Free More Ketchup Than Salsa - Confessions of a Tenerife Barman by Joe Cawley Page B

finger first at myself and then at Miguel, ‘… give me…’ I patted my chest, and fell into the trap of my first mime again. ‘ Si ?’
    By now Miguel had descended the ladder and was scuttling off in the opposite direction, glancing over his shoulder as he retreated. I wandered back to the bar dispirited, leaving the Germans to debate my intent between themselves.
     
    ‘He’s a bit strange, isn’t he?’ I asked Patricia. ‘He just ran off.’
    ‘He’s normally fine,’ said Patricia. ‘I’ll go and see if I can find him.’
    Five minutes later Patricia returned pulling the rotating floor cleaner behind her. She was doing her best to conceal a smile. ‘You want to watch him,’ she said to Joy. ‘Miguel said he made a pass at him.’
    They both looked at me. ‘Weirdo,’ I murmured. ‘I just wanted to borrow the machine.’
    Attaining at least a basic grasp of the Spanish language to avoid subsequent embarrassments was just one of the things that I had yet to learn.
     
    Not allowing well-intentioned locals to blow up the bar was another.
    Frank was a dour truck driver from Oldham who had brought his kids to Tenerife after separating from his wife. At 49 he had taken early retirement and bought one of the first apartments on El Beril. Along with most of the English-speaking expats – and I’m sure other nationalities as well – he got easily bored. Being bored abroad is a mischievous combination.
    We had a standard team of barflies, eager to occupy the tedious sunny hours with other people’s concerns. They worked on a rigid two-two formation: Frank would hold the left wing next to the Dorada pump; Al, an alcoholic from Liverpool with a mysteriously large amount of cash and an equal quantity of razor-sharp wit, would provide a constant flow of banter for him to head at whatever target happened to have been chosen that day. At the back, Frank’s son, Danny, would lob the odd remark over his dad’s shoulder or pass it along to his sister, Sam, to dribble with for a while until the two attackers took control.
    The two kids had tried a term in a local school when they first arrived but didn’t like it and hadn’t been back since. ‘They know enough already, couple of wise-arses,’ Frank would argue when the subject was broached. Since their brief affair with education, they spent much of their time with their dad which, when not fishing, was more often than not on a Smugglers bar stool.
    Danny probably knew more than us about running the bar, from cocktail recipes to how to change a barrel. Over the first few nights the thirteen-year-old would often help Joy or Faith out in times of crisis. ‘’Undred ’n’ fifty pesetas,’ he would demand from customers, his eyes barely level with the black painted bartop. The two girls had been scared out of changing barrels by Frank – ‘Don’t lean over it. Knew a man in England who got his head taken clear off’ – whereas Danny would be only too happy to oblige.
    As one of the original El Berilians, Frank was a self-appointed troubleshooter dealing with a variety of problems that befell the other English residents. He wouldn’t, however, help the foreigners as he called them. The Germans, French, Italians and Spanish were part of the problem and, ironically, Frank’s colonialist policy would have been to shoot them all if they didn’t go back to their own countries. Racist he may have been, but if you had a problem with your car or needed some DIY doing, Frank was your man, though the results were not always positive.
    Two tall tanks housed in a flimsy metal cabinet on the terrace fed propane gas through the exterior wall, along the length of the restaurant and into the kitchen. This routing left a lot to be desired as the slightest leak combined with a casually discarded cigarette could have seen a drastic repositioning of the Smugglers Tavern.
    There was a safety device in place, which cut off the gas inside the cabinet if there was a fire or some