by A Long Walk in the High Hills- The Story of a House, a Dog
I’ve decided to start in Port d’Andratx, which is a mecca for yachties, men who spend hours mending and tending their boats hoisted high on platforms in the harbour. If there’s any place where I can find someone who knows about engines then this is it. The port has a unkemptness to it still, a sprawling reed bed filled with wildlife stretches from the sea towards the hills which descend as steep and treacherous cliffs. It is all very beautiful.
This morning the fishing fleet has landed and their catch off-loaded so there is much breakfast merriment in the café close to the harbour. English holidaymakers are arriving in small groups off buses, strolling along the shore as I head to the Café Consignia for coffee and fresh orange to plot my next move.
There’s a local paper left on one of the tables which has a story about Claudia Schiffer having problems with a photographer in the port. I think I’ve seen him on his rounds. He rides a scooter, has a pock-marked face, lumpy nose, thick glasses and curls anchored under a baseball hat. Very fetching. He puts on a show of pretending he’s not looking for a photo opportunity but either he or one of his mates managed to climb a high wall to grab pictures of Claudia, topless, in her parents’ swimming pool and Claudia’s now complaining that a lucrative advertising contract is under threat because she has been seen semi-naked in magazines round the world. I feel sorry for Claudia, it’s gut-wrenching to have snatched photographs taken in private moments, but I’m not in the mood to dwell too much on her plight, feeling lucky that somehow I’ve managed to dodge whatever press interest there might be in me by decamping to a rough house up a rough track where I can happily do simple things without being watched. It is a real joy and one I don’t want to ever have to think too hard about.
A loud voice interrupts my thoughts. ‘Hello, what are you doing here?’
I’m about to pretend it’s not me when, ‘Selina, it’s Joe’ breaks through. It’s an Irish friend of mine who I haven’t seen for years, pulling up a chair. Joe is a musician who spends most of his time touring Europe, so I shouldn’t be totally surprised to see him in Mallorca, but to run into him in the port is quite a coincidence because one of Joe’s great loves in life, apart from music, is engines. He couldn’t have turned up at a better time.
Having got a willing Joe on the track of a generator, I am able to return to the house to check on Boris and his boys, stopping to talk for a few minutes with Kendi, who cocks her head from one side to the other as I tell her how lovely she is and how clever. I so want her off the chain, walking with me, and I know she craves the same but there are moments like this when I can’t see how it’ll ever happen. It’s hard not to feel despondent as I leave her behind, cramped and chained.
‘What’s a bar of soap doing on the kitchen floor?’ I ask of Boris who’s up a ladder hacking away with a hammer and chisel. The soap has got me momentarily foxed. When I bend to pick it up I can see what look like teeth marks etched into its softness and it dawns on me that far from rats ‘never ever coming in the house’ they are already firmly in residence, making themselves completely at home with my lemons and my soap.
‘Boris!’ I yell.
Boris, who’d been expecting a warm buenos días from me, trips down the ladder. ‘What’s this?’ I shove the soap at him. Boris forces a wan smile and says what I need is a cat to come and live with me.
The hunt for the rats goes on for an hour before the pantry is universally declared their hidey-hole even though there isn’t any sight of them and no one can figure out how they’re getting in. The cracks in the bathroom wall are deemed too narrow for a big almond rat to squeeze through so I am left on my own in the house, on guard.
In the meantime Joe has done a great job. He’s found a monster of a generator – nearly new – at a boatyard in the port which he’s having delivered on the back of a big truck. There are smiles all round as the bright red machine is winched off and wheeled into my sitting room for safety. Now we have to find it a home of its own, so Boris diverts his men off the stonework to begin a new project: restructuring the dunny ready for its new inhabitant.
‘You know, when you see pictures of life in remote villages in India,’ Joe muses, while Boris and his gang get into gear, ‘there’s always a light bulb hanging up there.’
He has a point. Poor countries in the Third World have electricity, so why not a country home in Spain, a burgeoning and soon to be member of the new European single market? I know that the state-owned electricity company Gesa, with its total monopoly of the market, has no interest in houses like mine. It has to keep power surging through under-ocean electricity lines or so it tells us. More likely it has no time for houses owned by foreigners. An attitude that takes some getting used to.
Joe says he has to be going, he’s only come to Mallorca for a few days before a concert tour of Germany but he’ll keep in touch and hope I manage with my new toy. I thank him profusely and go straight back to initiate another major search of the house for my elusive almond rats.
Later that day after Boris has gone and the peace of a sunny evening descends, great sobs ricochet through the air. At first I can’t make out where they’re coming from but a moment later Emmy Lou turns up, tears tumbling. I haven’t seen her since we drilled for water but something must be terribly wrong for her to be like this. ‘What is it, Emmy Lou?’ All she says is she ‘had to do it’, her shoulders heaving with the effort. This is beginning to sound bad so I find a chair and a glass of wine and try and calm her but she is inconsolable.
Eventually, as the light dips she tells me in a muffled voice she has had a terrible decision to make: she has had to kill the cats. She says it’s all her fault. ‘I shouldn’t have brought food up from the village but I can’t just leave them all to starve.’
It transpires Emmy Lou has to go to the States for a few months and she has been beside herself over what to do with the cats she has encouraged into the valley. Her anguish has coincided with the arrival of two young German vets on the island who are planning to humanely destroy dozens of poor creatures who’ll be left with nothing to eat when the cafés close for the winter in San Telm, so Emmy Lou had asked if they would come and do the same to her cats here.
‘No one understands,’ Emmy Lou sobs. ‘Carter is calling me a murderer and now I don’t know where Tiddles is. She ran away when all this started.’
I feel desperate for her and tell her it’s the kindest thing she could have done and that I’m sure Tiddles will return, but of course it’s all so horrendous for Emmy Lou and for me, too, for that matter. What an awful end to another lovely day.
three
A whistle pierces the morning haze. My film crew, who until then have been desultorily chatting to one another, suddenly jump. We have been waiting in the courtyard of the Alcazar Palace in Seville for His Majesty King Juan Carlos of Spain to begin his tour of the city and the heat is building.
Security guards ease out of the shadows, chauffeurs in wrap-around sunglasses nervously tug at the doors of their black limousines, as another whistle and ‘Selina!’ lobs sexily through the stillness, down from an ornate balcony on high. Juan Carlos is waving. My cameraman, dashing Steve from Birmingham, thinks the King is calling him so grins and waves back, missing the moment, of course, to capture on camera this most informal of monarchs at his most mischievous.
It had been quite a challenge to get Juan Carlos and his Spanish advisors to agree to the documentary Spaniards are not encouraged to get up close and personal with their King especially on TV. The old guard at the Zarzuela Palace in Madrid made sure the royal mystique, if that’s what it can be called, dripped on its loyal subjects only at chosen moments. This was still a young monarchy in a new and potentially volatile democracy. The dictator, Francisco Franco, who died in 1975, had picked Juan Carlos to succeed him. Rocketed out of exile, Juan Carlos helped propel Spain, once considered Europe’s Third World backwater, to prosperity. Integration into the European single market and ten years of stable socialist government under Felipe Gonzales
had culminated, in 1992, in what promised to be a spectacular year for the country.
The bold gamble of staging both the Olympic Games in Barcelona and the Expo in Seville in the one year had sparked the world’s interest. How better, I gamely thought, to celebrate this Year of Spain than to ask if I might make a filmed profile of its popular King?
It helped that I had a pad in Mallorca. At least I was able to gauge, in a tiny way, the energy and enthusiasm coursing through the country. ITV back in the UK wasn’t so fired. Letters went back and forth, me trying to persuade them that this would be a project with ratings assured, but TV execs appeared to be more interested in the football fixtures of the year than a film about some European royals. ‘Who is this Prince of Spain anyway?’ asked a commissioning editor in the middle of a particularly fraught meeting. Er, actually he’s a king, not a prince, I spluttered.
Things were not going too well at the other end either. I had fixed up a meeting with the elderly men gate-keeping the King’s office in Madrid. Zarzuela Palace, the surprisingly modern home of Juan Carlos, his wife Queen Sofia and their three children, is on the outskirts of the city, situated in the middle of a deer park parched with the Spanish sun. At the Zarzuela, I was greeted courteously but with as much enthusiasm as I’d encountered in London. The Spanish Court was not for budging. It didn’t want the King to take part even though, I tried to reassure them, this would not be for domestic consumption. The King and his family would only be seen talking to me in English. I was shown, politely, the big brass-hinged door.
I got an unexpected breakthrough a few weeks later. There had apparently been a lot of discussion about my idea and many younger officials in the Palace were pressing for change. They wanted to see their King portrayed across Europe as a forward and modern monarch, at home with his people. I was summoned back to the Zarzuela, this time to meet Juan Carlos to see if we might agree terms. The room was richly furnished in mahogany and perfumed with Havana’s best. King Juan Carlos, with loafered feet, leaned back in a high wing chair as I outlined the plot to his advisors and where I hoped we would film: Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Extramadura and Mallorca. Finally, Juan Carlos, carefully mouthing cigar smoke towards the frescoed ceiling, said, yes, he would do this, on condition we spoke only in English and didn’t mention Franco.
With the King on board, it was now vital ITV gave its backing. We had exclusive access; we would be the only film crew out of 10,000 journalists covering the Olympics to be allowed to accompany the royal party. Still, there was procrastination.
A deal was eventually struck with Grampian, one of the smaller companies in the ITV firmament which had been promised nationwide airtime on the network. As no one thought the film (‘foreign’!) would get decent ratings, Grampian, being Scottish, went on a desperate trawl for a partner, a company that would help shoulder the financial burden, and came up with a new player on the media scene in Spain, a French cable company, who were looking to make a splash.
Our new partner was informed the King wouldn’t, under any circumstances, speak Spanish on camera, that the UK had the first airing of the film and as executive producer, I was in charge. It meant I picked up another crew, an extra cameraman and assistant, Alberto and Paloma, along with a producer Nacho, who would be a godsend with translation and getting things done. They got second use of the film, subtitled, to play on cable – all sides happy at the outcome.
Through all the negotiations I was keen to make my off-the-beaten-track Mallorca a centrepiece of the movie, hoping that in appealing to an international audience there might still be time to protect the unspoiled island from overzealous developers already lining up to destroy it.
We began filming at the King’s home in Madrid, where it soon became evident that here was someone ready to throw himself into the spirit of movie-making from the off. Anything we asked Juan Carlos to do, he did with enthusiasm, although at quite a pace, which is why I got caught out with him and his Harley Davidson.
We had heard that the King would often take off on his motorbike round the streets of Madrid, wearing a black crash helmet. There were numerous stories of how he’d stopped to offer his unsuspecting subjects a lift, or a helping hand. It was Juan Carlos’s way of getting to know his country incognito. Eventually, of course, he’d lift his helmet and be recognised but the message was out: here was a young king, in touch with his people, raring to go.
Would his Majesty mind if we filmed him getting on his bike, riding off into the distance for one of our sequences? No problem. He waved to one of the royal mechanics to bring on the royal bike and a gleaming Harley was wheeled into shot. The King mounted it and turned the key to start the machine. Nothing happened. The camera was rolling and, knowing I might lose this opportunity if we didn’t get the thing moving, I stepped forward and pointing to the choke, suggested, ‘Sir, why not give it some gas?’ Juan Carlos obliged and to my amazement, and his, the machine powered up, and roared off.
When the King on his bike came back into view I had already decided this might not look so clever on camera, me showing him, a monarch, how to start a motorbike. Would his Majesty like to do the sequence again? No, no, he was absolutely positive, we had so many other things to do. Which was why, when the film finally aired, I got it in the neck from Spanish commentators who universally agreed I had portrayed their macho king as a bit of a fool. After all, every Spanish male knows how to start a motorbike, don’t they?
After the motorbike came the helicopter. King Juan Carlos is also a helicopter pilot and wanted to fly us to a tiny hilltop monastery, where his grandfather Alfonso XIII sought refuge and solace after abdicating. It would be interesting, I thought, for us to talk to him about his family, the Bourbon kings, at this remote sanctuary.
Unfortunately we did the trip at such a gallop – and once at the monastery couldn’t talk through the clatter of the blades of the helicopter – that my cameramen, despairing, never did capture a ‘clean’ shot, that is, a beginning, a middle and an end sequence that would allow the film editor back at base to cut and thread the pictures together. All we had which was in any way useable was a dramatic shot of Juan Carlos practically crash-landing the machine back in Madrid, in an avalanche of dust.
I blamed myself for not insisting the King slowed down, but in those early days of filming I wasn’t quite sure what his reaction would be. He was obviously used to taking charge and impatient but the Spanish critics didn’t cut me any slack on this either. How dare I portray their King as an incompetent at the controls of his helicopter?
I had a feeling these very human qualities of the King would go down well in the UK, which they did, but when the Spanish got their hands on my film (something I had not foreseen) well, then it was a different matter. Let’s just say the British sense of humour in those days was not the same as the Spanish. In any case, the expensive and wasted day trip to the monastery focused me. I took the King aside and explained the difficulties we faced and from then on, having learned fast, Juan Carlos geared down. In the filming that followed the King instinctively knew when the camera was on him and how long we needed him to hold the shot. He suddenly turned completely professional.
Our great and unspoken difficulty was a man who had been dead seventeen years. Francisco Franco had the blood of millions of Spanish families on his hands. The last thing Juan Carlos wanted was to reopen the devastating wounds of the Civil War by discussing his relationship with Franco on TV, a man who had guided the young King’s military education in order that he should succeed him as head of state.
Although no one spoke much about these things openly in Spain, tensions weren’t far from the surface. Shots were fired in the Spanish parliament, the Cortes, only eleven years earlier while Juan Carlos was playing a game of squash. His decisiveness in appearing on national television to assert his authority was widely credited with defusing the attempted military coup.
In fact, Juan Carlos had scarcely put a foot wrong since becoming monarch on Franco’s death. Within
three years he had overturned virtually everything Franco stood for and certainly over the past decade Spain had become the success story of Europe. It was obviously difficult for older Spanish commentators to have to watch the person who, they believed, had saved their democracy portrayed on TV in such a natural and, in their minds, disrespectful way. A mass ITV audience, on the other hand, wasn’t into history lessons, wanting instead dollops of personality, glamour and action from a king whose country many had holidayed in. Which is what had also appealed to Juan Carlos. He would later tell me, ‘We had this reputation as a country where everything could wait until tomorrow, the “manana” effect. Of course it was a myth, but the only way to prove that was to show the world how efficient we could be.’
I managed to get back to Mallorca, once our first tranche of filming was finished in Madrid, to check on my own efficient team of workmen. Unbelievably, my house had been transformed. Boris had turned out to be quite a craftsman with stone, making the miserable-looking dunny into a rustic work of art. The new generator, wired up, ready to go, sat smack in the middle of it, but all work had come to a stop, I was proudly informed, when Mario one morning spotted an almond rat reclining on my sofa, and they had all gone to find out how it got in, to finally solve the mystery.
The pipes behind the water tank held aloft on the platform in my bedroom had been its point of entry. Johnny had not cemented round the pipes when the tank was installed so there was a big hole exiting on to the roof. All the rats had to do was abseil down and, yippee, they were in. Mario had personally seen to it that there were no more rodents lurking in dark corners and the inside of my home was now, he could definitely guarantee, a rat-free zone.