Here she was, back in Tenerife, with the intense Canarian sun beating through her jacket as she walked across the tarmac at Reina Sofia Airport. Walking through endless corridors which led at last to passport control and the baggage hall, Pat wondered if she should take a trolley, then realised she couldn't, because she didn't have the requisite one euro piece. Her bags would be there, wouldn't they? She stood beside the stationary luggage carousel and waited, alongside family groups their children attired in colourful holiday clothes and retired couples wearing loose-fitting trousers and floppy hats. Only Pat was alone.
Just as the carousel jerked into action, her mobile phone rang and for a few frantic moments she rummaged through her handbag, purse, comb, sun cream, lipsalve with sunblock ... There it was! She checked the display as she pressed the green button. "Hello Helen. I'm here."
"Hi Mum. Are you okay?" said her daughter. "I'm fine"
"I'm so worried about you doing this all by yourself."
"Helen love, the luggage is coming through now. I don't want to miss my case on the conveyor belt."
"OK, Mum. Talk to you tomorrow. Just go and talk to Carla and put the apartment on the market. As soon as you can. Then you can come back home."
"I will. Thanks for ringing, love."
Pat watched as blue cases, black cases, green ones, red ones tumbled down the luggage chute. Hers was brown. She drew in her breath and held it, but a few minutes later she and her suitcase trundled together through the dowdy black airport building and out into the blinding sunlight of the street. "The things you worry about never happen," Ken used to say.
"Playa de las Americas, por favor," she said, in laboured Spanish, to the driver of one of the white Mercedes taxis lined up outside. . .
"Where in Las Americas?" answered the taxi-driver in English. "El Paraiso."
The car lurched off in a cloud of dust, on to the open road and the savage Tenerife landscape, huge bare and jagged boulders, tall, spiky cactuses with livid red flowers. Soon they entered Playa de Las Americas, passing streets of skyscraper hotels, bars with flashing signs, restaurants advertising paella and cheaper and cheaper beer. Then they turned a corner and left all that behind.
"Beautiful, beautiful," said the taxi driver, as he drove alongside the cream and blue Andalusian style perimeter wall of El Paraiso.
Pat nodded without speaking as she counted out Euro notes for the taxi fare. Would €10 be enough for a tip, she wondered.
"Here?" He stopped in front of the mottled blue marble staircase, which led up to El Paraiso reception.
After taking his money, he sped off leaving her to lug her suitcase up the marble staircase, one step at a time; Ken used to carry the luggage up the steps. Outside the apartment door at last, she took out her key - the special Tenerife key, with the picture of the island's largest volcano, Mount Teide, on the fob. This will be the last time, she thought, but yet she felt that familiar frisson of excitement.
"We could afford it, you know," Ken said one day as they walked past an estate agent's window on the way back to back to their hotel.
"Don't be daft! " Pat retorted.
"Why not? Our daughter is off our hands, married, with children of her own, in work and earning more than we ever did. And always telling us what to do." They went inside and spoke to Carla, the agent. She showed them several apartments, but they knew El Paraiso was right the minute they walked inside - airy, spacious rooms, simple pine furniture, and a patio, which looked out to sea and the island of La Gomera.
"Do you like it?" Ken whispered to Pat.
"Well, yes, but-" The price was in millions of pesetas.
He turned to Carla. "We'll have it."
The first things she spotted as she walked into the apartment were Ken's pyjamas on his pillow, almost new, a Christmas present from Helen. Eighteen months ago, he had forgotten to pack them. For a moment, tears welled up in her eyes, but it was no good crying when there was no one to see or hear. After wiping her face with a tissue, dusty and brittle through being left out for a year and a half, she took everything out of her case, put it away in the usual drawers and tidied the apartment. She dusted the paintings - her paintings -, which Ken
had insisted on hanging on the apartment walls.
"I'm not a proper artist," she used to say to him.
"Well, I like them. And I live here."
He had walked two miles in the searing midday sun to buy her an easel and paints from what was probably Tenerife's only art shop. "You're so hot! " she had said when he returned, out of breath and red in the face.
"This is Tenerife! "
She had reached into the fridge for the mineral water.
"A bit of warmth ... is what we... come for."
"But Ken-"
"I'm fine." He wasn't.
Helen rang again the following day. "How are you doing, Mum?"
"I'm okay."
"Have you done it yet?"
"No, love."
"All you need to do is to go into the office. You know where it is, don't you? Insist on speaking to Carla herself. She speaks very good English, as I remember."
"Helen, I've only just got here. I'm just settling in."
"Don't get too settled, Mum. You really do need to get on with this. Then you can come home. I worry about you being there all by yourself."
"I'm all right."
"No. It's not good to spend time alone. Those people you used to play bridge with, are they around? What was their name? I met them a couple of times. She used to be a schoolteacher."
"The Thorntons. I've no idea."
After ringing off, Pat stepped outside and peered around the dividing wall. The loud red and yellow umbrella three apartments along indicated that the Thorntons were indeed in residence. "Oh dear," she muttered to herself. Pat and Ken enjoyed their cards, but, as he used to say, "I'm not prepared to spend an El Paraíso afternoon sitting in a stiflingly hot room with the shutters closed, listening to Kathleen Thornton screaming at her poor husband, 'Surely you knew I had the ace of trumps!'"
Next morning Pat spotted Kathleen in the supermarket. Acting on reflexes like a footballer, she dodged behind an adjacent stack of San Miguel. "I got away with it, Ken!" she whispered into the beer cans as her 'friend' moved on to another aisle. "Just in time!"
She passed Carla's office on the way back. For a moment, her pace slackened. She even allowed her eye to move over the glossy adverts for properties and then to pass through the window, on to Carla herself sitting behind her desk, her phone tucked her chin, her tanned face, as always, creased into a smile.
Pat wouldn't stop today, though; she was very hot and carrying heavy shopping. Besides, she thought as she unlocked the apartment, it would be rude to go in just as Carla was about to close for siesta. She put away what she had just bought - cheese, mixed nuts, green tomatoes, a tin of asparagus, a plastic sachet of green olives and coconut yoghurt. Ken hadn't liked coconut yoghurt, or olives. "I will do it tomorrow," she informed the inside of the fridge.
The following morning she got up at half past seven, dressing herself in a skirt and her 'good' shoes, because Carla would wear a businesswoman's pencil skirt and high heels with bare tanned feet. She had a job to do and she would get on and do it, before Helen's evening phone-call and her inevitable question. Not that she was afraid of her daughter, of course. Well, not really.
"Helen's the best daughter in the world," Ken used to say, "but she's bossy. Always has been since she was a little girl."
Pat breakfasted outside on the patio, as everybody did at El Paraiso, although not as early as she was today. Every apartment was asleep, towels from yesterday slung over the balustrades and curtains closed. She drunk in the view around her, crinkly fronds of the banana palms, red flowers on plump spiky cacti, huge orange lilies and tiny purple flowers which she and Ken believed to be bougainvillea but they weren't sure and they never got round to looking it up. When I come back from Carla's, this won't properly be mine anymore, she thought.
She went back inside, washed up and set off, arriving outside Carla's office at ten past nine to find the blinds drawn across the windows; the sign on the door read, 'Cerrado los lunes'. Pat felt her energy drain from her heart, into her arms and along her fingers, down her legs and out through her toes. 'Closed Mondays' it reiterated, as if she didn't already know. 'Montags geschlossen' it went on, revelling in her discomfiture.
She jumped when the travel agent next door pulled down his awning with a cacophonous clatter and scraped the pavement as he set up sandwich boards advertising coach tours.
"English?" he called to her. "Er ... yes."
"Mount Teide, madam. Today. Ten hundred hours," he went on, as she stared at the unlit office. "For
you, €50.
She shook her head and scuttled back to the apartment. Although she thought as she changed back into her holiday clothes, she would like to see the sights of Tenerife again, especially as she was unlikely to return. Ken would have hired a car, of course, but Pat didn't feel confident to drive 'on the wrong side of the road'. She looked at her watch: only half past nine.
"The other people on the buses are really nice," she said to Helen that evening. "You've been on a
bus tour? Wasn't it full of ... old people?"
"I'm not so young myself, dear. But guess what? I'm going to Los Gigantes tomorrow and Icod de Los
Vinos on Wednesday."
"I'm really glad you're getting out and about, Mum, but you must go and see Carla." "Well, I can't
do it until Thursday now?"
"Mum, have you spoken to Carla," Helen asked on Thursday evening. "About the apartment?" "Well, no, dear. I was quite tired this morning and then, this afternoon, I got my easel out. You know, the one Dad bought me. I'm painting Los Gigantes. Those cliffs are tremendous, still take my breath away. Although they're building hotels up the rockface now."
"Mum!" Helen sighed down the phone like a gale. "You've got to get on with this. I'll evening phone-call and her inevitable question. Not that she was afraid of her daughter, of course. Well, not really.
"Helen's the best daughter in the world," Ken used to say, "but she's bossy. Always has been since
she was a little girl."
Pat breakfasted outside on the patio, as everybody did at El Paraíso, although not as early as she was today. Every apartment was asleep, towels from yesterday slung over the balustrades and curtains closed. She drunk in the view around her, crinkly fronds of the banana palms, red flowers on plump spiky cacti, huge orange lilies and tiny purple flowers which she and Ken believed to be bougainvillea but they weren't sure and they never got round to looking it up. When I come back from Carla's, this won't properly be mine anymore, she thought.
She went back inside, washed up and set off, arriving outside Carla's office at ten past nine to find the blinds drawn across the windows; the sign on the door read, 'Cerrado los lunes'. Pat felt her energy drain from her heart, into her arms and along her fingers, down her legs and out through her toes. 'Closed Mondays' it reiterated, as if she didn't already know. 'Montags geschlossen' it went on, revelling in her discomfiture.
She jumped when the travel agent next door pulled down his awning with a cacophonous clatter and scraped the pavement as he set up sandwich boards advertising coach tours.
"English?" he called to her. "Er ... yes."
"Mount Teide, madam. Today. Ten hundred hours," he went on, as she stared at the unlit office. "For you, €50.
She shook her head and scuttled back to the apartment. Although she thought as she changed back into her holiday clothes, she would like to see the sights of Tenerife again, especially as she was unlikely to return. Ken would have hired a car, of course, but Pat didn't feel confident to drive 'on the wrong side of the road'. She looked at her watch: only half past nine.
"The other people on the buses are really nice," she said to Helen that evening. "You've been on a bus tour? Wasn't it full of ... old people?"
"I'm not so young myself, dear. But guess what? I'm going to Los Gigantes tomorrow and Icod de Los Vinos on Wednesday."
"I'm really glad you're getting out and about, Mum, but you must go and see Carla." "Well, I can't do it until Thursday now?"
"Mum, have you spoken to Carla," Helen asked on Thursday evening. "About the apartment?" "Well, no, dear. I was quite tired this morning and then, this afternoon, I got my easel out. You know, the one Dad bought me. I'm painting Los Gigantes. Those cliffs are tremendous, still take my breath away. Although they're building hotels up the rockface now."
"Mum!" Helen sighed down the phone like a gale. "You've got to get on with this. I know that Dad always used to deal with this sort of thing. I mean, I do appreciate that maybe you don't feel up to this task. Look, I think I'd better come over. I'll look up the planes on the internet tonight."
"I'm always pleased to see you, dear, but you've got your family and your job. Really, there's no need."
"You've got to get rid of the apartment, Mum. I mean, I know it's very nice inside and there's nothing wrong with the El Paraíso complex, but it's in quite the wrong part of Tenerife. In fact, it's quite tacky where you are. You can hear all the night clubs even with the windows closed."
"Helen, I'll let you get on. Goodnight."
Pat wandered on to the patio. It was the moment of dusk, those few minutes when the sun fell in red streaks over the sea. Warm yellow lights flickered across the bay and already she could hear the familiar thud-thud of music.
"Young people enjoying themselves," Ken used to say. "And why not?"
"Tacky! Tacky? How dare she? Good thing I put the phone down when I did," Pat thought. Ken hated arguments too.
She went back to her easel. She knew she would never do justice to the Tenerife sunset, or the cliffs of Los Gigantes, but what was the harm in trying? When she looked up again, it was dark and she was tired and hungry. She went into the kitchen and made herself salad, for the second time that day, rabbit food, as Ken used to call it. He had been a meat and two veg man. As she ate, she thought about putting her painting things away, but she
would only have to get them out again tomorrow. She would never have left them out when Ken was with her; not that he would have objected, but it would have been inconsiderate.
Back in the bedroom, Ken's pyjamas remained on his pillow. She had no intention of moving them. "I love you. I love you so much," she said, rubbing his jacket against her cheek. Was it wrong for a widow to be happy?
In the morning, Pat rang Helen at work. "I've decided not to sell the apartment, dear."
"You can't keep going there by yourself."
"I'm here now and I'm fine."
"It won't work. Mum, listen to me! "
"I'm listening and I know what you're going to say, but sometimes even Mum decides things for herself."
"Yes, but-"
"El Paraíso means paradise, you know. That's what it was for Dad and still is for me."