Dolly And The Cookie Bird - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 03 by Unknown Read Free Book Online

straw hat with a big brim on top. When they spoke together it was a long sort of industrial rattle, like a macaw talking quickly. They asked a great many questions, personal questions.
    I didn’t mind. I was wearing a high necked shift, in a sort of thick orange fibre, my hair loose, and sandals, with a fine chain and Mummy’s leaving-school pearl thing tucked in where the neck hid it. I told them the worst, and we all shook our heads over the lack of a husband, and one of the younger ones said I’d need to find a good strong Ibizenco.
    I said good and strong didn’t matter, only something in trousers; and another one with a voice like a saw said, “Watch out, you never know what comes in trousers these days.” We all shrieked with laughter. It’s easy. It makes you go all sweet and old-fashioned, like visiting old ladies in hospital. I don’t know why, but I only think of using four-letter words when I’m with people like Janey and Gilmore. And Mummy, of course.
    I bought what we needed and got some carnations for Anne-Marie. The Lloyds never seemed to cut what was in the garden. I remembered, too, that I must come back and get something for Flo. I choose nice presents, or so everyone says. If you know anyone as well as I know Flo, you know what they really want. Her mother always gives her long Johns. I was going to spend three of my pounds on a sexy mantilla. Two were earmarked for something for Janey later, and a trifle for the woman owning the flat. I stood a minute, counting Anne-Marie’s housekeeping and ticking off lists, and wished a bit that I’d waited for breakfast. However. “Fish,” I said to Helmuth, and we set off again.
    They were jolly nice in the fish market as well. That was a funny round tiled building with a roof like an umbrella with a hole in the middle. Inside, you walked between two rings of stalls: the first few were meat, with long, pale chickens hanging, all thin legs and bunched feet, and a pig’s head in solid pale pink, its eyes little closed slits. It seemed to be laughing.
    I didn’t need meat. Spanish beef isn’t to Mr. Lloyd’s taste, so he has two 15-cc freezers stocked with chicken, whole butchered lamb, and cuts of Aberdeen Angus flown out from home. Anne-Marie had shown me the freezers, proudly. There were ten pounds of raspberries in one, and American ice cream and asparagus tips. “See? There is no one else on Ibiza has this. Not with food. But the Casa Veñets has its own generating plant, Miss Sarah.” I got the point. The light had failed twice that night already. I moved along.
    There were trays of crushed ice on the squared concrete paving, with coral prawns in them, strung like a necklace. Seamen, in faded trousers and big rubber boots, were bringing trolleys loaded with boxes to the stalls as you watched: octopus and squid in grey, sloppy envelopes; heaps of whitebait like needles. Fat silver fish lay interleaved on one counter; on another, eels lay beside a tangle of blue mussel shells. There were nameless fish, purple-blue and bright pink, and big silver fish pinstriped in yellow, and green fish, with yellow-white speckled bellies. The names and prices, in Spanish, were chalked on small blackboards or stuck in a cork float. I looked at Helmuth again, and he grinned and took me by the hand and led me forward. The queues parted and then closed around me. We were in conference.
    We got back to the car about an hour and a half later, and heaved in the baskets: compared with me, the fish all looked dynamic. Helmuth dragged out the big wicker-cased wine jug he and Anne-Marie use in the kitchen and went off to fill it, and by the grace of God, I trailed off to watch him.
    He went into a little bodega at the edge of the square. After the dazzle of sunshine outside, it was cool and dark, and smelt of wet wood and alcohol and the plant house in Kew Gardens. I looked around while the shopkeeper filled the big bottle from one of the kegs. On the other side was a row of