“You not on a working day, then?”
I shook my head.
“Nope. Actually flying with your lot, this time”
“Where are you off to, then?”
“Cuba”
“Ooh! Packed your dancing shoes?”
“I don’t dance. Packed my snorkel and flippers, though”
“I remember you talking about stuff like that before. Where was it you went that time?”
“Egypt. Red Sea”
“Not fancy that again? Shorter flight, bit cheaper?”
“Well, the food was crap there, and so was the beer. And a couple of other things”
The ground girl stared at me, then smiled.
“Yeah, got you. You’ve done so well, you know? I really admire your courage”
I burst out laughing at that one.
“Necessity, Cindy, not courage! Anyway, yeah. Egypt would be more than a bit risky for me, and the food really IS rubbish, and the beer’s like cheap shampoo. What’s the point of all-inclusive if it only includes shite? Oh, and I got some glass in my foot in the pool last time. Russians on the pop from before breakfast, broken glasses and bottles everywhere”
“Might be the same there, in Cuba I mean. Russians”
“Done loads of research. Mostly French Canadians, for some reason”
“Well, you enjoy. You deserve a break. I’m off to Gate 16 now; Puerto Plata’s due out. See ya!”
I settled myself into one of the seats halfway down one of the long rows, trying to guess who would be near me for the long hours of the flight. Please, god, let it not be one of the kids running screaming around the gate area… Distraction. I dragged out the two books I had found in Foyle’s, a coral fish guide and one of the few available bird guides to the island, and did my best to familiarise myself with at least some of the more common ones. Fill the time until boarding, and hope the nerves will ease.
The actual call for boarding took me by surprise, and I realised that I had actually fallen asleep in my seat, the insomnia of the previous night catching me up with a vengeance. I pulled the handle out of little pull-along bag, placed boarding card in passport and joined the queue.
“Hiya, Caroline! Cindy said you were flying with us today. Can’t do you an upgrade, sorry”
I grinned back at her.
“No worries, Kelly. As long as we get there, and reasonably on time, I’ll be happy”
“Well, you enjoy! You know the way, love”
It was a bit quicker along the walkway until I caught up with the queue at the actual aircraft door, and then it was shuffle-stop again.
“Welcome aboard, Miss Nelson. Please take the aisle on the left for your seat. It’s a window spot”
Too late to back out now, then. I shuffled forward once more as other passengers gradually filled the overhead lockers with their own cabin bags, and then I was there, the set of three chairs empty, belts folded across each seat. I quickly placed my flight supplies onto my chair, humped the bag into the locker, and settled myself into place. Books into the little mesh pocket, Walkman sling around my neck, earplugs and sleep mask in the pocket of my photographer’s gilet. I fastened the belt just as my flight companions arrived, settling back in as relaxed a state as I could manage as they went through their own ritual.
Ten minutes later, they were gone, courtesy of a hostess and an offer of a honeymoon upgrade, the cabin crew woman leaving behind a whispered “Best Kelly could do, Caroline” as she led away a grinning pair of newly-weds. I was NOT going to turn that one down, and eyed the acres of space gratefully. At five foot ten, I am not exactly short for a woman, and I could see myself sleeping far more comfortably across three seats than I could ever hope for coffin-style in a single seat.
The usual sequence then unfolded, tapes tied in double knots, sharp tugs to inflate, the Showing Of The Whistle And Light, as well as the Dance of the Exits (which may be behind you), as the plane moved slowly along the taxiway towards the main runway. I left the books in the mesh pocket as I struggled with my nerves, now at a peak.
Why on Earth hadn’t I picked somewhere safer, or at least closer to home? Cuba was meant to be safer for us than Egypt, but surely it would have been less risky going to the Med? I knew the answer, though, and it was simple frustration. I had spent so many holidays swimming in exotic places, surrounded by fish in such a variety of shapes and shades, and it had all stopped as soon as I had made that final decision, the one I had delayed for so long.
I looked down at my handbag, set next to my feet, almost able to see the passport through the leather. It held that magic letter ‘F’, so fuck ‘em all. Anyway, that was the plane rocking on its brakes as the engines wound up, so it was too late to back down. I closed my eyes and slumped back into the seat as the surge of acceleration took me away from Gatwick.
I have no idea what time it was when we arrived at Holguin, which served me right for booking everything as cheaply as I could. It was pitch black, and there was supposed to be a car waiting for me. A middle-aged man was pushing forward, grabbing for my bags, and as he was about to stuff them into the boot of an old Lada, I spotted a younger man holding a sign: ‘NELSON’.
Accompanied by some serious grumping from the first driver, I dragged my bags back out, and waved at the young man. He took my larger bag across the car park to a bulbous American antique with the name ‘Oldsmobile’ across the front of its bonnet.
“You are going to Guardalavaca, no?”
“Yes. Si”
He nodded, and I climbed into a capacious front seat, a bench affair stretching right across the width of the car. We started off, several other old Yank cars ahead of us, thick clouds of dust coming back from the one immediately in front. At least, I thought it was dust until I went to rub my right arm, resting on the open window, and discovered the light film of oil on my skin.
I didn’t really start to worry until I realised that the excuse for a paved road had disappeared, and we were on a dirt track. No lights in the street, small concrete houses, and we were stopping. Fuck. Cuban Immigration hadn’t so much as twitched on seeing my passport, my bag had arrived on time, and yet here I was, not even at my resort before I was about to be robbed.
Fuck, once more. I started to look for a decent direction to run, as the car slowed, and then the driver turned to me with a shake of his head.
“I am sorry, but the car, she is not in good today. I get my other, yes? You wait?”
Lightning suddenly flashed overhead, and in its flash the lad looked so shame-faced I found myself almost making my own apologies.
“Not a problem. Will it take long?”
“No. My house here, yes? My brother, he knew the car is bad. Five minutes”
I had another bad moment when his brother appeared, but there was a much smaller figure with him. My driver was into his ‘sorries’ once more.
“My son, he can come for the ride as well?”
Relief. Raped and robbed and murdered, maybe, but not with a ten-year-old along to share the fun. Or at least I hoped so. The lightning was getting more insistent as we pulled away in another car, also an Oldsthingy, and we were soon back on a better road. Just as we hit a longer straight, an immense spike of lightning slammed down directly in front of us, but surely at least a mile away, and all three voices, including my own, went “Ooh!”
If anything eased my fears, that was the moment. Twenty minutes later, we were rolling into the turning circle for the Sol Rio de Lunes y Mares resort, and as I fumbled through my tourist money, I am sure that I tipped the driver far more than was normal. Safe, sound, and it turned out to be three in the morning, and my room was a ten-minute walk away, and it had a shower, and the oil came off, and shit, I was tired. I still set my alarm for seven.
The light hurt my eyes, far too few hours later, and I dithered before breakfast. What to wear? What would they see in the daylight? A quick scrape of my face, my normal handful of Progynova, and then sod it. Long cotton skirt, flat sandals and a vest top with a scarf laid over my shoulders, just in case of local mores. I wasn’t looking forward to the meal, memories of Egypt sniggering over my shoulder, but it turned out to be rather good, with all sorts of things that were actually tempting rather than being simply the best of a poor choice. And they had tea, tea that I was allowed to brew to my own preferred strength rather than some insipid lukewarm pisswater.
I still felt rough after my late arrival, but sod it. I ate in a large dining room with huge windows, a slightly scruffy pool outside, and once I had finished my munchies, I took a last cuppa outside to one of the tables there.
There were black birds hopping around, and from my bird book, which had automatically slipped into my handbag, I identified them as ‘Cuban blackbirds’, and as I watched them stealing scraps from around the tables, a shadow passed over me, and that was my first ever turkey vulture, and certainly not my last. They were everywhere! I strolled back to my room, still half asleep, seeing other birds on the grass and in the shrubs, but sod that for now: the other thing that had grabbed my attention had been the vast expanse of blue sea stretching away to the horizon.
No way did I have the confidence for a bikini, so the one-piece would do, an old T-shirt over the top to spare me too much sun for the first day, and a carrier bag was enough luggage. The beach was pristine, and dotted with little shelters, a palm leaf parasol-shaped roof on top of a concrete pillar, and one near the ramp down was unoccupied. I sat down in the shade, sorting through my kit as a group of skinny topless women basted a few yards away in the steadily increasing blast of the sun.
“’Ere! You can fack off outer are spot, facking dago cah!”
Bollocks. I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to be recognised as a fellow Brit by any Best Essex Gammon, and shuffled through the hot sand to another little shelter, this one with no sunbeds nearby. I pulled off my skirt, rolled it up and put it into the carrier bag after tipping out my mask, snorkel and fins. Wrist strap of my simple waterproof camera pulled tight, and what felt like the walk of shame across the sand. Surely nobody could miss what I actually was, despite the hair, tits and one-piece cossie? Eyes down, watch my footing and try not to step on any of the little crabs popping in and out of their sand burrows. I sat down in the edge of the water, expecting the shock of cold the Med would have given my rump, and it was like a warm bath. Ooh! This was going to be good!
I fell over backwards three times as I tried to pull on my fins, but I didn’t care, and once the fins were settled in place, I sorted my mask and snorkel, half-rolled into the water and started to swim slowly from the beach. There was sod-all about, and as I looked down, I realised that the sea bed was covered in grass, white sea-urchins scattered throughout, and then a shoal of silver and yellow fish swept past, and I didn’t have a clue what they were.
That set the pattern of my day, and I spent whole hours finning slowly across acres of dead-looking coral at the western end of the beach, slowly working out what I was seeing in the way of sea-life, or at least some of it. The water was warm, if a little cloudy in places, and I was finally at peace, nobody anywhere near enough to point or laugh, the breath sighing in my snorkel and only the slightest of waves to rock me despite the steady breeze.
There was a little café at ramp, just past the basting slappers, and I took lunch there, surrounded by couples and families speaking accented French. As I looked through what photos I had managed to get of some surgeon fish, one of the men called over to me.
“Anglaise?”
I nodded back, grateful for the courtesy.
“English, yes. First day here”
“You seek the coral? The fishes?”
“Yes indeed”
“Then you walk along the plage, past the etang. There is rock, and then a cliff. Coral is situate under the cliff. Many fishes are there”
“Thank you!”
“Not a problem. You here alone?”
“Yes”
He grinned.
“Be aware of the waiters, then! They have the rapid smile for the lonely woman. Lonely? No. The woman alone, is better English”
I smiled back.
“I think I will be safe that way”
Another grin, as his wife shook her head.
“That is not fun! Is a holiday, you must venture”
“My venturing is in the water, I think”
“Well, we see you in the dining, then. I am Laurent, my femme Nicole, and the trouble ones are Yves and Amelie”
“Like the film?”
Laurent looked archly at his wife, who nodded, before he turned back to me, and in response to a raised eyebrow, and as a courtesy, I gave my name.
“Not Caro-LYNN, nor Caro-LEEN but Caro-LINE, please”
Little Yves, who wasn’t that little, being about twelve, held up a hand.
“And not Carrie, like the other film?”
Fathers and sons, oh dear. They were certainly better company than the underclad gammon, and when I left, they all insisted on handshakes.
The walk along the beach led past a little stand of sailing boats, and then I reached the narrow creek that led to the ‘lagoon’, and dear god it stank. There were semi-drowned trees in the middle, however, and a group of herons or egrets, including what was clearly an anhinga. Bingo! The map on the internet had shown that the smelly pond backed onto the hotel grounds, so I resolved to find a way round to it later. For now, the rock Laurent had mentioned was showing along the edge of the beach, so I found another little ‘umbrella’ under which I left my bag, and slipped back into the water.
What a difference! There were a few coral heads offshore, and around them were clouds of fish. It wasn’t anything as good as some of the Red Sea reefs I had visited, but I was more than satisfied, and started to blitz my camera’s memory card with stills and videos. Not bad for a first day, and I started to forget my terror from that stop in the middle of nowhere. I thought to myself that I could definitely manage another ten days of this!
It was nearly five in the evening when I finally emerged from the water and strolled back up the ramp to my block and another shower in my room. The vultures were still swooping around in the breeze, and as I combed my hair looking out of my picture window, I could hear that wind moaning around the end of my block. I had ear plugs, so nothing to worry about. Once my hair was in shape again, I sorted my handbag out, putting everything of value into the little safe, leaving the bag itself free for the two books, my little camera and the midget binoculars that went everywhere with me. Dinnertime.
It was another hour before I could leave my room, as my confidence fought against my fear and only just prevailed. I had a summer dress on, with dressier sandals than the morning, but still flats. Oversized sunglasses, just a touch of lipstick, and then out of the door while I still held my nerve. There was no queue at the big dining room, and a smiling man led me to a table with two place settings.
“Drink? Margarita, mojito, coca?”
“What is a mojito?”
“Cuban drink. Famous. With lime. You will like it”
“Okay. Can I try a mojito then, please”
“Si! The food, it is there, you choose”
As he disappeared, no doubt to the bar, I looked at the selection, and my good intentions of staying slim and healthy vanished in a choice of fresh meats, salads and desserts. Eat your heart out, Egypt, I thought, and then remembered the rather less pleasant effects of the food out there. Not here. I filled a plate with salads as a starter, and found my drink waiting on my table.
There were leaves in it, which turned out to be mint, and it was tart, and it was fresh, and I realised that if I stayed with mojitos I would end up pissed in about an hour. Sod it; I would just have one more, with my dinner.
I was asleep by nine o’clock, four of the sneaky things later.
It took me a couple of days before I found my routine, but it was a simple one. Get up, eat, swim, eat, swim, shower in my room while smiling at whatever amazing little sculpture the cleaner had turned a towel into, and then dress down for dinner. At least, the first parts became routine, because the latter part went out of the panoramic window on my second evening.
“Caro-LINE!”
My new Canadian friends were already seated when I arrived, and as they scraped their chairs closer together at their table, it was obvious that they expected me to dine with them. My smiling man, part way through leading me to another sad singleton table, just shrugged and went to collect some more cutlery, leaving me with the hardest of questions.
“Mojito?”
Sod it.
“Por favor”
I took my seat between Yves and Amelie, and the boy passed me a plate of bread rolls as Laurent did the handshake thing again, as my mojito arrived.
“We miss you yesterday evening, Caroline”
“I was just so tired! Jet lag, whatever. At least you just fly in the same time zone. I am still on London time. Oh, yes—I found the fish. Thank you!”
Nicole looked up from buttering a chunk of bread, smiling.
“You have photographs? With your little water camera?”
“Yes indeed. Haven’t got a clue what they are, the fish, though. Birds, yes, but not fish. I am hoping to watch a few birds while I am here; it’s my first time this side of the Atlantic”
Laurent was nodding in agreement.
“Yes, and the birds here, they are very different to what we see in Montreal. Have you seen the Emerald yet?”
“Emerald?”
“The humming bird, zzzzzzzzz it goes. There are many here, but you see them at the flowers, above the beach. Behind are the… Yves?”
The boy looked up from his plate of salad.
“Kingbirds and mockingbirds, Papa”
I realised I needed to load my own plate from the buffet, so nodded my thanks to the lad and sorted my starter plate, noticing that there was a ‘barbie to order’ section with what looked like chicken and beef. Next plate, Caroline, and remember to leave room for pud.
Yves was flicking through some pieces of paper as I returned, and he grinned at me.
“They have the sanctions here, and so no tablet. Not natural, but I have here the travellers’ pages and I have found what I need. Do you read only English?”
“Yes. Sorry…”
“Papa? Please tell me if I have the wrong words, but there is a man who can show where the birds live, he is only called Pablo here in the papers. He is on a moto, or maybe a cyclomoteur…”
The boy rattled off some French, and Laurent replied, “Motorbike, or--- Caroline? English word for a very small motorcycle, for boys to ride?”
“Moped?”
“Yes! I thank you. He has a moped or a motorbike”
Sod that, I thought, but the idea was tempting, at least the birding part. No way was I straddling some two-wheeled shed behind a strange man. Yves was scribbling in a notepad, and tore out a page and passed it to me.
“The telephone number. Papa?”
“Ouai, mon fils?”
“Animation, this evening? We can stay to watch?”
“Yes, of course, but only here, not the other place”
I missed some of the conversation, because I could smell some of the barbecue, and my stomach was rumbling happily. The cook was all smiles and crinkly old eyes, and efficiently converted my “Could I have a mix of meats please?” into a plate of aromatic promise. Top up with veg, back to the table, and my waiter was there, pointing to my empty glass.
“Could I just have a beer, please”
He nodded and swept away, and on his return with the frosty glass I saw that Laurent was passing him a banknote. As the waiter made it disappear, Laurent explained.
“This is Cuba, Caroline. It is not a rich country, because of our mutual neighbours. Many people here, they do three jobs. The money, yes, it is CUC, not national pesos. Nothing to me, or perhaps only a tiny thing, but here, for them, is big, important. We have animation tonight, every night. Entertainment, yes? First here, and then in the other room, beside the other piscine. Pool. That one is for late night. The people who make the music, they have already worked for a whole day, so please, be kind. Find some small money, for your cleaner, for the Animation, for the man who brings your mojito. Do you have the soaps from your home?”
“Toiletries? Yes. I had no idea what there would be here”
“Then do not use those in your bathroom. Leave the bottles and the soaps for your cleaner, for her family”
Shit. Was it that bad? I looked at the buffet selection in a new light. Shit, once more.
“This animation, Laurent?”
“Ah, it is music, and sometimes the dance. The rumba, the salsa, yes? You are a dancer?”
“Me? God, no. Two left feet, and too tall for that sort of thing!”
And too bloody terrified as well, but I kept that bit to myself. The ‘other room’ was not far from my own block, so I decided to have a little look in before bed, but there was already another beer beside my plate, the waiter’s efficiency most definitely enhanced by Laurent’s tip. I folded the piece of paper with Pablo’s number and slipped it into the inside pocket of my handbag as the conversation turned down a safer route, and I found myself explaining the joys of managing a large part of an airport duty-free shop.
“Not a lot of perks---er, extra benefits--- but this is a diver’s watch. Not expensive, but it does the job. The camera was cheaper on the internet than in our shop, so I bought it there”
Nicole sipped from her glass of wine that never seemed to empty.
“What is the bad part of the work?”
“Oh, that’s an easy one! Two things, really, and the first is just watching everyone else going off on holiday while I have to work. Never feels fair, that”
Yves piped up again, asking what the second bad thing was, and I grimaced.
“Drunks. People who come to the airport in the early morning, not in transit. People who are still on our time zone, and their breakfast is mostly alcohol. They get drunk, they get stupid, and then they don’t fly. Some of them… some of them act like it’s a good thing to get so drunk they miss their flight, that it makes them big men or something”
Nicole sniffed.
“It is the men, then?”
“Not always. Plenty of drunk women as well. Not nice to see”
“Really? That is shameful”
We chatted for what felt like hours, and as we adapted to each other’s accents, it got more and more natural, and it seemed that my little glass of beer had achieved the same auto-filling nature as Nicole’s. Finally, though, the last of our food was gone, even though the buffet was still tempting me, and all five of us moved out to the seats by the pool, where some speakers had been set up, a small group of musicians tuning their instruments and checking the sound as about ten men and women in matching outfits chatted, occasionally scanning the audience-to-be. Nicole was fumbling in a carrier bag, and fished out a pair of heeled shoes with a broad strap over the instep. Oh.
I waved for a mojito. I had the wrong shoes for dancing, it appeared, and I already knew I had the wrong legs, so it were best that I made sure I got the wrong head on as quickly as possible. The tuning didn’t take that long, and then the band launched into what can only be described as a ‘Latin’ piece; hardly surprising, given where we were. I am not a musician, but I can recognise guitars and double bass, and the shaky things were maracas. I guessed the drums were bongos, but there were other bits of percussion that left me clueless. Whatever it was, it wasn’t like the usual rubbish I had heard on the radio in the hesitation gap between first recognising it and managing to hit the off-switch, probably because it was very, very live. The band was grinning, clearly having fun, and the hangers-on were twirling away in some sort of swaying dance. By the second or third tune, Nicole and Laurent were up with them, jiving or rumbing or salsing or whatever it was called, and the kids were doing their own version behind our table.
I had another mojito as I watched, realising that I actually had a pair of shoes similar to Nicole’s, bought as heels I couldn’t fall out of, and less uncomfortable than spikier ones would be. The steps looked simple, a sort of in-and-out with lots of hip movement, and I found my feet tapping, and…
Don’t be so bloody stupid, Nelson. Other couples were up now, so as Nicole and her man took a breather, I made my apologies, citing persistent jet lag, and headed off for my room. Somehow, though, I found my way to the other venue, the one described as ‘late night’, and settled myself into a chair by the wall, for more beer.
The music was very different, featuring an extremely talented flute player, and I found myself relaxing as I listened, or perhaps simply getting more drunk as she played on. My dreams were busy, despite the alcohol, and filled with the sensation of a skirt swishing from side to side as my dream-self stepped there and away, sway and back.
Ring Pablo, and get away from the music for a while. I could manage a backy on a moped, just the once.
I was late for breakfast, so missed my friends. A quick inquiry at reception and they sent an e-mail to the address Yves had given me; I wondered if it was purely external links, outside Cuba, that were unreliable. Never mind; when I returned from my day face-down in the sea, I had a reply, and an appointment the next morning, which gave me the excuse I needed for an early night, just as Nicole was sorting her footwear out. By early night, I mean some more beer in the other venue, where a soprano of rather more than decent quality was working her way through some opera standards.
The dreams were the same, and the sound of the wind moaning around the end of the building somehow took on a dance rhythm. Crap.
I was ready for the bike as early as I could manage, in slacks, trainers and T-shirt, my photographers gilet holding bird book and mini-bins, while the lightweight rucksack I had packed in my suitcase carried big bins, spotting scope and full-size camera., If I were to get robbed this time, the best part of seven hundred quid would be gone, but I didn’t care. There were all sorts of things I wanted to see, and this was the only way I had found to do so.
Pablo wasn’t that late, and his bike was neither a throbbing monster nor a tiny fifty, but a reasonable modern scooter with a 250cc engine. I could live with that. He stepped off the bike, and I realised how tall he was, at least six foot three, probably a year or two older than myself.
“Caroline nelson?”
“Yes. You must be Pablo?”
“Si. You have binoculars?”
“Yes, and a telescope. I have them in a rucksack, so they won’t be in the way”
“In the way? Oh!”
His laugh was absolutely natural, and he was grinning while shaking his head.
“No, not like that! I have a friend, he has a taxi. I meet you at the start of a path, in the forest. You pay me for the guiding, and you pay him for the transport. You have CUC?”
The Cuban tourist peso, naturally. I remembered Laurent’s account of second and third jobs, and that was borne out by the friend’s car, which hadn’t a single indication of its status as a taxi. I didn’t mind, to be honest. The driver was pleasant, although he didn’t speak English, and there was no haggling over the price Pablo had dictated. We made our way on smaller and smaller roads, turning to dirt in an echo of my ride from the airport, and at a little shack where two men in a neighbouring paddock were branding horses, Pablo’s scooter was waiting, and it was hot, bloody hot, away from the coast and its breezes. I paid his friend, who cleared off, and Pablo led us through a gap between two of the stringy trees to the start of a footpath, or perhaps goat track.
“There, Miss Nelson. Your first bird today”
His voice was hushed, and as I followed his pointing finger, I saw it, a tiny shape in red and green.
“Tody. Common bird, but very small. We have smaller, but you don’t see that today. Cuba has the world’s smallest, the bee hummingbird, Not here, though. Very rare”
That set the tone of the day, and I was astonished at how well he knew both the birds and where to find them, even including two types of nightjar. Red-legged thrush, tanagers, even a surprisingly well-hidden trogon, even a caracara in flight, I was seeing some wonderful stuff. We’d walk, push through some scrub or thorn, and he would go “There”, or “Look”, and there would be another new species for me. We paused at one point as he indicated a tall tree with a lumpy base to a high branch.
“He is there. Can you look through that little telescope? May I?”
It was the eyes I spotted first, and Pablo identified it as a Cuban pygmy owl. I spent a little while getting some half-decent photos, and then he indicated a piece of rock to one side of the trail.
“Have you brought food and drink?”
It was my turn to grin.
“Do I look stupid? I have a bag of munchies from breakfast. Want to share? I didn’t know your plan, so I made a bag full”
Another grin.
“Well, I have water, and… against the mosquitoes, yes? Oh, and…there”
Finally, I had my first hummingbird. It might not have been a ‘bee’, but it was just as the Canadians had described it, buzzing away as it worked through a fall of unfamiliar blossoms. As always, the longer I sat quietly, the more birds (and lizards) I saw. I was entranced.
Sod Egypt, once more. Sod topless gammons lying mindless under a coating of sun oil. Sod bloody Sussex. For a few moments, sitting in the shade of an unfamiliar type of tree eating sweaty ham and cheese rolls and drinking lukewarm water, I was in paradise.
Pity about the mossies.
The afternoon went the same way, as we emerged from the path to find Mr Not A Taxi awaiting us, and the second part of the trip was spent at a wetland area, all reed beds and egrets, warblers and clapper rails, with an enormous land crab skulking under a bridge support. I was surprised when Pablo apologised for the lack of ‘interesting’ birds. I looked at him in astonishment.
“Are you joking?”
“They are all common birds”
“Pablo, not to me. Come over to where I live, and I will show you want ‘common’ means. We even have a word for them: SBJs. Small Brown Jobs, that is, because they are all small and brown!”
He shook his head.
“One day, I want to see the Camargue, or the Solent, or Slimbridge. The migration time in Gibraltar, oh yes”
“The bloody Solent? That is where I come from, just inland. Trust me, not that much to see there!”
He was grinning again.
“I think the English word is ‘snap’, Miss Nelson!”
“Caroline, please! You make me feel like a schoolteacher”
“Caroline, then. Now, You still have CUC? I need to be rude, for I have to pay for food for my home”
“You can’t fit much shopping on a scooter, surely?”
“Ah, my friend delivers it, and I pay the store. The food is already at our apartment”
“How many are you? Children?”
“I have a daughter. She is fourteen”
“Sweet! What do you call her?”
“Rita, after her mother”
I laughed.
“I had that as a child. My parents named me after my… mother, so whenever someone called that name, we both looked round”
After my father, to be truthful, but I wasn’t sharing that little titbit. Pablo was shaking his head, though, a sour set to his mouth.
“There are just two of us now, Caroline. A bad driver, which is enough of the story. Now, I must ring my friend to collect you”
Conversation closed very abruptly, but I could feel his pain. He dialled a number, and after a couple of rings, he launched into Spanish. I couldn’t follow any of it, but it gradually increased in vehemence, as did the movement of his free arm. Eventually, his head dropped, and a tone of reluctant acceptance came over his voice. He closed his phone, and turned to me, looking profoundly embarrassed.
“My friend, his car has broken. It is the time when everyone comes from work, and I do not know when I can find you a driver, and I must get back to my office and the store. I am sorry”
Shit.
“What options are there?”
He turned and looked at the scooter.
“Have you ridden before on a motorcycle?”
With a beard and a leather jacket, Pablo, but once again you do not need to know that.
“Many times”
“Then I am sorry, but we have no choice. Please just sit still and do not lean the bike”
He popped the saddle off, and produced a second helmet, a minimalist thing that didn’t even cover my ears. I managed to force it on, the size a little small, and once he had the engine running properly, I settled onto the back seat, the suspension sinking a long way. No bloody grab handles. With a muttered “Sorry, mate”, I took hold of his waist, and we were off.
I had never, ever, ridden on such a shit road surface, each notional straight in the road actually a chicane, simply because of potholes. Riding that pillion made me feel as if I was taking part in that dance from the evening before, and I was rather relieved when I was able to step off the machine at the turning circle in front of the resort. A horse-drawn taxi (that was what the sign on the back said) was waiting for a passenger, and its whip-wielding driver called out something to Pablo that sounded like a bad joke. It went backwards and forwards a couple of times, and then my biker muttered something under his breath that carried more than its fair share of venom. He pulled his scooter onto its centre stand, and led the way into the building, face like thunder. I caught his arm just inside the door.
“What did that man say?”
“It is… No. He is making trouble for me. He tells me that you are… That I am seeking sex, abandoning Rita for money. I need to speak to the manager, explain his words. This can make trouble for Rita, because his mouth is too big. I do NOT leave my daughter!”
Shit, he was angry, but at least it wasn’t with me.
“Wait here, and I will speak to the manager, because I have been insulted, and I am the paying guest. You are not. Please”
I left him shaking with anger and approached the desk, a mad idea now in control of my mouth, and after I had done just a little bit of negotiation (and spent a few more CUC), I returned to an angry man.
“Pablo, are you in time to pay your bill?”
“Yes”
“Can Rita ride on your scooter?”
“Yes. That was her helmet you wore”
“Then go and pay, then collect her and bring her here. Dinner is on me tonight”
Pablo stared at me for a few seconds, before looking into the main body of the hotel, then turned back to me.
“You cannot do this”
“I can, and I have already paid the man at the desk, and it was less than I would have paid your friend with the taxi. The car taxi, not the twat with the horse”
“Twat?”
He was clearly puzzled, and I found my cheeks burning.
“A rude word in English”
“What does it mean?”
“Oh, um…a lady’s, um. Her private parts. Not the rudest word for them, but not polite”
He barked out a laugh, shaking his head.
“What time? We cannot be out late in the night, as Rita has school”
“Er… half past six? Six thirty? In the bar here, this one by reception?”
“Six thirty, then. You do not need to do this”
“It is done. If you can’t make it, I have other friends, so I won’t be alone”
That brought a sharp memory of Laurent’s confusion over the English word, and with a wave, Pablo was off on his scooter, and I was left wondering exactly how stupid I was being. It was a done deal, though, unless he didn’t turn up. Sod it: I had time enough for a quick swim in the pool near my block, and then a shower. I found myself walking straight past both, though, as I walked across the mown grass to where a sudden downslope gave me a view of the lagoon, as a green woodpecker worked up a tree to my right. My newly educated birder’s eye picked out two sorts of kingbirds, some mockingbirds, grassquits and no fewer than six emerald hummingbirds moving from flower to flower, as if each fresh blossom held something the previous one had lacked.
No. Away with the maudlin. I quickly ticked off four sorts of herons, two types of cormorant and the anhinga I had seen from the beach, and then forced myself to turn on my heel and take the lift to my room. Into the swimming cossie, and splash into the pool, even though it would have been polite to have showered the grime off first. I slumped in the water for half an hour, making some desultory gestures towards ‘swimming lengths’, but I couldn’t keep enough focus on things. Out of the pool, padding barefoot along the concrete path, and back up to my room to lose the smell of chlorine. I only had forty-five minutes of privacy remaining.
I was at the little bar early, just as Nicole and her children passed me on their way to the dining room.
“Caroline! You dine with us? Laurent is late, as he was asleep, and the children, they would eat soon”
Salvation, in a sense.
“I would love to eat with you again, but I will have guests”
She stopped dead in her tracks.
“Guests? You have met other English people here?”
Oh yes, but no way would I ever wish to dine with them.
“No. He is a local man”
Yves was grinning happily just then.
“Maman, ask Caroline if he may be called perhaps Pablo?”
Once again, I felt my cheeks burning as I nodded.
“And his daughter. We had a small problem during the day, so I thought, well… Nicole, I remembered what you and Laurent said about how many jobs they each do, so it is a thank-you for a very good day. That is all”
She sent the two children on, with some words in French that I assume meant ‘Find a table for seven’, and stepped over to me, her voice much softer.
“And now you wear the skirt, and those shoes? Be careful, my little friend. Perhaps not drinking too many mojitos?”
I tried to make a joke of it, mentioning her bottomless wine glass, and she gave me the full eyebrows and shrug French experience.
“Wine is food, not drink! We eat soon”
I watched her walk off to catch up with her children, knowing that my fate had been sealed as soon as I had invited him, for there was no way I could have avoided being seen with him in the open spaces of the dining room. Laurent hurried past a couple of minutes later, with a little wave for me as I simply pointed to the tables, and then Pablo was coughing for attention, a skinny semi-teenager with an explosion of curly black hair standing just behind him, her eyes wide as she tried to take in every detail of the building. I rose carefully to my feet, far too conscious of the different stance the heels lent me, and made myself smile as warmly as I could for the girl’s benefit.
“You must be Rita. Welcome. Are you hungry?”
Her father whispered something, and she grinned, teeth startlingly white against the milky coffee of her skin, and nodded, asking something in Spanish. Pablo squeezed her shoulder, and she tried a few words on English.
“Yes, hungry! There is the music here?”
I had been so wound up I had missed the arrival of the band and dancers, but I just nodded and smiled again, before addressing Pablo once more.
“I have friends here to eat with. Will that be okay for you?”
His smile was a little abashed, but at least it was there.
“You are still sure about this?”
“Told you: I’ve already paid, so too late for that. Drinks?”
I was surprised when he ordered a Cuba libre for himself and a Coke for Rita.
“You aren’t riding the scooter?”
He grinned, a little more at ease.
“My friend with the taxi owes me the favour”
“What, the one whose car broke down?”
“No. A man with a horse, that received an explanation of the facts from me. I was quite persuasive, and so was your hotel manager. He has a Hyundai car as well as the carriage with the horse. As long as we are not here too late, we have the ride home”
“Fine! Um, yes---food?”
I walked in front of them towards the sizeable table that I assumed Yves had selected, spotting a knowing look between the adults as Laurent took in my choice of shoes. Introductions all round, along with the usual handshakes, and this time a kiss-kiss-kiss to my cheeks from the Canadians, all of them in turn. I took my seat, Yves to one side and Rita to the other, and did my best to explain. Yves was as forward as ever.
“This is the bird man with the motorbike, then?”
He turned to Pablo.
“Caroline can walk, then, as well as spend all day lying on her front in the water?”
Laurent almost lost it then, a mouthful of wine only just retained without being sprayed all over the table, and Pablo turned to smile at me.
“Did you not suggest these people were your friends, Caroline? Perhaps you might rethink that”
I shrugged.
“Perhaps, if we fill his face with food, then I won’t need to. Rita? Food?”
A happy smile, and in pairs and threes we started the process of inflicting serious harm on the buffet. I settled down with a mixed salad to open proceedings, and Pablo indicated his daughter attacking a similar selection.
“I had to explain that she doesn’t have to have everything at once, that she can go back as many times as she likes. It is very strange for her. She also wants to know about the music”
Yves surprised me then, leaning past me to speak to Rita in what was clearly broken Spanish, and once again I caught his word ‘animation’, that time twisted a little, and Rita was tugging at her father’s arm, rattling off much faster words.
“Caroline, what is the dancing?”
I swallowed a mouthful of mixed salad.
“I have no idea. I am not a dancer. Nicole? You do that stuff, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“Yes. My man and I, we like to dance. It is mostly the salsa, sometimes a rumba, but occasionally, we get our favourite”
Yves snorted.
“That is when my sister and myself, we leave with the red faces. My parents, they like the tango. I am grateful it is not from Cuba, so we don’t have to watch them look silly”
Nicole fixed him with a stern look, but there was still amusement behind it.
“One day, young man, you will gain the understanding of why we dance the tango. Or perhaps you already understand, but find embarrassment at the thoughts of your own parents----ah! I have it right, then. Who is it that you have danced with? Could it be---”
“Maman!”
He rushed off for more food, towing a giggling Amelie, and Pablo sent Rita along with them, sighing as he took a sip of his posh rum and coke.
“Thank you all. We do not have many chances for an evening like this, Rita and myself. It is a pleasure to meet people who can still smile with sincerity. May I propose we salute that?”
He lifted his glass.
“To real smiles and open hearts”
I could drink to that, and as I did, I was counting back through my own glasses. Three mojitos and a beer—slow down, Nelson. We paced ourselves through the various tasty items on offer, and my drinks changed to straight coke rather than minty sandbags; I realised with real surprise that I wasn’t missing the extra servings of alcohol. All three of the children seemed to be getting on extremely well without more than the hint of a common language, as Rita was only slowly starting to discover the physical limitations of her stomach. As for the notional adults, I had slipped all three of my cameras into my bag, and I was talking the others through my pictures. Pablo only knew some of the fish by their English names, but he wrote down the Spanish ones as we flicked through, while Laurent did the same in French. The children were back in time for my bird pictures, and there was a rapid-fire exchange of names in three languages, especially when we arrived at my shots of the pygmy owl.
I hadn’t realised, in my monolingual ignorance, that the French word that best translated as ‘sweet!’ or ‘cool!’ also literally meant ‘owl’. The picture that brought the biggest reaction, however, was very different. Pablo had led the way across a clearing in the trees, on a search for what he called ‘nighthawks’ and I thought of as ‘nightjars’, and when one had erupted from where it had lain almost perfectly camouflaged, I had started snapping away, and one moment of wonderful luck had caught Pablo from behind, standing with his legs apart as another Antillean nighthawk took flight, and it looked as if his head had sprouted two long, pointed and white-flashed wings, almost like some mythical Viking helmet. Rita, in particular, was ecstatic, gabbling away in Spanish, and Yves nudged me.
“She wants a copy, Caroline”
I shrugged.
“I can’t e-mail it, though, can I? I don’t have access here”
Pablo looked slightly embarrassed .
“If you let me take the little card, I can put the photo onto my own computer, but you must tell me there are no personal pictures”
“They are all personal pictures—oh! I see! Not to worry; they are all pictures from Cuba. It’s a new card”
“Then I must also ask if you will let me use the photograph. I have a page… No. I have a friend in Germany, he has a page for me on the internet, so that tourists can find me. Would you be happy for that? I can ask him to put your name to it. It is a very good picture”
I started to laugh at that compliment.
“Do you know what technique I used for that picture, Pablo?”
“No. I am not a good photographer”
“Neither am I! I just set the camera to take multiple shots, press the button, tack-tack-tack, and hope. Then I delete all the rally bad ones”
He laughed again, and his face crinkled into true delight.
“It is not just me that can’t, then. Can I make an offer in return?”
“Go ahead”
“I have another friend, he is a marine biologist. If you let me also take the underwater card, he can identify the fish for you”
“Ooh, yes please! I know sod-all about them”
“We have an arrangement, then. Now, Nicole? You are… ah!”
She had been fumbling in her bag once more, as the band started to tune up, and once more it was into her heels and ready for the dance. Rita was chattering away once more, and Pablo turned to the rest of us.
“My daughter loves to dance. Will you forgive me if I stay past the meal, so she can have some fun?”
Amelie prodded her brother.
“He thinks he can dance, but it is always with me. Yves…”
Rapid French from her, and in reply he gave what was clearly intended to be a brotherly put-down, but the only reaction from his sister was a shrug of pure Gallic eloquence, and the comment, “There is chocolate cake, and I wish to eat some. Dance with Rita”
He looked a little awkward, and then in a rush, I understood what was going on in his head. A teenage boy, brash and cocky to everyone around him, except with any young girl that wasn’t actually his sister. The band was playing by then, and Amelie gave her brother another nudge; a sigh, a nod to Rita, and an unspoken but obvious invitation followed from the boy. The girl’s grin was so wide that I half-expected the top of her head to fall off, and the two were off to the terrace outside and almost straight into a passable effort at the dance his parents made look so easy and elegant.
The three of us were left sitting at the table, Amelie grinning away as she settled into an enthusiastic attack on two slices of the chocolate tart she had spotted, and waving at the two of us still sitting by her.
“Go! Dansez! Do not laugh at my brother, though; he is very reticent with girls”
I shook my head.
“I can’t dance, love”
“Then you must learn. If this man cannot teach you, ask Papa. And I can see your shoes, like Maman’s. Go!”
Pablo was laughing yet again, and as he rose to his feet, he drew me to my own.
“Her brother may be shy, but this one, eh?”
He muttered some quick Spanish, and then led me, trembling, to join the others. Taking me in a sort of ballroom hold, he murmured, “The thing is in the sway. You step, and the feet stay, but the knee, it rocks back, and…”
Somehow, I managed to make it through a dance he said was ‘salsa’, and he then suggested that as I had managed one, then surely a second might go more easily, and that dance had a friend, so it was some time before we sat down, Rita and Yves already draining a fizzy drink each as Amelie wiped chocolate from her lips, then frowned.
“Oh merde!”
Yves looked up sharply at his sister, and she pointed out of the window, where Nicole was talking to the band, several of the musicians grinning. I was a little lost, still coming down from the high of actually dancing and not falling over, and with someone who could still find a smile afterwards. Amelie was shaking her head, and Yves turned to me with a frown.
“Could you please shelter us in your room tonight? I think Maman has requested a tango; I know that look she has on her face”
I knew less than nothing about the mechanics of the dance in question, but of course I knew the half-joking description of it as ‘the vertical expression of horizontal intent’, and some perverse part of me was anxious to see exactly how rude it could get.
Five minutes later, and I was in shock. Laurent and Nicole hadn’t been the only couple who were familiar with the dance, and dear god it was rude. Nicole was forever doing little flick things with her lower legs, and when the right one flashed out and hooked itself behind Laurent’s thigh, I really didn’t know where to look. There was absolutely no way I could ever behave like that in public, and I fully understood Yves’ discomfort. He must have felt like I had, the only time I had heard my own parents having sex.
Wrong. So wrong, but the two in question that evening were certainly not my parents, and I realised I was actually enjoying their performance despite the burning sensation in my cheeks, Rita was laughing at Yves’ grumpiness, and passing multiple comments to her father that were probably something like the scores held up by judges in figure skating: five nine, five nine, six…. Pablo was shaking his head, and yet again laughing.
“She asks why I am not dancing a Tango with Caroline, young man, and also if you know the steps”
Yves just shook his head, cheeks glowing, and once more I could read his thoughts. Such a dance, embarrassing to watch when performed by his parents, would be utterly terrifying for him if it involved a girl close to his own age, poor boy.
Another broad grin from my new friend, as he replied to a comment from his daughter.
“She asks what time we must leave, as I warned her she must be ready for school tomorrow with sufficient sleep, and she says that the foreign music is now replaced by our own, and that if Yves and Caroline are not too tired?”
He led me through two more of the dances, as the two other couples stayed near us, and I watched how Nicole’s arse and hips moved with her skirt, something subtle in the way her knee seemed to rock back over her planted foot with each step of the dance, and I did my best to imitate her artistry, until at last the evening was over for my guests. A last cold drink for all of us, two memory cards popped out of my cameras, and a round of hugs and cheek-kisses before Pablo and Rita strolled off hand-in-hand to the exit and, I hoped, a suitably chastened taxi driver.
“Caroline?”
“Yes, Nicole?”
“The children have gone for more drinks. How do you feel?”
“Shattered! Er, very tired”
“He is a handsome man, no?”
“Um, I suppose so, yes”
“Please be careful. This meal tonight, it was a generous thing, but do not dream too much. He has the puces, the cards for the pictures. Take time before another meeting, yes?”
I felt myself sagging more than a little. What exactly had I been doing, after all, apart from dancing with a nice man anxious to let his daughter have a laugh and a decent meal? There were so many stories at the airports, of older women finding themselves married to pool boys or waiters of half their age, predatory men they fell for on holiday, and the perpetual refrain: “But my man’s DIFFERENT! He really loves me!”
I wasn’t thinking that, of course, but I understood Nicole’s concern, and resolved to let Pablo seek further contact. Give it a couple of days, and get some more snorkelling in. The birds could wait.
Two days later, and there was an envelope for me at reception, holding two memory cards and a couple of sheets of paper with lists of scientific names, obviously from his scientist friend. There was also a note from Pablo.
‘Rita says thank you for the dinner and the dancing. I have another day without my office job on Thursday and I have another water place for the birds. I must ask for money for it, as ever, but this time, if you would be willing, I can carry you and save the cost of the taxi. Please send an e-mail if you wish to go.
Pablo’
I was ready far too early, trying to decide what to wear, how to tie my hair, so many stupid internal arguments. I was going on a birdwatching trip, saving taxi money by riding pillion on a scooter with a tiny engine. I mean, my last bike, when I was still doing my best to be ‘bad ass’, had been a ZZR1100 Kwak, so a 250cc toy wasn’t something to scare me. In the end, I went with cargo pants, polo shirt and gilet, along with my lightweight canvas boots. I wondered whether Cuba could offer any equivalent to the nasty little Scottish bastard the clegg, one of which had managed to bite me in the foot all the way through my sock and the very canvas boots I was wearing.
Bastards.
I filled my rucksack with my optics, half the breakfast buffet for later, and a copious supply of anti-mossieness. He had said we would be heading for some wetland area or other, and still water and bitey little shits went together like jam and wasps, so I was as prepared as I could be.
Down in the lift and along to the turning circle, the little bundle of CUC in a zipped pocket in my gilet. Ten minutes after my arrival, and he was there, with a grin and a cheeky comment that my footwear was far more appropriate than my heels would have been. On with the lid, straddle the tiny scooter, and off onto the pothole chicane. Apart from a smile, a nod and a quick “Ready?”, he didn’t say a word until we had ridden some considerable distance, pulling up where a slipway dipped down into a shallow but rather wide creek. I took a few seconds to stretch my back, and lock away the helmet, and then he started to describe what we might see.
“There is a river to the West of your hotel, but it is just water. Here, there is mud, and there are reeds. We have another stop, which is more of a coast bird place, so no trogons. I want to give you a chance to see different… habitats? That is the word, yes?”
I nodded, and I was gifted another smile. We set off for the mudflats upstream from the slipway, and he was, of course, spot on. Most of what we spotted were herons and ducks, but there were several different rails, a decent selection of waders, plus a few warblers and other passerines in the bushes and small trees that punctuated the reeds and lined the riverbank. I was more than content, and was looking forward to a lunch break when Pablo handed me the helmet once more.
“I know a better place than here to eat”
It turned out to be a low cliff, no more than twenty or thirty feet above the sea, with a few eroded outcrops to sit on, and the steady sea breeze pushed away all the previously mentioned bitey little bastards. There were actual seabirds there, from brown pelicans to boobies, and it was utterly different to the stifling heat of either the reedbeds or the forest we had first visited. Some of the gulls were familiar, but I picked up a couple of ‘Americas’ specialities, and in the end, did I care? I found myself leaning back as the breeze cleared my damp sweatiness and actually rendered my cobbled-together breakfast doggy bag almost edible. I handed half to Pablo, as I had on the previous trip, and he grinned, handing me a small greaseproof paper package.
“Rita insisted I bring these. She isn’t a… how would you say it? She can cook some things, but is not an expert?”
“Beginner, or ‘just learning’, that would do”
“Yes. She can do some things well, but they are not general things. Not a complicated meal. She can make cookies, though, and she asked if ‘Caroline the nice lady’ would like to try some”
I opened the package, and recognised one of the two different types of biscuit there, something Mum had taught me to make, called ‘melting moments’. The other biscuits were coconut, so I tried one of each, and while they could have been better, they were tasty, and Rita had made them specifically for me, so of course they were wonderful. I wiped the crumbs from my mouth, revelling in the sweetness, as Pablo pointed out another novelty for me, a sodding great dragon-sized iguana. I’d seen several lizards already, of course, as well as the ubiquitous crabs on the beach, but this thing was on a different scale.
“They are vegetarian, Caroline. Do not be frightened of it”
Frightened? I was entranced! It was exactly the sort of thing I had flown the Atlantic to see, and after Pablo had thrown it some of the bread crusts, I took a lot of video and multiple stills. It was utterly gorgeous.
“Are you ready for a longer ride? There is another type of habitat to see, but it will be hot and the roads are not good ones”
I kept my silence on the subject of pothole chicanes, and simply smiled.
“What sort of habitat?”
“Open land, with a few bushes. There will be mosquitoes, and it is a[something Spanish]”
“Sorry?”
“Holes underground. Ess peely oh logico”
“Ah! We call that caving, and no. Never”
Sudden realisation lit up his smile.
“Ah! You mean ‘no’ for going under the ground, but not for the over the ground”
“Exactly. If it was evening, and there were bats coming out, yes, but if it means going into holes, no”
He laughed out loud, shaking his head.
“I agree! Riding my little bike is enough excitement!”
Something cheeky stirred inside just then.
“You didn’t find that tango exciting, then? Laurent and Nicole?”
Tanned as he was, I could still see the blush.
“Caroline… I did not know which way to look, especially when she… those things with her feet, oh!”
I laughed with him.
“Do not expect to see me do that sort of dance, ever! I am not a dancer, normally. When I was, it was a different sort of dancing”
“Eh?”
“I was a rocker. Heavy rock music, you know?”
“With the head shaking and the long hair?”
“Yes, basically. I still listen to that, but I have always been more of a one for classical music. That is something nice at the hotel, you know”
“Music?”
“Yes. They have the band and the dancing by the big pool, but over past the other one, they have late night music. People sing, play flute or violin or piano. It was jazz one night, but others were all classical”
“I am not as familiar with that music. Rita is finding her tastes, but I am trying to show her other things than shouting men. It is difficult, though, to help her love words when those words are always in English. Shall we ride now?”
I got back quite late to the resort, as we had been caught up in the local ‘rush hour’, which involved all sorts of traffic from tractors hauling trailers filled with standing people, through horse-drawn wagons to bicycles with sidecars. The scrubland he had taken me to had been really productive, and both my camera and little notebook were filling up steadily.
As I handed him back the helmet, he asked the obvious question.
“When is your return to England, Caroline?”
“In four days”
“Ah. I have no more time for another bird trip. What time is the flight?”
“Five o’clock in the evening, this Friday”
“You have the taxi reserved?”
I had a sudden vision of straddling the back of the scooter, a bag in each hand, and laughed silently at the idea.
“There is an organised group, a package tour, and their representative has agreed to take me in their coach”
“Oh. Perhaps, then, I may wave at the airport, with Rita”
“That would be great! Hang on”
I pulled my little notebook out, and quickly scribbled down my address and e-mail.
“These are my details. Tell me: how do you listen to music, at home?”
“With my ears, of course”
“No! I mean, by CD, or cassette tape, or vinyl record?”
“Ah! We have records, but I also can play the CDs through my computer. Why do you ask?”
“Well, it was a thought. If I find some good music, something Rita might like that isn’t rap?”
“I understand. May I take the little book?”
He quickly wrote down a street address.
“This is where we live. The mail will be delivered to the… We have a building, in the village, where we have the television for those without their own, and the doctor. The mail goes there. Now, I must see that Rita is fed. It has been a delight to watch birds with you, Caroline Nelson”
A sudden impulse took me, and I stepped forward to hug him, kissing him on the cheek.
“And me you, Pablo”
He rested one hand in the small of my back for a few seconds, then pulled back a little to fasten his helmet.
“If I do not wave to you on Friday, with Rita, then have a good journey. Adios, Caroline”
He was gone, the little engine whirring away, and I found myself reluctant to move from the spot. Exactly how stupid was I being? He was a paid guide, taking me to places he thought would be good for birds, and that, after all, was how he picked up his trade, by good internet reviews. Who was I to him? There was also the rather important fact that he must have picked up on what precisely I was, despite the years of hormones and that little stay at the Nuffield just outside Brighton.
Shirley bloody Valentine, that was me. I made my way down to my block, the towel sculpture in my room turning out to be an elephant that time, and I took a long shower, rinsing off the dust, sweat and insect repellent along with a short session of tears.
Stupid, stupid bloody tranny, that was me. Four days to go, and they would be four days of what my new friends called ‘lying face down in the sea’. I dressed in a long skirt and loose blouse, my hair still a little damp, and made my way to the dining room, where Laurent and his family were waiting. I ordered a mojito as I entered, and shortly after I took my seat, it arrived. Nicole was all smiles.
“How was today, Caroline? We saw you leave on the motorcycle”
“It was a lovely day, Nicole. We covered three different habitats”
“Habitats?”
“Types of countryside, of terrain. Some muddy ground, some open, well, savannah? And a sea cliff”
She was smiling at me, but there was a little something else in her expression, and she left it there as we ate our buffet selections, and I stayed with mojitos, until I needed to visit the loo, which was when I found her on my shoulder as I entered. We did our business, but she was there as I washed my hands.
“You are confused, Caroline. We are worried, Laurent and myself. Even the children, they ask if you are attached to Pablo”
“He is a guide, Nicole, and I am a client”
She shook her head, a sad little smile in place.
“He is a man with a child, and that child has no mother. He is a man who clearly finds your company to be pleasant, but he remembers his daughter at all times. And you…”
She looked away, with a suck of air through her teeth.
“Caroline, if we are wrong, Laurent and myself, please do not take the offence. We have a friend, mon mari and myself, who we think is like you. She is needing to learn of how to be the woman, and from moment to moment, there is a hesitation. She was our friend with a different name, before. Now, she is happier”
I stared at her, but of course she had known. In the end, behind all the ‘confidence’ I pulled on as armour, I was still far too vulnerable. Of course they had seen through the tits and the hair and the swimming costume and skirts. I looked down, and nodded, and Nicole simply pulled me into a hug.
“Poor, poor Caroline!”
Bloody tears, but there was tissue in the cubicles, and a sink to rinse my eyes out afterwards. Nicole was quiet for a while, then started a polite interrogation, her voice so, so soft.
“You did not come for the romantic meeting, did you?”
“No. It was for the nature, the birds and fish”
“And now, that has changed, no?”
“I suppose so. He is a very nice man”
“And you are a good woman, Caroline Nelson. Perhaps…”
She paused, looking off into her own memories, then turned back with a smile.
“Our friend, yes? She found a man she liked, but it was a mistake. She tried, but, well, no history that I can reveal save that it was not a good choice. It did three things for her, though, and one was to show her how a woman is with a man, how one must dance about the other. The second, that was the acceptance, that she was, the English word, um, a woman who is attracted to men?”
“Straight?”
“Yes. Straight. It let her know herself better that way”
“You said three things, Nicole”
“Yes. Three, the third, it was to help others see her as she was, and one of them was another man, a man with more courage, and much of love in him. They have the fiançailles, the wedding to come. That is the third thing, the opening of eyes”
Again, her voice softened.
“Do we have the right, once again? Is this your moment of discovery of who you are?”
I just nodded, and her hug was fierce.
“Take courage then, my dear one, and now we must return so that my man and myself may scandalise our infants”
I didn’t dance that evening, nor did I desist from the mojitos, and when I said my goodnight to the Canadians, I received a whole series of hugs. I found myself walking past my block to the late-night bar, and this time the musician was the soprano once again. I ordered a fuck-it-I’ll-have-another-mojito, and settled back to listen, Ten minutes later, I realised that she was taking requests, clearly filtered through her own repertoire, and I found myself on my feet.
“Do you speak English?”
“Yes I do. Do you have a favourite you wish me to sing?”
“Well, I hope you know it. It’s an older song, by Purcell”
Her eyes lit up.
“Oh! Do you speak of Queen Dido? The lament? Such beauty! Yes, I know the aria. You wish me to sing it?”
I nodded, and she smiled, waving at the man on the piano.
“I have not the orchestra, but Esteban here, he knows the tune and can adapt. Please to take your seat again, and when I am finished with other people’s songs, we will perform”
I settled into my armchair once more, and there was a fresh drink awaiting me, and twenty minutes later I was sobbing as she gave a more than adequate performance of the soul-destroying bleakness of Dido’s Lament.
‘Remember me…’
It was well past my normal breakfast time when I woke up, lying across my bed, still dressed. I hadn’t done that for years, not since the earliest days of my transition, and I felt like shit. Yet another shower helped a little, but I made a slightly fragile decision that I needed to get out of the room before I ended up losing the entire day. I pulled on my cossie, added the usual lightweight skirt and top, and made my way down to the beach. A cold drink in the little café helped, and then I set off from the beach, heading for the swathes of dead coral to the West rather than the busier waters around the coral heads and fish.
I finned steadily out over the seagrass meadows until I hit the dead white limestone of the dead zone, and simply kept going. There were small groups of ocean surgeons moving across the bottom, and a flatfish erupted at one point, swimming in a bizarre manner but at some speed. The swell was getting up a little, the water a little murky, and I was floating away in two senses.
What had I been doing, in the end, apart from deceiving myself? What disturbed me most was that I hadn’t seen it coming. So many years being utterly and obsessively careful, keeping my barriers up and my privacy secure, and I hadn’t spotted how open I had been leaving myself until it was almost too late. What must he have thought? Nicole and her family had clearly known what I was from the moment we had met, so how could Pablo have missed it?
Clarity was there in a sudden stab of pain as reality hit me. What did I actually have in my life apart from work? I got up, I went to work at whatever hour my shift roster demanded, and I came home again. I chatted with work colleagues, occasionally with customers, and then shut my front door on everyone but whatever face filled the TV screen. I had nothing and nobody, but at least I wasn’t reduced to performing for pampered foreign tourists.
I carried on for another twenty minutes, finning slowly across a desert peppered with small holes, the occasional tiny bright jewel of a fish popping out to look at me, and then the level plain dipped into a small underwater gully, and FUCK!
Stay calm, woman, pull the camera to you and cover its shiny bits as you back away, turn and swim as gently as you can towards the shore, leaving six or seven fucking feet of barracuda roosting or resting or lurking or sodding whatever it was doing, and did it matter what the sharp-toothed thing was doing as long as it didn’t follow?
I thought the thunder of my surging heart rate must be more than enough to ring its dinner bell, but it clearly had better things to do, and so I started to relax as I approached the shore, finally feeling safe enough to turn and follow the beach back towards the little outcrop of rock, full of squirrel fish or goat fish or aardvark fish or whatever they were called, and as I saw some of the prettier creatures appearing, my spirits started to lift. It is hard to be depressed when looking at the cartoon smile of a porcupine fish. It was only the rumbling of my stomach that reminded me I had not only missed breakfast, but lunch as well. After a quick sweep of the coral heads, and yet another futile attempt to collect a sand dollar without seeing it crumble, I set off back to shore, and then back to my room, and finally as brave a face as I could manage for dinner with my friends.
I stuck to beer for the last few days of the holiday, at least as far as dinner was concerned, but it was mojitos all the way as I sat in the other bar and fretted my way through a collection of rather talented musicians, and the days counted down.
Swim. Eat. Drink. Ensure I left a few tips in each place I lingered, and as I packed everything away on my last day, I made sure that I placed the hotel toiletries, along with a much bigger tip, into the middle of the towel sculpture of two swans my cleaner had left me. Time to say farewell.
Laurent and his family had left two days previously, which had meant a small bright segment, as we had celebrated something or other, perhaps just being alive, and I had found myself dancing with both Laurent and Yves in turn. Hugs, and promises, and addresses were all exchanged, and my last couple of evenings had been missing more than a small piece of what I was realising I needed.
I sat in the lobby area reading for a couple of hours until the package tour courier called for boarding, and I rode an air-conditioned coach to Holguin airport rather than an antique American car. Like a good little girl, I had the cash ready to pay for my exit visa, and then it was queue for check-in and bag drop, queue for security and exit visa purchase, and sit around for a stupid length of time until our plane finally arrived at the gate.
We took off on time, turning to the North-East as we climbed away from Cuba, the sea bright beneath us as the sun gilded huge banks of cloud, and there hadn’t been a sign of Pablo.
The girls were cooing over me when I went back to work, particularly over my tan, or rather the remnants of pink skin where my nose had peeled.
“How far down does the tan go, Caroline?”
“As far as my swimming cossie”
“Ooh! No topless beach, then?”
That actually made me snort with laughter.
“Lauren, that’s no joke. I got there really late, no sleep, pushed myself to get up in the morning and, well…”
I gave them as acidly contemptuous a description of the Essex Gammon as I could manage, and by the time I finished, there was a small crowd of sales assistants round me, throwing comments about orange women wearing six pairs of false eyelashes and unable to pronounce the name of the perfume they had apparently been bathing in. Lauren herself was particularly scathing.
“Well, it’s not just cause they’re thick, is it? Those trout-pouts they all get, I’m surprised they can move their bloody mouths to say anything”
Haley’s response was just as sharp.
“Yeah, but they still manage, and we do NOT get paid anywhere near enough to listen to that shit all day. Caroline, we need a proper catch-up, and piccies!”
So it went on, and I found myself agreeing to an evening out when rosters were kind, as well as a lunchtime session in our training room using the overhead projector. I had, of course, brought the cards with me, and once I had delegated two of the girls to do a coffee and cake run, those of us who had the chance settled down for a break with extras.
Yes, I made them pay for the coffee and extras—I had brought the entertainment.
They oohed and aahed over the shots of the hotel, gasped at the pristine white sands, and cooed at the pictures of the buffet spread for dinner, Lauren commenting that she could take or leave the beach as long as she could be left sitting in the cake section of the dining room. The fish videos brought smiles, and the bird shots, particularly of the tody, produced more loud comments, mostly along the lines of “It’s so CUTE!”
The one that brought the longest conversation, however, was the crown of wings picture. Lauren, as always, was straight to the point.
“Who is that, Caroline?”
“Oh, a local bird guide. He takes people out to some of the best local birdwatching sites”
“He’s got an arse you could crack walnuts with. How tall is he?”
“Dunno”
“Dunno how tall he is, or whether his arse can play the Nutcracker?”
“Both. I think he’s about six three, six four”
“Well, sod the cake selection, then. Or better still, get him to meet me there. I can take one for the team!”
I laughed dutifully, then moved to some snaps of Laurent and his family, explaining how I had met them, and without warning cut to a sneaky picture of two French Canadians in full-flight tango raunch. It was Haley’s turn to comment.
“Bloody hell! She looks like she’s about to drag him to the ground and screw his brains out!”
I nodded.
“I didn’t know where to look, and their two kids were absolutely pink. They told me Laurent and Nicole do that all the time when they’re on holiday, especially if there’s a live band”
We ran out of break time far too quickly, and I agreed to bring a laptop for our proposed night out. As the girls dispersed, Lauren hung back for a moment.
“What’s his name, love?”
“Who?”
“Don’t play the innocent with me, Caroline. Who was it you first told? Who was it that went with you to talk to the bosses? I know you, girl, and that was no ‘just a local bird guide’ random bloke. Spill the beans”
I stared at her, then found myself sagging.
“Yeah. He’s called Pablo, and he has a daughter, Rita. Yes, I… Lauren, it wasn’t easy. It’s sort of… I know who I am, I always have, and I can be her now---”
“You ARE her, woman”
“Yes, but that’s all fine and dandy until, you know, someone else”
She took the two steps necessary to take me in a hug, her head resting on my breasts, before squeezing me almost breathless.
“You are bloody lonely, aren’t you?”
I pushed the tears back down into that void in my soul, and nodded.
“Not surprising, is it? People like me, et cetera et cetera”
“Bollocks. What about that Customs Officer, and her friend the copper? Do that music thing in Horley? Both of them married, and I have seen their men round them, way they act and stuff. No doubts there, so why not you?”
A pause for breath, and then almost a whisper.
“Is it because you are just realising, just now, that you are straight?”
I found just enough strength to nod.
“He danced with me”
“There’s more, isn’t there?”
“Suppose… He said he would be at the airport, to say farewell, but no sign of him”
I found myself gushing, telling her far too much, and she took my shoulders in her hands.
“Right, love, I have a sort of plan, okay? Can’t trust your judgement, dishy waiter syndrome and all that shit, so here is what we do”
“We?”
“Yes, ‘we’. You think I abandoned you when you got all that shit sorted? Who bloody well drove you to and from that hospital? Now, what you do is offer him a contact, something you said you’d do that doesn’t involve asking for a shag, and preferably something that includes his daughter. Makes it less of a one-to-one thing, and from what you say, she sounds like a good kid. Ideas?”
“We talked about music. I said I could suggest some”
Lauren laughed happily.
“Fuck me, doesn’t that take me back? Bloody mix tapes by post! Me and my fella, we were always doing that, till we got together proper, yeah? Send him some discs, burn some of your music onto them. Leave the ball in his court. Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“Not saying I’m right here, just making a suggestion. If he’s got a kid, something might have come up, something unexpected. If it had just been him, on his own, then I’d say fuck him and his Cuban scooter, but a kid complicates stuff. Drop a line. If he comes back, let him make explanations. If he doesn’t, then what do we say?”
“Fuck him?”
“Absolutely! Now, there’s someone lurking by the watch stand. Fetch, woman!”
I took her suggestion, and after we had survived our Big Girly Video Night in the Moonraker, I sat down and spent a couple of hours burning tracks from my CD collection onto a blank disc and slipping it into a padded envelope with a list of the contents, along with a quick summary of each track, and a letter.
Dear Pablo and Rita
Thank you both so much for making my holiday a fantastic experience. As promised, here is some of my music, with titles and explanations.
I am now back at work and getting used to British weather again. I missed you both at the airport, but perhaps, if I come to Cuba again, we can say hello
With thanks
Caroline Nelson
I didn’t see anything in return for four weeks, and then found a letter on my doorstep with a Cuban postage stamp. Shit. I picked it up from the mat, placed it in the middle of my dining table, and left it strictly alone while I prepared and ate my evening meal, the envelope staring at me throughout.
Finally, I could resist no more, and slit the envelope to find a bundle of notepaper and a small cardboard folder, which I opened first. It held a photograph of a smiling man and girl, standing in front of some ornate building lit by brilliant sunshine.
Dear Caroline
I have done the best to write this using a dictionary to try and make the spellings right, but my English is better as I speak than as I write. I have put into the package a photograph of Rita and me in Habana. We think it is a nice picture.
We have listened to the music that you sent. It is very nice and I have copied it onto my computer so that she can have the disc for herself. It is nicer than the rap, she says, and better still because it came from a nice lady.
I am sorry for the airport, but it was a difficulty. Rita had become sick, and we were with doctors. I have researched the English word, and I think it is nephritis, from the kidneys. Rita has been a long time in the hospital, and there has been a surgery to remove the organ. She is to come back home in three days, and that is why she had your music for herself, to make her happier in the hospital. Thank you again.
Rita has asked me if she may have a photograph of the ‘nice lady’ who sent the music. She has been working hard at learning the English so that she can write thank you herself.
I also have a request. My work that made the German website, it has been seen by the government, the office for tourists. The reports on TripAdvisor and other pages, they say are a tourist boost. They wish, the tourist ministry and the regional council that is my own employment, to help me with the Schengen visa to see some sites in Europe, and I have asked that they can also help with an England visa. It would be of help if I could have a sponsor for the England one. It is not a money cost business, simply a name for someone who can speak for me in England, write a letter to the Visa office when asked.
It is a big request from a stranger, I know.
With kind wishes
Pablo and Rita.
I spent a long time considering his request, my suspicious mind noting how often he mentioned his daughter, and trying to work out where the scam lay, before I simply sent an e-mail to him confirming my support.
When I say ‘a long time’, it was actually the length of time it took to switch on my laptop, and I may also have attached a selfie I had snapped a few months earlier. I was clearly an absolute cretin. Three weeks later, astonishingly fast, UK Visas and Immigration were grilling me by post from an office in Croydon. They had their own set of questions, so I just went with the flow rather than write a eulogy. They knew what details they wanted, and I gave them what I could.
Lauren, as ever, picked up on my mood, as did Haley, and even Cindy the ground girl, who had cornered me one afternoon for a report on how the trip with her firm had gone. I gave as neutral an account as I could, but she clearly scented blood, and I had to invent a stocktake to break free from the interrogation. Lauren was much more direct, of course, in a chat over some posh coffees.
“He’s replied, hasn’t he? What’s he said?”
“His daughter was ill, so he couldn’t make the airport”
“How ill?”
“He says she had to have a kidney removed”
“Shit! That is one hell of an excuse, woman. It’s either the fuck-off Big Lie, or he’s being straight with you. There’s more, though? I can tell”
“He’s asked… he is being asked to come over here, and he wants me to act as a sponsor for the visa”
“Oh fuck! How much money have you sent him?”
“I haven’t. It’s all between me and the Home Office. Character reference stuff. No money. His government will pay the visa costs”
“Do. Not. Send. Money. Got me?”
“He hasn’t asked for any”
“Yet”
“I don’t think it’s like that, Lauren”
“Said a thousand women pen-pals of American army officers in Afghanistan!”
“Seriously? This is business, his bosses and his government. He’ll be spending his time in the embassy, nothing else, and the way he describes it he’s getting it all as a pat on the back holiday while they wave him around as an example of eco-friendly Cuban green politics”
She sat back in the coffee shop chair, shaking her head.
“Do you know how pushy you sounded just then? Caroline, love, dream all you want, okay? Just realise that they don’t always come true, dreams. Not saying yours can’t, just that if you keep an open mind it would be safer. When’s he due to arrive?”
“I, well, sorting the visas and that takes time”
“Fuck off, Caroline! You don’t lie well. You never have, not even when you did all that play-acting pretending to be a man. When?”
“They’re due in three weeks”
“Oh, fucking hell on a stick! Hang on--- ‘they’?”
“Yes. He’s bringing Rita with him”
“Well, at least that will put the mockers on any knee-trembler-style promises. Where are they staying?”
“No idea. Some hotel, or up at their embassy, I assume”
That last was an absolute, flat-out lie. We had been exchanging more and more e-mails as the calendar ran down, and I had done a determined spring clean of my little two-bedroom ‘starter home’. I could manage in the single bed for a while, and they could share my double, and if Rita wanted her own space, the sofa opened out into a bed. I had even bought new plates and bowls. I did not tell Pablo any of that, nor Lauren, although I think she suspected something of the kind. She was too good a friend to push things, though, simply waiting as calmly as she could to pick up any pieces that might be worth salvaging when the inevitable shipwreck arrived.
There I was, then, sitting in Costa’s in the North Terminal as the big screen went through its changes for the Cubana flight from Havana. Landed; on stand; in Customs hall.
It was forty minutes after that ‘Landed’ message that a tall man and a smaller teenager appeared through the flicking chrome-and-glass doors of the arrivals, and I only stayed in my seat because Lauren had my arm pinned.
“Let him make any moves, girl. Don’t look eager to please”
I caught his gaze turning our way, and despite my friend’s advice, my free arm was up and waving, and while Pablo saw me first, it was Rita he turned to, and as she followed his pointing finger, her face lit up as my heart melted.
She was so much thinner than I remembered, her eyes a little sunken, but that smile shone, and she homed in on me like a guided missile. I rose just before she reached Lauren and myself, as that woman made a comment about taking one for the team if I got bored with him.
Rita’s hug wasn’t a weak one in any sense, and it was followed by an all-encompassing one from her father as she gabbled her greetings in much more fluent English than I had heard from the girl in Cuba.
“Pablo, Rita, this is my friend Lauren. She works with me”
“Lauren, I am pleased to meet you. May I ask a favour?”
To me, she looked surprised, but covered it well enough for a stranger to miss.
“Go on?”
“Is there perhaps a ladies’ restroom nearby you could show my daughter to?”
Lauren flicked a quick look my way, but after I gave the slightest of nods, she led Rita away. Pablo sighed, folding himself down into a spare seat before taking my hand. A quick squeeze, and release.
“Thank you, Caroline. You have done so much for a stranger and a foreigner”
“You are no stranger, Pablo. I consider you a friend. What are your plans now?”
“Oh, my people have given me a list of hotels I can consider, in a town called Horley”
My heart was in my mouth just then.
“I, um, I have an offer Pablo. I live not far from the airport, and, well, I have room”
He stared at me, then shook his head, as if dislodging a fly.
“You have how many bedrooms?”
“Two, and I also have a folding bed in the living room. One bed each”
Another flat stare, and then a soft smile.
“Will I have the right thinking that you have not told the friend this, the one who is just now returning my daughter from the restroom?”
I shook my head, and he gave me another smile.
“So be it, then. What plans have you made?”
I took a deep breath as Lauren and Rita sat down, and in response to Lauren’s raised eyebrow, I asked for another latte.
“Oh, and Rita likes cake, if I remember correctly. And chocolate”
Lauren’s other eyebrow joined her first.
“And so? She’s a girl! Pablo?”
“Yes?”
“Caroline has told me of Rita’s illness. Before we feed her cake, is there anything about her condition that means she needs to be careful?”
Shit. That was something I really should have thought of myself, but Pablo was shaking his head, and smiling again.
“Thank you. I see Caroline has a sensible friend, but no. The problem was in the one organ, and if she is sensible, the other will work”
“Okay. Drinks?”
“Espresso and coca, please”
“In the same glass?”
“Eh? No!”
Lauren was off with a snort, tugging the girl along for the important task of cake selection, and Pablo turned back to me.
“What plans have you made for us, Caroline?”
I found my cheeks burning, as I understood almost too late that by ‘us’, he meant himself and Rita.
“I have taken some time off from work. The Autumn isn’t the busiest time, not like Summer or Winter. I have a car, so I thought we could go to some of the reserves, return the bird-spotting favour. And I have a surprise for tomorrow evening, if you want”
“A surprise of which sort?”
“Music. There is a group I have always loved, and they are in concert not far from my house. I have reserved tickets. I hope that is okay”
He perked up at that.
“Would this music be any of the tunes you sent us?”
“Yes, actually. Do you remember the song ‘The Gardener’?”
His smile broadened immensely.
“Oh yes! That is one Rita likes to dance to. She would dance in bed, in the hospital, just with her hands. She asks me how the violinist makes the sounds he does”
“The violinist is a woman, Pablo, and I believe she uses two different instruments in the piece”
“This is tomorrow?”
“Yes. I think you will be recovered by then. My other plans are flexible, but can change if your bosses want you to do other things. I have a couple of tents”
“No!”
“Yes! Optional, on your agreement, but there is an area on the south coast with lots of good birdwatching, and history. There is a campsite very close to the sea and the birds. Just a thought that I haven’t made any firm plans for”
He shook his head, still smiling.
“And Rita?”
“Oh, obviously! What does she want to do?”
“She is young, and, well, she wants to eat at a MacDonald’s place”
“Oh dear!”
“Sorry, but that is the way of a teenaged child”
“Then… Okay. We get you settled, and we do not allow you to fall asleep too soon, jetlag and stuff. Once everything is in place, we take the bus into Crawley centre”
“Caroline?”
“What? I mean, pardon?”
“Thank you. This is all too much, just for return of a few trips on the scooter”
“Oh do shut up! You made my holiday so much better than it could have been, and this gives me an excuse to get out of the house”
“Well, I do have some duties. One of them is to visit our embassy in Germany, where my website is based. The other is to report on evil capitalist colonialism in an oppressive bourgeois enclave”
“You have lost me!”
“That is the words I use to justify another visit, to Gibraltar. What I mean is really ‘Go there to watch the birds migrate to Africa’, but in words that my government understands”
That set me grinning.
“You are devious indeed, Pablo!”
“I do what best I can. And, later, we talk, yes? Here are the others, and they have the cake”
Yes, they had cake, and it vanished quickly enough, Rita looking wistful until Pablo whispered something in her ear, which produced a grin. Lauren rose just then, hugging me farewell and in her own turn whispering into my ear.
“You are putting them both up, aren’t you? Don’t answer; I know you, soppy cow. Just remember my number if you need me”
She was off, and after a last wipe of her plate with a fingertip, Rita followed me and her father with the luggage trolley all the way to the furthest bloody stop in the airport bus station, where we caught the 100. A much shorter walk, now without the trolley, of course, and I was opening my front door.
“Bedrooms are upstairs. Pablo. You have the big bed, and Rita has a choice of sleeping there with you, or the smaller bed in the other room. If she wants her own room, I have a bed here. There is an electric shower in the bathroom, and I have put clean towels on the beds. Once you have dumped your luggage, and done any freshening, we are back on the bus”
I left them to it, trembling a little with nerves after they had disappeared upstairs, and selected some music from my CD collection.
No, not the Purcell right then. Think, woman… Beethoven’s seventh symphony, the dance one. Just as the first movement found its way to the start of the big tune, I heard rapid feet on the stairs, and a panting Rita was there.
“This, you send me! I LOVE!”
She stood transfixed as the music took flight, head back and arms out like someone gazing into a bright dawn, and a few minutes later, Pablo entered, smiling fondly at his daughter swaying in the middle of the room. Not a word from him until the movement was over in a crescendo of horns, and then he settled beside me on the sofa-bed.
“She has chosen the little bed, if that is not inconvenient. She thinks sleeping with a parent is what children do. When do we leave again?”
“As soon as you can get her away from the music collection, my friend”
“If I say the name of that business to her?”
“Indeed!”
Coats back on, out of the house for the bus once more, some American fast food and a walk around the shops (Rita wide-eyed at the range of goods), and to my surprise, a stop at the big outdoor activity shop for a sleeping bag for Rita.
Pablo simply smiled at my confusion.
“I will take up your offer of the camping. I saw two sleeping bags in your closet, so this makes the three we require”
He looked away from me just then, to where Rita was working her way down the collection of woolly or fleece hats, then laid an arm over my shoulders, hugging me with a single sharp squeeze.
“She is alive, and she is happy, and you are letting me see her smile again. Thank you”
I found my arm moving under its own steam, and it slipped around his waist to return the hug.
“I am so glad. She looks happy, my friend”
“Caroline, I think she is. She was very unhealthy in the hospital, very sick. The surgeon… I nearly had no daughter, so now I must treasure her, treasure each day. Now, I think, with the cold weather here, she should choose a hat, one with many colours. Please, while I see to my girl”
His arm had stayed over my shoulders, and as he pulled away, his other hand squeezed my own as it sat on his waist, and then he pulled away and started the serious business of hat selection. Priorities, indeed. Once we had sorted her headwear, I led them back to the bus station, pointing out the railway station across the road for their future trips to London.
A we rode back to my place, I explained the plans for the following day.
“I have to work tomorrow, just the morning and from very early, as a favour for my managers to pay for my time off. There are things for breakfast in the house, and I will show you how the television and music centre work when we get home. Does Rita like Pixar?”
Pablo was sitting with her across the aisle from me. And he tapped her on the shoulder, while still talking to me.
“Ask her yourself. She has more English now”
“Rita?”
“Si? Yes?”
“Do you like to watch videos?”
“Videos?”
“Movies”
“Ah! Yes. The cartoon?”
“Do you want to watch some tonight?”
I had one in mind, and as she nodded, I was working out where it was in the stack in my living room. Single woman, minimal social life. Of course I had a major proportion of Hollywood’s soppiest output.
We had already eaten, more than once, so I made a pot of tea, opening one of the cokes I had picked up the day before, and three of us, Rita in the centre, squeezed onto the sofa to watch ‘Monsters, Inc’, which gave me another surprise when Pablo showed me where the Spanish subtitles were.
By eight in the evening, both were nearly asleep, so I pushed them up the stairs after dragging down my own bedding and nightwear. I did my teeth and stuff in the kitchen sink, and then crawled into my own truckle bed, elated and confused in equal measure.
I slipped out in the early morning, leaving a note confirming my time of return, only the slightest of doubts pricking me about leaving all of my possessions in the hands of two near-strangers, and rode the bus back to the airport for three-quarters of a shift to pay back that favour from the management. Both Lauren and Haley were on their day off, so I escaped a grilling, which was a relief, but I was still twitchy with worry.
I needn’t have worried, of course. The two of them were slumped against each other on my sofa, ‘Despicable Me 2’ on the video, and there was a smell, or perhaps an aroma.
“Pablo?”
“Ah! Do you mind? You wrote for us what time you would return, and so I left Rita in the house to open the door, and I have food for us”
“I can smell it! Fish and chips?”
“I saw the shop from the bus, so I went in time for your return, so we must eat now. That is your work uniform?”
“Yes. As you can see, they make us wear a lot of cosmetics, to sell them to the passengers. I always… I always feel a little silly”
Rita leant forward to see past him, and shook her head.
“You look pretty! Is nice!”
Teenage girl and make-up, oh dear.
“I must get out of this uniform, and then a shower”
Pablo shook his own head.
“Shower after the food. Something simple for avoiding the grease, but eat first”
Sod it. I slipped into pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers before rejoining them and wolfing down the large cod he had purchased, along with half of the chips. I was going to end up like a whale at that rate, never mind a cod. Rita was giggling away at the video, and Pablo just looked stunned. Realisation hit me.
“Pablo?”
“Yes?”
“How much have you had to eat?”
“I wanted to taste many things”
“How much?”
“Too much!”
I couldn’t help it, and burst out laughing, till tears were flowing.
“You are supposed to be the sensible one!”
He gave me a seriously shamefaced look, and with a small shock, I realised that this was Pablo feeling vulnerable, almost for the first time with me. I decided to back off, just a little.
“Then it is a light meal for this evening, my friend. I have salad stuff in the fridge, so that’s the plan”
“How far is the place we are going?”
“Ten minutes, on foot. There’s a bar, if you like”
“Then I may sleep for an hour or two!
“No”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No sleep, Pablo. After the flight, and then whatever you have managed to force down, you will feel awful. I want you to enjoy this. What does Rita want to do?”
He smiled again.
“Watch your videos, of course! She thinks she has entered Paradise, and has made a list of titles she wishes to see. Do you have a plan for yourself?”
“Me? What I said: shower, chill for a bit and then get ready for the evening. I am actually looking forward to this--- it’s been a while since I went out for music”
“You don’t include the times in my country?”
“This is my country, so I am only talking about that for now. Are you going to sit with Rita?”
“I thought I might walk for a while, to make the meal move a little. There are birds about”
“Bit they are… Ah. They are all new to you, aren’t they?”
“Exactly. A first day, in a new land?”
“Then there is a small park nearby. I can find you a street map, and if you want, you can borrow a guide book and some bins?”
“Bins?”
“Binoculars. Take your walk, then. Rita can relax, I will shower, and then we can head out together. Will she want a shower or anything?”
He nodded.
“I think she wants to dress well for tonight. She says that she will be her best for her friend”
I felt my heart lurch, but froze the smile on my face, and sent Pablo on his way with a book, a pair of bins and a sneaky hug. I spent longer than normal in my shower, and then an even longer time staring into my wardrobe.
Necklines. Visible bra. Hemlines. Et bloody cetera. To my surprise, Rita walked into the bedroom, stared at me as I stood in my bra and knickers, and then pointed at a pale blue summer dress.
“Papa, he like you. Please be pretty for him”
I stared at her, and she shrugged in as expressive a manner as Laurent had ever achieved.
“My Mama, si? New times. You are nice lady, and Papa happy”
Her mouth twisted, and she dropped her eyes for a second.
“English, I try. Not good. But I try”
I stared at her, trying to read what she meant, and then decided to try what Spanish I could find,
“Tu Papa?”
“Si?”
“Y mio?”
“Si!”
I fumbled for some words.
“Tu papa, um, vorrei, um, mio?”
She shook her head at that, then stared hard at me before muttering something under her breath, then proclaiming something else that sounded like “Si! Tu y mi Papa muy bueno!”
I realised that she was doing her best, both in what English she had as well as in deliberately dumbed-down Spanish, and if half of what I read from her words was true… I pulled the summer dress from the hanger, and to further encouragement from a child, I made myself look like a clown.
That was how it felt, but throughout the process, Rita was beside me, and as I applied the various colours to my face, she was matching me, and occasionally steering me in a different direction. In the end, I lost track of time, and it was only the sound of the front door bell that brought me back to reality.
Pablo. Concert. Dressed and made up in a way--- fuck it. Rita was happy, or so she said. I made my way downstairs, in the heels I had worn for that evening in Cuba. As Pablo set my bird book and little binoculars on the sideboard, I deliberately looked him up and down.
“You’ll be fine like that. Let’s get going”
It was a fine early evening, for once, and I wore nothing but a cardigan over my shoulders, although I made sure I was carrying my coat. Rita made a point of walking on the other side of me to her father, and, with a grin, linked her arm with mine. She called across to Pablo in rapid Spanish, and, a lot more reluctantly, he took my other arm. More quickfire Spanish from Rita, and I managed to catch the sense of it when both of them started trying to match their steps to mine, like some three-legged race with extras.
Suddenly, Pablo stopped dead. He was looking and pointing upwards.
“What is that hawk?”
“Where… Oh. Sparrowhawk, Accipiter something. See the wingbeats, flap-flap-glide, flap-flap-glide?”
“Thank you!”
He was chuckling then, and as I turned to look at him, I found his head lowered, eyes crinkling.
“The first British bird you have shown me, Caroline!”
“It’s a really common one”
“And what was it you said to me when I said the same thing by the water on that first day?”
“Well…”
“Do they sell drinks, alcoholic, at this venue?”
“Absolutely”
“Then we shall celebrate my first bird from a friend. Andiamos!”
I was a little twitchy as we crossed the car park, just in case there was anyone I knew to see my get-up, and he picked up on my nerves.
“You look fine, and it is a celebration now, so smiles, yes? This is the bar? What would you like?”
“I don’t think they will have the makings of a mojito, so a dry white wine, please. Not dressed for drinking a pint of beer, am I?”
Rita and I found a corner to wait while Pablo went to the bar, and I was doing my best to explain some of the posters for upcoming events when there was a polite “Excuse me” from behind me. I turned, to see a familiar face. She smiled, eyes flicking quickly to Rita.
“I hope I’m not intruding, but I recognised you. Caroline, isn’t it? Duty-free shop?”
I nodded.
“You’re Customs, aren’t you?”
She laughed, happily.
“They keep changing the name, but yes, that’s me. Steph Woodruff. Him indoors is over there with Annie and her men. Sorry to be nosy, but I didn’t realise you had a kid of your own”
“Oh no; this is Rita, daughter of a friend. They’re visiting for a while, from Cuba”
“That’ll be the tall man at the bar, then”
Did she see everything going on round her? I realised it must be a side-effect of her job, and let it lie.
“Yes. Pablo. Rita, un amigo—amiga? Un amiga, my trabajo, si? Mrs Woodruff”
The girl held out a hand, and Steph said something in reasonably quick Spanish, or at least what sounded like it. A few quick exchanges, and Steph turned back to me, eyes a little harder.
“Not wanting to speak out of turn, Caroline, but, well, we both know we are riding on the same bus. This girl, and she says her English is poor, used a word to describe you, one I won’t repeat, that says you are a lot more than an ordinary friend of her father. Not my business, but please be careful. No MMD crap”
“MMD?”
She put on a whiny voice.
“Oh, my man’s different! He doesn’t just want a passport, and the thirty year age gap doesn’t matter, cause he LURVES me!”
A flat stare, then a smile.
“I watched you walk in, woman, and just this once, I don’t think so. Does he, well, know?”
I understood exactly what she meant, and shook my head.
“I don’t think so. Don’t know, really”
“Then be doubly careful. Here…”
She scribbled a quick note and handed it to me.
“Name and address, if you get any issues, or just need an ear to bend. Your maybe man is just coming… Hi! I work with Caroline, I’m Steph. How are you liking Crawley so far?”
Pablo grinned, and this time it was a cheeky one.
“I am Pablo, and you have met my daughter Rita. How do I like Crawley? I am looking forward to getting out of it!”
“That bad, eh?”
“Not like that--- Caroline has promised to show me some places for birdwatching. We have plans”
“Ooh! I am also a birdwatcher. We shall definitely compare notes, woman. Now, I have a herd to round up, and then it’s Steeleye. You might find them a little strange, Pablo”
“My daughter loves them. She has a disc from Caroline here. She really likes the violin”
There was a sudden gleam in Steph’s eyes.
“Hmmm. We shall definitely have to find somewhere for that. See you later!”
She was off, and I was even more nervous. ‘MMD’? Was that me? So gullible there was even a TLA for it? I took the glass from his hand and drank half of it in one gulp. Smile, girl.
“We are up in the high seats, Pablo, and central, so it would be polite to be there early, so that folk don’t have to squeeze past us. Once we have finished these?”
“Okay. We are in your hands”
As if. He set the empty glasses on the bar, and we made our way vis lift and stairs to the seats, Pablo leading us along the row to the seats I had indicated. I waited for Rita to follow, and she simply pushed me forward. Once again, I would be in the middle. I settled my coat onto my lap, hands folded together on top, and Rita reached across to take my left hand, and then her head came to rest on my shoulder as she squeezed my fingers, then a whisper of “Thank you, Caroline”
She straightened up again, but her hand stayed there. Pablo saw, and reached across with his left to squeeze his daughter’s hand as it held my own. We sat like that for a while, and then, as the house lights went down, she reached across with her other hand and moved his to my spare one. Oh hell.
His hand lay on mine like a limp fish for a few seconds, and I waited for him to remove it. It stayed there, and I turned a little to see his face, guess his thoughts. All he did was raise his eyebrows in obvious query, and, heart rate soaring, I gave a little nod, and his hand moved, to take mine properly.
On came the group, and I caught Rita’s gasp as she saw the youth of the fiddler. I whispered to her something about the musician, and got the reply “She so pretty as well!”, and then Steeleye launched into ‘Dodgy Bastards’. As they finished that first song, and Maddy called out “Good evening Crawley!”, we applauded, and then settled back in our seats. Once again, two hands took my own. Not just politeness, then.
They worked through a clutch of newer stuff, promoting whichever album they had out, and then switched to the older stuff most of us die-hard fans had come for. It wasn’t all fifty-year-old stuff by any means, because they had a habit of coming up with a new ‘standard’ every year or so, and as the ‘Da-daah’ opening chords of a particular song snarled out, her hand tightened briefly on mine.
The group did their stuff, Maddy’s almost ethereal take on the opening vocals floating above the nastiness of the instrumental parts, and then she did her own very individual thing to damn the ‘Gardener’ of the title. In between… I am not a musician, but I have some technical knowledge of the process, and as the young fiddler finished wailing away, and the band held the tune, she swapped her wooden violin for an electric one, and I was off with her, almost finding my old life as a rocker, but now without the beard. Oh, it was good!
There were other favourites, of course, from ‘Alison Gross’ through ‘Thomas the Rhymer’, and when Maddy introduced the final encore with “Oh, you all know the words already, so I can save a bit of my breath”, I was away. It isn’t a classic song in any real sense, but it is a happy one, with a chorus that is so easy to belt out, and if ever there was a poster child for ‘feel-good music’--- Enough said.
As the band finally said goodnight, and we rose to pull on jackets and coats, Pablo grinned at me.
“This music tonight, was it for us, or for you, Caroline?”
“Um… does it matter?”
He called past me, more rapid Spanish to Rita, and she just threw back her head, eyes closed and a broad grin in place, and made little fist-pumps, before replying in even quicker Spanish, and I gathered the clear impression that she was absolutely delighted. Down the stairs to the lift, and out into the lobby, where people were gathering for a last drink, or a first, but either way, a drink. Pablo pointed to the bar.
“White wine again?”
“Not now! Pint of the summer ale, this time. Just ask for the Gold”
He joined the scrum, and as if by design, I found Steph Woodruff and her little group with me.
“What did Rita think, then? Rita? Bueno?”
The girl rattled off some comment or other, and I caught the word ‘Gardener’ in the middle of it all. The dark-haired woman standing by Steph was nodding in agreement.
“Steph would have been playing that with her, given the chance, aye? Just even more over the top”
She was looking at me, though, and I realised that Mrs Woodruff must have brought her up to speed. She held out a hand.
“Annie Johnson, and yes, same bus, as Steph puts it. Where is he?”
She caught herself, tried a smile and shook her head.
“Sorry. Work habits die hard. Try again, Annie… you still smiling, Caroline?”
I couldn’t stop the answer that burst out, which was the simple statement that I was, and more than I had been earlier, and Annie nodded, with a much softer smile.
“Yeah, Hairy here and me, we understand that bit. Thing is, we understand the other stuff as well, so here’s my number to go with Steph’s. Any issues, I have more than a few contacts”
“Why the concern? You don’t know me”
“Doesn’t matter. Random waifs and strays Are Us, sort of. Geoff and Eric are pumping him at the bar, so I’ll wave at them to let him go. Anyway, they have our pints, aye?”
Three men and an older teenager joined us, Pablo passing me and Rita our refreshments, and there was a quick round of introductions to husbands and son, and it was noticeable that both of the former settled immediately into comfortable and physical contact with their other halves. That was possibly the cue that had Rita cuddling up to me, and then…
Pablo’s arm slipped round my waist, above Rita’s own hand, and it was public, and I was trying my best not to show the nerves that were screaming at me.
Smile. Concentrate on the cool refreshment of the ale. Try and ignore the two warmth resting on each hip. Left arm laid over Rita’s shoulder, that’s companionable, and she’s a kid, so it’s safe, and my right hand is holding my drink, so it’s not me doing the cuddling. I got through the jokes and the comments on musical technique, especially from Steph, who turned out to be a violinist herself, and then the five of them were gone, along with my pint. I separated from my two companions, pulling on my coat, then led us from the hall, the air suddenly chill against my cheeks,
Definitely no beard anymore.
We straightened into line abreast as we left the car park, and first Rita, then Pablo, took a hand, so that we were joined as a chain of three, linked in warmth. We walked like that all the way back to the house, where Rita simply pulled me to her, kissed my cheek, and with a quick Spanish version of ‘good night’, went upstairs to her room.
I stood for a while, simply staring at the door to the hallway, then turned back to Pablo.
“What are we doing, my friend? Sorry to spoil the mood, but I am someone… I am not used to this sort of thing. I have no complaints, but, well. I don’t know what I should do now”
As I looked at him, I knew exactly what it was I wanted to do, which would have involved some seriously energetic activity, but how would he react? He must realise, surely? What would he feel?
Please let it not be disgust.
He sat down on the sofa, waving an arm for me to join him, but keeping a judicious distance between us.
“Please, Caroline. A little talk, I think”
As I sat, I watched him turn his gaze away, towards my stack of DVDs.
“So much. Such short time. My head, it is spinning, I think is the English wording. What is your thought about Rita?”
“She is wonderful, Pablo. You should be proud of her”
He sighed.
“She is in love, Caroline, in love with you. Not that way, no; she likes the boys. No: she sees the tall lady who dances with her father, who sends her music in the hospital when she is nearly dying. The woman who smiles at me. What could be more natural than for me to follow her path?”
I nodded.
“And what does her father think, then?”
“Her father? He is uncertain. He sees… Caroline, may I talk freely?”
“I think that is sort of the point here, Pablo”
“Yes. I suppose it is. Your bathroom, I looked in the little box with the mirrors on the front”
“The bathroom cabinet”
“Yes. The cabinet. I was seeking toothpaste. You have medication, my friend”
Oh, fuck.
“Ah”
“I had wondered, from the first day. You are so tall and slim in, well, the behind?”
“I don’t have a fat arse? Thank you, I suppose”
His gaze was now fully on me.
“We both know my thoughts here”
“Yes”
“Yes you know my thoughts?”
“Yes, I think you have things right. I am sorry, Pablo. If you feel you can no longer stay, I will understand”
He muttered something in Spanish that sounded pithy, then turned to me.
“It is not just Rita that has found the fairy tale, Caroline. You are constant in what you do”
He shook his head, then smiled again, a skewed one.
“I think I may have the wrong word. Not always wanting, but always the same person”
“Consistent”
“I thank you. Consistent. You do not ask, you do not request. You are just open in the hand and, I believe, in the heart. I had wondered… we, men in the towns around the tourist places, we see women who come, older women, and they look for the younger men, they make promises”
I couldn’t help bursting out laughing, and he sat bolt upright as I waved at him, trying to get an apology out, fighting the snorts until the words were there.
“I am not laughing at you! It is just that my friends, Steph and Annie?”
“The tall woman with the red hair?”
“Yes, her. They were warning me about men who do that! They wanted me to be wary of younger men who are after an escape from the country, a new passport, all by claiming to love older women”
He stared at me, mouth slightly open, then fell victim to his own laughter.
“Really? We are both frightened of the same chimaera?”
“It seems so, but there is still the other thing”
“Yes, there is. That thing… I must sleep, but I think, what your friends cared about, I think that is an end to some of my concern. The other matter, I think I know where my mind goes, but not tonight. Too much discussion, too quickly”
He rose, and I followed, trying to guess which way ‘his mind’ was going, and he stepped forward to hug me, his cheek against mine. He pulled back a little, so I could see his smile.
“Thank you, my friend. I think, now, that I know who you are”
He kissed me, a gentle peck on my lips, and then he was gone through the door to the stairs. I stood listening as his tread went up to the bedroom, then started to get ready for bed. Once under the covers, I couldn’t relax, turning and shifting position through the night, waiting for the clock to tick through enough hours to make it worth getting up once more.
As is so often the case, sleep mugged me just when I thought it a lost cause, and I woke to golden sunshine burnishing the edges of my curtains. What bloody time… nine thirty? Shit! There was a soft murmur of voices from the kitchen, and as I pulled on my dressing gown, I finger-combed my hair into some sort of order before opening the door. The two of them were sat by the kitchen window, looking out into my postage stamp of a back garden, a bird book open on the sill. I realised they were watching whatever little visitors were at my bird feeder.
“Good morning Caroline! We see the birds Papa and me!”
“Morning, Rita. Breakfast? Desayuno?”
Pablo looked over his shoulder.
“We had cornflakes, and the toast and marmalade. What is the difference in English between the two, marmalade and jam?”
“I think it’s that one is citrus fruit, but then there’s lemon curd, and… Short answer? Don’t really know. What are your plans today? When do you plan to go to your embassy?”
“Tomorrow, so I will need to remember the bus to the station”
“Number 100. Only one you need, but going to Redhill. Or just walk down the main road to Three Bridges station, for more trains. Pardon me while I make a pot of tea”
My mouth ran away with me right then, and plans I hadn’t consciously made landed on the table between us as I filled the kettle.
“I had a thought, and that was a trip out by train, if you would like”
“Where would we go?”
“Brighton. Seaside, some bird life, and a funfair on the pier. It’s a nice day out there”
“Swimming?”
That allowed my nerves some respite, for of course I just burst out laughing.
“Not unless you want to freeze off all your extremities! Um, all your fingers and toes. That water is cold-cold-cold. And I have just had another idea. Rita?”
“Si?”
“You like photographs?”
She looked confused, so I turned back to her father.
“I have an old and simple camera, and I am pretty sure I have a spare memory card somewhere. Let Rita make her own choices about photos”
“That would be nice. I think you have only just thought of this plan; am I right?”
“Absolutely! Best sort of plan, in my view”
“Will there be walking?”
“A bit”
“Then perhaps not the heels today”
He was still making jokes, then. I relaxed, just a little, slightly more confident I hadn’t frightened him too much the night before.
“I am off to get changed, have a wash and do my teeth. There are eggs over there, if you want anything else, and if you please remind me, there is a supermarket near Brighton station, and we need some more milk and bread”
‘We’, dear god.
“We go by train?”
“Parking is a sod in Brighton”
Translation: I am not sure if I am fit to drive after that night’s excuse for sleep. I left them to it, Pablo explaining the plan to Rita, and following my ablutions I picked an appropriate wardrobe, which involved trousers that time. If the breeze got up on the coast, I had no intention of flashing my underwear. Not to strangers, anyway--- grow up, woman. After a last cup of tea, I locked up behind the three of us and led the way down to the other station.
Pablo, who sat beside his daughter, shook me awake just as we came through Preston Park confirming my good sense in choosing not to drive, and after we had arrived at our stop, I tried to lead them out of the station. By ‘tried’, I mean that Rita once more turned us into a chain gang, this time by grabbing a hand from each of us and towing hard. I remembered that she was supposed to have been extremely ill, and then just went with her.
The day went as all days do in that city: ambling through the Lanes, gawping at the Pavilion while wondering why it had been built, dodging the traffic on the horrendously busy Kings Road, and staring out to sea from the Doughnut. Rita was fascinated by the sculpture, but I had something else for Pablo.
“Follow me along the top of the shingle”
There is another stone groyne, almost touching the Palace Pier, and often partly covered by shingle, as we approached, he stopped dead.
“The birds, Caroline?”
“Turnstones, or ‘ruddy turnstones’ in international-speak. This is somewhere they come really close”
We got a few more ticks for him, including a (great) cormorant or six, some early winter-plumaged guillemots and an awful lot of herring gulls. I even found him a passing great black-backed gull, and that was Pablo’s boxes ticked. Nicely done, girl. Last bit.
“Time to head up onto the pier, people. Hold your noses as you go in, because the smell is vile”
We had a couple of rides, we played some games, we ate an ice cream each, Rita took our photos at the ‘face through a hole’ mermaid silliness, and we bought some Brighton rock. Nothing unusual, apart from some long minutes spent staring at flocks of gulls hoping for a rarity. A long walk up North St brought us back to the clock tower and the final little climb to my supermarket, Rita chattering away in Spanish to the occasional terse reply from her father. Bread and milk, as planned, and before I headed to the till, I asked Pablo if there was anything else we needed.
I also, quietly, asked him why Rita seemed a little sharp in her tone, and he sighed.
“She wishes to know why we stand apart, Caroline, and… Here. I pay”
He placed two bottles of dry white and a two-litre bottle of Coke into my little wire basket, and headed for the cashier. So much for that little chat. It all went into my equally little rucksack, along with the book and binoculars, and then he insisted on carrying the thing. Up the last bit of road before the station, and then stand uselessly below the huge destination board until we saw a Three Bridges train, Rita cuddled up to me and slipping her father occasional glances.
Once we had a train, she charged on ahead of us, finding four seats free around a table, and with another glare at her father, she sat ostentatiously in one of the aisle seats, her message plain. I shrugged, and turned to Pablo.
“I’ll have the window, then”
As he settled beside me, Rita gave a satisfied nod, and slipped across to her own window spot with a much happier grin. I let my hands fall into my lap as the train pulled away, once more feeling the tug of my need for sleep, and Pablo grunted as my eyes started to close.
“Sit up for a moment, please”
I did as asked, and his arm came down behind me. A half turn, and I was comfortably cradled with my head on his shoulder and my left arm resting across his chest. Oh, Rita, I thought, you are a pushy girl, but there was no way I was going to complain. As I settled down, I heard a clear “Awwwww” from the old woman across the aisle. Her words, my thoughts.
My thoughts must have turned to dreams, because I woke once more at Haywards Heath, mouth like an armpit, and a little lost as to where on Earth I---
I suddenly realised where my hand was, and it was on a very firm thigh. Not dangerously high, certainly not more than a third of the way from knee to crotch, but still on his thigh, and his free hand was on top of my own, I assumed to stop any upward migration of my digits.
“I think we are close to home, Caroline”
“Zat Haywers Hee?”
“Haywards Heath, yes. How mush sleep did you lose last night?”
“Most of it”
“Well, you have slept all the way back”
“Oh hell! Did I snore?”
He grinned.
“Most adorably, with a little squeak. Rita loved it”
Another thought struck me.
“Tell me I didn’t dribble!”
“Rita had Kleenex”
“Oh shit”
“I don’t think you did that”
Rita was giggling at my reaction.
“Papa sleep as well!”
She was waving the little camera I had given her to use, and showing me a picture of the two of us slumped together in our seats, both mouths open and his head reasting on top of mine. I was simultaneously appalled and entranced, and a teasing voice in the back of my mind was gloating about ‘sleeping with a man’. I sat up, trying to get my senses back online before we arrived at our station.
“What are we eating tonight?”
He was almost back to his usual self, it seemed, for I got a rather quirky smile.
“Not fish and chips, please”
“Okay… Do you like Chinese food?”
“I don’t know”
“Then we can talk through a menu when we get in; my local place delivers”
Translation: I am shattered, and slightly footsore, and I really, really don’t want to have to go out again. We ambled down the ramp from the platform at Three Bridges, and up the road to my house, where I decided that propriety could take a running jump, and once again I climbed into pyjamas, dressing gown and fluffy slippers before digging out the menu for the ’New Lotus’, and then spending some not inconsiderable time explaining to Pablo, and through him Rita, exactly what we would be eating. I did play safe, although I ordered a double portion of salt and pepper squid for myself, as it was my treat.
Rita joined me in fashion sense, borrowing a spare towelling robe to wrap herself in, which just left Pablo, who grumbled.
“I sleep in shorts, it would not be polite”
Rita just huffed at that, and joined me as I ferreted through my DVD collection for something family-friendly. To my surprise, her eyes lit up on spotting the boxed set of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ films, and she hurried over to her father to wheedle his permission. I couldn’t actually care what we watched, as long as we did it together, because even the few days I had been putting them up had brought a solid realisation of how lonely I had been.
It was all temporary, and I knew that full well, but just for a while I wasn’t alone. Waking up that morning to voices in the kitchen had been a real lift, and if… Those thoughts again. Focus on the possible, nelson, and seize what is there, rather than pine for what could never be. I settled the video of ‘fellowship’ into the player, and set it going, knowing that at some point I would have to hit ‘Pause’.
As the Hobbits arrived at the ‘Prancing Pony’, the delivery man rang our doorbell. I picked up the bag, took it into the kitchen, and brought out the warmed plates, as Pablo poured two and a half glasses of wine. It wasn’t until we were sat behind my coffee table, trays on laps and spare portions in front of us with the wine, that I caught up with that thought: ‘our’ doorbell?
Sod it. Sod the two of them, as well, because my squid evaporated from the carton. My glass stayed topped up, Rita being switched to coke by her father very early into the evening, and as the food was disposed of, the film continued. Rita had manoeuvred herself onto one end of the sofa, so that she was able to snuggle up to Pablo as the nastier parts arrived, in Moria, which left me on his other side. I left the film running while I cleared the debris into the kitchen to deal with in the morning, then returned to my seat. Rita had her feet curled underneath her, leaning into her father, and so, my heart thundering away, I mirrored her pose on his other side. As my head settled on his shoulder, he stiffened slightly, turning to look at me, his expression unreadable for a moment, and then a slight hint of a smile appeared, and he settled back, an arm over each of us.
Rita ducked down to see past him, and I caught her smiling at me. Her right hand reached across his chest, palm open, and I could read her mind as I took her hand, and we finished the film as three people wrapped comfortably, and comfortingly, together.
Rita looked towards the stack of DVDs as the film ended, and it was clear that she wanted to watch the next one, but the clock was most definitely against her. Pablo spoke softly to her, and she simply nodded, before rising and coming round to face us both. A hug and a kiss for her father, the same for me, and she was off to bed, while I was still settled against him, afraid of breaking the spell. As the hall door closed, he almost whispered my name.
“Yes?”
“What are we doing?”
I took a couple of deep and slow breaths, trying to pull my heart back down from its location near my tonsils.
“I think… I think we each have ideas, my friend, but at the moment… At the moment, we are getting to know each other better”
He was silent for a few seconds, than nodded, slowly.
“Yes. I think that is right. Would you please sit up?”
Shit, I thought. That’s the end of that little episode. He shuffled sideways until his arm was on the rest to his right, and then, to my astonishment, simply raised his left arm in a clear invitation. As I settled against him once more, he spoke softly into my ear.
“You are--- No! I was going to say you are heavy, but that would have been rude, and it is simply that if you lean against me, it is easier if I have a support”
“Um… okay”
I wriggled a little to get more comfortable, and he grunted a little as I did so, and my left hand settled back onto his chest, where Rita’s had been.
“Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“If I ask questions that are too private, you must say”
“Okay”
I was being so bloody eloquent, but didn’t dare say too much, in case it was the wrong thing. His speech had a little slippage to it, and I counted back, trying to work out how much of the wine had made it into his own glass rather than mine. Dutch courage?
“You must please tell me of yourself. We both know of the thing that sits without speaking”
More slow breaths. This needs saying, woman, for good or bad.
“You mean that I am a trans woman”
“Yes. That. It is not that you are just wearing the clothes”
“No. I wear the clothes, as you put it, because they are what women wear, and I---”
“I understand. Because you are a woman. But not always so”
“I haven’t always been a woman, no. I was once a girl”
He let his head fall back, eyes closed.
“But the world disagreed with you?”
“Exactly. I tried for a while to agree with them, but that could never work”
“How did you try?”
“I did things to seem like a man, tried to live like a man, but it could never work”
His arm squeezed my shoulder, just a little.
“I think that is an obvious thing. I am unable to see you succeeding at such an act. You wear… there is an English idiom, about hearts and clothing?”
“I wear my heart on my sleeve?”
“Yes, that is the one”
I found my left hand clenching a little against his chest, and he brought his right up to soothe it, as I started to gush.
“Yeah, you are so bloody right there. All the way through school. I was bullied a lot, lucky to have been a reasonable size, I suppose. If I had been any smaller, I might not be here”
His hand almost spasmed, tightening on mine.
“You speak of… of harm to yourself?”
“Suicide rates are awful, Pablo. I was lucky enough not to end up that way. I know of others…”
I took some far deeper breaths. Let me get past this bit.
“Some people are really unlucky. There was another woman that lived nearby. Pablo?”
“Yes?”
“I am going to ask you to be very honest here, and because we are, well, sitting as we are, do not be afraid of offending me. Please describe what you see when you look at me”
He wriggled a little away from me, and I almost sat up, but he took my chin in his right hand, raising my head so that I was looking him in the eyes.
“Warts and all, like your Cromwell?”
“Please. You can’t possibly say anything worse than I have already heard”
“Okay, then. First… first, you are tall, and that is something I have always liked for a woman. You are very slim, and your walk has grace, although I can tell you do not wear the high heels often. You are not comfortable in them. Your posture, it was something I saw on the first day. You often stand as if you anticipate receiving a blow”
“Not that surprising”
“No. Not from what you have told me. Your hair, it is not too long, and as I look at your forehead, I can see that it must be the original colour”
He laughed out loud suddenly, and I waited until he spoke again, a little worried at the reaction.
“No, Caroline, my laughter is not from you. We have many blonde women in Cuba, but not many who are actually blonde. Some of them use the sort of bleach that you keep in your kitchen, and they are not blonde, but orange”
“Forget them, Pablo. Yes, this is me, not from a bottle”
“Okay. Your… For me, my preferences, your hips could be a little wider, but… Your face. You have a strong nose”
“A beak”
“No. A strong nose, one of personality, of you. Your mouth…”
He shook his head.
“Your eyes, I have never looked into grey eyes before”
“My mouth?”
He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and then he simply turned his head and kissed me. No slobber, no tongue trying to gain entry; just the gentlest, softest of lips, and I found my hand cradling his cheek before he pulled back.
“Yes, your mouth. It is the way it smiles with your eyes, and I have had much to drink tonight”
I started to pull away, disappointed, and he held me in place, eyes locked on mine.
“That was not my meaning, Caroline. Not that I would do such a thing because of drinking, but that the drinking has left me freer to do what I have been desiring. I am a confused man, because I can see nobody in you but a woman, one who has been generous beyond words, and yet I know your history. There is confusion. This other woman: she was like you?”
“Yes, she was”
“And you use the past tense to describe her”
“Yes. I asked you to describe me for a reason. That woman was not as lucky as me--- she was a Royal Marine, well over six feet tall--- er, a little under two metres. She still went through her transition. Remember when we walked through the shopping centre in Crawley, the big indoor place? County Mall?”
“Yes”
“She was one of the security managers there”
He was staring at me, and I realised my eyes were leaking.
“What happened to her, Caroline?”
The tears were definitely falling now.
“Do you remember Steph and Annie, the two women at the Hawth?”
“Of course”
“That other woman was murdered by a gang of men. Thrown off a bridge over the motorway. Steph arranged her funeral, and Annie, the dark-haired girl, she… She’s a policewoman, Pablo. Steph told me that she, Annie, had the job of recovering what was left of the dead woman, from a busy road”
He muttered something in Spanish, almost spitting some of the words, and I put a finger to his lips, courage returning from somewhere.
“No, I haven’t had that, or anything like it, although I did get my cheekbone broken once”
He must have picked up on something in my expression, for his next question was on the money.
“Was this from a lover?”
I made myself snuggle back down into his embrace, my head almost on his chest, away from the temptation to simply grab his face and take more kisses. I needed some balance.
“Not quite, Pablo. It was someone I smiled at, once, a man I thought looked handsome, and he saw, and he didn’t like fucking queers. I… I have never had a lover, ever. How could I? When I looked like a man, it would have been homosexual men who would have found me to their taste. Now, well, if they were to find out who, what I am, all I can see is the man who punched me that time, or the bastards who murdered poor Melanie”
He sat in silence for quite a while, breathing slowly, before replying.
“You have not lived an easy life, have you?”
“Bears and Popes?”
“Sorry?”
“Ah, no. Sorry from me. English idioms, meaning something is really obvious. Two questions: do bears shit in the woods, and is the Pope a Catholic. Very commonly used”
“And your answer? Without the Popes and bears?”
My own turn for a pause, and then it came out.
“Pablo, I have had a far easier life than many, but it has been a safe one, and I have sublimated things in so many ways, but what it is--- I am lonely”
The deepest of sighs from him, and then almost a whisper.
“Rita and I, we understand that, since… I am going to London tomorrow, as you know. I must sleep. What are your plans? Rita is not required at the Embassy”
“Would you trust me with her? Would she be okay with me, herself?”
He laughed out loud.
“She adores you, Caroline! And how could I not trust you with her, except in the matter of fast food?”
I slipped my hand across his chest so that I could hug him more emphatically.
“Then we ride the train up together, we see you to your appointment, and then she plays tourist for the day. Can you get hold of a mobile phone?”
“I have one”
“Then get a SIM card for the UK, and take my number. I have made my own decision”
“Which is?”
“Tomorrow, you do the Embassy thing. The day after, unless there are problems, we are off camping. By car. I have some more treats for you both. Does she like castles?”
“We will find out! Now, I have much to think about, and I have to be very well-dressed for tomorrow, so I need to go to my bed”
As he kissed me a gentle goodnight before closing the door after himself, I was having an internal conversation, where the responsible Ms Nelson was explaining to the quivering Caroline that no, disappointment wasn’t on the cards, no matter how gagging-for-it she might feel. Go to bed, little girl, and be grateful for what you have just received.
---
I woke early, before either of them was down, and had the cafetiere ready for Pablo when they entered the kitchen/dining room. Cornflakes and toast would do for breakfast, as I was sure that Rita and I would top up rather early, once Papa was out of sight. Down the main road to the Station, once more in a daisy chain of held hands, Pablo in a charcoal grey suit and tie and Rita and I in jeans, as the wind was still a little gusty, and what is there to say about a day in London?
We got off the train at City Thameslink, grabbed the bus to Drury Lane, both of them fascinated by riding a ‘real red double-decker’, and left Pablo at the entrance to the Cuban Mission. Rita and I then did something I had never done before, and grabbed one of the open-topped tour buses that go round and round the sights. Her camera was never out of her hand, nor a smile far from her face, and each new wonder brought me a hug. As a rather long finale, we stepped off at Buckingham Palace for the walk back through St James’s Park, Rita chattering away in her slowly improving English and fluent Spanish, while I did my best the other way round. The pelicans brought laughter from her, but after I led her up Horseguards to the actual parade ground, I gave her what she told me later was the best part of the day. Through the arch onto Whitehall, and that day the two guards were mounted, boots and breastplates gleaming.
I wondered if I might need to splash out on another memory card for her.
Trafalgar Square was our destination, of course, and I had received a text from Pablo, which meant that he had found a suitable SIM. He met us at the foot of the Column, and I noticed he had his own camera with him.
“Caroline, did you know the Embassy is close to the British Museum?”
“Oh yes, And that is the National Gallery, and there are other museums over at Kensington, and are you dropping hints?”
He grinned, and slipped a casual arm around my waist, which brought a happy grin from his daughter.
“What was that phrase? Bears and Popes?”
“Yup! Oh… oh really!”
His eyes followed mine, and once again there was a mutter of Spanish, but it=t didn’t stop him taking several pictures.
“Pablo?”
“Yes?”
“That is called The Fourth Plinth. It doesn’t have a permanent sculpture on it, so it changes every so often. Can I ask if you are seeing what I am, and what, from her giggles, Rita has noticed?”
He just nodded.
“I think we need to move away, Caroline”
The sculpture in place was of a clenched hand giving a thumbs up sign, the thumb being about four times longer than it should have been in proportion to the rest of the fingers. The problem was that, from where we were standing, it didn’t look so much like a thumbs up, but more like a set of fingers wrapped around something stiff that is normally located further down the torso. To be clear, it looked like a rather large erection.
We did, indeed, need to leave the area, and I wondered if he might want to censor her memory card. I led the way down Northumberland Avenue to the underpass that took us to Embankment Tube Station, thus avoiding the Maccy Dee’s that sat outside Charing Cross, and rode a Circle Line train to Blackfriars for our Thameslink service to Three Bridges. Rita was still grinning, and when we found a two-facing-two set of seats, and Pablo casually settled beside me, I got a hug before she settled down at the window.
I didn’t fall asleep that time, and when we got home I simply dug out some pizzas from my freezer.
Once the meal was over, no alcohol this time, I turned to the two of them.
“Right. Tomorrow, we leave the house for a few days, so you two need to pack what you will be taking with you. We will be on the coast, and it will probably rain. There is no mud where we are going, unless you go down from the sea wall, but it will probably be windy”
Pablo was translating as I spoke, and when I said, “And if you are both good children, I might take you on a ferry ride to an island”, Rita almost spilled her coke.
I rose, gathering the plates, and smiled at her.
“Pack, yes? Then Lord of the Rings, secundo?”
They packed. I packed. I also got into my pyjamas, as did Rita, and I threw Pablo some old tracksuit bottoms that were only a little too short in the legs, and we settled down for our film, and we sat in the same way we had done to watch the first one. Yes, I got another kiss goodnight.
My sleep, however, wasn’t as restful, for the simple reason that all I could see was that huge stiffy on the Fourth Plinth; all I could hear was my own voice declaring my complete lack of experience that way. I needed to make some space, or I might ruin everything. I got out of bed, and changed the tents I had intended to take with us, so that instead of my three-person base camp fortress of a tent, I had one slightly-more than a single Vaude Taurus and a two-person Vango.
Don’t push too hard, woman, I thought, and of course, that simply made me think of that subject even more, and in the end, I did something I hadn’t managed for a very long time, hoping that neither of my guests would hear the creaking from the sofa bed.
I woke early once again, nervous about Pablo’s mood in the most peculiar way imaginable. I found myself worrying that some odd mental link might have led him to suspect what I had been up to in the night, but then again, he might just have heard the creaking and done some simple addition. I took a few minutes to finish loading tents and other hardware into the car, and then started the kettle going.
In the event, it was Rita who was first down, and I was oddly comforted by the way she seemed to know where everything was, and to be utterly relaxed about preparing her own breakfast.
She shot me a slightly worried look as she poured milk onto her cereal.
“Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“You and Papa? Is all good?”
I nodded, trying to make my smile seem unforced.
“I think so. Si”
“My Papa, he is, how to say, solitario? No friend, all trabajo? Work?”
Before she could say more, I heard the living room door open, so put a finger to my lips, and then he was there, with a hug and a cheek-kiss for each of us. As he poured his own cereal—like father, like daughter, it seemed—I poured as well, tea, coffee and orange juice. He sipped his coffee, then smiled at Rita before turning back to me.
“Where are we going today?”
“Right. I remembered what you said about waterbirds, so I have a couple of ideas. This is the camping one, and I have another in mind as a possibility for another day. What I need to know is what your people have planned, because you said they wanted you to go abroad”
“Yes. I am going to Hamburg next week, for a meeting with the man who made my website”
“Just you again?”
“No, with Rita. This is to be a photoshoot, simple Cuban man, with his daughter, who makes green tourism in our country, showing its beauty to other green people, international brotherhood of the proletariat naturalist. We will meet my internet friends, with a group from our Embassy, and they will take photographs of us looking through our binoculars and lament about our need to have help from our brothers in Europe because of the evil suppression of our freedom by our neighbours across the Straits of Florida”
He grinned.
“That is how they will describe it, anyway. For me, I will finally meet some friends I have not seen for too many years, and Rita will encounter one more culture. Unfortunately, there is no room for another friend to travel. We will be away two nights alone. I mean, only”
“What about the other trip you mentioned?”
“Ah, plans are still being made for that one. Now, where are we going today?”
“down to the south coast, to a campsite I know that has very good birdwatching nearby, and on the way I will stop somewhere special. You mentioned Slimbridge, if my memory is accurate”
“Not there?”
“No, but another reserve run by the same people, with an extra treat for Rita. So get ready, and have your bags by the door in half an hour, and we will be off. The camping kit is in the car ready”
Forty-five minutes later, I was on the road to Horsham and the Arun valley. Rita was away on her own plane, courtesy of my MP3 player, which left the two notional adults free to talk.
“I’ve packed a couple of self-inflating mats as well as a closed cell foam one, and there are two duvets in the boot as well, just in case”
“Where will we eat?”
“There is a little café on site, but I have my two-ring cooker with us”
“Two rings?”
“Gas rings. Plus two little stoves, so we can have a brew in the morning. Tea, coffee. Brew. We go past some supermarkets, so we can pick up some supplies on the way. There are a couple of pubs, either side of the campsite, one about a mile and three quarters away, the other a bit less. They both do food, and the walk is absolutely flat to either one. Now, shush, please. I don’t drive this far very often, and I need to concentrate. Could you dig through the CDs in the glovebox---that thing there? Find something you might like. I drive better with music”
Translated: please let me avoid difficult topics of conversation until I have no choice, or at least until I am not in charge of a car holding two people I care about. He found my Moody Blues compilation, and that was fine. I sang along where I could, and on a check in the rear-view mirror, I spotted that Rita had taken off her headphones and was nodding along to our CD. Sound taste in music, that girl. We were on the last track when we hit the outskirts of Arundel, and once it was done, I turned the player off.
“This is the extra treat for your girl, Pablo. Small town, but there is a cathedral and a huge castle, which we will drive right past. She got her camera ready?”
We did an abbreviated version of the Arundel tour, without entering any of the ‘sites’ except the WWT nature reserve, even though the thought of being rowed around the boating lake like some swooning romantic heroine did have a certain appeal. Rita was fascinated by the captive birds, Pablo wanted to spend the entire week listing gulls and ducks, and I still had a long way to drive, so I pulled them away by force of will and back to the car park. Once again, I was hearing Pablo’s words to me, apologising for not showing me anything ‘special’, when every single bird I had seen was something new. Even the dunnock singing in a bush near our car had him in raptures.
“All in? Belts on? We are rolling! Pablo, could we have ‘Bedlam Born’ on the CD please? No Maddy on that one, but the original violinist does some amazing things I think Rita will enjoy”
That album saw us past Chichester, and up to the edge of Portsmouth, and I asked Pablo what he had thought of it.
“It was mixed, but that song about the robbery, that was powerful. That guitar was so, I don’t know the right words. It made my hands clench”
“That guitar was a violin. Tuned an octave down, but still a violin”
“Really?”
“Yup. Could we have the Sibelius third next?”
I always do the same thing when listening to that one, and that is to sing along, ‘da da dada dah’, and that tune is featured so often in the finale that it is easy to remember as well as infectious. I checked in the mirror just then, and Rita was most definitely on Planet Sib; when I looked to my left, her dad just grinned and sang the tune along with the two of us, until the shout of life and joy from the horns brought the whole thing to a close.
I pulled into a petrol station just then, and the two of them were laughing happily as I filled the car and went to pay. On my return, as I clicked in my belt, Pablo put a hand on my arm.
“Rita says that the Sibelius was like that Beethoven you sent her. It is music to dance to, to shout to the doctors”
“Why doctors?”
“To shout ‘still living’, of course. That is music of real joy, and… I must listen again. There were things in the basso, the deeper sounds, that just need more attention”
I looked at him with renewed respect, because he was absolutely right. There are two particular moments, one in the third, and another in the fifth, where Sibelius wrote some astonishingly complex sounds for the bass and cello players, and the result is as visceral as Peter Knight’s electric octave fiddle in the way they reach out and grab the listener by the hindbrain. I needed to see what Pablo had in his collection…
Of course I had the fifth along as well. It wasn’t a day for the fourth.
Round Southampton, through the edge of Totton for the big supermarket, and then past Ashurst campsite and the quicker way through Lyndhurst. Brockenhurst followed, ponies more apparent, then Lymington, and finally Lower Pennington Lane. I took care on the single track road, but I was getting impatient to be parked and pitched up.
My booking was confirmed in the little office, a suggested area to pitch up given, and I drove us round to the huge field in the south of the site, stepping out of the car to stretch my back and shoulders. I hadn’t driven that far for years.
I realised that Rita was in front of me, looking worried.
“Caroline? You are good?”
“I am just stiff, love”
I mimed it, making creaking noises, and she smiled.
“Papa and me, we make the tent!”
Oh no you don’t, girl. I knew how my tents went up, and I didn’t want them wrecked. I checked the ground for debris, and after a little debate, I decided to put them up (my mind was avoiding the word ‘erect’) side by side. The Taurus is a two pole design, really quick to set up, but the Vango uses three hoops, and is a little trickier to get right. Once they were up to my satisfaction, I threw in the three mats, taking the closed-cell one for myself and then returned to the car boot to collect my sleeping bag. When I turned around, Rita was already putting hers into the Taurus, which was not the bloody plan at all.
“Pablo? That’s my tent!”
He was actually blushing.
“Rita says no. She said other things as well”
“Such as?”
“Please, not here? We talk later?”
I shook my head, and walked over to the girl.
“Please; my tent?”
“No. Mine”
“Rita…”
She looked up into the sky for a second, then back at me, after muttering something. There was so much of her father in her..
“You, Papa? You not want?”
Oh dear god, girl, of course I bloody did, but no, I couldn’t. She hadn’t finished, though, and in a rather astonishingly precise mixture of mime and broken English, she let me know what she had heard from her father in the night. Oh shit. Not just me then.
“You want, he want, I have MP3”
It wasn’t just the language barrier: I really had no answer to her. I returned to her father, and shrugged,
“Do you snore? I have ear plugs, enough for both of us if I do”
“Is there noy enough room in her tent?”
“Theoretically. They advertise it aa a two person tent”
“Really?”
“Yup. If you both lie on your side in tight sleeping bags, with nothing else in the tent, then maybe. It’s fine for one, though”
Just like his daughter, there was the muttered imprecation, and then he started hauling bags.
“Fine. She gets her way, then. What are we eating tonight?”
A clear attempt at changing the subject, but I welcomed it.
“Get the tents ready, then I think it’s a walk. I am not going to do camp cooking after all that driving, and it’s fine. We’ll walk out the long way on the sea wall, then take the cut on the way back. Bring your binoculars”
“Walk where?”
“Chequers Inn. They do food”
“Caroline?”
“Yup?”
“How many times have you stayed here?”
“God knows!”
He was smiling again, which was more than a good thing.
“You know where all the necessary things are”
“I know where the pubs are. Same thing, really. The cut is a footpath, and years ago it was unusable, just full of nettles”
“Nettles are what?”
“Stinging plants. Urtica. Those things over there are some”
“To avoid?”
“Most definitely, but they can be eaten”
He shook his head, then went to help Rita set out her bed. Fifteen minutes later, I led them through the two little gates to the start of the track out to the sea wall, as early as I could manage as I anticipated a large number of delays as we walked. I wasn’t wrong, and my conversation with Pablo became a little repetitive at times.
“Redshank. Curlew. Black-tailed godwit. Linnet. Goldfinch. Stonechat. Mallard. Gadwall. Shelduck. Little egret”
On arrival at the actual sea wall, by the concrete pipe thing, I was pleased to see that the tide was out, although on the way in.
“The Solent. That hillier bit over there is the Isle of Wight, and that lighthouse is on our side, by a fortress. Those white things are called The Needles. Rita?”
“Yes?”
“That is an island. You want to go there in a boat?”
“Papa?”
I was shuddering a little at the cost, it being allegedly the second most expensive ferry crossing in the world, mile for mile, but sod it. This was their trip, and I owed them a treat. Pablo was scanning the mudflats, but still listening, and as he brought his bins up to his eyes, he replied.
“Caroline?”
“Si? Yes?”
“What would that involve?”
“We get up early, drive back into Lymington, just over—ah! See the ferry?”
One was just setting off for the island, and he nodded before returning to his scan of the brown slime.
“We take one of those to Yarmouth, which is behind that white lighthouse, and we drive to a few places; I know some nature reserves there. Then we catch the ferry back to Portsmouth, which is something to see”
Suddenly, I was laughing, and it was a moment before I could get the words out.
“Pablo?”
“Yes? Something is funny?”
“Portsmouth is one of our main naval bases. Are you sure you aren’t really a spy?”
He turned to me, deadpan.
“No, I am no spy. But Rita, she is an officer in our state security. Her assignment is to investigate American fast food menus. She is a dedicated worker. Now, what are those?”
“Dunlin. Oh, and there’s a greenshank!”
As we turned left to follow the top of the sea wall, Rita was singing something in Spanish, softly but happily, and with a few more ticks for her father, including an avocet, we left the sea defences for the narrow lane that led to the pub, where we ate some proper pub grub, and made plans for the morning while not exactly stinting on the drink. I did my best to slow down, but while not drunk, two of us were definitely feeling sleepy as we made our way back to the tents by way of the cut. When I said ‘two’, I meant me and Rita, who was yawning over the sticky toffee pudding I had suggested for her. Pablo still seemed switched on, especially when we heard a tawny owl calling in the darkness. I had a headtorch with me, so we were able to walk safely, but Rita almost needed our help to get into her bag. We zipped up her tent, and then simply stood for a while, each with our own thoughts.
“Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“Please; you go to your bed first. Change, get comfortable. I have my night things here, and I must to the men’s rest room”
I nodded, and crawled into my, our tent, stripping everything off before pulling on a thigh length nighty, wavering for a few minutes over whether I needed knickers before deciding to leave them in my luggage. I settled into my sleeping bag after unfastening the inner door once again, and just as I was deciding that yes, the duvet would be a nice addition to my bag to keep off the rapidly chilling night air, Pablo was back. He came into the tent feet first, in shorts and T-shirt, closing the outer zip as he did so, and then the inner. He slipped into his own bag, and I passed him the edge of the quilt.
“Can you pull this across? I think it’s going to be chilly tonight”
“Of course”
We lay in the darkness, both of us on our backs, the inches between us seeming like a rift valley, until he muttered something and turned to face me. His voice was a whisper, and as he spoke, I wondered if Rita was asleep, or plugged into my MP3, as she had suggested.
“Caroline?”
“Yes, Pablo?”
“I cannot do this”
My mood crashed, ready to burn, but he hadn’t finished speaking.
“Like this, close. Please forgive, but this is not the alcohol”
He kissed me, as gently as before, pulling back again to say more.
“This is me, the man, yes?”
He kissed me once again, and my courage emerged from hiding. Sod gentleness: I put my hand on the back of his head, pulled it closer, and did my very best to snog him properly. I wasn’t exactly in practice, not actually having snogged anyone before, but he responded, until once more pulling away, breathing deeply, resting on an arm by the side of my head. I reached for his hand, and he linked his fingers with mine, before I managed to get my other hand to the zip of my sleeping bag, pulling it down. More courage came from somewhere, and I found his own zip, and let go of his hand to squirm onto my side, reaching for his waist and pulling him closer as the kissing continued. His hand was stroking my cheek, and…
The courage was still there, and I didn’t care where it came from, or whether it was the alcohol, because I wanted this man so much. I let go of his waist to take his hand once more, and when I placed it on my breast, I felt him moan into my mouth. He took his hand away, and slid it under my nighty, his palm rough on my nipple, and so I reached down, mad thoughts of the Fourth Plinth in my mind, but my first act was to push those bloody shorts out of the way before… Oh god, so hot in my hand.
I had no lube. Why would I ever carry any? I wanted him inside me, to find out if it all worked, and then I had a thought. I pushed his face away from mine, murmuring that I needed a towel. Once I had it underneath me, I opened the other thing I had remembered.
The next morning, I was first up, really needing the ladies’ for more than one reason. When I returned, Pablo was up, so I simply snogged him properly, not caring if anyone saw, and then we shook Rita out of bed for bacon sandwiches, on crap white bed with a smear of low-calorie butter substitute.
We didn’t tell her why there was a scoop of it missing, but she had obviously guessed what had happened, and sang all the way to the ferry terminal.
It was a bit of a rushed day, but we got the nature reserves in, complete with a sighting of a kingfisher. An Island tour was completed by car, with just a few tick-box moments, such as a ride on the Alum Bay chairlift and a stop at the top of St Catherine’s Down. Rita was bouncing about happily, and her English was just about good enough to ask how big the Island was. That, oddly, was something I knew, thanks to a friend who had cycled the thing for his 50th birthday.
“There is a cycle route all the way round the edge, and it is a little over one hundred kilometres long”
That surprised Pablo, but I was still shuddering at the cost of the ferry, which was almost exactly one pound for each mile of that circuit. Eventually, as Rita ran out of steam, and after a stop for lunch in Niton, we were once more boarding a ferry, this time for Portsmouth, part of a cunning plan of mine. I suppose it was absolutely typical of me.
I was sore all morning, from where he had been, but how was he feeling? He took my hand freely, there were constant smiles and little touches, all of which lifted Rita’s mood well beyond smugness, but I couldn’t help remembering exactly what we had done. Fucking margarine was far too literal a phrase. It was still a good day, though, despite my fears. Hot and cold, that was me.
We finished our little drive at Fishbourne, and once aboard the return ferry, my plan started to run. The fortifications, Spinnaker Tower and a few hints about the Historic Ships set their hooks into the pair, and all I could say was “Not enough time; perhaps we might come back?”, which seemed to be a popular suggestion. One top up halt at the big supermarket on the way out irritated me a little, for no sooner were we back in the car when Pablo seemed to gain a mystic revelation that his bladder needed relief. I was left sitting in the car with Rita while he dashed back into the shop, and that, naturally, left me open to interrogation. Pablo’s joke about her being some sort of STASI/Gestapo apprentice stopped being funny.
“Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“You, Papa: you are happy, yes?”
There was no way I could deny that one. Terrified it wouldn’t last, fearful he would wake up from whatever daze he was in, shocked at the bleakness of my former life, revealed by their presence in my house, and, worst of all, the understanding that at some point in the very near future, even if he didn’t snap out of my dream, they would both be leaving, and my life would be back where it was.
“Rita? Yes. I am happy. I think your Papa is also happy”
She flung herself at the back of my seat, doing her best to hug me with it, and then Pablo was back with us. I raised one eyebrow.
“All drained, then?”
“Er, yes. Tonight’s meal?”
“Camp cooking, my dears. Pasta with Stuff”
“What stuff?”
“Wait and see, but we now have wine, so if it tastes bad, we won’t care!”
It’s a bit of a slog along a busy motorway until the turning for the Forest, but I knew the way all too well. I was tired by the time we parked up by our tents, but not too tired to delegate. That was when I realised I was calling Pablo ‘Papa’. Shit.
Pasta with Stuff was something I had evolved early in my camping days, consisting of fusilli pasta, chosen for its speed of cooking, dropped into a mishmash of tinned chopped tomatoes and anything else I could find, all ‘improved’ by the addition of oregano and that universal remedy for crap stews, hot chili powder. This time, I added stewed beef, mushrooms and most of a tube of tomato puree, plus some garlic.
It got eaten, as did the trifle I had picked up, and yes, the wine was opened and poured. It was still with some trepidation that I settled down in my sleeping bag, though, as Pablo seemed a little distant. When he returned from his ablutions, though, he made a point of pulling me closer, so that I was resting with my head on his arm and my hand on… No T-shirt. I moved my hand down a little, with no objection from him, and a similar discovery: no shorts. My heart rate was lifting steadily.
“Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“I did not need the rest room. But I found this”
It was a plastic bottle of proper, fit-for-purpose lube. Shit, yet again.
“I do not make too many assumptions?”
“Pablo, you can… oh, just shut up and come here”
-----
We spent the next day well away from the car, with a slow walk round to the Gun at Keyhaven, taking so long because every single lagoon, pond and mud scrape held something new for him. The tide was just receding from full flood, which let Rita discover the game of Gloop, where a stone is chucked onto liquid mud, disappearing in a little fountain of brown gunk, along with that sound: ‘Gloop’.
While I was enjoying seeing his delight at finding new birds, I was actually finding a few nice ones for myself, including a raven and a ring ouzel. There is a little bridge over the sluice gate on arrival at the harbour, usually with cars parked nose-on to the parapet, and we lingered there for a while. The tide had fallen enough to reveal a lot of mud, and while that was covered in godwits, the wall itself had a number of turnstones trotting about, utterly unconcerned by the cars and their occupants.
“Papa?”
“Yes?”
“Two things. First, look in that tree to our left. See it?”
“Yes! Is it a falcon?”
“Female peregrine, but forget that for now. Behind us, over the reeds. That is a bloody pair! Never seen that here”
“Pair of?”
“Marsh harriers. The dark one is the female. You are bloody bringing me luck!”
Let him watch, or let me watch; it didn’t matter which. We followed the harriers until they moved off, and then I turned to Mrs Peregrine to snap some decent shots, her feet bright against the dead wood. Once that was done, well, he got a proper kiss. I pay my debts.
We had lunch in the Gun, before making our way over to Sturt pond, where there was another welcome surprise in a flock of golden plover, and--- It was a very good day of birdwatching, and our last night’s camping involved a meal of noodles and more Stuff, and yes, Pablo was affectionate. As we drove back in one hit the next day, he was full of the need to make another visit. Plan successful.
I was absolutely shattered when we got home, as I wasn’t used to so much driving. It was another reminder of my bleak pre-Pablo life, reinforced when I picked up the mail from the mat, trying to work out when I had last received a personal letter.
The answer was obvious, and that letter had come from the man beside me. There was no discussion about sleeping arrangements, as all assumptions were clearly correct. Rita reached new levels of irritating smugness, and even with the language barrier, we were both able to communicate more than adequately.
That was another little revelation. I had liked her from the moment we met, for who wouldn’t? Now, I found myself caring for her. She was so cocky sometimes that it was hard to remember either her age or the fact that she had been so ill, so recently. Over the next few days, while Pablo had another meeting in London, we spent our time together, exploring both my music and my films, although we saved the final part of Lord of the Rings until Papa was home. Life was good, life was amazing, until time came for their Germany trip.
I saw them off at the airport, but it was absolutely traumatic. It had taken me such a short time to grow accustomed to him in my bed, but it felt so right, and then bang, gone, along with the bustle and giggle of Rita. I was lost. There was only one thing to do: I went back to work, and of course that meant Lauren. We did our usual coffee-shop catch-up
“Thought you were on leave?”
“Well, cancelled some of it”
She looked at me, or rather peered, then slumped.
“Fuck, you’ve got it bad! Have you---shit, you have, haven’t you? Shagged him?”
I couldn’t answer, but she could read my hesitation. She shook her head.
“One part of me wants to slap you, the other one wants to know how well the surgery---really?”
“Yes”
“Fuck. Er, that is all I need to know”
“That is all you are going to get”
My mouth wanted to say so much, but I couldn’t open up quite as quickly as I needed to.
“Lauren? Can I trust you?”
“Oh, for… you bloody well know that one. What has got you so scared?”
“He’s off in Germany right now, for work, and, well…”
I drew a couple of deep breaths.
“My bed feels empty, and I don’t know what to do”
She sat and thought for a few seconds, then shook her head, before looking up again.
“Would you be able to put up with a fat slapper?”
“Sorry?”
“Oh shit, I remember when he, my first husband, when he fucked off with that sleazy cow from Tesco’s. I can’t imagine what it must be like for you, so new to it all. I mean, I’d been there more than once before, but that time I was actually married and… I can stay with you, if you want. Let you have someone else beside you to fart and steal the duvet”
She moved in that night, but she wasn’t a farter, although she did indeed take more than her share of the duvet. It was just for two nights, but once again I was reminded of my luck in the friends I had found. The day that Pablo and Rita were due to return, I was working a late shift, so that I could be at the airport for their return, due in the late evening. I had just settled down with a cup of tea at the start of my break when Lauren came rushing up.
“Seen this, love? In the Guardian?”
She thrust the ‘supplement’ part of the paper at me, open to somewhere in the middle, and the first thing I saw was my ‘crown of wings’ picture.
“What’s this… they stole my picture?”
“Nope. Read the credits underneath”
The title spread was of that picture, with a separate block of six others to one side, and they were all mine. Underneath, I found some very small print:
Photographs from Sanchez Herrera’s website. Clockwise from top left… Main picture…
At the end of the list of bird names was the sentence ‘All photographs copyright C Nelson’.
“Bloody hell!”
Lauren was nodding.
“You need to see if you are entitled to a fee, my girl! Read the rest; I’ll watch the counter if you run over your break”
The article was a translation from an original in a German newspaper with a name I couldn’t pronounce, and it covered Pablo’s visit to his German friend, featuring interviews of the two of them as well as some slightly clunky statements from his government minders. In summary, his impeccably green tourist business was being hamstrung due to unfair sanctions imposed by the horrible Americans. Pablo, however, while agreeing with the official line, spoke more about how he limited his group sizes to what could fit into a single car, so that other members of his community could benefit from sharing the income opportunities he generated in a climate of imposed poverty---etc. I didn’t actually care, because it was all so wonderfully positive, and they were my pictures, in two national bloody newspapers, and there was more: two people I was starting to really, really care about were due home in a few hours.
A few seconds later, I re-ran that thought: home?
I sat quietly for about five minutes, looking at the pictures over and over again, before walking out to join Lauren.
“Thanks for this, love”
“No worries, girl. How are you getting back to your place?”
“Bus, I suppose. Same way I came in”
“Want a lift?”
“Wouldn’t say no! You’re in H, aren’t you?”
“Benefits of seniority, or in my case, age. I’d say ‘rank’, but I know how you think”
“I won’t say ‘pretty’, then”
“Cow”
“Tart. Hello, sir, is there anything in particular you are looking for?”
She was with me when they arrived, and while I remembered her previous advice about not seeming too keen, I did my best to ignore it, and greeted both of them in an extremely enthusiastic way, and stuff propriety.
Lauren came in for a nightcap, and as we talked through the newspaper article, Pablo opened a bottle of wine, and Lauren accepted a glass, then, after a pointed look at my sofa, its friend. I knew exactly what she was waiting for, and after we had finished our drinks, she got it. I opened the bed up, brought her a spare nighty, and after all three of us had hugged her, I went upstairs with my man, that phrase warming me in wonderful ways.
No, we didn’t, both of us being rather too tired, but we did talk, and it was Pablo who led the conversation.
“Lauren cares about you, Caroline”
“We go back… You know my history, or the important parts. I am still surprised that---”
He put a finger to my lips.
“I now know you. It makes… It helps me find my way out of confusion. A confession, now. When I answered your call, in Cuba, I did not know what to expect. I saw a woman, expensive boots, I thought, well, I will have some money this week, and then we found the owl, and I saw your little telescope. Such a wonderful thing!”
“It came from Lidl, Pablo! Only cost twenty pounds!”
“Really? Oh. That is not what I thought. Well… then we saw the owl, and that was the telescope, as I have said, but it was your photographs. You had the face of a child, so open in your joy. You were not saying ‘Look at how I take wonderful photographs’, but rather ‘Look at my luck in capturing this image’. That is you, Caroline. When the newspaper people wanted images, they said I must claim them, and I said no, that my lady had taken them, and that her name must go with them”
“Really? Your lady?”
“How else should I call you? I think your friend, Lauren, she also sees this in you. You do not claim the credit for anything, and I believe that is because you doubt that you deserve it”
He wriggled a little, so as to settle my head on his shoulder.
“You asked me to describe you, and I said how you hold yourself as if anticipating a blow. You do not feel that you deserve anything good. Lauren also sees this”
“Lauren was the person who stood by me when I decided I could no longer pretend”
“Decided, or perhaps realised?”
“Yeah, better description. She has always been there for me”
“The one true friend, yes?”
“I have other friends”
“But she is the centre. I am not like her, for what you say is that she saw you from the beginning. I had to learn. When we rode on my bike, I felt that I might take some advantage, a tourist woman, but that day… And then that hijo de puta made his comment. Your reaction was when I started to see you clearly. When you gave us a dinner, and we danced, and Rita smiled so widely”
He took a couple of slow breaths.
“I cursed the fates when I had to miss your departure, but I have a daughter, and she will always come before all else”
“Pablo?”
“Yes?”
“What’s brought this on? You are being very serious”
“Ah, so many things! Part of it is the talks in Germany, with the embassy people, and I have some news there, but… Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“How do you… We sleep together now. How is that for you? Not the… Not the intimate things, but the sleeping?”
I cuddled him s tightly as I could.
“I’ll answer two questions, then. The one you tried not to ask, that is amazing, something I never expected, but I believe that it is so wonderful because it is with someone I am happy to fall asleep beside, and happier still to wake up with. I have got used to this, and I will miss it when you leave”
I will be devastated when you leave.
I felt him nodding.
“Yes. That is much how I feel. What has happened since is that I have spent only a little while apart from you, and it has felt like an amputation. I have a question for you, and while I believe I know what your answer will be, I must ask and not assume an answer. Will you come with me on the trip to Gibraltar? I wish to watch the migration, but I would love to share it with more than one person I care for”
What was he asking? Really?
“What was that other news, Pablo?”
“Not for now, Caroline. It is something I must think about. A decision to make. Now, if you decide to come with us, I cannot offer an airplane ticket. My government is paying for Rita and myself, as well as a room in the Holiday Inn Express”
I snorted at that one.
“Not The Rock Hotel, then?”
“I must remain within a budget, alas!”
“I understand, far too well. I can get an Easyjet flight, no worries there, but how big is the room?”
“I have no idea. You would have to book another, I am sorry”
“Pablo? I would… You asked me about sleeping with you, like this. I am getting used to this, and, oh hell. It wouldn’t be fair to leave Rita in a room on her own, would it?”
He squeezed me once more.
“No. I have been thinking hard, but I see no solution”
“When is this trip?”
“From Monday next week, for three nights”
“Shit. Those two nights in Germany were bad enough… Can you excuse me, please?”
I slipped out of the bed, grabbing my dressing gown to cover my nakedness, and crept downstairs as quietly as I could. In the sitting room, there was a soft glow, and when I entered, I found Lauren lying in bed reading her e-book.
“Caroline? Problems?”
“Might be. Just wanted to sound you out on something”
“Okay. Nice tits, by the way, but I don’t swing that way”
I tightened up the top of the gown, feeling my blush in the half-light, as Lauren sat up.
“Problems?”
“Sort of. Just looking for some suggestions, fresh viewpoint sort of thing”
I quickly outlined the situation, and she nodded her way through them.
“So, then: you want to spend three nights testing out your replacement bits, and the kid’s in the way”
“No! Well, yes, but not like that!”
I pulled my own thoughts together, realising how true her reply actually was.
“I have got used to sleeping with someone, and it is something I have never, ever had before. He was away for two nights, and in a little while he will be flying back to his own country, so I don’t have that much time… Three nights is a big chunk to lose”
She stared at me for a few seconds, then half-smiled.
“It’s not the shagging, is it, love? You’ve fallen hard, haven’t you? First time, as well”
“Not really. First time it’s ever come back my way, though. Yeah, you’re right. Just beginning to realise it”
“So the kid needs looking after. When are you flying?”
“I haven’t decided if I am going, yet”
“Yes you bloody have. When?”
“Out on Monday, back on Thursday”
“Leave it with me, then”
“Rita can’s stay here. Wouldn’t be fair”
“Shit. Both of them. You’ve fallen for both of them, haven’t you?”
I nodded.
“What woman wouldn’t?”
“Thank fuck you’ve still got that bit right. Like I said, leave it with me. I have an idea”
I crawled back into bed, and as he drew me to him once more, he asked what I had been doing.
“Speaking to Lauren. She says she has an idea”
When I went down the next morning, she was gone, off to home and then work, no doubt. My guests spent the morning working through my music collection, as I found my own way through the airline and hotel booking process, and then we hopped a bus into the town centre for some random shopping and more American fast food for Rita. Somehow, we gravitated to the big outdoor shop once more, after I had spent half an hour telling her that no, that skirt in that shop was most definitely not ‘made for me’, and it was while she and her father were trying on what I would have called ‘approach shoes’ that my phone rang.
“Can I help you?”
“Nope, but I can help you, love. Him indoors is sort of happy, and work has agreed”
“Agreed what?”
“Bloody hell! Do you not have any idea of what people think of you there? Haley has offered to cover an extra shift, so has Kylie, and my feller has simply said that both the Chinese and the Indian deliver, but that I had to bring you back in one piece and not swap you for a monkey. Got a staff deal on a ticket, as well”
I had to sit down, my legs failing me.
“What are you saying, Lauren?”
“You booked another room?”
“Yes. A double. Pablo’s got a twin, and they put us next door when I asked”
“Lovely. Can I speak to him? Joined at the hip as you are, he’s there, isn’t he?”
I passed the phone over, and he simply listened for nearly a minute, before all but whispering a soft ‘Thank you’.
“Lauren, you are a true friend to her. Thank you. I will give the phone to her again”
“Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“All sorted. I am sharing the twin with the kid. And tell that silly sod that I’m his friend as well, and no crap about not knowing him properly. Tell him that he will always have a friend here, after what he has done….”
With real shock, I heard a sob from her, and then she was speaking again, her voice slightly broken.
“And you, you stupid, thick woman, understand how much I love you. All that shit you got, and you are still here, and this, this could be something real, I watched the way he looks at you, girl… I know it’s a long time ago for me, but I watch him, and I remember what it was like with my feller, and it still is, and you have never had that till now. Shit. Going to have to go to the bog and repair my face now. I will see you here on Monday, okay?”
Click, and she was gone. I sat for a while, phone in hand as Pablo sat down and slipped an arm around my waist.
“She said to remind you that she is your friend now as well. Will Rita be all right with her?”
He nodded.
“We are in adjacent rooms. She has already met Lauren, of course, and they laugh together… yes. She will be okay. Now, important things: do you have a guide for the birds that will be there?”
“About a dozen of them. Remember we have a weight limit on the baggage!”
“Then I shall look for something lightweight for you. I think I see it”
Matching sun hats.
Monday morning saw us at the airport once more, Lauren catching up with us in the departure lounge, a broad grin in place.
“Nobbled the check-in staff! W are sitting just about together. Two window seats, an aisle and a middle”
With a cock of her head, she called me from my seat.
“We need a quick visit to the ladies’, Pablo. Tea runs through me like nobody’s business!”
I followed her down the walkway towards the toilets, but as soon as we were out of sight of the others, she stopped.
“Sorry, love, but got to be a bit heavy, so shut up and listen for a bit. You know my situation”
I nodded, shutting up as requested. Where was this going?
“Yeah, my feller, my Scott, he’s what I should have found years ago, that’s what I first thought when we got together. I was wrong. I can see that now. You know about my first husband, course”
“Sleazy---”
“--- cow from Tesco’s? Yeah that one. Thing is, and same with my feller and his ex, we neither of us would have been the same without our separate Big Fucking Mistake. Me and Scott, we danced round each other for ages, because of before, yeah? Meant that when we did get ourselves together, we’d shaken all that soppy shit out of our systems. We knew who we were, no pissing about, no play-acting. Worked for us, it did. That’s what we found out, early on, and what I ask myself… No. I bloody well know the answer. My Scott, he wouldn’t have been the same man he is now, not without that history, nor me. You… Oh, shit. You’ve never had nobody, and what worries me is that you’ll still have that soppy shit in your mind, and that Pablo, don’t get me wrong, he’s gold, love, one of the really good ones, but he’s got baggage, and you need to be ready for what that might bring up. What’s Rita think of you?”
I shook my head, trying to make my answer as non-soppy as I could.
“Honestly?”
“Of course bloody honestly!”
“Okay. I think… She’s been doing a lot of the pushing, Lauren. Seems really keen that we get together, Pablo and me. She’s been very direct about it”
“Yeah, and what if she wakes up and decides you’re trying to replace her Mum?”
“Oh, hell. I hadn’t thought of that”
“One reason I wanted a quiet word, love. Not saying she will, love, but you better have an answer ready for that one, just in case. No!”
She held up a silencing hand.
“I am not saying dump him, love, because he is a bloody good bloke, at least from what I’ve seen. Just saying… Shit. Just saying don’t forget how new all this is to you, and how it isn’t for him. This could be something really special, but just remember where I am if it crashes, okay? Hug?”
I gave her exactly what she needed, wondering as I did so which way it would go. She was absolutely right, but I had no option I could see other than walking forward with him. If it fell apart, I would at least be left with memories, which would be a hell of a lot more than I had owned before I had met him. I gave her a last squeeze.
“Come on, woman. Let’s go and see how the dice land”
She laughed, and then grinned.
“First time in my life I’ve come up with a clever answer right away, so here it is. Those dice; don’t try and load them, otherwise it will turn to shit. Come on. You giving the kid the window seat?”
“Course!”
“You’ve been there before, haven’t you?”
“Several times. For the bird migration”
“Swimming okay?”
“Not like the height of Summer, but warmer than Brighton”
“Not bloody saying much! Yeah, let’s get back”
We took off almost on time, with Pablo in the aisle seat and me sandwiched between him and Rita. There were plenty of empty seats, so we could have spread out a little, but sod that. There was plenty of interest on the way out, especially when we climbed past the Isle of Wight and I did my best to point out our camp site, but after crossing part of France, we spent far too long crossing water, followed by interminable ranges of brown hills interspersed with solid layers of cloud. I dozed off for a while, until elbowed by Rita. We were over water once more, a little while later almost skimming the water round Europa Point as the seat belt sign lit up. I looked across at Lauren, for this was the part that normally put the frighteners up newcomers.
After a long sweeping turn, we dropped steeply on the approach, finally levelling out almost level with the high-rise buildings on our right, and then there were people looking up as we got so low we were almost in the waves. A thump as we landed, and then the roar of the engines as we hit reverse thrust immediately, and a startled “Shit!” from my friend.
The plane slowed, the Devil’s Tower to our right, and after a little bit of faffing about to get to the terminal, the engines would down to a stop. Lauren was shaking her head, looking at me across the aisle.
“Is it always like that?”
“Short runway, love. Better than disembarking by boat”
I whispered some words of advice to Pablo.
“Whatever you do, do not tell them that stuff about bourgeois colonialism and that. Smile nicely, and mention the birds”
We had no problems in the end, although the two Cuban passports did delay us a little. I wasn’t sure if the buses ran to anywhere other than the bus station, so I splashed out on a taxi, after some advice to the other two alleged adults.
“Right, listen, you two! Money here is same as it is at home, but is different”
Lauren put on her best ‘officially puzzled’ expression, so I explained.
“One to one exchange rate with ours, all the coins the same, but with different tails. Pound coin, old ones, used to have a Neanderthal skull on it. The banknotes are different, but they take ours. Cash points—er, ATMs, either you get one of ours next to theirs, or the machine asks you which one you want. Oh, and rubbish bins, in the street? You need to use a pedal as well as lift the lid”
More puzzlement from Lauren.
“What the--- Why?”
“Keep the monkeys out of them”
“Oh”
The taxi dropped us off at the hotel, and once Sanchez Herrera Plus One and Nelson Plus One had been checked in, to a slightly raised eyebrow in the latter case (I could read the receptionist’s mind: two women, double bed), we made our way to our rooms, and took our actual places. A quick change to lighter clothes, which meant him taking most of his off, but we had plans. Pack a rucksack each, out of the door to the bus stop, buy a hopper ticket each, and then into Casemates Square from the bus station.
“City centre, people. The ticket buys us unlimited travel for today. But first, a late lunch. Favourite place of mine, this one, and Pablo?”
“Yes?”
“You’ll want your binoculars out of your bag”
I love the Café Solo, for a number of reasons, one of which is their snacks, like the wonderful bruschetta. They do excellent coffee, and great tea, and you can sit out in the sun and watch what seems like all of Gibraltar pass you. There is one other advantage to the place. We were partway through that bruschetta when I called for his attention.
“Pablo?”
“Yes?”
I pointed up past the Moorish Castle.
“There. Short-toed eagle”
His jaw dropped, but he twisted in his seat, slapping his bins to his eyes before letting out a slow, almost ecstatic, groan.
“Yes! And---stork?”
“I think so”
Lauren settled back into her chair, smiling.
“Caroline, love, if this is the way you go about birdwatching, then I am your girl! Is this the plan? Sunbathing, good food, and they just fly over?”
“Basically, yeah. I mean, there are a couple of other places I want to go, like Europa Point, but there’s a nice café there as well. Then there’s the Top of the Rock, the Genoese Fishing Village, the Alameda Gardens--- oh, Pablo?”
“Yes?”
“See that starling over there?”
“Yes”
“New bird for you. Gibraltar has spotless starlings; different bird to ours”
He started laughing, and it was a happy sound, and he followed it up with a grinning explanation for Rita’s benefit, and all the time, his eyes were twinkling.
“Lauren is correct, my dear one. I remember walking through scrub and forest with you, and now here we are, seeing one new bird after another, and all while sitting in a café. Where do we go now?”
I smiled back, catching what he had called me, oh yes indeed.
“I would like to take the bus down to the Point. There is a place we can sit, look at Africa. It is amazingly peaceful, and with the weather this good, and feel the wind? The birds soar over the Rock when it is hot, and then it’s all downhill to the other side2
Lauren had a hand up.
“And dinner tonight? Posh meal, or just slob? I vote for posh, because I, for one, have brought my gladrags! You, Caroline?”
I found myself blushing slightly, for I had indeed put something smarter into my bag, as well as one of my few sets of heels, and simply nodded. Lauren grinned.
“Good! Cause you is not the only one who can work a bloody computer, Nelson. We have got reservations for seven thirty tonight at the Waterfront. My treat”
I shook my head.
“Not cheap, that place. I’ve eaten there”
“Yeah, and I have a free bloody hotel room for three nights, so nyah! Show on the road, then?”
Pablo settled our tab, and we walked back out through Water Gate to the bus station for the bus down to the Point, and I was happily pointing out every bloody thing I could, from the Mamma Mia pizzeria through the Rock Hotel and the cable car to the distillery, and after passing the mosque, we climbed off at the last stop. I insisted we stop for ice cream before walking the short distance to the path in front of Harding’s Battery and its stone benches. As we walked, Lauren reached out for my right elbow, stopping me eating my own lolly. My left hand had ended up held by Pablo, in some magic way.
“Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“Shut up for a bit, love. You’re like a bloody tour guide! Just relax for a bit. We are here, it is sunny, I’ve got a 99. All is right with the world. Don’t need no chatter! Now, that big lump over there will be Africa, then? Just yes or no, all right?”
“Yes. Good. These bench things for us?”
“Yup. Always find it really peaceful here, despite all the crowds it gets”
“Then let’s be peaceful for a bit”
She was right, of course, and I managed about five minutes of contemplation before we were both scanning the rocks and water with our bins, and totting up a range of gull species, pipits and passing raptors.
“Oy, you two!”
He answered for us.
“Yes?”
“This nicer that doing it in Cuba? Nice seat, and an ice cream?”
He grinned across at her.
“An English phase I heard from my woman here: I could get used to it. Oh, and another--- it’s a tough job, but I will take one for the team!”
‘My woman’…
We finished our ice creams, and Lauren rose from her seat, tugging Rita up with her.
“Caroline, me and this one are going for a walk, take some pics. Nowhere to get lost round here?”
“Not really. Just head for the café. We will, later, for a cuppa”
“Pablo? You okay with me dragging her away?”
“Who better to look after her? Do not let her talk you into buying fast food”
“Laters, then!”
The two of us settled back into our near-silent scanning. With the murmured litany of bird names: yellow-legged, Med, Audouin’s, gannet…
“Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“We will be going home soon, Rita and myself”
My guts lurched. Here it comes. I remembered Lauren’s words, and one thought kept fighting with another: ‘at least I have known love now’, and ‘I can’t lose this’. And where did that word come from?
From me. I realised, or rather finally acknowledged, that I loved him. No doubts, no confusion; just simple acceptance of an obvious fact. I did my best to keep my tone calm, level.
“I know”
“I have a difficulty with this, and so does Rita”
More of Lauren’s words came back to me.
“I am not trying to replace her mother, Pablo”
He squeezed my hand, still looking out to sea, eyes scanning for passing birds.
“We have spoken of this, and she knows. You miss a lot of what she would say, Caroline, because of the languages, but her words are clear, her feelings. She told me that you would not, could not, replace… My own English, sorry. ‘Would’ has the two meanings here. Her meaning was that she understood that you did not wish to, not that it was not something about to happen. What she said was wiser, and she asked if you might add to her mother, not replace her. She is very, very clear, Caroline, in that she does not wish to lose you, and she has vowed to improve her English so that she can tell you that herself”
“I don’t want… Oh, shit, what can we do?”
He turned to look me in the face, one hand cupping my chin.
“Grey eyes…”
With a shock, I saw that his own eyes were moist. He shook his head, almost sadly.
“This, this I did not anticipate, when I took an English lady to see birds, and she turned out to be so timorous, so shy. So generous”
“So artificially made”
Why on Earth did I come out with that? He paused, then shook his head.
“So natural in who she is. I have no illusions there, and nor should she. You. I have news, but there are issues I need to resolve. I await some information. Please be patient, my dear one”
“What information, love?”
Fuck! Ball dropped big style with that word. He simply raised an eyebrow, then nodded.
“Yes. I think so too. Now, where are we going? I think the children should be collected before Rita acquires a burger and fries”
“Chips”
“Chips, then. Where to now?”
“Catalan Bay. Then back to get ready for dinner; the place Lauren has booked isn’t a cheap one”
He drew me to him for the gentlest of kisses, then tugged me to my feet.
“We have two days, my love, to seek birds. Let us not forget that there are four of us. Tomorrow?”
“Um, cable car? Amazing place, lots of monkeys…”
I rattled on, stunned at his casual return of that word, and we gathered Rita and Lauren from a table at the café before catching a bus round to the eastern side of the rock, our first monkey up on the hillside, and the steps down to the sandy beach and, yes, another ice cream. I was on holiday, and words had been exchanged. The fact that we could look straight up to the top of the Rock and check out the migratory birds circling as they waited for the right winds was simply a bonus. The day held so much warmth, and not all from the sun.
Lauren was ready early that evening, and insisted on a taxi to the Waterfront, on the basis that “In these shoes? I am not walking all that way! Got three days left”
Pablo actually had a suit in his luggage, and shiny shoes, but he left the tie in our room after only a little nagging from me. I found out later that he had actually slipped the thing into his inside jacket pocket, but never mind, as he didn’t wear it.
Lauren was in a long dress, in leaf green, with what I called cheese-wire sandals that were most definitely not for striding all the way to the restaurant. I had what I now thought of as my dancing shoes, plus a longer dress than I would normally have worn, to mid-calf in navy. Rita, in her turn, was looking very much the young woman, in her own posh frock and low heels, her hair up and a touch of make-up to her face. Lauren was grinning happily.
“Bloody hell, don’t we look posh! No dripping food down your fronts, people, cause we are dining in a select establishment of haute cuisine and absolute poshness, not Maccy Dee’s. yes, I meant that for you, Rita. You two should’ve seen her eyes when she saw the size of the burgers in that Europa place!”
The taxi was on time, our table was ready, and of course the staff spoke Spanish, which let Rita emerge even more from her shell. The food was delightful, the wine was acceptable, the puddings were an absolute indulgence, and just as we moved to the coffee-and-bill stage, Pablo’s phone buzzed at him.
“Excuse me, ladies. I have the text”
Lauren sniffed, slightly adrift after the wine.
“We’d say ‘a text’, Pablo, mate!”
“He looked at me for a second, before turning back to her.
“No, my friend. ’The text’ is correct, for it is one I have been waiting for and…”
He quickly scanned his phone, than let out a very deep sigh, his shoulders slumping, then put the mobile away.
“Lauren, Caroline, this is a message from my embassy. Caroline, we have said things to each other today, important things. Are you comfortable if I share them with our friend here?”
I nodded, after only a few seconds of thought. After all, who else was a closer friend? Pablo squeezed my hand.
“Thank you, my love”
Lauren’s breath whistled.
“Really?”
I nodded, yet again, like some stupid ornament.
“Yes, really. What was the text about, love?”
“Confirmation. I work for our government, Lauren. A civil servant, you would say. My business, the guiding, it is an extra job. It has made some news, outside of Cuba, and that is largely because of my friends in Germany, and the photographs this woman has delivered. My country wishes to make the guiding a formal business, to establish guides in the tourist areas, from local people. That will require that the right people be collected, selected, sorry, that they be trained”
I couldn’t speak, but Lauren was already there.
“They want you to do some of this training, then?”
He shook his head.
“No, they do not. I have no skills there. I know the birds, but I am no teacher. Other people will do that. I am a simple civil servant. Simple civil servants can be moved to new simple civil service jobs. The foreign ministry, you would say, wishes to sell Cuba as a green destination for holidays, and this will become part of it”
I found my own voice at last, for he was smiling.
“What does this mean for you and Rita?”
For us?
“That my new role has been approved. My…”
He pulled his phone out once more, then read out some of the message.
“My credentials are to be presented to the Court of St James as a very junior cultural attaché for tourism at our London Mission. Rita and myself, we will be going home as planned, but then, after…”
He shook his head, then looked up, grinning.
“I do not know what the arrangements will be, how the Mission will house us, but, well, after we have been home, the two of us, I feel we will be returning to, well…”
Another grin.
“Can you wait for me until I come home properly, my love?”
Rita was crying, but when we had our bottle of cava, and poured her a glass, she cheered up.
My man left me in October, but he was back for Christmas. New Year, new life.