Santa Gertrudis
Christina’s car was a reluctant old thing. I sat in it a while, breathed in the stale upholstery, looking for clues about her life. There was nothing in there except an empty bottle of diet lemonade and a half-eaten packet of biscuits in the glove compartment. I switched the radio on. Fast Spanish voices interspersed with jingles and then a rap song. I wondered if it was 21 Savage, the one the boy on the plane had talked about. I switched it off again, sighed, and turned on the engine.
I hadn’t driven abroad in my life. It was a little daunting. At first, I was all over the place. I had typed ‘Santa Gertrudis supermarket’ into my phone before setting off. My phone lost signal, and I quickly forgot what I had seen on the map. Now I was just following signs for Santa Gertrudis, traveling over the grey tarmac, trying to remember which side of the fading white lines I was meant to be driving on.
I soon discovered that Santa Gertrudis is very pretty. Wide streets, geometrically pleasing houses, whitewashed buildings, pink bougainvillea, and cafés full of laid-back people. Everything perfectly designed for the hard blue sky above. I drove around. I passed a vegan café and a Pilates studio and eventually reached a shop that looked like it sold food. A window had posters advertising beer and olive oil. I parked somewhere near the kerb at an angle that would have interested Pythagoras.
I walked the three little aisles with a basket. It was a whole new world. I felt like I was a university student again, learning how to think about the things you need to live. The autopilot had been on for decades. Since I’d been widowed, I’d hardly ever changed the weekly shop. It was quite scary to be starting afresh. I walked around. There were signs above the produce, written in chalk. Frutas y verduras ecologicas, for instance, above cardboard boxes of nectarines and mushrooms and the plumpest tomatoes I had ever seen. I put one of the tomatoes in the basket and continued down the aisle.
I soon encountered a strange-looking machine next to a stack of empty bottles. The machine had a spiraling metal chute descending into a transparent cylinder. Beside it, there were a lot of oranges. I rolled a few down the chute and waited patiently as the trickle of juice slowly made it into the bottle I was holding. After a couple of minutes, I had a bottle of (very) freshly squeezed orange juice. Then I filled the rest of my basket with a baguette and cheese and biscuits and coffee and washing-up liquid and shower gel and toilet roll and gin and tonic water. Above the humming of refrigerators and a fan, and quiet but bouncy pop music on a radio, I had a conversation with the lively checkout person, whose name badge read Rosella.
The shop was empty of people, and Rosella was clearly in the mood for talking. Her English was great. She had lived in England – in Brighton – for a couple of years and had moved back.
‘This island is a magnet,’ she said, as she scanned the coffee. ‘Do you know Es Vedrà?’
‘Es Vedrà? No. I am new here.’
‘Ah. Well, Es Vedrà is a rock. A large high rock that sticks out of the ocean. You can see it from Cala d’Hort. A beach in the south.’
I remembered the slightly ominous feeling I’d had looking at the tall rocky islet from the plane window. ‘I think I saw it when I flew in.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. They say it is the third most magnetic point on Earth. There is something special about it there.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. There are good stories and bad stories. Years and years ago, there was a hermit who lived there. In a cave. A religious man. A priest. He wrote about lights he saw in the water. Lights that lit up the whole sea. And since then, they have been seen at other times. They nearly caused a plane crash once … And now the rock gives off a strange vibe. It feels scary sometimes. I always feel something is there. Inside it.’
It was quite a dramatic conversation to be having in a supermarket. I tried to be polite. ‘Oh well, it’s an interesting island.’
