by Alan Laycock
“Hola,” he grunted, looking far less chirpy than his sidekick, although Arturo had assured me that he hadn’t touched a drop on the job, him being my eyes and ears on site unless I was there, in which case I’d use my own.
Cristóbal’s regular crew of four skilled builders trooped over and uttered muted greetings, after which we stood there on the tiled patio, looking expectantly down the drive.
At eight o’clock on the dot Cristóbal clapped his hands. “Right, bring in the gear and we’ll make a start.”
“What about the new blokes?” said Miguel, a cheerless man of forty and nothing at all like that other Miguel, Natalia’s ex-boyfriend, who still popped up in my dreams from time to time, though Natalia had assured her mother that he was now a mere footnote in history and no longer even worked at the university refectory.
“What about them? Do you want me to organise a little dance so that you can get to know them?”
“No, Cristóbal,” he muttered.
“I’ll lead the dance,” said Arturo, twirling around and twisting his hands in the air, before clapping and stamping his feet.
To my surprise, Cristóbal actually smiled, as did Diego, while the others looked on grimly, as Arturo hadn’t yet had the opportunity to work his magic on them.
Just then a noisy blue van trundled up the drive, juddered to a halt, and five men aged between about thirty and sixty piled out, stretching and yawning, before each pulled out a large rucksack or travel bag. Cristóbal strode over with me hot on his heels.
“Cristóbal?” the oldest and smallest man asked, the others all being strapping chaps.
He grunted and surveyed his imported team who were undoubtedly Spanish. As it was ten past eight I thought he might berate them, but he merely asked the man how their journey had been.
“Not bad. We set off at five, but we’re ready to go. I’m Rafael,” he said, offering his hand to Cristóbal.
After shaking he found mine poised, as I was keen to avail them of my key role right away.
“I’m Alan. I’m here on behalf of the owners.”
“Encantado, Alan,” said the bald, wiry chap who looked a bit like a more rugged version of Bernie.
“Where have you come from?”
“From Tomelloso and nearby, in Castilla-La Mancha.”
“Oh, right, that’s a long way from here.”
“About 250 kilometres by the fastest route,” he said in a clear, pleasant voice.
“Oh, will you drive there–”
“Right, enough chatter,” Cristóbal interrupted. “Come on, I’ll show you your rooms.”
“Rooms?” I said, but the rude blighter had already marched off, so I followed them into the house.
It transpired that the Manchegos, as they soon became known, were to stay at the house during the week, initially in two of the bedrooms which had survived Arturo and Diego’s sledgehammering. To my surprise I saw five tatty mattresses piled up in one of them and I murmured to Cristóbal that it had been thoughtful of him to provide them.
“They’ll need them after eleven or twelve hours’ work,” he muttered.
“Does, er, Malcolm know they’re staying here?”
He glared at me. “It’s nothing to do with him. While the work’s going on, this place is effectively mine,” he said, helpfully pointing at his formidable chest.
“All right.”
“What’s in that?”
I held up the document case. “Er, a notepad, and pens.”
“What for?”
“To make notes. I have to feedback to our employers, remember.”
He grunted. “The best thing you can do is stay out of our way.”
I raised myself to my full height of six foot one and glowered down, though I still felt somehow smaller than him. “Think yourself lucky that I didn’t oblige you to employ me on this job, from beginning to end,” I growled.
He prodded me lightly just under the ribcage. “I have a watertight con-tract, Alan, and you’re not mentioned in it, so behave yourself,” he said with a sneer.
It then occurred to me to make a joke which turned out unexpectedly well.
“Ha, before long I’ll be pulling the…er, building strings in this area, so you behave yourself, Cristóbal.”
Bernie’s talk of being enigmatic in the presence of his farming pals had inspired me to say that, and instead of laughing in my face, Cristóbal raised his eyebrows and pouted thoughtfully. He wasn’t one for pouting much, generally speaking, so I underlined my absurd point by slapping my case, clicking my tongue and heading purposefully for the door, before stomping from room to room, making copious and mainly meaningless notes. When I returned ten minutes later, casually displaying a page covered in aggressive handwriting, Rafael had moved into another room with his youngest colleague, who turned out to be his son, while the other three had laid down their mattresses in the first room and unloaded cooking equipment and other sundry items.
I heard Cristóbal barking instructions to his regular crew downstairs, so I asked Rafael and his son, a stocky chap called David (with the stress on the i) how they’d ended up working on this distant job.
“Oh, we often work away from home, usually on the coast,” said Rafael. “I don’t quite know how Cristóbal located me, but we’d just finished a big job in Benidorm, so I agreed to come here for six weeks.”
“Only six weeks?”
“Yes, that’s what he said. I think he intends to get all the main work done in that time, then let his boys finish things off.” He shrugged and smiled. “It suits me to have a definite end date, so that I can line something up for later, probably on the coast again.”
“I see. Do you never work close to home?”
“Oh, before the crisis we did for a few years, but I sensed that a slump was coming, so we still kept doing jobs on the coast from time to time.”
“And after the crisis?”
“Things were quiet, but we did better than most.”
“Papá has always kept us in work,” David said proudly.
“It must be hard to be away from home every week,” I said.
“Oh, one gets used to it,” said Rafael. “Often on the coast we’d only go home every other weekend.”
“Twelve days working twelve hours a day,” said his son. “A lot of work and a lot of money.”
“Is Cristóbal… is this contract to your satisfaction?”
“Yes, it’s fine. I told your friend our rates and he agreed,” said Rafael. He clapped and rubbed his rough hands together. “Only four days this week, then home for Reyes, so we’d better get started.”
“Yes, er… if there’s ever anything you’re not happy about, please have a word with me,” I said, fluttering my pad and gazing into his eyes enigmatically.
“Sure, Alan. Come on, son, let’s show these Alicantinos how to work.”
Left alone in the makeshift bedroom I gazed out of the window at the pool and the fields beyond and felt a spell of profound thinking coming on, so I pulled up a chair and sat down in order to allow the blood to reach my brain more easily. As I listened to the voices, thuds and scraping sounds below, I found myself smiling and stretching languorously. Having already seen Cristóbal’s crew at work I knew they were capable, hard-working men, and I felt sure that the Manchegos would be every bit as good as them. At that moment I had no doubts at all that the work would be finished by the end of April, if not before, as with twelve men going at it hammer and tongue for six weeks they’d get an awful lot done.
Cristóbal didn’t only give orders, you see, but also led by example on most jobs, so the nine, no, twelve-bedroom hotel would gradually take shape before my observant eyes and I’d be able to reassure Angela that her dream project was progressing smoothly. Malcolm would be pleased with my masterful management and who knew what the future might hold? Maybe they’d decide to build a house nearby and ask me to oversee proceedings, and as I looked out over my domain I imagined all sorts of edifices. A conservatory,
a greenhouse, a café and even a bandstand popped up all over the place, and Malcolm might also require his own golf course, and who better than I to find the location and even design the course, playfully placing bunkers here and there and creating picturesque ponds for him to chip his balls over?
The fact that I knew nothing at all about building or landscaping seemed irrelevant and I’d just decided to take a tour of the grounds with my trusty document case when I heard raised voices from below. I sighed, stood up, and endeavoured to maintain my dreamlike serenity as I descended the stairs, where I found Arturo and the biggest of the Manchegos apparently on the point of coming to blows in the lobby, while the others looked on. There was no sign of Cristóbal.
I approached with my document case enfolded in my arms and came to a halt at the spot where a boxing referee would have stood. Arturo had adopted a pugilistic stance, while the Manchego stood with his hands on his hips, possibly planning to swat away the much smaller man should he dare to unleash a blow. At that critical moment I found it expedient to imagine Bernie standing across from me, observing how I handled this tricky business.
“What’s going on?” I asked calmly.
“This big oaf is a racist swine,” Arturo whined without dropping his guard.
“It was a joke,” said the hefty, swarthy chap of about forty.
“He asked what a bloody gitanillo was doing on site, and though I’m not a gypsy, I might have been. Is that any way to behave in this day and age, Alan?”
“It was just a joke, man. With your hair and those rings I thought you must be one of us.”
“These rings come off when I start work and… what do you mean, one of us?”
The man chuckled gutturally and let his arms fall by his side. “I’m quarter gypsy and proud of it. I was just joking, I tell you.”
“Quarter gypsy?” Arturo said, scratching his temple with his fist.
“My grandmother, may she rest in peace. And you?”
“Half gypsy, my father.”
“Really?” said the referee.
“Yes, Alan. Look, with gypsies I’m a gypsy and with payos I’m a payo. (Payo is the word that gypsies use for everybody else.) It makes life easier. All right, man, you were joking,” he said, offering his hand, which the quarter gypsy shook.
“Where’s Cristóbal?” I asked.
“Gone to town for something,” said one of his men.
“Fortunately,” said another.
“As he doesn’t like gypsies,” said the first.
“What?” said the quarter gypsy.
“He thinks he doesn’t like gypsies,” said Arturo with a chuckle. “But I’m educating him. He’s all right really.”
“It might be best if we don’t mention this little… incident,” I said.
“I’m sure we’ll all get on fine,” said Rafael, who would probably have stepped in if I hadn’t appeared. “I only hope that you boys can keep up with us.”
“Ha,” said Diego. “We’ll show you Manchegos how to work.”
As almost every word I’d spoken that day seemed to have hit the spot, I ventured the following witticism.
“Ha, since I’ve lived here I’ve seen that Alicantinos are the laziest workers in the country, if not the world, so I’m sure you Manchegos will work much faster.”
With twelve local eyes glaring at me I pointed out that it was a joke.
“Pah, some joke,” said Diego, and on hearing the sound of wheels on gravel they all sprang into action, leaving me to rue my silly jest after so successfully diffusing that sticky situation.
As you’ll have already gathered, I do have a tendency to enter a fantasy world from time to time, but that slight clanger brought me back down to earth and I did go to tour the grounds, not to plan preposterous structures, but to stay out of the way and let them get on with it. A lorry soon arrived with a huge load of sand and a van brought dozens of bags of cement and other materials, but as this book isn’t a building or any other kind of manual I’ll be sparing you most of the details regarding the ins and outs of the construction work. Human interaction is what interests me, though by midday I’d seen that little enough of that appeared to be on the cards, as Cristóbal had the Manchegos and Alicantinos working in separate teams. Cristóbal’s squad, though good workers, were a dull lot on the whole, apart from Arturo, and the Manchegos seemed no more forthcoming, except Rafael, who usually had something to say when I passed by with my document case, unlike Cristóbal, who studiously ignored me until about one o’clock.
“I’m off for lunch now,” he said as he walked past with a pneumatic drill on his shoulder.
“Oh, I’d better come with you,” I said, having slipped no sandwiches into my handy case.
“Of course. If you’ve seen enough for today, I’ll drop you in town.”
“All right.”
As we sped along in the van I expressed my optimism regarding the timely outcome of the work.
“Of course, I told you I had everything under control.”
Liar, I thought, as he’d been panicking about not finding enough workers, and even feared having to employ nasty foreigners.
“How did you find the Manchegos?”
“Oh, through contacts. They have a good reputation, but aren’t cheap.”
“I hope they’ll be comfortable there.”
He shrugged. “They’re used to sleeping on site and they have plenty of room. They can use the kitchen until we start to renovate it, and there are plenty of chairs and things around the place.”
“They might be a bit cold,” I said, as night-time temperatures had already dipped below freezing a few times.
“I’ll take a couple of gas heaters after lunch. Don’t worry about them or anything else, Alan. The job is big but straightforward. You don’t even have to go if you have anything better to do.”
“I’ll go twice a week, as I told Angela I would.”
He shrugged. “As you wish. Oh, when you speak to her, ask her where they plan to live.” He released the wheel and rubbed his hands together. “I think a nice three-bedroom chalet with a private pool would be best, over to the right of the house, eh?”
“I’ll ask her.”
“Persuade her.”
“I’ll ask her.”
“Five percent for you, Alan.”
“We’ll see. They might have other plans.”
“I can see no alternative if she wishes to be near her hotelito.”
I sighed with relief when he slowed to 50kph in the urban zone, as he was a truly demonic driver.
“Drop me here. I’ll drive over on Friday morning.”
“OK. Speak to Angela and find out when they’re coming, and… you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
By the time Inma arrived home from the bar at seven I’d spoken to Angela and also bought a 1658 Oliver Cromwell silver shilling at the bargain price of £1,499, plus registered post to Spain.
“Isn’t that a lot of money for an old coin, Alan?”
“Not for this one. I’d have called to ask your permission to buy it, but it was such a bargain that I couldn’t risk losing it. It had only been on sale for a few hours and I know the seller and he must need to free up some cash, as the coin’s easily worth two thousand or more,” I babbled.
She chuckled and grasped my cheek between finger and thumb, something I think she’d seen Cathy do. “Ask my permission? Why, it’s your money?”
“Our money, and there’s too much of it in that cereal box.”
“Oh, I forgot about that. Which one is it? I threw one away yesterday.”
I made to dash to the larder, but remembered that I’d checked it that afternoon, again.
“I’m joking, silly, but I don’t feel comfortable with it in the house either. Why don’t you put it in the bank?”
My eyes opened wide. “But it’s black money, remember. They might ask me where it came from.”
She laughed in that endearing tinkly way of hers. “Oh, Alan, you
’re so funny sometimes.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. I mean, who’s to know where the money came from? You’re a foreigner, remember, and twenty thousand isn’t so much.”
“Nearer nineteen now, as I’ve… withdrawn some money.”
“Put most of it in the bank soon, cariño. What did Angela have to say?”
As I poured the tea I told her that I’d reassured my boss that the building team was top notch and that I had every confidence in them.
“And have you?”
“Yes, I think so. I’d expected Cristóbal to pick up stray workers from here and there, but the Manchego boys are a tried and tested squad who’ve done many bigger jobs than this one.”
“What did she say about the new plans?”
“Hmm, it seems that was a snap decision of Malcolm’s. He suddenly realised that he wouldn’t want to be so near to the guests, so he had his architect come round on Sunday evening and modify the plans. I asked her where they planned to stay when they come over and she told me that Malcolm had come up with an idea, but wouldn’t tell her what it was.”
“That’s strange.”
“Apparently he likes to surprise her from time to time, normally with jewels and things, so she’s sure it’ll be something good.”
“So there’ll be no new house for Cristóbal to build?”
“It appears not. Not yet, anyway, and I didn’t like to pry.”
“Did you ask her when they’re coming out?”
“Yes, but she wasn’t sure. That’s also part of Malcolm’s surprise, it seems, and I think he also wants to surprise me and Cristóbal, so I don’t know when they’ll come.”
“Malcolm seems to be full of surprises.”
I intertwined my fingers and stretched my arms in the air. “Yes, and whenever he comes he’s going to be surprised by how much work has been done. With a dozen men under Cristóbal’s command they’ll transform that place in no time.” I sipped my tea and sighed contentedly. “Ah, I really do think this building business is going to go more smoothly than I imagined. I’ll call round twice a week, but I’d better start thinking about doing something else too.”
Inma looked at the ceiling, so I did too.