Read Dolly And The Cookie Bird - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 03 for Free Online Page B

offices and workshops that edged up to the hill of the high town. The high town in Ibiza was called the Dalt Vila and had an old wall right round it, Helmuth said.
    We parked by the Philips building in the Mercado Nuevo, and you could see the town wall from there —tall and flat and yellowish-white, with palms and creepers, and the sandy roof tiles of buildings behind. It ran just beside us as we walked through narrow, shadowy streets filled with traffic, scurrying men, women mopping out offices, chaps washing their taxis, and housekeepers, like me, with a big woven basket folded over the arm. A boy passed in patched trousers and sneakers, selling the
Diario
newssheet, and Helmuth gave him three pesetas for it
    I wasn’t looking. I’d found a Panateria by following the smell of fresh bread round two corners, and there was the window, piled with crystallized pears and cherries and peaches, and plates of soft, glistening iced cakes and small toffee custards in chocolate papers, and rounds of frilled, sugared shortcake and thick patterned cream in the jaws of golden flaked pastry, and chocolate sponges filled with whole cherries, soggy with rum. Inside there were stacks of long, hot, crunchy loaves, and soft, sugared cushions of bread-cake, limp and warm on the hand. I bought enough to put pounds on Janey, and five chocolate Easter eggs. Helmuth dragged me out.
    The market was even better. You could find it by the noise, or by following the high walls of Dalt Vila, for the market square footed the ramp that led up to the Dalt Vila gateway. The square itself had shops on three sides, most hardly open. In the middle was a small Doric erection clobbered with people, like the Temple of Diana of the Ephesians in the middle of the Aldermaston March. The building was set on an island, and patched blinds stretched out from its roof to cover the rickety stalls which surrounded it. Inside, between classic columns, was a landscape of counters, with fat, jolly women in jerseys helping to load them from the jam-up of trucks, lorries and carts in the square round about. Helmuth plunged into the middle, and I followed, my hair stuck to my neck.
    If the sun had been on the market, instead of on the high town behind it, I should have needed dark glasses. At Mother Trudi’s, the fruit and veg were all washed and graded and delivered in polythene. These would have punched their way out of the bags. The lemons were all Wallace Beery: husky, belligerent brutes with cauliflower rinds. The tomatoes were like pumpkins: green heavy-lobed monsters, all blotched with dark red. The radishes reared in a wet, scarlet pile, the size of young carrots. Instead of the neat bunch of bananas I was used to was a thing like a thick green umbrella stand, with the cringing bananas growing down on the stalk. Heaps of peas in the pod lay on old sacking, knotted like golf balls. There were baskets of muscadel raisins and crates of matt carmine apples and attols of oranges; and onions, like gold Chinese lanterns, hung about in red nets. There were artichokes, common as sprouts, and strings of dirty-white garlic, and crates labeled sanguinas full of portly blood oranges. The profusion was stunning. I gaped at Helmuth, and he took my arm and pushed me right in.
    I knew, of course, about buying: I’d learned the hard way, through indignant employers. I’d also had a year’s Spanish at school. I’ve forgotten most of it, but I’ve a good ear for accents, so I’d listened to what Helmuth said and scribbled down the words I knew I’d need to use. He steered me from stall to stall and introduced me. They all knew Helmuth: the women waved their arms and their voices swooped. They grinned, showing white gappy teeth, and laughed at everything I said and gave me twice what I asked for. The young ones were sallow and merry and fat, with old jerseys and skirts and flat shoes, and the old ones all wore long black skirts and shawls, kerchiefs over their hair, and sometimes a