Page 51 of Old Girls on Deck

She turned and gave me a little grin.

‘I shouldn’t, should I? But I do. I feel very chipper actually. Which is not something I have felt for a very long time.’

After breakfast we collected our things together and left the ship, clambering onto one of the coaches waiting on the quayside which would take us to the Sagrada Familia.

We drove out past the usual railings and officials that surrounded the port, and onto a road lined with palm trees which were just beginning to spread their leaves out in the spring sunshine.

Then onto wide roads, past the impressive monument to Columbus and past modern apartment blocks, colonnaded shops, and restaurants where the locals were enjoying mid-morning coffee in the shade. We passed open squares and parks, racks of bicycles and then suddenly there it was.

I think every person on the coach drew a gasp of wonder as we reached our destination and looked up. The press of people queuing, the cranes swinging high overhead, the traffic which clogged the roads, the sheer scale of the cathedral, it was all rather overwhelming.

‘They are still building it? I’d heard that, but I didn’t think it was true,’ someone asked.

‘It won’t be finished for quite a while,’ Diana said, ‘the construction has been going on for over a hundred and forty years. Gaudi took over when he was in his mid-fifties and he knew he would never see it finished, but he said his boss wasn’t in any hurry. By that he meant God. Raphaël was telling me last night, they only got proper building certificates a few years ago.’

‘Good job they did. If they’d tried to build that where we live without planning permission, the council would have made them pull it down!’

‘Raphaël told me when Gaudi got his architecture degree, the head of the school said he didn’t know if it had been awarded to a madman or a genius. Only time would tell.’

‘A bit of both, I think by the look of it,’ I said, ‘and it’s so different. Not like our churches back home. And now you have brought Raphaël into the conversation, tell me everything all over again.’

Diana rolled her eyes at me and lowered her voice.

‘I’ve told you already. I made a fool of myself; we had a lovely meal; we had a cocktail and then I threw my shoes away and kissed him.’

‘Did you like it? The kissing bit I mean.’

‘Yes, actually.’ She started to smile and turned away to look out of the window.

I smiled to myself too, pleased with the way things were going.

‘I should have taken you away on holiday a long time ago if this is the effect it has on you,’ I murmured.

‘No,’ she said after a while, ‘this is perfect timing.’

I felt a little glow of happiness then, that I had done something to help my sister out of her sadness.

The tour was organised with marvellous efficiency, and we followed our guide into the building, everyone exclaiming at the wonderful kaleidoscope of colours, the towering pillars and vast spaces.

Eventually we returned to find our coach, and the conversation back to the ship was lively with some passengers thinking the building was wonderful, and a few others dismissing it as a tourist trap, a monstrosity, or a gingerbread house.

‘I don’t know about you, but I think we need afternoon tea,’ I said as we got back to our cabin to dump our handbags and souvenirs.

Diana had bought her neighbour Tom a snow globe of the cathedral, which had seemed a good idea at the time. Now, as she shook the sparkly flakes and watched them settle onto the spiky spires, she didn’t look very sure.

‘What was I thinking,’ she said with a sigh, ‘he will probably think it’s tacky, and rather silly. His house has no knick-knacks and the only paint colour he seems to recognise is magnolia. And I’m not much better. When I go home, I’m going to redecorate. And start chucking a lot of things out. It’s time I did. I can’t live in a shrine to the past forever, can I?’

Diana went into the bathroom to freshen up and I sat on the balcony looking out at the cranes on the quayside and I thought about Tom. He obviously had a thing about Diana, well even I could see she was a very attractive woman, so why shouldn’t he? But he didn’t have the spark, the energy that Diana had needed, that was obvious. She hadn’t glanced at the sheaf of print outs he had given her when we left, they were still in a folder at the bottom of the wardrobe, and as far as I knew she hadn’t contacted him at all since then or sent him any pictures as she had promised she would. He would probably be worrying, imagining all sorts of disasters that had befallen her. Planes crashing onto the boat, muggings, and random foreign illnesses.

It was interesting; perhaps well-meaning Tom with his insular, restricting outlook and obsession with the weather, had been pulling Diana into his way of thinking. A few days of sunshine would be in Tom’s mind the prelude to a heatwave and forest fires. Rain would presage floods and ruined crops. Even the mention of a white Christmas made him twitchy. He had aged into the sort of older person who saw danger around every corner. A threat in every stranger. Had Diana been getting like that? I thought about it; it was quite possible she had.

Was I getting like that too? Older people were more aware of problems and dangers, most of us didn’t like to step out of our comfort zones, and when those zones became smaller, the fear somehow became greater, expanding to fill it, like a great, suffocating cloud.

Maybe it was the same for everyone of pensionable age. If a seventy-year-old did something like wing walking or rowing the Atlantic, it usually made it to the national news, as though old people were a novelty act for younger people to marvel at. Great for his age. Still standing upright and speaking in complete sentences. Amazing.

Been married for forty something years? Absolutely astonishing. How many years had I been married anyway? I thought about it, slightly ashamed that I couldn’t remember.

Thirty-three? No thirty-four? The boys were thirty-two and thirty. That meant our next anniversary would be our thirty-fifth. What was that then? Coral? I don’t think we could have any coral presents these days; David Attenborough would be after us. But it wasn’t too late to celebrate what we had.