Hammond Innes - Medusa

Jorge Martinez was a lawyer, a slim man with sharp features and a way of holding his long, narrow head that suggested a cobra about to strike. He was, in fact, a very formidable little man and quite a prominent member of the ruling party, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español or PSOE. He had only been Alcalde in Mahon a short time, but already he had his hands firmly on the local power reins, his political sense acute. He got up as I reached the table, shook me by the hand, holding my elbow at the same time, and waved me to an empty seat opposite him. His wife was there, a dark-eyed, vivacious woman, also another lawyer and Colonel Jiménez of the Guardia Civil . Gonzalez topped up my glass with more brandy.

The Alcalde not only wanted me to attend the opening, but would I make a speech? ‘Five, ten minutes, what you like, Mr Steele.’ And he smiled, his use of the English address rather than the Spanish señor quite deliberate. ‘You are very much known in your community and you will comprehend that here in Menorca we have problems — political problems arising from all the villa people. Not those who come to end their lifes here, but the summer migration. It is a question of the environment. So you speak about that, hah?’

He stopped there, waiting for some acknowledgement, and when I made no comment he said brusquely, ‘You speak about the regulations the developers are agreeing to. Also you say this urbanización is a good developing; it is small, villas not too close, the environment of Albufera acknowledged, and it is good for our island. It brings work, it brings money, some foreign currency. Okay? You speak first in Spanish, then in English, so very short speaking, but the political point made very clear.’ And he added, ‘I am informed you always have good co-operation with my officials at the ayuntiamento . So you agree, hah?’

He had that explosive way of asking a question and insisting on agreement at the same time. In any case, when you have had a few drinks, and the commitment is over two weeks away, it is easier to say yes than to think up some convincing excuse on the spur of the moment. ‘ Bueno, bueno .’ He smiled, a glint of gold teeth. ‘So nice to talk with you, señor.’ I was dismissed, and I left the table with the feeling that if I had declined his invitation he would have seen to it that next time I needed a permit for something from the Mahon town hall it would not be forthcoming. But a speech in Spanish — or did he mean the local Catalan, which is very different? In any case, my Spanish was a hybrid of the two, having been picked up quite haphazardly as occasion demanded.

Somebody had thrown a pile of furze on the fire, the band half-drowned in the crackle of the flames. Florez passed, light on his feet, the young woman in his arms glittering with tinsel, the button eyes in his round face fixed on the table I had just left as though watching for an opportunity to ingratiate himself. I went back to the bar and stood there watching the shadows of the dancers moving against the limestone roofing and the far recesses of the great cavern. The dancers themselves were a flicker of fire-red images, the whole scene so lurid and theatrical that it seemed almost grotesque, the band thumping out a brazen cacophony of sound that ricocheted off the stone walls, the beat so magnified it almost split one’s ears.

‘Manuela has a good idea, no?’ a voice shouted in my ear. It was the Commander of the Naval Base. ‘Why does nobody think to use this place before? It is magnificent, eh?’

The music stopped abruptly, the dancers coming to a halt. Floodlights either side of the cavern entrance were switched on, spotlighting white-capped cooks and the charcoal fires with their steaming pans of soup and steaks sizzling and flaming on the coals. Lloyd Jones had stopped quite near us and I hailed him over. ‘I’d like you to meet Fernando Perez,’ I said. ‘He’s Jefe of the Navy here.’ I introduced him as Lieutenant Lloyd Jones of the Royal Navy, adding, ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

I sensed a moment’s hesitancy. ‘In fact, I’m now a Lieutenant Commander.’ He laughed, a little embarrassed. ‘I’ve just been promoted.’

We offered him our congratulations and Perez asked him what he was doing in Menorca. ‘You are on leave per’aps?’ He had a good command of English, particularly sea terminology, having had a short exchange posting to an RN carrier, though quite why they sent him to an aircraft carrier when he was a gunnery officer I don’t know.

‘Yes, on leave,’ Lloyd Jones said.

‘You have a ship, or are you posting ashore, like me?’ And Fernando Perez gave a deprecatory little smile.

‘No, I’m very lucky,’ Lloyd Jones replied. ‘With the promotion I’ve been offered a ship.’

‘And where is that?’

‘I’ll be joining at Gibraltar as soon as my leave is up.’

Fernando turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘You are indeed fortunate. Except for the Americans, who have so many ships, like the Russians, all our navies are in the same boat, eh?’ He smiled, looking pleased at having achieved a touch of humour in a foreign language. ‘Myself, I do not have a ship since five, no six years now. Already I have been ‘ere three, stuck on a little island where nothing ever happen.’

‘But at least you have the biggest guns in the Mediterranean,’ I said.

‘That is true. But what use are they, those big guns? They belong to another age and we have so few ammunition … Well, you know yourself. We fire them once a year and everybody complain because windows are shaken all over Mahon, some broken.’

‘Are these the guns out on the northern arm of the Mahon entrance?’ Lloyd Jones asked.

‘On La Mola, yes. If you wish I take you to look at them. It is a Zona Militar , a prohibited area, but there is nothing secret about those guns, they ‘ave been there too long. Everybody know about them.’

They started talking then about the problems of island defence and after a while I left them to see that the girls were being looked after, Soo in particular. I didn’t want her standing in the queue and maybe getting jostled. In any case, she was becoming a little self-conscious about her figure, I think because all our friends knew very well she had lost the first. But she was no longer at our table. She was at Manuela’s. Petra, too, and they had already finished their soup and were tucking into steak and mashed potato, Gonzalez Renato sitting between them and everybody at the table flushed with wine and talking animatedly.

I went to get myself some food then and Miguel joined me in the line-up for the barbecue. He had his cousin with him, both of them in dark suits, their hair oiled and their faces so scrubbed and clean I hardly recognised them. They hadn’t booked a table so I took them to mine. They had their wives with them, Miguel’s a large, very vivacious woman with beautiful skin and eyes, Antoni’s a small, youngish girl with plump breasts and enormous dark eyes that seemed to watch me all the time. I think she was nervous. I danced with her once. She moved most beautifully, very light on her feet, but she never said a word.

It was as I took her back to the table that I saw Soo dancing with Lloyd Jones. She shouldn’t really have been dancing at all, but by then I’d had a lot to drink and I didn’t care. Petra joined me and we danced together for the rest of the evening, and whenever I saw Soo she was with the Navy, looking flushed and happy, and talking hard.

At midnight the band stopped playing and Manuela lit the train that set the fireworks crackling. It was a short display and afterwards everybody began to drift off home. That was when Petra announced that I was going to drive her over to Cales Coves.