Onward and Upward

Chapter 11

  On my return to El Campo life slowly settled down again, and a few weeks later I had a surprise visitor, it was Inma’s mother. Inma had gone solo in one of my Cessna Skyhawk’s a while ago, and now she could take passengers up for the first time, so who was her first passenger to be, her mother of course. Her mother, who had never been in an aeroplane before in her entire life, had spent the whole flight gazing in amazement at her clever daughter’s face. She had always known her place in life, but when her daughter had first spoken confidently into the aircrafts microphone, and somebody had actually politely answered her (it was Chalky), followed by a ‘hi mum, have a nice flight’ her world changed forever. She had, up until that moment, never believed that people like ‘them’ could actually fly an aeroplane all by themselves, deep down she had believed that that nice Mr Heslop was behind the scenes aiding her, and so as her daughter confidently taxied up to the hangar doors after the flight, and a mechanic came up and asked her daughter if he could look after the aircraft for her, her mother made a monumental decision, she would pluck up all her courage and go and thank that nice Mr Michaels personally. Inma was shocked; this was most un-motherly like, but still Inma led the way into Mi Casa, through the front doors god forbid, and headed for Maria’s office.

  ‘Yes’ Maria said, ‘Andrew (‘Inma, surely you call him Mr Michaels’) was in his office; go straight in’ (what, no appointment).

  Ten minutes later, after Maria had taken a photograph of me presenting her daughter with her flying licence (in the guise of a rolled up magazine), and the obligatory one with her mum in the photo as well, Inma and her mother, arm in arm, were off back to their apartment in San Miguel, and ‘no’ they didn’t require a lift ‘thank you very much’, they enjoyed walking together.

  Fifteen minutes later Carlos rang me; there had been a terrible accident on the new roundabout at the bottom of the road leading up to El Campo, and it involved Inma and her mother.

  ‘Have you rung Doc Martin’, I had seen her a little while ago going into her ‘well woman’ clinic.

  ‘Yes, and the Ambulance, and the Police, and one of our cameras has caught it all on disc’. David had insisted that a camera was always pointing down the entrance road, just in case. It was always handy to have visual evidence to back you up, if there was ever a problem, but even he hadn’t envisaged something like this happening, and by the time I arrived at the roundabout Doc Martin and several of the other Doctors from the Centro Salud, including Doctora Botella were working on Inma, but her mother was covered with a sheet.

  The Ayuntamiento (Town Hall) had recently constructed a roundabout at the bottom of our drive, as a sort of thank you for all the things that I was doing around the Pueblo, but obviously the very elderly gentleman who delivered to the ferreteria (hardware store) had never come across it before. He had been going too fast, and his load had not been secured properly so when he suddenly found himself running out of road he did a double swerve, the first one loosened a pile of scaffolding poles in the back, and the second one catapulted them off the lorry, and into Inma and her mother. Her mother had died instantaneously, and but for Doc Martin and the other Medico’s Inma would have quickly followed. One scaffolding pole had slammed into the small of her back and another one had caught the back of her head. She was in a mess but fortunately the Cruz Roja (Red Cross) helicopter was in the air, returning from another emergency, so after dropping its medics off it quickly went and topped up its tank at El Campo, and then came back and landed beside the roundabout. Inma was gently loaded into the machine, and then it was swiftly on its way to the nearby hospital, along with Doc’s Martin and Botella.

  A few minutes later, as I sadly watched the crew carefully lift Inma’s mother into the back of their Ambulance, a Guardia Civil Officer started asking about ‘next of kin’ details, and all eyes turned to me, and I realised that I, and all at El Campo were now Inma’s next of kin, apparently she now had no one else. Thomas, Carlos’s deputy stepped in and took over, his wife’s mother had recently passed away so he knew the routine, and he also realised that what happened to Inma’s mothers earthly remains now, those important final hours, would be lost to Inma, she was unconscious, and likely to be so for some considerable time, so he sorted out the Guardia Civil Officers, and instructed the Ambulance Paramedics to use a local undertaker for Inma’s mother, and then he took out his mobile and rang his brother-in-law; he was the Pueblo’s foremost photographer.

  A few hours later I visited the hospital where Inma was, and it certainly bought back some vivid memories for me. As I sat there with Caroline, she was brought out of theatre, she was alive but still in a critical condition, and if she survived at all it was clear to the surgeons that she would never walk again, so I contacted my old team at the Hospital (that thought it was a hotel) and gave them some very explicit instructions. Over the next few weeks it would be text book co-operation between the public and private sectors, or else. I hadn’t realised it but Inma was one of my ‘founder members’, and as such she was someone very special to me, we had been through a lot together but we always came out of the other side with smiles on our faces, she had that sort of effect on everyone, so I made it perfectly clear to all and sundry that Inma had medical cover like no one else had ever had; she was their number one priority.

  Two weeks later Inma, although still very poorly, was now off the critical list, and her medication was slowly being reduced, just enough so that she could be told about her mother. Her friends had quickly arranged an around the clock bed watch for her, this after all was Spain, but somehow she was still unaware of her mother’s demise, that, apparently was going to be left to me to tell her, and I was not looking forward to it in the slightest. It must have been how Maria, Caroline and I walked in, because she picked up on something and immediately started sobbing. I took her hand and tried to break the news to her as gently as I could but she was beside herself with grief, until Thomas came to my rescue. His brother-in-law had, immediately after Thomas’s phone call, started recording everything that happened to her mother on his video camera, everything that Inma should have been involved in was recorded for her to watch, the preparation of her mother’s body, the all-night vigil at the funeral directors, and the funeral procession. I swore to her that I had nothing to do with the turnout on her mother’s final earthly journey, yes I was there, but I was swallowed up in the crowds. San Miguel del Mar came to a standstill for her mother. Inma had never realised that San Miguellians now held her mother in such high esteem; she had definitely worked off the stigma of being a single parent. Thomas’s brother-in-law had utilised footage from El Campo’s security discs (not the gory bits), and at least two other cameramen, to professionally edit it all onto two discs, one lasting about ten minutes, the other lasting two hours. I held Inma’s hand as we watched the expurgated ten minute version on a wide screen television, she of course cried all the way through it but at the end she was smiling as well, which is a very hard thing to do. One good thing about Inma’s situation was that I had been there only three years before, perhaps not exactly the same but close enough to understand how she was feeling, so I sat there and let her pour out all of her grief, troubles, and worst nightmares, it had to all come out, and so I decided to be there for her, as Alice and Robin had been there for me. Maria and Caroline aided me and the three of us spent the whole night just talking to her, and being there for her. We watched the short video over and over again, and finally it sank into her that she really wasn’t all alone, and so by breakfast-time she was over the worst of her grief, and as we left her in the capable hands of one of my other maids, Carla, we even got a kiss and a smile. All that we had had during the night were cat naps and endless cups of coffee, so when I got back to Mi Casa it was straight to bed, but at one o’clock I was woken up by my phone jangling away on the bedside table, it was Vicente, and he needed to see me urgently.

  It really wasn’t Inma’s time at all; as we had been consoling her last evening ‘per
son or persons unknown’ had broken into her and her mother’s apartment and totally and utterly trashed it, there was virtually nothing left in one piece, but why was Vicente involved. The ‘Police Local’ had routinely contacted Carlos as the representative of her employer, and he had contacted Vicente, not because of the trashing, that really was a police matter, but because of a letter that Carlos and Pierre had found when they visited the scene of wonton destruction a little later on. One of the few things that had conveniently survived was a letter from Inma’s mothers’ landlord, giving Inma thirty days to vacate the apartment. The lease was in her mothers’ name and there was a ‘no right of succession’ clause in it. Of course Vicente scrutinized the lease but it was watertight, although he still managed to put the fear of god in the landlord, he may have gotten away with this ‘eviction’, but never again, Vicente arranged for a company of Private Investigators to go through the landlords holding like a dose of salts. By three o’clock I was up, abluted, dressed, fed and sitting at the head of my conference table, I had called an emergency meeting of the ‘A’ team. Maria, David, Caroline, Carol, Mrs Blake, Eddy, Teddy and Marcel studied the only item on the agenda - Inma. Now was the time for positive thinking, and by six o’clock I had Inma’s new contract in front of me. Everyone agreed that she was genuinely wasted as a maid, and that she would definitely be more suited to the position of Deputy Housekeeper (Mrs Blake suggested that), and Chief Purser when I was embarked on the Lady S (Carol suggested that). She would now qualify for a specially adapted company car (Caroline suggested that), and should be allocated the use of one of the Senior Staff suites (David suggested that), or one of my apartments in San Miguel (I suggested that). Both the suite and apartment should be adapted for wheel chair use (Eddy suggested that), and that ‘I’ should look into a ‘wheelchair adaptable’ aircraft (Teddy suggested that), and that a special hamper of her favourite foods should be taken into the hospital (Maria suggested that, but Marcel went off to assemble it). I had not been too worried when Carol had suggested that Inma take on the Chief Pursers position on the Lady S, all decks above the waterline were ‘wheelchair friendly’.

  Eight o’clock that evening I was back in Inma’s room, she’d had a fairly comfortable day considering the news that she’d had from me the previous evening, and of course she now knew all about the apartment as the Police Local had been to see her, briefly, but I could see that she was building up for another teary session. I sat down and held her hand, asked her how her day had been, and she promptly burst into tears, I seemed to be having that effect on people lately. When I could get a word in edgeways I asked her what, apart from her mother, were the tears about.

  ‘How about being homeless and out of a job for starters’ she moaned, she was definitely in ‘self-pitying’ mode.

  ‘Why are you out of a job?’ I asked.

  ‘What use is a paraplegic house maid to you’ she bleated out, but there was a bit of the old fire returning and she knew me well enough by now to know that I had something up my sleeve.

  ‘That’s quite right’ I said, ‘but I haven’t got one’.

  ‘So you’ve sacked me already have you’ she snapped back (she was definitely out of her ‘self-pitying’ mode now).

  ‘Why on earth would I want to sack my Deputy Housekeeper?’ I said, and plonked an envelope in her hand. She opened it, read the enclosed contract, and burst into tears again; I really will have to work on my people skills. We chatted about her new positions for a little while, until fortuitously a consultant came a visiting, he must have heard that I was in town. ‘The prognosis please’ I asked (patient confidentiality goes out of the window when you pay the bills). Inma was making a remarkable recovery, the swelling had now gone down in her brain, but she was right, she would be a paraplegic, although with a little help from a small machine she would hopefully have normal bowel movements (TMI, TMI {too much information}), so no little accidents. Within the next couple of weeks she should be off to my old hospital for some serious rehabilitation (by helicopter of course), which would, with luck, take about three or four months. She should then be able to return to El Campo, hopefully in time for Christmas, although it would still be a further few months before she would be ready to start her new roles full time, he had obviously never met Inma before. I think that I left her in a better frame of mind than when I arrived, so I made my weary way down to the entrance of the hospital, with James traipsing along behind me, to try and find Russell, not that I usually had any trouble finding Russell, I just had to find the nearest ‘no parking’ zone.

  Russell seemed to appear overnight, one minute he wasn’t there, the next he had always been there; he had been one of Paul’s finds. A year or so before he had received my fateful phone call at Monastery Housing Association, Paul had been walking through its front office and noticed that a most of the receptionists and Housing Officers were hanging on to their desks for grim death, it wasn’t a virus, it was a tenant. Mr Russell Hobbs, of 25 Ironside Gardens had just been in to ask if there was a garage available for him to rent, not just any old garage mind you, but a very large garage, that could take his Rolls Royce. Russell’s parents had had a wicked sense of humour when they named him, and he frequently wished that they had both been put down at his birth. Following a very traumatic childhood he joined the Army, but that was even worse than the school playground, so as soon as he could he left, but with a driving licence and several specialist driving courses under his belt, and quickly obtained a position as His Lordship’s driver, and as His Lordship only ever called him Hobbs he was quite happy with the situation, and this carried on for many a fine year, until a new maid arrived. His Lordship took one look at her attributes and promptly had a heart attack. In his will he left Russell, sorry Hobbs, the Rolls, no money for its upkeep mind you, just the Rolls Royce. Russell had been on the local Housing Associations waiting list for more than enough years so they re-housed him immediately, as his ‘tied accommodation’ had suddenly become un-tied, when His Lordship expired. He was allocated a lovely little flat in Ironside Gardens but the Roller was the problem. Initially he kept it at the local under-takers, but the rent was astronomical, so he started up a business ‘doing’ weddings and then running the newlyweds to the airport, and he also picked up a few trips to ‘posh’ do’s, and in the beginning he did alright, but the garage rental was slowly but surely eating into his profits. Eventually, in desperation he thought ‘Monastery Housing might have garages to rent, and if they do perhaps they have a large one going spare’, so one afternoon, as he was in the neighbourhood, he popped in, he had nothing to lose after all. As he left the Housing Associations offices the laughter followed him halfway down the street, but he was used to laughter, but when he finally got home there was a car parked outside his block of flats and a ‘man from the Association’ was ringing his door bell, it was Paul. He had a disused store room close to Ironside Gardens, ‘if they did it up, would he like it?’ Eureka! ‘He who laughs last, laughs longest’.

  All went well for a year or so but then competition and high overheads slowly put him out of business and he had to go onto Housing Benefit, but that didn’t cover the garage rental, and one of the last things that Paul got before he left for Spain was a ‘thank you very much’ note from the area Housing Officer; Mr Hobbs’s garage rent was now in substantial arrears.

  After Paul had settled down in Spain, and had a few minutes to spare, he would have a ‘chin wag’ with David, and on one particular occasion he related this amusing little anecdote to him, finishing with ‘it’s a pity he’s having such a hard time of it, he’s a very nice chap really’. Apparently I then agreed to it, and he was quickly recruited as my chauffer, not just any old chauffer, but a ‘defensive driving, aggressive driving, high speed driving, spinning the car round in its own length type of driver’. His Army training was going to come in handy after all, and his Roller was now in my garage gathering dust, and I wasn’t even charging him any rent, more fool me, but there again I did h
ave the bragging rights. How many other billionaires could say that their chauffeur had his very own ‘chauffeur’ driven Rolls Royce, even if he did have to drive it himself.(?)

  Russ just loved my Maybach 62 (Daimler AG), although in his opinion it was of course not quite as nice as his Roller, but it was pretty close, and as we wound our way back to El Campo, of course by a different route every time I left the hospital, we approached ‘that’ roundabout and I noticed, in my half asleep state, a demonstration going on outside El Campo’s gates, and it seemed to involve everyone that I employed, and their families. As we slowly entered the throng it became obvious that it was a friendly demonstration. Word it seemed had gotten out about how I had treated Inma, and somebody had wanted to shake me by the hand, and it had sort of snowballed. I slid the sun roof back and stood up in its opening, and I felt like royalty, or even more important - like a soccer star, everyone seemed to want to give me a ‘high five’ as I slipped gracefully by. When I finally arrived at the top of the drive I vacated the Maybach and approached David, ‘well’ he said ‘it looks as though it’s official now, you can walk on water’, obviously they all approved of my style of management. I sneaked a quick glance at my Rolex, it was nearly eleven o’clock at night, so what do you do with a crowd this size (it seemed like the five thousand), obviously you have to feed them, so I searched the crowd for a patch of white, the kitchen staff, found it, and there he was - Marcel. I wondered if he would remember the training exercise that I‘d had with him a little while ago? So I held up my hand for a bit of hush, and as the decibels subsided slightly I shouted ‘MARCEL – WHAT TIME IS IT?’ A look of puzzlement momentarily came over his face, and then he flung his arms in the air and shouted back, in his best Australian accent, ‘IT’S BARBY TIME’.

  Out came the loaves, fishes, steaks, beef burgers, chicken bit and pieces and everything else that goes towards having a midnight ‘barby’, and an hour later I was stood there in my bra, panties and fish net stockings (they were imprinted on the front of my apron, someone was definitely going to be out of a job mańana) dishing out the ‘scran’ with John. Not only had I inherited Topsy with three of my aircraft, I had also inherited his barbeque. He had ‘found’ a 45 gallon oil drum, cut it in half and converted it into a Barbecue; it was basic, but perfect, and it turned out to be much more popular than the gas barby’s, the charcoal barby’s, and the spit roaster that were also mass producing goodies, it might just have had something to do with all the added flavouring that had congealed on the grill over the years, then around one-thirty, after I had converted the heathen masses to barbequed bananas’, (place whole bananas on the grill, and turn frequently. When the skins start to bubble, split along their length with a fork. Slowly mush the insides with a tea spoon until perfect, and then pour the tipple of the consumers’ choice over it (or insert chocolate buttons in it for the womenfolk). Serve with squirty cream, eat, and you are now ready to meet your maker), I went ‘walkabout’, first I watched Natasha trying to teach a group of teenagers the ‘Cossack dance’, then I joined in a sing along, in about four different languages, with one the permanent crew of the Lady S, who was doing a ‘fair to middling’ job at throttling a ‘squeeze box’, and then without any warning whatsoever it happened; I heard a spine chilling scream, followed by an evil, satanic laugh. This was the Country that had bull fighting as family entertainment so as I rushed towards the crowded table from whence these evil sounds were emanating, my imagination was well into overdrive. I barged my way to the front of that heaving mass of humanity, but I was too late, my worst nightmares were realised – Topsy had introduced uckers to the masses.

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