He pauses to gather breath in the sunshine, mopping his forehead with an already damp shirtsleeve. Bill and Doris have just climbed the same number of steps as days in the year, which is a pleasing coincidence but perhaps unwise for an overweight pensioner. And perhaps only approximate, because the number depends on what you view as a step - there are stretches of roadway as well - but Bill started counting when they set off, behind the big church in San Sebastián, and now they’re at the top of the last flight of steps, standing on the road that continues uphill towards the Parador hotel.
‘I could do with a beer, Doris,’ says Bill, looking around hopefully. Got to be a bar somewhere near here, he’s thinking. There’s always a bar somewhere near, in Spain.
‘Let’s wait till we get to the Parador,’ his wife urges. The Parador hotel is why they’ve climbed the hill. Doris wants to have a look around and maybe have lunch there. They’ve been told it’s a splendid old building - well, a replica of a splendid old building - on a clifftop site with beautiful gardens overlooking the town, the harbour and dramatic Teide volcano across the water in Tenerife.Doris and Bill are a success story for the island’s tourism development strategy, which includes enticing cruise ships to call here. Although the cruisers moor up only for a day, sometimes less, their passengers spend serious money (reputedly around 50 euros each) and often award La Gomera their highest satisfaction ratings. These two liked it so much on their previous brief visit (The clandestine emigrants, 21 December 2016) that they’ve come back for a fourteen-day holiday.
At the moment, however, Bill is still grumbling about being thirsty as they set off up the hill towards what may or may not be the Parador in the distance. They pass a house with a huge open garage occupying most of its frontage, from which float happy sounds of conversation, laughter and clattering cutlery. Intrigued, Doris pauses to peek inside.
‘Doris…’
‘It’s a party,’ she tells her husband. Bill retraces his steps to pull her away, but it’s already too late, they’ve been spotted. Doris is shyly waving her hand to someone inside, returning a greeting. ‘I think they’re inviting us in, Bill.’ The hand signal for come here is confusingly different from the British version, a palm-downwards flapping like a traffic cop pulling you in.
After a brief show of reluctance, they step into the cool interior of the garage, where a cheerful young man points to a beer bottle on the table and says in a fair attempt at English: ‘Beer? You want beer?’
‘Ooh, well…!’ says Bill. The young man retreats into the gloom at the back of the garage where a large white fridge is lurking in one corner. He returns with two opened beer bottles and glass tumblers. The tumblers are cold, the beer is colder, and Bill pours his and takes a swig without pausing. The young man politely pours some for Doris. ‘Today it’s hot!’ he observes accurately, smiling at Bill who is still mopping his forehead.
Meanwhile, a woman with a young child dangling from one hip is waving them towards two empty chairs beside a trestle table. The table runs the entire length of the garage from front to back, covered with a white paper tablecloth and dotted with plates and dishes full of black olives, green olives, chunks of white cheese, slices of ham, slices of chicken, baby squid bathed in tomato sauce, baby fish fried in batter and more, more, along with baskets of bread carved into hearty pieces from a barra, the Spanish version of a baguette.
Plates are placed in front of Doris and Bill, cutlery passed along the table and hands indicate that they are to help themselves from the feast on display. ‘Ooh, well…!’ says Bill again. He hasn’t yet learned to say ‘sí’ or ‘gracias’ or ‘How kind of you, I’d be delighted to take a little of the cheese’ but it doesn’t matter, all they both need to do is relax, smile and hold up their beer glasses as though offering a toast. ‘Salud!’, good health, agree the others around the table, raising their wine, beer or Coca Cola.
The young man who successfully captured them and is clearly proud of his achievement points to a lady seated at the far end of the table. ‘Eight,’ he tells them, holding up seven fingers then eight after doing a recount, and launches into a song that sounds exactly like Happy birthday to you except that the words are Spanish. ‘She’s eighty today,’ Doris interprets cleverly for Bill. The balloons bobbing in brightly-coloured bunches around the walls are a helpful clue.
‘Yes, yes, etty,’ shouts the young man, delighted. ‘And two,’ holding up two fingers. Everyone cheers and the birthday lady chuckles and nods. She’s obviously had her hair done specially for the occasion, carefully trimmed and curled and tinted to a warm, youthful chestnut, and she looks in fine form for eighty-two, apart from a couple of missing teeth when she smiles.
An hour later Bill and Doris are still in the garage, sipping red wine now and finishing platefuls of bacalao a la viscaína, salt cod in a spicy tomato sauce. At some point after that - who’s watching the clock? - they’re up on their feet and dancing, with each other, the birthday lady and practically everyone else, to an irresistible salsa rhythm from a large loudspeaker hitched to a laptop computer.
‘We haven’t been round the Parador, Bill,’ Doris reminds him severely during a brief pause for coffee and almond biscuits.
‘Tomorrow,’ promises Bill. ‘And we’ll come up by taxi.’
Notes for the serious student
Garages are tremendously important. In most families or extended families there's at least one member with a garage, ideally large enough for at least two cars. On a site of limited area the house itself may be perched on top of a garage occupying the entire ground floor.
The garage doesn’t have to be pretty or even finished, it just has to be big enough to accommodate a family party. Often a house will remain for many years hoisted on concrete columns, the ground floor garage to be finished when finances permit.
Garages that are further advanced may include a cooker and sink at the back and even a toilet, as well as the trestle tables and plastic chairs piled up neatly until the next party. In the final stages of evolution the walls are plastered and painted, the floor laid with big shiny tiles and the toilet cubicle expanded to include a shower. By now the car is usually left outside, which doesn’t matter much in this climate.
And sometimes, in the case of a really big garage, granny will get permanently installed there along with her furniture - an impromptu apartment for independence but with easy access to help from son or daughter. This is almost certainly an illicit use of a garage but nobody’s going to make a fuss about it.
