Dolphins Under My Bed

by Sandra Clayton

  There is a passage in the Anglican funeral service, which I have sat through more times than I care to remember, that begins: In the midst of life we are in death. In the midst of death we are also in life this August afternoon. It vibrates all around us. There is a wedding party on the quay above us. The bride and groom are being photographed in the bright sunshine against a backdrop of moored yachts and a bright blue sky. Below us, on a large square pontoon, children are putting away sails from their fleet of little Optimist dinghies and leaping into the water with shrieks of pleasure. Fairground music throbs across the water from the direction of the Ferris wheel; there is the whine of bagpipes from a street musician and the chanting of male voices at some distant football stadium, rising and falling like a church organ.

  When we finally get to the other marina we hover for some time but nobody has left – or looks about to leave – a wall. There is no space against any wall anywhere, nor is there anyone around to ask. The only place to tie up alongside is a small pontoon and most of its length is taken up by a Guardia Civil patrol boat. Its crew will not be best pleased if they are unable to respond to a call because they are trapped in a corner by us. We troll up and down each side of the visitors’ pontoon. There are very few spaces, none of which is wide enough for us to get into.

  Then half a dozen cheerful young Poles appear and wave us to a space beside them. We should never have attempted it ourselves, it is too narrow for us, but they push and pull and get us in. Voyager’s high sides and ample girth – compared with their long, low, slender monohull – amuses them. Elderly but well-maintained, it probably began life as a racing yacht.

  ‘You are very wide,’ one of them says, ‘while we are very …’ he holds his palms a few inches apart. They are indeed extremely narrow; beautifully, elegantly so, but I do wonder how all six of them manage to fit inside.

  The ropes on the quay are too short to reach our bow cleats, so we tie on our own, and the Poles hold our bows off the concrete quay while we confront our first experience of a lazy line. With eight people involved, however, and Voyager wedged in like a tinned sardine, we do not have a problem.

  We are now into the hottest part of the afternoon in Spain’s high summer. After three nights of broken sleep and the last four hours in the broiling sun berthing three times and refuelling, David and I are wilting. We eye each other with the same unspoken thought: it is now so late that we could just as easily go in search of ‘plane tickets first thing tomorrow morning, when it will be cooler and we are less tired.

  The six young Poles are scaling the ramp and disappearing across the quay. The last one turns at the top. ‘Fiesta tomorrow!’ he calls, pleased to be offering us a treat. ‘And the next day, and the next!’ David and I watch him disappear after his friends in horror. A three-day Fiesta means today will be the last day anywhere will be open for business until next Tuesday and the funeral is on Thursday. We hurry from the boat without stopping to change.

  La Coruña is the town’s Spanish name. In the language of the Province of Galicia, in which the town lies, it is called A Coruña. The British know it as Corunna, and the relationship has sometimes been a turbulent one. It was from here that Philip II of Spain’s Invincible Armada sailed for England’s south coast in 1588 with 130 men-of-war, ostensibly to punish Queen Elizabeth I for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots but also to extend their empire and return the English to the Catholic Church. Sixty three Spanish ships and 15,000 men were lost.

  A year later, in 1589, Sir Francis Drake, with 30 ships, led an assault on Corunna, but the town was saved by local heroine Maria Pita whose statue stands in the town’s main square.

  In 1809, during the Peninsula War, at the Battle of El Vina just outside the town, Marshal Soult led Napoleon’s forces to victory over British troops led by General Sir John Moore. General Moore died of his wounds and is buried in the Old Town.

  Today La Coruña is an industrial town of around a quarter of a million residents, which is not a size one normally associates with friendliness. A yachtsman we once met, who had used it as a bolt hole while waiting to get round Finisterre, had declared it was the pits. We expect the next couple of hours to be difficult, if not downright unpleasant. We are wrong.

  17

  Booking a Flight Home

  To get from the marina to the town involves walking along the pontoon, up a ramp, across a car park, through a small inner harbour and across a multi-lane highway. This highway runs parallel with the waterfront, but none of the rather grand buildings lining it contains anything resembling a travel agent. They are mostly foreign banks, marble-fronted and with acres of plate glass.

  In one of them I catch sight of my reflection: baggy cotton trousers, loose long-sleeved shirt and straw hat. David looks a little less eccentric, but not much. In fact, we look like the sort of foreigners that in an earlier age any self-respecting townsperson would have thrown stones at.

  We can’t spot a tourist office and, since it is siesta, everywhere is closed and there is barely a pedestrian to be seen. We finally manage to trap one, on a traffic island with a little circular news stand on it, although like everywhere else the news stand is closed. Only as we corner the pedestrian do we realise that in our hurry we have left our Spanish/English dictionary behind.

  The man is elderly and has a kind face. ‘Excuse me,’ I say in Spanish. ‘Do you speak English?’ I have never in my life seen anyone sorrier at being unable to fulfil a stranger’s request. He puts a hand to his mouth and shakes his head sorrowfully. Then he brightens and thrusts both hands forward, nodding encouragingly, in a gesture that says: Try anyway, you never know.

  ‘Travel agent,’ we say in the unlikely event that the two words sound similar in both languages.

  He makes a painstaking, almost heroic attempt to discover what we need, but we cannot bridge the gulf. His shoulders sag, his hands drop, and his eyes fill with sadness. We are consumed with guilt and do our utmost to cheer him. We cannot abandon him in his present state. I take both his hands in mine; we thank him repeatedly for his efforts, and finally leave him smiling.

  We make our way up a steep, narrow side street into the upper town, but there is nothing resembling a travel agent up there either, so we look for someone else to ask. There are only two people in sight: an unusually tall young Spaniard with an empty fish tank under his left arm, talking to a friend in an open doorway.

  I offer my apology in Spanish and ask if either of them speaks English. Both shake their heads, but with no-one else in sight I feel I have to persist. The expression of the tall one with the aquarium is so amiable, and he is so obviously willing to help, that I decide to concentrate on him. I sigh. Miming eggs in a French grocer’s was child’s play, but how do you perform travel agent?

  Half-expecting both young men to rush inside the house hooting with derision, I thrust out my arms and sway slowly forward. My impersonation of an aeroplane could just as easily be interpreted as a mad Englishwoman in baggy clothes and a straw hat who thinks she is a seagull. Indeed, the shorter of the two men does begin to edge discreetly inside his doorway.

  ‘Aero port!’ says the tall one smiling, and is about to describe how to get there. Suddenly I am into Charades mode: the left index finger raised, accompanied by a smile celebrating his identification, then a cautioning right hand. The young man’s amiable face is a study in concentration. His dark eyes never leave my hands. As a much-criticized hand-waver myself, it confirms my theory that the hand ballet of southern Europeans is not the empty exhibitionism claimed by northern sceptics. Hands can be read like print.

  Nevertheless, I’m not sure how to move from the simple concept of flying to the complexity of airline ticket sales. Tickets. I flatten my left hand, and raise it palm uppermost to chest level, supporting an imaginary book of airline tickets. Then, with my right hand, like airline check-in staff, I snap out a ticket in a crisp gesture, and hand the imaginary ticket book forward with my left.

  ‘Ah!’ he says, and begin
s to describe in Spanish the complicated route to the town’s nearest travel agent. Fortunately he keeps the words to a minimum, and the accompanying hand signs make them easy to follow: Up here, second left, 3rd right, down a steep hill, follow the road round to the right, then take the left fork . . . From there it is straight on. We thank him very much.

  We get as far as the fork in the road and then our memories give out – or rather David’s does. My ability to follow directions extends only to a factor of three: in this case as far as ‘Up here, second left, 3rd right.’ Unfortunately there is no-one around to ask. We stand at the junction while David racks his brains to remember whether we are supposed to take the left fork or the right.

  ‘I suppose logically it has to be the right . . .’ he begins, when a sound close behind us makes us turn. An unusually tall young Spaniard with an amiable expression and a fish tank under his left arm points to the left fork with his free hand. David grasps it in both of his and shakes it warmly. I do too, though I really want to hug him for his kindness. We plunge on.

  In her middle years, and of grim expression, the woman presiding over the travel agent’s counter sits sideways-on to it and gives most of her attention to the computer screen in front of her. She glances at us only rarely, obliquely, over her spectacles. She also teaches us a meaning of the word No that you won’t find in a Spanish dictionary.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ I ask.

  Her right hand moves fast towards her left shoulder and from there it slashes across her body towards her right hip. ‘No!’ she snaps.

  Given a choice we would undoubtedly have left at this point and gone elsewhere, but time is running out and we have to persevere. In doing so we discover that her response, whilst initially off-putting, really means: Actually I speak quite a bit, and understand even more than I speak, but am not terribly confident about it and get lost if I’m deluged in too many words at high speed, but I’ll do what I can for you.

  We British are renowned, not least among ourselves, for the way we speak to people whose language is foreign to us. We say, ‘Do you speak English?’ and if the person asked says, ‘No,’ we continue in the expectation that they will inevitably understand as long as we speak loudly and slowly enough. If, on the other hand, they say, ‘Yes,’ we immediately assume that they are as fluent as we are and confuse them with complicated sentence structures and a flood of unnecessary words. The woman tenses, waiting.

  I point to David. ‘Madre,’ I say, ‘morte’; then indicate both of us: ‘Inglaterra, por favor.’ She relaxes, and goes to work immediately on her computer. Gradually her language skills begin to emerge. There is a severe shortage of seats because of the holiday, she explains in English. However, she has found two on a scheduled flight, although not together, and they are expensive. We accept them gratefully and she telephones to reserve them.

  After looking at us briefly, however, she purses her lips and turns back to her computer for some considerable time.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I whisper at David.

  ‘Dunno,’ he whispers back.

  After surfing endless computer pages she emerges triumphant with two return tickets on a charter flight departing earlier and at half the cost of the ones she has just reserved for us. She confirms them, writes out tickets, and cancels the reservations on the scheduled flight. Yet still she is not finished.

  The airport, she explains, is a long way from the town, and gives us the name of the hotel where we can buy tickets for the airport bus at a fraction of the taxi fare. The bus will pick us up outside the hotel. She gives us a timetable, advises us to buy the tickets beforehand, and to be at the stop ten minutes in advance of the bus departure time. And all this from someone who denied speaking a word of English. She looks rather startled at having her hands squeezed affectionately by two oddly-dressed gringos with sun-burnt hands and faces. There are two days until our flight.

  18

  Fiesta and Leaving La Coruña

  We are woken at 7.30 next morning by cries of ‘Arriba, arriba, uno, dos, tres,’ and the sound of rasping breath. Five Guardia Civil officers are hauling a RIB over the stern of the patrol boat that we prudently didn’t block in yesterday afternoon. Massive engines throb and the RIB rumbles out. Half an hour later it rumbles back, by which time the quay has become a hive of activity. People are erecting scaffolding, and sound equipment is arriving.

  We go ashore and, as instructed by the other marina, pay our fees at the Real Club Nautica of Coruña, a magnificent building, elegant with panelling, chandeliers and sparkling glass. This is a strange setup for a yachting centre so crucial to yachtsmen travelling to and from northern Europe. For non-members the shower block and other facilities are ten minutes walk away at the other marina and I have a fleeting vision of trekking through the fairground and down an elegant avenue in bathrobe and fluffy slippers with a towel round my head.

  However, as berth-holders we do have access to the Club’s lavatories on the first floor. They are sumptuous, with black and white diamond tiling, large white panelled doors and gleaming brass fittings, although the mirror filling one entire wall really belongs in the fairground across the way because despite being tall and thin my reflection in it is short and plump. As you walk back down the stairs you look through the Club’s dining room of starched white cloths and napkins and down the long wide veranda which runs along the front of the building with its wonderful view over the harbour.

  Out on the street, and determined to locate a launderette, we stumble upon the tourist office. It is a completely anonymous building from the pavement as you leave the quay. Only if you turn and look back as you cross the multi-lane highway into town do you see its sign and entrance. Someone inside tells us where to find the launderette and gives us a map. We go back to Voyager and load the large rucksack.

  A passing Pole, seeing us disembark with it, wishes us a good trip.

  ‘Going to the launderette,’ we say.

  ‘Happy laundry,’ he says cheerfully.

  It is a long walk uphill which takes us through the old quarter’s back streets and narrow shady alleys, past small, peaceful squares and Romanesque churches. When we get to the launderette its steel shutters are down. A sign says it opens Monday to Friday. Today is Saturday. We have coffee under the striped awning of a pavement café and take our laundry home again. We meet the same Pole. He looks at his watch, surprised.

  ‘Launderette closed,’ we say.

  He shrugs sympathetically. ‘That’s España.’

  Although overcast, the day is very hot. When the sun breaks through, the deck beyond the awning’s shade is too hot for bare feet. Yet on the boat opposite a woman in a black swimsuit lies out in it all afternoon, rising only to hose herself down periodically and then fall back onto her towel again.

  Meanwhile the scaffolding opposite lives up to its threat of becoming a sound stage. First it is draped in black fabric decorated with stars, and then the sound arrives. No people; just a massive sound system pumping out noise so loud that initially it stops you in your tracks and ultimately prevents you from thinking. We put in earplugs but it makes little difference. The boat and our bodies are vibrating with it.

  Around 2pm we wave off the Poles in their elegant, slender yacht. ‘Good time to go,’ I yell through the wall of sound coming from the empty stage. They nod with pained expressions. ‘Thanks again for helping us in yesterday,’ I shout, but several feet away by now they are unable to hear me.

  The noise ceases suddenly at 3pm. Its absence is disorienting. We are just getting used to it when an unseen hand starts it up again. After the brief respite it sounds worse than ever. And this, of course, is only the beginning. The electronic guitars and vocalists, all mega-microphoned, are still to come. We decide to put as much distance between us and it as possible by going into town and remaining there for dinner.

  A short time later, bathed and respectably dressed, we step ashore. Our first stop is the posh loos of the Real Club Nautica of Coruña.
A diminutive, anxious man in a white jacket blocks the main entrance. He is obviously under orders from a management in fear of being overrun by the hoi polloi during the fiesta. He seems to be asking if our name is Judd. David’s face brightens the third time he repeats the question, as understanding suddenly dawns. ‘From Voyager,’ he says, pointing down into the basin below us. We are allowed upstairs to the WCs.

  The town is incredibly full of people. And lots of small children. Yet, despite being shoulder to shoulder in a few places, everyone is polite and good humoured – strolling, chatting, drinking coffee.

  We accost a matron at the top of the hill and ask for Maria Pita Square, where David thought he saw restaurants while we were walking our laundry. We have climbed too high. She accompanies us back down the hill with rapid instructions, in Spanish but clearly about which roads not to take when she leaves us and continues her own journey. Then, realizing we are not understanding, she abandons her own destination and escorts us to ours.

  The square’s eateries do only snacks, but in a side street running off it we find the seafood restaurants. The waitress, unusual since Spanish restaurant staff is usually male, speaks no English but has a lively personality. Because I carry out all negotiations in foreign languages, along with the meal I also order the wine. When she brings the bottle to our table she pours it into my glass for me to taste. I am quite startled to realise that this is the first time I have ever been invited to taste the wine at a table which contained a man.