More Ketchup than Salsa
by Joe Cawley
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Published by Joe Cawley
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Copyright © 2011 by Joe Cawley
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Smashwords Edition
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Chapter 1
It was whilst holding aloft a not altogether pleasant-smelling mackerel that the decision was made. Blood dripping from a rabbit dangling overhead tinted the cold water from the fish and rolled down a white sleeve. The March rain hammered on the rotting tin roof high above the stall and where there was more rot than metal columns of water plunged onto the shuffling shoppers below. Their faces were drawn and bleak like a funeral cortege following the last remains of hope. From life they expected nothing – save a nice piece of cod at a knockdown price. Northern England in March. Northern England for most of the year, in fact. I was 28. There had to be more. I lowered the fish to eye level, ‘Is this my life?’
The fish said nothing but I already knew the answer.
I had worked on Bolton market for six months forcing myself out of bed at 3.30 every morning to spend 11 hours knee-deep in guts and giblets, selling trays of dubious fish and chicken at three for a fiver. The freezing cold and the smell I had grown used to but the pinched expressions of fellow passengers on the bus journey home still brought about a great deal of embarrassment. It couldn’t be denied, in the inverted language of market traders I was lemsy (smelly) from deelo (old) fish.
Word inversion was useful when you didn’t want customers to understand. ‘Tar attack!’ would have all the workers scuttling for higher ground onto splintered pallets or battered boxes of chicken thighs stacked at the back of the stall as a rat the size of a bulldog decided it was time for mayhem.
Originally dubbed the poor man’s market in what was a working man’s town built on the prosperity of the local cotton mills, Bolton market was subsidised by the council to provide cheap food and clothing for low-income workers. (In a flourish of affluent delusion it has since been completely refurbished and modernised. The rats get to scamper around on fitted nylon carpets amid designer lighting franchises. An elegant coffee shop offering vanilla slices on dainty china now occupies the spot where once the best meat and potato pie sandwiches in Lancashire were messily consumed by fishy-fingered stall workers like me.)
It was an undemanding job both physically and mentally, which suited me fine. Stress was for the rich and hardworking, characteristics that were never going to be heading my way. That’s not to say that I was content. A string of menial jobs had taught me that contentment is not always found on the path of least resistance but I had found myself meandering towards that monotone British lifestyle of school-job-pension-coffin and something needed to be done, fast.
I had grown bored with the same old stallholder banter – ‘We’re losing a lot of money, but we’re making a lot of friends,’ or ‘Oh yes love, it is fresh, it will freeze.’
I was becoming unamused by the teasing of old ladies as they stood at the stall with purses wide open, names inadvertently displayed on their bus passes.
‘Hello Mrs Jones. Fancy seeing you here.’
From beneath a crocheted hat the gaunt figure would try to force a vague recollection. ‘I... err...’
‘You remember me, don’t you, Mrs Jones? I used to come round your house for tea every Friday.’
‘I... I think I do. Yes, yes. Now I remember,’ she would say with a weak smile.
Even the daily competition to land a rabbit’s head in Duncan’s hood had lost its appeal. Duncan was a mentally retarded hulk who, although teased mercilessly by the market crew, was also well looked after by them. They gave him pocket money that he spent on Beano comics and Uncle Joe’s Mintballs, and made sure that no harm came to him from occasional gangs of skinheads that, for want of anything more constructive to do, would try to beat him senseless.
At six-foot-four, 18-stone, with no neck and an unappealing habit of walking around with his cheeks puffed out and his bottom lip investigating the underside of his nose, he was not what most able-sighted people would term ‘attractive’. If one of the workers did manage to score a rabbit he would charge at the victor, bellow obscenities and curse them with death threats until his attention was distracted by one of the girls. At this point all aggression would dissipate as he embellished the gurning with a damp pout. ‘Give us a kiss,’ he would demand in such a commanding voice that were it not for his spectacular ugliness would have been hard to refuse.
‘Hey, boss,’ I shouted, jerking my head back from the open box of chicken thighs, ‘you can’t sell this. It stinks.’ Pat continued pulling at the innards of a rabbit.
‘Dip it in tandoori and put it out as five for a fiver.’ I looked down at the poultry pieces glowing green.
‘No. I mean it really stinks. You’ll kill somebody with this.’ Pat lifted a red-stained sleeve above his shaved head and breathed in the blend of blood and body odour. His shoulders rose as his round torso filled with the sweet smell.
‘You’ve been here six months. Don’t start getting a jeffin’ conscience on me now,’ he grunted. He pointed the sharp end of a filleting knife towards me. ‘Get it sold. Anyway, the dead can’t complain.’
I dipped each piece in the bucket of rust-coloured spice then chucked them all in the waste bin when Pat turned his back to have a word with one of the girls who had lost a false nail inside the rainbow trout she was gutting.
I decided that I should dispose of his lethal produce more permanently and wheeled the bin outside to the main rubbish collection point. The sky had given up on any attempts of clarity and had slipped into dull grey pyjamas, sucking the last remnants of colour from Ashburner Street. When had life turned grey? I asked myself. Where was the excitement, the glamour, the anticipation of things to come?
A voice answered; ‘Come on Tinkerbell. There’s fourteen rabbits waiting for decapitation in here.’ Pat was poking his ruddy cheeks around the huge sliding doors, an ill-timed intrusion on the meaning of life.
A nine-to-five had never been a burning ambition. Neither for that matter was a five-till-four. I had long aspired to be a musician – well, a drummer at least. I’d answered the ad in my head and spent 14 years in an interminable interview.
Rock Star Wanted
Requirements: The ability to sit on your arse, make a lot of noise and become famous.
Remuneration: Unbelievable.
Perks: Aplenty.
But try as I might, I was always several beats behind stardom. A sporadic booking at Tintwistle Working Men’s Club was the closest I’d got to Wembley Stadium, which was more than 200 miles further up the pop ladder of success.
My battered old Pearl drum kit now gathered dust at the back of a garage in Compstall while my life did the same at the back of a fish stall in Bolton. I desperately needed an out.
‘Hola!’ Two hands covered my eyes from behind.
‘I thought you weren’t back till tonight,’ I said and planted a kiss on Joy’s cheek. She’d just returned from a girls’ week in Tenerife.
‘I got the flight time mixed up so I thought I’d surprise you. You smell nice.’ She peeled a phlegm of chicken skin off my neck.
‘Pat’s trying to offload some killer chicken. I’ve chucked it in the bin. You look well. Had a good time?’
‘Yeh great. But listen, I’ve got some news. Big news. Meet me in the Ram’s after work.’ She winked and ran to the bus stop where the number 19 had just sprayed a line of rain-stained shoppers.
The rest of the afternoon passed just like any other. Terry came round to see if any of us had orders for him. ‘There’s a lovely brass table lamp I saw in Whitakers,’ said Julie, Pat’s wife. ‘Green glass shade, second floor, next to the clocks.’
‘Can you get me a clock, Terry? Nothing too fancy. Wooden perhaps. Something that’ll look nice above me kitchen door,’ asked Ruth interrupting the customer she was serving.
Debbie, Pat and Julie’s daughter, flapped her arms excitedly. ‘Oh, Terry, Terry, me Walkman’s bust. Get me a good one, will you? And don’t forget the batteries this time.’
Terry scribbled the orders on a scrap of paper. ‘Joe? Any more CDs?’
‘If you can get Thrills ’N’ Pills And Bellyaches I’ll have that.’
‘Hey, if it’s pills you want, you only need to ask.’
‘No, it’s the new Happy Mondays CD.’
‘Oh, OK,’ he said disappointed, ‘I’ll see what I can do. But if you do want pills,’ he tapped his nose conspiratorially, ‘I know a man.’
Terry returned at the end of the day, red-faced and panting. He dragged a large, leather holdall behind the stall.
‘Littlewoods are here,’ shouted Julie. We grouped around Terry who opened the bag and passed around the various items like Father Christmas on day release. Price tags were strung around the clock and table lamp and my CD still had the security tag attached.
‘I’ll be back on Saturday to settle up,’ he said and scuttled off into the crowd with the empty bag.
I continued to push out ‘tish’ at three for a fiver and mechanically joined in the banter. We wolf-whistled at passing girls and then shouted after them as they turned and blushed, ‘Not you love. Don’t flatter yourself.’ Monotony could be so cruel.
The Ram’s Head was not the obvious choice for a celebratory reunion but it was run by Leonard, the only landlord who would put up with the aroma of stale trout. A previous and unsuccessful career in boxing had left him nasally advantaged when it came to our patronage.
There were half a dozen drinkers scattered about the perimeter of the high-vaulted room. Most sat alone. Their eyes tracked what little movement occurred beyond Leonard methodically drying glasses with an aged tea towel. A Jack Russell lay across the feet of one man. It yawned at the lack of antagonists whilst its master carefully rolled a cigarette as if in slow motion.
Brass wall lights topped with cocked green shades cast the room in a sickly pallor throwing sallow circles of light onto the once-white wallpaper now jaundiced through decades of low-grade tobacco.
The only sounds were phlegmatic coughs and the deranged melody of a fruit machine happy to have found a friend. Joy was feeding it 50-pence pieces with one hand, jabbing at the nudge buttons with the other. Her tan had attracted the attention of two investment advisers dressed in no-brand tracksuits who were teaching her about consecutive bells and lemons. Lessons in slot machine skills she certainly did not need.
‘Pint and a half please.’
‘Joy’s at it again.’ Leonard smiled a toothless smile and nodded at the machine.
‘No stopping her, I’m afraid. She insists it’ll pay off one day.’
I carried the glasses carefully across the threadbare carpet and blew on the back of her neck. ‘You winning?’
‘Nearly. Have you got any fifties? I think it’ll hold on two bars.’ The two lads peered inside the machine trying to see if was worth risking their beer money.
‘Come on.’ I motioned to a table under a window. A karaoke poster written in yellow marker pen obscured most of the outside view which would have been the damp remnants of Bolton’s first ever bicycle shop.
‘So what’s this great idea then? You give all your money to me and I stop it disappearing inside those stupid machines?’
She took a sip and raised one eyebrow. ‘You’re gonna like it.’ She paused to take another sip then smiled again. I smiled back. ‘So come on then.’
I’d known Joy ever since she’d pushed me backwards off the top of the slide at nursery school. She was an experimental child but compassionate with it. As soon as my head had hit the floor she slid down and ran around to peer in my face. ‘You dead?’ she asked. I managed to smile crookedly as Miss Cornchurch dragged her off by the arm before I passed out.
But I took solace in the fact that I was not the only one bullied by Joy. In fact, she was so impressed by my not dying that she took on the role of protector and regularly pushed other kids from the slide if I wanted to have a go. She also insisted that I push her off, as she was curious to see what it felt like to fall so far. I declined the offer.
We sailed through primary school as a tag-team of cutesy cheek and imaginative excuses. I would help her with her homework and she would steal me penny chews as a reward.
As pre-teens we had only once stepped over the line of platonic friendship. It was Saturday night and her parents had left us playing Buckaroo whilst a romantic western flickered in the background. Joy’s attention was diverted from the kicking mule by a passionate scene involving a feisty cowgirl and cowboy.
‘Kiss me like that,’ she commanded and pulled my face against hers. I remember the taste of liquorice toffees and wondered if this is what she tasted like to herself all the time. We remained eye-to-eye for about a minute until, unimpressed, Joy pulled away and silently placed another bucket on the donkey’s backside. Romance didn’t surface again for a long time although we both maintained a mutual disrespect for each other’s juvenile amours.
Although in different levels of classes at comprehensive school, we would still hang around with each other during most lunch breaks and after school, plotting horrific revenge on the teachers that had dared to reprimand us. I was usually no more than an accessory but due to my pubescent lanky stature I had taken over the mantle of protector. And boy, did she need it. A cheeky smile and sparkling eyes could redeem her of most crimes but there were times when physical intervention was unavoidable.
We finally became an item after an unplanned holiday together. Joy’s boyfriend had dumped her just days before departure accusing her of spending more time with me than with him. It all came to a head outside the Dog and Partridge in Hazel Grove when I was invited on what her boyfriend thought was going to be a cosy tête-à-tête but turned out to be a tête-à-tête-à-tête.
On a campsite in southern France, fuelled by too much alcohol and exposure to naked flesh, intimacy was inevitable. The holiday romance continued after we returned home and still did three years later inside a dingy pub in Bolton.
‘How do you fancy moving to Tenerife?’ Joy peered over the rim of her glass. Her eyes searched mine.
‘Uh... why?’
‘We’ve been offered the chance to run a bar, only it needs two couples to run it, so I said I was married.’
‘To who?’ I shrieked.
‘To you, you numpt! Who else? I said we could run it with me as bar manager and you as the chef and...’ Her speech accelerated as it always did when she was trying to steamroll me.
‘Hang on, hang on.’ I raised a hand to slow down the onslaught. ‘Who would offer to let two people who have hardly any experience of pouring a pint let alone running a bar in a foreign country, take over a bar?’ I knew as soon as I had said it that our previous careers may have deviated slightly from fish filleters to nightclub management. Joy confirmed that she had exaggerated our talents slightly and distorted the actual financial arrangements.
It transpired that we weren’t expected to just run it; we were expected to buy it.
‘What exactly are we supposed to buy it with? Fish heads?’ I spluttered when the actual truth came out.
‘No. We can borrow it,’ replied Joy. Her straight face implied that there was something else she wasn’t telling me.
‘How much?’
‘A hundred-and-sixty-five grand... more or less.’
I blinked twice. Hard. My pint remained suspended halfway between my open mouth and the beer mat. This was surely some seafood-induced dream. Believing that this was just another of Joy’s get-rich-quick schemes that would fizzle out as fast as previous plans I decided to humour her.
‘You said two couples?’
Joy continued. ‘I didn’t tell you but I got a phone call from your stepdad before I went to Tenerife. He said that the bar on El Beril, where his apartment is, had come up for sale and he was thinking of buying it as an investment. He asked me to collect the books for him to take a look at. When I called in, the owner said why don’t I take it over. Anyway, when I got back this morning Jack came to pick up the books and I joked about us two running the bar for him. Before I saw you he’d just called to say he’d been talking to your mum and they both thought it was a good idea. We go into partnership with your brother and they’d help us raise the money.’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ I interrupted. This was in danger of becoming serious. ‘From having a bar job in Tenerife, we’ve gone into partnership with my brother and into debt with Jack to the tune of a hundred-and-sixty-five grand. All on an island two thousand miles away with a population that doesn’t speak English. And all behind my back. Where exactly does my opinion come into all this?’
Joy became defensive as she always did when she was on the offensive. ‘Calm down. It’s just an idea. Just forget I ever said it and tomorrow we can go back behind that crappy stall and stink of fish for the rest of our lives.’
Several pints later – I suspect that they had been laced a little – the whys and wherefores had progressed to whens and hows.
Chapter 2
I hadn’t seen my brother for several months. Like me he was drifting through life waiting for an opportunity to be handed to him on a plate. Over the three days since the seed of the idea had been planted, I assumed that like me he’d begun to think that this could possibly be it.
Joy, myself, David and his girlfriend Faith had arranged to discuss the idea in The Stage Door pub in Manchester. It was next to the Palace Theatre where a degree in sociology and history had enabled my elder brother to secure the lofty position of box office assistant.
Although we were virtually neighbours in age – there were only 11 months between us – we were poles apart in character. I was the practical brother, he was the creative one. I had logic, he had intellect. Ask about the social order of the Napoleonic age or the consequence of community breakdown in the 1980s and my eyes would glaze over, saliva would forge a path down my chin and my brain would start blowing raspberries. David, however, would casually launch into a scholarly diatribe over the shame of the proletariat and the fortitude of Karl Marx and then try and flog you two tickets to see Widow Twanky played by Keith Chegwin.
University had taught him many things: how to dress like an East European chimney-sweep; how to smoke out of the side of his mouth like an aristocrat; how to behave like a socialist; and how to make £1.50 last a fortnight. Only on weekdays though. On the odd weekend when he would return to Mum and Jack’s house he muttered about the capitalist extravagances of home life before indulging himself in a bathroom full of designer toiletries, a kitchen full of food and a car full of petrol. I suspected that David, like me, was also ready for an out.
‘Well!’ I exclaimed, starting the discussion. ‘What do you think?’
‘We’re all for it,’ David replied. ‘We think it’s a great opportunity...’
‘You do,’ interrupted Faith looking up at my brother. Physically they were complete opposites. David had the physique of a retired rugby player but the heart of a teddy bear. At six-foot-two he was a good 12 inches taller than Faith who, with her tiny, doll-like features, seemed too delicate for a man with hands the size of bin lids. Her skin was porcelain white, a nose stud and four gold earrings provided a gilt-edge. She looked like a fragile piece of china but her apparent frailty was used to good effect. David would fuss round her like she was a vulnerable child.
Where David merely had to breathe his words to be heard, Faith had to project her voice with all the force of a shout but without the volume just to reach ears that were rarely close by. ‘It’s a huge risk for me. I’d be giving up my career to gamble on this,’ she strained. Faith’s career had so far reached the dizzy heights of assistant manager at a Virgin Records store in Altrincham. We were not playing with high stakes here. ‘I mean, none of us have any experience of working behind a bar, in a kitchen or running a business,’ she continued.
‘I’ve worked in my Mum’s café and Joe and David have both had bar jobs. It’s just the next step, that’s all,’ said Joy.
‘Selling pies and serving tea is hardly the same as owning a restaurant,’ argued Faith.
‘We’ll learn,’ countered Joy.
‘That’s a bit flippant considering we’ll be in debt for a hundred-and-sixty-five-thousand pounds. It’ll be an expensive lesson if we get it wrong.’
‘We’ll just have to make sure we don’t then, won’t we?’
‘What about my cat? I can’t leave him.’
‘Surely a cat isn’t going to make the difference between going and staying?’
‘I’ve had him a long time.’
‘He’s not even your cat. He’s David’s.’
‘He still loves me though. I can’t leave him.’
‘Well, buy him some sunglasses and bring him along. He looks like he could do with a holiday.’
‘I’m being serious.’
‘So am I.’
This was not a good start to a business partnership. David and I let the girls slug it out for a while as we bought another round of drinks.
‘You know that Mum and Jack said that they’d only lend us the money if we all went?’ I reminded David.
‘I know, but I’m not sure if Faith’s got it in her. You know what she’s like.’
I wasn’t sure if any of us had it in us to leave the comfort zone of undemanding jobs in familiar surroundings and put ourselves in debt through owning a business that we knew nothing about on an island of which we knew even less. Although spurred on by Joy’s reckless enthusiasm to give it a go, Faith’s contrary attitude had raised uncertainty about the wisdom of Mum and Jack’s plan. I began to think if we were really ready for it. This was a commitment, the very thing that I had done my best to avoid all these years. A small part of me hoped that Faith would say no and we could sink back into the cosiness of a life without change, responsibility or effort.
Although Jack’s offer to lend us some of the money and help arrange a mortgage for the bulk was a generous, and perhaps foolish, one, the rate of interest that we’d be paying back was a lot more than the rate he would have gained by holding the same money in a bank. At the end of the day it was a business proposition that was intended to benefit him as well as us. Financial gain was always behind any reasoning of Jack’s.
The appeal of investing in a bar on the same complex as his apartment would satisfy many whims. He could waltz in and out, help himself to large brandies and puff on fat cigars. He would have achieved most men’s dream to own their own pub but without having to deal with the petty whims of a drunken Joe Public.
An added bonus of course was that his two stepsons would finally have ‘proper jobs’ rather than messing about with mackerel, Karl Marx and Widow Twanky.
If there was a certain amount of self-interest in the proposition, there was also a smattering of sense in Jack being the one to suggest it. After decades of flogging houses on the home front, he had retired from his UK partnership the year before and had set up a similar venture for property investors overseas. Tenerife was the first port of call as residential tourism was just starting to follow in the footsteps of its package holiday popularity. For UK investors seeking a red-hot winter bolthole whilst the rest of Europe turned blue, the Canary Islands had recently emerged as a leading contender, with one advantage over the Spanish Costas – winter sun.
Located less than 100 miles from the coast of North Africa, the seven islands making up the Canarian archipelago had all the assets that a North European citizen looking to escape grey winters could ask for. Perma-sunshine, an eternal spring climate, safe bathing and an enlarging expat community.
Historically this septuplet of islands had drawn the attention of many British visitors, most of them unwanted. In 1595 the Canarians beat off Sir Francis Drake as he tried to conquer La Palma. In 1797 Nelson and his arm parted ways during an ill-timed attack on Santa Cruz de Tenerife. And whilst docked off the same island in 1832, Charles Darwin was thwarted in his lifelong ambition to explore the archipelago because of the risk of a cholera epidemic.
Perhaps with all the chronicled exploits of the early visitors it was surprising that it wasn’t until the late 1980s that the masses cottoned on to the appeal. For Joy and me though, it wasn’t the beaches, pine forests or volcanic badlands that had provided the lure. If Jack had diverted his attentions towards pig farming in Lithuania and dangled a means of becoming swine entrepreneurs I think we would have been equally enthused. It was merely the dream of an adventurous escape from our usual drudgery but with the added incentive of daily sunshine and a potential pot of gold if we managed to avoid spectacular failure.
The problem now was that this dream had grown dangerously close to becoming reality and for me that would mean having to swap the excitement of making plans with the horror of having to follow them through. But the decision was now down to Faith.
Despite several more remonstrations about what a crazy, illogical plan it was for herself and the cat, Faith finally, though reluctantly, agreed to come. Having overcome our own personal doubts, Faith’s decision took us to Phase II. We had to start preparing to move.
For Joy and myself the most pleasant part of Phase II was leaving the market. But that would only come after the most unpleasant part – telling Pat.
He was in a particularly vicious mood that day. ‘You’re not going to sell that fish by whispering, Joe, for jeffin’s sake, shout.’
‘Three fish for a fiver! Fresh in today!’
‘That’s not shouting. That’s talking. Scream it out you nancy.’
‘THREE FISH FOR A FIVER. DON’T BE SHY, COME AND BUY.’
‘Joy, shift those chicken legs. They’ve been out of that jeffin’ freezer three times now. If they have to go back in one more time you’re going in with them. Sandra! What the bollocks...?’
Sandra worked alone on the shellfish ‘department’ slotted at right angles to the fish and chicken stall. She was allowed to run it how she pleased and was a particular favourite of Pat’s. This was just as well as the slightest hint of a reprimand would make her reach for the Kleenex. Today however, wasn’t even a good day for Sandra.
Occasionally, apart from the run-of-the-mill fish like cod, halibut and hake, Pat would take delivery of some unusual marine life. This was partly to show off to the other fishmongers in the market and partly to keep the attention of his regular customers.
Emerging from the cold, dark, hush of Ashburner Street into the brightly-lit riot of early morning stall preparation was a slap in the face. Finding yourself eye-to-eye with a creature that you wouldn’t normally expect to come across in Bolton town centre was heart-stopping.
I was deep in thought about warm quilts and soft pillows, hands burrowed in my donkey jacket, collar turned up in defence against the biting chill, when suddenly what appeared to be a large shark was grinning at me from atop a trestle table in the middle of the market hall. The apparition was indeed a 3-metre shark, Pat’s latest ‘attention-grabber’. It had certainly got mine. Pat’s beam matched the shark’s as he noticed my shock. ‘Think you can sell that?’ he asked.
‘It’s a shark,’ I said.
‘Top marks Einstein. I can see education’s not been wasted on you.’
But this morning it was fauna of a different kind that was destined to draw the gapes of Bolton’s plastic bag brigade. A fresh delivery of live crabs had arrived and Sandra had carefully arranged a dozen of them on their backs, little legs cycling in unison between the cockles and mussels.
Unfortunately, a sympathetic pensioner had noticed they were upside down and had turned them back the right way whilst Sandra was off chasing a young boy who had helped himself to a fistful of crabsticks.
Sandra returned to find a man in a cloth cap and a woman with no teeth hopping youthfully in front of the stall. The upright crabs, having sensed a window of opportunity, had hurled themselves off the edge of the stall and were scuttling for their crusty lives between wellies and moon boots in a bid for freedom. The good people of Bolton, unaccustomed to such crustaceous attacks, had also fled, missing another window of opportunity around the other side of the stall as Pat had sanctioned an emergency plan of four trays for a fiver plus a free bag of tandoori chicken in a bid to woo the fleeing shoppers.
The crabs were eventually herded together but not before word had got out that Pat’s stall should be given a wide berth. Trade that day remained slack. Worse than that, the other stallholders had gained enough ammunition to goad him in the Ram’s Head for a very long time.
At the end of an unprofitable day, Pat’s ruddy cheeks were scarlet, his mood black.
‘Pat, can we have a word?’ said Joy. Pat grunted and kicked a box of chicken legs towards the freezer for their fourth frosty sleepover.
‘We’ve bought a bar in Tenerife,’ I said. Pat stopped kicking and looked up. His eyes narrowed and his cheeks glowed furiously. He was in no mood for jokes, especially if they were on him.
‘What d’you mean you’ve bought a bar? A toffee bar maybe. How can you two buy a jeffin’ bar on three quid fifty an hour.’ He turned his back and shooed us off with a flick of his hand. ‘Piss off. I can’t be doing.’
‘So we’re going to have to hand in our notice,’ continued Joy.
‘You’re serious?’ We waited for an explosion after the pause. ‘Do you want a barman?’ Pat had turned round again. He was looking from me to Joy and back again. We both let out a nervous laugh.
‘No, I’m pleased for you. You’ve both worked hard. We all had a bet on how long you’d stick it out when you first came working here. We gave Joe one day and you two weeks. Didn’t think you’d both hack it. You proved us all wrong. Just let me know a week before you’re leaving so I can get someone else in.’ He turned round and shoved the chicken with his foot as we strode off. ‘Oh, and don’t forget,’ he shouted, ‘if you do ever need a barman…’
When the rest of our stall colleagues heard the news, they were sceptical. They expected to see us reappear at one of the other stalls further down the market selling mixed bags of sweets or bundles of low-grade toilet rolls.
The send-off on the last day was full of warm-hearted well wishes. Old fish innards and chicken bits were cheerily stuffed down our clothes and we were both forced to wear rabbit carcasses on our heads for a good deal of the day.
A couple stopped in front of the stall with mouths agape. They both had matching lilac shell suits and absurdly orange-tinted tans. ‘Why have you got rabbits on your heads?’ asked the man, understandably bemused.
‘Because it’s our last day,’ answered Joy.
‘Oh,’ he replied, as though this was a reasonable explanation.
‘Why are you orange?’ said Joy.
‘It’s called a suntan, love,’ said the lady.
‘Oh I see. Been away?’
‘Yes, we’ve just come back from Tenerif-ey,’ smiled the lady.
‘More like Shirley’s Sunarama on jeffin’ Hardwick Street,’ muttered Pat as he passed behind carrying a box Terry had just delivered.
‘Tenerife!’ exclaimed Joy.
‘Yes, we own a villa out there. We try to get over as much as possible, you know, to get away from this frightful weather.’ Her voice had suddenly jumped up a couple of social classes to underline her ownership status. ‘Have you been?’
‘Oh aye,’ said Joy brightly. ‘We’ve bought a bar restaurant there. We’re moving in a few days. Maybe we’ll see you there.’
‘Yes... you might well,’ answered the woman faintly. The exclusivity of her status was in danger of being cheapened by a market trader of all people! She didn’t like it whether it was true or not. The woman was no newcomer to the market and had been on the receiving end of teasing before. You couldn’t blame her for doubting that a couple of fishmongers wearing rabbits on their heads had bought a business on her island.
‘I’ll miss you,’ said Sandra at the end of the day. A solitary tear dropped onto a bag of peeled king prawns. ‘Here, take these,’ she blubbered. She checked if Pat was looking and handed us the seafood as a farewell gift.
Pat immediately shouted us over. ‘You three, over here now!’
‘Shit,’ said Sandra. ‘Might be needing a job meself now.’
‘We all clubbed together and bought you something for the bar,’ said Pat. The others were standing around watching. He handed us a box. Inside were an elaborately framed dartboard and two sets of darts. ‘I bet your bar doesn’t have one of those, does it?’
‘No, I’m sure it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘Thanks Pat. Thanks everybody.’ We were touched that Pat had taken the trouble to arrange a going away gift, irrespective of the fact that the price tag signalled Whitakers of Bolton had unwittingly donated it.
Pat had spared us a final end of day clear-up. We were keen to get home to start packing. There were only three days to go before we were due to fly out and suddenly it seemed like we had a mountain to climb. I wasn’t ready, neither physically nor mentally.
I had intended visiting the haunting ground of my schooldays in Glossop. Subconsciously I wanted to be in a place where anxiety, responsibility and financial burden had yet to surface. I wanted to recapture those carefree feelings of walking to Su’s at lunchtime when the biggest decision was whether to have batter bits with my chips.
I wanted to stand outside the Surrey Arms where my first serious relationship was sealed with a long kiss, when nothing in the world mattered apart from spending every minute of every hour with Lesley Allen. It was a sensation that I desperately wanted to recapture to clear the whirlwind of emotions currently wreaking havoc in my head.
I wanted to go to Old Glossop at the edge of the Pennines, to wander into the hills and gaze over Derbyshire life. It was there that I always had time to think, safe in the knowledge that at home my mum would have cooked my tea, washed my clothes, been to work and still have the patience in the evening to devote all her time and love to my brother and me. She was the one who had absorbed the anguish of teenage angst, soaked up the grief of broken relationships, made all the plans for our better future whilst my dad busied himself in making a career, always miles away from his real responsibilities. I could see now that my Dad had passed down his commitment-aversion genes. I too had developed a phobia of being trapped in a situation with no means of escape.
But my nostalgic journey was not to be and I continued with the material aspects of emigrating. Packing for a new life involves a bit more than throwing in a few shirts, a pair of flip-flops and a good book. Everything that I had collected had some meaning and each time I was coerced into taking things out of my suitcase to throw away it felt like another nail in the coffin of my life to date.
Despite the wrench of packing for a new life and packing up my old one all was going according to plan until we got a phone call from our gestoria, the person who was sorting out the paperwork for us in Tenerife. ‘Slight problem. I can get work permits and residence permits for the two lads as joint owners, but not the girls. I’ve just found out the only way we can make them legal is if you’re married, in which case the wives automatically become residents. You’ll all have to get married, quickly.’
As much as our hearts were racing at the thought of swapping the two-tone grey of Bolton for the multi-coloured hues of a life in the sub-tropics, Joy and I were adamant that marriage was not a thing of convenience. The threat of wedding chimes set off alarm bells and we said no. The whole move was in jeopardy once again.
Even Faith was disappointed. They had already agreed to get married if it meant we could still go ahead with the plan. They were not amused at our refusal.
‘We’re prepared to sacrifice so much and you won’t budge at all,’ complained Faith at an emergency meeting.
‘We are not being told when to get married,’ I said. ‘We’d rather forget the whole idea.’ Secretly, although I loved Joy, I had no intention of getting married at all, ever. My parents had got divorced and I was not convinced that wearing top hat and tails for a day whilst paying for a knees-up for distant relations was the key to an eternal romantic union.
In the meantime, David and Faith frantically set about organising their wedding, convinced that we would change our minds. It was only amidst a flurry of international phone calls between Jack and our gestoria that she admitted she may have been a little over-emphatic in using the phrase ‘have to get married’. We could still go ahead with the move but the legalisation process would take a lot longer that’s all. The risk was that, in the meantime, should Joy and Faith get caught without either work permits or family connections they would more than likely be deported. Naturally my brother and his wife-to-be were a little miffed at this eleventh-hour revelation but it was too late to back out, so they proceeded with their big day anyway.
Thus, on a blustery Saturday less than three months since the original business idea had surfaced, and in the presence of a select nearest and dearest, my brother and his girlfriend duly whispered ‘I do’ at a registry office in Salford. The bride, in an inauspicious display of doom and gloom, draped herself from head to toe in flowing black with matching bonnet, boots and mood.
The dashed affair was completed in traditional fashion: the hat competition was won by Aunty Beryl who managed to force an astounding union of millinery and garden mesh; confetti and insults were hurled with equal verve; tearful emotion became more contagious in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed; and opposing relations were loudly hailed as potential new friends whilst quietly cursed as pains in the neck.
All the hellos quickly turned to goodbyes as the last drops from upturned bottles of Beaujolais dripped onto white linen. The following day we were leaving England to start a new life. The honeymoon was already over.
Chapter 3
To wake up in the morning and realise that this is the day every aspect of your life will change forever is, to put it mildly, a tad daunting. Try as I might, I couldn’t get back to sleep to delay the inevitable. A tinge of excitement at the start of something new was overshadowed by a cocktail of worry: anxiety that it was too late to stop the momentum; fear that we were stepping into the unknown and into a huge debt that would be hung round our necks for a good number of years; and panic that we had lost something – vital paperwork, passports, our minds. Yesterday I had gained a sister-in-law. Today I was to gain a new life, new identity and new prospects. Excitement and anxiety see-sawed continuously. A life with fish seemed years ago and my thoughts were now racing in one direction, towards what lay ahead. Final packing and the drive to the airport were incidental, a fuzzy montage of checking, re-checking and re-re-checking. I felt like an obsessive-compulsive.
Money? I patted my pocket. Phew... or was it? I thrust my hand into my pocket and let out a sigh. Yes, money. Was it all there though? Had I dropped some? I remembered pulling the keys out of my pocket to give to Joy. Were some of my hard-earned fish funds lying invitingly on the wet pavement outside Joy’s mother’s house? I pulled out the wad and counted it again. All there. Or was it? Had I counted it wrong? I pulled it out again. 10, 20, 30, 40... ‘Pack it in. You’re going to lose it.’ She snatched it from my hands and folded it in her purse.
I was surprised just how calm she was despite having just waved goodbye to her mother. Joy had an inner strength and a practicality that was beyond me. When the going got tough, whilst I’d look for my coat, Joy would take hers off to wade right in. For her, avoiding trouble and strife was not an option. If she set out to do something she would continue unfalteringly in a straight line until the mission was accomplished. I would veer right and left haphazardly trying to find a way round the hard work and confrontation. Some would call it lazy, I preferred creative meandering. However, creative meandering was not an option now.
David and Faith were to catch a later plane via Madrid so they could accompany Mal the cat on his journey. They would meet us at the bar tomorrow.
As the taxi neared Manchester Airport my nerves called a brief truce. The general mêlée and the whiff of aviation fuel transported me to a time when personal responsibilities involved nothing heavier than returning to the house with the same clothes I went out in and not being caught with a finger up my nose.
This airport ‘buzz’ started the day my brother took possession of our first aircraft registration book. We both had an alarming lack of hobbies during our junior school years, a situation that our mother set about rectifying with no little verve and haste. Horse-riding lessons had gathered pace until we both outgrew the pastime – literally. My brother and I were not lacking in stature during our pre-teens. Our assigned ponies, unfortunately were. Short horse plus long rider equals public embarrassment. Merrylegs and I had to part.
Judo was an equally short-lived pastime. Although our mother took great enjoyment from getting us out of the house on a Saturday morning so she could hoover in peace, the appeal of handing over money to a man who repeatedly threw us to the floor soon waned.
It was thus with some poorly disguised horror that we announced to friends and family that we had joined the ranks of dumbfounded young (and not so young) anoraks on the viewing gallery at Ringway International Airport.
Any airport now instantly invokes memories of sipping tepid Vimto from within the deep safety of an oversized snorkel jacket hood. At regular intervals the sound of rain pattering on polyester would be drowned out by the exciting screams and whistles of a jet taking off or landing no more than a few hundred yards away. Screwing my eyes up I would read the registration number out to my brother with a mouth full of egg mayonnaise sandwich.
‘Bvhee, voy, phthee, thow, thow, thuren.’
My brother, adept at translating my gobbled observations, would then meticulously scan through our handbook checking for BYC 227.
‘Nope. Already got it,’ he would announce more often than not. Occasionally I would sneak a glance at the more accomplished spotters’ records. Their pages always seemed to have more entries than ours. Written notes and scrawled observations filled their pages. ‘It’s not a competition,’ my brother would remind me. Even then I remember having feelings of inadequacy; too few numbers, not enough equipment, tiny thermos flask. We had no short-wave radio to listen to the mysterious dialogue between pilots and the control tower. It was something that we always aspired to but that was what plane spotting and most other ‘collecting’ hobbies were about. It wasn’t about having, it was about wanting. Even the fully loaded top dog of the viewing gallery would watch enviably as a bulky piece of metal lifted itself from the rain-stained tarmac of monotony to head for unimaginably more colourful skies beyond our horizon. We all wanted to go, but this was the closest a pale 11 year old, with just enough money for a bus ticket home and a two-pence piece for the rusty observation binoculars was going to get. I should have realised then that I would always be striving for more. Contentment was forever going to be sadly beyond my grasp. It’s not unhappiness or dissatisfaction at what you already have, more of an obsession with not wanting to miss out on another opportunity that you know is out there.
‘Opportunistic’ was one of the terms that my dad had used to describe me after he had divorced us. It was a rare acknowledgement that he had taken enough interest in his sons to warrant making a judgement and even then it was in the form of a written word on his suicide note. I was more taken aback by the fact that I had received a personal letter from him than the fact that he had taken his own life.
After all of his years of searching for something away from his family he had come to the jolting conclusion that his can of contentment was forever going to be perched on a shelf just out of reach. I was intensely aware that I was shopping with a list that was potentially as unattainable.
Joy’s father, Arthur, had arranged to meet her at the airport to say goodbye. Urgent business had called on the day of his daughter’s emigration. Bolton Wanderers were playing Tranmere Rovers in the Third Division playoffs at Wembley. As soon as the fat lady started singing Arthur had promised to make all haste back north to wave us off. Unfortunately (unless you’re a Tranmere fan of course) Bolton lost 1–0 and the post-mortem took a lot longer than expected. This, combined with a particularly popular day for enjoying the M1 meant that the final boarding announcement came well before Arthur.
‘We’d better make a move,’ I suggested. I had bid my farewells to my Mum and stepfather at their house. Similarly with Joy’s mum, Faye. Even though Joy was primarily the instigator of the idea I still felt a pang of guilt at having been partly responsible for the decision that took her away from her family. She was the youngest of five offspring, the only girl. I sensed her mother in particular was not overly happy that her daughter had fled the nest for a distant land.
Faye and Arthur were traditional parents who had cemented a close bond amongst their children. Their four sons all lived within two miles of each other and were regular visitors at the house. I felt like I was stealing Joy from this nurtured and protected environment and risking her happiness two thousand miles into the unknown. Although Joy was initially the most excited about the idea, I sensed that she still got her lead as to whether it was a sensible idea from me. If I had said no, she’d have been just as happy.
Joy continued nursing a paper cup of coffee, gazing towards the airport entrance. ‘I can’t go without saying goodbye to Dad.’ Her eyes had started to well up. ‘Two more minutes. He’s probably broken down.’ Just as she finished the sentence, Arthur burst through the doors puffing and panting.
‘Bloomin’ broke down,’ he affirmed.
After prolonged and tearful clasps, Joy’s farewells were complete, albeit a touch rushed.
Once on board I idly mulled over the fact that I was about to embark on an exciting life in a foreign land. I watched as the cabin crew ran through their regular repertoire of useful information, pointing out which doors we were to calmly file out of if the plane plummeted to the ground and revealing the technical intricacies of how to buckle and unbuckle the seat belt. Suddenly a moment of panic jolted my mind.
Foreign! I thought, and then again a bit louder. Foreign!, As in foreign language! It was one of the many elements of emigrating that I had pushed to the back of my mind. How was I going to communicate with the delivery companies? What if I got lost on a shopping mission? I rummaged through my carry-on bag and whipped out a handy phrase book. The panic increased as I tried to ingest every expression that I thought I might possibly need, but it was no good. Spanish words went in one ear and plopped right out of the other. There was too much to learn. Why don’t these books just include general phrases that could be applied in a variety of situations like ‘Say nothing unless it’s in English.’ Instead they include specifically useless expressions such as, ‘My hat is on fire and I don’t seem to have any water. Do you know where I may be able to purchase some?’
I gave up and consoled myself with a Jack Daniel’s. We were actually doing it. I was actually being responsible for my own future. I had always chosen ventures that implied no binding allegiance. It was holistic claustrophobia, keeping my options open. I figured this is what it must be like to be a grown-up and felt strangely elated. I was finally committing myself to something that had no way out, something I had to see through whether I liked it or not. If the going got tough this time, I’d have to rough it out, ride the wave, sink or swim. I slammed the cabin crew call button for an emergency refill.
Being served alcohol in your seat is one of the few redeeming factors about flying. This aside, it seems that the comfort of passengers is well down on the list of priorities for most charter airlines, just below ‘making sure there are ample miniatures available for the cabin crew to take home’ and ‘making sure the captain has credit on his Visa in case the plane runs out of fuel’.
Seating arrangements are absurdly inadequate unless you’re prepared to pay extra for the privilege of being responsible for fathoming out the sequence of lever-yanking necessary to operate the exit door after an unscheduled freefall. I was also the victim of an incessant recliner. The only way I could read the in-flight magazine was to rest it on the bald pate of the man in front who had reclined so much that I managed to pass a good few minutes counting the moles on his head.
The joys of having someone inconsiderate in front can only be equalled by having an oblivious individual behind and I had scored in both directions. Every 20 minutes or so the incontinent grabbed my seat to lever himself up catapulting my head as he battled to clamber over his neighbours on numerous scurries to the toilet.
This made reading impossible and for want of anything better to do, I paid a visit to the toilet myself. I have to admit to having a fascination with these sites of sensory overload. They’re like giant Fisher Price Activity Centres. The combined aroma of cleaning fluids, cheap soap and a dozen lingering perfumes confuse your sense of smell whilst the unfamiliar sounds of droning engines, creaking plastic and ‘whoosh’ of water being magically whisked away lead to disorientation. A barrage of notices add to the chaos, warning of dire consequences for disposing of paper products in the waste disposal unit or waste products in the paper disposal unit. Wipe round to clean. Lift up to drain. Push down to flush. Press in to call. Slide across to close. Pull out to open. In a state of increasing panic I struggled to fulfil all my obligations and with one hand hastily trying to hitch up my trousers, the other unwittingly resting on the call button, the door flew open.
‘Can I help you sir?’ enquired the stewardess, holding the door open a bit wider and for just a little longer than I deemed necessary.
‘You were a long time,’ noted Joy on my return.
‘Just trying to pass the time,’ I replied, deliberately disturbing the slumber of my bald lap mate with a well-placed elbow.
I spent the remainder of the flight staring at the clouds or squinting at re-runs of the hugely unamusing Terry and June sitcom that seems to be compulsory viewing for those restrained in padded seats, locked inside metal cells miles away from populated areas.
After four hours the captain announced our descent. Out of the window the peak of Mount Teide, Tenerife’s sleeping volcano, poked through the cloud cover below. The ethereal vision of our new homeland obscured by cloud yet signalled by the impressive point of Spain’s highest mountain added to the apprehension of entering another world, another life even.
We touched down, waved our passports at the disinterested customs officials and awaited the arrival of four mismatched suitcases, three borrowed holdalls and a square, plastic flight bag that nowadays is usually only sported by those passengers who still insist on travelling in 1970s safari suits with hair severely parted in a cut-along-here-for-lobotomy fashion.
We had been happily reunited with half of our baggage but then cases from another flight began to mingle with ours. The tannoy garbled in Spanish and then repeated the message in equally unintelligible English. Something about hairdryers were not to be used on horses.
A rotund German lady with exceptional BO had stolen my view and I leaned a little closer to the conveyor belt. As I did, an overhanging Samsonite rushed from behind the lady and struck me square in the groin, lifting me up slightly and carrying me along for a couple of inches. Now I had tears in my eyes and an intense urge to lie down to contend with, as well as the pungent sumo obstructing my vision.
‘That’s our case on that belt over there,’ said Joy, pointing to the adjacent carousel.
After relaying back and forth rounding up the remainder of our wayward luggage, the air rife with the fragrance of squelching armpits and with a nagging ache lingering in my gonads, we were welcomed to Tenerife.
The arrivals hall was a bright but characterless warehouse stocked with a mixture of tanned locals and tour reps in dizzy florid blouses. Each held a board with their company’s name emblazoned across it. Every tour operator that I had ever heard of, and a lot that I hadn’t, seemed to be represented here. Some already had flocks of bewildered, washed-out faces huddled around them, fathers relieved that all responsibility had been passed to someone who knew what the hell to do next.
Joy and I pushed the trolleys through the milling crowd and emerged blinking into the glaring sunshine of our new country of residence. Hot blasts of air swept over us as we wheeled down the endless line of people waiting for a taxi. Overhead, a piercing blue stretched from the glittering Atlantic beyond the runway to where the mountaintops gashed the sky several miles inland.
Families herded their belongings together. Their holiday started here and shirts were already off, revealing pasty torsos desperate to be toasted. As with all travel, replacing familiar surroundings with the unknown fires an electric charge that awakens a sense of adventure. Even those whose pool of adrenalin had long been suffering a severe drought were caught in this buzz of excitement.