The Santiago De Camino and the Costa Del Morte

A person who is authentic does not need silicone or the most expensive clothes, or the lip injections or the four by four KGM the size of a small coach. What set her apart was her big feet and thin ballet like posture. Just like Audrey, she loved clothes, but desired Audrey's aristocratic air and delicate voice. Jana herself always kept a cigarette holder in her handbag, even though (unlike Audrey) she didn't smoke. She chose dresses that she liked, usually vintage, and didn't need to 'fit in' with current fashion trends. Somehow, she made it work for herself and her authentic style shone through.

“I've just seen your holiday photos.” wrote Jana's best friend Gretka back on the smart-phone. "And you know what? Your body lines look just like Audrey! You remind me of Audrey Hepburn.

Jana smiled, then brushed down her 1950's navy shirt-waist dress and began to type her response in the message box.

"Why thank you Gretka! You've just prepaid yourself ice cream for a whole year!"

With her students she had the patience of a yogic master, she’d been an English teacher for 10 years; it didn’t make her rich, but it paid the bills, and she’d gotten lucky in life inheriting this grand old house in Porto - the luxury ocean that swept in, the coarse stone walls, the steep hills she loved, palm trees and pineapples. Her favourite spot was on the high wall by the high stone stairwell under the great bridge, sipping juice as she watched tourists go by and she felt Porto was the only place in the world where people could walk over a narrow bridge at the same time a train tumbled over too.

When it came to her students, she was the best, but such was her temperament, she’d blow up at the touch of a keyboard or at the forgotten purchase of a one euro bus ticket.

She sat before the dead screen with dead eyes and her hands in her lap and she waited patiently for the words to come. The air today was suffocating inside her apartment. Her view was scaffolding, dust roads and thin sorry looking cats. 'I could scream.' She thought. For thirty minutes, she just sat there and didn’t type a word.

She looked up to her left, always in this way, and twiddled her thumbs whenever she concentrated hard and forced herself to come up with a true sentence as Hemingway used to do overlooking the city of Paris. ‘Finally.’ she thought and breathed a deep sigh of relief and wrote down her first sentence: "Toby is a bastard."

'This story is never going to be published.' Decided Jana. 'Toby is a bastard.' She repeated in her mind like a mantra. 'But I have to write this story.' So she began.

The story of the Santiago de Camino

She met Toby last year in some side street in Porto itself in a boutique vintage shop she often visited, just below the tall Clerigos tower.

That day, Jana entered the vintage shop that shone and glittered with the jewels and jewellery inside and met a shop attendant with a smile. He was a well spoken man who seemed like someone that needed saving, accentuated by a Harris tweed jacket that was too big by half a size, as if he was making up for a space in his life. But when she looked closer she saw that his shoes were unkempt, weathered (a very bad sign), and it consisted of a heel that gave him an extra inch and a half, and perhaps he just didn't have any potential at all. There was a gap in his shirt that revealed his chest because of a missing button. She saw all the signs, all the clues, to leave, but by the time he had commented on her elaborate henna, printed on by hand in Turkey a week ago, she had asked for his email, which he offered with a slight hesitation followed by a crooked smile.

By riverside tables

Seagulls screeched and cried and Monaco-esque white boats sailed by men in blue and white into the riviera. They were sat in a cafe together overlooking the lagoon, downtown, and it was as overcast as it could be and slightly misty.

"Would you like to walk the Catholic Camino hike with me?" asked Jana.

"Tell me about." said Toby and displayed two open hands, tips of fingers touched together, as he lent back in a clean cut ruffled cotton shirt as white as Porto’s walls.

"Well, a student of mine told me about it the other day and it sounds perfect for our engagement get away. It’s somewhere in the north-west of Spain in an area called Galicia." said Jana. "Think of it as a pilgrimage."

"It definitely sounds interesting." said Toby. He’d handed her the simple silver ring on one knee not to far from here in a restaurant two weeks ago now. "So tell me about it."

"Well, it is said that the Camino starts from your own front door. But officially, there is the Portugal trail, which starts in Porto. Jana looked to her left as she thought.

“Okaaay.” Toby replied.

“Or the St-Jean's trail which starts in France and that one stretches to around 800 kilometers.” she said.

"So what are you thinking then?" said Toby. "Which one?" The couple held each other's hands over the table.

"The Camino that starts from Porto." she replied. “Image walking through all those wonderful Portuguese towns or eucalyptus forests and the coastline…ah the coastline!”

"I REALLY like the idea..” said Toby. "But how far to walk for?" He started to look at a map on his phone.

"I see here that some of the full walk can be up to 2500 kms!"

"Well, not the whole way of course, especially in the summer heat anyway, but I don't know about you." said Jana, "I think we could manage 100 km over the course of four or five days. It would be perfect."

"As we’re both Catholics, this sounds like the perfect thing." Toby repeated. "Wild camping or hostels?"

"Definitely hostels. I hate camping!" They both laughed.

Toby's hand slid down to her thigh below the table.

"Leave it there." She whispered to his eyes. So he did, on her bare legs from the skirt down.

In the summer

The airport in Vienna was full of holiday goers on their way to their departure gates and they'd arrived there with an hour and a half to spare having caught the 6.10 bus from the SNP bridge in Bratislava, where Toby lived, which was about a forty minute ride to Austria. The corridor of the airport echoed with a hotpot of Austrian, Hungarian and Slovak.

Toby always said she was fighting a losing battle, but if a person has a determination to do something then no-one can stop them and so it was that even here Jana held a handful of trash collected from the floor outside (a small glass wine bottle, three chocolate wrappers, an apple juice carton and some supermarket plastic bags). She was deliberate and careful not to dirty her lily white collar shirt or loose fitting trousers as black as the Black pearl itself. She placed each bit of trash into the correct bin; the bottle in the green can; the carton into the grey can; and the rest into the yellow plastic can.

Jana picked up the trash whenever they went for walks behind the apartment and today at the airport was no different while Toby would collect rocks wherever they went in nature, and this actually drove Jana totally mad.

For Toby, the rocks glittered salt crystalised in rain and sun, untouched until he came along and he studied them; he would turn them over; around; rotate left and right and generally handle them as if they were gold. He could sense the richness in them. 'Perhaps there was gold in these rocks or in these fields?' he thought. He had heard there was gold in this land and his heart told him it was so, and at times his collection of rocks, not just here but from around the world, became an obsession. 'Perhaps it was way up in the mountains among the Eidelweis, the stars of the Carpathians, or below the Rhododendrons that blossomed at the higher altitudes, where the gold lay.' He considered.

Jana rolled her eyes.

"You're so into rocks, it's kind of weird!" She said. "Please just leave them. You have too many. We don't have any space in the house for these useless things - they'll only clutter the space!"

She watched her fiance pick up another pink and blue rough cut and fretted about how it would be brought back to the kitchen back in Porto probably; sandy, dirty and a real clutter. Whenever things didn't go as she planned it, she would get angry.

The plane was delayed for over two hours. For forty five minutes everyone had to stand in the waiting corridor, which was hot and stuffy. While some of the other passengers sat down, others less patient began to shuffle forward as the time went on and one girl in her early twenties adjusted her shoe string bra which barely covered her large breasts and she stared back in defiance.

They boarded forty minutes later with the big bossom lady in front, but once they'd boarded the pilot announced that there would be another hour of delay due to air traffic control, but everyone soon found out that it was due to bad weather around Spain.

It took them another three hours to get to Madrid and by the time they had got on the one euro and fifty cent bus that went to the inner city metro underground station, another hour went by and it was already around 9pm. They saw that the metro system worked much the same way as the London underground, so to follow the route was straightforward, but as buying tickets was all in Spanish they asked the attendant at the information desk to help them purchase the tickets.

"So you must catch the grey line 4, then change for the red line to Sol and the number 3 to Legazpi." Said the attendant. Each change was met with a greater number of travellers; a sea of dark Spanish heads. By the time they arrived at the legazpi line there was barely any space to squeeze on, but as they were already late for check-in by a few hours, they had no choice but to force their way in. ‘The hostel might be shut now.’ thought Jana.

They walked up the steps, but were met by a rush of retreating Spanish who fled the streets above. Flashes of lighting and heavy rain filled the night sky. People were soaked through to their skin and dark Spanish hair stuck to wet t-shirts.

"Right. It's 10 o'clock and we HAVE to get to the hotel before it closes!" Shouted Toby, still holding the baggage.

"After three we run. One...two...three... GO!”

They pushed up the steep stairs and into the thick blanket of rain that poured down on Madrid. Legazpi street was grey and dark. Jana felt too weak to help with the heavy bags, and they kept under the balconies and roofs.

A day later

The Camino path began in the center of Madrid and once out into Spanish mainland it followed dusty roads alongside speeding cars and went through hamlets of grey and white houses with orange terracotta tile roofs and high white walls which hid mediterranean gardens. There were some forests, but the walk was heavy on untrained feet and soon Jana got blisters, with Toby okay as he was the more regular walker, and that frustrated Jana even more. The mountains were up ahead.

By day four, the two were no longer speaking. The walk had been long, hot and arduous. This walk has been nothing but roadside trail. Dust and cars; nothing else.

"We need to go right here," said Jana. The signs of the Camino ever so often would run cold.

"No, I think it's this way." answered Toby, defiant and stubborn; this is how it’d gone every day.

"It isn't." She said.

"It is." He said.

"This is childish." she stated. "Screw you." she added.

"Screw you too." answered Toby and he walked ahead. Despite her protests, Jana angrily followed, not wanting to get lost.

The arguments were getting longer and more gruesome and pathetic and as they approached the end of the fourth day, the final day, they walked into a meadow and were able to see the five tiered Cathedral that towered over the dark grey stone houses.

It could and should have been a special moment, to spot the world famous Santiago de Compostella cathedral from this vantage point on the hill before the walk down, every Catholic since time began would have given their left foot for it. But the couple were tired and fed up. Not caring about the millions of pilgrims who had experienced this since the 9th century when the cathedral was built. But the couple kept their heads down and no longer spoke. Only the silent march and the soft crunch of boots on gravel remained, until the boots hit the smooth stone of Santiago town.

As the weary Camino pilgrims (and some less religious walkers) paced down the direct and straight road through old houses to the old cathedral, Scottish bagpipes welcomed them through. Tears of joy and cries of relief, individuals and those in groups in replicated t-shirts lifted their arms up in triumph or clapped together unified as they stepped down the ancient passageway or fell to the ground exhausted and spread-eagled on the concrete, before they recovered and headed into the Cathedral for the evening mass, having completed such a gruelling and yet compelling journey with deep meaning.

But instead of elation, Jana and Toby looked at each other and dispersed and went their separate ways. The strain of the intense daily walking of great distances, 18 or 20 miles, in the heat took it's toll. They thought they knew each other, but they hadn't, and now they did, and even a kiss couldn't unify them again.

The 100 km hike had shown each the other their true colours and they didn't like what they had seen. They also entered the Cathedral for the 7.30 pm mass, going in via different doorways, and when it finished an hour later with the deep bellowing song sung by the master priest, the bells tolled solemnly and each walked alone to their chosen hotel. Toby would fly home the next day to Slovakia and Jana would take the train to Portugal.

The Costa del Morte

Jana decided to stay on another day. The next day, morning mist clung to the mountain by the dark ocean like two friends long lost met, and the ocean cut right into the Spanish mainland like a curved sword. In the evening, she ate a dish of oil fried potatoes with a tear in her eye, sliced salmon garnished in lemon and a dollop of garlic cream placed in the busiest street in the small coastal town of Finisterra, along the costa de Morte (death coast) and a place with a lighthouse known as the end of the world where she walked 2 miles uphill alone.

Jana, still in her shirt waist dress, typed her last word of the story on her notebook. The day was hot and she stood up and walked to the kitchen to pour herself an ice cool orange juice from a jug that sat on the top shelf of the fridge. Her slender fingers stroked the misted up glass from the heat of her hand after she placed it down and she watched the vegetation move in the wind.

When she returned to her work, she shrieked when she logged onto her gmail. The story of their break up she had guarded for such a time was posted onto the website competition without her knowing; 'how did he get it?' she thought. He was a computer wizard but even then, she couldn't be sure it was him. The world would now see the story of their break up in Spain. Everyone would know. She looked again and then she saw it, a message with a picture in her inbox. The picture was of the Santiago Cathedral with the simple words below 'serves you well' and she looked out of the window and murmured "you bastard."