Five Bestselling Travel Memoirs Box Set

by Twead, Victoria

  Brass wall lights topped with cocked green shades cast the room in a sickly pallor throwing sallow circles of light onto the once-white wallpaper now jaundiced through decades of low-grade tobacco.

  The only sounds were phlegmatic coughs and the deranged melody of a fruit machine happy to have found a friend. Joy was feeding it 50-pence pieces with one hand, jabbing at the nudge buttons with the other. Her tan had attracted the attention of two investment advisers dressed in no-brand tracksuits who were teaching her about consecutive bells and lemons. Lessons in slot machine skills she certainly did not need.

  ‘Pint and a half please.’

  ‘Joy’s at it again.’ Leonard smiled a toothless smile and nodded at the machine.

  ‘No stopping her, I’m afraid. She insists it’ll pay off one day.’

  I carried the glasses carefully across the threadbare carpet and blew on the back of her neck. ‘You winning?’

  ‘Nearly. Have you got any fifties? I think it’ll hold on two bars.’ The two lads peered inside the machine trying to see if was worth risking their beer money.

  ‘Come on.’ I motioned to a table under a window. A karaoke poster written in yellow marker pen obscured most of the outside view which would have been the damp remnants of Bolton’s first ever bicycle shop.

  ‘So what’s this great idea then? You give all your money to me and I stop it disappearing inside those stupid machines?’

  She took a sip and raised one eyebrow. ‘You’re gonna like it.’ She paused to take another sip then smiled again. I smiled back. ‘So come on then.’

  I’d known Joy ever since she’d pushed me backwards off the top of the slide at nursery school. She was an experimental child but compassionate with it. As soon as my head had hit the floor she slid down and ran around to peer in my face. ‘You dead?’ she asked. I managed to smile crookedly as Miss Cornchurch dragged her off by the arm before I passed out.

  But I took solace in the fact that I was not the only one bullied by Joy. In fact, she was so impressed by my not dying that she took on the role of protector and regularly pushed other kids from the slide if I wanted to have a go. She also insisted that I push her off, as she was curious to see what it felt like to fall so far. I declined the offer.

  We sailed through primary school as a tag-team of cutesy cheek and imaginative excuses. I would help her with her homework and she would steal me penny chews as a reward.

  As pre-teens we had only once stepped over the line of platonic friendship. It was Saturday night and her parents had left us playing Buckaroo whilst a romantic western flickered in the background. Joy’s attention was diverted from the kicking mule by a passionate scene involving a feisty cowgirl and cowboy.

  ‘Kiss me like that,’ she commanded and pulled my face against hers. I remember the taste of liquorice toffees and wondered if this is what she tasted like to herself all the time. We remained eye-to-eye for about a minute until, unimpressed, Joy pulled away and silently placed another bucket on the donkey’s backside. Romance didn’t surface again for a long time although we both maintained a mutual disrespect for each other’s juvenile amours.

  Although in different levels of classes at comprehensive school, we would still hang around with each other during most lunch breaks and after school, plotting horrific revenge on the teachers that had dared to reprimand us. I was usually no more than an accessory but due to my pubescent lanky stature I had taken over the mantle of protector. And boy, did she need it. A cheeky smile and sparkling eyes could redeem her of most crimes but there were times when physical intervention was unavoidable.

  We finally became an item after an unplanned holiday together. Joy’s boyfriend had dumped her just days before departure, accusing her of spending more time with me than with him. It all came to a head outside the Dog and Partridge in Hazel Grove when I was invited on what her boyfriend thought was going to be a cosy tête-à-tête but turned out to be a tête-à-tête-à-tête.

  On a campsite in southern France, fuelled by too much alcohol and exposure to naked flesh, intimacy was inevitable. The holiday romance continued after we returned home and still did three years later inside a dingy pub in Bolton.

  ‘How do you fancy moving to Tenerife?’ Joy peered over the rim of her glass. Her eyes searched mine.

  ‘Uh... why?’

  ‘We’ve been offered the chance to run a bar, only it needs two couples to run it, so I said I was married.’

  ‘To who?’ I shrieked.

  ‘To you, you numpt! Who else? I said we could run it with me as bar manager and you as the chef and...’ Her speech accelerated as it always did when she was trying to steamroll me.

  ‘Hang on, hang on.’ I raised a hand to slow down the onslaught. ‘Who would offer to let two people who have hardly any experience of pouring a pint let alone running a bar in a foreign country, take over a bar?’ I knew as soon as I had said it that our previous careers may have deviated slightly from fish filleters to nightclub management. Joy confirmed that she had exaggerated our talents slightly and distorted the actual financial arrangements.

  It transpired that we weren’t expected to just run it; we were expected to buy it.

  ‘What exactly are we supposed to buy it with? Fish heads?’ I spluttered when the actual truth came out.

  ‘No. We can borrow it,’ replied Joy. Her straight face implied that there was something else she wasn’t telling me.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A hundred-and-sixty-five grand... more or less.’

  I blinked twice. Hard. My pint remained suspended halfway between my open mouth and the beer mat. This was surely some seafood-induced dream. Believing that this was just another of Joy’s get-rich-quick schemes that would fizzle out as fast as previous plans, I decided to humour her.

  ‘You said two couples?’

  Joy continued. ‘I didn’t tell you but I got a phone call from your stepdad before I went to Tenerife. He said that the bar on El Beril, where his apartment is, had come up for sale and he was thinking of buying it as an investment. He asked me to collect the books for him to take a look at. When I called in, the owner said why don’t I take it over. Anyway, when I got back this morning Jack came to pick up the books and I joked about us two running the bar for him. Before I saw you he’d just called to say he’d been talking to your mum and they both thought it was a good idea. We go into partnership with your brother and they’d help us raise the money.’

  ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ I interrupted. This was in danger of becoming serious. ‘From having a bar job in Tenerife, we’ve gone into partnership with my brother and into debt with Jack to the tune of a hundred-and-sixty-five grand. All on an island two thousand miles away with a population that doesn’t speak English. And all behind my back. Where exactly does my opinion come into all this?’

  Joy became defensive as she always did when she was on the offensive. ‘Calm down. It’s just an idea. Just forget I ever said it and tomorrow we can go back behind that crappy stall and stink of fish for the rest of our lives.’

  Several pints later – I suspect that they had been laced a little – the whys and wherefores had progressed to whens and hows.

  CHAPTER 2

  I hadn’t seen my brother for several months. Like me he was drifting through life waiting for an opportunity to be handed to him on a plate. Over the three days since the seed of the idea had been planted, I assumed that like me he’d begun to think that this could possibly be it.

  Joy, myself, David and his girlfriend Faith had arranged to discuss the idea in The Stage Door pub in Manchester. It was next to the Palace Theatre where a degree in sociology and history had enabled my elder brother to secure the lofty position of box office assistant.

  Although we were virtually neighbours in age – there were only 11 months between us – we were poles apart in character. I was the practical brother, he was the creative one. I had logic, he had intellect. Ask about the social order of the Napoleonic age or the consequence of community br
eakdown in the 1980s and my eyes would glaze over, saliva would forge a path down my chin and my brain would start blowing raspberries. David, however, would casually launch into a scholarly diatribe over the shame of the proletariat and the fortitude of Karl Marx and then try and flog you two tickets to see Widow Twanky starring Keith Chegwin.

  University had taught him many things: how to dress like an East European chimney-sweep; how to smoke out of the side of his mouth like an aristocrat; how to behave like a socialist; and how to make £1.50 last a fortnight. Only on weekdays though. On the odd weekend when he would return to Mum and Jack’s house he muttered about the capitalist extravagances of home life before indulging himself in a bathroom full of designer toiletries, a kitchen full of food and a car full of petrol. I suspected that David, like me, was also ready for an out.

  ‘Well!’ I exclaimed, starting the discussion. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘We’re all for it,’ David replied. ‘We think it’s a great opportunity...’

  ‘You do,’ interrupted Faith looking up at my brother. Physically they were complete opposites. David had the physique of a retired rugby player but the heart of a teddy bear. At six-foot-two he was a good twelve inches taller than Faith who, with her tiny, doll-like features, seemed too delicate for a man with hands the size of bin lids. Her skin was porcelain white, a nose stud and four gold earrings provided a gilt-edge. She looked like a fragile piece of china but her apparent frailty was used to good effect. David would fuss round her like she was a vulnerable child.

  Where David merely had to breathe his words to be heard, Faith had to project her voice with all the force of a shout but without the volume just to reach ears that were rarely close by. ‘It’s a huge risk for me. I’d be giving up my career to gamble on this,’ she strained. Faith’s career had so far reached the dizzy heights of assistant manager at a Virgin Records store in Altrincham. We were not playing with high stakes here. ‘I mean, none of us have any experience of working behind a bar, in a kitchen or running a business,’ she continued.

  ‘I’ve worked in my Mum’s café and Joe and David have both had bar jobs. It’s just the next step, that’s all,’ said Joy.

  ‘Selling pies and serving tea is hardly the same as owning a restaurant,’ argued Faith.

  ‘We’ll learn,’ countered Joy.

  ‘That’s a bit flippant considering we’ll be in debt for a hundred-and-sixty-five-thousand pounds. It’ll be an expensive lesson if we get it wrong.’

  ‘We’ll just have to make sure we don’t then, won’t we?’

  ‘What about my cat? I can’t leave him.’

  ‘Surely a cat isn’t going to make the difference between going and staying?’

  ‘I’ve had him a long time.’

  ‘He’s not even your cat. He’s David’s.’

  ‘He still loves me though. I can’t leave him.’

  ‘Well, buy him some sunglasses and bring him along. He looks like he could do with a holiday.’

  ‘I’m being serious.’

  ‘So am I.’

  This was not a good start to a business partnership. David and I let the girls slug it out for a while as we bought another round of drinks.

  ‘You know that Mum and Jack said that they’d only lend us the money if we all went?’ I reminded David.

  ‘I know, but I’m not sure if Faith’s got it in her. You know what she’s like.’

  I wasn’t sure if any of us had it in us to leave the comfort zone of undemanding jobs in familiar surroundings and put ourselves in debt through owning a business that we knew nothing about on an island of which we knew even less. Although spurred on by Joy’s reckless enthusiasm to give it a go, Faith’s contrary attitude had raised uncertainty about the wisdom of Mum and Jack’s plan. I began to think if we were really ready for it. This was a commitment, the very thing that I had done my best to avoid all these years. A small part of me hoped that Faith would say no and we could sink back into the cosiness of a life without change, responsibility or effort.

  Although Jack’s offer to lend us some of the money and help arrange a mortgage for the bulk was a generous, and perhaps foolish, one, the rate of interest that we’d be paying back was a lot more than the rate he would have gained by holding the same money in a bank. At the end of the day it was a business proposition that was intended to benefit him as well as us. Financial gain was always behind any reasoning of Jack’s.

  The appeal of investing in a bar on the same complex as his apartment would satisfy many whims. He could waltz in and out, help himself to large brandies and puff on fat cigars. He would have achieved most men’s dream to own their own pub but without having to deal with the petty whims of a drunken Joe Public.

  An added bonus of course was that his two stepsons would finally have ‘proper jobs’ rather than messing about with mackerel, Karl Marx and Widow Twanky.

  If there was a certain amount of self-interest in the proposition, there was also a smattering of sense in Jack being the one to suggest it. After decades of flogging houses on the home front, he had retired from his UK partnership the year before and had set up a similar venture for property investors overseas. Tenerife was the first port of call as residential tourism was just starting to follow in the footsteps of its package holiday popularity. For UK investors seeking a red-hot winter bolthole whilst the rest of Europe turned blue, the Canary Islands had recently emerged as a leading contender, with one advantage over the Spanish Costas – winter sun.

  Located less than 100 miles from the coast of North Africa, the seven islands making up the Canarian archipelago had all the assets that a North European citizen looking to escape grey winters could ask for. Perma-sunshine, an eternal spring climate, safe bathing and an enlarging expat community.

  Historically this septuplet of islands had drawn the attention of many British visitors, most of them unwanted. In 1595 the Canarians beat off Sir Francis Drake as he tried to conquer La Palma. In 1797 Nelson and his arm parted ways during an ill-timed attack on Santa Cruz de Tenerife. And whilst docked off the same island in 1832, Charles Darwin was thwarted in his lifelong ambition to explore the archipelago because of the risk of a cholera epidemic.

  Perhaps with all the chronicled exploits of the early visitors it was surprising that it wasn’t until the late 1980s that the masses cottoned on to the appeal. For Joy and me though, it wasn’t the beaches, pine forests or volcanic badlands that had provided the lure. If Jack had diverted his attentions towards pig farming in Lithuania and dangled a means of becoming swine entrepreneurs I think we would have been equally enthused. It was merely the dream of an adventurous escape from our usual drudgery but with the added incentive of daily sunshine and a potential pot of gold if we managed to avoid spectacular failure.

  The problem now was that this dream had grown dangerously close to becoming reality and for me that would mean having to swap the excitement of making plans with the horror of having to follow them through. But the decision was now down to Faith.

  Despite several more remonstrations about what a crazy, illogical plan it was for herself and the cat, Faith finally, though reluctantly, agreed to come. Having overcome our own personal doubts, Faith’s decision took us to Phase II. We had to start preparing to move.

  For Joy and me the most pleasant part of Phase II was leaving the market. But that would only come after the most unpleasant part – telling Pat.

  He was in a particularly vicious mood that day. ‘You’re not going to sell that fish by whispering, Joe, for jeffin’s sake, shout.’

  ‘Three fish for a fiver! Fresh in today!’

  ‘That’s not shouting. That’s talking. Scream it out you nancy.’

  ‘THREE FISH FOR A FIVER. DON’T BE SHY, COME AND BUY.’

  ‘Joy, shift those chicken legs. They’ve been out of that jeffin’ freezer three times now. If they have to go back in one more time you’re going in with them. Sandra! What the bollocks...?’

  Sandra worked alone on the shellfish
‘department’ slotted at right angles to the fish and chicken stall. She was allowed to run it how she pleased and was a particular favourite of Pat’s. This was just as well as the slightest hint of a reprimand would make her reach for the Kleenex. Today however, wasn’t even a good day for Sandra.

  Occasionally, apart from the run-of-the-mill fish like cod, halibut and hake, Pat would take delivery of some unusual marine life. This was partly to show off to the other fishmongers in the market and partly to keep the attention of his regular customers.

  Emerging from the cold, dark, hush of Ashburner Street into the brightly-lit riot of early morning stall preparation was a slap in the face. Finding yourself eye-to-eye with a creature that you wouldn’t normally expect to come across in Bolton town centre was heart-stopping.

  I was deep in thought about warm quilts and soft pillows, hands burrowed in my donkey jacket, collar turned up in defence against the biting chill, when suddenly what appeared to be a large shark was grinning at me from atop a trestle table in the middle of the market hall. The apparition was indeed a 3-metre shark, Pat’s latest ‘attention-grabber’. It had certainly got mine. Pat’s beam matched the shark’s as he noticed my shock. ‘Think you can sell that?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a shark,’ I said.

  ‘Top marks Einstein. I can see education’s not been wasted on you.’

  But this morning it was fauna of a different kind that was destined to draw the gapes of Bolton’s plastic bag brigade. A fresh delivery of live crabs had arrived and Sandra had carefully arranged a dozen of them on their backs, little legs cycling in unison between the cockles and mussels.

  Unfortunately, a sympathetic pensioner had noticed they were upside down and had turned them back the right way whilst Sandra was off chasing a young boy who had helped himself to a fistful of crabsticks.