorously. “Then that leaves us two, Mummy,” said Paul, feeling pleased that he would have Cheryl to himself for an hour or so. “Shall we get a couple of sun loungers later and chill?”
***
“Looks like you’ve got an admirer, Sonya,” said Kate Lewis, as they waited for Evan to finish off his icecream, which he was doing very messily.
“Who?”, said Sonya, looking around the room for some handsome man to materialize.
“The waiter who took our plates away before. The one that ruffled Evan’s hair and pulled a funny face at him. He’s been looking at you, every time he stops for a breather by his loading trolley.
Typically Latin, isn’t he, with that swarthy skin and come to bed eyes?”
“That will do, Kate,” said Greg disapprovingly. “ Don’t encourage her. If she has to have a holiday romance, I don’t want her flirting with some foreigner. She’ll be bound to meet an unattached male if she goes to the disco I saw advertised at midnight.”
“Oh, so you’ll be allowing me to go to the disco, Father dear?,” said Sonya. “ I didn’t know you were going to let me off the leash, as it were.”
“Now Sonya, you needn’t take that tone with me. You’ve already made one mistake that your mother and I have had to pick up the pieces of. Even though you’re twenty six, you’re still acting like a teenager. Time to take responsibility for your actions and flirting with a Spanish waiter isn’t a sensible course of action as far as I’m
concerned.”
“Whose flirting?” said Sonya, feeling annoyed with her mother now, for bringing the waiter to her attention. “I didn’t even know who Mother was talking about, when she said the waiter was looking at me.”
“Well, we’ll let the matter end here. Let’s see if Evan wants to go to the Kid’s club first, then we’ll get some drinks.”
***
“Hello and what’s your name?” asked Tina of Jack, as he was pushed gently by his mother into the small room that was used for the Canary club. “Jack Cooper,” replied the little boy shyly and turned to Cheryl for reassurance that he should be with this lady in a strange room.
“And do you go to nursery in England, Jack?” He nodded in answer, but went back to hold his mummy’s hand.
“Do you want me to stay with him?”, Cheryl asked. “Just for a little while until he gets used to you. I’m afraid he only goes to nursery on a Tuesday and a Friday and I had an awful job getting him there in the beginning. Our little girl Annabelle is in the other room, should you need somebody to comfort him later. She’s seven, going on twelve by the way.”
“ Oh, we get a lot of timid children when they first arrive in the Kid’s club, but you’ll see, tomorrow he’ll be asking you to bring him. Why don’t you come and sit on the mat with Evan? He’s new. Perhaps you came on the aeroplane together from England”
The two little boys stared at each other for a moment, then Jack let go of his mummy’s hand.
***
“Those clouds over there don’t look too promising, Mavis”, observed Fred, as he and his wife relaxed on their sun loungers, under the shade of a palm tree by the swimming pool wall.
“Well, the girl on the coach said the next two days were going to be bad, didn’t she? Remember that chap we spoke to at the Antilla last year, he was saying that February and March were the rainy months on Tenerife. He said if you look at the clouds in the morning and they came below the mountain, you could forget sitting in a deck chair and make other arrangements for the rest of the day.”
Mavis took a look at her husband under lowered eyelids as she said her piece. She was still annoyed with Fred for booking at this place instead of the Antilla.
“Why did you book for February anyway, Fred, there was nothing to stop us coming in January, was there?”
“Yer know I was waiting to see what was happening over George’s chest. I thought if he got th’all clear we could have a late booking. Anyroad, this were cheapest week, price goes up again with half term looming.”
“With the amount of children that’s here already, you’d think it was half term,” Mavis retorted. “I don’t know, I would never have dreamt of taking our Valerie and Lilian, off school to go on holiday when they were kiddies.”
“We never had the money anyway in those days, Mavis. Just enough to spend a week in a caravan each summer near Rhyl. We only just scrape enough together to have one of these package holidays and that’s with me getting a private pension as well. This bloody government wants shooting, the way they take their share before I get any of it. You know, I’ve worked for forty nine years for that pension, started as an apprentice with the Post Office, digging holes and climbing poles, then worked me way up to a Level 1, just for this bloody shower to dip their greedy fingers into it. Our Valerie had the right idea when she cleared off to Australia. I wish sometimes we’d bloody well gone with her, but now we’re far too old.”
“Calm down love, you’ll be pushing up your blood pressure,” said Mavis, having listened to her husband’s moans since he retired from work ten years ago. “ Go and have a look in the foyer and see what kind of things they do in the daytime. There’ll be a board somewhere with all the activities on.”
***
Jenni and Simon sat a table on the patio overlooking the swimming pool. They had come down too late for lunch, as the restaurant closed at two thirty. The waiter had told them that if they waited until three, the pool bar would be serving hot dogs, beef burgers or pizza. Simon had just ordered a slice of pizza and some french fries each and while they were waiting, he was drinking a pint of beer and Jenni was sipping a coke.
She shivered a little, though it was still warm in the sunshine. She had taken a shower after Simon had finished with her, now her head was thumping and she was glad he’d abandoned the idea of a swim in the pool. She had changed into a pair of white shorts and a pink boob tube and had tied her brown shoulder length hair into a pony tail, though now she wondered whether she should go back to the room and get a cardigan on? Perhaps later, after we’ve had something to eat, she thought. It’s because I’m tired that I’m feeling the chill. At least that’s what her granny would have said.
Jenni looked at Simon as he sat opposite her, he was staring at something in the sky with a blank expression in his eyes. He did that sometimes, looked as if the lights were on but there was no one at home. She wondered not for the first time, what she saw in him?
A psychoanalyst would say that she had thrown her lot in with Simon, because she felt she was no longer loved by her parents. Jenni had thought about that when she was studying Sociology for her G.C.S.E. Maybe that could be said of her mother, who had recently got married for the third time, but not her father, who she was still in contact with and had been since she was a little girl. She supposed it was to get away from the sick making lovebirds that she had thrown herself at the first lad who made a fuss of her, she thought, remembering how she had met Simon at her mate’s house. Melanie was Simon’s cousin and because her house was near to the bread making factory, where he worked a three shift system on the conveyer belt, it was easy for him to drop in for a brew before or after he started work.
Somehow, she had got sucked into a relationship with him and had found it pleasant at first to have a boyfriend on her arm. She had read all the magazines that told her of love and teenage sex, what boys liked to do with girls and what experiences girls had with boys and she had listened to the sex information given out at her school. Everyone was doing it, girls in her class who wanted to have a baby, girls in her class who didn’t want a baby, so that like her had been given the Pill. She didn’t know what she really wanted to do with her life, though a couple of A levels would be nice.
She felt as if she had been talked into this holiday, while the first flush of romance had been between them, but as the months passed, she had begun to feel like a prostitute. An unpaid prostitute, unless you could call this holiday that Simon had paid for, reward for what she was having to put up with. There had to be something better than this for the rest of her life!
Simon looked at his girlfriend with a huge wave of tenderness. She had always reminded him of a little puppy he’d been given when he was a child. Jenni had the same velvety brown eyes and shiny hair like the puppy and she was small, only five feet two, compared with his six foot nothing in stocking feet. That puppy had followed him everywhere, was devoted to him just like Jenni was. In fact the puppy eventually got on his nerves and he gave it a good kicking. His mother gave it away to someone she knew at work.
He hoped that he would never do anything like that to Jenni, because she too could go away like the puppy had. He ordered another pint of beer when the waiter came with their food order. This was the life, as much beer as he could get down his neck, fast food in plenty which was the type of grub he liked, and his bird willing to open her legs anytime he felt like shagging her. What more could he want and the sun was shining as well!
Chapter Three.
“Does the restaurant have two sittings for dinner, Paul”, asked Cheryl, as she came out of the bathroom wearing a white towelling robe that the hotel had provided. “Oh, don’t smoke that in here, go out on the balcony if you have to smoke.”
“Do you want me to answer your question or go out on the balcony, Darling?” asked Paul, hastily stubbing out his cigar, then carrying the ashtray out to the white plastic table. He knew she hated him smoking. She said it made her clothes and hair smell and it wasn’t go
od for the children’s chests, but hell, he had to have some pleasures in his hard working life.
“Sorry, I forgot to ask with having to put up with their petty regulations. I’ve already nearly poked my eye out with the tip of this bloody wristband thingy.”
“Don’t swear in front of Annabelle, Darling. It’s a good job Jack is asleep in the bedroom, you know he’s like a parrot. Anyway, I’m not finding the wristband intrusive, it goes very well with the white bracelet on my watch.”
“Well it doesn’t look good with my Rolex. I’m very annoyed still, even though that rep’ was very understanding.”
“So, what time shall we eat? Annabelle, are you hungry yet?”
“No, Mummy, and I want to read my book anyway. I was really cross this afternoon in the Kid’s club, all the boys wanted to do was play pirates. The lady called Anna had me and another girl making pirate hats for them and they didn’t have to do anything. A whole afternoon wasted when I could have been reading my book. I am not going again tomorrow, you won’t be able to make me go.”
“You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to, Gorgeous,” Paul soothed. “This is your holiday too and if you want to spend it reading your books, then that’s fine by us.”
“Don’t be silly, Darling. She could stay at home and read her books. We’ve taken her off school so that she could get a little tan on those pale cheeks of hers, so tomorrow she will be in the pool or down on the beach with a bucket and spade.”
As Annabelle stared mutinously at her mother, Paul tried to break up the atmosphere. If Annabelle started kicking off she would wake Jack and also put Cheryl into a nervous mood. She always got nervous when Annabelle tried to push the boundaries. Time out in her bedroom didn’t seem to work anymore.
“They have a Mini disco here after dinner, Annabelle. I’m sure Mummy will help you choose one of the lovely dresses we’ve bought you and then you can show everybody how you strut your stuff.”
Clouds Below the Mountains Page 4