‘She’s more than intriguing.’
He laughed again. ‘You’re hooked!’
Greg stood, took off his shirt and picked up his board. ‘Coming in?’
‘Sure,’ I said, strangling a yawn.
‘Why so tired?’
‘Hard ground and a snoring Kiwi. I’m camping with some guys from Down Under.’
He laughed at my nightly ritual — erecting the tent and bailing at dawn.
‘You?’
‘I live in a mansion.’
A few doors down from the Spanish consulate at the Côte des Basques was a magnificent four-storey stately villa in pale pink. A sign bearing a red skull and crossbones was the only clue that the rear of the ground floor had collapsed, falling a hundred metres to the sea below, leaving a gaping hole the width of the house. The remainder teetered on the edge of the cliff.
Inside was dusty. Pieces of broken ceiling plaster lay scattered on the floor, but the beautiful wide staircase leading to the upper floors was still intact and met the ground floor where the earth had subsided. Someone had put a board across from the nearest solid ground to the bottom of the stairs. By carefully ‘walking the plank’ you could reach the staircase and access the floors above.
Upstairs seemed safe enough, provided you stayed on the landward half.
Word had passed around and about fifteen itinerant travellers were now bedding down in this new-found luxury dormitory.
I set up my sleeping bag next to a French couple. The guy introduced himself. ‘Marc,’ he said. ‘And this is Giselle.’ I guessed Marc was in his late thirties by his wispy shoulderlength hair and matching grey beard, but I doubted Giselle was even twenty. Her sad eyes wandered past me.
They were an odd pair, not romantically linked, more like brother and sister. Marc spoke reasonable English, but not Giselle. She rarely conversed with the others and usually only through Marc. There was something beguiling in her fragile ways and she caught the attention of all the men. She, however, seemed oblivious, trapped in a sort of consuming depression. Mostly, she’d sit on her bed gazing vacantly into the distance, disconnected. Marc would occasionally whisper to her in French and bring her around. We never did learn precisely what had crushed this delicate woman’s spirit, but at times you could sense the seeds of healing.
‘What’s your story?’ asked one guy. She shrugged and look to Marc for assistance.
‘She’s had a difficult time,’ said Marc gently. ‘And she doesn’t like to talk about it. So, please, don’t pressure her.’ He stroked her hair. Marc was a gentle soul, who’d left his native Paris to recover from drug addiction and become Giselle’s saviour.
Marc had a wizardly aura. Much of the time, he too seemed lost in contemplation, drifting in another world. He was like an old sailor who’d travelled the world, returned, but told little of his adventures. When he did speak, we listened, like devotees of a mystical guru.
I talked to him about surfing, the exhilaration. ‘That feeling’s seductive,’ he said. ‘Takes a grip, you want more and more.’ He stroked his beard. ‘Take care to keep it in balance. It’s an enlightening distraction, mon ami, not a destination.’ I didn’t know exactly what he meant. But it made me wonder.
Together, Marc and Giselle cast a soft ghostly shadow over our dark and dusty dormitory.
Greg had established himself on the other side of the room under a window, his drawing and painting tools in a satchel beside his sleeping bag.
I woke early the next morning and silently watched him propped against the wall sketching, using the shaft of dustfilled light that filtered through the broken shutters of the window above. He seemed right at home, natural, even in this strange abode. He laboured with a quiet controlled energy. There was a look in his eye that I caught from time to time, something from deep within warmed him, and drove him forward. He’s lucky, I thought. He’s found his purpose in life, his vocation, his passion. It made me a little jealous, a little sad. My path seemed so unclear. Was I really destined to become a doctor?
But Marc’s caring for Giselle moved me too. His gentle way of looking after her was inspiring. He was part nurse, part counsellor, but mostly a devoted friend. Like Mum looking after my sister Louise, forever attentive, seeming to sense her needs before she realised them herself. Even the smallest things. Adjusting the makeshift pillow, helping her sit up, proffering a drink of water, wiping her brow, smoothing her hair, setting an errant wisp in place, a comforting look, a reassuring touch, a few whispered words. Just like Mum.
More like a nurse than a doctor.
Doctors and nurses both care for people, I supposed, in different ways. Nursing seemed more intimate. Could a doctor get that close? That intimate? I doubted it. They were men of science, preoccupied with rational thought. I’d seen them in the hospital, always in a hurry, passing from bed to bed, from patient to patient. Occasionally, they’d pause and then, for a brief moment, you might see that look in their eye, the one Greg had. But the glow didn’t seem to last. Maybe it was buried too deep. Maybe they didn’t give it time to burn, like Greg did.
The ancient ceiling was all cobwebs and dust and flaking paint. It needed care too. Incredibly grand in its heyday, I imagined, but now broken and crumbling and hanging on for dear life. A bit like Giselle.
And there we were, literally teetering on the brink. Mum would die if she could see me. She was a scaredy-cat at heart. Always worrying. Strange, I mused, that she allowed us boys to take such risks. That must have been hard. Perhaps she paired the risk with sport, and reconciled it that way. Sport was okay, and therefore risk in the name of sport was okay. So travelling, or anything else, in the name of surfing was okay too. Was that how she thought? I’d never asked.
I surveyed the room. This was a bit of grand old Europe. Though not the kind my parents had in mind. Dad would have a field day in here. A fix-it man’s heaven. He’d be at it from dusk until he fell into bed at night, distracted by his world of repair and renewal.
Giselle let out a muffled, hollow moan, like a cry from the bottom of the sea, and rolled over.
Repair and renewal. Humans needed that too. Maybe Mum was right. Maybe with her caring genes and Dad’s fix-it genes, I could fix people. But a vocation should feel natural, shouldn’t it? Surfing felt natural. And you should be passionate about what you do, shouldn’t you?
Maite had lit up when she talked about her people, her heritage. Where was my glow? What made me burn inside?
Not much.
Maite. Mysterious Maite. I’d love to see her again. My feelings for her felt natural. Was she part of my destiny? But Maite meant Mundaca.
Mundaca. I felt natural there.
Every morning we surfed the Côte des Basques. In the afternoons, we’d hitch to the Grand Plage. Greg was keen to hear more about the waves in Mundaca. He’d heard about the mythical left-hander, and with his ‘goofy foot’ stance, the wave sounded especially appealing. He’d be facing into the wall of the fast-breaking wave, making it easier to ride. Between surfs, and sometimes out in the water, we continued our conversations. He talked less and less about Morocco, and more and more about finding good waves.
Well after midnight, Greg woke us up. ‘There’s someone downstairs,’ he whispered loudly.
‘Who?’ I whispered back.
‘Probably someone looking for a place to sleep,’ he replied, yawning.
We listened. A few creaks, footsteps on the staircase. Then torches bounced off the ceiling in the landing. The door flung wide and torchlight filled the room. ‘Attention! Attention!’ a gruff voice shouted from behind the blinding light. ‘Police!’
Everyone was suddenly awake.
Four heavy-booted gendarmes bustled into the room. ‘Get up, all of you. Allez! Vite!’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Marc when a gendarme grabbed at his sleeping bag. ‘Calmez-vous.’
The gendarme started yelling. ‘Everyone up. Allez! This house is condemned. You are illegal trespassers,’ he boomed.
> We were all dressing, packing our things, mutterings from the sleepiest heads, while the police hurried us along. The superior shone his torch at us. ‘Passports, identity cards,’ he called out sharply.
Silence. The shadows on the walls went still. A floorboard creaked. We dropped what we were doing and fumbled to find our documents. One by one, they perused them. There was no escape. ‘Get your things and come with us,’ said the superior to one Spanish guy.
Jesus, I wonder what he’d done.
His face was all strangled grin. He shrugged and two gendarmes led him away while the rest of us were herded out of the building with a warning never to return.
‘What a pain in the arse,’ said Greg.
With our sleeping bags draped over our shoulders, we filed past the laughing guards outside the Spanish consulate to nearby bushes and bedded down on the uneven ground. I drifted off to the pitter-patter of light rain on my sleeping bag. Even the skies were spitting on us.
The following day, we snuck back into the mansion.
The Spanish man they had arrested reappeared late morning. ‘They think I am Basque terrorist,’ he mumbled. ‘Me Basque, but not terrorist.’
Greg and I exchanged a vacant look.
‘Basque terrorist not sleep here. Terrorist not stupid,’ he added. ‘Me? I look like terrorist?’
Greg gave him a bemused stare.
‘Never met a terrorist, mate,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Wouldn’t know one if I fell over him.’
He laughed. ‘Fall for terrorist? Not good idea.’
Greg and I hatched a plan to return to Mundaca. ‘We’ll have to camp out to begin with,’ I told him, excited. ‘It’s summer and I reckon accommodation will be scarce.’
‘I love camping!’ He rubbed his hands on his thighs. ‘Spain! I can’t wait, man. Let’s buy a car.’
I felt the smile slip from my face. ‘I’m on a pretty tight budget, Greg. I don’t have money for a car.’
He strummed his fingers on his thigh, as if weighing the risks. ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy us a car if you buy the camping equipment — tent, stove and cooking gear. And we can share the cost of petrol. How does that sound?’
‘Perfect!’ I felt like hugging him. ‘Absolutely perfect!’ Then a thought, my joy dissolving. ‘But I can’t drive.’
‘I don’t mind driving.’ The moustache twitched. ‘You’ll be washing a lot of dishes.’
Greg already had his sights on an old grey Citroen Deux Chevaux, which he took me to check out. ‘It’s not powerful,’ he said, ‘but man, what it lacks in power it’ll make up for in economy. It’s stingy on the gas and fuel’s going to be our biggest expense. How’s this French gearstick?’ He slid it in and out of a hole in the centre of the dashboard. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’
We called by the mansion to collect our belongings. Marc was the only one there to bid us adieu. Giselle had been having a bad day and was sleeping.
‘It’s tragic, man,’ said Greg, when we reached the car. ‘Such a beautiful chick, but she looks like a ghost. I heard there was a suicide in her family.’
‘Yeah, tragic alright,’ I said, wondering why anyone would kill themselves. Could life get that bad?
CHAPTER 2
Greg guided the Citroen south, past The Steakhouse to the turn-off for Spain. His blue eyes gleamed behind his glasses and a grin was set firmly beneath his newly trimmed moustache. The little grey Citroen strained up the hills, laden with luggage and surfboards, but otherwise purred contentedly, heading south-west for the Spanish border.
Greg seemed to be purring too. He drove with his long limbs stretched out, left hand draped over the steering wheel.
I stretched and eased back against the seat. It felt good to be returning to Spain, as if I was back on track. And it was good for Greg too, one more step removed from the Morocco experience.
The hum of the motor and the sight of the distant Pyrenees sent me drifting back to that first journey.
My parents had sent me the few known details of my brother’s whereabouts, the name of the town, and the bar where to ask for him. I’d studied a map of northern Spain in my London bed-sit, the route and the various turn-offs. It appeared straightforward enough. I was hoping he was still there.
He had to be. I’d worked hard for five months mopping the floor of a coffee factory and saving my precious pounds so I could make the trip. It was 1975, and anything seemed possible.
I was itching to head out into the world, but I left London later than planned and the journey through France was slow, marred by rain, interminable waits, an unpleasant night in a chicken coop with two Irishmen, and a long torturous walk out of Bordeaux.
Hitchhiking was certainly cheap, but it was so unreliable. At least the weather had fined up while I travelled further south, and when I crossed the border into Spain, it felt like the gates to summer had been opened.
I reached San Sebastian in the late afternoon, grubby, weary and hungry. I couldn’t speak a word of Spanish and my schoolboy French was next to useless, but I found myself a hotel and before long I was under the shower. Running hot water — what a miracle!
In the evening I took a short walk along the seawall promenade and, as light faded into night, inhaled the salty breath of the Bay of Biscay for the first time. I felt an unexpected peace. In many ways, it was like breathing for the first time.
I slept well and before long was back on the road. A lucky ride had me at Amorebieta, the turn-off for Mundaca, an hour later.
Greg swerved around a pothole, rousing me momentarily, but I was soon drifting again, back to that road that climbs steadily out of the valley floor and into the hills.
The hills, paled by the strong sun, were a yellowy-green at that mid-morning hour. The early mist was gone, chased off by the sun’s first rays. The sun, well clear of the mountains, pushed upwards.
I slung my backpack over my shoulders and looked behind. The car I’d hitched a lift with had disappeared, leaving the road deserted. I was alone.
Walking up the curving road, I began to unwind, a slow release from the grasp of the city and all things man-made. Each step took me higher above the town and deeper into the folding green hills of the Pyrenees. It was my first morning in Spain and I couldn’t have felt better.
Hiking rhythmically up the cracked bitumen into the hills with the sun on my back, the road was deceptively steep, my thighs were straining and sweat trickled down my neck. I paused to rest. Gazing back, I was struck by the mountains. ‘God! Look at that line of peaks,’ I said to no-one. ‘So mysterious, so silent.’
I was eighteen and venturing into a strange new land and, despite its foreignness to me, I felt quietly confident. I’d thumbed my way around, but that was only the beginning. A taste! I wanted to see more, experience more, like my brother, John. My surfing friends all had similar travel aspirations. We all had that longing, that dream to find perfection.
I loosened off my pack, took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from my face and neck. A hawk lifted from a nearby meadow, prey in its clutches, spiralling slowly upward to a carefree blue sky, drifting with the current across the valley until lost, a speck merging with nature.
Climbing the road again, the gentler foothills of the Pyrenees reminded me of Apollo Bay and the Otway Ranges along the Victorian coast, but the thick, long grass, wildflowers, low rough stone walls, the clay-tiled rooftops of the farmhouses — all set against a backdrop of pine forests, the Pyrenees and a pale blue sky — told me I was in Spain. I had a reason to feel that quiet pleasure.
One of those compact rounded Italian cars made in Spain snaked up the road, whining its way towards me. Instinctively, I stuck out my thumb.
‘Francés?’ the dark-haired driver asked when I opened the door.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Australian.’ I wondered if all young foreigners were French until proven otherwise.
‘Ahhh! Australiano!’ He sounded pleased. He ushered me in, sweeping the passen
ger seat forward with a sturdy tanned arm so I could stow my pack. ‘A dónde va?’ he asked enthusiastically, easing the car back onto the road.
‘Mundaca,’ I replied.
‘Mundaca?’ he asked, his forehead knitted, his thick lips slightly open, a single gold tooth visible in a row of white. ‘Lequetio.’ He pointed to himself, smiling broadly, glancing my way with a satisfied look. He spoke a few sentences in Spanish, finishing each with ‘Guernica’.
I knew the name Guernica from the map, it was on my route.
‘Parlez-vous français?’ he asked, swivelling his muscular neck.
‘Un peu,’ I replied, a little nervously. It really was ‘un peu’. Three years of French at high school had left me with a minimum of conversational skill. Like my friends, I’d found learning a foreign language a compulsory torture.
‘Je m’appelle Arturo,’ he said, smiling gently and proffering his hand.
Big hands for a small man, I thought. ‘Owen.’ I returned his firm handshake. ‘Je m’appelle Owen.’
Arturo spoke only slightly more French than I did, which put me at ease, and we managed to conduct a primitive dialogue while we drove through the undulating hills. He seemed pleased. ‘I don’t get a chance to speak French too often,’ he said, ‘It’s good to test my skill.’
It was a test for both of us. When the skill faltered our fumbling hands tried to do the talking, the pauses growing from hesitant silence to soft groans, head shakes, then laughter.
Guernica, more modern than old, was almost deserted at that midday hour. We pulled up at the town plaza, surrounded by older buildings. ‘Manger,’ Arturo said, putting his fingers to his lips. He led me up a few steps to a wide stone walkway, and we made our way through the scattering of round tables covered with red-checked cloths that sat unoccupied outside several bars.
Mundaca: A Tale of Intrigue, Romance and Surfing in Franco's Spain Page 2
