The driver had seen me looking at the bicycle and thought I was interested in the shop. He seemed to be trying to make up for his earlier awkwardness at seeing the address.
‘Ibiza is an island of salt. They harvest the salt in Ses Salines. The salt…you know…’ He mimed something big and flat as he searched for the English word.
‘Pans?’ I offered.
‘Yes. The salt pans. They are beautiful. You must see. Especially when the…pink birds are there.’
‘Flamingos?’
‘Yes. Yes. You must see them. My father was a salt-miner, and his father was a salt-miner, and his father’s father was a salt-miner, and father’s father’s father was a salt-miner…’ I was getting it. ‘You see, señora, Ibiza has been invaded by many different people in its history…but always the salt has stayed the best in the world. We salted the fish eaten by the emperors.’
I would later discover that the taxi drivers of Ibiza often doubled as tour guides and historians.
‘And now you are invaded by tourists,’ I said, calm again after my bicycle-induced wobble.
‘Yes,’ he laughed. ‘Them too. The worst of the invasions. The hippies then the ravers then the celebrities and the hippies one more time. From everywhere. Not just Britain. Germany, France, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, and even today you have the Americans and everyone else too…Brazilians, Argentinians…No, it is a happy invasion really. We are all the same species, right?’ His smile was wide and genuine. ‘Ibiza is where you come to remember that. All places, all ages, all people. It’s good. Apart from the golf courses. We do not like golf courses here. There is one but no more. One is enough.’
‘Golf courses?’ I thought of Karl. He didn’t like golf.
‘¡En serio! People go to the streets here if you want to make a golf course! Beach clubs not golf clubs! We like music, we like the sea, we like good food, and we like nature. But not so much the golf courses. Or the price of apartments. Or the roads in August.’ And then the car and conversation took a left turn. ‘We have aliens too. That’s what some people say. There are a lot of…crazy people on this island.’
‘Noted. I will try my very hardest not to open a golf course,’ I said, earnestly. ‘And I will look out for ET.’
And he laughed and even gave the steering wheel a pat of appreciation.
‘Yes. Very good! Golf! No! Aliens! Yes!’
And I smiled on the back seat and stared out of the window, but then my thoughts darkened a little.
We like the sea.
I looked at the driver, as if he was a Rorschach inkblot that hadn’t quite revealed itself. He went quiet for a little while. He frowned, in thought. And then he came out with it.
‘I know that she died,’ he said. ‘I read about it. Christina van der Berg.’ He pronounced the name carefully. As if it was something porcelain. ‘I saw it in the Diario. The newspaper here. Diario de Ibiza.’
‘Did they say how she died?’
‘She was diving, I think.’ I caught his eye in the rear-view mirror. The next question he asked very tentatively, I remember.
‘Were you her friend?’
‘No,’ I said, for some reason. And then, ‘Yes. I mean, a long time ago. I used to be her friend and I am coming to look after the house.’ I don’t know why I said it like that. Look after. Maybe I was self-conscious suddenly of just how odd it was to be given a house by someone you hardly knew. ‘She came here years ago to be a singer, but I don’t know if that was what she was still doing. She was very talented. She had a gift.’
His concerned expression was back. ‘A gift?’
‘Yes.’
He swallowed this like a pill. ‘There are things about this island,’ he said. ‘Things that most people don’t get to see. Things that aren’t easily…explained…’
I had no real idea what he was talking about. When I was a child, I once went on holiday to the Isle of Wight, and I had made friends with an odd woman in a fudge shop in Yarmouth who believed she was a former mermaid. Maybe it was islands. Maybe they sent people insane.
Desolation
We were pulling over now. We were here. A desolate place with nothing around but traffic.
The only picture I had seen had been of the exterior, reprinted onto a letter, and, like my eyes, was not of very good quality. Just a hard blue sky and white walls. I had been picturing a villa in a hillside village.
But we arrived somewhere else, and I instantly felt like I was making a mistake.
I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but it was, quite possibly, the least attractive house on the whole of Ibiza. Absolutely no bougainvillea in evidence. Or charm. And it made the bungalow in Lincoln look like a mansion in the Hollywood Hills by comparison. Maybe this was why she didn’t give it to any of her real friends. They didn’t want it.
It was a small white box, existing where it did for no real reason at all. Single-storey. Tiny windows. Standing above the roadside grit and blanched tarmac, with the paint peeling like scabs. Patches of brown cement dotted all over it. Smashed glass from a thrown beer bottle and random pieces of rubbish strewn around the outside on the tarmac. Walking distance to nowhere.
To make things worse there was a billboard across the street for a deluxe hotel. An aerial photograph of swimming pools and impressive buildings situated on a clifftop. Open now. The latest Eighth Wonder Spa Resort Hotel, Cala Llonga, Ibiza. Visualise your dreams and make them reality.
‘Is this it?’ I asked him, as I handed him twenty euros, staring at the small decrepit house.
‘This is the one.’ He smiled a little courteous smile. ‘It was nice to meet you,’ he said. And he had a look you get used to as you get older. Concern. ‘My name is Pau. Like Paul. But without the l.’
‘I’m Grace,’ I said, opening the car door. ‘Also without an l. How do you say “nice to meet you” in Spanish?’
‘Mucho gusto.’
I nodded, as he got my luggage out of the boot. ‘Okay. Mucho gusto.’
‘And buena suerte is good luck.’
‘Oh. I hadn’t asked for that one.’
