Now the problem with those industrial units on the Altea strip is that all the parking is on a pair of service roads on either side of the main road that runs through the middle. At night, and for some users, this is an advantage. The area is brightly lit because there are assets to protect. As a consequence, flesh, in various shapes and forms, tends to assemble to advertise its availability to the passing traffic, the streetlights along the service road effectively creating a vast open shop window. The thighs lift towards the carriageway, the hips wiggle to the vans. The only downtime for business is early evening. The flesh has not yet arrived and customers for furniture, hardware, British bedding, German cars, French cheeses, satellite connections, lights and pipe fittings have already gone home. As a result, there’s no shortage of parking.
But because I was outside Paradise, I was facing Altea again. I was thus forced to ride in the wrong direction before I could turn left onto the main road at the traffic lights. It also has to be remembered that often in Spain you can’t turn left. You have to go straight across, round a roundabout and then join the main road from the right. This system pertained along the Altea strip, so I soon found myself passing along on the other side of the road, again on a service lane. I was directly opposite Paradise and there, still open, was a small bar. I decided to rest again, parked the Raptor and ordered one for the road. I took my seat outside for a better view of the buildings opposite.
It was a pleasant evening for the time of year, hardly balmy, but a comfortable temperature to sit outside as the sun started to sink. I ordered a jarra - none of those fiddling little cañas for me, because there’s not enough beer in one of those to wet your lips, despite the fact that most Spaniards leave them half-finished.
I settled down, took a good swig of nectar, and set about what I took to be the final episode of my day out in the mountains. I was musing on memories of my afternoon with Olga in her cave, reliving the sensation of young, firm flesh touching my own and trying to make sense of why she had turned hard to get. I was so bound up with my attempts to relive ecstasy, that at first I didn’t notice the black Porsche four-wheel drive pull up outside Paradise across the road.
Now as I said before, I’ve not done much music over the years. But after my perfect pitch trans-sexual of a tutor had identified my previously hidden musicality, I decided to follow up with another unit. M231 turned out to be a brilliant course.
Modern Orchestral Techniques In The Twentieth Century Tone Poem For Percussionists it was called. We had to study several pieces chosen around a theme and analyse the orchestration, especially the percussion, of course, and then write a small piece of our own. I chose industrial-mechanical music as my theme and was delighted to learn that it provided real potential for further study, beside wonderful material for my assignments. I did the music of the iron foundry, the steam engine and the motor bike, the last being, as it turned out, merely an updated version of the railway.
Now if any of you readers of the Cottee blog have ever worked in an industrial setting, you will know that it’s a deafening experience - quite literally deafening. We always used to joke, us Kiddington adolescents, that by the time they’d reached eighteen, you could tell which girls had worked in the Bromaton mills and which had not.
“Hello, Christine,” you’d say, and Christine Middlefield would say, “Hello.”
“Hello, Dorothy,” you’d say, and Dorothy Ellison, quite unlike Christine, would say, “Hello.” We weren’t ones for wasting words, us Kiddington teenagers.
But the difference was that while Christine’s volume was normal, in the colloquial rather than statistical sense, Dorothy’s greeting was delivered as if she were addressing someone half a mile away, and that despite the fact that you were standing right next to her. That was because Dorothy, by the age of eighteen, was as deaf as a post, having already spent the best part of three years threading and unthreading a hundred and twenty bobbin spinning frame in a woollen mill.
They had a special bus, the mill girls - they were always girls, by the way, even the ones over fifty. There were forty of them every weekday morning, including Saturdays, which was a half day. They loaded onto their old AEC jalopy of a works bus opposite the pub on the main road, next to the rugby field. We used to joke that when the mill girls’ bus went past, you couldn’t hear the old wagon’s engine rattling or its gears crashing because the sounds were completely drowned by the ear-splitting chatter of the passengers. Even the ones sitting next to one another had to shout at the tops of their voices. At least that’s what they did if they’d worked at the mill for ten years or less. After that, they’d usually learned the wonderful conversation method of silent speech, so they could be completely quiet. This developed because after a while they stopped competing with the noise of the machines. Their friend was deaf anyway, so there was no point in shouting and thus it made sense to converse by lip-reading. The younger ones remained a raucous bunch, however, until they had honed their skills.
So let’s compare the bus load of mill girls on their way to work and the full orchestral tutti so commonly used in mid-twentieth century classical music portrayals of industrial settings. What do they have in common?
Well, surprisingly in both cases you can hear a pin drop. All right then, not exactly a pin, but in the orchestra with everything playing triple forte and the brass deliberately orchestrated into each instrument’s sweet spots, even the slightest tinkle on the triangle is not only audible, it stands out. Equally, amongst the stone deaf ladies at full call (pronounced kal, to rhyme with pal, incidentally, meaning to natter incessantly at local gossip), the sound of someone dropping a tanner on the floor would tinkle its way above all conversation, and thus provoking a scrimmage to see who could get their hands on it first. And so with my beer outside a bar on the Altea strip...
I might have missed the black Porsche Cayenne turning off the main road. And I might also have missed, given the hum of two lanes of heavy traffic between myself and it, the opening of doors. What I did not miss, however, was a sound so different, so profoundly unique, that its merest hint immediately demanded attention. It was the unmistakable parrot-squeak of Johnny the gangster’s artificial voice. There was a complete car full. Phil Matthews was driving. George Jones, the pin-striped, walrus-impersonating, middle-class leguleian of a lawyer was in the front seat. In the back was an unlikely threesome, surely heavy enough to need the considerable power of that vehicle just to get them moving. It was none other than chirping Johnny and both of his heavies. And it was the quiet squeaky rattle of Johnny’s synthetic voice that rose above all commotion. I looked up.
They all got out. Johnny used a key to open the door of Paradise. One day I should show him the easier way. They all disappeared inside. They didn’t stay long, just five minutes or so, when they all reappeared in the exactly opposite order in which they had entered. Johnny locked up on exit. I noticed, however, one slight change in that Phil Matthews was carrying a small cardboard box, a box of a type I believed I recognised. He placed it in the luggage compartment beneath the hatchback. The vehicle drew away as silently as it had arrived. They weren’t using the air conditioning, preferring open windows on the pleasantly fresh evening. Johnny the Gangster’s squeaks were still clearly audible, if not exactly discernible above the ambient noise.
I was just halfway down my pint, still contemplating the significance of what I had just witnessed. I was, however, now looking with interest less than concentration at the entrance to Paradise, directly opposite to where I was sitting. I found myself musing on the subject of their purpose. It was just five minutes later - still shy of six-thirty in the evening - when another vehicle drew up and parked. This time it was a large flash BMW, one of those hybrid vehicles that doesn’t have an official series number in chrome on the boot lid. It was beige, big, beautiful and driven by that perseverate Pedro the Mayor, whom I could never pin down on perfectly obvious environmental issues. He was
alone. I racked my brains, trying to remember his wife’s name from the party at Mick’s house, but I couldn’t and had to look it up from my blog entry when I got home. It was Alicia, of course. Anyway, she wasn’t there, but I will need her name when I place a short anonymous message on the mayor’s domestic answering machine service, when I ring tomorrow when he, I hope, will be at work. It won’t be a long message, no more than a confirmation of the fact that I saw him entering Paradise alone the night before. I’ll use a special voice, of course.
In a wholly matter of fact way, he locked the car with his remote and mounted the steps to the door of Paradise. What happened next surprised me so much I actually stood up, thus risking being seen. I just reacted. It wasn’t a conscious act. I sat down again just as fast, worried that I might attract attention to myself. Pedro, Mr Mayor, also had a key to Paradise. Now that was surprising.
A phrase I have not used for many a year came immediately to mind. Again as teenagers, we had the habit of developing our own language. It’s quite common, I think. At one stage we Spoonerised everything. It was an era when Conrad Hunte opened the often invincible batting for West Indies, and Friar Tuck often accompanied Richard Greene as Robin Hood on the tele. We had an era when we turned everything backwards, like Leonardo da Vinci when he wrote in mirrors, except we kept the same word order. Thus I had friends called Ynot Notlob and Yma Revoslob. Then there was the era of the anagram. A fellow electrician came out as Avo Nose Drill, and I’ve already mentioned my interest in this little trick in relation to former Tory Prime Ministers. I still think that John Major is the best. What I did not include was the obvious avoidance of anagram status by a certain Vice President. He was clearly so conscious of the fact that his name was an anagram of ‘grow a penis’ that he included a spurious T as a middle initial, a move most commentators believed might refer to his love of tennis, despite the fact that he was no good at it, his serves often slapping the back of his doubles partner’s head.
But the adolescent linguistic code that was relevant to Pedro’s ability to open up Paradise with a key was our habit of mixing euphemism and pun. We had a series of stock phrases. We all knew what they meant, but rival peer groups and crucially parents had no idea, so you could converse openly about delicate but essential matters such as sex, girls, sex, sex, sex and girls without anyone being able to understand.
And the phrase that leapt to mind as Pedro pushed the door? Twelve inches. Just that, twelve inches.
Meaningless in itself, ‘twelve inches’ becomes something under suspicion when an association with its partner phrase, ‘something’s afoot’, is subliminally recalled. Pedro the Mayor being able to let himself into Paradise with a key when it’s not even open for business... twelve inches, nothing less. Some fifteen minutes later, by which time my pint had mysteriously disappeared, I could no longer resist the urge to investigate, risky though it might be. So I paid up and crossed the road calculatedly on foot at the lights rather than waking up the neighbourhood by starting up the Raptor to drive forty yards.
I paused at the entrance until the traffic lights on the main road again turned red. The traffic stopped. The ambient noise level dropped and I pressed my ear to the door. There was quiet. They were not in the foyer bar or the office whose barred but not shuttered window was just to my left. Inside, Paradise was quiet. Twelve inches. I let myself in. The foyer bar was deserted as expected and there was no hint of a light.
I paused again for a moment, now in a quandary as to how to proceed. I decided, given the nature of the establishment I had entered, to work bottom-up and thus begin by inhabiting a social sphere I understood. I entered the code that opened the office door. There was still enough light filtering from outside for me to see clearly. On the desk, loosely but securely slotted under the blotter surround was what looked like a single sheet of paper with a yellow post-it note attached. I glanced and immediately saw content which was of personal and professional interest. “OM,” read the note, “pls translate, copy and circulate to all partners. Urgent.”
Now O I recognised. Surely this was addressed to my beloved Olga, that vulnerability of my desire. But I knew her as Miss Pushova, OP not OM. I assumed it meant Olga or Mick, thus identifying the document for either’s attention, but without the slash that would have made such meaning clear. The assumption troubled me, because anyone pedantic enough to abbreviate ‘please’ to ‘pls’ would surely not have omitted an absolutely essential oblique slash.
I looked at the sheet beneath. The words ‘The Castle’ leapt out from within a sea of otherwise unintelligible Spanish. I scanned further. Again the same two words sprang out. I lifted the paper to inspect it more closely, and found it was in fact two sheets, printed in different formats and different fonts. I concluded that the documents came from different sources. They were both of interest, so I quietly closed the office door, took out my mobile phone and photographed both documents, using flash to ensure faithful reproduction. I took the albeit dangerous precaution of closing the window shutters to enclose my momentary illuminations. Luckily the mechanism that lowered the slatted cover offered no uncontrollable squeaks. It was a calculated risk and I got away with it. I replaced the documents with care and raised the shutter with extreme care. It was silent again.
I turned to the wall safe and entered its predictable code. It opened. As before, there were folders and papers. Crucially, the cardboard box of passport blanks had gone. Surely that was the familiar box I had seen Phil Matthews place in the back of the Porsche. No doubt the contents of said container were about to perform their intended role in life. I closed everything, taking care to replace papers, handles and keys at the correct angle and let myself out of the office. Twelve inches, I thought again.
It was then that I heard the noise, the strange sound that both intrigued me and undid me. There was a muted cry and moan from upstairs, dim but clearly heard. The stairs behind the bar, Suzie’s stairway to heaven, according to Mick, were unlit and quite dark. The door that usually closed them off had been left open. No windows let onto that space so it was wholly internal to Paradise, so the evening’s sunset glow was utterly excluded.
I had to feel my way up the stairs, one step at a time, lightly sliding flattened palms against the walls. I silently thanked building practices that installed pre-formed concrete stairways as a unit rather than creaking wooden treads and risers. I had remembered how many steps to expect and so, when I knew I had arrived on the first floor landing I paused to await new auditory clues that would help to locate exactly the source of any nearby activity.
I did not have long to wait. It came from my left, close by. I recalled from memory the rooms to that side and surmised that the sounds came from either the first or second room along the corridor, no further. I stood and waited for another minute or more, consciously inviting my knowledge of the relative nature of sensory organ responses to allow my eyesight to accommodate the dark. It worked perfectly. Out of the dark emerged minute snippets of visual stimulus. The second door on the left did not quite fit in its frame. It was hung with the handle on the left, so from my vantage I was presented with the hinged edge. The very slightest hint of dim greenish light narrow-coned its way across the floor towards me, filtering through a millimetre gap between door and jamb below the lower hinge which obviously had not been fully rebated and so stood slightly proud. It did, however, take me a moment or two to interpret the pattern.
One of the few science courses I ever did was P100, Digital Optics Generator Operation Or Deconstruction. It was a course with an option, hence the ‘or’ in the title. Anyway, what lay before me, my knowledge-base informed, was the output of a low-wattage spot, shone horizontally at more or less floor height.
I advanced. Again the noise came, now precisely located within the lit room and, more importantly, voiced in human tones, though strained, even restrained. A couple of steps took me to the door. The faint cone of light now illuminated m
y toes, extremities that were beginning to feel slightly cold, given that I remained barefoot, having carried my flip-flops worn like mittens, slotted over the backs of my hands to avoid unwanted noise on the way up the stairs. Indecision is not a state I know well, but, as the second occurrence of the muted wail emerged from within, I felt frustration rise. I dare not open the door. Yet I had no possible view of the inside through the minuscule crack at the hinge. And Paradise was constructed on the mirror principle, with each room a reflection on those on either side. Thus the interior of this room was to the right of the door. For a view of the interior I would have to open the door wide and peer right round it. If this were chess, I would be in check.
I racked my brains so hard I wonder the room’s occupants did not hear the rattle. And then inspiration returned. While replaying my memory of visiting the upper floors of Paradise, I recalled a feature that was technically specific to this variety of establishment, though not unique. There are few quasi-residential facilities where the premise’s occupants are regularly viewed from outside. In such places, there is sometimes doubt as to whether those inside are still in residence, still in one piece, not hanging from the light fitting or doing something generally not allowed or distasteful. One is the Victorian jail, where officers retain the right to spy on inmates on a regular basis. It’s part of the job. The other is an establishment such as Paradise, where routine checks might also be made to ensure that business is still being done, transactions remain within agreed limits and that the ladies are not providing piecework extras on the side, on the front, back, side or inverted or in any other position or agreement not deemed kosher by the establishment. I remembered that the doors have spy-holes! And professional installers don’t place then anywhere except at eye level! Recalling that Olga was probably the gaffer in Paradise, I guessed her level of vision, felt gingerly across the surface at the relevant height and - bingo! - there it was. A levered, smooth sideways push silently manoeuvred the rotating cover to the right.
A Search for Donald Cottee Page 37
