Knowing from what she’d read in a guidebook that parking in the centre of Hisarönü could be a problem, Carole found an empty space on the outskirts. Having checked for line markings on the road and parking permits in other vehicles, she concluded that they were safe to park there.
They were beside the high rectangular block of a hotel. A board outside advertised its evening entertainments in coloured chalks. Monday: Bingo. Tuesday: Quiz Night. Wednesday: Belly Dancer. Thursday: Country & Western. Friday: Karaoke. Saturday: Barn Dance.
Carole looked at the list with distaste.
‘Well, that’s Saturday night sorted,’ said Jude.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’ll go to the Barn Dance.’
‘What! The idea of going to a Barn Dance under any circumstances is appalling. Going to one in a foreign country where one does not know anyone else is …’ Her words trickled away as she took in the expression on her friend’s face. Carole Seddon was not always very good at recognizing when people were making jokes.
‘Hm,’ she said and they walked in silence into Hisarönü.
The silence didn’t last long. Every step they took revealed more evidence of the way the entire town was geared to the demands of British holidaymakers. And not, to Carole’s mind, the nicest kind of British holidaymakers.
Every restaurant they passed offered competitive prices (in Turkish lira or pounds) on full English breakfasts – many with the additional incentive of HP sauce and Tetley tea. Roast Sunday dinners with Yorkshire pudding also featured strongly. There were pubs called the Queen Vic and the Rovers Return. Restaurant names included Rumble-Tums, The Bee’s Knees, Robin Hood and Delboy’s. The theme of the Only Fools and Horses sitcom was continued in a retail outlet called Trotter’s Independent Trading Shop. Amongst its goods on offer were bottle openers shaped like penises, along with watches and sunglasses actually advertised as ‘Genuine Fake’. It was only one of many shops and stalls selling tourist tat. Between them, hairdressers, nail bars and tattoo parlours abounded. A soundtrack of English 70s pop music blared from every doorway.
Carole Seddon was in a state of perpetual shudder, which was not improved by the sight of the tourists who thronged the streets. As feared, there were a plethora of tattoos and Union Jack T-shirts. Obese women with their hair pulled tightly back into scrunchies had far too much glitter on their eyelids and their denim shorts. Too many for Carole’s taste wore nothing more than a bikini. And far too many of the voices she heard came from the Midlands or the North. Which, in Carole Seddon’s lexicon, meant they were ‘common’.
What made this transplanted British enclave even odder was the number of Turkish elements which still remained. Women in traditional dress of baggy trousers and headscarves swept the pavements in front of the shops. Their menfolk sat around outside cafés smoking and sipping at sweet tea in gilded glasses. Young men with cropped black hair buzzed about on their scooters like lazy insects.
The whole set-up prompted uncomfortable thoughts in Carole. She was against the idea of foreign destinations being converted into outposts of Britain, but equally she never felt quite relaxed when abroad. And she suspected that her reaction against Hisarönü was basically social. What she objected to was the idea of transplanting Blackpool to Turkey. While if the place being transplanted was somewhere more genteel … say, Fethering perhaps … well, that might be a lot more acceptable. And then she reflected that in some ways Kayaköy was perhaps not a million miles from Fethering transplanted to Turkey.
They couldn’t miss the Dirty Duck. The whole frontage of the two-storey building was painted a virulent, almost fluorescent, yellow. The pillars of the vine-covered front terrace were also yellow, and outside hung a pub sign of a cartoon duck looking lasciviously through binoculars at distant bikini-clad girls on a beach. The menus, the mats, the coasters and everything else on which there was room to fit it carried the same logo.
They sat down at one of the terrace tables and were greeted instantly by a bonhomous young man in a Dirty Duck polo shirt. It clearly never occurred to him to address them in anything but English. ‘Hello, pretty ladies,’ he said. ‘Could I get you something to drink?’
Jude opted again for a large Efes. ‘It’s so refreshing in this heat,’ she said, ‘but I must stop drinking it soon or I’ll just swell up like a balloon.’
Though conscious that she was going to have to drive, Carole reckoned one glass of white wine would be all right.
‘A dry one you like, madam? We have very good – it’s like a Sauvignon Blanc.’
‘Yes, that’ll be fine, thank you.’
‘Large or small?’
‘Large,’ Jude answered for her.
While the man went for their drinks, they studied the menu. It was all predictable English pub fare (or ‘Pubbe Grubbe’ as the menu insisted on calling it). As well as the inevitable full English breakfast, there were fish and chips, steak and ale pie, hunter’s chicken, sausage and mash and so on. ‘Goodness,’ said Carole, ‘that all looks so filling.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jude. ‘I’m feeling quite peckish.’
Carole looked into the interior. There, the fierce yellow paint had given way to a dark wood effect with coloured glass lampshades and a perfect replica of an English pub bar. She was hoping to see Donna Lucas, but there was no sign of her. Carole wondered – and indeed worried – about the best way of finding out if she was on the premises.
By the time their drinks arrived, she had, to her relief, found a part of the menu featuring some lighter dishes, and when asked she ordered a cheese omelette. Jude went for the sausage and mash.
‘Very good choice,’ said the waiter. ‘Wall’s sausages shipped over specially from England. Not spicy like Turkish sausage.’
‘Sounds great,’ said Jude. ‘Oh, by the way, is Donna Lucas around?’
‘Donna? Yes.’
‘It’s just, we met her briefly at Dalaman Airport, and she said if we came here we’d get special rates.’
‘Of course. I’ll tell her you are here.’
EIGHTEEN
Jude took a long, blissful sip from her beer. The first sip was always the best, just the sheer coldness on her tongue, the tingle of the bubbles. Thereafter, she knew, would follow a process of diminishing returns as the beer approached room temperature and she became more aware of the blandness of its taste. But it was worth it for that first moment.
‘If we do see Donna,’ said Carole, ‘what are we going to ask her?’
But there was no time to make plans because at that moment the landlady came bouncing out from the bar to greet them. Denim shorts were tight at the top of her chubby legs, and she wore a red T-shirt with a large Dirty Duck logo on the front.
‘Carole and Jude, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘You’ve got a very good memory,’ said Jude, whereas Carole just thought Nita must have discussed them with her friend before they’d appeared at Dalaman Airport.
‘Welcome to the Dirty Duck.’ She gestured round her domain. ‘Mine, all mine.’
‘You run it on your own?’
‘Yes. I did have a husband who in theory was my partner in the business, but once the hard work started he lost interest. Contrived to lose interest in me at the same time. So now I no longer have a husband and the Dirty Duck’s all mine.’
‘Was your husband Turkish?’ asked Carole.
Donna’s brows wrinkled. ‘That’s an odd thing to ask.’
‘Sorry. I just thought, having met Nita’s husband …’
‘Ah, the mighty Erkan.’ Though whether she used the adjective as a compliment or in irony was hard to say. ‘No, my husband was a Brit. Still is, come to that – just, thank God, no longer my husband. He’s still around – though I avoid him like the plague. He’s to be seen in the bars of Fethiye, slowing drinking himself to death on raki. Which is fine by me. Thank God we never had any children.’