Ibiza Surprise (23 page)

I hung on, with my arms stretched like chewing gum, until Gilmore complained, and I actually had his lizard belt with the bull clip off twice. The kerbs were packed with beak-nosed Spanish women with lots of eye black and jewellery, and old types with long, gathered, black sleeves, black silk headsquares, and cut-velvet shawls with silk fringes under their pigtails. Children seethed. We crossed five streets and got to the market, where the stalls were dismantled and the square jam-packed with crowds. The balconies of all the town houses round the walls were also crowded with people and draped with red and yellow, the national colours.

There Mr Lloyd had an earnest discussion with a man in a uniform, and next thing, we were scurrying up the ramp to the Portal into Dalt Vila. We went under the long arch of the Portal and into this roofless place I’ve mentioned before: a kind of paved, high-walled room which connects the arch into the old town with the arch into the new. There, Mr Lloyd hustled us behind one of the pillars and we stood, looking around us and waiting.

It was a super place, I must say. We faced a blank wall about thirty feet high, in the right corner of which was cut the portal on to the ramp. Through the arch, you could see the whole market lying below, the lights and the people. We stood with our backs to another blank wall and inside a long, pillared portico, which held up a strip of tiled roof jutting over our heads. On our right, our wall was joined to the wall of the portal by another arcade: a double arch with a room built above, with no windows but a green double door giving on to a rusty, railed balcony. The roof of the high room was tiled, and behind it, the end wall rose up another six feet or so, covered with creepers, with a path at the top. There were plants growing out of all the cracks in the stones, and a sort of yellow flower in the tiles over our heads, I had seen it, turning up the hairpin bend in the Maserati with Janey. On our left, the fourth wall was a short one, and the whole lower part nearly formed the entry and the pools of lamplight on the white walls and the moon shining on the cobbles, like an incline of paperweights, round which the procession would come.

I was staring at it, mesmerised, when an officer came up and asked us to move. Mr Lloyd talked to him severely in a low voice, but it didn’t do any good. We shifted out of the guard place and through the arch into Dalt Vila itself.

It was all right. We stood looking at the outside of the arch, among the crowd in the square, squashed up to one another, giggling, and making witty remarks, until Mr Lloyd suddenly said: ‘Hush.’

Then we heard it, high up in the darkness. The flat tuck of the drums.

I felt Derek shiver. My curry was also starting to do salaams. I wondered what Johnson was doing. What could one man do? I wished I’d been able to stay nursing Clem. I wondered if Spry knew what to do for concussion. Clem would make a decent husband. A nice one. One who didn’t throw paper-bag parties. My stars. He couldn’t even afford paper bags.

The people round about us were Spanish. The woman next to me turned out to be one of the helpers in the fish market, and she kept smiling and talking in short, clanging outbursts of patois. Instead of the jersey and skirt and the square-fronted apron, she wore a black crepe dress and a black lace mantilla. She still smelt of fish. I asked when the float of Saint Hubert appeared in the procession, and she said nearly last. I don’t think she approved of him. I suppose he was a bit secular to have all those rubies. The drums were getting louder, I thought. I looked at Janey’s father.

He looked preoccupied. If he were going to snatch twenty thousand pounds’ worth of rubies, I suppose he would look preoccupied. I supposed anyway he had seen it before: they had had the villa in Ibiza a long time, before his wife died. You forgot Janey was half-Spanish. I wondered why she wasn’t a Catholic, and then thought that perhaps the mother wasn’t. He would have no religious scruples, anyway, about pinching jewels from the Church. And I didn’t suppose he cared a damn about deer. But would he have killed my father and brought me out to Ibiza? Then I remembered what Johnson had said. If he thought Daddy had written to me, then he might.

Gilmore said: ‘That’s the music,’ and if you strained, you could just hear it, far up the hill. Not creepy stuff in the least, wails and rollings of drums, but stern, tinny tootles, four beats to the bar, above the conversational roar of the crowd. Above our heads, a caged finch, wakened by the noise, suddenly started to twitter, and some others answered him.

Gilmore said: ‘Don’t be alarmed if some of the stations look a bit tottery. The canopy poles are fitted with fairly loose sockets so that the whole shooting match sways if they want it. It whips up the excitement.’

‘Do they never tip one right over?’ I said.

Gilmore shrugged with his eyebrows.

‘It’s been known,’ he was kind enough to explain. ‘In places like Seville, they go in for sensationalism a bit more than Ibiza. You might get a hitch here if the bearers stop for a swig in a side street. Now and then there’s a little contretemps, too, if the candles get too near the costumes. But that’s about the extent of it.’

Derek said, suddenly: ‘I wish we could see the start of the thing. I think I’ll try and work up a bit, and then come down alongside it. Would you mind?’

I didn’t know who he was asking, but I said I wouldn’t mind, and Mr Lloyd said he wouldn’t, although he didn’t think he had a hope, and Janey didn’t say anything. In fact, I minded more than somewhat because I had to choose whether to go with him or stay with the Lloyds.

I was a coward. I stayed. If Derek was going to do something awful, it was now clear to me that I wasn’t going to stop it. But at least I wouldn’t know anything about it.

He went, and we stood with the crowd and looked at the steep incline before us, edged with tall, balconied houses, down which the procession would come. It would come down into the square, and folding back on itself, would march through the arch into the empty guardroom before us, and turn left, through the Portal and down the ramp to the town. After that, the long threading of streets to the Vara de Rey, the circumnavigation of the Monument, and back and up through the Dalt Vila again. The thought made my legs ache: I looked at those glassy rounds of scratched stone and thought of Johnson.

‘Here it comes,’ Mr Lloyd said.

And we looked up and saw the top of the slope crowded, in silence, with tall, faceless, peaked masks and torches, and smelt the incense, in silence, rolling down on our heads. Then a masked, barefooted man advanced alone down the path, his purple robe brushing the cobbles, a banner in purple and gold held high in his hands, and a double file of purple-robed figures came silently after, linked hand to hand by a thin, swinging black cord. On their heads were the tall cones of purple I had seen with Johnson before, and purple hung over their features. In one hand, each carried a torch like a lily sheaf, and a priest in white walked between them, moving from side to side, encouraging.

They came down the long path in silence, and padding round, turned their backs on us all and marched steadily through the arch, past the gallery, and left through the other arch leading to the low town. At the entrance they slowed for a moment, and you could hear, from the changed quality of sound outside and below the high walls, that the crowds out there had seen them. Then they resumed their slow, swinging pace and continued, and we turned to the high slope again and watched to see the file of penitents end and what was to follow.

Although only half my mind was thinking about the procession, I remembered it afterwards with fantastic clarity. Of course, the setting was fabulous, and whatever anyone says, I am hung up on creepy processions. I remember the heave in the curry when behind all the wagging, thin peaks a red glow appeared, which turned out to be a little float, carried on four penitents’ shoulders, with a figure of Christ knee-deep in candles and greenery, with whopping Victorian lamp brackets at every corner. The penitents were coming down a bit warily, clacking along with kind of walking sticks to fix under the litter when the weight got too much. They came down the hill without stopping and turned through the arch, the guard space, and the other arch and disappeared, going steadily out of sight.

Janey said: ‘Ooo look. White ones,’ and the crowd behind us swayed and pushed us forward, so that we had to redress our line.

The white penitents wore layers of coarse snowy-white cloth, white peaks and masks, with big red crosses sewn over their bosoms. They had red crosses, too, on the plastic lanterns which they carried on long, thick, white poles. Behind them was another blaze of flowers and light: a float with the Madonna and Son, filled with red carnations and arum lilies, with pink plastic foam thoughtfully bound on the poles to save the shoulders of the sailor boys carrying it, their navy caps slung round their backs. They were the first naked faces we’d seen since it started. I noticed Janey craning a bit.

She had a good look, too, at the escort of soldiers who came next, with gold-banded hats off, but then we were back to the hoods and gowns: all white with pale blue masks, all white with blue hoods, all white with black hoods and buttons, like a gingerbread man, all down the front. A stout man in uniform and gloves came stepping down, like a
haute ecole
act without the horse, and then a ringing noise broke the silence and, turning a corner, rattled backward and forward among the high houses as the municipal band appeared on the slope and descended, blowing and beating. They had their music stuck out in front, and the flute had a little torch pinned to its chest. There was a clarinet, as well, and drums. The racket squeezed through the arch and ricocheted back and forth under the gallery before being swallowed, abruptly, by the jaws of the Portal. A body of upright men with long coats and epaulettes breasted the lane: they all caught Mr Lloyd’s eye and smiled.

‘Hullo?’ said Janey.

‘Public relations,’ said Mr Lloyd. ‘Pay no attention.’

They wheeled round before us. The room between the two archways was filled with bobbing caps and a few retarded white peaks. Things were still pouring down the slope. Church dignitaries in velvet and thick gold embroidery, edging downward with care. Two wooden crosses borne at intervals by robed figures, their black-soled bare feet padding securely down over the stones. The figure we had seen in the cathedral of the sorrowing Virgin, in a halo of silver, with her lace hankie still in her hand. Some women, veiled in black lace, carrying fancy black missals. A large block of civilians, in their good suits, medals catching the light. A Cavalry with the figure in a purple velvet sort of apron, a thick silver belt round the waist.

The silver flashed under each lamp as it came down the hill, and I stopped watching Gil and started to nibble my nails. Any minute now. More robed figures. A regimental band of cornets and drums, deafeningly letting off down the slope, the brass dressed in scarlet with fringes. The echo of the drums, banging backward and forward inside the arch, was like a heavy cavalry charge. Janey put her hands over her ears, but I was enjoying the mixture. You could hear, far off in the low town, the bugles and drums and flutes which had already passed us, playing something different. It was a bit like the 1812 being played by Boy Scouts in two different drill halls. Then the band got through and down to the ramp, and I had time to look up the slope and see the Saint Hubert.

Hubert is not one of my very favourite names, and what the fishwife had told me hadn’t changed my mind much either. After beating it up as a courtier, he was startled into repentance when hunting on Good Friday, say the books, by the sudden appearance of a stag bearing between his horns a radiant crucifix. He renounced all worldly pleasures and ended up as a bishop, in afterlife giving much help to those bitten by mad dogs and taken over by devils.

Anyway, there, obviously, seesawing at the top of the slope, was the form of Saint Hubert, in a bishop’s mitre, robed and bearded, with one hand uplifted, as in his photograph, and the other resting on the head of a stag. The heads in front of it moved, marching downward, and you could see that instead of a canopy, the float had a tree fixed at each corner, with flowers and leaves realistically made out of wax. Round the trees, lay the carved statues of various hunting dogs, one with a hare in its mouth, and the rest of the space was filled in with flowers and half a million candles with their flames all bending one way, like a happy crowd at a tennis match. Then it got a little nearer, and you could see something else: the candlelight flashing crimson on a sort of necklace slung round his shoulders. The Saint Hubert rubies. He still had them, then. So somewhere near, Johnson must still be lurking, but I couldn’t see him. Nor could I see Derek.

I looked round. A contingent of soldiers was goose-stepping past us: little, sallow men with moustaches, with rifles reversed held by white gloves, the ranked helmets shining like fishing floats. Both Mr Lloyd and Gilmore were staring at them, their eyes slightly glazed. Janey wasn’t looking at all. I followed her gaze with my eyes and found a wrought-iron balcony with a carpet flung over it and a family party sitting behind on tall, straight-backed chairs At the end of the balcony, a perfectly super type with one of those long, brown Spanish faces and sideburns was carefully picking geraniums out of the window boxes and throwing them to selected females in the crowd, most of whom were Janey.

I suppose, up to then, the retreating noise of the bands had drowned the sound of the barking. At any rate, it was only then that I noticed, and everyone else beside me, that the float of Saint Hubert was behaving in a peculiar manner. For instance, it was travelling sideways. It then moved backward, and sideways again, and then with sudden and extreme rapidity, disappeared up a side lane. There was a heightening of noise, and the procession halted behind it, while the crowds all inclined upward, pushing. It was the nearest one could get, in performance, to actually rushing to see what had happened.

For a moment, everyone shouted and shoved and asked questions, while nothing else happened. Outside the walls, there must have been a block on the ramp, for the band and the float and the penitents between the two arches had stopped, too, and those who could were craning round to watch the happening behind, while the lot stuck through the arch in the guardroom kept calling up questions. The soldiers stood at ease and swayed without moving their boots, their eyes wandering vaguely. Then, as suddenly as it had gone, the Saint Hubert float shot like a roller skate out of its side street, turned round twice in mid-road, and began to charge down the slope. At the same moment, creaking, the procession before us got moving again, and draining out through both arches, disgorged itself into the town, leaving the cobbles in front of us perfectly clear.