Portugal Gone Communist

With the kind permission of the author, we are publishing an extract from ‘Don’t Be So Sensitive’. The memoir recalls visiting Praia da Luz and his colourful descriptions recreate the Luz of the 1970s. He relives some wonderful holidays but also some painful separations when his mother and stepfather (Gerard) would spend every winter in their villa and leave him in Pimlico. The memoir begins and ends in Luz because Gabriel scattered his mother’s ashes near Black Rock.

In April 1974, our idyll looked close to being shattered. The Portuguese Revolution overthrew 40 years of dictatorship. We were walking in London one afternoon when an Evening Standard vendor bellowed, “PORTUGAL GONE COMMUNIST”.

My mother burst into tears. She must have been distraught. For a while there was serious talk of properties being confiscated and foreigners – wealthy capitalists! – would have been first in line. Would we lose our villa? For a while the atmosphere was feverish and many overseas owners fled, taking their valuables. Motorists, usually assumed (correctly) to be foreigners because most Algarveans had a donkey or cart, found it difficult to buy petrol. There were inconveniences for sure but the communists, whose strongholds were in the Alentejo, gave up confiscating property down south.

The Carnation Revolution, so-called because it was non-violent, fizzled out. A friend joked that the Portuguese deemed communism a great idea until they were told they’d have to share their pigs! Thankfully, the Luz Bay Club’s British manager had managed to keep the Club running throughout because many locals relied on it for their jobs. So Portugal began clambering unsteadily toward social democracy. Foreign-owned properties were safe, after all.

My mother was agreeably surprised to find the villa untouched when we arrived later that year, 1974. Even our adopted cat, Bobby, knew we were coming, waiting for us on the doormat outside. The publicity in the UK had been so bad we’d half expected to find a Commie cat raising the red flag!

In the years between my parents’ divorce and her meeting Gerard, I was happy. These were the halcyon days of my childhood. We visited Luz several times – sometimes only the two of us because my older half-brothers were working or studying – during this period. There’s a picture of me as a seven-year-old reading a book while a fat Bobby lazes nearby, looking out over the sun-kissed terrace. I can date it to late 1974 because it’s post-revolution but pre-Gerard. Also, the furnishings were still makeshift, just before my mother lavished money on the place.

Our family doctor once dubbed me “a sensitive squaggy”. There’s no such word, of course, but it was oddly appropriate and onomatopoeic. Even my dad called me “squaggy”. At this point I’d have been content to keep my mother to myself. Particularly for a vulnerable little fellow, it’s comforting not having to vie for your mother’s attention. You look up and there she is. No competition, no rivalry, and no expectations … a “sensitive squaggy” nestling near his mummy in the Algarve, with reassuring smells emanating from the gas-fired stove and a friendly cat nearby. For me this was just p-u-r-r-f-e-c-t. (Yes, I know, I know!) When I look back at the time when I was happiest I don’t hark back to big occasions but rather a mood of undisturbed innocence.

But this period wasn’t so great for my mother. We struggled with the luggage on our return journey on the train from Gatwick to Victoria. She broke her fingernail, slamming it in the compartment door while trying to get through with heavy bags. Later she called an ambulance and had to spend a day in hospital. She was at a loss without a partner.

I never holidayed anywhere else abroad during the entire period in which my mother owned the villa in Luz. But I could see the advantages of having a home in the sun. You know where everything is; you kick off your shoes and the fun starts immediately. No recce is needed; restaurateurs recognise you as regulars and give you exemplary service because they like you and know you’re likely to recommend them. And, in Portugal, sterling went a long way; in those days there were 50 escudos to the pound.

My mother was well-educated but Luz was not brimming with the intelligentsia. An exception was Alison Blair, whom we knew as Alison Hooper, who lived in a lovely rambling house in Boa Pesca, a quiet, elegant residential cul-de-sac. Alison, the Cambridge-educated co-founder of a popular magazine called Lilliput in the forties, was my mother’s closest friend in the town, sharing a love of art, travel and literature.

Luz housed more than its share of entertaining eccentrics. A retired army colonel and his wife were Alison’s neighbours in Boa Pesca. He and Gerard, who made his first trip to Luz at Christmas, 1975, would reminisce about the war. Gerard had been a bomber pilot in the RAF. Whenever I think of “the Colonel” I can hear him saying “and then Monty said to me in the desert”. We’d pass by his house and he’d be on the terrace, which Gerard christened “the bridge”, giving a mock salute. “Bow Tie,” the Colonel would say, which was the best Portuguese he could muster, a pale imitation of “Bom Dia”.

“Permission to come aboard?” Gerard would ask and the Colonel would nod. Usually, a long drinking session would ensue.

The Colonel and his wife lived the life of a stopped clock but maybe it was the life they wanted. One summer’s day, we had a picnic in their caravan in the countryside. The Colonel, who was a tightwad, noticed I was eating a lot. His wife kept offering me more but he stopped her.

“Come off it, you’ll be offering him the Christmas pudding next.”

Alison was amused by the eccentricity of her neighbours. One day, we were at the Colonel’s villa having drinks when through the wall we heard Alison pounding on her typewriter. The Colonel’s wife said: “I know that Alison is writing about us.” Sure enough, as Alison later told us, she was!

Another semi-permanent (and educated) resident in Boa Pesca was a wealthy, softly-spoken middle-aged American architect named Jim Weaver. Variously known as “whispering Jim”, “the quiet American” or “the weaver bird” to other expats, he’d speak slowly and only after consideration, propping his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. Gerard took him off to a tee behind his back but was (excessively) unctuous in his company. Gerard quickly realised where his bread was buttered – hence I inserted “wealthy” – because what was there not to like about regular buffets featuring spare ribs, English sausages and baked potatoes in a spacious villa overlooking the beautiful bay?

There’s a photo of my mother and Jim Weaver chatting on the Luz sand of a winter’s day, the water lapping gently at their feet. My mother, never one for lazing on the beach, has made a rare concession to her surroundings – by removing her sandals and treading barefoot! She has long cream-coloured trousers, rolled up at the ends, stockings underneath, a silk blouse and Hermes scarf, a cashmere cardigan, delicately rounded film-star sunglasses, and her obligatory gold brooch and bracelet. Weaver is wearing dark flared corduroys, a long-sleeved chequered shirt with gold cufflinks and a Lacoste V-neck sweater with a cravat. Nowadays, you don’t see such folk walking around a public beach, at least not in the Algarve. But this was 45 years ago.

Luz, especially out of season, was not especially exciting. So, you may well wonder what drew people like my mother and Jim Weaver to an uncharted, disconnected area of south-western Europe. The answer was all around you, in nature not in human company, and also in the allure of the seclusion itself. When the weather was clement, when the “toilet” (as Gerard christened the prolonged heavy rain) wasn’t flushing, it was gorgeous. Most winter days saw mild and sunny weather with scattered clouds, the air suffused with delicate scents of jacaranda and oleander. In the summer, the weather was milder than in the Mediterranean with welcoming sea breezes and cool nights.

The Algarve had almost no rain at all between May and October, so when it did come it was welcome. The “barragems” (reservoirs) would be empty by summer’s end. But for short winter stayers it was a nuisance. Sometimes the deluge would come without respite over a fortnight and if it coincided with your holiday, it was your bad luck. Damp was a major problem if you opened up an empty villa after prolonged downpours. But when would the rains come? “Quem sabe?” (Who knows?) Whenever it did, the locals would say “bom para favas” – “it’s good for the beans (to grow).”

When I was a child, I preferred the Algarve in summer, for obvious reasons. But, as I grew older, my favourite time was late winter when the almond blossom appeared, bathing the fields in pink. Sometimes the first blossom arrived as early as January, but peaked a month later. During cold, grey February days in London, I’d close my eyes and visualise it. Later, I grew to love the flowers of the region. Many years later, a week’s holiday in Albufeira (by then my mother had relocated east, to a larger resort in the Algarve) saved me from total nervous exhaustion.

Even back in Luz days, I realised that the longer the period spent in the Algarve’s clement climate, the harder re-entry into the UK would be. It wasn’t only the weather or the scenery, although the prospect of keeping winter at bay was enticing enough. It was also the relaxed pace of life and communion with nature. A riveting television drama series of the early 1970s called The Lotus Eaters related the exploits of British expats in Crete. The title comes from a saying to describe the lure of the Mediterranean. One of the characters says: “We’ve all eaten off the fruit of the lotus and lost the desire to return to our native lands.” This could also have applied to Brits in the Algarve. The Lotus Eaters, filmed in 1972, was considered innovative for its escapist premise. But my parents predated it by three years. They were the first lotus eaters.”