I opened the cubby hole door and rolled out into the engine room. The noise rose another notch and I crawled round to the hatchway. I was reaching up to push the hatch open when a breath of cool air brushed my wrist. Moving my arm around in the dark I picked up the draught and followed it back to its source. I felt a handle above me and the draught was coming from just beneath it. I crawled back to the cubby hole to get the torch.
Back at the handle I flipped on the light. No one would notice it up top in broad daylight. There was a small door about three feet by three feet in front of me. On my initial recce of the room I had missed it. I pulled on the handle and the door opened outwards and I was washed with cool air. I gulped it in like water to a man in the desert.
The space beyond was empty and, at the back there was another small hatch. Sunlight shone from beyond and it was through this gap that the air was coming.
I pulled myself up and into the small space, reached out and grasped the hatch. I pushed it and it started to fall away. I caught it before it fell open and crawled a bit further into the space, grateful for the cool air.
Beneath me was a metal walkway — ridged to prevent slipping and bordered with two small metal edges about an inch proud of the surface, running the length of both sides. It was a gangplank. I’d seen a few in the bigger boats at the marina. They slipped out of the rear of the boats like tongues to form a bridge between the marina pontoons and the boat.
The boat I was on had been side into the pontoon and the gangplank had been stored. I felt along the underside of the gangplank and realised that it was telescopic. My feet were hanging out into the engine room and my face was inches from the hatch.
The cool draft was being drawn in by the wake of the boat. As the boat progressed the rear caused a minor vacuum and air rushed in to fill it. The only down side was that occasionally the exhaust from the engines would get caught in the vacuum and pour into the space. But, compared to the hell-hole I had been in, this was sweet.
I wanted to pop the hatch to let more air in but anyone sitting at the back of the boat might see the door open and wonder why. I risked cracking it a little more and this increased the flow of fresh air.
If someone opened the engine room hatch my feet would be in plain sight, but there was fuck all I could do about this. I could curl up for a little while but the space was too small to stay that way for long. Anyway all I could hope was that the more miles we put between boat and Mallorca, the less likelihood that they would turn back if I was found.
I must have dozed off at some point because I was woken by the noise of the engine note dropping. The engine was kicked into idle and immediately the movement of the boat took on a much more unstable wobble. I wondered if we were at our destination but it seemed too soon.
There were voices above me but the engines had set up a ringing in my ears that made it impossible to make out what they were saying.
It reminded me of the time when I was twelve years old and had sneaked into the Apollo in Glasgow to watch Deep Purple. The ringing in my ears had lasted three days. I reckoned that by the time I got to Barcelona the ringing would still be going at Christmas.
With the boat now still, the flow of fresh air stopped and the gangplank space soon took on the temperature of the engine room. The rocking continued which suggested we were not moored up and when I caught the clink of glasses I figured they had stopped for lunch.
My throat was dry and the 2 litre bottle of water had long since gone. I reached for the little hatch and cracked it a little more and pushed my head into the gap. It wasn’t much cooler but it was better than nothing.
Forty minutes crawled by and I was on the point of giving up again when the engine fired up and we lurched forward. The movement caught me by surprise and I let go of the hatch. It fell away — banging against the hull. I froze, waiting for someone to notice, but nothing happened. I tried to reach out and pull the hatch closed but I would have needed to lean my head and shoulders out to reach it, and that was asking for trouble. I left it alone.
The air flowed freely, now joined by salt spray. I could see the Mediterranean framed where the hatch door had been. There was no sign of land.
An hour later a large black and white ship slid across my little picture frame. The words Barcelona-Mahon were writ large on the side. I smiled. At least we were on the main ferry route and this suggested that we were still on track for Barcelona.
Around five o’clock the engine dropped its note again. In the last hour I had seen an increasing number of boats and ships that suggested we were getting closer to land. Pulling myself forward I risked poking the top of my head out and was rewarded with the sight of the rising cliff that sat above the commercial port of Barcelona. I knew that on top of the cliff sat the Parc de Montjuic and just out of sight was the old Olympic Stadium.
The boat purred along parallel to the shore, keeping the commercial port on her left until we reached the entrance to the main marina. I wriggled back into the engine room and felt a wall of heat wash over me. Closing up the door to the gangplank, I crawled around the engine and back into my cubby hole.
The boat seemed to take an age before the engine was killed and the guys upstairs stopped moving around and got off. I waited for another ten minutes to make sure they were gone and crawled back through the engine room before opening the main hatch. For the first time in nearly twenty hours I stood up and felt my back crack. The boat was deserted and I wasted no time getting off the bloody thing.
I got my bearings and headed for the exit from the marina.
Half an hour later, and a full two litres of Coke in my stomach, I was in a public toilet at the bottom of Las Ramblas. My face in the mirror was black with diesel smoke and I was sporting the kind of hair that you get by plugging your fingers into the mains.
Stripping to my waist I did the best I could to clean my hair, face and arms. I scrubbed out my armpits and retired to a cubicle and slipped out of the rest of the clothes and put on the spare stuff from the plastic bag. I bundled the soiled clothes into the bag and ‘over skooshed’ some deodorant on all offending parts.
Back at the sink I brushed my teeth and straightened myself up.
I walked out into the evening and found Las Ramblas rammed with tourists and pretty people going for a walk.
The place was alive. Chatting, drinking and eating were the norm as I wandered up and away from the sea. I passed a row of living statues, all of them impressively made up.
One, a small evil looking dwarf had painted his entire body, including his tongue, green and delighted in slobbering and gibbering at tourists who approached him. No one dared go near him and I wondered how he made any money as the statues relied on tourists filling the plates or hats that sat in front of them.
I turned into the gothic quarter, made my way to a small internet cafe and found a terminal. Ordering up three cokes and a coffee I added a spectacularly sticky bun and the waiter looked at me with a look that said ‘you greedy bastard’.
I pulled up the Ryanair site and after a major struggle booked the last flight out of Girona that night at an exorbitant price. By my reckoning I had three hours to make the flight.
I killed the cokes and the coffee and wolfed down the bun before heading back into the night. I walked up Las Ramblas to the square at the top and over to El Corte Inglis, Spain ’s’ answer to Debenhams, and jumped in one of the taxis sitting there. The driver’s face lit up when I said Girona. I asked how much and he said a hundred Euros. I winced but nodded my head, and we were away.
The taxi drive took over an hour and I was dropped at a building site that doubled as an airport. The place was tourist city but I put on my patient head and joined the queue for my plane.