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Book: Dolly And The Cookie Bird - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 03 by Unknown
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Authors: Unknown
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they are not in control, and there may be conflict, perhaps disaster.
And, I thought, you can say that again.
I don’t think Janey actually wanted to be painted. I mean, she’d cheerfully spend days being photographed, but sitting still being turned inside out by another person was something different again. Janey liked to be in charge, on her own terms.
Anyway, after the siesta when it came time to leave for Johnson’s boat
Dolly
, I found that Janey had got herself completely tied up in showing the three red squares round the island, and I had to set off alone. I didn’t mind. Maybe Johnson would paint me instead. And Janey had lent me the Maserati.
The road from Santa Eulalia to Ibiza is a good one, as I’ve said: seldom built up for long and mostly running in long, level stretches, above or below the farm country. At places the speed is controlled, but a good, easy sixty to seventy is generally all right. On empty roads you could pick your own speed. Between six and seven in the evening, as now, it’s fairly constantly busy. Workmen in Spain stop at seven.
I set off then, taking it easy, and finding a path among the old battered Seats, the Peugeots, the daisy-painted Renaults and Simcas, and the bashed Ebro lorries with two sides gone from their steamy old bonnets.
I enjoyed it. I took time to look for the orange and lemon trees and the house that was building, with the old woman hobbling in and out with her wicker dish of wood shavings. A man was ploughing, his feet on the share, his fists gripping the big horse’s tail. The fig trees were budding at last—pale gray—with their branches outspread like the skirts of an Infanta, a green candle-leaf at each tip. The low sun hit fields edged by warped, whitened branches and turned the soil broken orange and the dry stone walls orange too. As the road rose a little, the hills and foothills showed, patched and streaked with green, tan, and pale sandy color, spotted with dark scrub and patched with low trees. Small white houses with tiled roofs faced the sun, shining, and the white cylinder of a well, or the tall pylons with their spidery windmills. Olives, with their brown twisted barks, and orange trees on their thin, spindly sticks. Poppies. Fir trees like thick furzy cushions of dense yellow-green, and yellow haystacks like mushrooms… A flower like a telegraph pole, with yellow blossoms on each short, outflung arm caught the sun, over and over, at the side of the road. I was happy.
I don’t know when I first noticed the white Alfa Romeo Giolia Spider behind me: I looked in the mirror and got a glimpse of this great yummy car roaring along at about eighty-five, which was a hell of a rate, I can tell you, on that busy road. Coco Fairley was at the wheel, in dark glasses, with a gold locket and a lilac shirt open right down to the waist, and Gilmore Lloyd was beside him.
Coco was one of Mummy’s first poets. His specialties were rich old cows and advanced concrete verse. When she went back to America he found another soul mate, and his career since hasn’t been without incident: he had twice got himself slugged by his own poems. Mummy used to say they were good, and she was probably right. From this, anyway, you will gather that Coco Fairley was one of the world’s seven great fragrances. I trod on the accelerator, and a donkey cart sort of flinched out of the way. Behind, Coco did the same, grinning, and beside him Gilmore Lloyd gave a rude kind of cheer. Then I realized that they thought I was Janey. I was wearing a little Chinese coat, with a matching bikini under it, and a headscarf of the same stuff wrapped tight round my hair. It would be a mess when I got on board
Dolly
, but I thought it was worth it. I whipped off the headscarf and flung the car, hard, at the road. Through the driving mirror, I saw Coco’s cupid’s bow shut under his glasses. Then the locket glittered, and he drew out to pass.
One thing I can do is drive. All the big
And, I thought, you can say that again.
I don’t think Janey actually wanted to be painted. I mean, she’d cheerfully spend days being photographed, but sitting still being turned inside out by another person was something different again. Janey liked to be in charge, on her own terms.
Anyway, after the siesta when it came time to leave for Johnson’s boat
Dolly
, I found that Janey had got herself completely tied up in showing the three red squares round the island, and I had to set off alone. I didn’t mind. Maybe Johnson would paint me instead. And Janey had lent me the Maserati.
The road from Santa Eulalia to Ibiza is a good one, as I’ve said: seldom built up for long and mostly running in long, level stretches, above or below the farm country. At places the speed is controlled, but a good, easy sixty to seventy is generally all right. On empty roads you could pick your own speed. Between six and seven in the evening, as now, it’s fairly constantly busy. Workmen in Spain stop at seven.
I set off then, taking it easy, and finding a path among the old battered Seats, the Peugeots, the daisy-painted Renaults and Simcas, and the bashed Ebro lorries with two sides gone from their steamy old bonnets.
I enjoyed it. I took time to look for the orange and lemon trees and the house that was building, with the old woman hobbling in and out with her wicker dish of wood shavings. A man was ploughing, his feet on the share, his fists gripping the big horse’s tail. The fig trees were budding at last—pale gray—with their branches outspread like the skirts of an Infanta, a green candle-leaf at each tip. The low sun hit fields edged by warped, whitened branches and turned the soil broken orange and the dry stone walls orange too. As the road rose a little, the hills and foothills showed, patched and streaked with green, tan, and pale sandy color, spotted with dark scrub and patched with low trees. Small white houses with tiled roofs faced the sun, shining, and the white cylinder of a well, or the tall pylons with their spidery windmills. Olives, with their brown twisted barks, and orange trees on their thin, spindly sticks. Poppies. Fir trees like thick furzy cushions of dense yellow-green, and yellow haystacks like mushrooms… A flower like a telegraph pole, with yellow blossoms on each short, outflung arm caught the sun, over and over, at the side of the road. I was happy.
I don’t know when I first noticed the white Alfa Romeo Giolia Spider behind me: I looked in the mirror and got a glimpse of this great yummy car roaring along at about eighty-five, which was a hell of a rate, I can tell you, on that busy road. Coco Fairley was at the wheel, in dark glasses, with a gold locket and a lilac shirt open right down to the waist, and Gilmore Lloyd was beside him.
Coco was one of Mummy’s first poets. His specialties were rich old cows and advanced concrete verse. When she went back to America he found another soul mate, and his career since hasn’t been without incident: he had twice got himself slugged by his own poems. Mummy used to say they were good, and she was probably right. From this, anyway, you will gather that Coco Fairley was one of the world’s seven great fragrances. I trod on the accelerator, and a donkey cart sort of flinched out of the way. Behind, Coco did the same, grinning, and beside him Gilmore Lloyd gave a rude kind of cheer. Then I realized that they thought I was Janey. I was wearing a little Chinese coat, with a matching bikini under it, and a headscarf of the same stuff wrapped tight round my hair. It would be a mess when I got on board
Dolly
, but I thought it was worth it. I whipped off the headscarf and flung the car, hard, at the road. Through the driving mirror, I saw Coco’s cupid’s bow shut under his glasses. Then the locket glittered, and he drew out to pass.
One thing I can do is drive. All the big
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