“Beautiful scenery – lovely and warm, a little too hot if you are dangled into volcanoes. Found the people very friendly apart from the violent thugs and murderers.”
I kept my bags close to me as I jostled through the small but compacted market crowd, my natural instinct to watch for danger. The jury was out on how well that instinct had served me recently. I suppose overall it had done okay.
I passed by the many tat stalls of t-shirts, hats, handbags and various assorted souvenirs. There didn’t seem to be much to interest me, but I had time to kill that I didn’t want to spend in an introverted lather, so I pressed on. A brightly fronted little shop stuck out as I went to go past it on the far side of the market. ‘Ice-Cream For Crow,’ it was named.
Weird!
I stopped and saw that it was a record shop and I instinctively headed on in. It was quite dark in there, contrasting to the hot midday sun outside. It was your standard record shop – walls lined in posters, shelves and shelves of vinyl, and some middle aged guy behind the counter. I nodded to him and he nodded back. He was probably only late forties actually, black hair, wearing a tight black T-shirt, I could see he was pretty ripped. I started straight into riffling through a few rows. It only took a second to find he had a decent jazz section. There was some old school seventies rock blasting on the stereo. The singer was hollering about ‘dancing madly backwards.’ It was actually pretty cool – if you like that sort of thing. It was strange finding a kind of quirky and cool spot like this right at the touristy market. I suppose vinyl-buying hipsters may well holiday in The Canaries too. The guy came from around the counter and began to put a handful of records carefully away.
“Help ya with anything love?” he asked abruptly.
“Fuck!” I said, then “Sorry,” I said laughing guiltily, “It’s just your accent.”
He had startled me, doubly as he sported a broad Ulster accent.
“Don’t worry yourself, I’ve heard a fair bit of fuckin’ swearing before,” he said, with a meaty smile.
I kept smiling, “I just wasn’t expecting an accent from back home. Have you been here long?”
“Not really – came over last year. You on your holidays?”
“Yeah I am. Heading back today. Ahh – lovely – living here must be a bit of a change from back home?”
“Ack you know, it is and it isn’t. Both places only have one season. Here it’s sunny and hot all the time and back home it’s always pishing down.”
I laughed again. We chatted for a few minutes, he was dead on, even if rough around the edges. I bought a record from him. It was a compilation of some of the upbeat stuff Miles and Trane did together in the fifties. I had all of the tracks on all things, but it’d be nice to have them together. Besides, the owner had cheered me right up. Even just his accent got me excited for home.
I headed on. I came to a small area with two little piers by the edge of a river that must have joined the sea underground. A little wooden bridge curved over it, leading to a pub, where a young guy was playing guitar and singing through a small P.A. He had a good voice. He was singing Freefalling by Tom Petty. The guy was making a good job of it. It’s a staple of my own covers set and one of the few I actually enjoy singing. I shuffled over to a stone wall off to the side, on the edge of the pub car park. I hoisted myself up, setting my bags either side of me. I lit up a smoke and inhaled deeply, letting myself soak up a little of the pleasant, easy atmosphere. There would be more challenges ahead, I knew that. But by tonight I would be back in my home town, with someone who cares about me, away from this place, smoking a joint. I smiled.
It was easy enough to arrange a taxi to the airport and the ride was only a half hour trip. I felt good on the drive over, still confident enough. Part of me worried that I was ‘wanted.’
What if the police were waiting on me?
Or what if more of Sammy’s lot knew about me?
It was impossible to know, so I tried to stay calm about it. When I arrived, though, it was a different story. Heading in through the double glass doors, into the huge departures area, I had a wobble. It was as if the dry heat inside had made my confidence and determination start to evaporate. There were big crowds of people: EVERYWHERE! Then there were the airline staff, security staff and a few police scattered about. My nerves were shot. As I paused on the recently buffed tiled floor, I clutched my bags close, and it felt like every set of eyes that passed were looking directly at me. And more than that – it was if they knew. How could I have been so brazen to think I could just leave the country? The police could already be after me and here I was announcing exactly where I was. And – this was the same police force who had officers hand me over to be tortured and almost killed.
Are you stupid, Vicky?
I reminded myself to walk on, feeling self-conscious standing still. What did my injuries look like too? I hadn’t looked in a mirror properly for a couple of hours. I passed by a few magazine shops and walked parallel to the queues leading up to the check in desks. My eyes searched all over, trying to pick up any vibes that I was actually being watched. The travellers were mostly families and there was
