Then. Now. Always. Page 7

  I really should have made more effort with my appearance, but I didn’t leave myself enough time to get ready after my early morning swim at the beach. Denim shorts and a light pink vest top were the closest items to hand, and I’ve pulled my wet hair back into a small ponytail at the nape of my neck. I’m still getting used to not wearing jeans every day and actually being able to see the bare skin of my arms and legs. Being blonde, I’m naturally quite pale, and next to Elaine I look even fairer.

  ‘So,’ she says, twisting her fingers together in her lap, ‘how is this going to work?’

  ‘I think it’s best if we just switch on the camera and then talk,’ I tell her, remembering what both Tom and Claudette told me the day before. ‘That way we can just try to forget it’s even there.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to forget,’ she admits. ‘But I’ll give it a good go.’

  The iced tea tastes mildly bitter, but delicious, and I tell Elaine how much I like it as I finish setting everything up. Once I’m happy with the frame and the camera is switched on, I return to my chair opposite hers and begin my questions.

  Elaine tells me that she was born in London in 1956, but moved to Mojácar as soon as she turned eighteen, which was in the year 1974. She says she didn’t have the place in mind before she found it, but rather stumbled across it after meeting another artist in the South of France.

  ‘And you’ve never been back to England since?’ I ask.

  Elaine shakes her head, keeping her eyes on me rather than the camera. They’re very dark brown, almost black, and it’s hard to look away.

  ‘There’s never seemed much point.’ She brings up her shoulders in a shrug. ‘I didn’t have any family, so there was nothing to go back for.’

  I open my mouth to ask what happened, but then change my mind. We’re here to talk about her life in Mojácar, after all. What took place before that time doesn’t really matter.

  ‘I suppose I was a bit of a hippy back then,’ Elaine recalls. ‘I believed that I was a citizen of the world, and the people I met while I was travelling were the same. We convinced ourselves that we would be able to change the universe if only we could experience more of life. Of course, that may have been the drugs talking.’

  ‘Drugs?’ I fail to hide my shock.

  ‘Afraid so.’ Elaine looks more bemused than shamefaced. ‘It wasn’t such an unusual thing back in those days, and I was only eighteen. I was very happy to follow the pathway to oblivion without worrying about the consequences.’

  I’ve always been too much of a chicken to try drugs. Tom ate some hash cakes once when we were at university, and they must have been seriously strong, because the whole night he kept telling me that my face had turned into a potato and that he had a brother who was a jelly worm.

  ‘What was Mojácar like when you arrived?’ I ask now, and Elaine closes her eyes.

  ‘I’ll never forget how it felt to look up at the Old Town for the very first time,’ she says, taking a deep breath before lifting her eyelids once again. ‘Mojácar is unique in that the view looking up from the Playa towards the village is actually better than the one from up here looking back down to the sea. The splendour here is the opposite of most places.’

  ‘That’s so true,’ I agree, wondering why I hadn’t ever thought of it in that way before. ‘I constantly have to remind myself to turn around and look back when I’m walking down to the beach.’

  ‘I just felt at peace as soon as I got here,’ Elaine continues. ‘I’d been on the road for a few months by that point, and I was weary. Mojácar offered me something that I had failed to find anywhere else.’

  She goes on to describe the village as it was then, which surprisingly wasn’t all that different to now. Obviously there have been small improvements made over the years, and there are far more gift shops and restaurants than there used to be before the tourists became a regular fixture, but the essence of the village has never really altered.

  ‘What about the Indalo symbol?’ I ask gently. ‘Was that on every building in the same way as it is today?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Elaine confirms. ‘The symbol dates back to prehistoric times, as you know, and the artists here were quick to adopt it as an emblem.’

  ‘Do you believe in it?’ I can’t help but ask.

  Elaine pauses for a moment to consider this, crossing her legs and showing off the same pair of gold sandals that she was wearing down at La Fuente when we first met.

  ‘I believe that it offers many people a lot of comfort.’

  It’s a careful answer, and I don’t believe I’m getting the full story. Instead of pushing her, I simply sit in silence and wait. Sure enough, Elaine soon begins to talk again.

  ‘Whether you believe in the legend or not doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘The fact is that the symbol was definitely found in a cave not far from here back in the 1860s, and experts say the area dates to 2500 BC. Ever since the discovery, the Indalo Man has been associated with good luck. And do I believe in magic? Sometimes I do. Don’t you?’

  I shake my head, almost sad to be letting her down. ‘I don’t know. I want to. I do love the Indalo and what it stands for, though, and I think that’s enough.’

  She nods at that. ‘I think you could be right.’

  ‘What happened to the artists you came here with?’ I ask now. I’m conscious of time passing, and wonder if the battery is holding out on the camera. Theo had advised me to take my time with Elaine. We still had another three and a half weeks left to get all the footage we needed and, as he quite rightly pointed out, Elaine wasn’t about to tell me her entire life story in just one session.

  ‘Some left, some stayed,’ she says, sipping her glass of iced tea. ‘A few are still here, in fact.’

  ‘I read that Mojácar has one of the highest expatriate populations in the whole of Spain,’ I tell her. ‘Can’t say I blame them. I’d happily live here, too.’

  ‘Maybe you will one day.’ Elaine smiles.

  We finish the iced tea and she tells me more about her painting, which is mostly self-taught. Every autumn she hosts a small exhibition, and for years now she’s scraped together a living by having postcards and prints made of her work and selling them through the Old Town’s many gift shops. Luckily, she tells me, Mojácar is an area that attracts many appreciators of both art and beauty, so she’s never had any trouble selling her wares.

  ‘I could sit here chatting to you all day,’ I tell her as the church bells begin to chime for the second time since I arrived. I feel like I love and understand Mojácar even more than I had just a few hours ago, and as much as I’m loath to leave this idyllic little courtyard and my new friend behind, I also can’t wait to tell the others all the new things I’ve learned.

  ‘Shall we say the same time on Friday?’ I ask, packing away the last of the equipment.

  She nods. ‘That would be lovely. I’ll take you to my studio next time, if you like?’

  There’s another Indalo Man hanging on the wall by the front door, this time just made from simple twisted black metal, and seeing it there suddenly reminds me of something.

  ‘Just one more thing before I go,’ I say, turning back to her.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You said earlier that Mojácar offered you something you had failed to find anywhere else. What was it?’

  Elaine draws in a breath, then reaches across and puts a hand in the crook of my arm.

  ‘Hope,’ she says.

  8

  The next few days pass by in a blur of productive activity. We spend the afternoons up in Mojácar Pueblo, collecting footage of the village fortress and conducting interviews with a number of bemused local inhabitants, so my mornings are always packed full of tasks from Theo ahead of that day’s filming.

  I’m relishing being busy, though there’s just one dicey moment on the second day when I turn a cobbled corner in the Jewish Quarter and walk literally right into Diego, who is coming the other way with a large box of tomatoes
in his hands.

  ‘Hola, Hannah – qué tal?’ he’s quick to ask.

  ‘Bueno – gracias,’ I reply, scuttling away in the other direction without bothering to ask him how he is in return. It’s so strange to remember how besotted I was with him, even if some of the emotions are still acute. The way I behaved around him as a teenager seared me with a humiliating pain that has never really dimmed, and I hate the way I feel when I’m around him – small and insignificant.

  We’ve been working such long hours that by the time evening arrives, Claudette is content simply to sit on our balcony with her feet up on the wall, sipping a glass of wine and reading over her script notes for the following day. Theo, meanwhile, has taken to vanishing back down to his villa to review and edit the day’s recordings, leaving Tom and me to explore the many quirky little restaurants and bars nestled amongst the cube-shaped houses of the village. Mojácar is well and truly under my skin again, and I’m already dreading the thought of having to leave behind the wonderful sleepy atmosphere and the veritable kaleidoscope of greens, blues, whites and sunshine-yellows that I see every time I let myself stop and look around.

  Today is Wednesday, and we are all packed into Theo’s car heading out of Mojácar on the Carboneras Road towards Macenas, where there are two centuries-old watchtowers – the Perulico and the Castillo de Macenas – that he’s keen to include in our film. If we get everything done by lunchtime, then Theo’s promised us the treat of an afternoon off, so there’s a definite buzz in the air.

  ‘I cannot wait to work on my tan,’ Claudette is now saying. She’s slipped off her shoes in the back seat next to me and has stretched out her legs so that her toes are poking through the gap between Tom and Theo.

  ‘Can anyone else smell cheese?’ Tom jokes, earning himself a poke from Claudette’s big toe.

  As usual I’m splitting my time between staring out of the window at the unfolding landscape and gazing at the back of Theo’s head. Every now and again, he glances in the rear-view mirror and catches my eye. We haven’t had a moment alone together since the other day at lunch, so our conversation about his older lady lover has not been continued. Not that I want to hear all about how great some other woman was in the sack, anyway.

  For something that was built in the eighteenth century, the Castillo de Macenas is in pretty good nick, and I say as much as we sweep into the nearby parking area in a cloud of dust.

  ‘Spoken like a true intellectual,’ remarks Tom, winking at me as he clambers out of the car.

  Almost like a small castle in shape and design, the Castillo is constructed from brown and gold stone, its cylindrical edges drawing my eyes up and around. I find it bizarre to think of guards sitting up on the battlements all those years ago, looking out across the vast expanse of sea in search of any vessels that could herald a potential attack or invasion. Then again, what a view they must have had. There’s something about being close to a large body of water that makes me feel more invincible, as if the usual limitations of everyday life have slipped away and the possibilities have multiplied tenfold. Perhaps that’s why London can feel so relentless and stifling – it’s because my mind is subconsciously trapped between all those ugly man-made structures.

  Having already coached Claudette through her lines and helped Tom set up the camera, I stroll a few metres away from the group so that I won’t be in the way. Today, clouds have joined us for the first time since we arrived, and they add a pleasing new dimension to the dense blue veil of the sky. The scenery in this area is far more rugged than the coast a few miles behind us, with craggy cliffs leaning over the water and clusters of dried plants rotting in the heat. The dust is still here, though, blowing up around me and working its way into my nostrils, ears and probably even my belly button. It never ceases to amaze me just how much dirt I manage to pick up throughout the course of a single day.

  Claudette is talking to the camera now, her light French accent sounding mellifluous yet authoritative. Usually she would still be faffing around at this stage, demanding to check how she looks on screen and how she’s been framed in the shot, but today she is determined to get the job done. As she remarked to me this morning on our way up the steps outside our apartment, she’s planning to spend the few hours we have to ourselves hunting the beach bars for a man, telling me quite brazenly, ‘If I don’t have sex soon, someone will be murdered.’

  I actually don’t doubt her for one second.

  ‘Can we try that again, but with a little less haste, please?’ Theo is now saying, and as he turns his back I see Claudette stamp her foot with frustration. Tom is quiet when he’s working, ever the professional, but I know he must secretly be gritting his teeth at her histrionics.

  Leaving my colleagues to it, I wander across the makeshift car park to where the derelict shell of a building is just about still standing. Surrounded by dead shrubbery and tagged with lots of rather artistic graffiti, it’s oddly alluring, and I slip my phone out of my pocket to take a few pictures.

  What’s this? Another missed call from Nancy. Bloody hell – when is that girl going to take a hint? I stubbornly ignore the small voice in my head, which whispers to me that it might be important, that Nancy hardly ever calls me these days and surely she only would if something bad had happened. I refuse to believe that, though. If anything had happened to my parents, then someone else would have been in touch by now. All the same, I fire off a quick text to my mum just to check in.

  I was only six when Nancy was born, but I’ve never forgotten it. She arrived so fast that my dad’s new wife Susie didn’t even make it as far as the hospital and Nancy, ever the drama queen, was born on the back seat of a taxi halfway there. My dad took me to visit her a week later, and apparently I was enchanted at first. I thought of her as a doll, I suppose, so I was very miffed when I was told in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t, and that I was not allowed to swing her around my head by one arm like I did with all my other dolls. Babies may look cute, but they aren’t half boring to hang out with, and I hated the way that my dad cooed over Nancy. It was as if now he had her, he no longer needed me, and that feeling has never really left me. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he didn’t love Mum any more, now it felt like he didn’t love me, either.

  To make matters worse, Nancy was a very clingy toddler and hugely attached to our dad. She would muscle in on any games the two of us might be playing and cry if she wasn’t allowed to join in; she would pick up the pieces of my beloved jigsaws and chew them until the cardboard shapes warped and no longer fitted together properly. When I was nine, I was given the much-coveted role of Mary in the school nativity play, but on the day of the performance, Nancy threw a colossal tantrum and screamed herself sick. My dad was so worried about her that he stayed at home instead of coming to watch me on the assembly hall stage, and I have never forgotten how it felt to look down and see an empty chair where he was supposed to be sitting.

  Nancy desperately wanted me to pay her attention, but even as a child I knew that ignoring her was the best way to punish her. She had this need to be watched, adored and idolised by everyone, and I simply refused to go along with it. She had everyone wrapped around her chubby little finger except me, and I know it drove her mad. Why she was suddenly so keen to talk to me now was a mystery, but it was one that I didn’t have time to deal with at the moment.

  Angry with myself for letting my corrosive resentment affect my mood yet again, I take aim and kick a stone through the tumbledown doorway of the building, only to leap about fifteen feet into the air with a scream so loud that several birds fly up from the undergrowth.

  ‘Hannah – are you okay?’ Theo is beside me in under a minute, out of breath and palpably concerned.

  ‘A snake,’ I say, my voice still quivering with shock, as I point to the clear patch of ground where the stone once sat.

  ‘There, there,’ Theo says, pulling me against him and sending my senses reeling. ‘It’s gone now. It cannot hurt you.’

  ‘S
orry,’ I mumble against his shirt, my arms dangling down by my sides like laundered tights. ‘It just gave me a fright.’

  ‘I won’t let it get you,’ Theo soothes.

  Bloody hell – he’s even started stroking my hair. He smells so good, and his chest feels so firm against my cheek. Now I can hear his heart beating. Oh my God, I think I’m going to faint.

  Theo gently pushes me away so that he can look into my eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asks, so quietly that I almost don’t hear him. ‘It didn’t bite you, did it?’

  I shake my head. ‘No.’

  ‘Thank God,’ he mutters, releasing my shoulders so that my cheek can again press against the buttons of his shirt. His hands are working their way down my back, his fingers rubbing small circles as they go, leaving me burning with such an overwhelming need that I almost whimper.

  ‘What the hell is going on over here?’

  Claudette has marched over and is glaring at us, a graceful hand on her hip and an expression on her face that’s easily explosive enough to topple what’s left of the ramshackle reptile hotel behind me.

  ‘There was a snake,’ I mumble, forcing myself to take a step backwards out of Theo’s embrace. ‘It just startled me, that’s all.’

  For the briefest of seconds, I see a shudder pass through Claudette, but she quickly recovers herself.

  ‘Can we get a move on, please? It’s almost lunchtime.’

  ‘Come on,’ Theo says, turning to me with a smile. ‘You can help me direct.’

  Somehow I make it through the next hour without melting into a puddle of lustful goo all over the floor, and we’re soon back at Theo’s villa having dropped Claudette off at a beach bar on the way.

  ‘Fancy a swim before we head back?’ Tom asks me.

  I hesitate, looking over at Theo who has just returned from taking some equipment inside. I can’t stop thinking about how his hands felt, and I absurdly don’t want to wash away the sensation of him in the sea.