He was doing that, one Saturday in May, and I was in the shop restocking my wine cellar, according to Gerard’s guidance and recommendations . . . he’d been drinking a fair bit of it, so I decided that he might as well help me choose . . . when I saw what looked like a poster displayed on the shop’s computer monitor.
‘Arrels de vi,’ I read aloud. ‘Means “The roots of wine” in English, doesn’t it?’
I should explain that the St Martí community, even Tom and I sometimes, when there’s nobody else around, speaks a variety of tongues in its daily discourse, but most commonly Catalan, the language on the screen.
‘That’s right,’ Ben replied.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s the name of my wine fair . . . the fair I’m planning, that is.’
‘What’s a wine fair?’ I asked.
He and Gerard gazed at me, their expressions dangerously close to patronising. ‘A wine fair,’ the priest replied, ‘is a gathering of producers, brought together to display and offer their latest and finest vintages, for an educated public to taste and, hopefully, to buy.’
I looked at the Englishman. ‘Where are you going to hold it?’
Ben waved a hand towards the door. ‘The plan is that it’ll be out there, in Plaça Petita.’
I walked over to the entrance and looked at the small square, gently sloping, but terraced. Four pathways lead into it, two of them rising from the car parks that lie below the village. ‘Will it be big enough?’
He nodded. ‘Should be. I reckon it’ll take at least a dozen stands, and that’s as many as I’d want . . . for a first effort, at any rate.’
‘Who’ll be here?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’m approaching all the Emporda wine-makers. So far the response has been good.’
Catalunya contains a number of comercs, or regions; Emporda is ours, and it’s split into two subdivisions, upper and lower. ‘When are you going to have it?’ I asked.
He pointed to a date at the foot of the poster on the screen. ‘First week in September, soon as the August chaos is over . . . that’s if I can get everything put together. I’ve still got a hell of a lot to do.’
‘Need any help?’
He grinned. ‘Nice of you to offer, but I have to sell the concept to the exhibitors myself.’
‘There’s more to it than that, surely. There’s marketing, publicity; I could use the information centre to plug it, and to sell advance tickets.’
‘Advance tickets? I plan to sell on the day, that’s all.’
I frowned at him. ‘Ben,’ I said, ‘I don’t know a hell of a lot about business, but I do know that if you’ve covered your overheads before the show opens, everything else is profit.’
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ he conceded. ‘If you’d do that, I suppose it would be a big help.’
‘I will, and you could sell tickets through the hotels as well,’ I added.
‘That would be good too. I know most of them. Then there are the restaurants I supply; I’m sure they’ll advertise it, at the very least.’
I was well warmed up. ‘I could talk to the people I know in the tourist department in L’Escala; to see if they’d help. They have a website.’
Ben grimaced. ‘You might have a problem with them. There’s one big fly in the ointment; I need the mayor’s cooperation. I called her yesterday and . . . let’s just say she didn’t make any encouraging noises.’
‘Why do you need her onside?’
‘Because Plaça Petita is public land, and the mayor has the power to decide whether it can be used or not.’
‘What about the local traders’ association? You’re a member. Can’t they put pressure on her?’
‘I’ve talked to the leaders; they’re scared of upsetting her. A lot of them rely on town hall approvals to run their businesses. Getting on the wrong side of the mayor is never a good idea in L’Escala. Besides . . .’ He paused.
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure, but I think there might be a little bit of prejudice.’
‘Are you saying they’re agin it because you’re British?’
‘Could be.’
Beside me, Gerard sighed. By that time, he’d come to know my rising hackles when he saw them.
‘The hell with that,’ I declared. ‘Most of their businesses only survive because of the money that the Brits, the French, the Belgians and the rest of Europe spend in this town. And as for the mayor, L’Escala educates its children and runs its social facilities thanks to the taxes paid by expat property owners. You concentrate on bringing in the wine producers and leave her to me.’
Ben frowned. ‘Are you sure? I can’t afford to pay you, Prim. This will be a shoestring operation.’
‘I don’t want paying,’ I told him. ‘But I’d better have some sort of authority when I go to see her.’
And that is how I became operations manager of Arrels de Vi, the St Martí d’Empúries wine fair.
Four
If I ever suspect in future that I’m getting too big for my boots, I’ll remember my visit to the Casa de la Vila, the town hall of the Ajuntament of L’Escala, climbing the stairs to the reception desk on the first floor, and confronting authority, face to face.
Dolores Fumado Ortega, the mayor’s chief of staff, as she had introduced herself, was a short, stocky woman of an age that wasn’t easy to guess, but had to be fifty-something, maybe edging towards the next Big One. She was dressed in a grey seam-strained skirt, and a white blouse outlining the industrial-strength bra that was necessary to restrain her formidable bosom. Her hair was on the dark side of blond, but with a blue sheen, professionally shaped and lacquered. The ladies of L’Escala have a wide choice of hairdresser; I suspected that she paid daily visits to hers.
She had greeted me coolly, in a way that made it clear that whoever I was, she was more important, and the temperature seemed to be falling by the minute. She peered at me over the top of gold-framed, light-reactive glasses, her eyes offering nothing. ‘It is quite impossible,’ she declared. ‘The mayor’s diary is full. She couldn’t possibly see you now.’
I smiled, taking the meek and mild route. ‘I’ll wait.’
‘There is no point, senora.’ (There is no proper equivalent of Mrs in Catalan or Castellano.) ‘She has meetings all day and will have no free time.’
‘I’ll come back tomorrow, if you’d like to schedule me in.’
She sighed, telling me that I was trying her patience. ‘That will not be possible either.’
‘The day after?’
She shook her head. ‘The mayor is busy with the affairs of the town, with important matters.’
I tried smiling again. ‘Everything is important to someone,’ I ventured. ‘The wine fair is important to us.’
‘But not to the mayor.’ She had grown so frosty that she reminded me of a dumpy version of the witch in Narnia.
The truth is, the meek never will inherit the earth, so I changed tack. ‘When’s the next municipal election?’ I snapped. I could feel my eyes narrow as I spoke.
‘In two years. How is that relevant?’
‘How? Time for a reality check, Senora Fumado. I did some research before I came here. At this moment the mayor is at the head of a coalition. Her party has six seats out of thirteen; she’s sat on her arse in that office ten feet away from us thanks to the support of the single independent councillor that the people returned last time, her sister’s father-in-law, as I understand it. She’s hanging in there by little more than one polished fingernail. Two years from now she’s going to need all the goodwill she can get.’ Dolores began to move, as if to walk away from me, then stopped, as if she’d realised that wasn’t going to shut me up. ‘What she won’t need,’ I told her loudly, ‘is a determined, well-resourced person who speaks English, French, Catalan and Spanish lobbying against her, and maybe even fielding a multinational slate of expatriate residents. It may be an inconvenient truth, but truth it is, that I, and people like me, Bri
tish, Belgian, French, Dutch and the rest, have a vote in the local elections and can stand as candidates. How many of us voted last time? Damn few. But how many of us are there in this town, just waiting to be stirred up? You don’t need much to find the answer. Just pick up the local telephone directory and flick through it.’
I’d cracked her; I could see that. I stood there waiting for a response. But when it came, it was from behind me.
‘You’ll waken the sleeping giant, Mrs Blackstone?’ said a female voice, in English. ‘In that case you’d better come in.’
I turned, and saw a tall woman, in her mid-thirties, gazing at me with a half-smile on her face. She couldn’t have looked less like her executive assistant if they’d both worked at it. Her eyes were big and brown, long lashed, the compelling feature of her oval face. Her hair was dark, and fell to her shoulders in loose curls. She wore a white T-shirt emblazoned with the name and logo of the town’s anchovy museum . . . no, I’m not kidding; L’Escala has an anchovy museum . . . and tucked into blue denim cut-offs in a way that emphasised the swell of her breasts, the narrowness of her waist and the curve of her hips. As I looked at her my first thought was, ‘How come this woman didn’t pick up every male vote in town?’
‘I am Justine Michels Fumado, the mayor,’ she said, slipping into Catalan. ‘I can tell you don’t react well to the word “no”. Not many people get past my guardian. Congratulations.’
As she showed me into a small wood-panelled office, with a door leading out to a balcony that looked down on to the square below and across to the church, I pondered her name. ‘Fumado,’ I repeated.
She knew what I was asking. ‘Yes.’ She confirmed my quickly formed suspicion. ‘That dragon outside is my mother. She’s one of the old-time L’Escala families; half a dozen of them still own much of the town. When I moved into this office six years ago, she insisted on moving in next door. I was only twenty-nine then, and she thought I’d need protection. As you’ve found out, she still thinks so.’ She smiled. ‘She’s useful, from time to time, against those less formidable than you. In the summer L’Escala fills up with people who turn up to discover that they have problems with their apartments or villas. They don’t know the local system, so all they can think to do is march into the town hall and complain to the mayor.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment to us both.’ I paused. ‘And your first surname? Michels: that’s not Catalan.’
She pointed to a photograph, in a silver frame on a small cabinet. I looked and saw her eyes gaze out at me, from the face of a tall, handsome, silver-haired man. ‘My father was Belgian; he came to Catalunya forty years ago, to sell furnishings; my mother met him in his store in Figueras and snapped him up. His brother, my uncle, used to joke that he went to lay her carpets, but she laid him. Papa died two years ago, but I probably have him to thank for still being in this office. He was the unofficial leader of the Belgian community; they’re probably the original foreign arrivals in this town, and they’re my solid supporters, regardless of their usual politics. So, Senora Blackstone, you might have trouble lining up all the expats against me . . . although I suspect that with your name, you could recruit the British, if you were determined to try.’
‘My name?’
‘I know who you are,’ she told me as she settled into the leather chair behind her desk, and as I sat opposite her. ‘I’ve known since you moved to St Martí, or back then, I should say, since you’ve spent time here before. Eyebrows were raised when an outsider was able to buy the house you did in the village, and there was talk; indeed there still is gossip about you. I’d be a pretty poor mayor if none of it had reached my ears. You are rumoured to be sleeping with the priest, Father Gerard, but I know him too, and I know, from someone very close to him, that isn’t true. You are the former wife of Oz Blackstone, the famous actor, who lived here with you once himself, but you are not his widow. Your son is his. Your sister is the actress Dawn Phillips, and your brother-in-law is the film director Miles Grayson.’ She smiled. ‘You can afford to send professional people to make your point. So why are you breaking my door down yourself?’
‘Because I don’t employ people like that. I’m a hands-on person, and I’ve been brought in by Ben Simmers to help organise his wine fair.’
‘Ahh!’ The mayor’s head fell back as she sighed; as she gazed at the ceiling I could see that her chin showed no sign of sagging. ‘That’s what it is.’
‘That’s what it is,’ I repeated. ‘Ben reckons we need your permission to hold it in Plaça Petita. Is he right about that?’
‘Oh, he’s correct. The people of St Martí like to think that they’re autonomous, but they’re not. That is and always has been public land, and the town council of L’Escala decides what happens there. As leader of the council, the executive power is in my hands.’
‘So? Can we do it, Madam Mayor?’
‘Justine, call me Justine. I don’t know; I still have to reach a decision.’
‘I’m Primavera. What’s difficult about a simple “yes”?’
‘Nothing, but this one isn’t simple.’
‘In what way?’
‘I have opposition to it within the town council. There is one member who’s determined that it won’t happen. And no ordinary member either; it’s my coalition partner, the man whose vote keeps my group in power.’
‘Your sister’s father-in-law?’
‘That’s him. José-Luis Planas Ros. He’s powerful within the council, because of his unique position, and also within the trading community in L’Escala. He owns the big furniture shop in the old town, a couple of bars, an estate agency, and a pizzeria on the seafront. When Ben approached the shopkeepers’ association, word got to him; he opposed it and the sheep fell into line.’
‘Even though Ben’s a member of that group?’
‘Even though.’
‘What’s this guy’s problem with Ben? Is it because he’s English? Because I warn you, if it is, I’ll follow through on the threat I made to your mother. I wouldn’t have to field my own slate either; if I deliver enough British votes to your main opposition . . .’
Justine Michels threw up her hands. ‘I know, I know. That could swing the election. But I promise you, Mr Simmers’ nationality has nothing to do with it . . . at least not directly. I think this problem would still exist, even if he was Catalan.’
‘Then what is it?’
The mayor opened her mouth as if to reply, then fell silent, for almost half a minute. ‘I think,’ she said, eventually, ‘that it would be better for you to ask your friend.’
‘I will, don’t you worry. And I’ll be asking Senor Planas as well.’
‘You’ll be wasting your time if you try to lean on him. Come what may, he gets re-elected to the council every four years as an independent. The expatriate vote doesn’t bother him.’
‘I’ll bother him, though.’
She smiled, sympathetically. ‘You going to make him an offer he can’t refuse?’
‘I’m going to reason with him.’
She laughed. ‘That’s a line from the same movie.’
‘I know; it’s my favourite.’ I had to chuckle myself, as I recalled The Godfather, and the man who woke up to find his thoroughbred’s head on his duvet. ‘Does he have a horse?’ I asked.
‘Not even that would shake José-Luis. He’s old school, and the problem you’d have with him is typical of his generation.’
‘As in me being a woman?’
She nodded.
‘How do you handle him?’
‘He tolerates me and gives me his grudging support because of my sister.’ She paused. ‘No, because of my brother-in-law, Angel. Most of the time, he doesn’t interfere with the administration. He has a portfolio, environmental services; he gets on with that and he’s good at it. But occasionally, if he gets agitated about something, he can be difficult. This is one of those times.’
‘And you won’t overrule him and give us permission.’
&
nbsp; ‘Primavera, I would do it in a second, but it’s very difficult for me. As you know, I have two years left in power, and to be honest next time I may struggle to stay in this chair. This town has a modern history of turnabout in its local politics, and I can sense the swing against my party. There are many things my colleagues and I want to do, or at least get under way, before the next election. If I cross Planas, he could make it very difficult for us to fulfil these ambitions. One small local event, set against an improved social housing programme, against new classrooms for the school, against traffic improvements . . . Christ, we still have dirt roads in some parts of this town . . .’
‘But is Planas so important? Wouldn’t some of the other councillors support your programme?’
‘Not all of it. Social housing, road improvements; they’d have to go. Planas, misogynistic old goat that he is, supports the whole platform. I haven’t said “no” to your fair, not yet, but the real decision is his, and he knows it.’
I threw up my hands in surrender. ‘OK, I understand.’
‘I’m sorry, truly.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Don’t you have an alternative to Plaça Petita?’
I smiled, wryly. ‘No, short of holding it in the church . . . and if we did that, then nobody would ever believe that I wasn’t screwing the priest. You are right, we need a Plan B, against rain, if nothing else. But I’m not giving up on Plan A without tackling this man myself.’
‘But you’ll talk to Benedict first, yes?’
‘Yes, I will. I can’t imagine what he’s done to get this man so firmly against him.’
‘You can’t?’
Five
Everybody blushes. It’s a physical thing, the effect of increased blood flow through the facial capillaries caused most commonly by embarrassment. It has nothing to do with race, but you’d think that when someone is as heavily tanned as Benedict Simmers, it would be impossible to see it.
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