2004 - Dandelion Soup (15 page)

Marta had been well trained in the arts of laundry and housework and she would make a fine wife for a simple man.

There were other benefits that this wedding would bring too. When Marta moved in to the rooms above the clock mender’s shop to start her married life, Elvira would have an excuse to visit almost every day. After all, the clock mender would be a good catch for a widow like herself. Ha! Elvira Hipola wasn’t as green as she was cabbage looking. The clock mender had been widowed now for all of fifteen years and had no doubt got a tidy sized pot of pesetas hidden away somewhere for his old age. She could sell up the lodging house, bank the money, marry the clock mender and live the rest of her days in comfort. Marta and Ramon would be on hand to do the heavy work and she would be set up nicely for her old age.

Of course she had expected objections on Maria’s part, she was a good-looking girl after all, if a bit too high spirited for Elvira’s liking.

Still, luckily there had been the little matter of the man Marta had been seeing on the quiet that she had held over her niece’s head. A bit of honest blackmail had done the trick. It usually did. It had been a real stroke of luck that afternoon a few months back when she’d found the box of letters hidden under Malta’s bed. Disgusting they’d been! And to think the man was a foreigner too. She’d managed to get the mail intercepted and a tearful Marta had fretted for weeks when no letters arrived. One mention of that liaison to Marta’s father and she would be packed off to the nuns at Santa Maria to spend the rest of her days elbow deep in suds in the laundry or making marzipan lambs for feast days.

Marta had tried to delay of course, saying that she would make her own wedding dress, but Elvira had no intention of waiting a year or more while the crafty minx made a dress. Oh no! She’d put paid to that little trick! She had bought the dress herself. It was going to be a worthwhile investment after all!

It was pure luck that she’d walked through the marketplace on that particular Friday a week ago and seen the dress hanging above the old gypsy’s makeshift stall, blowing gently in the breeze.

It was good quality material the gypsy had told her, made by an expert seamstress in Florence, and she had it on good authority that it had only been worn the once. Sefiora Hipola had felt the material of the dress, sniffed it, and tugged at the seams to test the strength of the stitching. It was a bit on the big side and there were some dark stains round the hem. Still, with a little careful washing, a stiff scrubbing round the armpits to remove the perspiration stains, it would come up a treat. A good blow out in the spring air, a nip and tuck here and there and it would be as good as new!

She hurried on through the narrow streets. She had a busy day ahead of her. She had a group of foreign pilgrims arriving later and she needed to buy something special to prepare a hearty supper for them.

When Padraig O’Mally stepped down from the boat on to the quayside in Camiga he felt as if he had walked straight into one of the paintings on Mr Leary’s walls.

He stood quite still and looked all round him in wide-eyed wonder.

It was a place full of paint-box colours.

It was like an enormous painting that wasn’t yet quite dry round the edges. Sky and sea. Cerulean and cobalt.

A spinning sun of cadmium yellow.

The quayside was noisy and busy. Rough-voiced men in sweat-stained overalls pushed trolleys loaded with crates full of weird and wonderful things across the cobbles.

Huddled white birds cooing and shitting.

Hairy coconuts like monkeys’ faces.

Purple-skinned onions.

There were market stalls set up around the quay piled high with fruits and vegetables. There were curly-leaved cabbages and whiskery carrots, muddy potatoes and onions as big as babies’ heads. There were things he’d never seen before: strange fruits and vegetables in eye-watering colours. Rose madder. Yellow. Olive green. Viridian. Vermillion.

There were wicker baskets full of brown and white shit-smeared eggs nestling on straw.

There were stalls buckling under the weight of silvery sequinned fish, glinting like rainbows in the bright sunlight.

The market traders stood round the stalls talking and shouting, laughing and arguing. Some of them clutched bare-necked chickens as ugly as baby vultures, dangling head first, their mad eyes staring.

The men smoked acrid-smelling cigarettes and spat while the women stamped their feet and waved their arms like drunken windmills. The women wore dark clothes and had arses as black and wide as weathered old ships, then-dark hair plaited and thick as tarred rope.

A scabby-arsed donkey hitched to a cart stamped its hooves impatiently and a skinny yellow-eyed dog was digging at its neck for fleas, its shiny balls bouncing fitfully against the cobbles.

There were three women sitting on crates outside a large ugly building. Their skin was as brown and glossy as acorns. Their shiny black hair was streaked with Prussian blue, their eyes as dark as tinned prunes. They wore gold earrings that glinted like crescent moons and their ankles were ringed with bracelets of flies.

Padraig smiled and waved at them as though they were old friends and then jumped with fright as a siren blared out.

Miss Drew and Miss Carmichael stood huddled together like frightened children while Father Daley wandered around trying to find a car or taxi to bring them all from the port to the lodging house where they were going to stay in the place called Pig Lane.

Father Daley returned after a while with an old man following behind him driving a donkey cart. A three-legged dog followed excitedly behind the cart The dog began to sniff enthusiastically at the ankles of Miss Drew and Miss Carmichael and then feverishly around Miss Carmichael’s trunk.

“Shoo,” said Miss Drew timorously and stamped her sensible lace-up shoes.

The dog began to whimper then and paw at the trunk.

“It can smell all that corned beef you’ve got in there,” said Padraig with a cheeky grin.

“Wishht. Go away!” muttered Miss Carmichael, but the dog ignored them both, cocked one hind leg, balanced precariously for a second, then pissed copiously over the corner of the trunk and then lost its balance and toppled over.

A few of the market traders ambled over inquisitively and helped to lift the trunk and the suitcases into the cart.

The Ballygurry pilgrims clambered aboard the cart and the old man flicked his whip at the sullen donkey, and then they were off.

It was the ride of a lifetime. Once the old donkey got started there was no holding him back. Padraig had to hang on tight to Father Daley to stop himself from being hurled over the side of the cart and into the road. They bounced and lurched through the narrow alleyways and up the steep cobbled lanes of Camiga.

People stopped to stare as the cart clattered through the old town. A withered old woman, leaning heavily on a stick, crossed herself as they passed. Her mouth was a loosely elasticated ‘O’ and her one tooth a wobbling exclamation mark. Startled chickens and whimpering dogs scattered in panic at their approach. Padraig had to keep his hand slapped over his mouth to stop himself from roaring with laughter.

The old man who drove the cart was more like a goblin than a human being. He was a shrivelled up little fellow without any teeth at all and with eyes as small and hard as rabbit droppings. Every now and then he turned round and winked conspiratorially at Padraig and Father Daley.

All the way through the town he sang at the top of his voice. Every time they hit a bump in the road Miss Carmichael and Miss Drew, who were crammed in between two bales of hay, bounced into the air and screamed hysterically. Every time they shrieked the old donkey pissed with fright and the cart was engulfed in a cloud of heady steam.

Eventually, the cart slowed down, turned into a narrow alleyway and pulled up outside Señora Hipola’s lodging house where the Ballygurry pilgrims were to stay for two nights before they moved on to the monastery of Santa Eulalia.

While the grown-ups were shown up to their rooms Padraig went back outside to explore Pig Lane.

Padraig thought that Pig Lane was a strange and exciting place to stay. He had seen a photograph of it before in Mr Leary’s scrapbook, but there it had all been shown in black and white. In colour it was wonderful.

The houses were tall and narrow and squashed tightly together as if a giant had stood at each end and concertina’d them up. The doors and window shutters were painted in faded greens and reds. Instead of curtains there were flowerpots on all the window ledges, flowers in every possible hue.

The houses all had tilting balconies that were stacked with even more flowerpots. Faded triangular flags were hung across the lane from the balconies where they fluttered gaily. Hung across all the doorways of the houses were beaded metal fly curtains that jingled in the warm salty breeze that came in off the sea.

Padraig wandered slowly up and down the lane trying to get a peek inside the houses. Every house seemed like an adventure waiting to unfold, every tinkling doorway the entrance to an Aladdin’s cave. He longed to pass through the curtains and explore the insides of the houses and meet the people who lived their lives in Pig Lane.

A watchful cat on a window ledge stared malevolently at Padraig. He stared back and the cat twitched its ears with irritation and looked away.

In the gutter a few feet away from where Padraig stood lay a festering eyeless rat, belly up and wearing a vest of flies. Padraig touched it with the toe of his sandal and the flies rose around him in an angry cloud.

He moved on down the lane. The flies resettled contentedly.

Padraig sniffed.

Pig Lane was full of strange exotic smells.

Burnt fat.

Fresh flowers.

Raw onions and onions cooking.

The stench of stale piss that had dried to syrupy blobs on the walls of the houses.

Oranges and lemons.

Ripening tomatoes. Old leather and strange spices.

Garlic, although he didn’t know the name of it at the time.

Strong black coffee.

Cigarette smoke that drifted out from the Bar Pedro and scratched the back of his throat.

There was something peculiar besides.

There was a musty, dusty old smell that reminded him of funeral flowers and the inside of crumbling churches.

Guitar music escaped from an attic window high above his head and a kite string of gay musical notes lingered on the air for a few moments and then was sucked greedily away by the breeze. He imagined crotchets and quavers scattering away above the jagged rooftops.

He stepped back through the curtained doorway into the lodging house. It was cool and dark inside the house and a large clock in the lobby clanked and creaked and squeezed out the minutes reluctantly.

Miss Carmichael’s trunk was still in the hallway because no one was strong enough to carry it up the stairs. God knows what she had in there but it weighed a ton.

Padraig stared curiously at the trunk. There was something not quite right about it. He scratched his head thoughtfully and then ran up the stairs two at a time to fetch his camera.

Miss Drew, exhausted and mortified by their undignified arrival at the lodging house, lay on her bed, arms folded across her sunken chest and snored like an old porker.

Miss Carmichael, weak-kneed and still shaky after the horrific cart ride, sat on an orange crate at the makeshift dressing-table and studied her reflection in the mottled glass of the mirror. She’d almost had the life shaken out of her in that damned cart.

Holy Mary, mother of God, what on earth did she look like? The wreck of the Hesperus! She was as pale as death and beads of perspiration had dripped down from beneath her hat and streaked her make-up. Removing her hat, she was horrified to see that her hair was plastered to her head. She looked a very sorry sight indeed.

She felt a little better after a good sniff of smelling salts and a thimbleful of brandy to steady her heart. She poured some water from the jug into the washbowl and washed her face. She carefully reapplied some make-up and pulled a comb through her bedraggled hair.

Miss Drew slept on noisily. Miss Carmichael stepped out into the corridor and closed the bedroom door quietly. She stood and listened for a moment. She could hear someone sobbing loudly in the room opposite. It wasn’t exactly a good omen when the other guests were in floods of tears now was it?

She made her way nervously down the well-worn stairs to the dingy lobby. She’d get a few things from her food trunk and then when Miss Drew woke up they could cheer themselves up with a nice little snack and maybe a medicinal brandy to settle their stomachs.

She stood in the silence of the lobby and sniffed. The lodging house had a very peculiar smell about it It smelled like a cross between a damp library, a church and a stable. Suddenly Nancy Carmichael shivered and the hairs on the nape of her neck bristled alarmingly. She felt for a moment as though someone or something unseen was watching her intently. She looked nervously around her. The lobby was dark and gloomy but there was no one there lurking in the shadows and yet still she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling of being watched. She shook herself and tried to pull herself together. She wasn’t feeling herself at all and those horrible curtains over the door didn’t help; they were a real irritation, jingling and rattling and setting one’s nerves on edge.

She sniffed again and pulled a face. There was a most disagreeable smell coming from the kitchen at the back of the house. Heavens above, she’d thought that the smells in France were bad enough but this place! It was full of savages. Why she’d seen people down in the port eating sardines with their fingers, like animals!

What on earth was Father Daley thinking of bringing them to Spain? Old Father Behenna would never have dreamed of visiting such a terrible place. She only hoped that their next stop at the monastery of Santa Eulalia would be better than this god-forsaken hole. She still thought that there was something very fishy about them not going to Lourdes. It was very peculiar that all the hotels had been booked; Father Behenna had always managed to book them in. She wondered where on earth Father Daley had found out about Sefiora Hipola’s lodging house? It was a most peculiar place, ancient and shabby, a bit like a badly arranged museum. Still, she grudgingly admitted that the bedroom was reasonably tidy and the bed sheets were clean and freshly starched.