I don't really need a Candomble priest to tell me that my life is muito confusing, but I do wonder how he could tell this from a heap of shells. Superficially I don't look any different from the others who have filed in here before me: all three women have wind-tangled hair and worn crumpled shirts in various stages of disarray over swimsuits. None of us have any obvious jewelery, not even the one who can afford it and who usually wears enough bling to star in her own rap video. And the men, similarly, have been low key, in linen shirts and swimming shorts. So what can he tell from our outward appearance?
'He says your life is very confusing,' reports Antonio, our host's Portuguese Estate Manager who is here in Bahia with her, and is acting as translator.
Yep, got it. Tell me something I don't know.
The priest drops his white scull capped head over the shells as he stares at them again, his finger carefully picks his way through them like a stork. He seems puzzled. He looks up at me and says something that I can't understand, his slurred Brazilian pronounciation ebbing and flowing like the sea.
'He asks if you are planning a trip outside Brazil after this one.' says Antonio.
My mind leaps upstairs to the laptop I closed only a few minutes earlier and the email I just read from an old flame in another far off country suggesting that we meet in March, to which I had enthusiastically agreed.
'Yes....' I say, reluctantly.
'Sim,' Antonio nods, waiting for me to elaborate. I don't. How to begin to unravel the multiple complications this trip will create?
More Portuguese, more teeth sucking, more head shaking: estresse... pessimista... It doesn't look good.
'He says he has a feeling that you are going to make this trip anyway, but though he doesn't want to be pessimistic, he urges you to reconsider as this trip is going to cause you a lot of stress - a lot of unnecessary stress, and it might be better if you didn't go.'
A whole series of unfortunate and potentially embarrassing events unfolds in my head, one falling over the other like a line of messy, emotional dominos as I know only too well what can go wrong and how truly estresse things could become. Do I really want to take that risk? Abso-bloody-lutely not. I've already cancelled it the email saying I've changed my mind, poised in my mental out-box, ready to be sent. Not really because of the priest but because the power of suggestion doesn't have to be strong to alert me to the fact that it's A VERY BAD IDEA. But what a shame. I was already looking forward to a weekend away in an exotic location with an equally exotic man and a lockable door.
His prophecy came back to me the next day as I huddled in a tiny boat tossed like a cork in a three foot swell of white capped waves off the coast of Salvador, that rocked us all from side to side like the Banana Boats I refused, in fear, to ride at the fairground when I was a child. Suddenly it occured to me that perhaps I had been a little premature in cancelling my foreign tryst on the priest's say-so. Perhaps this was the trip I should have avoided? It was certainly causing me more *ing stress than I'd felt in a long time.
It had all started off so beautifully. Six of us turned up at the marina - the women abundantly dressed in white (so much so that if I had worn a coloured turban I could have sat on the street and sold Acaraje) with our swimsuits on underneath, all hatted up with our designer glasses and our Factor 50 sunscreen, the men in pastels and Panama hats, ready to sail around the bay and visit the islands in Paolo's brand new speedboat.
It was wonderfully elegant - all Tippex white calfskin seats, complete with little tables with compartments for your wine glasses, the instrument panel boasting more dials and levers than a space ship, a little bathroom in the cabin, and a wide, cushion laden berth like something out of a film star's boudoir. We boarded, some of us more elegantly than others. The Fosbury Flop came in particularly useful for me in a way it never did for the high jump on sport's day.
The engines roared into life and PHWOAR we were off, along the coast, hats hurriedly kicked to the floor and hair horizontal in the breeze, winding our way up mangrove lined rivers, palm trees and banana trees and, well, tree trees as far as the eye could see. We sailed up to an abandoned convent where we put down anchor, opened a couple of bottles of champagne and took turns at posing for photographs.
'Who would have thought that we'd be sitting here like this when we met 30 years ago in Oxford?' said Audrey, raising her champagne glass and chinking mine.
Indeed, who would have thought it. Back then, we both had bicycles and damp houses without central heating. Now she has a summer house in Salvador and, okay, I still have a bicycle and a damp house - but now it does have central heating.
We sailed on and on and then stopped for a lunch of grilled crevettes and shrimp curry, before meandering around the biggest island heading back to Salvador, just as the wind picked up and the sea, previously a placid lake of torpid leaden water, grew first needles, and then boiled like hot chip fat with white crested peaks. Salvador's skyscrapers were tiny lego blocks on the horizon as we bounced over the swell, slapping the water again and again until I began to wish I hadn't had the second glass of wine, or a second helping of curry. And then a shriek of alarm pierced the sky, a red light flashed, and the boat suddered to a halt.
One of the engines had failed.
'It's probably just a plastic bag or something,' said Paolo, but he wasn't going to get his Armani shorts wet by diving down to have a look. 'We'll just go the rest of the way on one engine,' he shrugged, but with only half the power driving us forward, now the waves slapped us, and occasionally cuffed us round the ear as the spray engulfed the boat.
Gerry's cafe au lait linen shirt rapidly developed a bib of moisture down the front and his sunglasses needed windscreen wipers to clear the water streaming down his face.
He was not amused.
Ten minutes later, the alarm sounded again and the boat stopped.
Right in the middle of the ocean, land a speck behind us, Salvador a row of pebbles ahead of us.
Ten minutes later, the alarm sounded again and the boat stopped.
Right in the middle of the ocean, land a speck behind us, Salvador a row of pebbles ahead of us.
A ferry trudged past and we flipped almost horizontal in its wake
Is this a good time to remember that I'm mortally afraid of deep water?
Paolo immediately got out his cell phone and made a call. To the coastguard, we assumed.
Erm, no. There is no coastguard.
Well then to the search and rescue?
Nope.
The lifeboat service?
Strike three.
He was calling his friends to see if any of them were around in their boats and would come and collect us.
'It's okay,' he said, eventually, 'Someone is on their way.'
He lifted his iphone to his ear again and gradually it occurred to us he was giving directions to the other boat.
Directions in the middle of the fricking ocean? What was he using as a landmark? There was no land. I heard him say ferry - luckily the word is the same in Portuguese as it is in English. So great, we're stranded in the path of the ferry which has just ploughed past us and isn't due back for another hour.
'Well at least we know we're fifty feet from the bottom of the sea,' quips Jerry looking at the sonar which helpfully also shows shoals of fish swimming towards us.
'Doesn't he have GPS,' says Mr Audrey, irraciably.
'Yes,' says Antonio, 'But he doesn't know how to use it.'
I looked at the sun, hanging at five fifteen. It gets dark at six fifteen.
'Hey but can't we tell our coordinates from our cells,' Jayne suggests.
Four iphones appear, but though everyone knows how to send a text, take a photograph, play movies and download podcasts, nobody knows how to find our position.
Tomorrow's AOL headlines are reeling out in my head in the space cleared by the emotional dominos: Pleasure Cruise ends in Tragedy: One Briton amongst the drowned. I'm the one on the left holding the ruddy champagne glass unaware I'm going to be dead an hour later.
The boat rocks like a cradle on crack.
Pete disappears into the cabin and begins, in Glasgow speak, 'Shouting for Huey.' His many years in the Dutch Merchant Navy have not equipped him for this. Because then he was in a ship that sailed.
We all block our ears so we don't join the chorus. And now this means the bathroom is out of bounds, along with the cabin when, thirty minutes later, he passes out on the bed, and we are still sitting there being tossed about by ever higher waves, as the sun drops to five forty-five and I'm so close to panic I can smell its shaving soap.
How the hell is his friend's boat going to find us in the dark?
In the distance someone sees the spray of on oncoming boat. We cheer and watch it come imperceptibly closer. Gerry begins a chorus of 'Rescue Me'. And then it sails right past us.
'What's the morse code for SOS?' asks Gerry. Someone supplies it (we've still got internet) and he sounds it out on the horn. The boat turns around and comes back for us. Relief all round. 'It's the person who sold you your house,' Paolo tells Mr Audrey.
This is Brazil folks, where your architect takes you out on a jolly and has to be rescued by another client who used to live in the property you now own. How to make friends and influence people. Lesson 1.
Five minutes later another, larger boat arrives and rope is thrown over the side so that it can tow us back into the harbour. It takes an hour, one broken rope and a small rubber dingy with an outboard motor to get us there. It is also pitch black by the time we arrive and every five minutes of the trip has brought another wave flooding over the side of the boat like a bucket of water in a carry on film, drenching each and every one of us. Audrey is sitting wrapped in a sodden towel. Gerry and Antonio have been huddling behind the instrument panel, and I have wet white clothing plastered to my body from head to toe through which my green and blue swimsuit can be seen as clearly as though I were wearing cellophane.
For the next 24 hours I can hardly stand up due to motion sickness, my hair is set in a salt stiffened beehive, I am sunburnt, sandblasted and I have a scrape on my cheek from God knows where and for this, for this I cancelled a weekend of carnal bliss with the only man I've been interested in for months imagining that it was going to cause me stress?
*
double *
After he had warned me about the trip, the priest had held my hand over a glass of water, then clutched the pebbles that I had been holding since he began his reading.
He looked sorrowful.
I heard: coração...quebrados... fraturado.
Antonio translated awkwardly, but he didn't need to. I already knew that too.
Is this a good time to remember that I'm mortally afraid of deep water?
Paolo immediately got out his cell phone and made a call. To the coastguard, we assumed.
Erm, no. There is no coastguard.
Well then to the search and rescue?
Nope.
The lifeboat service?
Strike three.
He was calling his friends to see if any of them were around in their boats and would come and collect us.
'It's okay,' he said, eventually, 'Someone is on their way.'
He lifted his iphone to his ear again and gradually it occurred to us he was giving directions to the other boat.
Directions in the middle of the fricking ocean? What was he using as a landmark? There was no land. I heard him say ferry - luckily the word is the same in Portuguese as it is in English. So great, we're stranded in the path of the ferry which has just ploughed past us and isn't due back for another hour.
'Well at least we know we're fifty feet from the bottom of the sea,' quips Jerry looking at the sonar which helpfully also shows shoals of fish swimming towards us.
'Doesn't he have GPS,' says Mr Audrey, irraciably.
'Yes,' says Antonio, 'But he doesn't know how to use it.'
I looked at the sun, hanging at five fifteen. It gets dark at six fifteen.
'Hey but can't we tell our coordinates from our cells,' Jayne suggests.
Four iphones appear, but though everyone knows how to send a text, take a photograph, play movies and download podcasts, nobody knows how to find our position.
Tomorrow's AOL headlines are reeling out in my head in the space cleared by the emotional dominos: Pleasure Cruise ends in Tragedy: One Briton amongst the drowned. I'm the one on the left holding the ruddy champagne glass unaware I'm going to be dead an hour later.
The boat rocks like a cradle on crack.
Pete disappears into the cabin and begins, in Glasgow speak, 'Shouting for Huey.' His many years in the Dutch Merchant Navy have not equipped him for this. Because then he was in a ship that sailed.
We all block our ears so we don't join the chorus. And now this means the bathroom is out of bounds, along with the cabin when, thirty minutes later, he passes out on the bed, and we are still sitting there being tossed about by ever higher waves, as the sun drops to five forty-five and I'm so close to panic I can smell its shaving soap.
How the hell is his friend's boat going to find us in the dark?
In the distance someone sees the spray of on oncoming boat. We cheer and watch it come imperceptibly closer. Gerry begins a chorus of 'Rescue Me'. And then it sails right past us.
'What's the morse code for SOS?' asks Gerry. Someone supplies it (we've still got internet) and he sounds it out on the horn. The boat turns around and comes back for us. Relief all round. 'It's the person who sold you your house,' Paolo tells Mr Audrey.
This is Brazil folks, where your architect takes you out on a jolly and has to be rescued by another client who used to live in the property you now own. How to make friends and influence people. Lesson 1.
Five minutes later another, larger boat arrives and rope is thrown over the side so that it can tow us back into the harbour. It takes an hour, one broken rope and a small rubber dingy with an outboard motor to get us there. It is also pitch black by the time we arrive and every five minutes of the trip has brought another wave flooding over the side of the boat like a bucket of water in a carry on film, drenching each and every one of us. Audrey is sitting wrapped in a sodden towel. Gerry and Antonio have been huddling behind the instrument panel, and I have wet white clothing plastered to my body from head to toe through which my green and blue swimsuit can be seen as clearly as though I were wearing cellophane.
For the next 24 hours I can hardly stand up due to motion sickness, my hair is set in a salt stiffened beehive, I am sunburnt, sandblasted and I have a scrape on my cheek from God knows where and for this, for this I cancelled a weekend of carnal bliss with the only man I've been interested in for months imagining that it was going to cause me stress?
*
double *
After he had warned me about the trip, the priest had held my hand over a glass of water, then clutched the pebbles that I had been holding since he began his reading.
He looked sorrowful.
I heard: coração...quebrados... fraturado.
Antonio translated awkwardly, but he didn't need to. I already knew that too.
