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They sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea and flicking over the glossy pages of the brochures, dreaming of a fortnight in Acapulco or a few weeks cruising in the Bahamas, before they settled down to deciding on something they could actually afford. Neither of them had much money. Although the farm was highly productive, most of the profits were ploughed back into farm equipment and stock, and Quincy's bank account was never exactly healthy; she spent most of what she earned.
'Spain's not expensive,' Penny thought aloud, gazing at a highly coloured picture of a bullfight.
Quincy stared at it, too, seeing in the black hair and tanned face of the bullfighter a strong resemblance to Joe Aldonez. Her mind detached itself and floated off into memories.
'What do you think?' Penny's voice broke into the dream and Quincy jumped, eyes opening wide.
'What?'
'Spain, stupid—you aren't listening!'
'Of course I am!' Quincy protested. Joe had talked a great deal about Spain and although he himself had never yet been there had obviously been fascinated by his mother's country. Quincy felt she would like to see it. She had some vague idea that by visiting Spain she might get closer to Joe, understand him better. 'Spain would be wonderful,' she said, searching her mind for some memory of the name of the mountain village which Joe had mentioned as the place his mother came from.
'This is a package deal,' said Penny, pointing to the brochure. 'Everything included; air flight, hotel, full board—so long as there are no hidden extras, we could manage that price, couldn't we?'
'Where is the town exactly?' Quincy asked, not recognising the name of the resort, and Penny got up and went in search of an atlas so that they could consult the map of Spain and see exactly where the seaside town lay. Quincy, under a pretence of studying the surrounding area, was looking out for the name of Joe's mother's home village.
'What do you think?' Penny demanded.
'If we can book for this hotel, that would be fine by me,' Quincy said absently, suddenly seeing the name she was looking for, and flushing. It wasn't far from the resort at all. They might be able to take a coach trip in that direction, she thought.
'At this time of year it might be fully booked, but we can ask, can't we?' said Penny. 'We'll pick a couple of other holidays to be on the safe side—if I can't book that hotel, where shall I try instead?'
'Where you like,'
said Quincy, crossing her fingers secretly. The idea of visiting Spain, now that she had had time to think about it, had made her very excited. She didn't want Penny to guess what was in her mind, though, nor did she mean to mention Joe Aldonez or the fact that he came from a family of Spanish descent. Penny might tease her.
They were lucky—bookings were down because of the recession and the travel agency were able to offer them a choice of dates. Penny booked them for the last week of June to give them a chance to save a little extra money, and to give herself time to get a passport. The week they were leaving the weather turned suddenly and icy winds blew in from the north, bringing grey skies and rain, which made them even happier to be flying away to a promise of sunshine, sea and lazy days on the beach.
Having kissed David and handed him to her mother-in-law, Penny commenced to bewail the fact all the way to the airport; her brow constantly furrowed with anxiety in case the baby fretted for her, or nibbled his way through an electric wire without being detected and short-circuited himself, or, even worse, in case he developed a form of infantile anorexia because of her disappearance and wouldn't eat his strained prunes.
'Do shut up,' Quincy said crossly at last, her patience giving out. 'He's going to be fine, your mother-in-law loves every fat inch of him, and you know it. She'll spoil him rotten! But if you don't stop wailing about it I might very well push you out of the emergency exit on the plane while we're flying over the Channel!'
Penny said: 'I always knew you had no heart,' but shut up obediently, only to start on the subject of Jim half an hour later. 'I forgot to pick up his grey suit from the cleaners, I must ring home and tell them. He'll want to wear it when he goes to the Rural District Council Meeting.'
'The whole object of this holiday was to part you from your problems,' Quincy pointed out. 'Forget Jim and his grey suit, forget David and his prunes—just think about dark-eyed Spaniards with roses in their teeth.'
Penny giggled. 'I'd remind you, I'm a respectable married woman!'
'I said think about them,' Quincy stressed. 'I didn't say do anything more.'
'Who said that sex was ninety per cent imagination?' Penny asked.
'I don't know, who did?' Quincy prompted.
'I don't know either,' said Penny. 'But he had something!'
Having left England in a windy, rainy turmoil they arrived in Spain in the middle of a thunderstorm of operatic proportions and, amidst earsplitting rolls of thunder and zigzagging flashes of white lightning, drove to their hotel in a small coach crammed to the doors with nervous ladies in summer dresses and men in shirtsleeves complaining that they hadn't paid through the nose for weather like that.
Next day, however, the sky was a clear, washed blue and the sun had faithfully returned to give the small resort a glittering white brilliance that brought smiles to the faces of the other guests at breakfast.
'This is more like it, isn't it?' one of the men who had flown over with them commented as he passed their table, and Quincy nodded and smiled back.
They spent the morning on the beach, lying on green-striped mattresses under beach umbrellas, taking the occasional stroll down to the sea and after a swim returning to flop out again like basking seals. Their hotel owned a small part of the beach and at the sea wall there was a cafe selling cold drinks and ices.
'This is the life,' Penny murmured without opening her eyes as Quincy sat up to lubricate herself with suntan oil again. Her skin felt comfortably warm, flushed with sunshine, but she decided to adjust her sunshade to give herself more shade. It would be stupid to get sunburn, right at the beginning of their holiday. With a sigh she relapsed into torpor and drifted off into a half-sleep full of the sound of the waves, the distant murmur of voices and the feel of the sun beating down around them.
They walked back to the hotel for lunch at one o'clock, strolling in the shade of some trees lining the promenade. Penny suddenly stopped at a small shop selling local, hand-made toys. 'Look at that gorgeous pink bear! I'll get that for David, he'll love it.' Diving into the shop, she left Quincy loitering on the pavement, gazing idly around her at the town. It had been a little fishing port before the advent of tourism; a maze of narrow, shadowy alleys, with small white houses crammed together, on a steep hillside leading to a quay. Now white skyscraper blocks of concrete and glass towered around the old town, choked traffic filling the narrow medieval streets.
