Therapy

delighted at having escaped from the Davises for a fortnight, only to find them having breakfast on the next balcony, maybe he’ll actually write it if there’s another series — but that I would have to go there to cast it, especially at this stage, is unlikely, if you know anything about the business. Zelda accepted it with a suspicious lack of suspicion. I can’t help feeling that she knows there’s more to this trip than television, but I must say she’s been as sweet as pie about it. She’s been very helpful about advising me what clothes to take. It seems a queer reversal of roles, as if she’s helping me plan my trousseau. I’ve arranged for Zelda to spend the weekend with her friend Serena, so that’s put her in a good mood. And Serena’s mother is a sensible woman so I don’t have to worry about them getting up to mischief. All in all, I’m rather looking forward to the trip. I can do with a few days of la dolce vita in the sun.
     
    * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
     
    Well, as a dirty weekend it was a disaster, to put it bluntly. It wasn’t up to much as a holiday, either, at first. Have you ever been to Tenerife? No, you said, I remember. Well, given a choice between the Siberian salt mines and a four-star hotel in Playa de las Americas, I’d choose Siberia any day. Playa de las Americas is the name of the resort where we stayed. Laurence chose it from the travel agent’s brochure because it’s near the airport, and we were due to arrive late at night. Well, that seemed to make sense, but it turned out to be the most ghastly place you can imagine. Playa is the Spanish for beach, of course, but it doesn’t have a beach, not what I’d call a beach. Just a strip of black mud. All the beaches in Tenerife are black, they look like photographic negatives. The whole island is essentially an enormous lump of coke, and the beaches are made of powdered coke. It’s volcanic, you see. There’s actually a huge great volcano in the middle of the island. Unfortunately it’s not active, otherwise it might erupt and raze Playa de las Americas to the ground. Then it might be worth visiting, like Pompeii. Picturesque concrete ruins with tourists carbonized in the act of parading in wet tee-shirts and pouring sangria down their throats.
    Apparently only a few years ago it was just a tract of rocky barren shoreline, then some developers decided to build a resort there, and now it’s Blackpool beside the Atlantic. There’s a gaudy mainstreet called the Avenida Litoral that’s always choked with traffic and lined with the most vulgar bars and cafés and discos you ever saw, emitting deafening music and flashing lights and greasy cooking smells all round the clock, and apart from that there’s nothing except block after block of high-rise hotels and timeshare apartments. It’s a concrete nightmare, with hardly any trees or grass.
    We didn’t realize how horrible it was immediately, because it was dark when we arrived, and the taxi from the airport took us by what seemed a suspiciously roundabout route to me, but on reflection perhaps the driver was trying to spare us the full impact of the Avenida litoral on our very first evening. We didn’t speak much during the drive, except to remark on how warm and humid the air was. There wasn’t much else to talk about because we couldn’t see anything until we reached the outskirts of Playa de las Americas, and then what we saw didn’t excite comment: deserted building sites and immobile cranes and blank cliffs of apartment buildings with just a few windows lit up and De Venta signs outside, and then a long arterial road lined with hotels. Everything was made of ferroconcrete, bathed in a sickly low-wattage yellow light from the streetlamps, and everything looked as if it had been built, very cheaply, the week before last. I could sense Laurence slumping lower and lower in his corner of the back of the car. Both of us already knew we’d come to Pitsville, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to admit it. A dreadful constraint had come over us since we landed: the consciousness of what we had come here to DO, and our anxiety that it should be a success, made us fearful of breathing a word of disappointment about the venue.
    At least, I consoled myself, the hotel is bound to be all right. Four stars, Laurence had assured me. But four stars in Tenerife doesn’t mean what it means in England. Four stars in Tenerife is your just-slightly-above-average package