I was there, and would endeavour to make the most of it.
The significance of the crucifix came to light as José Del Rey attacked the emerging hairpin bends with the vigour and ferocity that belonged only to someone who did not fear death. The crucifix swayed from side to side as he accelerated round the corners.
‘You all right back there, Miss Evita?’ he asked.
‘Clutch control,’ I shouted.
‘What?’
‘You couldn’t slow down just a bit? I don’t think I am in any hurry.’
He looked at me through the rear-view mirror and patted his moustache. ‘You are safe with me, miss. This is why they call me King of the Taxi Drivers. I know these roads like I know my own mother.’
Perhaps it was a phrase that didn’t translate well into English. I lingered on the thought of how well he could know his own mother. If she was anything like my Auntie Sheila, who had no-entry signs bobbing up all over the place, then we were in grave danger.
José Del Rey appeared to slow down as we got higher into the mountain. The air felt lighter, the greenery was dense; it was cooler and fresher. As I rolled down the window I could hear a faint drumbeat. I watched women with huge urns move as if they carried the rhythm within them, and children were dancing barefoot on the road. José Del Rey sounded his horn as we passed them, at which point they began running after us.
As we approached a plateau, the drumbeats grew louder and louder.
‘Two minutes,’ José Del Rey indicated with his fingers. There were houses painted in pastel colours dotted about. I could see a village square – it wasn’t a defined square with a focal point such as a church surrounded with benches or anything like that, just a simple open space where people congregated.
Both young and old were listening to the musicians who had brought out their drums and most people were dancing to the rhythm. As the taxi pulled up, a few people stared and smiled – welcoming smiles. Some of the boys who had followed us asked José if they could sit in his taxi. He shook his head defiantly.
I got out of the car feeling very self-conscious in my suit.
‘My wife is somewhere here, but if you want to go to the house first, I take you there.’
‘Is that where I’m staying?’
‘Yes, in our humble abode. Unless you want me to take you somewhere else?’
‘No, thank you. I’m very grateful.’
He patted his moustache and held out his elbow as a gesture for me to take it.
I marvelled at the people dancing so freely. They carried a different rhythm in them, one that was so passionate and carefree. It could not have been more different to the sounds of North London – the drone of the traffic; people locked away in their houses.
José introduced me to his wife, Delores, who was holding her son’s hand. She looked about the same age as I was and her son José could not have been more than seven or eight.
‘Welcome,’ Delores said. ‘José, welcome our guest.’
The little boy pulled a face and I pulled one back at which point he laughed.
‘You must be tired. Come, have something to eat.’
As I sat down in the square, plates of food were thrust forward from nowhere, and because I was so hungry I did not sit and savour the flavours, colours and aromas, eating so fast, like I had never been fed.
The night owl called bedtime like last orders, but people took no notice of the fact that night beckoned. Fires were built in a bid to keep it at bay. People stopped dancing and sat in a circle to talk and eat.
There on the mountain, mouths filled with food and conversation. Hot chillies gave fire to the blood and propelled words out with vivacity. Elders told stories whilst youngsters sat in their laps. It took me back to my early childhood when my grandfather would tell me stories in an attempt to put me to sleep.
Little José’s grandfather was recounting the tale about how the rains came. José went to sit next to him.
‘So the old lady, Emelda, who was against the union, shouted, “If you marry my son” (for he was her only son), “nobody here will ever dance.”’
Although it appeared as if the little boy had heard the story a thousand times, he sat even closer to his grandfather and urged him to continue.
‘So the spell was cast as the couple married. The old woman did not realise that she was part of the land that grew arid. She became cynical and twisted until death took her. There in the skies, she wandered aimlessly, lost because there was no one to love her or to shout up silent prayers that they missed her. The burden showed markedly in her posture, her stomach folded and her footsteps became heavy. Totally alone, she could bear it no longer and she cried and cried, begging forgiveness as she did so. The tears, sour at first, lost their bitterness as they touched the ground, bringing new life to all. Those tears were the rain that provided fertile lands on which the people celebrated and danced. From that, the rain came every year.’
Little José battled unsuccessfully with nightfall. He fell asleep on his grandfather’s lap, and I, also exhausted, took a stick and under the night stars wrote the words ‘thank you’ into the ground. I was truly thankful to be here, wherever here was, feeling for the first time in a long time completely free and myself amongst the company of generous strangers who did not make me miss home, understanding that home could be anywhere you wanted it to be.
The next morning Delores stormed out of the house. She was going to find her husband, José Del Rey, King of the Taxi Drivers. When she eventually tracked him down, she would rip off his moustache, the fake symbol of his manhood, and then toss it into the river. Mother Earth would surely know it was his and would then castigate him in some way for having polluted her in such a distasteful manner.
It was alleged late last night that José Del Rey had been giving lifts freely to women of a more rounded figure. Delores slept on what she had heard, trying not to give it importance. During the course of the night, the anger simmered inside her until she could take it no more.
They had been married ten years. José Del Rey had been sent to her in his crisp white shirt just eight days before she was due to marry someone else. He came from nowhere and she knew instinctively that he was the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
I’ve always believed this kind of scenario to be made up, having talked to my Auntie Sheila and Uncle Bali about it and having never really experienced it myself. But I believed Delores Del Rey when she told me that it was possible to love someone in the moment of meeting them.
Taken aback by his charm, his vision and his passion, Delores left her fiancé in a storm of scandal which she never quite managed to live down. At times like this, she regretted having made such a decision. Life was not easy with José Del Rey, but it was different. And despite the drama, anyone could see that they loved each other, from the glances they shared to the way he called her name and touched her fingertips when he thought no one was looking.
Delores returned later that morning with a look of relief. Reports that afternoon suggested that José Del Rey’s moustache
