Index | ||
|
The Fandango by Ron Simmonds |
|
Last summer we went for a weeks holiday in Tenerife, first time for twenty years. Second honeymoon, we said. This is where it all happened. The place hadnt changed
too much. We poked about the shops, admired the new promenade with all
the swimming pools, looked at the old haunts. On our last evening we visited
the Banana Beach, just for the sake of old times. It was still in the
same place, way out of town and difficult to reach. We went by taxi, the
long way around, with the taxi having to stop and back right to the edge
of the precipice every time we met another car. It was late and the beach
was deserted. The restaurant was still open and we ate fish and watched
the sunset. Reminded me a bit of Shirley Valentine. Not quite as romantic
as last time, but theres something about visiting old places that always
gets me deep down inside. After the meal we walked back to the town, but
now we trudged where we had skipped gaily all those years before, and
the long climb at sundown, through the barranca, up and along the banana
plantations and over the cliffs to civilisation took longer than wed
expected. Id
forgotten about sundown. In those latitudes it happens without warning,
and wed only gone about halfway when WOOMP! Down it went. There was no
moon. This is it, I thought. Somewhere along here theyve built a dirty
great wall right across the canyon and were stuck for the night. We stumbled
on, clutched hands and blamed one another, but there was no wall, and
we emerged gratefully in a lighted street right beside our honeymoon hotel. The
small, once bustling place overlooking the sea was now dirty, dark, and
abandoned. What looked like a large tree grew out of the bottom of the
empty pool. Right underneath, where no one had ever dreamed it possible,
they had built a motorway over the rocks. The big hotel next door was
still there, and we collapsed on to bar stools and ordered Marie Brizard. Neither of us had tasted
the stuff since the last time we were there, but its an ideal drink on
a hot night in Puerta de la Cruz, if, indeed, nowhere else. You get a
big glass filled to the brim with crushed ice over which your friendly
bartender will pour generous measures of the sweet sticky stuff. You then
fill your mouth with the ice and let it all melt slowly down your throat.
Moaning, rolling the eyes, and gasping for breath are mandatory and the
stuff makes you feel very strong and brave and romantic. Altogether we drank eight
each over a period of an hour and a half, during which time we watched
a really professional bit of Flamenco, after which I danced. Come on, said my partner,
eyes sparkling from her own enormous intake of the potently loaded crushed
ice, Lets do it. Just once. It was a waltz. I reckoned Id be OK on
a waltz as long as I didnt lift my feet and crush anyones tootsies. We began to shuffle. The
music emanated from a pile of junk over on the side presided over by what
I imagined was supposed to be a musician. He didnt have an awful lot
of time for the keyboards because he seemed to be wrestling most of the
time with a drum synthesizer, and losing badly. He didnt have enough
arms and legs to start them all off at the same time, so each number began
with lots of mumbling and stuttering as the drum machine raced or slowed
to the next tempo, rather like a ghastly set of electronic bagpipes warming
up. At the end of each tune the song ended but the malady lingered on
until he could shut the damn thing off again. I seemed to be the only
one noticing this. It was vastly different from the performance of a guy
I used to know in the Galicia Bar near Benidorm who was a raving lunatic,
but who could manage eight synthesizers all at the same time without missing
a beat, while simultaneously shouting insults at the customers. Everybody
loved that man. Meanwhile, out on the dance
floor, I had lost all my inhibitions. We began to branch out a little.
Moving with careless abandon we casually cleared the floor with our very
own versions of the Turdion, the Pié-de-gibao, and the Gibidana,
flowing easily into the Fandango, with my partner twirling her
fan most prettily while I waved my dango around all over the place. The
Spanish locals sat all around the dance floor watching with their mouths
open. They had never seen the like before, and werent likely to see it
again, either. Out there on centre stage
I was completely in control, standing, apart from the odd imperative stamp
of foot, absolutely motionless; around me the rustle of silks, the rapid
tic-tac of the heels of my partner, her red lips gleaming over white teeth,
dark eyes sparkling. I gave her directions a la Sevillana with
small arrogant movements of a crooked index finger, a look of utter disdain
on my dark handsome features as she swirled around me. It is easy for
me to look arrogant. I have been told that I even look arrogant from the
back. Fired by this dazzling display
another couple joined us, Germans I believe, and we went into a mad version
of the Jaleo de Jerez, which was actually very difficult for the
other guy because he had only one arm, and each time it came to the leap
and swirl he missed my outstretched hand and fell over. It was around this time
that the organist, whom we had kept well supplied with all kinds of weird
schnapps, began to intrude upon my subconscious. Unable to keep up with
the drum machine in fast numbers he began to flounder, most noticeably
in TicoTico where he did his own thing on the middle sixteen,
which he managed in nineteen and a half bars of, what was for me, sheer
terror, then went straight back into Managua, Nicaragua as if nothing
had happened. We were off, right across
the floor, arms stiffly outstretched, then, with a spine-ripping jerk,
we reversed, like Jack Lemmon and Joe E. Brown in Some Like it Hot.
On the way back we swept the shuffling old couple right off the floor.
They were still finishing the waltz theyd started half an hour ago. Out
of the corner of my eye I saw the German being carried out. We danced
on. Two buckets of crushed ice
later I realised, through the fumes, that apart from the first few bars,
the organist didnt really know any of the tunes he was playing at all.
He mixed verse, chorus, and release with gay abandon. If he had been doing
it on purpose he could have done no better. Never mind the chords, he
went ad lib on every melody almost at once, an astounding performance.
No one noticed. Suddenly, as if a master
switch had been thrown, he stopped dead. When I looked there was no trace
of him or his infernal machine anywhere in the place. He had been tossed
out into the street. The bartender said that there was no more crushed
ice, showed us the empty Marie Brizard bottles and threw us out into the
street, too. It was time to go. Our taxi driver turned out
to be a clone of the late, great Juan Manuel Fangio. He drove us back
to the hotel muy rapidamente, dicing along the cliff roads, roaring
over stop signs, and cornering with a vengeance, while carelessly lighting
cigarettes with one hand and showing us pictures of his wife and children
with the other. It had been a marvellous evening. Our neighbour picked us
up at the airport. So? How was it? Oh, very quiet. Very quiet
indeed, we said. |