Summer Flings and Dancing Dreams

by Sue Watson

  ‘Oh Tony, thank you,’ I said opening the book. He’d written something in Spanish – I had no idea what it meant.

  Bailar como si nadie estuviera mirando, Tony x

  ‘What does it mean?’ I said, puzzled.

  ‘It means... dance like nobody’s watching,’ he said.

  I felt tears spring to my eyes and I hugged him goodbye, unable to say very much. But as I left the hospital, I swung those double doors open and strode out into the sunlight. I’m about to shoot for the moon, I thought – so look out world, here I come.

  17

  A ROOM WITH A VIEW AND A WOMAN ON A MISSION

  Going to Spain was a big deal for me on so many levels. I was living my life as my daughter had told me to and I was going so I could bring back the flamenco for Tony – I didn’t know if he’d ever dance it, but I would do it for him. Then there was my dad, whose dearest wish was to learn the Flamenco in the place where it was born. I packed Dad’s letter in my suitcase, I kept it in a transparent plastic wallet now to preserve it forever.

  Early the following morning I took my flight. I’d never travelled alone before and it felt exciting and scary. It sounds silly, but I felt like Dad was with me, keeping an eye on things and making sure I was safe. There seemed to be so many possibilities just getting on a plane to another country – I could be anyone I wanted to be, there was no one to tell me how I should behave or the sort of person I was. My mum had said I was overweight, my daughter had said I had no life, and most of my colleagues saw me as a quiet member of staff who did very little other than her job. I was now a woman on a mission, keen to prove to myself and those around me I was about so much more than a green nylon overall, big knickers and a little life.

  I looked through the plane window, thinking about how much our identity and sense of self is tied up with our friends and family. I felt so different and free being completely alone... I didn’t have to be me, I could be anyone while here in Spain... I could be Lola.

  The only person who really saw my potential was Tony... in the same way my dad wanted me to learn to dance, they both knew I could do it. They both loved me in their different ways, saw my imperfections and my doubts and yet they still believed in me.

  Tony had given me that belief in myself and the means to fly and I loved him for it.

  Arriving at Granada airport, I was immediately hit by the heat and colour and a sense of wonderful strangeness. I was a little scared, my mouth was dry as I walked towards what looked like a beaten up old bus. I showed my leaflet from Escuela Carmen de las Cuevas Flamenco, the school where I would be attending classes, and the driver nodded. I assumed that meant he was going my way and managed to get myself and my large suitcase on just before he set off.

  Dropping me off on the narrow, winding streets of the Albayzín, a district of Granada, the driver offered vague directions to the Flamenco School, but I felt quite unsure of where I was going. After a short, but hot and uphill walk, I reached the top of the steep slope and the edge of the Sacramonte Hill, which was a relief because according to the directions I had arrived. The school was built around the gypsy cave complex – a maze of whitewashed caves, staircases, terraces and rooms. And there it was, the entrance – an ancient gateway with a sign ‘Carmen de las Cuevas, School of Spanish for foreigners; Flamenco School’.

  I couldn’t believe it; I was standing on sacred ground, in the throbbing sunshine in Granada at the birthplace of flamenco. With my heart in my mouth and tears in my eyes, I took it all in. ‘We made it, Dad,’ I said under my breath and stood for a while, lost in my thoughts, before walking slowly towards the entrance.

  I opened the door leading into a beautiful whitewashed courtyard filled with sunshine and greenery. Several small trees were breaking through the terracotta floor and little tables for two or three were waiting. Once inside I was amazed that this tiny sugar-cube exterior cut into the side of the mountain held the unexpected secret of a warren of modern studios, grotto-like cave classrooms and vine-covered terraces. I was mesmerised by the portraits of famous flamenco artists that lined the walls along with brightly coloured ceramic plates. This wasn’t the Spain of package tours and manicured pools, it was like the postcards we’d received from Spain in the early seventies. When I was a child, anyone who’d been abroad was spoken of in the same breath as an astronaut who’d been to the moon. In the days before package tours a place called ‘abroad’ might as well have been on the moon for families like mine with little money. And this was the Spain we imagined back then – the Spain of flamenco dolls and women with dark eyes, black hair and swirling scarlet dresses. This was a place of Mediterranean mystery and magic. I stood in the hallway feeling like that little girl holding my flamenco doll in wonder and imagining what the world was like.

  I wandered into the reception area to be greeted by one of the teachers, who was Spanish, and after a mumbled ‘hola’ from me, gave me a short tour of the school. Peeping into classrooms where fourteen or fifteen women were all stomping and shouting and sweating, I immediately felt revitalised after my journey, and wanted to join in straight away. But she lead me away from the dancing through the caves and the echoes of flamenco guitars and up onto a beautiful sunny terrace. The views looked out onto Granada took my breath away. The woman must have thought I was mad, I just kept smiling and staring like I was walking through a wonderful dream – it was everything I’d hoped it would be and I couldn’t wait to dance. Finally she gave me all the class details, directions to my accommodation and said she’d see me tomorrow.

  Leaving the school, I could still hear distant strains from a flamenco guitar, a voice singing in Spanish and the percussion-like sound of stomping, clapping dancers. My heart did a little skip – I was excited like a child, and despite the intense heat wanted to dance through the streets. Fortunately I managed to resist and walked carefully, following the directions, and headed to the apartment. It was set in the hills further down the road and I found it easily. It took a few minutes to work the key in the lock but once inside I felt pure relief from the blistering afternoon heat. The apartment was a cool stone with shiny white floors and walls. Consisting of just one room with a tiny kitchen off to the side, a bathroom and a little sofa bed, this was all I needed. The place was light and airy, but at the same time made cosy with ceramic plates, more brasses and pictures on the walls and traditional tapestry throws and cushions on the sofa. I walked towards the window to get a sense of where I was and realised they opened out on to a tiny, but lovely patio with the most spectacular views, just like the terrace at the school – looking down onto Granada. My throat swelled at the magnificent sight before me. Hundreds of higgledy-piggledy ancient buildings scattered and piled up in the sunshine, and there in the middle The Alhambra Palace. I’d read all about the palace before I came, and it was described by Moorish poets as ‘a pearl set in emeralds’. I could see now that the palace was the colour of pearls and the emeralds were the surrounding forests.

  It was majestic – described in the guidebook as ‘part fort, part palace, part garden’, I stood in awe at the view – like a huge feast laid before me, I longed to eat it all up and savour every moment while I was here. Gazing at the palace, I decided it had to be one of my first sightseeing stops and I ran to grab the phrase book so I could work out what to ask for in Spanish when I visited.

  Opening the book, I saw Tony’s message and suddenly missed him terribly, so I called him.

  ‘Hi Tony? I’m here! I wish I could say you’re not missing anything and it’s terrible. But it’s amazing! I have a patio and a fabulous view and the school is brilliant and... I am so grateful. I am loving this so much already, I’ve only just got here and I never want to leave!’

  ‘Oh Lola, it sounds as fabulous as I hoped it would be...’

  ‘I just feel so bad...’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re stuck in hospital and I’m here and...’

  ‘Right. I knew this would happen. Now listen to me “Laur
a can’t”, I do not want to hear any stupid talk about you feeling guilty because you’re having a good time. You are not responsible for my happiness. And while I’m on the subject, you’re not responsible for your mother’s or your daughter’s either...’ he said. ‘They have their own lives, as do I – and I have to tell you that a very cute nurse is tending to my every need at the moment. So believe it or not I’m very happy to be “stuck in hospital” as you put it.’

  ‘I know but...’

  ‘Shut up and let me speak. Guess what, sweetcakes? You will never find your own happiness until you stop fretting about everyone else’s.’

  ‘Is that from a book?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s from “Find the fear and jump in the fucking fire”... or something like that. Forget everyone else. Find yourself a hot Spanish guy. I will be so furious with you if you come back a virgin.’

  I started to laugh and with that he turned his phone off – which was either for dramatic impact or because the male nurse was ‘tending’ to him. I felt better after that call and as he’d made me feel so positive, I decided to leave Mum and Sophie until later.

  I unpacked, showered and made myself a cup of tea (observing Tony’s mantra which was ‘you’ll always be okay if you carry lip balm and tea bags’) and sat on my patio just gazing at the whitewashed buildings slowly turn to pale gold. No endless loop of musak playing in the background, no ‘do you have a loyalty card?’ no Julie around to tell me how to behave, how to feel. Best of all – no bloody conveyor belt of people’s whole lives in consumer goods flashing before me.

  Later I dressed in a kaftan and jeans and marvelled at my spectacle-less face and the length of my hair. I’d never had long hair in my life but recently I’d felt confident enough to let it grow and I liked how it felt. So checking myself one last time in the ornate mirror in the bathroom, I wandered down into the town. I had no plans to trawl the vicinity for available Spanish men as Tony had instructed and sought only sangria and supper.

  It was early evening and pleasantly warm after the blistering afternoon heat I’d arrived in. I walked down narrow roads lined with dust and prickly pear trees, stopping at a clearing that looked right across the city just as the sun was dipping behind the mountains on the South East slopes. Arriving in Albayzín, the city’s Moorish quarter, I spotted a young girl twirling and flapping her dress at a guy leaning against a restaurant wall. He was playing an accordion and diners sitting outside the restaurants were clapping along. Flamenco was in the streets here, in the blood of the locals, in the caves and the vines. And I felt it was in me too. The rhythm fizzed through my blood, the fiery stomping punctuating my walk as I wandered past the diners on the Plaza de San Miguel Bajo. The music chased me on clouds of orange and jasmine along narrow, whitewashed streets to a little tapas bar, an arched doorway in a wall, where I decided to eat.

  Like most of the buildings in the Albayzín, the bar was Moorish in style, with decorated arches, carved wooden ceilings, scalloped stucco, and patterned ceramic tiles. I took a table by one of the filigreed windows looking out onto the busy street. It was so different to the streets at home, the view from my checkout, the people I saw every day in green nylon. If we could choose our birthplace, I would choose this, a place of warmth and vibrant life, I thought as I gazed through the window. Oh if only I could have shared this with my father - together we would hear the heartbeat of this place of exotic splendour and heat like I’d never known.

  I was so excited I didn’t think I was hungry, but I enjoyed a delicious plate of tapas, crunching on fried, garlicky shrimps and a caramel-rich manchego cheese accompanied by crusty bread and a crisp Rioja. I’d waited so long for something like this and now here it was, and here I was drinking wine in paradise. ‘Life can sometimes take you by surprise,’ I thought – but only if you let it.

  The next day I set off up the hill to the school. I had been quite nervous, but once inside was overwhelmed by the friendliness of the teachers and all the other dancers. There were fourteen of us learning to dance for those two weeks and as Tony had chosen the ‘intermediate’ classes, I just hoped they wouldn’t be too tough on me.

  We put on our shoes and some of the other dancers changed, but I was wearing a T-shirt and skirt that I’d felt would work for the dance. The teacher told us we would be learning the ‘tangos’ element of flamenco. Pronounced ‘tangoss’, this involved a more familiar rhythm than some flamenco dancing so we could acclimatise. We all trooped into the classroom and began an hour and a half of fabulous, fiery foot-stamping and clapping. The joy was immeasurable, as was the stress-relief – I felt like I was in another world, completely taken away by the music and the rhythm. We also did compás classes which were all about the rhythm, the beat – a vital part of flamenco as it brings together the guitar, the voice and the dance.

  I made friends with a couple of other women in the group around my own age, but as one was German and the other French, we communicated with smiles and nods. Somewhere in the jumble of flamenco and foreign language we all established that we’d like to attend a few Spanish language classes also held at the school. My Spanish phrasebook from Tony would be useful but this was a chance to get to know other students, so signed up for the ‘Spanish for beginners’ course. I was glad I had because according to our dance teacher it was ‘muy importante’ to learn some Spanish, if only to understand which particular flamenco style we were supposed to be clapping.

  The first day was intense, we were surrounded by mirrors, forced to watch ourselves stumble through the machine-gun beats, the sweat, the endurance. I hadn’t comprehended the physical stamina and the mental agility required to grasp the complexity of rhythm and movement. I watched the teacher’s feet, almost too fast for my eyes, and tried desperately to copy what she was doing, but her feet were speaking a foreign language to mine. That first night I was completely exhausted, stiff and unable to contemplate any kind of movement – fit only to fall into bed. I lay there just imagining the next day, the heat, the wonderful views from the patios at Carmen de las Cuevas. I thought about how, just a year before I could never have imagined myself here, alone in another country learning Flamenco.

  The next day, after another hour and a half of arduous stomping and clapping, I staggered out to a vine-clad, sun-drenched terrace with my new friends. Here in the midday sunshine we began a rather confused conversation with their schoolgirl English and my very scant knowledge of French (which consisted of reciting a list of French cheeses available at Bilton’s and didn’t really work as a language on its own). We all clutched our notebooks where we wrote down the steps in number order, all loving the dance, the place – but complaining through mime about our stiff joints. We were laughing hysterically at one point as Bette, the German lady, attempted to tell us what her job was by getting down on all fours and snorting like a pig. Eva, the Parisian woman, was laughing so much she was running around the terrace clutching her tummy as I wondered what the French was for pelvic floor. Not surprisingly, the three of us (well the two of them) were attracting some attention and a guy wandered over to our table and said, ‘I translate? I speak the French and the English and... little bit German?’ He held his thumb and forefinger almost together to show how little German he knew – but compared to me he was probably fluent. Gratefully we nodded, inviting him to our table, where he introduced himself as Juan. He was Spanish, a bit Antonio Banderas with longish hair and dark eyes, and he told us he lived in Granada and was attending the school to learn flamenco guitar. With a few questions he was able to reveal that Bette was a pig farmer, Eva worked in a bank and I worked in a big shop. It was basic, but it saved me from miming a day at the checkout, and it helped to bond us all – albeit slightly. Being here in this wonderful place steeped in the dance and the culture and the sunshine, it depressed me to even think of Bilton’s, so I was glad when the conversation moved back to my favourite subject, dancing.

  ‘You dance the flamenco?’ Juan asked and we all nodded enthusiastically and Eva
mimed a little with her hands and stamped her feet and we all laughed politely. As lovely as these ladies were it was going to be a tough week trying to communicate in three languages, and once his task was complete, Juan said his goodbyes and told us he was attending the school for three weeks. ‘If you need me in translation just to stamp your feet and click of your fingers,’ he laughed. ‘And I will be there.’ He said this three times in three different languages. I didn’t know the words for ’wonderful’ or ‘take me, I’m yours,’ but as he wandered away, every woman at the table was glowing.

  18

  HOT CHORIZO AND A SPICY SPANISH POET

  I was determined to make the most of my time here and really explore. Two weeks wouldn’t be long to capture this beautiful city and I wanted to start straightaway, so later that afternoon I decided to visit the Alhambra, the place that had really captured my imagination in the guide book

  I headed into Granada on foot, as I had the first night I arrived. It was late afternoon, and I hadn’t expected it to be so incredibly hot. Walking along the dusty road, exposed to the arid heat was soon sucking my bones dry and I hadn’t brought a bottle of water with me or any kind of cover apart from my sunglasses and hat. It wasn’t like me to be so disorganised and I blamed the Mediterranean for messing with my head. I looked behind me, I’d come too far to go back, so stopped by the side of the road and sheltered under a prickly pear tree.

  I wasn’t there long when a motorbike pulled up at the side of the road. ‘Hola guapa!’ I heard and my heart lifted slightly. I knew from my phrase book that meant ‘hello gorgeous,’ which was a bit unexpected but not unpleasant.

  ‘You don’t be sitting here by the road, it’s too hot – midday, Laura?’ and the admirer knew my name too... how weird.