Past Caring (2 page)

What do you think? Let me know soon, Cheers, Alec.”

“Will you go?” said Jerry, a little too quickly for my liking.

“If I can possibly manage it, I’ll be there like a shot.” I was more confident than I might have sounded. I had a few hundred in a building society to cater for emergencies and this could definitely be classified as one.

“Well, why not?” said Jerry. “A holiday would do you good.”

By Monday night, I was able to telephone Alec to suggest a

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date. After several false starts and through a forest of static, I heard his familiar voice down the cable from distant Madeira.

“Glad you can make it, Martin. It’ll be great to see you.”

“Hope so, but it’s sooner than you might have expected. I’ve got an option on a spare seat aboard a charter flight on the 31st.”

“Take it. That’ll be a good time—I’ll be between issues and able to show you the sights. And the sooner you come the better—it may be worth your while.”

I dictated the flight number and time to him before we gave up the struggle with the static. Only after I’d put the phone down did I reflect on what he’d said and wonder whether he meant the trip might be worth more than just a holiday. Now the magazine was taking off, did he have something to offer to an old friend’s advantage? It was no more than the glimmer of a pleasing suspicion, but it carried me happily through the week before my departure.

It was in a mood of well-being and optimism that I boarded the charter flight to Madeira. Amid the holiday-bound happy families, I felt out of place, but a few in-flight drinks passed the time well enough, until, that is, stormy weather began to jostle the aircraft.

As we buffeted down towards Madeira, I peered out of the window for a sight of it, my knuckles on the arm of the seat turning as white as the wavetops which I found myself taking all too close a look at. There was, though, a smudge of green somewhere ahead of us and soon we hit something I hoped was the runway and braked violently to a halt. I stumbled from the aircraft instantly sober, tugging on an anorak against the drenching rain and trailing behind the others into the terminal building.

There was no sign of Alec as we cleared customs and the rest of the passengers began to disperse, but just when I was beginning to fret, I saw him bounding down some steps from an upper floor of the building.

“Hi, Martin,” he called, strolling towards me with a casual wave of greeting. He looked fit and well, tanned and relaxed, sandy hair turned blond by the sun, more like a lifeguard than a journalist as he clapped me on the back and smiled broadly.

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“How are you, old son? You look bloody awful.”

“Thanks, Alec.” I grinned ruefully. “So would you if you’d been through that landing. I thought we were going to ditch in the Atlantic.”

“A bit hairy, eh? It didn’t look too bad from the bar.”

“What does?”

“That’s more like it. Actually, the runway is a bit on the short side. I didn’t tell you because I thought it might put you off. This weather doesn’t help. You must have brought it with you—it’s the worst day of the year. Trust a pessimist like you to arrive when Madeira’s looking at its worst.” Alec was right: I’d always expected the worst from life and generally got it. He’d always hoped for the best and sometimes been rewarded. That’s why I’d spent an idle winter in London and he’d exploited the potential of an island in the sun. He was also right that it wasn’t at its best that day. The taxi driver wore sunglasses and drove as if the roads were dry, but all I saw as we sped round hairpin bends along the coast road to Funchal were dark cliffs, angry seas and louring clouds—more like Cornwall than the tropics.

“Don’t worry,” Alec assured me, “weather like this never lasts.

Madeira’s a beautiful island, believe it or not. Not that the Madeirans do much to keep it that way.” He pointed through the stair-rod rain at an abandoned building site. “They’ve got all the Latin vices”—we lurched through a pothole and I nodded agreement, while hoping the driver didn’t understand English—

“and only one virtue: they’re letting me get a magazine on the road. I know it’s the back of beyond, but it’s a start.” After countless false starts, Alec’s hope was intact. And so, miraculously, were we when the taxi wound down the hills and bends into Funchal: a smear of grey and brown buildings round a semi-circle of hills above a broad bay.

Alec’s house was a haven—cool, dry and peaceful, three things it hadn’t been outside. I slumped down in the lounge with relief, while Alec kept up his scatter-gun appraisal of life on Madeira from the kitchen.

“It’ll be black coffee,” he shouted. “Milk’s like gold dust here.

But you look as if you need it straight anyway. There’s a copy of the magazine on the table. Take a look.”

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Madeira Life,
April 1977: bold lettering on a glossy cover, adorned by a smiling, dark-haired girl in a striped dress and bolero jacket, clasping bunches of mimosa, their bright yellow blooms starting from the page.

I leafed through the issue. Clever and perceptive pictures, and Alec’s punchy prose, drew me on through a diary of events and a page of local news.

“What is the big story on Madeira at the moment, Alec?”

“There’s never a big story, Martin. I just dress up what there is and pander to my readers’ prejudices.”

“And they are?”

“Predictable. The same as English exiles anywhere, I guess: Why are the locals so loud and lazy?”

“And where can you get a cheap dinner?”

“You’ve seen my piece on the Jardim do Sol. Actually it’s a very good restaurant. I force myself to eat out every week to safeguard my readers’ palates. Funchal’s full of good, cheap eating places—and some bad ones. It’s important to know the difference.”

“I can imagine. Ah, this looks like your knowing eye.”

I’d passed a centre spread on the Flower Festival and come to an array of darkly promising, thickly encrusted wine bottles:

“ ‘Old Madeira—Does Any Still Remain?’ ”

“You’re bound to become a connoisseur of the stuff here. The trade’s dominated by the English families—always has been—so it’s a natural subject for them to read about.”

“And for you to sample on their behalf ?”

“You said it. But that piece is about 1792 vintage and whether there mightn’t be a few stray bottles left. Napoleon was offered some on his way to St. Helena but wasn’t fit enough to drink any.”

“Sad.”

“Yes—but typical. Madeira’s out of the main stream of world events. Famous people only come here before—or after—their prime. As you’ll see.”

I thought I already had, for here were sepia prints of Churchill, his unmistakable, bulky frame perched on a stool painting a seascape and, in another shot, posing with his wife on some arabesque balcony, with palm trees in the background.

Alec came into the room then, carrying a tray, and glanced 10

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over my shoulder. “Churchill wintered here often after the war,”

he said. “He liked painting up the coast at Camara de Lobos.” He set the tray down on the table and poured us coffee. “What do you think of it then?”

I closed the magazine and looked up. “It’s good, Alec,” I said.

“Very good. Colourful, lively, informative. I’d buy it.”

“You think it’s got a future?”

“It certainly deserves one. And you’ll know whether there’s a market for it.” I sipped appreciatively at the coffee. “In your letter you mentioned a backer.”

“Exactly. I ingratiated myself with the right man there. Leo Sellick’s South African and therefore well in with the English. He made a packet buying and selling land when hotels were springing up all over, and still owns one at Machico, east of here, where there’s the only decent beach on the island. He’s obviously got an eye for investments, so it’s encouraging that he’s put some money into
Madeira Life
. He also knows all the right people, who would otherwise freeze me out. He bends their ears up at the Country Club and makes them think well of me.”

“He sounds invaluable.”

“He is. And with his help, I’m going to make a go of this.”

I wished him well, genuinely, but not without a tinge of resentment. Alec had fallen on his feet again, while I still hadn’t found mine. His enthusiasm meant we didn’t have to dwell on my own news, which was negligible anyway. But I did entertain him with an embroidered version of my departure from Millennium.

In this, I’d resigned on the spot, rather than under coercion on New Year’s Eve. Historian though I was, I didn’t mind laundering the past when it suited my purpose.

Later, after dark, the rain stopped and Alec took me out to a restaurant he wanted to cover for the magazine. It was small, hot, crowded and cheerful, full of Latin laughter and bustling, seedy waiters. Alec ordered up two steaks of espada—a deep-sea fish—in shrimp sauce and a hearty bottle of dão to wash them down, then another when we started to relax.

“Tomorrow,” he declared confidently, “I’ll take you straight to the high spot of your stay.”

“What’s that?”

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“You can meet Leo. He lives up at Camacha, in the hills north-east of here. When he heard you were visiting me, he insisted I take you up to have dinner with him. And believe me—it’s not to be missed. He’s a generous host and his quinta’s a lovely place.”

“Quinta?”

“Estate, if you like. But you’ll remember quinta from port bottles at Cambridge. We got through a fair amount of Quinta do Noval together, I remember.”

“Our concession to conservatism.”

“And out of my price range here. So have another glass of this stuff, which isn’t.”

So I did, and the evening dissolved in drink and debate about British and Portuguese politics, students then and now, journalism and Madeira. Already, I was enjoying myself. An old friend and a new setting were taking effect.

Madeira was a different place when I woke next morning. There was a deep blue sky visible through the open window of my room, a chatter of birdsong from the garden, warm sweet air to fill my lungs as I rose and gazed out at sun-drenched Funchal, its rooftops already shimmering in a heat haze. Walls that had been grey when we drove in the day before were glaringly white, tiled roofs that had been brown were bright orange, the city clustering on a verdant hillside above a broad blue ocean. My head was thick but the air was clear, the prospect bright.

Alec went out after breakfast and returned with some bread, cooked chicken and mangoes. “A picnic lunch,” he announced.

“We’ll need it later. Are you ready to start?”

“What’s the hurry? I thought we were going out to dinner?”

“We are—on foot. But it’s a six-hour walk to Camacha, so get your boots on.”

“I didn’t know we’d be doing any hiking.”

“I told you—I’m a reformed character. And you look as if some exercise would do you good. Besides, it’s a beautiful walk.”

Alec started cutting sandwiches. “We’ll take my rucksack,”

he said. “Pack anything you want for an overnight stay. We won’t come back tonight.”

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Well, Alec had said Leo Sellick was a generous host. As for the beauty of the walk, I took his word for it. And at least there was dinner at the end of it.

We walked down to the harbour and boarded a battered old red and grey bus to carry us out of Funchal. It lurched and jud-dered up steep-cobbled, high-walled roads, engine protesting as we climbed ever upwards.

“We’re going up to Monte,” Alec shouted into my ear above the diesel roar. “It’s a route taken by lots of English settlers in the past, up into the hills where the air’s cooler and supposed to have healing qualities. Monte’s full of rest homes for wealthy pulmonary patients.” Fumes wafted through the window as the bus strained round a hairpin bend. “Of course, they didn’t travel by bus.” I could understand why.

The bus wound up into the hills until the air became fresher and the streets broader. We were at Monte, cooler and more peaceful than Funchal and, yes, more English as well. We left the bus and walked down a cobbled street past steps leading up to a large, white-fronted church with two rounded belfries and a statue of the Virgin Mary prominent in a niche in the centre of the facing wall.

“Our Lady of the Mount Church,” said Alec. “Emperor Charles of Austria is buried there.”

“Did he come here for his health?”

“If so, it didn’t do him much good. He died young.”

We pressed on through Monte to the Hotel Belmont and turned along a cobbled road past banks of blue and white agapan-thus into the settlement of Babosas. Here a railed lookout gave us views over the whole sweep of Funchal and the harbour, the hills above the city quilted with terraces and changing hue constantly as we looked, the shadows of clouds chasing each other across the corrugated slopes. I took pleasure just in looking, for the greens and blues were so much more vivid than they would have been in England, like acrylic paint after watercolour for one who’d just emerged from a winter in London.

We took a grassy path through a sunshot pine and mimosa forest heavy with scent and emerged into a narrow valley with crumbling, basalt cliffs either side. Climbing uphill, we reached the ramparts of a miniature canal where it emerged from the

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blackness of a tunnel. We headed east along a narrow walkway behind the watercourse.

“This is a levada,” Alec explained. “Madeira’s crisscrossed by them. They bring the rain down from the mountaintops to irri-gate the land and drive power stations. And they’re perfect for sce-nic walks.” Almost immediately a sheer drop down basalt cliffs yawned to our right.