Medusa

I’ll think about it,’ I said, and we went on dancing, which was a mistake with Soo in her condition. She had been watching us and she was furious, telling me I had humiliated her in front of everybody. That was after I had returned to our table and Lloyd Jones had taken Petra off to dance. It made no difference that we had only been dancing together because Petra had wanted to get me to visit the cave and see what it was she’d discovered.

‘So you’re going with her. When?’

‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ I said. ‘She just wants to show me a bit of a charcoal wall painting, that’s all. It won’t take long.’

‘When?’ she repeated, and there was a hot flush on her cheeks.

‘Tonight,’ I told her. ‘She wants me to go tonight.’

‘I see.’ Her tone was icy, and after that she wouldn’t speak to me. In the end I went over to the bar and got myself a large Soberano to chase down the wine I had been drinking. A hand gripped my elbow and I turned to find Manuela’s husband, Gonzalez, beside me. ‘You come to our table for a moment if you please. The Alcalde wish to speak with you about the opening of the new urbanización near the lake at Albufera next month. Jorge has been asked to make the opening and he wish you to take part in it, okay?’

I was not altogether surprised that Jorge Martinez should ask me to take part in the official opening of a new urbanización. I was one of the founder members of an unofficial association of resident English businessmen and I had on occasions acted as spokesman when the bureaucrats in the ayuntiamento had proved to be more than usually difficult over a planning application so that I knew Jorge in his official capacity as Mayor at the Mahon town hall as well as socially. In any case, since I was involved in property it was important for me to keep in with him.

In the post-Franco era, the political structure of what had become a monarchical democracy had steadily developed. The Baleares islands became one of the seventeen autonomous regions with its own elected parliament. The centre of this local government was at Palma, Mallorca. Foreign policy, finance and defence was, of course, still administered from Madrid through a Provincial Governor appointed by the ruling party. There was also a Military Governor. But Palma was over a hundred sea miles from Mahon and the comparatively recent introduction of this regional democratic autonomy had increased the importance of the local town halls and their councils, and in particular the power of the mayors who were elected by those councils. At least that’s how it seemed to me, and I mention it here because I cannot help thinking that this dissemination of power may have had a bearing on what happened later.

Jorge Martinez was a lawyer, a slim man with sharp features and a way of holding his long, narrow head that suggested a cobra about to strike. He was, in fact, a very formidable little man and quite a prominent member of the ruling party, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español or PSOE. He had only been Alcalde in Mahon a short time, but already he had his hands firmly on the local power reins, his political sense acute. He got up as I reached the table, shook me by the hand, holding my elbow at the same time, and waved me to an empty seat opposite him. His wife was there, a dark-eyed, vivacious woman, also another lawyer and Colonel Jiménez of the Guardia Civil. Gonzalez topped up my glass with more brandy.

The Alcalde not only wanted me to attend the opening, but would I make a speech? ‘Five, ten minutes, what you like, Mr Steele.’ And he smiled, his use of the English address rather than the Spanish señor quite deliberate. ‘You are very much known in your community and you will comprehend that here in Menorca we have problems — political problems arising from all the villa people. Not those who come to end their lifes here, but the summer migration. It is a question of the environment. So you speak about that, hah?’

He stopped there, waiting for some acknowledgement, and when I made no comment he said brusquely, ‘You speak about the regulations the developers are agreeing to. Also you say this urbanización is a good developing; it is small, villas not too close, the environment of Albufera acknowledged, and it is good for our island. It brings work, it brings money, some foreign currency. Okay? You speak first in Spanish, then in English, so very short speaking, but the political point made very clear.’ And he added, ‘I am informed you always have good co-operation with my officials at the ayuntiamento. So you agree, hah?’