Ibiza Surprise Read Online Free PDF Page A

the colour had gone from the roadside. I shut my eyes and let the wind carry my hair.
     
    It was a good road. I felt the drag as Austin slowed down and took a bend sharp on the right, and then we picked up speed again in a long rising course. I opened my eyes and saw the new lights of a road cafe slide behind, and a dark field full of goats. On the right, the road crumbled into a sort of dusty red ditch, overhung by a little wood with a lot of juniper undergrowth and an old car with no wheels at one end. Austin turned into the dirt and drew up. At last.
    It wasn’t even off the road: not properly, but I’d forgotten how soon it gets dark. My hair settled all over my face, like Brigitte Bardot, and I pushed it back, carefully, with my hands, which cleared the way for Austin’s Sahara suede cuffs to go right round my back.
    ‘You’re so lovable!’ he said, the rest of him following, so I put my hands comfortably round his neck and we had a very soft, long-winded kiss. He was good; and I must say I was glad of every bit of practice I’d ever had. Then he took his hands away and sat back a bit and said: ‘I beg your pardon. You’re too lovely a person, and I want you to forgive me. I don’t know . . . I just couldn’t help myself.’
    I thought of the last hunt ball I’d been to, and kept my face straight.
    ‘It was nice,’ I said. ‘But we don’t really know each other. I think perhaps we’d better get on.’
    Either I hadn’t managed to keep my face straight, or he was normal after all, for instead of driving on, he suddenly grabbed me in quite a definite way and stuck his mouth on mine in a much more advanced method, doing lots of fancy things, on the side, with his tongue. It was super, but I was being slowly shoved back into the side of the car, and I was just thinking of feeling for my shoe when the car door gave way and we both fell, headfirst, backward into the ditch. We landed just as a seedy old Seat came wheezing up round the bend and slowed, its headlights picking out the whole scene like an art clip from Ulysses.
    ‘Perdone-me,’ said an English voice in horrible Spanish. ‘Does the Senor require assistance?’
    I could see a pair of spectacles winking in the Cadillac’s dashboard light: Flo would have killed herself laughing.
    Austin said: ‘No, sir; I thank you. There’s no trouble at all,’ in a loud, hearty voice and after hesitating, turned and helped me to my feet. I’d busted my tights, which was more than a bit sad. Austin said one or two bright things about tripping and dark nights and fine weather, and handing me in, got seated and started the engine. I gave the other driver a wave. He stood and watched us go in a bemused kind of way before turning back to the Seat. Austin drove the rest of the way to Santa Eulalia with a hand on my knee, pressing it.
     
    It was just before we got into Santa Eulalia that I missed my handbag. My hair was a mess, and God knows what had happened to my mouth outline. I grubbed all over the floor of the car, and it just wasn’t there.
    Austin stopped the car, and by the time we’d made a thorough search, it was quite certain it must be back in that ditch where the Seat had interrupted us.
    Austin said: ‘You go on. I’ll drop you at the Lloyds’ and then go back for the bag.’
    There was nothing else I could do. I drove up to meet Gilmore Lloyd after seven years with my tights wrecked and my hair hanging in hanks and my lipstick all over my chin. All right. At least he could tell I was sought-after.
    The Casa Venets is set on a hillside in five acres of tropical garden, which go right down to the sea. Arriving there in the dark, with the palm trees showing against a big yellow moon like an advertisement for coconut candy, and the cicadas making the sound the BBC always makes them make, and the lizards flicking up and down the house walls, it was a bit breathtaking suddenly, and I wished Flo or someone had been there. Then we got round to the