Chapter 3. Nights on the Adriatic.
Part of my novel The Road to Ancona.
At 5 pm they changed to a bigger coach for the last leg of their journey. Soon after, the coach crossed the Swiss border into Italy and the rain stopped. Looking back at Switzerland, as the coach navigated a loop in the road, Michael could see dark clouds hanging low over the mountains. In front of them, the southern sky was bright and clear. Every time the coach neared a lake, Chico gave a well-rehearsed speech about it, in English, coloured by his heavy accent.
‘… and on our left is Como. Twenty-two miles long and one thousand, three hundred and twenty feet deep.’
The coach arrived on the motorway to Milan. ‘Now we enter the autostrada del sol,’ Chico the tour guide announced with an air of satisfaction. He went on to explain that it meant ‘the motorway to the sun’ and the coach passengers gave a weak cheer. As the luxury road-liner glided across the flat and featureless plains of northern Italy, the light faded and the sky dimmed to a dark, foreboding grey. On either side of the road, the scene was occasionally lit by flashes of lightning. They passed through the outskirts of Milan and then Bologna, as the last glimmers of daylight gave way to inky night.
It was well after midnight when the coach entered the small, cluttered resort of Cattolica, on the shores of the Adriatic. The town looked poor and shabby until the coach arrived in the tourist area, where open-air cafés were filled with people wearing brightly coloured shorts and flip-flops and the night was filled with the noise of people enjoying themselves. Michael noticed that there were no pavements at the side of the road, just gravel paths on which people walked; he wondered if the place had drains and sewers. The shabby, smaller buildings, where the locals lived, looked like they had been built in a hurry. In the early hours of the morning, the town was alive with people, its streets bustling with activity.
Richard was prattling away like an excited schoolboy. ‘This is fantastic. Just look at all those people. Oh, I do love the bright lights. This is just how I thought it would be. Look at all those bars and cafés. Everyone is sitting outside,’ Richard said.
Arrival in Cattolica.
The coach came to a halt in the Viale Marconi, outside the Hotel Britannia. The group left the air-conditioned coolness of the coach and stepped into the heavy, humid heat of the Italian night. Most of them were dressed in warm clothing after their visit to the Alps. The first thing that Michael noticed was the smell. The atmosphere of the resort had a distinct tinge to it. As he took his first breaths of Cattolican air, he noticed straight away that it smelt of shit. ‘A smell like this, you would only get at home if some workmen had opened the drains,’ he thought, ‘it smells like they don’t have sewers here.
The Hotel Britannia would be the base for the two teenage friends over the next two weeks. It was a modern-looking building with balconies at each window and a terrace at the front on which stood tables with coloured umbrellas. To Michael, it was like stepping into a dream. The lights, the sounds, the smells, everything around him crowded in on his senses as Michael looked around, desperately trying to come to terms with where he was. Nothing in the previous sixteen years of his life had prepared him for this. The feeling and atmosphere of that July night grabbed him by the throat, submerging him in an intoxicating cocktail of emotions, a bewildering array of senses. This was his first trip abroad and the first holiday he had taken on his own. Little did he know that the next two weeks would change his life forever.
The passengers crowded around the back of the coach as the tour guide and the driver pulled out their bags and suitcases. Soon the polished floor of the hotel foyer was littered with an untidy array of luggage. Michael noticed that there was no sign of a carpet anywhere. The lobby of the hotel was laid with polished stone slabs that looked like marble.
The boys were allocated to room 25. They climbed the stone stairs, heaving their bags slowly up the steps until they reached the second floor. Richard, being well-mannered, knocked on the door before opening it and going in. The large room contained a sea of beds. Stretched out on one of these, were two lanky lads dressed in dark blue denim jeans. ‘Hello. Who are you?’, one of them said in a thick northern accent. The Midlands boys were standing with their heavy suitcases and some hesitant moments of silence passed before Richard said, ‘We’re your roommates for tonight. My name is Richard and this is Michael.’ Richard stepped over to the nearest bed and dumped his suitcase on it, thus marking it as his territory. The two lanky lads looked at each other.
‘Well, I’ve never seen so many beds in a room before,’ Richard exclaimed in a jovial tone of voice. He started to unpack his case.
‘So you’re sleeping in here too?’, one of the northern lads asked with a note of surprise.
‘Well, that’s what the rep told us,’ Richard said, ‘he made it seem like everything was well organised, all sorted out in advance. He offered us free bottles of wine if we agreed to share a room. Well, we had asked for a twin but apparently the hotel is over-booked, so he told us.’
One of the northern lads asked ‘Who is this rep?’ Richard explained that he was called Chico and he had been in the foyer allocating people to their rooms. ‘Oh! That explains a lot,’ the other northern lad remarked, cryptically.
Michael edged himself between two of the beds, sidling like a crab between the cramped furnishings. While the boys busied themselves with their bags, the two northern lads remained on their bed. They watched the new arrivals as they unpacked but said nothing. Richard began to question them. His questions – of more than twenty words – resulted in two-word answers. Compared to his effervescent personality, the two lads from Manchester presented a rather sullen demeanour. It emerged, from the somewhat stilted replies they gave, that they had arrived two days earlier on another Galaxy Tours bus. No one had said anything to them about sharing a room. They were simply billeted to room 25. When they booked they also had requested a twin-bedded room.
Mancunians
The two Mancunians offered little information about themselves at first. Richard did manage to find out their names and ages. They told him Nick was 17 and Dave was 18 and they lived in Manchester. They offered little more by way of information; they liked to get to know someone before sharing personal details with them. Richard regarded them as being straight-laced working-class youths. Michael decided that Nick had a very dry sense of humour; he would sometimes come out with statements of a humorous nature, which he spoke without any facial expression and which only seemed funny if you thought about them. The northerners both disliked “foreign food” and preferred the fish and chips at Mario’s to the dinners served in the Britannia. At first, they missed the kind of beer they were used to but after a while, they developed a liking for lager and were even determined to drink it when they got home.
Like Michael, the two northerners had never been abroad before, so they assumed that such arrangements were perfectly normal. The northern lads’ main concern was that the boys had been promised an alcoholic bribe whilst they had not. This realisation drove them from their bed and down the stairs to search for this man called Chico.
That cluttered room and those strange northern lads were to become icons of the holiday for the two teenagers from the Midlands during their stay at the small hotel near the seafront. But it was not the lads who would make an impact on the boys; it was the girls. The two sixteen-year-olds had never been on holiday together before; they had been at school together in their Midlands home town and, when they left school and got jobs, they remained firm friends. It was their new-found income that had inspired them to book themselves on to one of the package holidays they had seen in the coloured brochures on a visit to the local travel agency. Now they were in the first big adventure of their young lives; hundreds of miles away from their parents in a foreign country where people spoke a different language and ate food they had never known before. The previous sixteen years of their lives had not prepared them in any way for the experiences that lay ahead of them.
Having finished unpacking, Michael said, ‘Richard. There are only three beds in here. That double one and these two singles.’
‘Very observant Michael.’
‘So, are those two lads going to sleep in that bed together?’
‘It rather looks that way, doesn’t it? Why do you ask? Would you prefer to get in with them?’, Richard replied sarcastically.
Michael began to formulate a reply to this statement but before he could say anything Richard pulled off his long trousers and put on some smart, white shorts and a T-shirt printed with blue and white stripes. He said, ‘Right, we’re off to the beach. We don’t want to stay in this smelly old bedroom. Come on Michael.’ He had not given his friend time to change before disappearing through the door. They walked down to the foyer. Richard said, ‘Michael! Where are your shorts? You can’t go out wearing long trousers. Did you leave them at home?’ Michael complained that he had not been given time to change before his friend had shot out of the room. Michael said sheepishly, ‘I haven’t got any shorts. I was going to buy some last weekend but I never got around to it. I haven’t worn shorts since I was at primary school.’ Richard simply rolled his eyes and sighed. He said, ‘Tomorrow morning I am taking you to the nearest clothes shop. You can’t walk around in those long trousers and that woollen top.’
Michael and Richard walked to the nearby beach. Michael, still in his thick, long trousers, felt his legs being throttled by the hot night atmosphere. The heat only accentuated his feeling of exhaustion from the long journey. To him, everything felt so different and strange and yet he also felt exhilarated. He began to feel overwhelmed by the sights and smells of this foreign place. He drifted through the bustling streets like a ghost, seeing everything as if from another dimension. He knew he was here, but in an odd way he was not here. It was just like being in a dream, he thought.
A buggy ride at night
Before they reached the beach, the boys found a horse and buggy waiting by the side of the road. ‘Michael, we must go on this,’ Richard said excitedly and, without waiting for a reply, climbed on board. Reluctantly Michael followed him. They were charged five hundred lira each for the short trip around the streets. The horse was used to picking its way through the crowds of people. As they passed the souvenir shops, Michael noticed that everything was priced in thousands of lira. He had not got used to the local currency and regarded it with apprehension. He felt overwhelmed by the heat, the bustle, the strange smells and the unnerving peculiarity of everything around him. The air had a sultry, oppressive feel to it that Michael had never experienced before.
After their impromptu buggy ride over, the boys came to the broad sandy beach. It was dotted with sunbeds and parasols for the holiday-makers to use (if they were happy to pay for them, which not all of them were.) They strolled down to the water’s edge and removed their shoes and socks. The sea was as placid as a sheet of glass; the water lapped lazily on the soft sand. In the silence of the beach, the noise of the town could be heard in the background. In front of them, the inky black sea merged indistinguishably into the sooty darkness of the starless sky. Flashes of lightning over Yugoslavia occasionally lit the firmament as they paddled along the shoreline, the water lapping gently over their feet. Richard’s babble had subsided; he seemed to have succumbed to the peculiarity of the darkness, where the world appeared like it was on the edge of the universe. Michael knew that he ought to feel happy, like his friend, but in reality, he was exhausted and felt rather sick, an ill-defined nausea that weighed on him and made him feel like he was in some kind of unsettling dream. As they strolled along the deserted shoreline, Michael wanted to hold his friend’s hand, to derive some comfort from their friendship in his moment of anxiety. But he stopped himself. He knew that Richard would jerk his hand away if he tried to grasp it. Despite the emotions that were flooding through him, Michael could find no way of expressing how he felt.
Back at the hotel, another coachload of holidaymakers arrived, among them a group of teenage girls from the Midlands who were to become the boys’ constant companions during their stay at the resort. Richard and Michael were sitting in the foyer as the new arrivals tumbled in noisily with their bags. While the adults sorted out their rooms, two of the girls sat down near the boys, who had been talking about what they might do over the days ahead but their conversation ended abruptly when Richard turned to the girls and said: ‘Just arrived then?’ With his usual cheery smile.
‘Oh! You’re English! I could have sworn you were German. I just said to Kate, ‘Let’s go and sit next to those German lads’ and it turns out you are English,’ Carol said and they all giggled; she asked ‘How long have you been travelling for?’
Richard replied: ‘Oh, we’ve been stuck on a coach for a week! Next time I am going to fly straight to the resort.’ Richard introduced himself, saying he was travelling without his parents and then asked ‘So, who have you come with?’
Carol explained that she was with her parents and that Kate was with her aunt and uncle.
‘Oh. And this is Michael,’ Richard said, almost forgetting that his friend was with him.
Richard said ‘I could tell you two were English as soon as you walked in.’ The girls laughed. It was Richard’s manner to say something provocative for the sake of being amusing.
‘We have both been abroad before,’ Carol explained. ‘We go on a packaged tour every summer.’
Carol had recently left school and was hoping for a place at the local art college where she wanted to do a course on painting, art and history. Although she had been to Europe before, this was her first time in Italy. A diminutive girl with short hair, she was thoughtful and caring and was to become Michael’s friend and confidant over their two weeks in the resort.
Two more girls joined them. Jane and Sandra had arrived with the boys on the earlier coach. They had met Richard and Michael at the hotel in Basel when they had stopped for dinner. The new girls said hello to the boys and pulled over a couple of chairs draping themselves over the arms. They spoke to the newly arrived girls. ‘Hello. I’m Jane and this is Sandra. It’s our first time in Italy. We’ve been here for less than a day and we like it already. Something tells me that the next two weeks are going to be one long party.’
‘Have you come with your parents?’, Kate asked.
‘No, we are both travelling alone this year. We persuaded our parents to let us go without them this year,’ Jane explained.
With her short curly blond hair and set of dangly gold earrings, Michael studied seventeen-year-old Jane as though she was a character in a novel. She was great fun to be with but inclined to be rather shallow. She was never serious about anything; a conversation with her was an endless round of jokes and barbed comments about other people. To her, life was just one long party. Michael regarded her as being typical of the girls who were teenagers at that time. The kind he had seen in films and television programmes. She loved pop music and film stars and was always talking about celebrities, even though she had never met any but she was an avid reader of the magazines that were written for her age group. These magazines were the source of all she knew and cared about. Her bible was Jackie magazine; from its pages, she gathered everything she wanted to know and believed every word that was in it.
Sandra was rather plain in appearance, quieter but with a confident demeanour; her straight brown hair was carefully combed and covered one side of her face and she wore a simple blue dress, the kind Michael called a ‘sack dress.’ The two girls gave the impression of being modern teenagers. Michael and Richard had met Jane and Sandra at the Royal Hotel in Basel, just after their arrival in Switzerland. They had sat together at dinner.
‘What’s Cattolica like then, Richard?’, Sandra asked.
‘Well it’s very different from England,’ Richard replied with a grin.
‘I should hope so too,’ Kate remarked. ‘What’s the beach like?’
‘Sand and water,’ Richard responded cheerily.
‘Sounds hopeful then,’ Kate replied.
The teenagers got to know each other that night; they would form a group of English holidaymakers who spent a lot of time together, while they were in Cattolica. Sixteen-year-old Kate was a vivacious girl, although at times she could be coarse and rude. She was one of the stronger personalities amongst the group of girls from the Midlands. Her party had arrived at the Britannia earlier on and she quickly made friends with Carol. Kate was on holiday with her aunt and uncle; her father had died a few years earlier and her mother had to stay at home to work, to make ends meet.
Sandra (just turned seventeen) had been abroad before, with her parents but this time they allowed her to go on her own provided she stuck close to Jane. Her mum and dad had made her promise that she would behave herself. This she achieved until she met Giovanni; that is when her normal reserve and caution evaporated and she suddenly discovered a sense of adventure.
Eating out
The group went into the hotel restaurant for a very late dinner. The staff were used to feeding newly arrived parties in the early hours of the morning. Tables and chairs were set out in uniform rows along the sides of the dining room with its polished stone floor. Each of the tables was set with four chairs and covered with a white tablecloth. The metal-framed chairs were of a contemporary Italian design and had oval-shaped backrests made of wood. Stainless steel cutlery, white napkins and wine glasses had been carefully laid out at each cover and on the tables were set small glass pots each with a single fresh flower. Huge bowls were placed in front of the diners, into which waitresses ladled large quantities of soup. Despite the summer heat, holidaymakers were invariably served hot soup for their starters. The watery concoction contained fragments of vegetables of an indeterminate origin, although some pieces were recognisable as celery.
This was followed by the usual roast chicken portions and boiled potatoes; the guests had to serve themselves from trays that had been waiting for some time under the infrared lamps of the servery. Richard and Michael sat at a table with Kate and Carol. They wanted to get to know the new girls. They talked about the journey from Switzerland and asked each other what they had seen of the resort so far. Richard told them about the ride in the horse and buggy and the stroll along the beach. Michael told them about being in a blizzard on the St. Gotthard pass.
After their meal, the holidaymakers gathered in the hotel bar to chat and relax. The bar had shelves of bottles lined up in neat rows. At the back, there was a coffee machine. Low armchairs had been placed around coffee tables on ornately patterned rugs and pots of large plants were positioned around the room. The room looked very modern, suggesting that the newly opened hotel wanted to convey a contemporary ambience to its guests.
The boys eventually went to bed, well after 3 am. Michael got into his bed and Richard turned off the lights before getting into his. They lay in their beds and pulled the duvets over them but the heat was oppressive and they soon had to throw them off. The northern lads were already in the double bed underneath a large duvet; they kept whispering to each other and sniggering and rustling the covers.
In the darkness, Michael could hear them and wondered what they were doing. He was suspicious about what they were up to. To him, northerners were a strange breed who spoke with funny accents and appeared blunt and crude in their manners. He could not understand why the two of them were in the same bed together. He put it down to them being from a poor northern town where siblings were made to share a bed even when they were older. They had given only their first names; Michael wondered if they were brothers. He eventually fell asleep but his dreams were full of foreboding and nightmarish images of being lost in strange places and wandering through large complex buildings unable to find his way out and always feeling that he was late for something.
Next: The Streets of Cattolica.
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