Free Ibiza Surprise by Dorothy Dunnett Page B

the point where it divided in two for incoming and outgoing traffic. As I put my foot down and moved out to turn to the left, I saw that Coco wasn’t following me. Instead, he was cutting across to the left, hugging the wrong side of the junction, in order to cut the corner and strike the Ibiza road just before me.
    He got there just as the cart did. I heard, as I accelerated, an almighty screaming of brakes, half drowned by an outburst of yelling in Spanish. Then the rest was covered by the sound of my own engine as I changed up and roared up the road.
    Here, the country was flat: low, green fields dotted with trees on the left with small terraced hills lying behind, and on the right, crops and small trees stretching far out of view. They passed in a blur. I overtook a big cream Mercedes, with forget-me-nots painted all over, and had to slow down to 50 for the Santa Eulalia bus; then I was off again. The white steps of a villa, with bright pots on them. A wood with fir trees and juniper and a snatch of wild thyme.
    Ahead, the San Miguel road was about to come in on the right, with a huddle of buildings on each side. A lorry, stacked high with thin metal pipes, came out of the junction and set off before me, the long pipes swaying gently before and behind. There was traffic coming. I slowed down to a respectful distance and glanced in my driving mirror. Empty. The best bit 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-storey 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 cafe. 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 harbour, with the Talamanca path coming in at a clutter of walls on the left, and an old cafe-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