Chapter 8. The Final Days.

Part of my novel The Road to Ancona.

The twelfth day. In the days before the end of the holiday, the mood amongst the holidaymakers changed. Gradually it began to dawn on them that the day of their departure was drawing near. The girls had to explain to their newly acquired Italian boyfriends that they would soon be returning home to England. Some of them were desperate to get the experiences they had missed out on so far or had not yet accomplished or had (as the case may be) and were sad to be saying goodbye to their newfound sweethearts.

The adults spent hours in the local souvenir shops searching for gifts to take back to their family members and friends. Some were particularly keen to take home records of the music they had heard in Cattolica. Nothing like it was played on the radio at home and tunes of this kind were not available in the local record shops. It was the music they had heard in Italy that would most remind them of the time they had spent there.

The accommodation at the hotel was constantly changing as groups left and new tours arrived. Dave and Nick were given a room of their own and the boys had a bedroom to themselves at last. In the afternoon it began to rain so the boys stayed in the hotel lounge. Kate came in. She was wearing a sack dress (a long one-piece costume popular in the sixties). For some reason, it appeared to have a bit of a bulge in the middle.

‘Hello, Kate. Are you pregnant?’, Richard said jokingly pointing at the middle of Kate’s dress. She laughed and asked him for a light.

Michael said to the others, ‘By the time she gets home she probably will be.’ Kate looked at him in disgust; she puffed on her cigarette. ‘I don’t suppose you have exactly been acting like a saint Richard,’ she retorted. They exchanged a few more quips and sarcastic comments and then Kate said, ‘Fancy a walk down to the beach, Richard?’ Richard looked through the large window of the lounge and saw that the rain was easing off. The pair disappeared through the door, leaving Michael alone in the lounge. He got out his little notebook and began to write about his walking trip on the road to Ancona. He wrote:

Being a writer makes me different to other people. They keep asking me why I am always writing things down in my notebook and I try to give them serious answers but I don’t think any of them understand. For me, writing helps to sort out my thoughts and feelings. In my notes, I can record what I have seen and done and how it has affected me. I write about what other people have said and done and what I think about them. Italy is a wonderful place and I am so glad I came here. I have really fallen in love with the country and its people. I want to capture all these experiences and feelings before I lose them. I am like a pot into which all the life of the holiday is poured. I cannot keep it all in my mind; there is just too much of it and everything changes all the time. In my notes, I feel that I can just about keep up with what is happening. But there are times when I struggle to take it all in. Everything is so complicated at times, even the things that seem to be simple. I use my notes to attempt to understand what it means.

He was there for quite a long time, writing his thoughts, until he noticed that his book was almost full. He set off into the town to look for a new notebook. He was walking along the Via Guglielmo Marconi when we saw a beggar sitting at the side of the road. In front of the vagrant, an old cap was placed, containing a few coins that people how thrown into it. Two girls were walking by, eating snacks out of paper bags. One of the girls decided that she did not like the packet of snacks in her hand and she bent down and dropped it in front of the beggar. He picked it up and started to eat the contents. Michael saw this and was reminded of something he had read about people starving in the midst of plenty; he decided to write about this as soon as he found a new notebook. It proved to be a long search; writing pads and notebooks were not in high demand in Cattolica. After an hour of searching, he found newsagents and they had a small stock of lined pads, so he purchased a couple of them.

Michael sauntered back to the hotel and sat in the lounge, scribbling about beggars and the ills and shortcomings of consumer society. None of the teenagers were around and he needed to rest from his long walk around the shops. Although the sun had come out, he decided to stay indoors and do some writing. Michael wrote in his notebook:

It is good that we have seen so much history on this trip. If we had not gone to Rome, Assisi or San Marino, it would have been much less of an experience. Without these visits to places of great importance, the holiday would not have been so good. If we had spent two weeks just in a holiday resort it would have been boring. We could have flown directly to Rimini from England and stayed there seeing nothing but the cafés and bars and having nothing to do all day but laying around by the seaside. I don’t think I would have enjoyed a holiday like that.

That night, at dinner, Richard, Kate and Michael sat together. Over the meal of chicken and potatoes, Richard was reluctant to say what he had been doing that afternoon. In answer to Michael’s questions, his replies were vague and evasive. Michael wondered what the two of them could have got up to while they had been away. By the time the dessert arrived, Michael had figured out, in his own mind, what they might have been doing; his conclusion was that they had been having sex somewhere. He was about to ask more interrogative questions when Sandra arrived at their table. She said, ‘Any of you fancy coming to the nightclub with me and Giovanni?’ Richard glanced at Kate who nodded, ‘Sure. We’d love to come’, he replied. Michael was left out.

Richard asked, ‘What time are you leaving?’ Sandra asked them to meet her at the main entrance at nine o’clock. Richard stood up and said, ‘Right. I’m off to get ready’ and with that, he walked out of the dining room. Michael was now alone at the table with Kate.

Michael said casually, ‘Richard’s a nice lad isn’t he?’

‘Yes. He’s quite a lad. How long have you known him?’

‘We were at school together,’ Michael replied.

‘So what made you two come on holiday together?’

‘Well, we both thought it would be a bit of an adventure. This is my first time abroad; my first time on a proper holiday, in fact. We felt that going on a package tour would be safer than trying to go it alone. We see a lot of each other back home and we found we both had an interest in Italy. We both have jobs so we could afford a holiday and when we found this one it looked like it would be a good deal for both of us.’

‘Richard thinks the world of you, you know,’ Kate said. Michael had heard this before from Carol.

Kate continued, ‘I know he can be a bit of a sod at times. That’s just his way. He can be a bit self-centred but really he does care about you very much.’ Michael remembered Carol saying much the same thing but he wanted to know if anything had been going on between Kate and Richard. He wanted to ask Kate about her relationship with Richard but found it difficult to get to the point.

‘It’s funny you know,’ Michael said, ‘we are as different as chalk and cheese but somehow that kinda works for us – in an odd sort of way. I think why I like him so much is that he is the complete opposite of me.’ He planned to follow this with more questions about what Kate thought about Richard.

‘Yes, we have noticed,’ Kate said with a smile. ‘What I can’t understand is how you put up with each other. Richard’s always trying to be the life and soul of the party, the star attraction, and you’re always writing in a notebook and seem to be lost in thought pretty much most of the time. What do you write about in that little notepad?’

‘Oh, I’m keeping a record of the holiday. I make lots of notes about what we have done what we have seen and things that are of historical interest. Because this is such an amazing adventure. I want to record it all so I can look back at it – in years to come.’

‘My word! Will I be in it?’, Kate asked.

‘Well of course. I make notes about everyone – even people like Mavis and Betty – and what they do. Like the time the two fat women had to stop the coach to go to the toilet at the side of the road and when they came back their dresses were all torn and covered in bits of bramble.’

Kate giggled. Michael was just about to launch into his questions about how Kate and Richard were getting on when Kate stood up and said, ‘Well, I’d better go upstairs and get ready. Are you coming to the nightclub with us?’ Michael thought for a moment; Richard had not asked if he would be coming with them before he disappeared. ‘Well, if you two don’t mind … yes, I would like to come. Would it be okay if Carol comes too?’

‘Yeah. The more the merrier, as they say.’ With that, Kate left the table and went back to her room. Michael had missed his chance to get into a conversation with Kate about Richard. He would just have to assume that they had been up to something. Michael looked around the dining room but could not see Carol. He went to the lounge and found her sitting on a sofa reading a book.

‘Hello Carol,’ Michael said, ‘Have you got anything planned for tonight? ‘

‘No. Not really. I heard it was going to rain tonight so I thought I would stay here and do some reading. What about you?’

‘Richard and Kate are going to the nightclub. They asked me if I wanted to come. Well, I don’t much like going on my own so I thought you might like to join us.’

‘Aw. I’m so sorry but I really don’t feel like going out, to be honest. I feel really worn out. I want to rest up tonight and get ready for packing and the journey home tomorrow. And I have a load of postcards to write. Why don’t you go, you won’t be alone – you’ll be with your friends. I am sure you will meet other people when you get there.’

Michael was a bit disappointed that Carol did not want to come out but understood how she felt. He let her get on with her reading and went back to his room. Richard wasn’t there, even though he said he was going to get ready. Michael ran the shower. Fortunately, the water came out warm and it wasn’t even the usual dirty brown colour. The recent rain must have replenished the cisterns and flushed them out, he thought. He felt a lot better after his shower. As he was drying his hair there was a knock at the door. He put the towel around his middle and pulled the door open a little. Dave stood outside.

‘Ey up Michael. Y’all right, cock?

Michael opened the door further and the lanky Mancunian lad walked into the room.

‘Oh sorry. I didn’t know you weren’t decent,’ he said looking at the boy’s towel.

‘It’s not a problem Dave. I was just getting ready to go out. We are all going to the nightclub. So, I thought I had better smarten myself up. Where’s Nick then?’, Michael asked.’Oh, he’s upstairs on the bed catching up with ‘is beauty sleep. Yeah, I know, he’s got a lot of catching up to do,’ Dave said with a grin. Michael wanted to dry himself off and get dressed but couldn’t figure out how he was going to do this with Dave in the room. He hesitated, saying nothing, and then Dave said, ‘Look, don’t let me stop you if you’re wanting t’ get ready. Don’t mind me. You know what I’m like.’

Michael was reminded of Dave’s habit of walking out of the shower with no towel around him. So he just pulled off his towel and started sorting through his suitcase looking for clothes.

‘You’ve gone a nice colour,’ Dave said looking at the angry pink sheen on Michael’s back. Dave was usually taciturn and never said much unless he had to, but now he seemed more relaxed and friendly, even chatty.

‘Yeah but it itches like hell,’ Michael said holding up a T-shirt and trying to decide if it was clean enough to wear.

‘You got anything t’ put on it?’ Dave asked. Michael glanced at the bottle of camomile lotion on the bedside cabinet.

‘Well, I have as it happens. But Richard won’t put it on for me and I can’t seem to get my arms round the back to do it myself.’

Dave walked over to the brown bottle and picked it up. ‘Sit down on the bed then’, he said. Michael was a bit surprised but sat down on the side of the bed. ‘Turn round’, Dave said and started to pour some of the thick white liquid into his hands. He started to massage Michael’s back with the lotion; it felt cold at first but very soothing. Dave rubbed the fluid into Michael’s shoulders, where the skin had started to peel.

‘You’re a bit like me’, Dave said. ‘I don’t tan. But then I don’t go out in the sun. I only get up when the sun’s gone down.’ He worked the lotion over Michael’s lower back where it looked particularly red and angry.

‘You’re a night-time person,’ Michael said, enjoying the soothing balm as it calmed the itching sensation. ‘You’re still as white as the day you arrived.’

‘Yeah. Very true, mate. But then I’m not bothered. When I get back t’ Manchester I’ll look the same as everyone else and no one will ever think I’ve been on holiday.’

Michael felt the lad’s hands working their way over his back; his touch was gentle but firm as he smoothed the camomile and worked it into Michael’s skin. Michael began to enjoy the soothing sensation of Dave’s large warm hands massaging his back. Suddenly, he leaned over grabbed the towel and placed it over his lap, fearing an embarrassing situation was about to happen. Dave noticed this and said, ‘What’s up mate? You enjoying this a bit too much,’ and chuckled. Dave then rested his hands on Michael’s shoulders and said, ‘Well I think that’s you done.’ Michael swivelled himself round to face him and then put his arm around Dave’s shoulders. ‘I have kinda got to like you over these two weeks,’ he said, ‘even though I was a bit peeved with you two at first.’ He smiled and said, Thanks, Dave. I feel a lot better now for that.’

‘That’s OK mate. Hope you enjoyed it.’ He looked down at the towel on Michael’s lap, sniggered and said, ‘Well, by the looks of it you certainly did.’ Michael’s face went bright red; he didn’t know what to say. He quickly pulled his arm from the lad’s shoulder and looked away. Dave said, ‘Hey! You’re not going all coy on me, are you? Listen, mate, we are all boys together. There’s nothing for you to be embarrassed about.’ Michael warmed slightly to the northerner’s casual directness. Dave and Nick had been a source of inconvenience and irritation ever since they were billeted together on the first night of their stay. But now, Michael was beginning to like Dave; he had a rough charm that was appealing and a brusqueness that he found attractive.

Michael turned and looked at him. He noticed, for the first time, the clear blue eyes under the messy mop of black hair that hung over his face. He had not realised that the Mancunian was actually quite handsome. Michael smiled at him and Dave smiled back. Dave pulled him closer to him and hugged him with his right arm. Dave said, ‘You don’t want t’ take any notice of me. I’m a regular guy, me. I know I’ve been a pain in the arse for you two. I’m sorry if us ‘ave got in your way a bit. Never wanted that t’ happen, like. Things ‘ave just ‘appened on his ‘oliday and ‘cos we’re not used to it we didn’t know any better. Hope you’re not mad at us.’

‘Mad at you!’, Michael exclaimed, ‘no, of course not. No way. You might not believe it but I like you … and Nick. Why should I be mad? It’s not your fault.’ Michael thought he might have said the wrong thing; so he hurriedly added, ‘It’s been nice to have you around. Richard can be a bit of a pain at times. You might have noticed how he treats me sometimes.’

‘Yeah. He can be a bit of a bastard at times. But then so can Nick, with me. It really doesn’t bother me that much. I give ‘im as good back.’

Dave lifted the end of the towel and rubbed it over Michael’s dripping hair. ‘There. That’s better,’ he said and gave Michael a slap on the shoulder. ‘You’d better get a move on if you’re going out.’

Michael stood up, his towel dropping on the floor and pulled on his shorts. ‘Listen, Dave, we are going to the nightclub. You and Nick want to come with us?’

‘Okay. Sounds like fun. I’ll go and wake Nick up and see what he plans to do tonight. We’ll meet you in the lobby at nine then?’

Michael nodded and the lad opened the door and disappeared through it. Michael finished getting dressed and combed his hair in the mirror. He felt a lot better for having had a wash and the lotion had curbed the irritation of his burnt skin.

Nine o’clock soon came and the teenagers set off from the Britannia to the nearby nightclub. Richard and Kate however were nowhere to be seen. Sandra was walking with Giovanni; he had his arm around her. Dave and Nick were talking to Michael but none of them had any female companions tonight. The dance floor of the nightclub was completely deserted when they arrived. It was only twenty minutes past nine and things did not begin to warm up until well after ten. A disc jockey played pop songs over the sound system, making occasional comments in Italian as he introduced the next track. In one corner sat a group of old women drinking coffee; they had been cleaning the place and now sat to gossip for a while before going home. A group of young waiters were smoking in another corner.

It started to rain through the vine-covered trellises, so everyone moved into the lounge area in the main building and sat in groups chatting and enjoying their drinks. When the shower eventually stopped, some couples took to the floor to dance the Twist. Michael ordered a glass of Moscato, although, by this time, he had become a little bored with it, probably because he had consumed rather more of it than was good for him over the past two weeks. The three lads sat at a table and talked, as the nightclub started to warm up. Dave and Nick agreed that this was not really their scene; back in Manchester, they never went to clubs, preferring to spend their evenings out in the local bars and pubs where they felt more comfortable. Michael was curious to know about Manchester; he had never been there but often watched Coronation Street on television and thought it must be something like that.

‘You don’t want to watch that rubbish,’ Nick said contemptuously, ‘Manchester is nothing like that. That programme is made by people in London who ‘ave never even been t’ Manchester. They think that everyone walks around wearing flat caps and ‘eadscarves. It’s a load of crap. Dave and I went down to London once for a day. We thought it was just like home. The people there looked the same as in Manchester and it was no different.’

‘So, what do you do, up there?’, Michael asked.

‘I work as a fitter in a garage,’ Dave told him, ‘and Nick works in a plastics factory, finishing mouldings.’

Michael was impressed; he seldom met people who were, (what he called), ‘manual labourers.’ Nick interrupted the conversation to ask, ‘Fancy a pint then Mike?’ He waved at one of the waiters who came and took his order for three pints of lager. There was some discussion as to what a ‘pint’ was. They settled for whatever was the local measure – litres or something like that.

‘Back ‘ome,’ Dave said, ‘we always drink beer – in pints. It’s what we do. We drink this lager stuff over ‘ere because it’s all they ‘ave. Mind you, I could get used t’ it. Am not keen on wine though, me. It gives me the runs.’ Nick laughed, he said, ‘Yeah. A pint of that stuff and you’re up all night on the bog.’

The evening did not bring the usual round of frivolity and fun that Michael had known on his previous visits to the club. The girls were all dancing with the lads they had come with and there were no ‘spare’ girls hanging around for the three boys to try their luck with on the dance floor. They decided to go back to the hotel. Michael found Richard and Kate in the lounge watching the television. ‘What happened to you two then?’, he said as he arrived at their sofa. They were sitting with their arms around each other. ‘Oh, we decided not to go; the weather didn’t look too good so we thought we would just stay here. What was it like?’, Richard asked.

‘A bit dull really. Not as good as it was the last time we went,’ Michael explained as he sat down beside the pair. ‘All the girls were with their boyfriends, so I spent the whole evening with Dave and Nick.

‘Dave and Nick!’, Richard exclaimed, ‘Oh! so you’ve pallyed up with them! You like a bit of northern rough do you?’, Richard said sarcastically and Kate laughed.

‘Well, actually, they are quite nice when you get to know them,’ Michael retorted. Richard said nothing and turned his face to the television, pretending to watch the film. Michael sat looking at the pair, wrapped up in each other. He felt like a bit of ‘gooseberry’ so he stood up and said, ‘Right then. I’ll be off to bed’ and walked away from the sofa towards the stairs.

As departure day approached, the mood of the tour group grew sullen. Two weeks had flown by but to some of them – Richard and Michael in particular – it had seemed like a long age since they sat on the train to London. Michael noted:

For the young, the passage of time is very different. Their lives are led at a faster pace. Their days are shorter than they are for adults. The weeks are like months to them. Two weeks felt like two years. For many of the younger holidaymakers, the dream was at its most intense towards the end.

‘We dream just before we wake up,’ Michael told Carol during one of their long conversations. ‘Our minds begin to work rapidly and then we open our eyes.’ He had read something along these lines in a book about psychology he had taken out from his local library. Many new relationships had been formed over the two weeks and the time for separations was approaching. The teenagers continued with their frivolities although now, with a new sense of urgency. The Italian boys were keen to consummate their liaisons with the English girls. On the penultimate night of the holiday, they were all sitting together in the lounge. Renaldo and Giovanni invited Kate and Sandra to accompany them to the beach. The girls declined their offer; their parents had taken to checking that they were in their rooms by eleven o’clock, over the past couple of days.

‘Come to the beach with us. We can walk in the moonlight,’ Renaldo said.

‘Sorry. We can’t do that tonight,’ Kate replied. ‘We are leaving in the morning, so we have to get a good night’s sleep.’ They were all disappointed and wished they could have gone to the beach and walked with each other.

Earlier that day, Michael and Carol went to Mario’s for one last coffee. Michael had been thinking about the camomile-rubbing session with Dave. What had been a very ordinary event began to take on additional significance for Michael. At the time, it had seemed like a perfectly innocent favour. It was not something that Richard had ever agreed to do; even though he was Michael’s best mate, Richard had always refused to rub anything onto his friend’s back, even in the privacy of the hotel room. Michael thought it a little odd, therefore, that a complete stranger had offered to do this for him. But then they were not complete strangers; they had been sleeping in the same room for several days and Dave had been in the habit of walking around the room naked after a shower. Something that Richard would never have done. Michael wondered why he had enjoyed the back-rubbing session so much; it had calmed the angry soreness of his sunburn and the massaging of Dave’s large, rough hands had been very relaxing but why had it led to an embarrassing excitement in his loins? He felt a little confused by the experience. He had not liked either of the northern lads and regarded them as an intrusion on his time with Richard. Michael’s fondness for Richard was partly because he was good-looking, as well as being fun to be with. He realised that he also recognised that Dave was, in fact, quite handsome and had a rough masculine appearance that he found equally appealing. Michael understood that he was a very innocent teenager who came from a background that was very simple and knew nothing of the ways of men. He resolved to talk to Carol about Dave; he thought that she would understand more than he did about what had happened and could explain the significance of it to him.

Michael said, ‘I was in my room having a shower before we went to the club, and Dave came down to see me. Well, you know I am suffering a lot from sunburn? Dave offered to rub some camomile lotion on my back. I’d asked Robert to do this but he refused. He won’t even rub oil on my back when we are on the beach.’

Carol responded, ‘That’s a bit odd. We girls are always rubbing oil on each other’s backs, on the beach and in our rooms before we go out in the morning. Nothing unusual about that. You share a room with Dave and Nick don’t you?’

‘Yes, we used to. But they have got their own room now and Nick was asleep upstairs when this happened. Dave massaged the camomile all over my back and it felt very nice. He was very gentle in the way he did it. But then, something embarrassing happened.’

‘When Dave was giving you a message, you mean?’

‘Yes. I don’t quite know how to put this … but well, I got a bit over-excited by it.’

Carol laughed. ‘You mean it turned you on?’

‘I had to cover myself up with a towel. But I don’t understand why that happened. I know Dave is actually quite a handsome lad. In fact, I have grown to like him a lot more now than when we first met. I feel a bit confused by what happened.’

‘Well, it sounds all perfectly innocent to me, Michael. Dave didn’t try anything with you, did he?’

‘Like what?’

‘Did he try to touch you somewhere, you know …?’

‘No. He was very friendly and gave me a hug but he didn’t try to do anything else. I don’t think he has designs on me; it’s not like he fancies me or anything. It’s just like … well, I think I enjoyed what he did more than I should have.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Michael. Has Richard done anything like that with you?’

‘No, of course not. We are very close mates and we spend a lot of time together but there’s nothing more to it than that.’

‘So, what are you confused about? You like girls, don’t you?

‘I like you. We get on so well together. I have been thinking about whether I like boys too; that’s what’s confusing me.’

‘Well, maybe you do. We’re only sixteen. My dad says that teenagers can get confused about things, at our age. He’s a petty wise old thing, my dad. He’s been around and knows about all kinds of things. If he were here now, I imagine he would say, ‘It’s all part of growing up.’ It’s the kind of thing he has said to me before.’ Michael felt reassured by what Carol had just said; it made sense to him.

‘Oh, thank you so much, Carol. I think that has put my mind at rest. So much has happened to me during this holiday and I am struggling to take it all in, sometimes.’

They talked about people, about experiences and what it was like to be young and free and in the sunshine in a foreign land. Going on holiday abroad had been a watershed experience for Michael. Carol had been on holiday with her parents before, including trips to Spain, so being in Cattolica was not that new or different for her. The two friends talked long into the evening until Carol said, ‘Well Michael, we’d better get back and get on our with our packing.’

The night before departure day, people were in their rooms packing up their belongings, ready for an early start the next morning. Everyone seemed to be leaving with more clothes than they arrived with. Space had to be found in suitcases for the gifts and souvenirs that had been collected in the resort and on the excursions. They all wanted to take home their trophies and icons; the little fragments of their holiday that would remind them of things they had done and which they could use as visual aids when they were telling their friends about every last detail of their Italian holiday. Several members of the party owned cameras and had used many rolls of film.

Although Michael had taken an old camera with him, he did not use it much. He had only one roll of black and white film in it and knew that getting it developed at the chemists would cost him a lot of money. His uncle had given it to him after he purchased a new one; it worked reasonably well but Michael knew little of its settings and was content just to press the button and hope for the best. In any case, he preferred to capture images with his pen. His notebooks were filled with snapshots of people, places and events, stored in his juvenile scribble. The other holiday-makers who had cameras were always taking snaps of each other, he noticed and seldom pointed their devices at buildings or scenery. They wanted their albums to be about people, so they could explain who was who and what they were doing. Had Michael been able to take many more photos and have them developed, he would have filled several albums with shots of historic sites, the Italian landscape, Swiss mountains and the broad expanse of the Adriatic Sea.

Before the holidaymakers began their journey home, someone took a picture of the whole group, outside the Britannia. When they got back, Michael was sent a copy of it. He noticed he was the only person wearing dark clothing. Everyone else wore light-coloured clothes but he, alone, wore a dark brown top. He thought he stood out – the one who was different to everyone else. Most of the men in the photo wore shorts but Nick and Dave were wearing dark blue jeans. It was a very mixed group of adults and young people but Michael was glad to have been sent it, to remind him of all the people he had met on the trip (those who were still there at the end of the two weeks.)

For many, especially those who did not have cameras, it was about the keepsakes and memorabilia they had picked up. They took back with them paper napkins printed with the names of the hotels where they had stayed. Many had purchased postcards; as Betty said,

‘These postcards are better than photos. You’d never get a view like that with a camera.’

‘The first thing I am going to do when I get home,’ Mavis said to Betty, ‘is have a nice cup of proper tea. These Italians have no idea how to make tea. They might know a thing or two about coffee but when it comes to tea they have simply no idea.’

‘I’ll be glad to get home and get some fresh air at last,’ Betty replied. ‘I’ve spent weeks with nothing but the smell of burnt rubber and shit up me snot-holes.’

Mavis replied, ‘I don’t know how they get the coffee to smell like that. They must keep it hot for ages. I wouldn’t be surprised if they put it on the night before so it would be ready in the morning.’

As they walked back to the Britannia from the cafe, Michael said, ‘I will really miss you, Carol. Without you, this holiday would have been totally different. You have been my rock.’

‘Well I hope we will stay in touch when we get back to England,’ Carol replied. It was a moment of warmth and recognition and Michael put his arm around Carol’s shoulders as they walked. She responded by putting her arm around his waist. Michael had discovered a great deal during his holiday but the one thing we had gained, more than anything, he thought, was the friendship of Carol and the realisation that friendship with a like-minded person could be so rich and fulfilling. Deep inside, Michael knew that he loved Richard and he knew why but he was too shy to admit it to anyone; ‘we are like brothers,’ he thought to himself, ‘but like most brothers, we are locked in combat most of the time.’ Carol was the one person for whom he felt no rivalry; she had accepted him just as he was and needed no proof as to what he could do or who he was. He was her soulmate and she needed no further evidence of who he was other than him just being himself. He said, ‘Richard is always posing and acting to win the regard of others; for him, life is one long round of theatre; he has to act out all the time, doing what he thinks other people want to see and hear. You rarely get to see the real Richard. His real face is always hidden behind the mask.’

‘Oh. That’s very profound!’, Carol said and smiled at him with that look she often gave him when he had said something weighty. ‘You’re right though. Richard is a poser. The only time I saw him come out from behind his mask, as you put it, was when you came back from your walk to Ancona and he went into a rage, simply to hide the fact that he was so upset about what you had done.’

‘Yes. That surprised me a lot,’ Michael responded. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’ He fell silent for a few moments, as he thought through the events of that day. ‘I told you, didn’t I, that I was planning to run away? The one thing that stopped me was the thought of not seeing you again – and my parents of course – and that you might actually be upset if I disappeared. Plus all that stuff the old priest said to me about the meaning of life and the need to find out who we really are.’

‘Well of course I would have missed you, Michael. And your parents would have been devastated if you had disappeared while you were away on a foreign holiday. I mean, no one had any idea what had happened to you. There would have been a huge search, the police would have been brought in to find you and you would have been brought back to Cattolica to face the music.’

‘I didn’t think of that. I was so caught up with that romantic idea of living in Italy and becoming a new person. I just didn’t think about anyone else until right at the end. Then I realised that you just can’t walk away from your life. It’s like the old priest said, you have to find your true self and that takes a whole lifetime. Something like that.’

Carol said, ‘Do you remember that time we were at the cafe and you said you felt that coming on holiday had made you feel more grown up?’

‘Oh yes. I did say that, didn’t I? But, it’s true. I feel like a different person from the youth who stepped off the plane in Basel. It’s alright for you; you’re used to it. But for me … it was like flying to the moon. Abroad for the first time ever. Flying. Staying in a hotel. Being away from my parents. It was all so much at once; so many new things happening to me for the first time. I thought I was prepared for it all. But, clearly, I wasn’t.’

They arrived back at the Britannia, kissed each other goodnight and went off to their rooms. After he had finished packing, Michael spent a few moments catching up with his notes. He wrote:

Being a writer makes you a different person. Other people take photos and collect souvenirs but these don’t tell the whole story. Keeping notes about what you do, what people said, things that happened… it brings it all back and helps you remember how you felt about it and what it all meant. I am so glad I took the time to write everything down as we went along. I will never remember all these details when we get back. I suppose it is possible that one day I might even turn these notes into a book. Everyone thinks I am really odd because I do all this writing. It’s not the kind of thing that holidaymakers would usually do. For them, it’s just another holiday. For me, it has been the greatest experience of my life. When I get back, I know I will write many poems about the experiences I have had. These two weeks have created many very strong emotions in me and I need to express them with my pen.

Michael went to bed and his dreams flooded over him. He dreamt about Romans, the ways of simple fisherfolk, strange houses with shuttered windows, dancing to tunes never heard before and singing songs in made-up Italian words, meeting people from foreign lands and Manchester … and his dreams repeated, in this way, for most of the rest of his adult life.

Next: Chapter 9, Return to Switzerland.

Go to the home page for The Road to Ancona

Chapter 7. The Road to Ancona.

Part of my novel The Road to Ancona.

Day eleven. Michael struggled through the last week of the holiday. The heat, the constant feeling of exhaustion, the incessant itching of the sunburn on his back, the continual emotional upheavals of his experiences, everything seemed to get on top of him. He enjoyed moments of frivolity with the group but he always had Carol to talk to if things were weighing on his mind. His excessive consumption of alcohol did not help; he rarely drank at home and now he was smoking all day too and drinking lager and wine from dawn to dusk. He felt sick all the time. Even so, he ate regularly and happily tried new dishes; he had adventurous tastes when it came to food. But the local bacteria had got into his gut and he battled with an upset stomach pretty much all the time. Richard was totally obsessed with everyone else, so Michael thought, which was true. His friend was a gregarious party animal. Michael’s sufferings were not Richard’s main concern.

‘It’s your own fault,’ Richard said, on a regular basis. ‘I told you to make sure you put sun-tan oil on before you go out in the sun. If you’re burning up, it’s your own fault.’

‘Well, would you put some Camomile lotion on my back tonight?’

‘No way. What do you think people would say if they knew I was rubbing your back,’ Richard said haughtily.

Richard was not the world’s most sympathetic person, particularly where Michael was concerned. Carol had left Cattolica with her parents, who had decided to go on an excursion for a few days, so Carol had to go with them. She would have preferred to have stayed in the resort with her friends but the parents would have none of it.

‘You’re coming with us and that’s final,’ Carol’s dad said after a protracted argument about the excursion arrangements. So, Carol disappeared from Michael’s life that day and left him with no shoulder to cry on and no one to talk to. Michael compensated by writing in his notebook. His long hours of solitude were spent working through his woes with his pen. He wrote:

Life has got on top of me now. All the time I feel sick, not just sick in my stomach but sick inside, in my head and in my heart. I know that Richard is my best friend but at times I feel he ignores me and is simply not interested in anything I say to him. When he is around I struggle to get his attention; when he is not around I miss him. I wish he would spend just a little more time with me and pay attention when I talk to him. He is forever going off with people, such as Jane or Kate and even Stewart, and not telling me where he is going or when he will be back. I am so glad that I have Carol as my friend; she means a lot to me and without her company, the holiday would not have been as good. But now she has gone away and I am left with nobody. There is no one other than Carol to whom I can really talk. I think there are times when she does not understand what I am saying but, even so, she tries to appreciate my point of view and she asks intelligent questions.

As the day wore on, things got steadily worse for Michael. He became overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness and nausea. Richard was nowhere to be seen and most of the others had gone to bed to sleep off the weariness of the recent long excursions and the late nights they had been having. Michael felt fed up and frustrated. He is tired of writing. He decided to pack a few things into his knapsack and go on a long walk. He did not tell anyone where he was going. No one was around to tell, at the time, anyway. He set off with no idea where he was going or for how long he would be away. He found himself on the Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, one of the main roads that ran through the centre of the town. It led to the main trunk road that headed south towards Pesaro and then to Ancona. He walked over the bridge and up the steep hill to Gabicce Monte. He walked along, turning things over in his mind, trying to sort out the conflicts that were eating at him, wrestling with the issues that consumed him. An agony of despair gripped his mind, desolation had taken hold of him. Tears ran down his face and he felt as though life no longer meant anything to him. He kept on walking until he came to the top of the hill. Having left the built-up area of Cattolica, he found himself in a picturesque setting of gently undulating hills, smoothly rounded and patterned with neatly lined vineyards and small areas of cultivation dotted with tiny white houses topped with red-tiled roofs. It looked to him as though it had been painted, like a rustic medieval picture, and its tranquillity gave him a little peace. The scene suggested to him the timeless essence of rural Italy. From the top of the mount, he could see the calm blue sea stretching into the distance, small boats leaving behind them trails of white foam. Looking at this beautiful, serene scene, Michael’s problems seemed pointless and stupid. He thought, ‘These hills have been here for a thousand years, tilled and cultivated by many generations of people, each with their own histories of love and pain.’ He felt small and insignificant in its expansive magnificence.

He resolved that he wanted to discover the real Italy, not the resorts that had become industries for the tourist trade, the hotels and restaurants that were factories for holidaymakers. In Michael’s mind, an image of the native Italy, untouched by the holiday business, had developed. He wanted to become a local; live like a local; he wanted to become one of them and share their way of life. He made his way down a quiet, winding lane that led from the top of the Monte. As he walked, he dreamed of staying in Italy for the rest of his life. He wanted a new life, to become someone else, to leave behind his English roots and start again here in this land where he felt at home and where the people were relaxed in their simple way of life. His life appeared, in his mind, like scenes from a fresco; motionless people caught in actions frozen in time, scenes set in lines and colour, life depicted in stylised moments. The pictures he imagined told stories of people preaching forgiveness and the futilities of life, of wise old men sharing their learning with the young, of saintly individuals explaining to animals and birds how they should lead their lives.

The winding lane brought him to the Autostrada that ran along the coast towards the port of Ancona. The traffic roared along it, filling the air with noise and dust. Michael followed its course until it led towards the town of Pesaro and there he turned off, not wanting to end up in another area of houses and shops with crowds of people going about their daily business. He needed the solitude of the rural areas.

Michael walked; he had no idea where he was going and was completely consumed by his thoughts. He imagined himself sleeping in a field that night. He was far away from the resort; alone and totally dependent on his wits and his determination. As he walked he saw himself running away and hiding in the hills of the Italian countryside. He wondered about how he would survive, learn to speak the language, where he would live if he could find work to support himself … but then his thoughts turned to the people he would be leaving behind and would never see again – his parents, Richard, Carol – and what they would feel if he never came back. Would they miss him? he asked himself. Would Richard be glad to see the back of him?

Michael wondered if he was secretly in love with Richard. Not in love with the real Richard, he thought, with his vulgar jokes and irreverent behaviour but with an idealised version of him. This ideal version was like that of an ancient Greek statue. A bronzed youth with a beautiful face, admired by all but lacking any kind of philosophy to add depth to his physical form. This idea was just one of many troubles that weighed on Michael’s mind during his walk. Michael imaged that people thought him odd; rather out of place, someone who just did not fit in. Maybe, here in Italy, he thought, he could become a different person. Maybe the Italians would understand him and his ways, unlike the English who did not. He saw the local people as being more accepting, more forgiving, more given to a live and let live attitude, people who reflected spirituality in life in a way that his compatriots did not. Michael’s mind was in turmoil, wrestling with the problems and difficulties that consumed him and ate away at his heart and mind. He followed the small roads and lanes of the countryside, having no idea where he was or where he was going.

Several hours after he started his walk, Michael came to a small brick-built chapel beside the road, a decaying hut from which the paint was peeling and the white plaster was falling off in pieces. The sun was lowering and bathing the world in soft golden light. The door to the little building was open so Michael wandered inside, hoping to find somewhere to sit down and rest. It was cool and dark inside and his eyes took some time to become accustomed to the lack of light. There were no windows; the only light was that from the open doorway. He sat down on one of the wooden pews in the middle of the tiny church; it was a simple place, with bare walls and an arched roof. He could see a crucifix at the end of the aisle, with a painted carving of Christ, fixed to the wall above the small altar. The symbol of a man nailed to a cross spoke to him; it seemed like his whole life was a cross he had to bear.

He sat there for several minutes, feeling glad of the coolness and a place to rest his now aching legs. He took the knapsack off his back and placed it beside him on the pew. A feeling of contemplative calm came over him. He had been walking for several hours and had no idea where he was. Having left Cattolica, he knew he had been walking south, following the coastal road towards Pesaro but had turned off and headed into the rural heartland of the area. He felt hungry but had brought no food with him; in the countryside, there had been no shops or roadside stalls from which to buy anything to eat. He began to think about what he should put in his notebook; trying to organise his thoughts into writings. His mind went over the ideas that had come to him during the walk. He revisited his longing to leave England and to settle in the country he was in, in its rural heartland and become a new person, someone quite different from the Midlands teenager that he was when he left home. The more he contemplated his situation, the more he began to have misgivings about the idea of running away. Hunger and weariness gnawed away at his determination.

The light coming in through the open door suddenly dropped; he turned round and saw the shape of a man, silhouetted against the brightness of the doorway. The shape suggested he was a priest wearing a round-brimmed hat. The man stood just inside the church, his eyes getting used to the darkness after the sunshine outside. He saw Michael sitting on the pew. He was surprised; few people ever entered this place. The old priest walked slowly towards the young boy. Peering down at him he said something in Italian which Michael did not understand. Michael said, ‘I have come here to rest’. The priest recognised the language and replied to him in English.

‘Bless you, my son. This house of God is open to all travellers who seek rest. Have you come far?’

‘From Cattolica,’ Michael replied. The old man had known the town when it was just a fishing harbour before the developers moved in and changed it into a resort for tourists.

‘Cattolica,’ the priest said nodding his head. ‘My father was a fisherman there when he was a young man. He had his own boat and made a good living from the sea.’ The priest sat down in the pew behind Michael. ‘I went to school there when I was a child – many years ago’, the priest said slowly, with a wistful note in his voice. ‘Many pilgrims used to stop there in those days. They were going to Rome to visit the shrine of Saint Peter, you know.’ The old man talked slowly and deliberately. ‘Everything changed in Cattolica when Bonaparte arrived there.’ The priest removed his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

‘Bonaparte!’, Michael exclaimed. ‘Why did the emperor of France arrive in Cattolica? Did they have packaged holidays in those days?’

‘No. No. Lucien Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon. He hated the noise and crowds of Rimini and much preferred the peace and quiet of our small fishing village. It cost a lot less, in those days, of course. He found space and time to think and eat with the local people. It is said he preferred the simple pleasures of fisherman’s food to the lavish banquets offered by the grand hotels in Rimini.’

Michael liked what he was hearing; it had a ring of authenticity to it. Stories about history and great people in times long past fascinated him. But the old priest was curious to know something.

‘So, why are you here my child? What brings you to this church? We seldom see holiday-makers in here. It’s not on the tourist map. How did you find this place?’

‘I was walking. I needed some time to myself, so I just walked along the road from Cattolica. That was about four or five hours ago. I found this place and the door was open, so I came in to rest my feet. My legs are aching. You don’t mind do you?’

‘No. No. Of course not, my child. The house of God is open to all. These chapels were built for pilgrims. They were created to offer rest for the weary, both the aching legs and the weariness of the soul.’

‘My walk has been a pilgrimage, I suppose,’ Michael explained. ‘I felt I needed to get away from everything. This is my first time in a foreign country. It takes a lot of getting used to. Things were getting on top of me. People, their constant problems, their incessant irritations … I can understand why people in the past went on pilgrimages. They must have got fed up with life and wanted to search for something … for solace.’

The old priest said, ‘They went on pilgrimages as an act of devotion to our Lord. Their journey was taken for the soul; it was a spiritual journey,’ the priest explained. ‘Like life itself, it was a journey and they made it to find themselves.’

‘I think that is what I have been doing,’ Michael said thoughtfully. ‘This whole holiday has been about finding myself … trying to work out who I am. I have been thinking about the purpose of my life. What I am here for.’

The priest nodded thoughtfully. He looked at the strange, fair-skinned teenager in front of him, trying to gauge the expression on his face in the gloom of the tiny chapel. The priest continued, speaking in slow and measured statements, ‘God has put all of us here for a purpose. My life as a priest has been a search to find and understand what that purpose is. Even now, in my old age, I do not fully understand it. It is one of the great mysteries of our religion. But you … so young! Your life has only just begun. I never thought about such things when I was your age. Life for me then was about living. Just living. There was no time to think back then. It was only later in my life, that I started to think about the meaning of our existence. As I read the Bible and talked to priests, a whole new world opened in my mind. That’s why I became a priest. Well that’s one of the reasons. The Catholic church is not a college of philosophers. We are not here to become wise and learned. If that happens, it happens. We are commanded to serve. Our lives must be devoted to the service of the church.’ The old man looked thoughtful for a few moments.

Michael was somewhat wary of the old man. He looked at his wrinkled face and grey beard but his eyes stared at him in a way that was kindly and inquisitive. Michael remembered the friars he had seen in Assisi. He imaged them as leading a life full of prayer and peacefulness. Perhaps this old priest used to be a monk, Michael thought.

‘Perhaps that is why the youth find it so difficult, these days,’ the priest continued. ‘They have no sense of purpose in their lives. Nothing to shape and guide them. So many young people have abandoned the church now. They come to us when they want to get married and we bury them when they are dead. But, so often, we do not see them between these times.’ The old priest looked sad for a moment. He peered at the teenager in the pew in front of him and noted the tiredness in his eyes. He continued, ‘We cannot escape what we are born into. We are who we are and few can change that. Our Lord has ordained a life for us, a place in the world that He has given us and we must bear the cross that He lays upon our backs. Suffering is given to us to open our eyes to the truth of the world and to make us deeper and more loving people.’

Michael was deeply moved by what the priest was saying to him. The dark clouds in his mind lifted as he listened to the words spoken by the old man, in his slow and deliberate manner. To Michael he was a voice from the past, almost as though he was a ghost that had come to minister to him the wisdom of the ancients; he listened intently, soaking up the words of the old priest, totally absorbed by what he was hearing. But then, he noticed that the light was fading away.

It was beginning to get dark outside; Michael said goodbye to the priest and thanked him for his time and for being allowed to rest in his little roadside church. He began to walk back to Cattolica. He turned over in his mind all that the old man had said to him. His words have given him comfort and solace. His churning anger and fears had been calmed by the slow and thoughtful things that the priest had said to him. Michael’s mind dwelled on all that he had been told about the purpose of life. He felt that his life should have a sense of purpose and he needed to discover what that should be. Michael resolved that he would spend the rest of his life searching for what his existence should be about. If he could not find himself in Cattolica, he thought, he would not find himself anywhere not even here in Italy. He realised that he was not strong enough to run away and start a new life. He felt weak and insecure and needed the presence of the people on whom he relied.

Michael arrived back at the Britannia very late that night. Richard was furious. ‘Where the hell have you been Michael?’, he said, as his friend appeared in the lounge of the hotel. ‘We have all been worried sick here wondering where you had got to. Why did you go off without telling us where you were going?’

‘I went for a walk,’ Michael said sheepishly. ‘I felt I needed some time to be alone and think about things.’

‘Well next time you want to be alone, would you mind telling us where you are going? Half the hotel has wasted their day looking for you,’ Richard said angrily. ‘And would you mind thinking about other people for once?’ Michael was surprised that his friend was suddenly so concerned about him.

‘Oh! I thought you would be glad to see the back of me,’ Michael said.

‘I’d be happy to see the back of you if I knew where you were going,’ Richard retorted testily.

‘Did you think how worried we were, not knowing where you had gone? For all we know you could have been abducted or fallen down a cliff somewhere.’ Richard ranted on for some time while Michael looked at him with a mixture of admiration and pity. After his spiritual experience and pilgrimage into the unknown hinterland of the Italian countryside, Michael went to Mario’s and got drunk.

Having returned from the trip with her parents, Carol found him there, sitting at a table with a bottle of wine and a pizza. She had been told about about his return and the scolding he had got from Richard. She sat down with him and looked at his tired face.

‘Richard said you went for a walk and that’s why you were missing for most of the day. Where did you go?’, she asked. There was a silence, during which Michael looked thoughtful.

‘I went on a pilgrimage,’ Michael said taking a sip from his glass. ‘Things have been getting on top of me lately so I just took off. I walked along the road to Ancona. I needed to be alone and to think about things. It was like going on a pilgrimage.’

Carol asked, ‘So, what did you think about on your pilgrimage?’

‘Lots of things, Carol. My mind has been in a bit of turmoil recently. I even thought about running away and staying here in Italy. But then I found an old church by the roadside and went in to rest and then this old priest came in and started talking to me. He talked about his life and what it was like when he was young. It was just a chance encounter but it helped me a lot. I feel like a lot of things have been sorted out in my mind now.’ Carol felt his emotion as he spoke. She said, ‘Richard was really worried about you. I think he really cares about you a lot. After all, he is your best friend. Apparently, he was very angry with you when you got back, so I’m told. But that shows how much he cares about you; he wouldn’t have got so upset if he didn’t. Someone said he gave you a right roasting when you got back. That shows how much he cares about you.’

Michael began to cry. He had never thought how much he would be missed, least of all by Richard. Carol put her arm around his shoulders and spoke comfortingly to him. He was exhausted by the long walk and the wine was stirring up his emotions.

‘You have a very good friend in Richard. Even though he can be beastly towards you at times, he is really very fond of you. He just doesn’t want to show it.’ This made Michael weep even more.

The two friends talked until Michael’s bottle was empty and Carol realised that he was too inebriated to make any more sense. She walked back to the Britannia with him and took him up to his room. He kissed her goodnight, went in and fell into a deep sleep.

Next: Chapter 8.

Go to the home page for The Road to Ancona

List of all of the chapters of this book.

Chapter 6. Conflict under the sun.

Part of my novel The Road to Ancona.

Day nine. Back in Cattolica, life continued much as it had done before the trip to Rome. Some of the girls from England had started affairs with the local Italian boys. They were attracted to their Mediterranean charms. But their parents were not happy about this. Kate was seeing Renaldo. Bear in mind that she was 16 and he was 21. Her aunt and uncle were less than pleased with this situation.

‘We are going to have to do something about that Italian fellah that Kate is hanging around with,’ Kate’s uncle said to his wife over breakfast.

‘I’ve heard what those Italians are like. I don’t want her coming back with us pregnant. But you know what she’s going to be like if we say anything to her.’

‘Well, we can’t lock her in the room for the next week. And keeping up with her isn’t going to be easy. She takes off without telling us where she is going.’

‘She seems to be pally with Sandra. Now, Sandra is a nice girl. Very level-headed. Maybe if I had a word with her, she might keep an eye on her,’ the wife said.

‘Good idea. I’ve not seen Sandra fraternising with the locals.’

Later that morning, Kate’s aunt found Sandra sitting outside the Britannia, enjoying a glass of Pepsi.

‘Ah Sandra; I’m glad I’ve found you. I just wanted to have a word with you about Kate.’

Sandra looked at her, surprised that the middle-aged woman had come to talk to her for the first time since they arrived.

‘You’re Kate’s auntie?’, She asked.

‘Yes. I know you’re a friend of Kate. You see, the problem is, I noticed that she is seeing that Italian lad.’

‘You mean Renaldo?’

‘Oh is that his name? Well, I was wondering if you could keep an eye on them for me.’

‘In what way?’, Sandra asked, feeling somewhat surprised at the request.

‘Well, you know. They spend a lot of time together. I was talking to my husband about this earlier. We are a bit worried in case anything should happen. You know what I mean?’

‘What kind of thing?’, Sandra asked, feigning innocence.

‘Well, you know … romantically. I don’t want Kate to get into any kind of trouble while she is over here. You must know what these Italian youths are like and he’s a lot older than Kate.’

Sandra had been dating a boy called Giovanni, who was 20, but she decided not to mention that. She felt uncomfortable with the tone of the conversation. She asked, ‘Well, have you talked to Kate about this?’

‘Not really. The trouble is, if I say anything to her, then she’s just going to fly into a temper. She can be difficult over things like this. I am sure she would respond better if you talked to her.’

‘To be honest,’ Sandra replied, ‘I don’t really know Kate that well and I’m not sure I can just go up to her and start talking about Renaldo like that. I really don’t want to start any rows while I’m on holiday. If you’re worried about her …,’ Sandra took a sip of her drink and continued, ‘then perhaps you should talk to her. I’m not keen to start spying on people I don’t really know that well.’

The aunt realised she was not going to get what she wanted from this conversation. She decided to back out; it clearly was not going to get the result she was hoping for.

‘Well thank you anyway,’ she said, getting up to leave. ‘Sorry to have bothered you. I hoped you might be able to help, and with that, she went back into the hotel to find her husband.

Sandra continued with her drink until Jane arrived and sat down at her table.

‘You won’t believe what just happened,’ Sandra said. ‘Kate’s aunt has just asked me to spy on her.’

‘What! She asked you to spy on Kate! Why?’

‘She knows Kate has been seeing Renaldo and clearly she’s not happy about it. But why ask me? I don’t know Kate that well and anyway it’s not my problem.’

‘Well, quite right too Sandra. Fancy doing that! What a cheek! Anyway, it’s not like they are getting up to anything. Well, not as far as I know. But then, it’s none of my business what they do. Did you tell the old cow to bugger off?’

‘Not in so many words,’ Sandra giggled. ‘But I made it clear I wasn’t going to do what she wanted. She said she couldn’t talk to Kate herself because she would fly off the handle. I don’t blame her. I would too, if it was me.’

‘Too right. Stupid old cow. I bet she’s just jealous because her niece is getting a bit of action and she isn’t.’

‘Well I’m glad I don’t have my parents breathing down my neck this holiday and watching everything I’m doing. I bet Kate won’t go on holiday with them again. I have got a good mind to tell Kate what has happened.’

‘Umm. Not sure that’s a good idea, Sandra. Best not to upset her. She’s having fun, so why spoil it? Isn’t that just what old auntie wants you to do? If I were you I would say no more about it. Let’s all just get on with what we want to do and enjoy ourselves while we can. After all, we’ve only got a few days left now.’

Sandra agreed with Jane about this and said nothing about the conversation.

Richard thought he had something going with Jane. They spent a lot of time together; they liked each other. They had got to know each other very early on in the holiday. All would have been fine except for one thing. Chico. Jane was infatuated with him. Now, Chico was a pretty street-wise young man. For him, the arrival of large numbers of English girls in Cattolica was a welcome development. For him, they were a crop ready for harvest. He knew he was on to a good thing. Relationships would develop but they would leave at the end of the holiday and he was then free to move on to new conquests. That was good for him and for Maria, his steady girlfriend. Chico knew that one day he would marry Maria. Their parents had pretty much agreed on this. But, before that, Chico was intent on sampling a few of the English girls, while he was young enough and free enough to do so. Jane was careful to avoid letting Richard see her with Chico. In any case, he was the tour rep and she didn’t want him to get into any kind of trouble by dating one of his customers. She was talking to Kate while they were at Mario’s.

‘How are you getting on with Chico?’, Kate asked.

‘Fine. I really like him a lot. He’s such fun to be with when he’s off duty. And you know what those big brown eyes do to me.’

‘I’m sure. But I thought you had a thing going with Richard?’

‘Well, yes, we are good friends and yes, Richard is really nice. We might even see each other when we get home. So I am saving him up for then.’ The girls laughed. ‘But you know I’m not going to get another chance with a gorgeous Italian man. Certainly not when I get home. If I don’t get my chance now, I will have missed out.’

‘So … if you want to carry on with Richard when you get back you really don’t want him finding out about Chico.’

‘Bloody hell no. I have to make sure Richard is out of the way before I start on Chico. You know he has a flat up there?’, Jane pointed to the window over the café‘s servery. ‘Well, he drops me a note when no one is looking saying what time I can come up. There’s even a back way into it, so no one can see me going into the café’s flat.’

Kate looked surprised. She said, ‘Well you’ve got it made then!’

Life for the young holidaymakers fell into a pattern. For Nick and Dave, it was a case of drunken nights and days spent asleep in bed. Back in Manchester, they were hard-working lads. Spending two weeks on holiday was something new for them; it was not an experience their parents ever had. Like the Italian youths, they were chasing girls but somehow they never got anywhere. They were either already too much the worse for wear from the large quantities of lager they consumed or lacked the charm that the local youths could turn on. Dave managed to strike up a brief friendship with Kate; at first, things seemed to be going well. But then the arguments started. Both of them were people given to belligerence. At home, this would have been perfectly acceptable but on holiday it was simply not on, as far as Kate was concerned. In any case, they came from widely separated hometowns, so it was very unlikely they were going to keep anything going when they got back. Dave noticed that Jane was interested in Chico; he could tell what she was up to and decided it wasn’t going to be worth the effort to pursue things any further with her.

Nick really wasn’t bothered about girls that much; he might occasionally play the part for the sake of appearances but did not entertain any serious intentions with regard to the opposite sex. Even back in Manchester, he had not formed any kind of lasting relationship with the opposite sex. Dave was his best mate and he focussed his feelings on him. He felt more secure with Dave; he knew where he stood and didn’t have to bother with the ins and outs of going out, dating, taking people out for the evening, and having to dress up and look good. Dave took him as he was and for what he was and everything was settled and happy, as far as Nick was concerned.

Michael had never had a proper girlfriend back home in the Midlands. He filled his life with reading books, and writing notes and his friendship with Richard gave him all the personal and emotional fulfilment that he needed. As he lay in bed at the Britannia, he thought about Carol and wondered if he should become more intimate with her. After all, he thought to himself, Richard has obviously been up to something with Kate and Jane. Why is he able to do things with them, he asked himself, trying to work out in his mind why Richard could get his way with girls and not him. He knew that Richard had girlfriends at home and he assumed that they might have done things together, though this was not something that he would ever mention. Michael liked Carol a lot but she was different from the other girls. She clearly wasn’t up for experiences in the way they were. But did she have any expectations of him, Michael wondered. The more he thought about this the more he was convinced that sex was not something he should worry about, as far as Carol was concerned. They were getting along just fine and it would be wrong, he thought, to upset the apple cart by trying it on with her.

The two friends were enjoying a coffee together. Michael said, ‘Carol. Have you noticed how the adults are keeping an eye on the girls all the time?’

‘Yes. A lot of them are clearly worried about what some of the girls are getting up to. Especially those who have shacked up with the Italian boys. I heard that Kate’s uncle and aunt have been worried about her and Renaldo. They think that something is going on between them. Kate hasn’t said anything to me about it but it’s fairly plain if you see them together.’

‘You don’t think Kate would take Renaldo up to her room?’

‘No. She wouldn’t take a risk like that. But they have spent some time together on the beach, late at night. They went off, the other night, saying they were going for a walk together but I don’t think they got much further than one of the sun loungers at the end of the beach where it’s fairly dark.’

‘Oh! Really! So you think they might have had a bit of nooky on the sun beds?’

‘It’s not for me to say, Michael. But if they have done, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

Michael said, ‘I’m pretty sure that Richard and Jane have been up to something. I know what Richard is like. He would never say anything to me about what he gets up to at night. We are close but not that close. But then this is a holiday and it gives us all the opportunities we would not get at home.’

The role played by the adults, who were on holiday with the teenage members of the party, was something that fascinated Michael. He listened intently when he overheard arguments between adults and girls about what they were doing and who they were seeing. It appeared to him, that the sexuality of the girls was constantly being held back by the grown-ups, as he noted in his little book:

Girls seem to have a different set of attitudes to us boys. They are much clearer, in their minds, about what they want. Us boys are still somewhat innocent. Here in Cattolica, the young people are desperate for freedom and experience. At 16 we all want to be adults but in fact we are still children. We want to grow up but we haven’t begun to understand what adult life is all about.

The young members of the package holiday were squeezing every drop of life and fun they could from the two weeks in Italy. The adults however took things differently. Some had done this kind of thing before, so for them, it was just another trip to the continent. The newbies, however, were still trying to come to terms with it all.

One couple – Mavis and Betty – had never been on a foreign package holiday before. Although, in their late thirties, the two women behaved much like the youngsters in the group. Both were jolly characters who liked to laugh a lot. Both had the same thing to show: their ignorance. They had learnt nothing about the country they had chosen to holiday in. When they booked the holiday, the tour operator sent a large pack of information. They had not read the leaflets on Italy, its customs and local knowledge. They filed the information packs away in a drawer, thinking they would get around to reading them eventually. They never did.

‘We don’t need to know all that crap,’ Betty said as shoved the papers into her bureau drawer. ‘It’s going to be just the same as Blackpool.’

‘We didn’t get all this stuff when we went to Morecambe for a fortnight,’ Mavis commented.

They did manage to get their passports sorted out before they left. The man at the travel agents had gone to some lengths to explain to them how they should apply for them and that they were needed for the holiday. ‘They won’t let you in without them,’ he said to them in a stern voice. They always booked at the same travel agency and insisted on being served by the same clerk. He knew what they were like. Most of the adults in the party enjoyed the routine of getting up, having breakfast and dinner at set times and spending time browsing through the souvenir shops. They were not interested in any illicit affairs either with the locals or with each other. They drank in moderation and were very concerned about putting on good appearances; they did not want the local people to think they did not know how to behave in a foreign country. Their main aim was to relax, enjoy their time in Italy, and go back with good things to say about the place.

On the tenth day of their holiday, Richard and Michael decided to go on a one-day excursion to the tiny independent republic of San Marino, not far from Cattolica. The place was simply a huge rock set in the plains of the Po Valley. Three mediaeval castles perched on top of the outcrop’s peaks and from the topmost turrets of the highest of these, there was a breathtaking view right across to the coast. Richard had chosen to wear white trousers for this trip; he knew they would have to look presentable when they visited museums or ancient attractions. Michael wore his woolly grey trousers and felt uncomfortable in them until they got high enough to enjoy the freshness of a cooler climate. By this time Richard had made friends with a younger boy called Stewart, who followed him around like a puppy and was completely besotted with him. Stewart had arrived with his parents a few days before the San Marino trip; he was a few years younger than most of the others and there were no kids of his own age in the hotel. He had latched on to Richard because the teenager had played pool with him and they got on well together. Richard enjoyed the attention of the younger boy and continually played jokes on him. They played football on the beach and Richard would tell him stories about things he had done at home.

Richard was always the centre of attention and played up to the crowd, while Michael was the fall guy of the double act. Michael was often left alone when Richard went off with someone; in the absence of his friend, he felt awkward and unsure of himself. When Richard was away from him, entertaining Stewart, Michael preoccupied himself with the history and artefacts of the medieval world of San Marino and its castles. He wandered around the museums peering into cabinets and reading the display boards that described the life and times of the Middle Ages. Eventually, he found Richard and began to tell him of the things he had seen. Richard however was too busy talking to Stewart to take much notice of the lecture being given to him by Michael. The visit to San Marino was brief; it was not long before they were back on the coach. Richard sat next to Stewart so Michael found himself sitting alone. He took out his notebook and scribbled away in it, trying to remember the facts he had gathered in the museums. He felt resentful that his best friend was showing more interest in someone other than him. He disliked Richard’s new, younger friend, who he regarded as being silly and puerile.

The coach returned to Cattolica and deposited the tourists at the Britannia Hotel. After dinner, the teenagers made their way to a nightclub Chico had recommended to them; he gave many of them free tickets to get in. It was named after the foremast of a ship and had a vaguely nautical ambience. At the nightclub, they found a spacious dance area covered by a canopy of branches and leaves. The boys were joined by the two northern lads and all the girls. A live band was playing popular Italian dance tunes of the day. Occasionally, local lads would get up and sing with the band in their vibrant Italian tones. The songs were very sentimental and told of unrequited love and emotional upsets with girls. Michael was impressed by the place – its rows of colourful lamps, its leafy ambience, candle-lit tables, the music and the array of wine bottles, many with gold-wrapped necks. He and Richard consumed large amounts of Moscato Frizzante. Its sugary contents boosted their energy levels and the alcohol helped them to feel relaxed.

At one point, Richard tripped and fell against one of the tables, which collapsed and its bottles and glasses smashed on the stone floor. It was a tense moment. The teenagers waited for the manager to come and demand that they all leave. But it was a venue used to such occurrences; a couple of waiters appeared with brooms and simply cleared up the mess and reset the table. A large English man from the next table walked over and said, in his broad Birmingham accent, ‘Oi! You kids behave y’selves. We don’t want the ‘I-ties’ to think we are a load of ‘ooligans.’ The teenagers resumed their seats and continued to drink and chat merrily, making a big joke about the incident with the table. A round of pizza was ordered and they began to tuck into the oily mass of cheese and crusty bread. At one point Michael hurled a slice of pizza at Sandra; it landed on her smart blue dress and left a greasy stain on it. She was not pleased. He apologised profusely to her but she avoided his company for the rest of the evening.

While he was eating his pizza, Michael noticed small green flecks in it, which he took to be herbs. He did not know which herbs they were; at home, such things were rarely used. His mother would serve mint sauce from a jar when cooking lamb and she made stuffing from a packet of dried ingredients which contained sage and thyme. That was the nearest he had ever got to herbs. He decided that, when he got home, he would look for Italian herbs in the supermarket and bring some home for his mother to use in cooking.

Many acts of bad behaviour took place that night. At one point Richard was lying on the floor and Kate was pouring wine into his mouth. A photographer appeared and walked around the table taking snaps of the holidaymakers. He stopped at the table at which the teenagers were sitting and invited them to move together so he could get them all into his view-finder. Michael was sitting next to Carol and put his arm around her shoulders; she put on an expression of amused embarrassment. He paid the photographer and gave him his address at the hotel and a couple of days later the photo arrived. It was a good one and the pair giggled as they looked at it and showed it to the others.

Michael danced with the girls; not the formal moves of hands-on ballroom but the modern, disconnected motions of the disco. At the end of the evening, the band broke into a slow number; couples gasped each other for ‘the slow one’ and several mouths were entwined in what they called ‘tongues.’ Richard was hard at it with Kate but Michael had been dancing with Carol and neither of them was ready for anything too intimate; so they went back to their table and emptied the last of the bottles. By the time they left, Michael was well and truly plastered. All the way back he kept singing at the top of his voice, making up the lyrics in a form of faux Italian. On the way up to their rooms, he grabbed Sandra and kissed her. It was partly because he was attracted to her but mainly because he was sorry about the incident with the slice of pizza. She accepted the kiss in good humour and they went off to their rooms.

After the nightclub, Michael’s dreams were full of images of people dancing, singing and having fun. In his sleep, he would relive the things that had happened to him and what he and his friends had done. He saw himself singing with a band; his fine voice giving out beautiful melodies with songs of love and romance. He might have dreamt this but in reality, he was not that good a singer, however much he could feel the song and find its emotions appealing. In his sleep, Michael could be a lot of the things that he could not be in real life; he could do things in his dreams that his waking life denied him. As a writer, his mind had an aptitude for fiction, as though digesting the food of life and finding nutrients in its colourful experiences. It was what fed his imagination and gave zest to his creativity. Michael’s dreams surfaced in his mind during the hours of daylight and he found he was easily able to remember what had taken place in his brain whilst in bed. For him, nocturnal reality flowed into the river of his waking life, enriching and nurturing it. He was well aware that this happened and valued it as a process that gave him inspiration and fed his scribblings. Michael found that his dreams lifted the veil that hid the inner meaning of real events and shed light on his daily experiences in a way that rational thought could not.

The English girls were interested in only one thing – the Italian youths. The other males from their homeland were good for a laugh, they would say to each other. But the romantic aspirations of the girls from the Midlands were for the local Latin boys. They loved their dark, sun-tanned looks and were easily charmed by the flattering remarks they would come out with in their broken English accents. To the English girls, the Italian lads represented romantic aspirations that were absent back home; they behaved in a way that was suave and sophisticated, so the girls believed, although, in fact, they were just doing what all Italian youths did and behaved no differently with the foreigners than they did with their own female compatriots. They did however view the English females as being available in a way that their girlfriends and finances were not. Throttled back by the power of the Catholic church and curbed by the values of the family, Italian youths viewed foreign females in a way that was different to how they regarded their own countrywomen. English girls understood none of this; they knew only that they were anxious not to go home without something to talk about with their friends and some memories that they could cherish.

Richard was interested in Kate and often monkeyed around to impress her. He frequently toppled over backwards on his chair in an effort to amuse her and her entourage. Michael had found his soulmate in Carol. She was, for him, the saving grace of the holiday. His friendship with her made up for the arguments with Richard and the way that Richard continually took the mickey out of him. Dave and Nick spent most of their time in each other’s company. The girls thought them rather peculiar, with their awkward northern manners and strange Mancunian accents. Some of the girls suggested, to each other, that they were an item and Nick was not interested in the opposite sex. Michael spent a lot of time writing and exploring the town. He joined in with the frivolities of the teenage group activity when it suited him, but that was far from always. As the days wore on, he became increasingly affected by the heat, and the irritation of the sunshine on his fair skin and was invariably moody. Richard was spending less time with him and more time with Kate, Stewart and the other girls. Michael spent his time walking around Cattolica when Richard was occupied elsewhere and Carol was away with her parents. It was only in the evenings, when they were all together, that he came out of himself and enjoyed the conviviality of the circle of friends and their frivolous activities.

Next: Chapter 7: The Road to Ancona.

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Chapter 5 Part Three. The Trevi Fountain.

Part of my novel The Road to Ancona.

Day seven. In the afternoon of the second day, Richard had fallen asleep on his bed, there being no organised trips and so Michael went for a walk. He explored the streets around the hotel. He found himself back at the Campidoglio steps and climbed them again to the piazza which was now less crowded with tourists and coach parties. Various Italian youths had congregated there, sitting on the low walls, watching the tourists milling around. They spied Michael and began to shout at him. ‘Hey English,’ they called and he wondered how they could possibly know his nationality. In fact, his ginger hair and pallid face made him stand out and it didn’t take a lot of intelligence to guess where he was from. Another lad called, ‘Hey English. You wanna a bit of jiggy jiggy?’ Michael failed to understand the meaning of this though he assumed it was some kind of salacious invitation. He decided he needed to get away from the delinquent Italians and made his way back down the steps. He could hear them jeering behind him. In the crowds of tourists on the street below he felt somewhat safer.

At length, Michael arrived at the Trevi fountains. Many sight-seers were sitting on the walls surrounding the semi-circular pool, looking at the carved figures and the rocks in the middle from which water was cascading. He dipped his fingers into the pool and found, to his surprise, that it felt ice cold. He later learned that the water had come thirteen kilometres via an aqueduct built by the Romans so it was still cold by the time it emerged into the Fontana di Trevi. Later in life, when he experienced very hot weather, he would think of the cold water of the Trevi fountains and how refreshing it had felt in the heat of the Roman summer. In this city, Michael felt that he had discovered an international culture; he saw around him people from all the nationalities of the world. He liked Rome more than London. It had so much history and culture that felt very different to him. The city had a romance and a sense of wonder, with its crumbling ancient edifices and imposing buildings. The Trevi fountains felt like the epicentre of this marvellous metropolis. He stayed there for some time, soaking up the sights and sounds of the attraction and studying the behaviour of the tourists who had gathered there.

Michael left the Trevi fountains and wandered around the roads looking into shops and exploring the lanes and alleys that led from the main roads. He stopped at a little café and sat outside enjoying some ice cream and a coffee. He made notes in his little book, penning thoughts about all that he had seen; he wrote

Rome never ceases to amaze me. I have fallen in love with the buildings, the ancient monuments, the lovely little cafés, and the milling crowds of tourists from everywhere in the world. The works of art, the shops with their designer goods and clothes, the strong sense of Italian style that can be seen everywhere. This is truly one of the great cities of the world. I wonder what more it will have to offer me before I leave.

Michael arrived back at the Hotel to find he had missed dinner. Richard wanted to know where he had been. ‘I went sightseeing. I found the Trevi fountains,’ he explained. ‘The water was ice-cold. And I saw some of the ancient monuments.’

‘Typical Michael. You go wandering off in a strange city, completely forget about the time and miss your dinner,’ Richard said with a note of annoyance in his voice. That night sleeping was difficult in the heat of the upstairs room. The window was wide open, letting in the noise from the city below and the mosquitoes.

The eighth day. Michael and Richard woke up the next morning with several red marks on their faces and backs. Richard insisted they buy some insect repellent. They had agreed, without a lot of argument, to go on a morning tour. The sightseeing tour set off at ten o’clock. Those that joined it were taken to see the Coliseum. Most of its stonework had been robbed away by successive generations of builders and now formed part of the houses and shops surrounding the huge edifice. They were led to an upper level that looked out over the remains of the central arena. The crowd could see what looked like alleys or corridors surrounded by crumbling walls – the remains of the underground trenches and tunnels that ran everywhere beneath the arena floor on which the gladiators had fought, the covering slabs of which had long since disappeared. The boys were standing next to a pot-bellied man and his wizened little wife. Michael overheard a comment between the two elderly American tourists: ‘Gee Martha, I wonder how they got their chariots round those narrow corridors.’

Michael was about to explain to them that the floor of the circus had been removed long ago when the tour guide started his speech and saved him the trouble. He was fascinated by the huge Roman ruins. He had long been interested in Roman history and seen photos of the Flavian Amphitheatre in books and magazines. He felt very privileged to be looking at it in person. The tour also took them to the Pantheon. The boys stood beneath its massive dome looking at the hole at its centre. Suddenly they heard the organ playing Handel’s Largo. Michael had detested this piece of music ever since he was forced to sing to it in the school choir. Against the backdrop of the music, the sound of polishing could be heard; various workmen were going over the marble floor with their noisy machines. A tour guide was present; Michael thought he was the same man who had escorted them around St. Peter’s Basilica. The guide went around all the members of Michael’s party demanding they pay him a hundred lira for the services of the organist. Michael hid behind a statue so he would not have to pay; he thought this was an impudent rip-off. The stumpy little guide began to explain how the dome had been constructed by the Romans, from concrete. He insisted that they had built a huge mound of earth and then laid the dome over it, pouring concrete into a wooden moulding, before removing the earth and leaving the dome suspended, where it had stood for thousands of years. Michael did not believe him. Chico had tried to claim that the guide was a professor of ancient history but Michael thought he was ‘a twat.’

When they were out of earshot, Michael said, ‘Chico tried to palm me off with the idea that the tour guide was a history professor. I am not convinced, Richard, I really don’t trust him one little bit.’

‘I think you’re right Michael; all that stuff he’s been spouting is one crock of shit.’ Richard could come out with a choice phrase when he wanted to.

After lunch at the hotel, the excursion party was taken to see the Catacombs. Michael was excited as he descended the steps into the cold darkness but Richard kept saying it was eerie and complained about being made to spend time with a load of dead people. The catacombs of St. Sebastian was where both Christians and pagans were entombed, the guide explained to them as he led them through the narrow tunnels, carved out of the native sandstone of the hillside, in the third century. The party passed by niches that had been dug into the walls of the tunnel and in which the dead had once lain. Richard kept saying how morbid it all was.

‘We came all this way to see this beautiful city and have ended up in an underground cemetery,’ Richard complained. The group carried candles to light their way, given to them by the guide. Richard kept groaning like a ghost and Mavis was getting noticeably annoyed at this.

‘Oh for god’s sake Richard! There ain’t no ghosts down here,’ Mavis insisted. Just then a draft of cold air blew against her face and she began bellowing at the top of her voice. Richard started laughing and the guide told him to shut up and show more respect for the dear departed.

Some of the shadowy tunnels still contained the bones of the deceased in their niches and they passed several skulls placed in holes in the walls. Michael felt a great sense of reverence and awe in this holy place, venerated for many centuries by generations of Christians. For him, it was a journey back in time; their descent down the steps from the sun-lit world above into the chilly darkness of the resting place of ancient peoples was a spiritual experience, one that he found very moving and profound. As he walked through the long narrow tunnels, their walls flickering in the lights of the candles, Michael imagined the people whose remains had been brought there, many centuries ago. He imagined a young girl who had died of a disease, her slender corpse wrapped in a white shroud. He saw, in his imagination, the tear-stained faces of her parents as they laid her tenderly in a niche and said their final farewells. He saw the image of the white body fade as they carried their torches away until all was plunged into darkness.

‘Now, Michael,’ Richard said, ‘don’t get lost. I don’t want to have to come back and find you have turned into a pile of bones.’ Some of the tourists laughed but Michael was too preoccupied with reading the little sheet of paper he had been given, to pay much attention to his friend’s antics. The small sheet gave the history of the site and information about the Basilica that stood above it. Michael was enthralled by the catacombs. He could have spent many hours there, dreaming about the lives of the people who had lain there for unimaginable ages. In this place of death, people came to life, in his mind. Had he met ghosts down there, he would happily have talked to them, asking questions about the lives they had led and the world in which they had lived.

The guide led them back to the entrance and to the Basilica on the ground above. Michael’s leaflet explained that the church was one of the richest and most important of early Christian Rome. Michael stood outside with the group, looking at its rounded arches and pointed roof. The guide explained that it was originally called Basilica Apostolorum and was consecrated to the Apostles Peter and Paul. It was built in the first half of the fourth century. Michael wished he had brought his book with him so he could make notes but he had forgotten to pack it before they left. The guide looked at his watch and apologised for not taking them inside but the coach was waiting and there was not enough time. The party took their seats and they were soon travelling back to the hotel.

‘Well, I’m glad that’s over!’, Richard said, as they sat in the coach. ‘I really don’t know why we bothered with that. It was horribly morbid. The last thing I wanted to see in Rome was a burial ground.’

Michael was disappointed at this friend’s dismissive attitude. He said, ‘Well I found it very interesting. It was a pretty moving experience, I thought. We see a lot above ground but what people don’t know is that there is a lot of Rome which is hidden from view, beneath our feet.’

‘Oh my god. You’ll be wanting to go down the sewers next,’ Richard said, wagging his head in disbelief.

‘Well, it’s funny you should say that but the sewers of the city are one of its most astonishing features,’ Michael replied. ‘I read once that the Cloaca Maxima is one of the world’s earliest sewage systems. It was constructed in 600 BC, you know.’

Richard just laughed, slapped his thighs and leaned across to the next seat. He said, ‘My friend here wants to spend the rest of the holiday going down the sewers. He thinks that’s a better way of sightseeing than wandering around all these bloody ruins above the ground.’

The person in the next seat peered at Michael but he was busy reading the leaflet he had been given at the catacombs. The coach arrived outside the hotel and the party filed in to get ready for the evening event. At dinner, the boys were given a table with an elderly German couple who spoke no English. As they waded through an incredibly large bowl of tomato soup, Richard said, ‘Really Michael, I wish you would try to cheer up a bit. We are supposed to be here to enjoy ourselves, not spend all the time reading silly leaflets and studying history. You make me despair sometimes.’

Michael was not at all pleased with this remark. He said, ‘Listen. We are in the world’s most historic city. We really should try to learn a bit about it. In fact, I am enjoying it all a lot. I love history and I don’t suppose I will ever get the chance to come here again. So, why shouldn’t I take an interest in the things we are seeing? And one more thing. Please don’t start complaining that we are going to see an opera tonight. You agreed to book it. You paid the money for it.’ Michael paused while he ladled some more soup into his mouth before continuing, ‘And anyway, it’s a very exciting performance. Chico was telling me about it; there will be live animals on stage and thousands of extras.’

Richard could tell his friend was getting a bit peeved and decided to leave his criticisms for later.

‘Well, I am sure it will all be very wonderful,’ Richard said and pushed his soup bowl away.

After dinner, the group set off to the Caracalla baths, an ancient Roman ruin used to stage operas and other events for the tourists. Tonight the organisers presented Verdi’s opera Aida, complete with a huge chorus and live camels and horses, performed by soldiers in full Egyptian costumes, taking part in the victory march, a highlight of the show. Radames arrived on a chariot drawn by four white horses. Michael marvelled at the magnificence of the scenery. He had never before sat through an entire opera, though he had heard some of the music on the radio. After all the trumpeting and tramping rhythms of the Victory March, the stage quietened down as Aida sang a nostalgic aria on the banks of the Nile. The evening was hot and Michael was tired from his long day of activities; during act three, as the soprano sang O patria mia, he fell asleep and missed the rest of the act and most of the next one. He did however wake up in time to witness the immolation scene where Radames and Aida are entombed together, locked in a dying embrace. He found this very impressive and moving. Michael always looked back on that night at the opera, in later years, celebrating it as one of the highlights of his teenage life, but forgetting to mention that he slept through almost half of it.

The next day marked the departure of the party from the eternal city. The journey back to Cattolica was uneventful. The three days had been exhausting for the boys. A lot of activity had been packed into the excursions and they looked forward to seeing their friends again, especially the ones that had not been on the excursion with them. After the trip to the catacombs, Michael’s sleep was disturbed with images of the ghosts of long-dead Romans. In the darkness of their long tunnels, he saw the dead climb from their niches and talk with each other, trying to understand why they were there and what their loved ones were doing in the world above. These were not frightening nightmares; his mind was striving to capture the life of the past and its people. He dreamt about them, to be with them. Their lives fascinated him and he longed to find out more about how Romans lived in those far-off days of centuries ago. But that would have to wait until he got home.

Next: Chapter 6 Conflict Under the Sun.

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List of all chapters of this book.

Chapter five, part two. The City of Rome.

Part of my Novel The Road to Ancona.

On the way into the city, Chico explained that Rome is set in a basin surrounded by seven hills. Speaking over the PA he said, ‘This basin traps the heat and humidity from the river Tiber and the patches of marshland on its outskirts,’ he explained, reciting information that he learned by heart on his training course. As the coach wound its way through the crowded, narrow streets, Michael could see some of the great historical remains of the capital of the Romans. The coach made its slow way, through the congested roads, to the Hotel Marco Polo, in the Via Magenta, arriving outside at around six o’clock. Michael and Richard were allocated to a small room at the top of the five-story building. Fortunately, there was a lift – a blessing in disguise – its winding gear, very near to their room, clanked and groaned all night. The boys put down their bags on the beds. Michael opened the window and looked out on the roofs of the nearby houses. ‘So these are the eternal slums,’ he commented. Richard lay down on one of the beds and closed his eyes. The heat was stifling. The open window admitted only a feint breeze. Michael noted the impressive, highly polished wood of the wardrobe and gold-embossed ornamentation on the ceiling. The room was neat and clean and a large mirror had been placed over a narrow writing desk which had an ornately carved chair. There was a wash basin in the room with gleaming steel taps. To his surprise, Michael discovered that the hot water was very hot and the other tap gave water that was very cold. Unlike the plumbing in the Hotel Britannia, both taps produced water that was crystal clear.

Michael sat down on the other bed and began to study the sheets that Chico had given him, outlining the trips, visits and events that were included in the Rome excursion. He thought of talking to his friend about what they might do during the three days of their visit but decided against this idea, given what had happened in Assisi. He decided that it would be better just to go with the flow and let his friend decide for himself what he wanted to do. Michael resolved to go along with whatever Richard wanted to do; being with him would be better than being away from him, even if that meant sitting around in bars and missing the great sights of the fabulous ancient city. Richard snoozed on his bed and Michael studied paperwork on his bed, occasionally writing comments in his notebook.

The boys went down to dinner. Michael was impressed that the food was served by smartly dressed waiters using silver service in which they placed the food items onto the guest’s plates using a spoon and fork. Their main course was spaghetti served in a bolognese sauce. Michael’s previous experience of this famous Italian foodstuff was limited to what he had got out of a tin, but this tasted considerably better. He was amazed at the length of the strands of pasta. One of the guests had to show him how to eat it – by winding it round his fork pressed against a spoon.

The air in Rome was hot; much hotter than in Cattolica where the breezes from the Adriatic Sea cooled the land. Chico was busy trying to sell sightseeing trips to the guests; Michael found out the cost of these coach trips around the city. When Richard suggested they go on one, Michael mentioned that they were short of lira and it would be less expensive to buy a map and explore the city on foot. Richard was all for going with everybody else but then that was him all over. Michael was the lone explorer, the adventurer who preferred to make his own way in the world. ‘Listen, Michael, I think we should go with everyone else,’ Richard argued, ‘I know it will cost 1,400 lira but I am sure it will be worth it now we have come all this way to be in Rome. It’s one of the world’s greatest cities and now we are here we should at least see a few of the sights.’

‘So you want to pay out over a thousand lira to be herded around like sheep,’ Michael replied, contemptuously. They were about to launch into one of their famous arguments when Chico appeared. Richard handed him the money and Michael sheepishly followed suit. He wanted to spend his first evening in Rome with his friend and knew that going along with his plans would be the only way he could do that.

After dinner, they boarded the coach and were soon on their way to the first stop. The coach dropped them at the Vatican. The tour guide, who had been allocated to the group, began his commentary as he led the party through the inside of the building. Michael thought he came out with a series of banal statements and was not impressed. Betty, however, was entranced and bellowed enthusiastically, issuing a series of oohs and aahs at the end of each of his statements. The guide was a short, stumpy man with a loud voice who kept clicking his fingers at people if he wanted their attention. He seemed to have brought several of his relatives with him. Michael had seen films of the Vatican on the television but now he was actually standing there, it seemed smaller. They were given a whistle-stop tour of the Basilica of Saint Peter. Michael looked at its opulence and elaborate ornamentation and thought of the stark simplicity of the monastery at Assisi with with its deeply spiritual atmosphere and plain stonework. As they galloped through its gilded magnificence, his mind was drawn back to the paintings of Poor Clares and poverty-vowed friars of the Franciscan orders he had seen in the previous basilica.

They also spent a whole ten minutes in the Sistine Chapel, which Michael thought had a distinctly musty smell, looking at the paintings on the ceiling before being led down into the crypt to see where the Popes were buried. The tour guide drove them on relentlessly from place to place, snapping his fingers when he wanted them to move.

‘Any moment now I expect to see a Border Collie appear at the edge of the crowd,’ Michael remarked. If any strangers stopped to listen to his words, the guide would order them to clear off, as they had not paid for his services. If anyone in the party dared to talk while he was speaking, he would immediately stop and glare at them with his bulbous eyes. Only when he had commanded complete attention from the party would he continue. He also had an alarming habit of molesting the females in the group.

‘I thought Hitler was dead,’ Michael remarked to Richard as they watched the guide strutting about while he was narrating his script. ‘I’m surprised to find him still alive and working as a tour guide in the Vatican.’

Their stay at the holy city was brief and they were soon back in the coach; Chico commented on each of the famous monuments as they sped past them. He was standing at the front, next to the driver, holding the microphone, repeating his set of well-worn cliches and often-rehearsed anecdotes – like a stand-up comedian. Michael thought he sounded like a half-witted parrot. They sped past the huge white memorial to Victor Emmanuel the Second. Michael regarded it as being very ostentatious and decidedly pompous.

‘What exactly is this monument for?’, Michael asked Chico, who explained that it was built in honour of King Victor Emmanuel the Second, adding that he had died in 1878.

‘So if the king is dead now, is it really needed any more?’, Michael enquired. Chico ignored him and continued with his commentary.

The coach stopped near the Campidoglio steps; the party alighted and soon the boys climbed up to the piazza on the Capitoline Hill, along with the others. The boys started to explore and found their way around to the right of the Palazzo Senatorio, to a narrow terrace, from where they could see the ancient ruins of the Roman Forum. Michael was far from impressed at the way the ruins had been illuminated; they were flooded with red, yellow and blue lights. He thought this gaudy display had been installed for the benefit of the tourists but made the great ancient remains look cheap and tasteless. The piazza was full of tourists, milling around and taking photos of each other. Their flashlights lit up the scene every few seconds. The boys mingled with the crowds, taking in the feeling of being part of what they were all about, fascinated by the many nationalities and sensing their excitement at being in this famous place. They failed to notice the time and the fact that the rest of the party had gone back to the coach. They raced down the steps but at the bottom could see no sign of the others.

‘Where did you say the coach would be?’, Richard asked, but Michael had forgotten what Chico had said before they had got off. ‘Surely it will be where we left it’, he suggested. Richard was not convinced; he said, ‘I am sure I heard Chico say that the coach would be parked somewhere else.’ He sounded agitated. ‘I don’t want us to be lost in the middle of a strange city late at night.’ The two boys started running round the streets searching for the coach. Eventually, they returned to the bottom of the Campidoglio steps. Richard said, ‘Michael, you stay here in case the coach comes back for us and I’ll go and see if I can find it.’ Michael was about to suggest that he did not like this idea but before he could say anything Richard had disappeared into the crowds walking along the Via del Campidoglio. Not long after he had gone, Chico arrived with a search party. He was furious; his brown eyes were protruding menacingly from his face. The passengers with him had insisted that the boys had to be found before the coach would be allowed to leave. Eventually, they found Richard and the boys were ushered into their seats to loud boos and whistles from the angry passengers. It was only five minutes later that they arrived back at the Marco Polo. The boys could easily have walked there in a few minutes but they did not know this and they had no map to show them where they were.

Back in their room at the top of the hotel, the boys collapsed onto their beds. It was stiflingly hot. Michael opened the small window but no breeze came in through it, only the roar of the traffic and the noise of people shouting and laughing in the street below. The lift mechanism clanked continuously. They lay awake for a long time, talking about their experiences, looking out on the curious assortment of roofs lit by the light of the moon, which they could see from their window. The sky was strangely luminous, the humid vapour in the air reflecting back the varied assortment of lights from the city. They lay down on their beds and continued their conversation until Michael fell asleep.

Throughout his time in Rome, Michael’s sleep was coloured with vivid dreams about the Romans. He had seen many films on television and at the cinema that had featured life in Roman times. In bed, his mind conjured up images of bearded men in white togas, soldiers in shining armour and crested helmets and elegant banquets where people lay on couches eating exotic food. Gladiators fought to the death in arenas, cheered on by excited crowds. Young poets wrote of love and heroic exploits. Wise old men wrote philosophy on pages of parchment. Such dreams were not confined to times when he was asleep; during his walks and sitting in the coach, similar images would come to his mind as he tried to capture the life lived in those ancient days.

Next: Chapter five, part three.

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Chapter 5: The Mystery of Assisi.

Part of my novel The Road to Ancona.

It was on the sixth day of their holiday that many in the party left Cattolica on one of the excursions offered by the tour operators. Richard and Michael had chosen three days in Rome; they had selected this excursion in England when they had booked the main holiday and paid for it in the overall cost of the package.

The coach left at 8:30 am; everyone was rather tired and sleepy, except Mavis who kept bellowing at the top of her voice. ‘Betty. Did you remember to pack the maps? Where’s my passport? I can’t find my passport!’

The other passengers reassured Mavis that she would not need her passport because they were not leaving the country. Mavis eventually sat down beside her friend and stopped making a fuss. The coach began its journey and soon they were driving along the Via Flaminia towards the Furlo Pass, where they entered a tunnel made by the Romans. Chico gave a commentary on things to be noted, speaking into the PA system from his seat at the front, next to the driver. Chico had been given a text to read out at certain points in the journey. Few of the passengers bothered to listen to what he was saying.

After passing through the picturesque countryside of Umbria they arrived, at one o’clock, at Terni – “… the romantic city of lovers and the birthplace of Saint Valentine whose day we celebrate in February,” Chico told them; adding that it was “also important for steel production.” It was very hot as they alighted from the coach and filed into a restaurant for lunch. Not a sit-down meal this time; in fact they were given a packed lunch.

‘The staple diet of the Romans – a packed lunch,’ Michael quipped. Inside his paper bag was cold roast chicken, a piece of cheese, a bread roll and a peach. ‘Simple Umbrian fare,’ Michael commented. The boys were hungry and ate theirs straight away. They opted to buy themselves some ice cream; they could choose from a vast assortment of flavours. Michael chose portions of strawberry and lime, for which he paid 150 lira. They wandered around without going too far from the coach. Michael immediately noticed the public conveniences: these consisted of a hole in the ground surrounded by a ramshackle metal screen full of embarrassingly large holes. Michael wrote:

We visited an Inn, on the way to Rome, just after the Furlo pass. Chico said that Mussolini often stayed there. I don’t know who Mussolini was but I assume he was some great historical figure from the past. The Inn had a wine cellar that had been carved out of the rock of the hillside by the Romans. Why did the Roman slaves work themselves to death just to make a place where tourists could go for a drink? There was also a very deep well; a variety of objects had been hung on the walls including fossils that had been discovered when the place was being dug out.

The break at Terni did not last for long and soon they were driving through the haze of the afternoon, seeing steep hillsides to which small villages clung. The summits of some of the hills had imposing castles and fortifications. The tranquillity of the sultry afternoon was intermittently broken by the bellowing of Betty who insisted that she was, ‘frying like a sausage in this window seat.’ Michael began writing in his notebook. He described Rome as being like a ‘coral reef of history. Centuries of encrustation building up on previous layers of civilisation.’ Richard was busy chatting to Jane and Chico was sitting next to the driver making occasional remarks into the PA system about things he saw out of the window.

‘On your left, you can see vineyards. The soil of Umbria is particularly good for white grapes,’ he explained. ‘Vines have grown here for hundreds of years and its wines are exported across the whole of Europe.’ Most of the passengers were not listening to this; they were busy talking to each other. Michael, on the other hand, was lapping up every word of it and jotting down notes in his little book.

‘The river Tiber runs through Umbria on its way to Rome,’ Chico continued, reading from the typed script in his hand. ‘The Tiber is Italy’s third longest river. It is called the Tiber because, long ago, King Tiberinus Silvius was drowned in it. The founders of Rome – Romulus and Remus – were thrown into it as infants but were saved by a wolf who suckled them and brought them up as her own.’

Michael had no trouble writing all this down verbatim because Chico was a slow reader. Chico continued, ‘Umbria is the green heart of Italy. It is landlocked, having no coastline. Apart from grape vines, the region is noted for its olives. It is said that Saint Francis used to walk through the groves of Umbria and talk to the birds that he found in its trees.’

Michael liked this very much and could picture the holy man in his brown cassock conversing with the woodland creatures. He became absorbed in his own thoughts and for a while forgot to listen to the speech coming out of the speakers of the PA system. In his young life, Michael had developed a strong affinity with animals and he kept many pets at home. He would talk to them as though they were human beings and could understand what he was saying. The image of a great holy man – the patron saint of animals – totally in tune with nature appealed to him. He tried to conjure up in his mind what Saint Francis would have looked like. He imagined him as being very kind and gentle, his face portraying great wisdom and his eyes peace and serenity; he had never been to church and his parents were not religious. They had him baptised when he was a baby but he was only a few weeks old at the time and could not remember anything about it. Sometimes his father would put Songs of Praise on the television and seemed to enjoy listening to some of the hymns they were singing. Michael was fascinated by religions of all kinds and would take out books on the subject from the public library. To him, religion was deeply mysterious and difficult to understand but it was something that attracted his emotions and stories of saints were of particular interest to him. Michael’s meditations came to an abrupt end as the coach jerked to a halt.

In the middle of the countryside, the coach stopped at a lay-by. Mavis insisted that she must respond to, ‘a call of nature.’ The rotund lady alighted from the coach bellowing to Betty to follow, her trunk-like arms holding on to the handles of the doorway. The two women disappeared into a patch of brambles by the roadside. Their shrieks and shouts could be heard back at the coach. After a few minutes, they returned with their gaudy dresses torn and festooned with pieces of wood, leaves and plants. Beneath her hem, Betty’s elephantine calves were covered with red scratches. They settled back in their seats, cursing angrily. Behind them the other passengers were sniggering and making rude remarks; they all thought it was very amusing.

In the middle of the afternoon, the coach pulled into the spacious square of the hillside town of Assisi, its jumble of white buildings dominated by a square white tower that rose above them; the delightful mediaeval town was now packed with coaches. Chico announced over the intercom that everyone must be back by five o’clock and anyone not sitting in their seat by that time would get left behind.

Umbria

Michael emerged from the cool atmosphere of the coach into the sweltering heat of the Umbrian afternoon. He looked around the square, lined with many rounded arches supported by short pillars. He was relieved to find there were no guided tours; everyone was free to do whatever they liked. The party was given lunch on the veranda of a small restaurant, over which ran vines that provided shade from the intense sunshine. The boys were delighted with this setting and found themselves at a table with a Polish couple who spoke some English. The charm of the moment was slightly spoilt by the Polish woman who complained continuously about the food. The men at the table were easily satisfied with the fare and her exasperated husband said something to her in Polish and then she shut up.

Michael asked Richard where he would like to go and what he would like to see during their visit. The Polish man interrupted to say that some of the local bars were very good and offered to take them to sample some of the local beverages. Richard readily agreed but Michael was not happy about this and was upset that his views had not been sought on the matter. Michael wanted to see the historic sites around him and visit the great church he had once seen on television. Richard frowned and said that visiting a church sounded a bit boring. The boys argued together about what to do and eventually Michael realised that he was not going to get his way with Richard. Michael stood up and left, aiming a barbed comment in Richard’s direction as he left the table.

Michael followed the coach party as they trooped off to the largest building – the triple Basilica of San Francesco. Chico explained that this was where Saint Francis – the patron saint of Italy – was buried. Inside it was cool and dark and, to Michael, it felt very tranquil and holy. He spent a long time studying the frescos of Giotto. A card on the wall explained that Giotto – Giotto di Bondone, as he was born – had painted them in the late Middle Ages. Michael loved painting and was fascinated by the history of medieval times. After studying the frescos, he went in search of the church’s gift shop and purchased a wooden rosary with a small cross attached to it, on which was nailed a little tin figure of the crucified Christ; he also bought a large book of prints of the Giotto frescos. He was not a Catholic; in fact he was not particularly religious but the rosary was an artefact that held meaning for him. He kept it for the rest of his life. The icon of a man nailed to a cross spoke to him.

As he gazed at the painted walls, he thought about the meaning of art and how it related to religion. The scenes were like a book that told a story in images. They were the ‘books’ of pre-literate people, he thought. Michael suddenly realised that Richard was not with him at this time; he remembered that they had been arguing about where to go and decided to split up. Michael had been determined to see the historical and spiritual side of the monastery and how it reflected on life and death but Richard was more interested in getting a few beers and buying postcards.

Michael’s feelings of exhaustion from the heat and the long journey vied with the uplifting splendours of the great basilica’s architecture and the stunning works of art around him. As he gazed at the frescos he felt overwhelmed with awe and wonder but as their story unfolded in his mind, his feelings gave way way to self-pity and melancholy. Feeling contrite, he began to think that he had been beastly to his friend. He saw about him many nuns wearing white wimples and dark tunics and he also saw friars in brown habits reverently kissing the feet of statues and reciting hail Marys in front of lighted candles. As an act of self-indulgence, Michael also kissed the foot of a statue; he wanted to know what it felt like. He noticed that the stone foot was deeply worn down and polished by countless thousands of lips that had touched it in veneration over many centuries. He felt very humbled as his lips touched the cold stone and felt as though unimaginable years of spiritual energy were pulsing through his face and into his body.

Leaving the others, Michael wandered deep into the building, away from the bustle and noise of the tourists, seeking quiet solitude and a chance to be alone with his thoughts, amongst the grey stone columns and the richly decorated arched ceilings. The interior of the church was dim, lit only by the stained glass windows through which the bright sunlight shone in a rainbow of coloured beams. He walked from one chapel to another, exploring shadowy chambers, looking at statues, gazing up at the vaulting with its patterns of crosses and leaves, the frescos depicting scenes from the life of Christ and of Saint Francis preaching to the faithful. He wandered through the aisles lost in his thoughts but still seething from his argument with Richard, resenting the fact that his friend was not with him to share in this amazing spiritual experience. In fact Richard was in a bar drinking lager and telling rude jokes to the Polish couple.

In a secluded corner of the monastery, Michael came to a statue of the Madonna. The figure was carved from wood and painted in blues and gold but it was her face that transfixed him. In the gloom, the life-like statue seemed real, it gave him the impression that it was alive and looking back at him. As he gazed up at her, it was as though the inanimate painted statue had suddenly become warm, living flesh. The gentle face of the Madonna had an expression that overwhelmed him; her face had a faint smile that seemed full of beneficence, her eyes looked down on him with compassion and a slender white hand was held aloft in benediction. Gazing up at the statue, Michael’s anger at Richard subsided. He stood there motionless, consumed with feelings of elation and sadness; it was a moving experience that sent a tingling shiver down his back and the hairs on his neck stood on end. Coloured lights, from the great windows above, fell around him on the grey stone flags of the floor and on the statue. He felt the presence of many generations of monks and friars who had, over centuries of time, imbued this place with their spirituality and their prayers. As he gazed into the wonderful face of the Madonna, his eyes filled with tears. Through their blurred vision, he thought he saw the face of the lady change slightly; she was smiling at him, a smile of recognition, as though she was seeing into his heart and hearing the thoughts in his head. In her face, he saw an expression of pity and forgiveness. It was a moment of heightened spirituality; later in life, when troubled and anxious, Michael would remember that moment when he had stood in front of the Madonna of Assisi and the memory brought him peace. ‘In future years, when I am old,’ he thought to himself, ‘I shall return to this place on a pilgrimage.’

Michael looked at his watch and saw it was five minutes to five. He raced back to the main square and was the last person to take his seat on the coach – to the cheers of the passengers who had been anxiously awaiting his arrival. He sat down beside Richard and would have told him about his experiences in the Basilica but Richard was chatting to the girls in the opposite seat and he did not feel like talking to the back of his head. They left the medieval city and headed through the Umbrian countryside passing into the region of Lazio and then towards Rome.

Next: part two. The Mystery of Assisi.

Go to the home page for The Road to Ancona

See a list of all chapters of this book.

Chapter four – final part.

Part of my novel The Road to Ancona.

Exploring Cattolica

The fourth day. Michael was fascinated by the local language. He collected as many words as he could and was particularly adept at imitating the way they were spoken. He even began to acquire an accent when speaking in English. He imitated the way Chico spoke – in a kind of simplified English with words in the wrong grammatical order, his sentences peppered with missing conjunctives, emphases being placed on the wrong syllables, absences of certain parts of speech that would be proper in spoken English. But then Chico did not learn his English at a school; he picked it up from those around him and if they were wrong he would be wrong too. Michael found this rather charming. His spoken sentences began to imitate the way the Cattolicans spoke English. He did not fully realise he was doing this; it just happened – his way of empathising with the natives.

Chico became the representative for Galaxy Tours last year. He had little in the way of formal education and had learned a little English when he did national service in the Italian army. Galaxy hired him because they were desperate for locals who could speak some English. Chico was not a good organiser; he had never worked in an office but had the kind of ready wit that enabled him to think on his feet. To him, being a tour rep was like being on permanent holiday. He had a huge dislike of Galaxy Tours but as long as they kept paying him he was ready to do their bidding. The only thing he really liked about his job was that it gave him the opportunity to travel to parts of the country he had not been to before, as he sat on the coaches with the holidaymakers, ferrying them to and from the airports in Italy and Switzerland. He also loved the endless parties, the welcome nights, the trips to the nightclubs in town and of course the succession of girls that came with them, even though he was already engaged to be married to a local girl. He appeared to be a mine of local information, although he made up most of it. He was a good-natured shark.

Michael wrote copious notes in his book about the buildings. He was particularly fascinated by their sun blinds and shutters. He noted in his book:

The windows of the Hotel Britannia, have green blinds made of wooden slats that are sealed into the frames of the windows and can be raised or lowered from inside each room. Most of these are left half closed – positioned in the middle of the window to block out some of the glare of the sun and reduce the heat that enters the room. Inside, the light is quite remarkable; the reduced sunlight is reflected by the whitewashed walls. Nearly all of the rooms of the three-story hotel have balconies; on these are yellow plastic chairs. Few people bother to use them because they are always out – either at the beach, the shops or the cafés. In any case, the area around the outside of the building is set with tables and chairs, each with its coloured parasol. The water that comes out of the hotel’s taps is often yellow in colour and has a distinct aroma of rusty iron. There are times when no water comes out at all and then, when it does start to flow, it is a dirty orange colour and clouded with sediment. Occasionally the lights dim, as the power supply is interrupted. The sink has two taps; both supply water at the same temperature – tepid. Several times I have noticed a very unpleasant smell coming from the plug hole in the sink. More than once the bottom of the shower cubicle has filled up with water because the drainage has become blocked. The people in the adjacent room left the shower running – they turned it on and nothing came out, so they went downstairs to discuss this with the manager. After a long absence, they returned to the room to find that the water had come back on and the whole room was flooded; in fact there was a maid outside in the corridor trying to mop it up.

Michael liked the shower – his home did not have one – only a bath. When the shower did work, he enjoyed it a lot, even though it rarely gave hot water. The northern lads also enjoyed showering – for the same reasons – though Dave had a rather alarming habit of coming out of the cubicle – dripping wet and stark naked – and walking around the room looking for his towel. Michael was a little taken aback at this; although, he did look at the lad’s lean and muscular body and admired his masculinity. ‘You can tell he’s masculine,’ Michael thought to himself, ‘it sticks out a mile.’

Michael noted that many of the Cattolican buildings appeared to be modern – mainly those in the areas that accommodated the holiday-makers. Occasionally he found one of the older houses, a traditional family home, and tried his best to catch a glimpse of the interior, through an open door or a window that did not have its blinds fully down. The external walls of these traditional homes were often rendered with coloured plaster. The windows were mostly rectangular though some of the wealthier homes had ornate heads to them (Michael used whatever words he could; he had no knowledge of architectural terms.) He would spend time walking around the town, exploring its narrow alleyways and soaking up the atmosphere of the small resort that had previously been a fishing village. Over the days of his stay, he fell in love with the place. Its marked difference from the drab terraced houses of his home appealed to him greatly.

Days were spent on the beach; nights were spent in the bars, cafés and nightclubs. The best thing about the resort, for the teenagers, was that life never stopped; it slowed down a bit in the early hours of the morning but soon came back again as the sun rose and the locals started their work. There was no need for the teenagers to do anything but the novelty of the resort attracted them and they were curious to explore and sample the delights it had to offer.

Apart from Chico and the Italian lads, who were after the English girls, Michael seldom met any of the locals, other than when they served him his food and drinks. He had tried to talk to local people when he was on one of his walks through the town but either they did not speak English or they were wary of teenagers. Michael studied the local people as he walked through the streets. He watched them as they rode on their scooters and mopeds; he looked at old men and women, dressed in black, sitting on chairs in the sunshine, usually outside their houses or the gates of their apartment blocks. He studied the young waiters as they worked in the bars and cafés and wondered what kind of lives they might lead, especially over the winter months when the tourists were not around. What did they do then? he thought To him, the English were inoculated against foreign culture by the way they stuck to their own way of doing things. English customs were a kind of life support system, he thought, that helped them cope with the differentness of the continent but also acted as barriers that denied them any real experience of European life. He tried to learn a few of the local words and would use them in his sentences; it was his way of empathising with the local people. His speech affected an accent in which he mimicked Chico’s way of talking, planting occasional Italian words into his English sentences. He would use words like ciao, saluti, grazie, per favore, l’acqua minerale, caffè, latte, and vino in his sentences (spoken in English; he never managed a whole sentence using only Italian and he rarely spoke anything to the local people other than asking for drinks or food.) Mario was the exception. Michael would talk to him for hours because his English was quite good and he seemed genuinely keen to talk about his home village, its history and the way of life led by the local people. He liked the English teenager who was always interested to hear what he had to say. He was impressed that someone so young and from another country was interested in his stories.

Michael passed most of his time in the company of the other teenagers; occasionally he would wander off on his own. He preferred being with just one person at a time; unlike Richard who was always in the middle of a group. Michael could enjoy the life of the gang at times when he was in the right mood. When everyone was laughing and joking, he could have just as much fun as the others. One evening the group of youngsters was in the hotel lounge. They decided to hold a seance. They were soon laughing and screaming. They all held hands and had placed beer mats, with letters written on them, in a circle, spinning a bottle in the middle. They took it in turns to spin the bottle and see on which letter it stopped. The girls seemed to laugh all the time; they would laugh at the slightest things. Sometimes they would get over excited but the boys also did. On a particularly rowdy evening, Michael jumped up on one of the coffee tables and tried to balance a flower pot on his head. The group expressed much merriment at his comical behaviour, mainly because it was him and they were seeing a side of the teenager that was previously unknown. They egged on his antics until the hotel manager, Ricardo, intervened and told him to get down from the coffee table. ‘Hey! Bambino!’, he shouted. Michael stepped from the table and put the flower pot back in its place. They could be naughty at times but generally, they were well-behaved and did what they were told.

The group would take a break from the beach at midday when the sand got too hot to walk on. They would often gather at Mario’s café. The girls ordered hot dogs which came with slices of toast instead of the more familiar bridge rolls. Michael decided to show off and asked for a slice of strawberry gateaux. The girls would not let him eat it in peace. They kept sticking their fingers into it and at one point, as Michael held it up to his mouth to take a large bite, Kate pushed it and it went all over his face. They all thought this was hilarious. As Michael took a sip of his drink, they made loud slurping noises; it was simple things, such as these, that made them laugh so much. At one point Kate made a very rude remark about Sandra’s sausage; this made Michael laugh so much that he sprayed the cola he was drinking all over the table. He tried to escape from their constant interference by moving to a table on the other side of the café. The group followed him and continued with their taunts and annoyances. It was all in good fun. A French guitar player appeared and began to strum out popular songs on his instrument. The teenagers began to sing along to any of the melodies they knew. Michael loved this; music was an important part of his life and he was very fond of group singing. He was more than pleased to join in; if he did not know the words he would just vocalise ‘la, la, la.’ The musician sang ‘Lontano lontano’, by the famous Italian songwriter Luigi Tenco. Michael loved this and some of the waiters stopped and stood listening to it until he had finished. He drew enthusiastic applause from the audience. Michael asked one of the Italian waiters to translate it for him and copied part of the lyrics into his book:

And far away, far away in the world
in a smile on the lips of another woman
you will find that my shyness
for what you teased me a little
And far away, far away in time
the expression of random face
will make you remember my face

That evening, Richard took Michael and Kate for a ride on one of the tricycles he had seen earlier. The large cumbersome machine had a green canvas canopy above it, edged with yellow fringes. The three teenagers sat on its seat in the middle, the boys on the outside with their feet on the pedals. They careered round the roads bumping into things and laughing themselves silly. Even Michael enjoyed himself; what cemented his friendship with Richard was his love of teenage amusements and having fun. They shared a similar sense of humour and a delight in being silly. Whereas Richard was of an even temperament, being consistently much the same all the time, Michael was frequently subject to moods; he could be sullen and self-occupied but at other times he would come out of his shell and enjoy the fun he was having with his friends. After nearly an hour, they took the machine back to its owner. Michael felt very happy; for once he was in high spirits.

‘That was huge fun,’ Richard said after they had left the rank of tricycles. ‘Did you enjoy it, Kate?’ Kate laughed and said ‘You guys are nuts. The way you were driving that bike, I can’t believe you didn’t kill someone.’

Towards eight o’clock, the group returned to the Britannia for dinner. Dinner at the hotel that night saw the whole company of young people together. Michael’s main concern was with trying to decide what the meat on his plate actually was. He was convinced it was rabbit. He was relieved that, even in Italy, potatoes were the same as they were back home. The teenagers had gathered together on a table. Chico appeared and placed two bottles of sparkling white wine in the middle of it.

”Ere you go,’ he said, beaming munificently. ‘With compliments of Galaxy Tours.’ He placed the bottles on the table and left. Richard wasted no time in tearing off the gold foil from the neck of one of the bottles. He placed his thumbs on the head of the cork. ‘I learned to open these at my cousin’s wedding,’ he said, ‘only, then, it was real champagne.’ The cork shot from the bottle, with a sound like a gunshot, startling the nearby diners, and landed on the other side of the room – in Mavis’s bowl of soup. She shrieked like a scalded cat. The teenagers saw this and burst into howls of laughter. Richard rolled about so much that he fell off his chair. When he had regained his composure, he stood up and proposed a toast to the tour operators. The teenagers took large gulps from their glasses. Then Jane stood up and proposed a toast to Chico; more gulps were taken. The evening progressed in this fashion and by the end of the meal, the teenagers stumbled out of the restaurant in an inebriated state. Their stomachs were stuffed with chicken and potatoes and their faces flushed with the wine. In the lounge, the group threw themselves onto the sofas and easy chairs and began to laugh and joke about the meal they had and the cork landing in Mavis’s soup bowl. Kate wanted to know why Chico had given them the bottles of wine.

‘It was because we had to share a room with two lads from up north,’ Richard explained. Jane feigned an expression of shock and said, ‘Oh! So all you boys are sleeping together!’ The group exploded into laughter. Richard rose to the humour, ‘Well our room is poorly furnished. There’s only one bed so we all had to get into it together,’ he fibbed. More uproar. ‘Chico bribed us with free bottles of wine. He said to us, on the first night, that if we all slept together he would look after us.’ The group descended into prolonged laughter.

In the lounge, Richard offered to buy the whole group a round of drinks. While he was at the bar, Michael stepped into the limelight. ‘Does anyone know what was in the soup tonight?’ he asked.

‘I was told it was vegetable soup,’ Carol explained.

‘I found a pea in mine,’ Kate said.

Jane responded ‘Mine tasted like the cook had peed in it.’

Sandra explained that she had asked the waitress what was in it and was told it was vegetable soup. ‘They probably scraped all yesterday’s leftovers into a big pot and boiled it up,’ Sandra suggested. The remark evoked a chorus of ‘ugh’ from the teenagers.

‘And then the cook peed in it!’, Jane exclaimed and everyone laughed uproariously.

‘Yes, and you should see what he stirred it with,’ Sandra remarked. The laughing continued.

Richard returned with a tray of assorted drinks. Jane said ‘Michael’s been making us all laugh.’

‘He’s quite a little raver when he gets pissed,’ Richard said handing out the glasses from his tray. ‘One drink and he’s anybody’s,’ he added.

‘Aye up Richard. Seeing as you’re all sleeping in the same bed, it looks like your luck is in tonight,’ Jane exclaimed. There then followed an explanation of what Richard had missed. Just then the two northern lads appeared in the lounge. The group cheered at them and beckoned them over. They pulled up chairs and sat down. ‘You been having a good time?’ Sandra asked them.

‘We’ve been out to a café over the road for supper,’ Dave said. ‘We couldn’t face that stuff they serve up in the hotel.’

‘Yea. We had fish and chips at Mario’s.’ Nick added.

Marios café was close to the hotel, situated on the side of a low hill. It became the favoured haunt of the English teenagers. Mario became accustomed to the behaviour of his young customers; he knew what they did was all in good fun if it at times it was difficult to tolerate. But, Mario was a man who had, in his youth, been a bit of a tearaway and, as long as they kept coming and kept spending, he always welcomed his young English guests. Chico, the tour guide had rented a room over the café so that was an added incentive for Mario to be nice to his unruly English customers. It had not taken Mario long to discover that his English customers wanted fish and chips; having found out how to cook this strange dish, it became a popular addition to his menu and quickly out-sold pizza and spaghetti. The clientele also asked for hot dogs; since no rolls of the correct shape were available locally, he served the saveloys between pieces of toast.

Sandra went over to the hotel’s jukebox and put on some music. The teenagers told each other a lot of jokes; it was something they did whenever they were together in a group. Kate told this one:

‘A young man asked his girlfriend’s younger brother if he could give him a lock of his sister’s hair and offered to pay him one pound for it. The boy replied ‘Give me a fiver and I’ll give you the whole wig.’

Sandra’s favourite was: ‘A woman once asked her husband if he believed in lie detectors. The husband replied ‘Yes of course I do. I married one.’

Nick told a story about a woman who went into a shop to buy a washing machine. The salesman told her that one particularly expensive model would pay for itself in no time. The woman replied, ‘Good. When it does have it delivered.’

You might have thought that Michael was not one for telling jokes. You would be wrong. His favourite was:

‘A very refined woman went to a posh dinner party. They all had plates of food served with large helpings of Brussels sprouts. Halfway through the dinner the woman lets out an audible fart.’ A peel of laughter came from the enthralled youngsters. ‘The diners looked up from their plates. So, she looks at the dog, lying on the floor near to her and says in annoyance, ‘Fido!’ A little later she lets out an even louder fart. To divert attention, she looks at the dog and says, ‘O, for god’s sake Fido!’ Five minutes later she lets out another huge fart, which rang around the room. She was about to say something when the dog’s owner said, ‘Quick Fido, get away from her before she shits on you.’

A roar of laughter exploded from the teenagers; some laughed so much they had tears rolling down their faces. Others started to choke on their drinks. Teenage humour, in those days, was invariably vulgar; the ruder the jokes, the more they liked it.

Richard’s one was: ‘Agnes married and had 13 children. When her husband died, she married again and had 7 more children. Again, her husband died. So Agnes remarried and this time had 5 more children. Alas, she finally died. Standing before her coffin, the preacher prayed for her. He thanked the Lord for this very loving woman and her dead husband and said, ‘Lord, they’re finally together.’ One mourner leaned over and quietly asked her friend, ‘Do you think he means her first, second or third husband?’ The friend replied, ‘I think he means her legs.’

The evening continued in much the same vein; rounds of drinks were purchased from the bar as soon as the previous ones had been consumed. The collection of bottles and glasses on the table grew steadily. More jokes were told and the noise grew louder as the party continued. Gradually the group fragmented into couples. Richard cosied up to Jane. Michael was deep in conversation with Carol. Dave and Nick were talking to each other. After an hour or so, Richard and Jane stood up.

‘We’re going to the beach,’ he said to the group and with that they disappeared towards the main door. Carol took Michael’s arm and said, ‘We’d better go with them or we might be missing something.’

At the beach, Richard and Jane lay down on a secluded sunbed in one of the darker corners of the area. Failing to spot where they had gone, Michael and Carol shook off their flip-flops and paddled in the sea. They walked along the shoreline arm in arm, talking about the evening and the people who had become their friends.

‘You have met several new people since you arrived, Michael; who do you like the best?’

‘You, of course. You have something that all the others lack – a mind. You think about things. That gives us both something to talk about.’

‘Why are you always writing in that little notebook, Michael?’

‘I am keeping a travel log, a detailed account of everything that happens. In years to come, I want to look back and remember the first great adventure of my life in as much detail as possible.’

‘Are you going to turn it into a novel then?’

‘I might do. I’ll just keep it as a memento of my journey and read it when times get hard or when I am feeling glum.’

The pair walked along in the placid water, enjoying the sultry atmosphere of the warm night and talking about the many things that they had seen and heard over the past few days. Feeling tired, they returned to the Britannia, leaving Richard and Jane on their secluded sunbed. Passing through the hotel, Michael noticed the two northern lads still in the bar. He said goodnight to Carol and made his way up to room 25, looking forward to falling asleep before others came in. He lay awake for a while thinking about the evening and his eyes were just about to close when the door opened and Dave and Nick came in.

They were chatting in their heavy Mancunian accents; when they saw Michael in bed, Dave said ‘Ey up, the virgin’s asleep already.’ Nick replied, ‘Well, ‘e’s laid ‘is kecks nicely on t’end of t’ bed.’ The lads peered at the apparently sleeping teenager. Nick walked over to look at Michael’s face to see if his eyes were shut. ‘Don’t mither ‘im,’ Dave said, ‘e’s been out on t’razz and now ‘e’s shattered.’ The lads left the sleepy teenager alone and started to undress. Nick said, ‘Should we leave t’light on; t’other one’s not back yet?’ Dave replied ‘Na. Best turn ‘im off; t’other one could be out all night. He’s taken ‘is bint down beach.’ Nick turned off the light and the two lads got under the duvet. In the dimness of the darkened room, Michael was squinting through his half-closed eyes; he could just make out the two lads as they pulled back the duvet from their bed to get under it and thought he saw, from their silhouettes, they were both naked. They snuggled down and began whispering to each other and moving about. Michael strained his ears hoping to hear a few words they were saying. Both of them were giggling quietly as they lay beside each other, rustling the duvet, doing something together. Michael was intrigued about what they were up to but he could see very little of the lumps under the duvet in the next bed. He heard Dave say, ‘Gerroff meh.’ Followed by Nick’s voice saying, ‘Aw, come on sexeh.’ Some groaning and giggling followed but Michael’s eyes closed and he fell asleep, not stirring again until the sun came up the next morning.

Day five. The next day it was very hot. Michael and Richard went to the beach to sun themselves on the rocks of the breakwater. As the boys walked to the beach, the sun made Michael squint and hurt his eyes so he purchased a pair of sun shades – the kind that had silvered glasses that were like mirrors. Richard had by now already turned a rich brown colour and his short fair hair had been bleached completely blond.

As they walked Michael asked, ‘And where did you get to last night? I woke up and you were not in your bed.’

‘I was with Jane of course. We stayed on the beach the whole night.’

‘Oh! Did you? So what were you doing on the beach all night?’

‘Oh, Michael! You need to ask? What do you think we were doing?’

Michael did not reply; he might have been a bit slow at times but he knew what his friend had meant. He thought of saying something about Dave and Nick in bed last night but decided not to; he regarded Richard as being a bit prudish and old-fashioned in his attitudes even if he was not, in his behaviour.

The boys arrived at the breakwater. They found a large flat rock, lay their towels on it and settled down to enjoy the sun. ‘You had better put some lotion on Michael. You will burn up if you don’t.’ Michael took his advice and began to ply his arms and legs with the orange oil. He turned to Richard and said, ‘Will you rub some oil onto my back, please.’ ‘No way,’ Richard replied with an exasperated tone, ‘not in front of all these people. They will think we are pansies. You should have asked Carol to do it for you before we left the hotel.’ Michael thought that was typical of Richard; he was so straight-laced at times. Admittedly, it was not the sort of thing that would have been acceptable on Blackpool Beach but here in Italy! And they were not exactly in the middle of a crowd of people, Michael thought.

‘Why ever not?’ Michael asked. ‘No one will see us out here on these rocks.’

‘Oh do stop being a pain Michael,’ Richard said. ‘I just don’t want to rub your back with oil. It’s not the kind of thing men do to each other.’

‘Well, that really is ridiculous. The girls are always rubbing each other with cream and no one thinks anything of it.’

‘Yes but if we started doing that people would start to talk. You are so naive sometimes, Michael.’

Michael covered his back with his towel and sat cross-legged on the rock with his back to the sun. Richard lay full length on his towel. Michael sat watching the people on the beach and children playing in the shallow water by the sandy shoreline. It was not long before he began to feel overheated and bored with doing nothing. He stood up.

‘Richard. I’m going into town to buy some postcards.’ He didn’t bother to ask his friend if we wanted to come too because he knew him well enough. So he just said, ‘Ciao’, picked up his bag and walked off down the breakwater.

Michael spent some time gathering postcards and souvenirs in the stalls and shops that lined the main road. When his cash began to run low he walked back to the Britannia and sat in the lounge sipping a glass of iced lemonade. Sandra found him; she said, ‘We are going to Marios. Come with us.’ Michael downed his drink and followed her to the main entrance where Carol and Jane were waiting. The group walked the short distance to the café and sat down at a table under a large parasol. They looked at the low building which served as a kitchen. One of the waiters, who was leaning on the servery, noticed them and walked across to take their orders. The girls ordered glasses of Pepsi and bowls of strawberry gelato. Michael had been studying the menu. ‘I’ll have the lobster,’ he said to the waiter, much to the amusement of the rest of the party. While they were waiting to be served, Pat came and sat down with them. She and her parents had arrived yesterday so she was still trying to find her way around the unfamiliar resort. ‘You settling in all right Pat?’, Sandra asked. Pat nodded and said, ‘This money takes a bit of getting used to. Everything is in thousands. It seems like you have to be a millionaire to buy anything around here.’ The girls giggled. ‘Have you met Michael yet?’, Jane asked. Pat waved her hand at Michael and said, ‘Hi. Have you been here long?’ ‘Nearly three days now,’ Michael replied. ‘Did you come with your parents?’, Pat asked him. ‘No. I am with my school friend Richard,’ he told her. ‘Oh! Where is he then?’, she asked. ‘I left him on the rocks sunbathing. He’s a real sun worshipper you know.’ ‘Good for him. I hope he gets a lovely tan. It’s not for me though,’ Pat replied, ‘My skin won’t take it. I prefer to keep cool and stay in the shade.’

The waiter arrived with Michael’s lobster. It was served on a plate surrounded by mashed potato that had been pipped into carefully sculpted shapes and with it a single mussel. The sad-looking creature sat on the plate with a melancholy look in its eyes. With it came an aluminium teapot; out of its lid, two pieces of string hung down, attached to the bags inside. There was also a tiny steel jug containing milk. Michael left it to brew. ‘These Italians have no idea at all about tea,’ Michael announced to the group around him. ‘They have never seen a packet of tea leaves in their lives.’

Pat agreed with him. ‘It’s tea bags all the way,’ she said. ‘Mind you, the coffee isn’t half bad though. Except of course at the hotel where it’s left to stew for hours and tastes of rubber. You have to come over here if you want a decent cuppa,’ she added.

Michael picked up the lobster and looked it in the eyes. He had never eaten one before and had no idea how to get into it. Jane demanded to see its death certificate. Everyone laughed and banged on the table. ‘It looks like it died of constipation,’ she said, reigniting the mirth. Michael turned the crustacean towards Sandra and said, ‘This is going to be fun. Any idea how to eat it?’ Sandra laughed and said, ‘It’s looking a bit sad with those googly eyes. Why don’t you give it a cup of tea? You might cheer it up a bit.’ The table roared with laughter. Various comments were made about the poor pink creature. Michael pulled off one of its claws and started to attack Sandra with it – she screamed and pulled away nearly falling off her chair. She was okay about eating meat but was not used to consuming animals that looked like they were still alive. After a good deal of joking and seeing that the boy had not the slightest idea how to deal with it, Pat said, ‘You really need a little hammer to get it open.’ She waved to a waiter, who ambled over. Pat spoke to him in perfect Italian and he went back to the kitchen. ‘Wow!,’ Jane said. ‘So you can speak to them in their own language’. Pat explained that her parents were of Italian extraction and she had learned the mother tongue when she was a child. The waiter returned to the table and placed a tiny metal hammer at the side of Michael’s plate. Michael stared at it with a bemused look on his face. Pat walked over to him and began to hit the shell of the lobster, breaking it into pieces and revealing the white meat inside. ‘Not many people know how to tackle a lobster,’ Pat said and walked back to her seat. Diane disliked the sight of the little creature being bashed to pieces. ‘I’m going to report this to the RSPCA,’ she said mournfully. Michael began to pull pieces of flesh from inside the shell with his fork. It tasted a bit like how Cattolica harbour smelt, he thought.

The tea was ready, so Michael opened the lid and pulled out the bags by the pieces of string attached to them. He poured some milk into the cup and then tipped the teapot over it. The water gushed out through the loosely fitting lid and went all over the saucer and the table. The girls all laughed. Michael cleaned up the mess with one of the paper napkins from the table and continued with his meal. Pat ordered a bottle of Sangiovese – a sweet red wine that she liked. The waiter delivered it with a clutch of spare wine glasses and Pat asked Michael if he would like to try a little. ‘Mmm … that’s very good,’ Michael said. ‘And it goes very well with the lobster,’ he added.

They talked about the people who were staying at the hotel. Michael explained that the teenagers had been talking about the two fat ladies – Mavis and Betty. He said, ‘One of the girls suggested they were like cows and cows make a noise called bellowing. We all laughed at this idea. From then on we always referred to them as ‘bellowing’ – on account of their loudness.’

Betty was the more dominant of the two fat ladies; she was always trying to keep Mavis in order. They were travelling with their husbands; two small, sheep-like men who were mere appendages to the over-bearing females. Mavis was in her late thirties and presented herself as being something of a clown; the teenagers viewed her as being loud-mouthed and rather stupid. To her, the world always appeared to be very nice. That is why she became the butt of everyone’s jokes. Both of them wore the most awful clothes – cheap cotton dresses printed with garish colours and flowery designs. Michael saw them as being like the fat, big-breasted women he saw on those postcards, sent to him from English holiday resorts, by his relatives.

Richard appeared. Jane said, ‘Oh Richard! You do look brown!’ He pulled over a white plastic chair and sat next to her. ‘Michael has just eaten a whole lobster,’ she told him. Richard was just about to make a sarcastic comment about Michael looking the same colour as the lobster when Jane said, ‘Oh and meet Pat. She arrived yesterday and she can speak Italian.’ Richard leaned across and shook hands with Pat. ‘So then Richard. I hear you have been sunning yourself on the rocks all day.’

‘Yes. Going for the burn. I don’t want to get back without a tan.’

‘Of course. There’s no point in coming all this way for the sun if you don’t go back with some of it on your skin,’ Pat said.

‘So, has Michael been behaving himself?’, Richard asked.

‘He’s been making us all laugh. What with his strawberry gateaux and then his lobster. It seems he’d never eaten one before and Pat had to cut it up for him,’ Jane explained with a grin.

Jane looked at Richard’s brown face and arms and said, ‘Have you been using tanning oil then, Richard?’

‘Yes. I bought a large bottle of it as soon as I got here. You can’t get it at home; there’s no demand for it in our local shops. Probably because we never get any sun.’

Carol said, ‘You’re not going brown then Michael?’

‘No,’ he replied, ‘I am just going the same colour as the poor old lobster. When we were on the breakwater, I asked Richard if he would rub some lotion on my back but he refused.

‘Oh, why is that Richard?’, Carol asked.

‘It’s not the sort of thing boys can do to each other.’

‘Why ever not?’ Pat commented. ‘You are only rubbing it on his back! I can’t see anything wrong with that.’

‘We wouldn’t hesitate to rub oil onto each other’s backs,’ Jane commented with a laugh.

Carol said, ‘Why can’t you rub oil on Michael’s back? You know he’s going to burn up with his fair skin. After all, he is your best friend.’

Richard frowned and took a sip from his drink. He felt like they were picking on him.

‘It’s okay for you girls to do things like that,’ Richard retorted, somewhat testily, ‘But if boys started doing it people would start to gossip about them.’

‘Oh what nonsense!’, Pat said. ‘You should see what the Italian boys get up to with each other. They don’t give a damn about anything. They can hug and kiss each other and no one gives a toss about it.’

Sandra joined in, saying, ‘Yes I have noticed that the Italian lads are a lot more free and easy over here. They can get away with things in Cattolica that they wouldn’t be able to do in England. I often see the local lads walking around hand in hand, just like they were a couple. No one blinks an eye about it.’

Pat said, ‘It’s just the way that Italians are; the lifestyle is so different here compared to England. We are all much more relaxed about everything. The English are so uptight.’

The group continued their conversation until the sun began to go down and they made their way back to the Britannia for dinner. Nothing that anyone said, however, changed Richard’s mind about how he would behave.

Next: Chapter 5: The Mystery of Assisi

Go to the home page for The Road to Ancona

Chapter 4 continued.

Part of  The Road To  Ancona.

The welcome party.

The night of their second day in the resort (the third of their holiday) saw everyone invited to the Galaxy Tours welcome party. The coach took them some way along the coast to an old villa on a headland overlooking the sea. The party was held in the large open-air area of the villa, its stone-tiled floor dotted with small trees and overhead a wooden trellis was covered in vines. Coloured lights were strung from the beams of the trellis. A band played on a low stage in one corner of the leafy courtyard. Between the courtyard and the edge of the cliff, a broad stone terrace looked out over the sea. Bottles of wine had been placed on the tables; dark green bottles with their tops wrapped in gold foil so they resembled champagne. In fact, they contained a fizzy, sweet, local white wine, worth around five shillings in the English money of that time. The drink was called Moscato and became a favourite with the teenagers. The boys were sitting at a table with Jane, Sandra and some other girls. They soon had the bottles popping as they tore off the gold foil and pressed their thumbs against the corks. A large, thick-set man on the next table came over to them and placed two bottles of the complimentary wine on their table. ‘You can have these,’ he said in a broad Black Country accent, ‘we don’t like wine. We’re getting some lager from the bar.’ Michael was impressed by the table in front of him, spread with many glasses and an array of golden-topped bottles. A few moments later another man, from another nearby table, also placed more bottles on the teenagers’ table. ‘You can have these,’ he said, ‘we don’t like it. It’s too sweet for our taste.’

The band played jaunty Italian melodies and couples began to dance. Waiters in white coats and black bow ties began to serve plates of food. Michael was drinking the free wine as fast as he could. It tasted deliciously sweet and was very bubbly. After dinner, Michael danced with Carol. She was on holiday with her parents, who approved of Michael because he was, “such a nice young man.” Short in stature and wearing a colourful printed frock, Carol did her best with the awkward movements of Michael. At various points in the evening, the dancing was interrupted by the arrival of a cabaret act. At one point a magician entertained them with a display of conjuring tricks that everyone thought were stunning. Later, a beauty contest was held and two of the girls from the party were invited to join in. Michael regarded this as being rather trite and false. That did not stop him from going with Richard to dance with the winning girls once it had finished. Michael had brought with him a black jacket which he wore with a white shirt and bow tie. It made him feel smart and glamorous. He felt very proud to be dancing with a ‘beauty queen.’ Richard was still in his shorts and beach shirt; he had not bothered to dress for the occasion.

As the bottles emptied, the behaviour of the teenagers deteriorated and this led to conflict with the parents who were watching them from their tables. A group of young Italian men had found their way into the room; probably waiters who had finished their shift changed into their everyday clothes and wanted a bit of fun before they went home. Several of the English girls made a beeline for them. In the competition for romantic partners, the Italian males always won hands down. The girls were infatuated with their walnut-coloured skin, their big brown eyes and glossy black hair. Most of the English boys in the party still looked pasty-faced, not yet having developed a tan.

Michael and Carol went on to the broad stone terrace overlooking the sea. The walls around the terrace were hung with blue lights. They talked about the holiday and how they felt about it. Michael explained about his writing and that he would, at times, write poems to capture the experiences he was having. Carol was genuinely impressed by this. She liked Michael; he was different from the swarthy lads from the Midlands. She regarded him as having a sophistication that the others lacked. The moon had risen and was casting its clear silvery glow on the dark sea, sprinkling it with sparkling diamonds of white light.

‘I have never in my life experienced anything like this,’ Michael said. ‘I have never been to a dance before. And I have never been to an ancient villa overlooking the sea.’

‘Yes, it’s all rather romantic,’ Carol responded. ‘At home, I went to a couple of my parent’s office parties but they were held at the working men’s club. It was not as nice as this.’

‘When I get home, I am going read books about the history of Italy,’ Michael said sipping at his wine glass. ‘I am going to the local library to see if they have any books about the Adriatic Riviera.’ He glanced at Carol, seeing her nod of approval. ‘I will certainly write a poem about tonight.’

Later, Michael dashed off a few lines in his notebook. He could not be bothered to scan the lines into rhymes so he just scribbled free verses as quickly as they came into his head:

Talking about literature on the stones of the ancient villa
overlooking the moon dazzling sea
the taste of sweet wine on our lips
as we converse under the stars
music dancing in our ears
we savour the things we have never done before
and the night ends with fireworks
lighting the darkness with their colours
their bangs and bursts splitting the silence of the night.

Back in the courtyard, the band was playing, couples were dancing and the behaviour of the English youths was gradually deteriorating into drunken lewdness. None of the holidaymakers from the Midlands spoke Italian. For the females in the party, there was only one language and everybody spoke it with equal fluency. Sexuality was a universal language and they all understood it. Some of the English girls were seen kissing the Italian boys. Richard got into a clinch with Jane but Michael and Carol were still outside enjoying the moonlight and talking about literature. When they rejoined the teenagers inside, the girls were talking about horoscopes. ‘What star sign are you Michael?’ Sandra asked. He replied, ‘I’m a Virgo.’ The whole group collapsed in hysterics. From that time on Michael was given the nickname ‘the virgin.’

Towards the end of the evening, the party-goers began one of their time-honoured rituals. They danced the conga. The Italian musicians had learned to play it from previous occasions of this sort. They knew it was something that the British always did and were happy to oblige them if it would make them enjoy their time in a foreign country. Another dance tune the musicians had picked up was called ‘The Highland Fling’. No one understood how this should be danced but the holiday-makers had a great deal of fun inventing moves that they thought it should entail. The finale of the evening was a fireworks display. Huge clouds of coloured stars burst into the sky as rockets exploded with loud bangs. The whole event was a wonderful experience for Michael; a unique event, the like of which, he had never known before. They all felt like this great occasion had been specially organised in their honour. In fact, it happened every night as part of the tourist industry routine for the resorts between Rimini and Cattolica.

Next: The Streets of Cattolica continued.

Go to the home page for The Road to Ancona

See a list of all chapters of this book.

Chapter 4 The Streets of Cattolica.

Part of my novel The Road to Ancona.

Day three. By the time the boys and their northern roommates had got up, most of the other guests had finished their breakfast and left the hotel. The boys managed to find some coffee in a large steel urn in the dining hall; it was very black and tasted of burnt rubber. They ate the last of the rolls on the table, spreading them with runny butter, that was about to turn rancid, and red jam.

The sky was overcast as the boys made their way to the beach. As they changed into their swimming costumes, it began to rain. They left their clothes beneath one of the parasols and went into the shallow waters of the Adriatic. The sea was as warm as the air and crystal clear; the rain splashing on their bodies was pleasantly cool. Richard was perfectly at home on the beach; he was like an animal in its natural habitat. Michael was slightly uncomfortable, being surrounded by strangers who were practically naked. He could smell the air; it had the aroma of wet sand and rotting seaweed. As a teenager his senses were sharp and acute and his mind reacted to what his ears and nose fed him, layering his experience of the world with his own individual significances.

The rain soon disappeared and, as the morning went on, the sky returned to its usual shade of azure blue and the sun just got hotter and hotter. Michael returned to the beach parasol, seeking relief from the burning sun. Over the course of the holiday, Richard’s skin would turn a rich nutty brown; Michael would end up looking like a freshly boiled lobster. By midday, the sand had become too hot to walk on in bare feet. Richard had been into town and had come back with an inflatable plastic airbed and was sunbathing on it, while Michael was writing notes in the shade. He wrote:

I have paid all this money and come all this way for some sun. Now I am here, I am hiding from it under a beach umbrella. There are people here on this beach who are basting themselves with oil, roasting in the sun like sides of meat in an oven.

The girls arrived and insisted that Richard let them take his airbed into the sea. ‘Richard, lend us your Li-lo. We want to have a go on it,’ Kate said. After some good-natured argument, Richard reluctantly handed it to the two girls. They walked into the sea and were soon taking turns to float on it. The flimsy device was not easy to handle but as one girl lay on it the other pulled it along. Fortunately, the sea in that area was surrounded by a breakwater of rocks and there were no currents or waves. The line of rocks that encircled the beach was a favourite place for sunbathers; they would lay themselves on the largest of the stones, rubbing oil into their skin. Such oils were for tanning; people had not yet learned about blocking ultraviolet rays. For sunseekers it was all about going home with a tan – so they looked like they had been somewhere.

Practical jokers

The teenagers played practical jokes on each other. Most of the lads in the group never got out of bed much before midday. This was particularly inconvenient for the girls who got up early and missed their company in the mornings. One day, two of the girls went to the boys’ room at 8 am. They knocked on the door. A sleepy male voice asked, ‘What’s the matter?’ One of the girls said, ‘It’s two o’clock. You had better hurry or you will miss the coach.’ A couple of minutes later two lads tumbled out of the room only to be greeted by the girls who were falling about with laughter.

Michael walked through the streets of the small town on his first morning in the resort. For him, the experience came as something of a culture shock. The streets disturbed him – the absence of made-up pavements at the side of the road, the presence of beggars, youths riding crazily on scooters and mopeds, dressed only in shorts and T-shirts (without crash helmets), the absence of traffic signs, people walking in the middle of the road. The little town was just one big holiday camp; everything in it was devoted to the holiday-makers and to squeezing from them every cent, every last lira. Corpulent women with massive breasts sold huge slices of watermelon, kept on big blocks of ice, at the roadside. Men stalked the beaches carrying cans of cola in buckets of ice. It seemed that the entire population was eking a living, in whatever way they could, by selling anything that the holiday-makers might buy. Food and drink were being consumed in copious quantities. Michael stopped at a small café and decided to write a few notes. He always carried a notebook and pen with him.

Life in the Mediterranean resort is very different from what it is like back home in the Midlands. I keep seeing these differences. I have only rarely been outside my home town and in fact I know little of English seaside destinations, other than what I have seen on the television. I see the people of Cattolica as being simple peasants. I do however realise that they have a culture of their own. I love their songs and music, for me, this conveys something of the real life of Italy, and much of what they seem to be singing about is youth and the vitality of being young. I saw the singer Gianni Morandi on the television in the Britannia’s lounge. My favourite song was Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blue, sometimes referred to as Volare. The local songs, sung by the lads at the bars and nightclubs, we never hear in England. This is a wonderful discovery. The more we soak up the lifestyle and culture of Italy, the more we come to the conclusion about what life in England is really like. It is not until you go abroad that you begin to understand what your life at home is about.

Michael paused to light a cigarette. In Cattolica, he could buy cigarettes for a fraction of what they cost at home. He sat back in his chair and watched the crowds of tourists walking by. Around him were small shops and stalls, on the roadside, selling souvenirs and slices of watermelon. The whole town was engaged in selling and there were plenty of people willing to buy. He returned to this notebook

European countries seem to have jumped on the bandwagon of commercialism. Everywhere I go I see people trying to sell things to the tourists. Hundreds of local people spend all day trying to get the holidaymakers to part with their money. But then I suppose the same thing happens back home. When we went to Blackpool for the day it was just the same. The whole of the seafront was little shops selling things, bars, cafés, fish and chip shops. I can’t blame the Italians for wanting to make a living. It’s probably no different back home.

Later that afternoon, Michael and Carol were drinking coffee in Mario’s café. Mario’s had a spacious outdoor eating area where round tables were set, each with its coloured parasol held aloft by a pole going through a hole in the middle of the table. White plastic chairs were placed around each of the tables. The kitchen where Mario prepared the food and drinks was on the ground floor of a low building above which were two small apartments; one in which Mario lived with his wife and another which he rented out to Chico during the summer months. Before Cattolica became a tourist resort, the building had been the residency of a smallholding belonging to Mario’s father; he grew vegetables for the local market. When the town became commercialised for the new tourist trade, the father gave the land to his son and Mario decided he would make a lot more money by turning it into a café. Michael learned all this from Mario during his many visits there.

Being young

Michael and Carol talked about being young and what this meant for them. Ever in a philosophical vein, Michael said, ‘The thing about adolescence is that we have no responsibilities. All we have to worry about is how we look; whether we are wearing the right clothes; whether our hair is right … when we go on holiday we have nothing to do. We fill our time with activities – things we want to do or that someone says we should do. Life just happens. We don’t have a programme to follow until there is an excursion to go on. We can sit around all day and do nothing if we like. The only thing we have to do is turn up for meals at the hotel.’

Carol agreed, ‘Yes, meals break up the day. It’s the same at home. In our house, we always eat at the same time. Breakfast, tea, supper. It’s the same old routine day in and day out. Without meal times, life would be difficult. It would be chaos if Mum had to plan every day differently. She wouldn’t know when to start cooking or even what food to buy.’

Michael said, ‘Adults have to worry about things all the time. They are always thinking about things such as when to have meals when to go shopping, how much money they have.’

Carol replied, ‘The adults are always worrying about things. Where people are, what they are doing, what time it is, where they have to go next. They might be on holiday from work but they are not on holiday from being adults.’

‘The grown-ups get on with each other but it’s in a very civilised way. They never really get to know each other because they don’t want to tell complete strangers things about themselves that they shouldn’t know about. Once they get settled into the holiday they choose which people they want to stick with. They find out pretty quickly who they like and who they don’t like and it stays the same until they leave,’ Michael said.

‘With us younguns,’ Carol replied, ‘we form groups but the groups change constantly. Some of the girls are the dominant ones – they are the ones who start things. They have their followers; other girls join their entourage.’

‘Have you noticed that the pool table at the hotel is a very important place? It’s like … a game where people act out their relationships. It’s not so much about playing the game as the way they play it,’ Michael explained, sipping at his coffee.

‘It’s different for us girls though,’ Carol said. ‘We don’t play pool – well not very often. We tend to talk about things in the toilets where we can be away from the boys and usually the adults too. Girls say things to each other in toilets that they wouldn’t say anywhere else.’

‘It’s an odd thing isn’t it?’, Michael said, as he took a bite from his piece of cake, ‘All these people have been thrown together on this holiday. Me and you – we would never have met outside of this holiday. Dave and Nick – those lads from Manchester – we would never have met them in a million years. We get thrown together in this place simply because we booked a holiday. There’s no way any of these people would have ever met each other in any other way. Wouldn’t it be funny if packaged holidays were only for people who already knew each other?’

‘It looks like the adults stick together,’ Carol remarked, ‘as a sort of protection – against the foreigners. The English people have come here for the sun and the sea but they have to put up with the place being full of Italians – and the Germans, of course. Have you noticed how many Germans there are here? It seems they too have travel agents that sell them packaged holidays, just as we do.’

‘Ah yes, the Germans!,’ Michael exclaimed, ‘The only thing I like about them is their custom of having coffee and cake in the mornings. I see all these signs outside the cafés, written in German, offering Kaffee und Kuchen but what I don’t like about them is the way they hog all the sunbeds. By the time we get to the beach all the sunbeds have the German’s towels on them. They must get up at the crack of dawn and put their towels on the sunbeds, so when we get there, there are none left for us.’

Carol nodded in agreement. ‘Isn’t it funny that we pay all this money to come to a resort that will guarantee sunshine and then, when we get here, we pay even more money to sit in the shade?’

‘Oh yes,’ Michael said. ‘And in this hot climate, that we have spent so much getting to, we spend lots of money on drinks to cool us down,’ he said and took another dip from his coffee.

‘So, you two are sharing a room with other boys?’, Carol asked.

‘We booked a twin room,’ Michael replied, ‘and then Chico said we had to share with Nick and Dave because the hotel was overbooked.’

‘You said they are from Manchester?’, Carol asked.

‘Yes. I am sure that’s where they are from,’ Michael replied. ‘It’s their accents; they sound like they are from Manchester. I have heard people talking like that on the telly. They are a bit odd though. You know, they both sleep in the same bed together.’

‘Really!’ Carol said in surprise. ‘Why is that?’

‘I don’t really know. I thought they might be brothers but I haven’t asked them yet. They didn’t give us their surnames when he first met them. I assume they are used to sleeping in the same bed when they are home. It’s what northerners do, isn’t it?’

‘Perhaps they do,’ Carol replied, ‘but you never know, they could be … well, you know, together-like.’

Michael was not sure what she meant by this but he had a hunch. ‘One night they were in bed, after we had put the lights out, and there was definitely something going on between them. They kept sniggering and moving about and rustling the duvet. It kept me awake. I don’t know what they were up to but they were obviously enjoying themselves, whatever it was.’

Carol replied, ‘It sounds to me like you are reading too much into little things. After all, you don’t really know them that well. Anyway … does it matter? Even if there is something going on between them, it’s not really any of our business.’ Carol looked very wise, Michael thought. He saw her as being old for her age. An old head on young shoulders, he thought.

Michael looked at Carol drinking her coffee and said, ‘This holiday feels like it has changed me in some way. I know it sounds funny but now I feel grown up; I don’t feel so much like a child any more.’

Carol gave him a look of surprise; she said, ‘In what way? How do you feel more grown up? Why should coming on holiday have made you feel like that?’

‘Well, for one thing, I have never been on a proper holiday before. My parents never went anywhere; they never took holidays. Your parents have taken you on holiday with them many times before?’

‘Yes. We always went away somewhere, every year, as far back as I can remember. It was usually somewhere in England but then, as cheap package holidays came in, we started to go to European resorts each summer. This holiday has not been out of the ordinary for me. I can see that it might have affected you though if you have never been abroad before.’

Michael continued, ‘It’s being here without my parents. That’s mainly what makes me feel grown up. I am responsible for myself. When I was little, my parents were always there to look after me. Now, I have to look after myself. Back home, if anything went wrong, you always felt you had people around you to go to if you needed help. Everyone speaks the same language so there would never be any problem with explaining things to people. If anything happened to me over here, I have no idea what I would do. I can’t speak their language.’

‘Well, it’s good we have Chico to take care of us,’ Carol replied.

‘Ah yes. Chico,’ Michael responded. ‘God help us if we ever get into any kind of trouble and need his help. So far, all Chico has done has caused problems for me.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like making us share a room with two strangers.’

‘That wasn’t his fault though, surely. It was the tour operators in England who overbooked the Hotel.’

The two friends spent a couple of hours talking, drinking coffee and ordering cakes and various items of food they wanted to try. They were happy, under the shade of the café’s parasol, chatting about their experiences and watching the people walking by, commenting about them. It was something that neither of them would have done at home, especially outside.

Michael said, ‘All the cafés at home are indoors only. Do you think that we will ever get tables and chairs outside, over in England, Carol?’

‘It would be nice if it happened but I think we get too much rain; I don’t see it happening unless there is a really big change in our climate.’

Their conversation paused as they studied the people passing by in the street.

‘Oh Michael, just look at that fat woman over there. Doesn’t she look a sight? How can she have the nerve to walk around in that tight dress with nearly everything hanging out like that.’

‘And look at her husband. He’s so small and that hat he’s wearing looks ridiculous.’

The two teenagers laughed a lot as they commented on the passers-by.

Food played a prominent part in the life of the holiday-makers. For them, eating was all part of the fun. At breakfast, in the Britannia, it was a time when people discussed what they might do that day and whether they should take advantage of the excursions that were always on offer. Chico was always around at breakfast; trying to persuade people to sign up for the trips that were offered on a daily basis. His commission depended on him being able to get customers to book for these optional extras. Dinner in the hotel was a social occasion both for the young people and for the adults. They would tell each other about what they had been doing, who had done what and what people had said to each other during the day.

Cafe society

The nearby cafés were where the English holiday-makers spent a lot of their time. Most of them were keen to sample the unfamiliar continental menus; they liked pizza and spaghetti and several resolved to look for these things in the supermarkets when they returned home. Not all of the English people were so keen on Italian food and stuck to their familiar diet of fish and chips. The local café owners had learned to cook what the English were asking for and began offering the staple diet of the English, as they saw it. Various Cattolican stall-holders offered slices of pizza to take away; others had baskets of apples and plums for sale, which they knew were popular with the tourists. Eating was a form of entertainment, just as much as drinking and dancing. Michael wondered if the local people ate for entertainment. Many of those he saw in the streets seemed to be poor people who were struggling to eke an existence and barely had enough food to keep them alive. It was those who had latched onto the tourist trade, he thought, who were prosperous and well-fed. Michael noticed that very few local people were to be seen in the cafés; most of them, he thought, were working during the day but even at night the cafés were populated mainly by the English and Germans.

It was very rare to see a black face in Cattolica. When a family from Africa walked through the streets, there were a lot of comments about them, both from the tourists and from the locals. In those days, people from Africa or India stuck mainly to the urban centres like Rome or Milan. Michael did however notice some Chinese-looking people; he assumed that they were Japanese. Japan was a prosperous country, he thought, and they could afford to take European holidays as much as the British and Germans. The holiday resorts were populated mainly by white people and seeing a black face was rare, so Michael noted in his book:

I do not often see black people in Cattolica. I suppose most of them come from poor countries and cannot afford to take holidays abroad. The odd few I have seen must be wealthy businessmen from Africa. So, why do people peer at them and make comments? Surely they are spending money the same as everyone else. People from Japan are spending the same money as we are and they do not get stared at. Why should people find black skin something that should be commented on?

That afternoon Richard kept his promise of taking Michael to the shops to buy shorts. The unwilling customer grumbled about the cost of everything. There were arguments over what style of the garment should be purchased but eventually, Richard’s dominant personality prevailed. Michael ended up with a pair of bright yellow shorts and Richard bought a blue cap for himself, a cap that he wore continuously until they went back to England. Richard usually wore an open-neck beach shirt or his T-shirt with broad blue stripes. Michael had brought very little clothing with him and none of it was at all suitable for a continental seaside holiday. As he had never been by the sea before, he had never had any need for shorts or T-shirts and England was not a place where he would walk around in skimpy clothing, even in summer.

Next: chapter four continued.

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