Already well into her eighties, I would guess, Doña Lucinda was my all-time model for the art of growing old gracefully. Her face had never seen a pot of anti-wrinkle cream in its life and her entire history was written there, engraved in cracks and canyons by some heavy-handed gnome. But she was beautiful. Deepest of all were the smile lines. She would break into a sunshine smile at the least provocation, in fact she rarely stopped.
We first got to know her on occasional evenings in one of San Sebastián's oldest restaurants, where she would sit at the bar sipping delicately from a wine glass while deciding what to order for supper. It was she, I'm sure (although this was many years ago) who opened the conversation, wanting to know who we were, where we were from, why we were here, what we did for a living. She was interested in everybody and everything.
In contrast to our casual clothing (what do you mean, scruffy?!) she was always dressed impeccably. Weirdly, but impeccably. With artistic vision, bohemian perhaps - not the granny rags of the hippies who sometimes pass this way but more an adventurous dignity. A colourful, swirling dress, cascading necklaces, jangly bracelets and dangly earrings that danced when she laughed. She shone rainbows into the shadows.
During our first conversation with her, perched as bright as a cockatoo on a bar stool with her silver hair gathered into a cheeky topknot, she explained that she was lodging here in San Sebastián on doctor's orders, in a small hotel.
Her home town was Hermigua, further to the north, where she lived alone (but with an interesting history, I suspect) in an old farmhouse down among the banana trees in the valley. Although splendidly cool in summer, her house tended to dampness in the winter and as the days grew shorter Doña Lucinda would grow wheezier.'So my doctor sends me away to San Sebastián!' she chuckled, as though she'd been banished for chronic naughtiness. 'It's drier here, and warmer.' Just as in earlier days, wealthy TB sufferers in Europe would be despatched to the crisper airs of Switzerland.
The restaurant's owner was also from Hermigua and Lucinda saw the place as a refugee's home from home. The young barman and waiter, Jaime, had no links with Hermigua but quickly succumbed to the old lady's irresistible cuteness and treated her with enormous kindness. 'Just a little plate of potaje de berros, watercress soup,' she would instruct him. 'And some bread, not much, I'm not very hungry.' He would guide her to a table in the corner and deliver a plate of soup not too hot and not too cold, together with a ready-sliced bread roll.
So, we were already old friends with Doña Lucinda by the time we met her that morning in the church square. 'I've signed up for the trip to Mallorca!' she told us. 'With the group. I've never been to Mallorca before. I'm so looking forward to it. Look, I've already had my uñitas done, my fingernails!' She showed us her fingers tipped with vivid crimson, expertly applied in a local salon. Fingernails are uñas but, as always in Spanish, the -itas adds warmth - these little fingernails were something special, these were holiday fingernails!
The holiday was a free two-week excursion to Mallorca provided by the island council for Gomera's senior citizens. These were people, reasoned the councillors, who had worked all their lives, often in great hardship, and now deserved an occasional treat. (The council still organises annual holidays for pensioners but, times being as they are, at subsidised cost rather than free.)
We admired Lucinda's sparkling uñitas, wished her a wonderful holiday and kissed her goodbye.
A few weeks later we found her seated at the restaurant bar once again, sipping white wine while deliberating on her supper. How had the holiday gone?
'I had a wonderful time!' she laughed. 'They cared for me very well, really very well indeed.'
'Cared for you?
'In the hotel. I got a terrible gripe, 'flu, on the second day and spent the rest of the time in bed.'
'Oh, no. That's not fair.' This is the kind of ridiculous injustice that so often hits those who least deserve it. I mean, why don't things like that happen to...
But no, enough. Doña Lucinda herself was far above such whimpering. She waved a hand as though wafting away a fly. 'It's not fair but it's life,' she said. 'Anyway I had a trip in an aeroplane, and I had a ride around town in a horse-drawn carriage the first day, before I got ill. That was fun! I had a lot of fun.' She giggled her infectious giggle. 'You should go to Mallorca one day,' she advised. 'They're lovely people, the mallorquines.'
I'm quite sure they are, but then everyone's lovely when you're Doña Lucinda.
Notes for the serious student
Why was this delightful old lady known universally by the honorific doña? Most people of her age are addressed simply by their first name or, if you wish to show respect, as señora. There are various ways she could have earned her upgrading to doña (see The three dons, 24 May 2016) but in Lucinda's case, none of them really fitted. Simply, there was no question of her being anything else but doña. She was far too charming and full of character, full of life, to join the humdrum masses of señoras.
