A Long Walk in the High Hills
Page 17
Whenever there was a lull in the proceedings, I’d sneak on to the usually empty upper deck for a quick kip but my cover was blown spectacularly one hot afternoon when the Greek air force came calling. I heard the roar as I lay, eyes closed on the sunbed. By the time I’d raised myself a monster was upon me, a great, thundering machine that rocked and buffeted the boat. It had apparently come to menace and signal our position to two warships gathering on the horizon. As the plane came back for a second swoop, Princess Alexia, the King’s oldest daughter, poked her head up through the hatch shouting at me to lie flat. Just in time, the plane had circled and come back for more, bearing down, but this time also wiggling its wings as it made its pass. If this was weird it got weirder.
Torpedo boats then appeared, forcing us to change course, pushing us towards the shore. The sight of all this gunmetal grey in a clear blue sea was beginning to be a bit unnerving. I couldn’t understand why the Greek government had to deploy its armed might to get Constantine off its back. By the time we anchored for the evening in a bay off one of the small islands, the situation was becoming bothersome. In something 007 would have relished, frogmen swam under our boat in the black of night in an attempt to cut off our radio communication.
Unfortunately, they didn’t quite manage it. Next morning the ship-to-shore radio went berserk with demands from every television news channel and newspaper across the globe wanting a stake in this Greek farce. It fell to me to field the press as best I could, although it put me once again in the firing line. ITN were first with their request for an exclusive. Sorry, you had your chance. ITV were offered the story but turned it down. It didn’t put ITN off or the rest of the international news media, which now flew in to track us down.
It was a great gig for them, of course, commandeering helicopters and fast boats in a lovely summer to race through the tranquil Greek isles in an attempt to be first to catch Constantine before the Greek military got to him. All this meant I now had a pile of extra work to do, which in practice meant nightly news feeds to Sky in London, who had joined forces with Fox TV in America and bought up the rights to all this from a dodgy radio link on a rickety boat. My documentary, which I’d hoped could be carefully crafted in calm waters, had to wait as headlines and brinkmanship seized the hour.
No one won that summer. Constantine finished his cruise but the government nursed its wrath, storing enmity to use against the Royals later. All I know is that when I boarded the plane at Thessaloniki after what should have been a restful and idyllic Greek odyssey, I was mightily looking forward to being in Mallorca again.
This is the problem, I’ve decided. Just as I begin to think of saying my farewells to the island, something happens to ensnare me again. We’ve stumbled down a rock-strewn hillside to reach the sea and find solitude, just me and Kendi. It’s a long tramp to this place but after Greece all I want is to close my eyes and listen to the waves. Here I can lay out on a rock and sunbathe, diving off into the cool ocean when it gets too hot knowing no one else will disturb my swim in this isolated cove and knowing, too, a mammoth jet isn’t about to belly-flop us. Moments like this make it difficult to contemplate leaving.
Kendi’s funny, she’s still queasy with water. She’s not sure if she should bark at it to clear off or press her wet and clammy body against me in the hope I’ll protect her. The sea is deep and clear and further out where rocks give way to sand all around becomes suddenly emerald, crystal and sparkly All my expensive bikinis bought for Greece are finally being put to good use although no one except me and my dog gets to appreciate them. We stay in this place until the sun starts flaming and dropping behind the island of Dragonera, tired finally with so much swimming, but reaching the path high on the cliff again is tricky in the twilight. The boulders seem so much more slippery and a bit treacherous but with a few firm handholds and a lot of pushing Kendi uphill from behind we eventually make it to the top as darkness descends and a moon rises. It is easy now, through the pinewoods lit like this by quiet light. As Kendi and I walk the five miles back, tripping occasionally on the rocks in the road, it occurs to me we haven’t seen anyone all day.
I had expected on my return from Greece to find my house open to the heavens but instead Ignacio has done as he promised. I have a beauty of a roof with old tiles mixed in with new and, even better, layers of insulation, protection between me and the hot night sky. At bedtime there is a huge difference, a coolness under the eaves which transforms my sleep and a sweetness knowing that all holes have been filled and there will be no more night-time visitations from inquisitive little birds or worse. The promise being realised in the house after all my effort is another ensnarement. To see an old house come alive like this is exciting. It’s like an oil painting I’ve nearly completed, for my eyes only, to be secretly thrilled about. As long as no one comes along to ruin it.
After such a triumph with the roof, I begin to think the making of a pool might be a cinch after all. When Ignacio shows up looking pleased with himself I tell him how impressed I am with his work and ask him when we can start on the pool. He says he has given this a lot of thought and has managed to procure the very best person on the island, an expert in construction, who will build a work of art. He will bring him up to the house tomorrow.
At nine the next morning Boris’s Carlos arrives on his motorbike and hangs around, lurking behind a bush on the road. I can’t quite work out this odd behaviour but Ignacio soon bowls up and Carlos and he walk round to the ‘backside’, the back of my house, to discuss the pool. When I join them Carlos is introduced to me as the person who is going to be in charge of the work. So this is Ignacio’s so-called expert. Carlos blushes, twisting his cap between his fingers. ‘Ignacio,’ I whisper, as I haul him away from Carlos, ‘this is the guy who built these walls that are falling down and you’re telling me he’s an expert?’ Ignacio tells me not to worry goes over to Carlos and the two go into a huddle.
After it’s over and Carlos manages a smile, Ignacio says it’s all okay he’s sorted the problem. ‘What do you mean, it’s okay? What did you say to him?’ I feel heated.
‘Oh, I asked Carlos if he was really the person who built all this crap,’ gesturing with his open arms, encompassing the whole site.
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said Boris thought you did not want to go to all the expense so he cut back and economised on the foundations.’
I cannot find the words in Spanish to convey I’m about to go ballistic, but Ignacio is ahead of me. ‘I have brought you the presupuesto,’ he says in a mollifying voice and shoves an envelope into my fist. ‘Now you’ve had this very bad experience,’ he soothes, ‘you’ll want to pay for only the best.’
It takes me at least a day and a half to not go on the hunt for Boris but after telling myself I should be ‘mucha calma’ over something I can’t do anything about I begin bit by bit to unwind again, although this time, I promise myself, I am definitely not going to let Carlos or any of them out of my sight, when they start excavating the hole for the pool.
Mateo, one of the trio of old men who frequent Sancho’s, is sitting in a chair in the small balcony over the village restaurant, its long green shutters thrown wide to catch whatever air there is. This must be where he lives. I’m reading a newspaper and I can see him clearly. The morning is still and already hot and here’s this old man at his open window on a kitchen chair, his head cradled in his hands. Every now and then Mateo lifts himself and props his head on an arm as if it’s all too exhausting. He has on a vest and is plainly distressed. It has been an unbearable night, humid and close, and as Mateo’s in his eighties and obviously not too well, he must have battled to get through it. I’m not quite sure what I can do but after a while, just as I am about to see if Sancho might go over and help, the old man notices me. In an unhurried moment he lifts his hand, hardly an acknowledgement, and smiles. He stays seated at the window as I finish a coffee and wave goodbye.
Later that morning at around eleven a gathe
ring of men huddling in small groups appears in the square, their hands in their pockets, talking quietly with one another but even so a hum sets up which becomes louder as more and more arrive. I think there has been some effort to put on best clothes. The carpenter is here with his impressive black moustache and his two sons, also in the square are the baker and the garage mechanic; all the tradespeople have gathered. In the ten minutes it takes for the church clock to strike twenty-two times every street is full. Everyone is waiting for something.
From the house with the bright red shutters, a coffin emerges followed by a line of family members. It takes them no time to enter the church or for the crowd to just as quickly process in behind.
So the dapper little man who loved his art deco house is dead. It happened, I understand, quickly and unexpectedly. He’d been pestering the local council the week before to get them to close off the side street overlooking his garden so that it might be protected from youngsters throwing rubbish. It obviously won’t happen now.
Soon, the short church service is over and the crowd is out again. By a quarter to twelve it’s almost as if the funeral has never happened. Everyone has gone, except for the old man. Mateo is still there, watching from the balcony.
Through the year the village keeps a gentle pace, its pulse only quickened by its life-enhancing fiestas. On saints’ days and religious holidays and days when big fights from long past are remembered, local people lay out the bunting. I can never keep up with the fiestas in the year, although early warnings always arrive on the back of a truck. A hoist with a man in a bucket goes down each side of the main street, threading paper chains in and out of balconies and back across the road. The place is strewn, ready. A week later the party begins, music and feasts cooked in barrels split in half and filled with fire feed everyone for just a few pesetas. It all takes place in the square under the plane trees and has a set pattern. The children come first in the early evening, then as they go to bed tired and excited, the band changes gear and the grown-ups get to make a ton of noise into the early hours.
As if village folk don’t have enough fiestas of their own to organise they also take on some in San Telm. In high summer, the ladies of the village deploy their skills on the harbourside where they lay on one of the most evocative banquets of the year. Held as the sun sets over Dragonera, long trestles are laid with paellas which have been bubbling on barbecues on the beach. Those lucky enough to have bagged a space on a bench on a hot night like this are in for a treat. Over paper cups of wine shared with merry strangers, this has to be one of the best.
It was during the summer fiesta season I realised I was being cased. Whenever I turned up on the island, there’d be the inevitable roar of a motorbike racing past my house at all hours and then just as quickly hurtling back. My comings and goings were watched and photos snatched. It really didn’t matter who I was with or what I was doing, the inevitable photo would appear in the English newspapers in the Andratx papeleria a couple of days later. As regular as swallows descending in summer, the press religiously checked out my status. It got so that anything would do. Like the unremarkable photo that appeared in a national paper of me reading a book laid out on the sand. Going to the beach started to become a hazard, instinctively feeling a camera was on me and finding, later, it was. The press got brazen, once chasing me along the bay, shoving a camera in my face because they felt like it, upsetting me with their thoughtlessness. I was what they called a celebrity and in Mallorca, with no legal protection, I was therefore up for grabs. Car chases through the backstreets of Andratx, things turning nasty when cornered up dead ends, strange people listening in to conversations over dinner in restaurants, made me more protective than ever of whatever private space I could find on the island. Gunther becoming a gaucho didn’t help. I met him and the local vet as I am heading off to Palma for dinner, trotting up the track towards me. He is astride a black stallion and so is the vet. At first I don’t realise it was Gunther. He looks like an Argentinean horse rustler with his black cape, black hat and black boots. All he lacked is a mask and he could well be Zorro too. The horses rear at the sight of the headlights and as I edge past, the rider theatrically throws back his cape and careers off, cantering up the hill into the dusty blackness. I know then it had to be Gunther.
Gunther didn’t last long as a gaucho. I don’t know why. He spent a few months trekking into the mountains and then lost interest. The two horses are now free to graze wherever they wish and have ended up invading my privacy by blockading my back gate.
Every time I want to go out or come in I have to bribe them. Usually with an ensaimada. They aren’t the kind of horses you take liberties with either. They’re wild. They’ll charge down the road, necks outstretched, teeth bared, if they see someone new on their patch. They are handy with their back legs too, lashing out with big kicks and flying manes. I can easily leap the back gate now. They’ve got me trained. I have to have a regular supply of ensaimadas in my pocket because without them negotiation is never an option.
As with all opportunists they’re not content to barricade my gate but want into my garden as well. They’re good in that they don’t come on the patio to eat the flowers in my pots but they’re set on polishing off my trees. Whenever I catch them out they canter over a piece of pig wire just behind my house, clearing it easily.
So I now need to raise and strengthen it. I choose a day when they’re not around and spend hours hammering stakes and tying wire. The moment I finish they reappear, taking my fence in a single stride. So now I’m cursing and shouting and off they go, back through the pig wire but one of them catches his back leg and in a panic uproots my newly repaired fence. I’m now in a rugby tackle with a horse. I have a hoof under my arm trying to free it from the wire as he takes me and the fence, bucking and kicking, into next-door’s olive grove. Somehow I manage to regain my balance and mercifully, just as the hoof comes round with another wallop, he breaks free and thunders up the valley.
After this encounter their manners improve. They treat me with a kind of horsey respect and allow me through the back gate even if I have forgotten their payola but their generosity doesn’t extend to everyone. The horses block the way, whinnying if anyone else turns up. When Ignacio and his men arrive to start the pool I try to tell them to be on guard. I think they think I’m bonkers. Only when they’ve had their oranges nicked and bread thieved do they come to their own uneasy accommodation with the horses, which mainly consists of swearing ferociously at them.
The horses finally do a bunk when the JCB arrives to dig the pool and I suddenly miss their clip-clopping up and down the road, stopping to snort over my garden gate at night. It used to give me the creeps, but with these two loose on the range I never had to worry about unwelcome intruders.
While the stallions stay away Carlos makes headway. He comes and goes on his motorbike and works with wire and cement so thick nothing should shift afterwards. As I can’t stay and supervise for ever I’ve persuaded my father, who takes an interest in these kind of things, to come and house-sit. He and Pepe get on well. When Pepe encounters my father, under a panama hat reclining on an old wicker chair watching the work progressing on the pool, he asks where is Senorita Selina. I like the Senorita bit. My father tells him, ‘El Capitan, she no aqui.’ The boss, she’s not here. Pepe takes a moment to consider this and comes to the reasonable conclusion my father can be trusted with ‘Senorita Selina, she loco, no?’
There’s a lot of activity at the house with the red shutters in the village. It has only been a few weeks since the dapper little man died but his garden has been ripped up and a skip has appeared. The builders have moved in and are lifting stuff out by the sackful. When I go and investigate, along with old doors and a pile of rubble a whole life has also been dumped. A large black-and-white photograph of a family – a mother, father and child posing in their Sunday best – has survived, its fall cushioned by a bag of sand. The photo is in an ornate oval gilt frame with a lover’s knot, it must
have been taken in the 1950s, and although the photo is faded, I’m certain the father in the frame is the man who has just died. Dozens more photos lie wasted in the skip along with suitcases, chairs and a painted wooden tea caddy with ‘Te’ written floridly across the lid, which lifts to reveal tea leaves still inside. There is a porcelain doll and a child’s picture book that has pinned on each page a neatly folded linen hanky telling the story in Spanish of a roguish wolf who sneaks in to steal sheep. The wolf on the front cover of El Lobo y las Ovejas is wearing an emerald green shirt and yellow trousers with a bright red bandanna round his neck. He’s running off with a poor little lamb in a pink spotty frock under his arm. The book I notice has hardly been touched, its pages never turned, because the hankies are still unused.
Soon the ornate garden and its vivid mosaics will be uprooted along with the fountain and the oranges and lemon trees and replaced with modern tiling. The dapper little man’s daughters look as though a burden has gone.
While all this is happening José gets out of a taxi. José is one of the three old men who used to frequent Sancho’s. I haven’t seen him for a while and here he is, having come all the way from Palma. He tells the driver to wait and goes into the bar. Sancho, who’s watching a cop show on TV, throws his arms round him, oh so pleased he’s back. José is now in an old people’s home in Palma, because apparently he’d been found wandering, dazed, in the village late at night. For a few minutes these two old friends talk and laugh and then José quickly says he has to go, the taxi’s waiting. Sancho hurries over to his sweety jar and returns, emptying its contents into José’s hands. ‘Take these, take some more,’ implores Sancho.