Free Dolly And The Cookie Bird - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 03 by Unknown Page A

of the road was just coming: a long, straight, well-surfaced speedway between fields and small farms. And soon, after that, the white buildings of Ibiza should show in the distance. The pipes swayed in front of me, mesmeric as a snake-charmer’s dance. On the left, another lorry was crawling out of the yard of a solitary brick factory.
Salida de Camiones
. Hell.
    A white blur appeared in my mirror. Coco.
    I fumed behind those waggling pipes while the other lorry got itself down to the road. It waited for two cars to pass and then lumbered across into place in front of the pipes. All the time the Alfa Romeo, with nothing in front of it, was doing a bomb down the road right behind me, and when the two lorries finally ground into action again, it was on my tail, with Gil cheering and a snide smile on Coco’s lips.
    We passed one or two buildings and an isolated block of four-story flats without overtaking, edging in and out and getting our ears flattened for us by oncoming stuff whizzing by. Then there came a sharp turn to the right. I stuck my bonnet right out, with my teeth set, and looked. There was the road clear in front of me: a long avenue of tall, leafless trees as far as the eye could distinguish, with the evening sun, on the right, lighting up the sides of the piled houses up in Ibiza. I drew right out, with a long flute of the Maserati’s double-tone horn, overtook the bloody pipes and the lorry before it, and then let her right out.
    I did a ton up that road, and probably more. I remember the white walls of farmhouses, a glimpse of some palms, and the junction to Jesus coming up on the left, with a café. The Lloyds had got used to the idea of a village called Jesus. I thought if a lorry came out of that road now, I’d go straight to Jesus all right.
    It didn’t, but Coco was coming instead. I could see the white car in the mirror, howling along on my tail, and I could see too that he was going to try to get past. It was his last chance. After this there were some low warehouse buildings and a piece of waste ground, and then we were straight into the sharp, right-hand corner which led to the harbor, with the Talamanca path coming in at a clutter of walls on the left, and an old café-bar on the right, its pillared porch sticking out in the road with bar —stop on a sign. I disapproved of that bar. It was falling down anyway, and the front yard under the porch was cluttered with oil drums and crates of San Miguel bottles, odd bikes and ironmongery for sale. Someone would stop there when he didn’t mean to one day.
    It’s not that I’m psychic, but I realized right then that someone was going to, right now. Coco, with his dark glasses glaring, drew out to pass as we got to the corner, just as a lorry full of lemonade trundled out from the Talamanca path. I suppose he’d seen it. I know I had and was braking already. I think Coco saw my brake lights go on, went mad, and decided to pass me before the lorry got fully across. I’ve a good idea that when it happened, Gil was trying to take over the wheel. At any rate, I got a glimpse of this great blue thing with a red-and-white top saying piña, naranja, limón, pomelo , and then of the Alfa Romeo in front of me, skidding wildly as he realized he couldn’t pass it and was too late to brake. The lorry slewed back into the middle—fast—tried too quick a turn, and got stalled. Coco stood on his brakes, shot across to the Talamanca buildings, turned at the last minute, and twirling right round, shot in front of me straight under the drunken porch of the bar-café. There was the crash of glass and the rending of bicycles: a shelf of potted geraniums tottered and fell, and a pile of polythene pails shivered and sprayed, like monstrous bouncing confetti, over the whole epic scene.
    I changed gear very gently. I drove very gently past the bar and the lorry, along to a spare bit of dirt. I made a lot of hand signals and parked. The lorry was still standing plumb