7
Elaine’s house is nestled at the very top of the Old Town, along a cobbled street decorated with trailing bougainvillea and jacaranda trees, their respective pink and lilac petals carpeting the pathway like confetti. Her front door is painted a bright, cheerful yellow, while the shutters on each of the front windows are a deep turquoise, with flowers painted around the edges on the white stone.
‘Did you do these?’ I ask, enchanted, as she readies her keys.
Elaine smiles. ‘I did. I do new ones at the beginning of each summer.’
‘They’re beautiful,’ I tell her. ‘You have a real talent.’
Once we’ve crossed the threshold, I realise that the painted flowers outside were merely a cherry on Elaine’s huge trifle of talent. There’s barely a space between all the exquisite landscapes cluttering the walls, and she’s covered the entire back door leading out to a small courtyard garden with an intricate image of twisted foliage. Taking a step closer to examine it in more detail, I can see the individual brush strokes where she’s added veins to the leaves.
‘This is amazing,’ I murmur, genuinely at a loss for anything more articulate to say. ‘It looks so real that I can almost smell it.’
Elaine, who is busying herself preparing a large glass jug of iced tea for the two of us to share, merely nods some thanks at me over her shoulder. Trying to look like the professional camerawoman that I most definitely am not, I unfold Tom’s tripod and start fiddling with the bag containing the camera.
‘I thought we could sit outside, if that’s okay?’ Elaine says, opening her beautiful painted door. There’s a small table and chairs in the yard, along with a number of flowerpots of various shapes and sizes. A strip of sunlight bunting is stretched across the outer wall, and a large blue-and-white clay Indalo Man hangs by the kitchen window.
‘I spend a lot of time out here,’ Elaine explains, bending down to remove a weed from one of her many pots and dropping it over the wall. ‘It’s a great place to paint or read, or simply sit and listen to the birds singing.’
‘The birds in Mojácar really do like a song,’ I reply, thinking back to the wake-up call of my first morning here.
‘I like to think it’s because they’re happy,’ she says, smiling at me as she sits down. She’s wearing a long green dress today and her hair is once again pulled back off her face. The bangles are still in situ on her wrist, and I notice that she’s added a hint of rouge to her lips.
I really should have made more effort with my appearance, but I didn’t leave myself enough time to get ready after my early morning swim at the beach. Denim shorts and a light pink vest top were the closest items to hand, and I’ve pulled my wet hair back into a small ponytail at the nape of my neck. I’m still getting used to not wearing jeans every day and actually being able to see the bare skin of my arms and legs. Being blonde, I’m naturally quite pale, and next to Elaine I look even fairer.
‘So,’ she says, twisting her fingers together in her lap, ‘how is this going to work?’
‘I think it’s best if we just switch on the camera and then talk,’ I tell her, remembering what both Tom and Claudette told me the day before. ‘That way we can just try to forget it’s even there.’
‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to forget,’ she admits. ‘But I’ll give it a good go.’
The iced tea tastes mildly bitter, but delicious, and I tell Elaine how much I like it as I finish setting everything up. Once I’m happy with the frame and the camera is switched on, I return to my chair opposite hers and begin my questions.
Elaine tells me that she was born in London in 1956, but moved to Mojácar as soon as she turned eighteen, which was in the year 1974. She says she didn’t have the place in mind before she found it, but rather stumbled across it after meeting another artist in the South of France.
‘And you’ve never been back to England since?’ I ask.
Elaine shakes her head, keeping her eyes on me rather than the camera. They’re very dark brown, almost black, and it’s hard to look away.
‘There’s never seemed much point.’ She brings up her shoulders in a shrug. ‘I didn’t have any family, so there was nothing to go back for.’
I open my mouth to ask what happened, but then change my mind. We’re here to talk about her life in Mojácar, after all. What took place before that time doesn’t really matter.
‘I suppose I was a bit of a hippy back then,’ Elaine recalls. ‘I believed that I was a citizen of the world, and the people I met while I was travelling were the same. We convinced ourselves that we would be able to change the universe if only we could experience more of life. Of course, that may have been the drugs talking.’
‘Drugs?’ I fail to hide my shock.
‘Afraid so.’ Elaine looks more bemused than shamefaced. ‘It wasn’t such an unusual thing back in those days, and I was only eighteen. I was very happy to follow the pathway to oblivion without worrying about the consequences.’
I’ve always been too much of a chicken to try drugs. Tom ate some hash cakes once when we were at university, and they must have been seriously strong, because the whole night he kept telling me that my face had turned into a potato and that he had a brother who was a jelly worm.
‘What was Mojácar like when you arrived?’ I ask now, and Elaine closes her eyes.
‘I’ll never forget how it felt to look up at the Old Town for the very first time,’ she says, taking a deep breath before lifting her eyelids once again. ‘Mojácar is unique in that the view looking up from the Playa towards the village is actually better than the one from up here looking back down to the sea. The splendour here is the opposite of most places.’
‘That’s so true,’ I agree, wondering why I hadn’t ever thought of it in that way before. ‘I constantly have to remind myself to turn around and look back when I’m walking down to the beach.’
‘I just felt at peace as soon as I got here,’ Elaine continues. ‘I’d been on the road for a few months by that point, and I was weary. Mojácar offered me something that I had failed to find anywhere else.’
She goes on to describe the village as it was then, which surprisingly wasn’t all that different to now. Obviously there have been small improvements made over the years, and there are far more gift shops and restaurants than there used to be before the tourists became a regular fixture, but the essence of the village has never really altered.
‘What about the Indalo symbol?’ I ask gently. ‘Was that on every building in the same way as it is today?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Elaine confirms. ‘The symbol dates back to prehistoric times, as you know, and the artists here were quick to adopt it as an emblem.’
‘Do you believe in it?’ I can’t help but ask.
Elaine pauses for a moment to consider this, crossing her legs and showing off the same pair of gold sandals that she was wearing down at La Fuente when we first met.
‘I believe that it offers many people a lot of comfort.’
It’s a careful answer, and I don’t believe I’m getting the full story. Instead of pushing her, I simply sit in silence and wait. Sure enough, Elaine soon begins to talk again.
‘Whether you believe in the legend or not doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘The fact is that the symbol was definitely found in a cave not far from here back in the 1860s, and experts say the area dates to 2500 BC. Ever since the discovery, the Indalo Man has been associated with good luck. And do I believe in magic? Sometimes I do. Don’t you?’
I shake my head, almost sad to be letting her down. ‘I don’t know. I want to. I do love the Indalo and what it stands for, though, and I think that’s enough.’
She nods at that. ‘I think you could be right.’
‘What happened to the artists you came here with?’ I ask now. I’m conscious of time passing, and wonder if the battery is holding out on the camera. Theo had advised me to take my time with Elaine. We still had another three and a half weeks left to get all the footage we needed and, as he quite rightly pointed out, Elaine wasn’t about to tell me her entire life story in just one session.
‘Some left, some stayed,’ she says, sipping her glass of iced tea. ‘A few are still here, in fact.’
‘I read that Mojácar has one of the highest expatriate populations in the whole of Spain,’ I tell her. ‘Can’t say I blame them. I’d happily live here, too.’
‘Maybe you will one day.’ Elaine smiles.
We finish the iced tea and she tells me more about her painting, which is mostly self-taught. Every autumn she hosts a small exhibition, and for years now she’s scraped together a living by having postcards and prints made of her work and selling them through the Old Town’s many gift shops. Luckily, she tells me, Mojácar is an area that attracts many appreciators of both art and beauty, so she’s never had any trouble selling her wares.
‘I could sit here chatting to you all day,’ I tell her as the church bells begin to chime for the second time since I arrived. I feel like I love and understand Mojácar even more than I had just a few hours ago, and as much as I’m loath to leave this idyllic little courtyard and my new friend behind, I also can’t wait to tell the others all the new things I’ve learned.
‘Shall we say the same time on Friday?’ I ask, packing away the last of the equipment.
She nods. ‘That would be lovely. I’ll take you to my studio next time, if you like?’
There’s another Indalo Man hanging on the wall by the front door, this time just made from simple twisted black metal, and seeing it there suddenly reminds me of something.
‘Just one more thing before I go,’ I say, turning back to her.
‘Yes?’
‘You said earlier that Mojácar offered you something you had failed to find anywhere else. What was it?’
Elaine draws in a breath, then reaches across and puts a hand in the crook of my arm.
‘Hope,’ she says.