Making It Up As I Go Along (11 page)

First let me tell you who Bryan Dobson is: he
reads the news on Irish telly every evening at six o’clock (well, a minute past six, but
let’s not quibble), and there’s something about Bryan that I find immensely
reassuring. Now, can I tell you about the role he played in a holiday I had in Morocco? Thank
you. Well, I visited with Himself, who had climbed Mount Toubkal on one of his mountain-scaling
adventures and every day after his return tormented me with, ‘Oh, Morocco this, Morocco
that. The time I had the delicious tagine in the blah-de-blah.’ So eventually I agreed to
go.

And Marrakech, a place that Himself had
particularly loved, transpired to be not so wonderful for me because – in one of those
unfortunate oversights – I didn’t have a penis. They’re not so keen on women
in Marrakech. To put it mildly. But that’s a different story.

This is about what happened
after
we
left the gropey, hissy insults of Marrakech. We were driven for several dusty hours through
barren desert and crucifying sunlight, heading for a palmeraie in a place called Ouarzazate (a
palmeraie is something akin to an oasis, a sudden burst of green – yes! – palms in
the endless shifting landscape of the desert). Suddenly, out of the emptiness, a sand-coloured
fortress appeared, with turrets and narrow slits of windows and a huge wooden door. Do you watch
Game of Thrones
? Do you remember when Khaleesi showed up
at
Qarth, ‘the greatest city that ever was or will be’? Well, it looked a bit like
that.

The driver ushered us into the fortress, where
the light was so dim that I struggled to see. Behind us the huge wooden door slammed shut and
uneasiness started to hum inside me, then an elegant blonde woman stepped forward and said, in a
French accent, ‘Welcome to Maison des Rêves. This way, please.’

She led Himself and myself down a windowless
corridor, off which led numerous rooms and alcoves, but we were moving at speed so there was no
time to stop and have a gawk. Eventually we fetched up in a sitting room with big leather
couches and a drinks table containing every kind of alcohol ever invented.

‘This is a hotel like no other,’ she
said. ‘There is no restaurant, there are no mealtimes, everything is at your
pleasure.’ She smiled – sort of – and I tried to smile too, but I wasn’t
keen on the sound of things. I like rules. ‘There are no charges. If you desire a
drink’ – she gestured at the table, which was buckling under the weight of bottles
– ‘please help yourself. Whenever you need anything, simply come to this
room.’

Then we were taken to our first-floor bedroom,
which was beautiful – exquisite even – in a simple, deeply tasteful way. The bed was
low, the linen smooth and cool; a seating area had a strange-shaped fireplace that looked like
the cone of a tagine, and the bathroom was big and modern and stone-coloured. But there was no
telly. Or mini-bar. Or phone. Or little book saying stuff about plug adaptors and babysitters.
Most crucially of all, there were no windows. Well, I exaggerate – there was one, hiding
behind shutters, but when I opened them the window looked on to a small, square, access-free
space. We could see nothing of the outside world and, with panic flickering in the pit of my
stomach, I knew I needed to ground myself by – please don’t laugh – going
on Twitter. But – horrors! – there was no Wi-Fi. I
needed
the Wi-Fi. I
needed
Twitter. I felt a thousand million miles away from
home and I needed a reminder that it still existed.

So I went downstairs, looking for the special
room with the couches and drinks table, but I must have taken a wrong turning because I
discovered myself in a tiny dining room. I set off in another direction and arrived at an empty,
turquoise-curtained hammam. Back I went, walking faster now, taking left turns, right turns,
recognizing nothing, and I stepped into the bright light of an unexpected courtyard – the
walls were mosaicked in a million shades of blue and a perfect little fountain bubbled in the
middle. Exits led away from all four sides and suddenly I couldn’t remember which one
I’d come in via.

Panic started to rise in me; I was lost,
I’d
never
find my way back. And just as I was about to start shouting for help, a
man, dressed in baggy trousers and a long tunic, appeared and, smiling but silent, led me to the
sitting room with the couches and the drinks.

French lady showed up and explained that
sometimes there was Wi-Fi but it was unpredictable and sporadic. ‘Because we are so alone
here, so far from civilization.’ She gave a helpless little shrug and I wanted to shout,
‘I
know
we’re very far from civilization, stop reminding me about
it!’

When we came down for dinner that evening,
candles burnt in wall-sconces and we couldn’t find the couch-and-drinks-table room. That
scared me because I freely admit I can barely tell left from right, but Himself has an uncanny
sense of direction. Eventually someone materialized – smiling but silent, just like the
last time – and led us to a tiny, perfect dining room, set for two, with candlelight
glinting off golden-coloured goblets and polished silverware. There was no menu and no
explanation of what we were
getting, which is so different from Ireland
these days, where you’re practically invited to meet a cow and its entire extended family
before you have a cut of beef.

Also, it was so dark, we might as well have been
eating blindfold, and afterwards we were accompanied to the foot of the stairs which led to our
room, because if we hadn’t been we’d probably still be traipsing around to this very
day.

The next morning before breakfast we spent a good
ten minutes lost and wandering, until yet another silent-but-smiling man in trousers and tunic
led us outside to the garden, to a stunningly beautiful area which featured large wire
sculptures of butterflies and flowers, with massive swathes of brightly coloured silk strung
between them, creating an outdoor room. We were seated upon cushions shaped like low chairs and
we were brought delicious food.

And so it went on for a couple of days. Every
time we came downstairs, it was as if, since our previous visit, a few hours earlier, the layout
of the corridors had been rearranged. Always, just as we were at the point of panic, someone
appeared. It was as if they were spying on us, watching us on CCTV, doubled over laughing in the
viewing room, as we took wrong turn after wrong turn, before someone came to rescue us.

At mealtimes, we never knew what we’d be
getting or how much – sometimes we got course after course, and other times the parade of
strange, delicious dishes would end abruptly.

The staff did a lot of enigmatic smiling, but
never spoke, and I began to wonder if they were actually mute. In a dark, fearful moment, I had
a flash that they’d offended someone powerful and had had their tongues cut out, and
quickly I had to make myself stop thinking that way.

On the second afternoon I made Himself accompany
me on ‘a turn around the grounds’, and although I pretended to admire
the olive plants and palm trees I was in actual fact trying to find the wall
that marked the boundary of the property. Beaten back again and again by undergrowth that became
too thick to get through, I realized I was looking for a way out.

Because what was really, really bothering me was
that, no matter how many corridors I went down, no matter how many left and right turns I took,
the one thing I never found was the big wooden front door where I’d entered that first
day. I had another flash of terrible fear as my mind presented a picture of the doorway having
been bricked up.

I ‘got’ the philosophy of the Maison
des Rêves – it was for jaded control freaks, who travelled widely, from Ulan Bator to
Tierra del Fuego, and could have club sandwiches and Sky News no matter where they were. The
set-up here was to provide something fresh and wonderful and it was to encourage guests to
surrender control. Most people would adore it.

Now and again we could hear snatches of distant
voices from a room above us – I listened hard, it sounded like two women and they seemed
to be speaking French, but I couldn’t be sure. And once, I saw two people – a man
and a woman – disappearing around a corner. I hurried to catch up with them, but by the
time I got there the corridor vibrated with their absence.

Eventually I confessed my anxiety to Himself.
‘I feel like I’m being kept prisoner by a benign warlord.’ I could actually
visualize my jailor – an extremely fat man, wearing rose-coloured silken harem pants, a
roomy tunic embroidered in gold thread, curly-toed Aladdin slippers, an orange turban and an
elaborately waxed moustache. Despite the bright colours, he exuded a dreadful air of menace.

I named him Pascha Fayaaz and I described my
entire, elaborately imagined fears to Himself.

I could see myself being
ushered into Pascha Fayaaz’s presence, as he lounged on a lapis lazuli daybed.
‘Maaaaaarian,’ he crooned, in a quare-accented, silky voice, ‘I hear you wish
to leave us.’

Then he snapped his fingers, rattling his many
golden bangles, and a flunky leapt forward and offered him a platter of Quality Street. Pascha
Fayaaz’s fat, elegantly manicured hand hovered over the sweets and eventually he selected
the purple one. With unexpected delicacy, taking care not to rip the tinfoil, he unwrapped the
sweet and handed the paper to a meek-looking man. ‘For my collection,’ he said, and
the meek-looking man hurried away, bearing the tinfoil on a silken cushion. Then Pascha Fayaaz
popped the chocolate into his mouth and took a moment to savour it, before his attention
snapped, once more, to me. ‘So, Maaaaaarian, you are not happy here. And this, it makes me
so very saaaaad. What are we doing that is so wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ I stammered.
‘Nothing.’

‘The food, is it not to your liking? Your
accommodation? The people who serve you?’

‘Everything is wonderful,’ I said,
‘beautiful. Especially the … er … “people who serve me”.’ It
was important to say that, I felt. I didn’t want any of them to come to any grief.
‘But I miss home.’

‘Home?’ He sounded surprised.
‘What about your so-called home do you miss?’

‘Well …’ My mind seized on one
thing. ‘I miss Bryan Dobson. I miss the six o’clock thing. Every day after the
Angelus – no, I won’t get into explaining that, it’s not important – but
every day after the Angelus, Bryan comes on the telly and it makes me feel …’
Carefully I sought the correct word. ‘
Safe
. I’ve survived the day and
I’m relieved. Yes, safe, that’s how Bryan Dobson makes me feel. Safe.’

‘Safe,’ Pascha
Fayaaz said thoughtfully. ‘Huh. Who knew?’ Then he clicked his beringed fingers and
I was led back to my room.

About three and a half hours later, there was a
knock on my door. It was one of Pascha Fayaaz’s flunkies. He said, ‘You must
come.’

‘Why?’ I was seized with anxiety. But
already he was walking away so I hurried after him. He led me into Pascha Fayaaz’s
sumptuous quarters, where he was, as usual, stretched the length of his chaise longue, eating
things. There was an air of something exciting and terrible in the room.

‘So, Maaaarian,’ Pascha Fayaaz said.
‘You know that I wish for you to be perfectly happy here. So!’ He clapped his hands
together and called, ‘It is time!’

Outside a door that led off to an anteroom I
could hear lots of noise – bumps and muffled shouts, as if some sort of fight was going
on. Horrified, I watched as several staff wrestled a creature into our presence. It seemed to be
a man, a tall one, dressed in a Western-style suit, but he had a hemp sack on his head. The sack
was whipped off the man’s head and his hair was all tossed and he had a bruise on his
cheekbone and a cut on his forehead. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he shouted.
‘Who are you people?’

‘Now, Maaaarian,’ Pascha Fayaaz
crowed with delight. ‘Here it is! Here is your Bryan Dobson! All the way from your
Ireland! Now, Maaaaarian,
now
you will be perfectly happy here for ever!’

PS: None of this business with Bryan Dobson
actually happened, you understand. I mean, I
do
like him and I
do
feel safe
when he comes on at six o’clock, but no one actually kidnapped him for me, and after four
days at Maison des Rêves they unbricked the front door and we were allowed to leave.

Previously unpublished.

One summer I went to Norway on a cruise of the
fjords with Himself and Himself’s parents. I am very fond of Himself’s parents (John
and Shirley). I am also doing a load of sucking up to them because my sister-in-law, Caron, has
recently given birth to delicious Jude, so she is currently enjoying the position of Most
Favoured Daughter-in-Law.

So we set sail from Newcastle, and one of the
things I fear most in life is being hungry, and I was terrified I wouldn’t get fed enough
on the boat and what would I be able to do about it, seeing as I was a long way from any
shops?

But I couldn’t have been more wrong: there
was TONS of food – breakfast, morning coffee and bikkies, lunch, afternoon tea, a
five-course dinner and, if you were still hungry after all that, there were midnight snacks. It
was FABULOUS!

Every day at noon you’d hear this distant
rumble, like the ship had come aground on an iceberg, but it was simply the stampede of everyone
storming the dining-room doors as soon as they opened for lunch.

Normally I’d be in the thick of that sort
of brouhaha, but they were a determined-looking bunch (despite being generally very aged) and I
didn’t fancy my chances, so Himself and myself usually waited until a bit later, when all
the pushing and scratching had calmed down. My mammy had been on this self-same cruise two years
ago and when I told her about all the pandemonium,
she said, not a bit
surprised, ‘Oh yes, any time there was food, they were like pigs at a trough.’

Right then! Norway! A stunningly beautiful
country – clean and pure and uncrowded and unpolluted and any of the people I met were
very nice. We saw glaciers and fjords and the midnight sun and my personal highlight was the
Marimekko shop in Trondheim where I went pure BERSERK. I bought two nightdresses (one stripy,
one spotty), one light-blue raincoat, one matching umbrella, one pair of pink felt slippers,
three tea towels and an adorable little pink dress and matching tights for my god-daughter
Kitten. I bought so much they gave me 10 per cent off and two free packets of patternedy paper
napkins (one blue, one green). Another highlight was the Noa Noa shop in Bergen, but I managed
to be more restrained and no one gave me any paper napkins there (but I am not complaining).

Other Norwegian highlights included four nights
of shipboard bingo. John and Shirley had never played before, and when Shirley won forty-eight
quid on the last night she was full of talk of taking it up regularly on her return home. I fear
I may have corrupted her …

mariankeyes.com
,
June 2005.