Dolphins Under My Bed

by Sandra Clayton

  In the winding streets at the base of the rock, the pubs of Irish Town provide hearty, inexpensive meals while old-fashioned hardware shops stock anything you want if you only look long enough. We also visit the surviving part of an early 14th century Moorish castle on the hillside and, at the top of the town just outside the city walls, the old cemetery where British casualties from the Battle of Trafalgar are buried. It is shaded by palms and pines, divided by tidy paths and there is a great sense of peace here. Like all cemeteries, its tranquillity belies the pain of living and dying endured by those resting beneath its soil: like Captain Thomas Norman of the Royal Marine Corps & late of His Majestys Ship MARS, who died in the Naval Hospital of this Place on the 6th Day of December 1805 in the 36th Year of his Age after having suffered several Weeks with incredible Patience & Fortitude the Effects of a severe Wound received in the great & memorable Seafight off TRAFALGAR.

  Of the three hundred and fifty men brought ashore from the battle sixty died of their wounds, some of them very young like William Forester, aged 20, who also lies in the cemetery. Although he and Captain Norman rest under individual headstones, most of those who died here lie in a mass grave while the majority of those who lost their lives were buried at sea. The Royal Navy lost 449 men that day, including its Commander in Chief, Admiral Lord Nelson, who fell in action on his flagship, Victory. Ten times that number of French and Spanish sailors died, 4,408 souls in all.

  In between trips out we vacuum and iron while we have access to electricity, as we plan to leave tomorrow. We know that we need to find somewhere to spend the winter months from November to February and have a fancy for either Barcelona or a harbour near Rome that the American, Tom, in Cascais told us about. With this in mind we decide to push on as it is the beginning of October now and we still have a long way to go.

  During the night some Australians, two boats down, herald their own forthcoming departure with a farewell do. I wake up to execrable music around 2am and a bloke yelling violently about ‘Roger’. Before it becomes clear whether this is a person or the sexual act I have found my ear plugs.

  We cast off from the marina around ten on a bright sunny morning, stopping off at the fuel dock before setting out into the Bay. While we wait for two Navy RIBs to take on fuel we chat to a man from another yacht. We mention our chilly reception on arrival and he explains that the authorities are very suspicious of anyone entering Gib at night or early in the morning. Considering our dawn arrival, in a gale, and showing a hated flag we are probably lucky to be leaving at all.

  We motor past the dockyards towards Europa Point and are treated to our own dolphin safari. There are hundreds of dorsal fins, some of them huge, some in places dolphins don’t carry them, arcing out of the water. Apart from two tankers which seem to be having a race, and the Saga Rose, in which sensible people our age go on cruises, we have the bay to ourselves. There is a great pall of yellow-brown pollution hanging over Gibraltar and the Spanish mainland.

  The strong current through the Strait which had swept us into the Bay of Gibraltar five days ago flows down the centre of the Mediterranean Sea. So rather than follow the coast, we decide to take advantage of this current and by early afternoon are being borne along at 9 knots under the genoa.

  It is good to be at sea again, with a bright sun, temperate sea and gentle wind. However, I note when doing the log at 2 o’clock that afternoon that the barometer has dropped 6 points since we left Gib. David begins scanning Navtex for gale warnings. Around 8pm a stunning red-gold sun drops like a stone into the sea leaving red-gold feather streaks across the sky. The wind falls to nothing around midnight, while from behind our stern a full moon bathes the boat in a light so bright you can read by it. To the south-east a shooting star hurtles across in front of the constellation Orion. The night is so clear you can easily see ships’ lights 10 miles away with the naked eye.

  Meanwhile, David still ponders the drop in barometric pressure and its implications for our journey.

  ‘Perhaps I tapped it too hard,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ he says.

  I’d seen David tap the barometer before doing the log that morning. I’d never seen him do that before and assumed that I should have been tapping it as well. So when I’d taken over the log, I’d tapped the barometer too. It had dropped a point. I’d tapped it again, just out of interest, and it had dropped two more. Next log, I’d tapped it again.

  ‘You’re only supposed to do it once a day!’ he shouts. ‘In the mornings!’

  Then the depth gauge produces one of its sudden drops – to just over a metre, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

  MEDITERRANEAN SPAIN

  35

  Gibraltar To Almería

  Our destination is Almería, at the eastern end of the Costa del Sol and at the head of a huge bay. On this stretch of coast there are very few anchorages and they are quite exposed, so we are planning to go into a marina again. David has done the last watch of the night and he is in the cockpit when I get up.

  The sun is just rising as I emerge from a dim cabin with sleepy, half-closed eyes into one of those mornings that takes your breath away. The sea is flat and glossy, like floating silk. A newly risen red-gold sun has put a pink and gold sheen on it, and it undulates voluptuously, unbroken except at our wake where it curls away from our stern like cream from a whisk. The sky seems translucent. A soft pink-grey mist lies at the water’s edge obliterating any sign of habitation while above it rise the soft brown contours of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in subtle layers, bathed in sunlight. And you wonder if this is what the dawn of Creation must have been like. You go up front, still drowsy from sleep, bare feet slipping over decks wet with dew and stand on the foredeck, bathing in the unbelievable beauty of it all, wanting it to go on forever.

  In less than an hour the sun has risen high and hot enough to burn away the mist and reveal an unbroken wall of high-rise concrete overhung with yellow pollution. But we are two and a half miles offshore and if you screw up your eyes a little, and pretend it is a cliff face, you can dream on a little longer.

  It has been a quiet night, apart from David’s brief encounter with a large stationary ship bearing a ‘vessel not under command’ signal – two red lights, one above the other – warning of mechanical or steering breakdown. Somebody on board had turned a spotlight on him as Voyager passed.

  ‘What sort of ship was it?’ I ask over breakfast.

  ‘I dunno,’ he says, ‘I’d got this blinding light in my eyes.’

  His own torch had gone out in the middle of his watch. We have encountered a hiccup with our rechargeable battery system. Whilst taking all day to recharge, the battery doesn’t last through the night.

  Some time later there is a VHF radio announcement for a weather forecast on another channel. Unfortunately I can’t hear the channel number in English. In Spanish I catch only the second number – quatro – but by the time I have trawled through all the two-number combinations ending in four I have missed the broadcast. However, the weather is so calm and we are so close to our destination that, for the moment at least, a weather warning is irrelevant.

  The skyline as you approach Almería from the sea is dominated by the immense Alcazaba castle, built by the Moors in the 10th century and second in size only to the Alhambra, the largest of the Muslim fortresses in Andalucía. Its fortified walls undulate over the hilltops for what seem to be miles.

  The town itself was founded by the Phoenicians, an ancient race from a narrow strip of land along the eastern Mediterranean coast which is now modern Lebanon, plus parts of Syria and Israel, and which included the two biblical cities of Sidon and Tyre. They were formidable sailors, traders and settlers of the first and second millenniums BC. Their influence extended far beyond the Mediterranean, however, and before 600BC they had sailed to the Atlantic islands of England and Ireland, Madeira, the Canaries and the Azores and all the way round the coast of Africa. There is even some small evidence that they may have reached New Engl
and 2,000 years before Columbus made landfall in the Americas.

  Almería was also a major Roman harbour after 19AD and was sacked by the Christians during the Crusades. Then ownership passed back and forth between the Spanish and the Moors until finally resting with Spain at the end of the 15th century. There is an old saying to the effect that Almería was Almería when Granada (home to the famous Alhambra) was just its farm. It currently has a population upwards of 150,000.

  We arrive at 11am at a small marina, tucked behind a sea wall. We stare at a pontoon with a green awning and a courting couple on it, and what might be fuel pumps, and wonder if it could conceivably be the waiting pontoon as well. It is in a narrow inlet between the marina and an enormous wooden pier, 60-feet high, but the water itself looks very shallow. We are just thinking about nosing into it to test its depth when a marina attendant appears to our right and waves us to the short concrete dock on which he is standing. David squeezes Voyager in, between shoaling rocks at one end and a small cabin cruiser’s beam across the other. We are the only foreign boat here.

  While David goes off to the marina office and I put away our foul weather jackets, another weather forecast is announced on the VHF. The channel number I had been unable to hear out at sea turns out to have been 74 and the weather for the morrow is favourable. David returns saying that the boats here are mainly small; the area reserved for bigger boats is full; no-one speaks English and the only word he understood in Spanish was ‘stay’. He has assumed that means we can stay where we are. He isn’t entirely sure, however, so while he remains aboard and puts the boat to rights in case we have to move after all, I go in search of fresh bread and some torch batteries before the shops close for siesta.

  When we had set out for the Continent I had expected more individual shops and markets, especially in the small coastal towns and villages we so often put into. Like England, however, most people in most places seem to shop in supermarkets. They may lack local colour, but are a boon to the linguistically-challenged. You don’t get involved in queue-forming mimes while a shopkeeper tries to determine how many rashers you want, or whether you want the heads on or off. You simply pick up a pack and wander off to the checkout where a computerized till screen tells you how much money to hand over. Another advantage, when you lack road transport, is that everything is under one roof. All you have to do to find that roof is stop a fellow-pedestrian, smile, say, ‘Excuse me,’ in the appropriate language, add ‘supermarket, please’ and then they smile and point in the approximate direction. You pinpoint its exact location by observing the first fully-laden supermarket polybag that hoves into view and then following the line of its wash.

  Between the marina and the town of Almería there is an area to cross of derelict streets, flyover supports and abandoned warehouses. It is typical of a docks area in the process of redevelopment and rebuilding is in hand. Everywhere you go, it seems, Spain is renewing herself. Once across this no-man’s land you enter a new and affluent commercial centre. A woman carrying supermarket polybags cheerfully points in the direction of the building I am seeking.

  Although new and bright, it is not a happy supermercado. There has been a gesture towards open planning and circular displays which, although attractive, leads to trolleys being pushed in curves instead of straight lines which inevitably results in collisions and bottlenecks. Also, the ticket machine at the bread counter has broken down. The queue there is enormous and edgy, and the solitary assistant looks harassed and resentful. I want something for sandwiches at sea next day, and while I’m not averse to a little crispness on the outside, I do like the inside to have a bit of give in it. The Spanish and Portuguese tend to favour bread with a firm texture and a very hard crust. The result is reminiscent of the half-baguettes that British Rail buffet cars used to sell as sandwiches in the early nineties, so that you turned up at business meetings with tomato stains down your blouse and mayonnaise behind one ear.

  I don’t join the jostling bread queue. I buy a packet of burger buns off a shelf instead. At least they flinch when you touch them and a filling stays inside so you can eat it. I am unable to find torch batteries of the right size.

  In our sort of life you spend quite a bit of time looking for things. When I get back I go in search of the showers. This is a very nice marina built for local people that also provides squash and tennis courts, saunas and a gym. I find all of them while looking for the shower block as the buildings don’t have any signs on them because the members already know where they are. I try Reception but both women are engaged in a long, complicated dialogue with somebody, so I go back outside. A very tall African directing car parking speaks perfect English and I enter the unmarked door to which he directs me. The large room is empty apart from a table with a model of the marina on it. I go outside again. The man is further away now but he spots me and waves me back in with a motion of the hand that says keep going. I continue through this empty room to another, with a woman at a counter. She directs me to the right, at the same time calling out melodiously, ‘Ni-co!’ As I enter, a young man in overalls uncurls from under a washbasin, smiles and dutifully withdraws.

  Like supermarkets, you develop a feel for shower blocks which range from very good to potential death traps. The worst we ever encountered had a long sloping floor of very shiny white porcelain tiles but no handholds unless you counted the loose electrical wiring to the right of the door as you stepped into semi-darkness. With the tiles wet from a previous user it was like trying to walk down a glacier on leather soles. The options were electrocution if you grabbed at the wiring for support; having your feet shoot from under you if you didn’t; or hurtling painfully chest-first into the taps if you managed against all the odds to stay upright without being electrocuted. This one is currently being refurbished and will probably be very good when people like me allow Nico to finish working on it.

  Although my experience is limited, every marina regardless of size seems to have three toilets and three showers; as if there is a European Union directive, or else they get them as flat packs or something. But all three of anything never work. One lavatory will not flush. One washbasin will lack a tap. One shower head will be missing. Few have adequate hooks to hang up your clothes and towel so you quickly learn to wear the absolute minimum and make a proper inspection of the facilities before committing yourself. Today, because of the renovations in progress, two shower heads are missing. Unfortunately the remaining one is also faulty, sending an arc of water over my head onto my towel and clothes hanging on the single hook on the back of the cubicle door. By reducing the flow to a dribble, I can retain a towel that is only moderately damp. And at least it’s less water to soak my hair. In marina showers, with their high, non-adjustable shower heads, you invariably wash your hair whether you want to or not. But then the Mediterranean’s hot sun and wind dries it again in minutes.

  Unusually, David adjourns to our cabin after lunch. Unaccustomed heat is tiring; so are night passages with their interrupted sleep. We are also aware how very unfit we are.

  At 2.30 an elderly man in a rubber dinghy tows in four Oppies. One of them has an exuberant little Angela in it. Round the edge of the high wooden pier beyond our stern I can see the castle we had observed from the sea. To the left of it is an impressive piece of civil engineering. They have erected bridges between hills, tunnelled through peaks and shored up valleys to build a road around the coast. Almería is changing. The little marina itself is where great ships would once have tied up to that high wooden pier, but either the pier was much longer then, or the harbour has silted up, for the water around it is now too shallow for anything beyond a small day boat. My eyelids begin to droop and I join David in a siesta.

  We go ashore around 6pm. It is an impressive town with a lot of new building going on that gives a prosperous air to it. We stroll along a shady promenade of enormous, very old trees, and up the hill to the castle. A very bent, very old woman in black emerges from a tiny cave-dwelling in its shadow, her arthritic
hand outstretched for money. Up above her an affluent young bride and groom pose for photographs under an archway using the battlements as a backdrop. In a street below her, a quartet of young, male lute players in black velvet knickerbockers, belted tunics, and sleeves slashed with red satin, wait. Their sunglasses are a modern touch; likewise the cigarettes they are smoking to pass the time until the bride and groom return from their photo session to be serenaded into the reception.

  From Moorish castle, cave dweller and Renaissance musicians we meander down through old narrow streets and tiny pastel houses to a café for a beer. It is very pleasant to sit at street cafés. It’s not something that happens much in northern England except during the best days of summer. It is also considerably cheaper here. Two beers accompanied by two dishes of tapas cost less than a single pint at home. We observe the peak-hour home-going traffic and are glad we aren’t part of that any more. It is not until we are leaving our table that I read the name above the window: Café Gladys’s.

  I used to have an aunt called Gladys. It’s not a name I’ve ever associated with Spain. Nor could my Aunt Gladys, nor our parents nor any of their contemporaries, have ever contemplated the life David and I are able to live now. It would have been incomprehensible to them. As with many other nations, two world wars had impoverished their generation, their parents’ generation and their country.

  As children during the first World War (1914–1918) many male family members had failed to return from the carnage to support them. Their working life had begun at fourteen. As adults, between 1939 and 1945, they had been conscripted into the Second World War, or into the factories that supported it, working long hours on rationed food for minimal wages out of which they paid for the hospital births of their children pending the inauguration of the National Health Service in 1948. David and I were both born during World War II.