Burning Bush Stony Ground: Gibraltar Sojourn Part 2

By Joseph Fiol

These stories, along with others, are randomly scattered among the pages of "Not the Eyes Again . . . & Other Irregularities," "The Devil in French . . . & Other Musings," "When It Was the War . . . & Other Conflicts," "Second Coming . . . & Other Upheavals," and "The View from Below & Other Reerings."

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Aug 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496987853

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© 2014 Joseph Fiol. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/07/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8784-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8785-3 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

The Apples of Desire

When It Was the War

You Can’t Kill your Granddad

When You Dream

Comings and Goings

What Shall We Do Next

Not the Eyes Again

When Jacko Met Pancho

The Passing of Jacko

Azzopardi Loves Aeisha

The Crab Goes Ape

Little Awakenings

Hippopotamus with Rice

Muted Green

Not Three As Well

Of Lice and Would-Be Men

Bespoked Bothered and Bewildered

A Brush with Kulture

Breakfast à la Carte

‘Saturn’ and the Door with no Handle

The Tangerine Canary

Strewn Pebbles

003½

Time Up

Other titles

Troubled Water … & other irregularities

When It Was the War … & other conflicts

The Devil in French … & other musings

Second Coming … & other upheavals

The View from Below … & other peerings

Burning Bush, Stony Ground … Gibraltar Sojourn. Part One

RECORD:          Drawings Paintings Aquaflo Constructs

Exhibitions Notes Films Project Books

For my Family and Friends

The Apples of Desire

I don’t eat apples. It’s not that I don’t like the taste. Apple pie … I love. But whole apples? … nah. Yet strangely, last year when for the first time in forty-eight years I went on a visit to my place of birth … when I stood by that lamp-post and identified that dent on the cast-iron column … in the middle of that swirl of mixed emotions … the thought of apples found its way into my head. It was closely followed by the image of a donkey and along with it, the dull ache of guilt settled in my stomach.

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Ever since we were married, fifty-five years previously I had been promising my wife that I would take her to Gibraltar. However for one reason or another life kept getting in the way, until we managed to get there last year.

Perhaps in anticipation of the trip, which I viewed with a mixture of excitement and a dread of ghosts, I started to experience vivid recall of places and incidents, both within my own neighbourhood and beyond, at times going back to when I was around four years of age.

I am not unused to peddling mental imagery as a way of life, but the experience was new to me in that it came in a totality of the senses, together with emotional associations and in the clarity and certainty of dreams. The detail in the visualising went beyond remarkable, taking in streets, buildings, features of these, individual objects as well as people. At first, I simply drifted around at random, soaking up impressions as they presented themselves. Then, partly as a way of testing myself, I imagined myself walking from one particular place to another and, revelling in the detailed richness of the recall, embarked on many such flights of imagining across the town. Here is an example. It is the first of the sorties and it takes the route from my house at 4, Devil’s Gap Steps to the Grammar School in Witham’s Road. There were others, among them those to Flat Bastion Road, Castle Street and Williss’ Road, where members of my family used to live. Fearing that it will be as tedious in the reading as it was exhilarating in the experience, I shall be sparing and stop at Prince Edward’s Gate instead of going all the way to Witham’s Road.

I reach for the doorknob of my front door … oblate tarnished brass, loose on the spindle … the wall next to the door … section of plaster bulging, roughly the contour shape of Africa, several laths showing … on to the outside small steps … six, concrete with pebble mix, pitted, worn on centre edges … rubbish on the corrugated sheeting below my window, mainly cardboard … wall separating my house from the wide steps … broken glass along top, clear and dark green … iron spikes, right angle section, twisted, rusted, barbed wire threading through three holes … on to the wide steps, turning left to go down … the other side of the wall opposite my window … small corrugated sheet shelter … supporting bracket, bolts showing through … covering the water fountain … two taps with green metal casing, held in place with bar and padlock … small square door on wall … stopcock and meter … to the right Lime Kiln Road … narrow passage … windows at ground level … glass whitewashed, dusty … Sacred Heart Church in the distance … lamppost at corner with steps … goose-neck top … next to Mr Garcia’s patio … door open … large plant pots on flagstone … small drain grille centre … opposite Mr Benabu’s house … flat roof … black door, brass knocker, ball on rod … shutters painted white … move down … large steel ring embedded into one step (used to haul heavy equipment up to the slopes) … further down … railing separating steps from passageway … horizontal rails, tubular, bluish metal, rusted on the uprights … on to triangular area where steps give on to Flat Bastion Road … motorbike, with tarpaulin, under Mr Sciacaluga’s window … opposite, disused building … door hanging loose … iron steps … down towards junction with Prince Edward’s Road and Castle Road … railings of Sacred Heart Church on top of high stone wall up along Castle Road … down from it Marchena’s Store … brown shutters open … steps leading into raised patio, vertical railing, grapevine … large square galvanised refuse bin, lift-up led, handle squared metal … dark patch by the kerb (where paraffin spilt from the oval tank drawn by white horse) … turn left down into Prince Edward’s Road … old canon sunken on the corner with Flat Bastion Road … muzzle filled with concrete, dark grey, rust round the edge … past Barber Shop left … Bakery levelling off from hill … opposite, wall, door set back, varnished wood, brass nameplate: F. Panayotti … down … Presbyterian Chapel … wrought iron gate, lower half covered in corrugated sheeting, noticeboard right of entrance, dark varnished wood, faded gold letters, gully under stone step leading in … Army Married Quarters … levelling off the hill … low railing … passages on two levels lined with doors … stairs connecting to Flat Bastion Road … down … dark passage into Sampere’s house … grocery store opposite … the hill veers left and levels off … low stone wall rounded at top … shielding off culvert, large square drainage grille cover … railings to house above … opposite, wood fronted two-level houses … washing lines … covered fountain bottom of Wilson’s Ramp … long wall to Forty Steps … opposite, twin steps in both directions in Gowland’s Ramp … metal arch with street lamp … disused shelter … sliding grille on rollers, diamond pattern … wet inside … rock face along to brick wall … black shiny door … large brass nameplate: Sir G. Gaggero … steps to Kavanagh’s Court … opposite, low wooden door … tennis court … high scaffolding poles with wire mesh … sagging … concrete marked with white lines, faded … road rises towards Charles V Steps to left … Hargreave’s Barracks … clock above open covered area … corner of Hargreave’s Parade … overhang with square stone pillar … Prince Edward’s Gate.

I can only give the foregoing as a prosaic list of details. Any attempt to describe the all-encompassing flow of such experiences, at once extending and encapsulated, would prove futile and overblown.

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We touched down at Gibraltar North Front Aerodrome and made our way to our hotel in Cathedral Square. Next morning after breakfast, I left my wife relaxing in the hotel courtyard and set off on the slow hollow uphill walk to my house in Devil’s Gap Steps. It was something I needed to do on my own.

I found my house, along with others which hadn’t actually been demolished, boarded up and derelict. Everything appeared different in a strangely familiar way. Not a soul, other than those of the dead, disturbed the desolate air. All I could do was sit on my front steps and try not to think until I could gather sufficient resolve to stand and begin to walk back down the wide steps.

At the bottom of the steps, I turned left and went up Flat Bastion Road, perhaps reluctant to leave the neighbourhood, with the vague notion of going to my cousins’ house at number 21. The area had not suffered the same fate as my Steps and although changed there were signs of living all round. I made effort not to scrutinise passers-by too closely, since close on half a century had passed by and the likelihood of recognition remote.

Although with shutters drawn, my cousins’ house was certainly occupied. I stood for some considerable time just gazing around. The entrance to the tenement next door to number 21 was still identifiable in spite of the renovations and actually boasting a door. My interest kindled, I searched for other features, taking notice for the first time of the lamp-post directly opposite my cousins’ front door. It stood unchanged and in place by virtue of having been erected into a low substantial wall which separated Flat Bastion Road from a flight of stone steps leading down to dwellings at a lower level.

I was gratified to identify the lamp-post as it had been a feature in my flight of fanciful imaginings back in the UK. Bemused as well as pleased, I gazed up along the green cast iron column and experienced a severe jolt. That dent, above eye level and horizontal along the fluted column, was part of the unnerving detail of my recall. It was within that sense of displacement and on top of the emotional turmoil of the morning, that the thought of apples bobbed incongruously up into my head. To add to the confusion it was followed by a mental image of a donkey, at which point the dull ache of guilt lodged in my stomach. With some effort the brain cranked into gear and began harassing the memory banks. Then out it all came, tumbling out.

Sixty seven years previously, there by that same lamp-post, I had coveted apples. I could have settled for figs, pomegranates, pears standard and prickly, oranges, tangerines, bananas, plums, cherries, grapes, medlars, apricots, peaches, mulberries … but no … it had to be apples … no ordinary apples … nothing like the gnarled misshapen ones peppered with brown spots which my grandmother used for her toffee apples … oh no … these were special … the Apples from Paradise.

Why did I crave them? … was it because they luxuriated in wooden boxes, individually wrapped in purple tissue paper? … was it because of having caught a tantalising glimpse of the demure roseate flesh within the wrapping? … was it just an elevated anticipation of scrumping? … just another inconsequential childish whim? … just another story? … or was it that story again in different guise? … that first story … the one about Man and the Apple?

And why the feeling of guilt? … that poor donkey … hadn’t its kind been punished enough for that one presumptuous act on the first Palm Sunday?

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The donkey’s ears twitch and swivel in our direction. It has picked up on the charged whispering behind the lowered shutters. The animal is unsettled. It tosses its head, pulling on the tether securing it to the lamp-post.

Quieto, burro, growls the man and continues loading the basket. He takes the pencil from behind his ear and after moistening the point, writes on a piece of paper which he places inside the basket. He then picks up the basket and carries it across the street towards the open doorway to the tenement next door to number 21. He ties the basket to a dangling rope and tugs on it sharply twice. The basket starts on a jerky ascent. Mrs Gomila is shopping for her fruit and veg. from her window on the third floor. The vendor waits with hands on hips, his head turning between the donkey and the window of number 21.

How much are you charging me for the runner beans? calls down the shopper, the steel in her voice turning the question into a challenge.

Three pence, answers the vendor, one hand cupped to his mouth.

They were tuppence last time, points out Mrs Gomila sharply.

They are the last of the season and a bit scarce, parries the man defensively.

And stringy by the look of them, there comes an audible snort from above, followed by a louder one from below as the donkey continues to fret. By sheer good fortune, with his attention on the donkey, the vendor narrowly escapes serious injury from the coins wrapped in newspaper dropped from above. After counting the money, he remains staring silently upwards.

It’s all there, calls down Mrs Gomila tersely. I’ve taken a penny off for the beans.

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It is Saturday and the grown-ups are about their business in the town. Left to our own devices with no school in the offing, it is a time to be used with productive purpose, which is why I am at my cousins’ house at number 21 Flat Bastion Road, peering out through the slats of the lowered shutters. We are of an age when excitement is both appetite and sustenance, preferable tinged with a modicum of danger and with scant regard for propriety or consequence. I am coming up thirteen, my cousins Roberto and Carlos are twelve and ten and a half respectively.

In the week, Roberto had chanced upon a punctured football bladder. In certain circles, it was common knowledge that the pink rubber of the bladder was far superior, both in elasticity and tensile strength, to the black inner tubes of bicycle wheels traditionally used for catapults. Following the fortuitous find, my cousins were of a mind to upgrade their weaponry and with that in mind, came to see me at my house in Devil’s Gap Steps. Together we made our way up to the slopes and on to Charles V Wall, going through an opening which led to a secret place and arriving at a particular olive tree. Unlike its fellows with their contorted limbs, that little tree had in the past yielded excellent two-pronged branches. We found two to our liking, which I would strip of its bark and keep at my house, where the security surveillance from my aged grandmother was less stringent. I parted company with my cousins after arranging to meet up on the Saturday at their place, to work on the advanced prototype.

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As soon as the coast was clear, we lowered the shutters and set to. Four half-inch wide strips were cut from the bladder and attached with binding wire to grooves cut out on the prongs of the two catapults. In keeping with the updated design, the square of leather to hold the missile, usually acquired from the tongues of shoes, was replaced with that from army boots of more durable leather.

Roberto and Carlos were in ecstasies over the updated models and beside themselves with the anxiety to test the weaponry in the field and at the same time avoid an accumulation of broken ornaments. Providentially, as it seemed to us, the cry of the itinerant vendor announcing his produce, came to our ears.

The gruff voice gradually grew louder as the vendor plodded up the hill to the slow pace of the donkey under the weight of the loaded panniers. In contrast there was frantic haste inside number 21. In the absence of pebbles the kitchen was ransacked as the most likely place to yield suitable ammunition, which turned out to be habas (dried broad beans). Our minds concentrated, a strategy was hammered out in breathless gasps.

We had of late fallen foul of the Spanish vendor: an irascible fellow of ready profanity and volatile temper with a very marked aversion to any juvenile being in close proximity to the bountiful panniers. On a particular occasion, my cousins were simply standing around gazing at the donkey while the man was busy serving customers. I had wandered into the exclusion zone of the panniers, my attention drawn by apples among the proliferation of fruit. To refer to them as ‘apples’ was to downgrade them to the level of the wizened windfalls covered in toffee by my grandmother. Such was the glistening splendour and perfection of those apples, occasionally glimpsed inside their purple wrapping, as to make them seem artificial. The closest to them, which I could envisage at the time, was the apple that did for Snow White. Needless to say, in the innocence of my years I did not make any nefarious or allegorical associations with those Apples of Desire. If anything, I might have had a subconscious realisation that not all apples were the same and, possibly by analogy, that there was something ‘out there’ other than what you knew.

No sooner had the last customer moved away than the man, turning to us with an oath, grabbed hold of each of us in turn and propelled us away from the panniers. The action and attitude of the vendor struck at the very heart of schoolboys’ sense of fairness, honed in the classroom, as it affects themselves.

To my cousins’ eagerness for testing the updated equipment was added the zest from their grievances towards the vendor. Weaponless myself, I sought redress by more subtle and devious means. It occurred to me that properly directed, my cousins’ intended target practice combined with the vendor’s temper, might provide the means to achieve my end. For by then, spurred by the treatment from the vendor, I craved the apples. I resolved to plunder them using the fire cover from the catapults, with my determination in conflict with the queasy feeling regarding the risk involved.

At Mrs Gomila’s words, the vendor accepts the inevitable and thrusting the coins into the pouch round his waist with ill grace, makes his way back to the donkey. By then there is quite a gathering of customers around the panniers and the good ladies lose no time in engaging the disgruntled vendor in the bluffs of haggling.

Ready? I say to my cousins, my hand on the shutters. Roberto and Carlos nod eagerly, thumbs and first fingers tight round the leathers holding the habas. You go first, I tell Roberto. I lift the shutter, he lets fly. The donkey gets it on the rump. I notice the spasm of its hide, like when it dislodges irritating flies. The shutter is lowered. Carlos takes his position, looking grim. I nod to him and raise the shutter. A palpable hit, the donkey whinnies.

What’s the matter with the bloody donkey today? the man is heard to growl, while attending to a customer. Roberto is ready for the next salvo.

Hang on, I tell him. We’ve got to get the man, so he knows what’s going on and starts getting angry. Wait till he moves away from the women with his back to us. I peer through the slats and wait. Now, I raise the shutter. Roberto twangs.

What the … what was that? The vendor turns, looking wildly around. He looks in our direction. We daren’t breathe. The danger passes. He looks up at the tenement. Carlos is ready to go again.

Let Roberto take this shot, I tell him. You’ll get your chance in a minute. Right I say to Roberto, the back of the donkey this time." I raise the shutter slowly to give him time to take aim. He finds the spot. The donkey startles, pulling on the tether and stamping its back legs. The man grabs hold of the bridle. The customers move