A Long Walk in the High Hills
Page 18
José gives Sancho his loveliest smile, thanks him for the sweets and after another hug climbs into the taxi and leaves. Sancho’s lower lip begins to tremble as he starts to weep. ‘You’ll see him again, Sancho,’ comforts someone nearby.
‘No,’ says Sancho, ‘I will never see José again.’
nine
The Saharan wind is picking up speed, it’s brought down JL the ripe pomegranates hanging at the top of the tree and there’s a thickness to the air. I’m sheltering inside, having a rummage because the animal sanctuary needs to raise money for a new refuge and someone will be arriving shortly to collect. Isobel turns up soon, a softly spoken Scot, the last person I’d expect to see running a rescue centre. She’s got on a pretty, flower-sprigged frock, her pale skin protected by a straw hat and although she’s driving a chunky truck appears fragile. She is, however, brisk. She can’t stay long as she has other stuff to pick up but wants to know if I’ll come and meet the helpers on their bring-and-buy stall this Saturday. ‘Och, do come,’ she says, ‘we’re easy to find. Follow the signs to the Magalluf car boot.’ She eyes a pair of crocodile cowboy boots I seem to have acquired from somewhere and dropped in the pile for her to sell.
‘I’ll definitely try,’ I promise as she hurtles off stirring up the dust behind her.
Magalluf is a bit of a nightmare. The car boot is held every Saturday on the outskirts of the resort but after driving three times round the ring road I have to cave in and ask for directions in a café down a side street. A helpful waiter produces a map, turning it upside down before pointing to the place I’m supposed to be heading except I still can’t quite get my bearings and my expression must give me away. Like Manuel in Fawlty Towers, he throws the map aside and deprecatingly, concedes, ‘Señora, you know nothing – eh.’
Eventually the crowds trooping in the heat lead me to the spot. It’s packed with stalls and for a moment I feel like bottling it but Kendi’s spotted a docile Labrador basking in the sun and I can see the crocodile boots from here. There’s a lot of activity around the stand as Isobel’s team of helpers, mainly women along with an odd fellow or two who’ve been roped in to help lift things, do brisk business. In the melee I manage to buy a piece of blackened old wood carved with angels which looks vaguely ecclesiastical and set off to walk back to the car when one of the helpers calls after me, asking if I’ll come to a meeting of the Santa Ponsa Ladies’ Club the following Saturday night. As I can’t think of a good excuse why not, I say I will.
By the time next Saturday comes round I’m not feeling like heading to Santa Ponsa. It means I have to put Kendi back in her kennel earlier than normal and I’m concerned because the tips of her ears are reddened and sore and she yelps if I inadvertently touch them. It will mean a trip to the vet on Monday, but I said I’d go to the do, so go I will.
Santa Ponsa is situated on the coast. It has a fine sandy beach but layer upon layer of apartments and hotels have obliterated the natural beauty of the bay. The Santa Ponsa Ladies meet at a country club on the edge of a pine forest, on the eastern outskirts of the town, a private members’ affair with gyms and beauty salons, tennis and golf where they get down and dirty to cajole enough cash out of their supporters to fuel their refuge.
I manage to park my muddy four-wheeler behind a well-placed bougainvillea in the car park and ditch my dirty espadrilles for a pair of kitten heels just as the ladies arrive, carefully manoeuvring their expensive motors into the reserved members-only spaces close to the main entrance. Just inside the front door is an illuminated fountain, which drops a shimmering cascade of water over a bed of pebbles. There’s Muzak piping and a marble black-and-white tiled floor which leads to a large reception room where everyone’s in such full animated chirp already, clutching their pina coladas and whisky sours, no one notices me.
It means I can do a full recce of the room and decide my next move. There’s a lot of white and lemon frocks and bronzed arms and legs topped off with big jewellery and strappy gold stilettos. These are high-maintenance women, nipped and tucked, all pretty formidable. I get the feeling this must be one of their regular get-togethers, an excuse to come, check on progress and chivvy each other along, because I’ve happily decided I’m definitely superfluous to these proceedings.
Once they’ve done the social niceties it’s down to business. Tables have been laid for a candlelight supper and everyone hurries in to discuss what next they must do to keep their animal refuge solvent. They are a determined bunch. I find myself next to a striking woman, Rebecca, who runs a beauty parlour in Palma. She tells me the refuge was started in desperation by an English woman many years back who couldn’t put up with the cruelty she saw all around her. Her mission was to take in abandoned animals, not put any healthy animal down, but to find them good homes or keep them for ever in her care. Over the years, more and more people have pitched in to help, horrified at finding the dream island they’d retired to overrun with suffering. They have managed to rescue thousands of animals, donkeys, cats, dogs and horses.
‘Have you been to the refuge?’ Rebecca suddenly asks. I tell her I have. She then says it’s important to remember it is not just the Brits who run it. So many nationalities are in this with us, especially local people, Mallorquíns. ‘Our main worry right now, however,’ says Rebecca, ‘is that the council in Palma is pressurising us to leave our home and we have to find another place fast. It means buying land and that, as you know, is becoming more and more expensive.’
‘Why don’t you tell the council you’re not going to move until they find you somewhere else? I would have thought that only fair.’
Rebecca says her members don’t want to make enemies of local politicians on the council as they are uncertain of what they might do to them. ‘You wouldn’t believe how some people loathe our sanctuary,’ says Rebecca. ‘We have to barricade ourselves against arson, some of our animals have been poisoned and others stolen. We go into many difficult and dangerous situations to rescue creatures and once we’ve got them, then we defend them, we will do anything it takes, we will never let our animals down.’ By the time Rebecca has finished her tale of heroics and woe, I’ve decided the ladies of Santa Ponsa would do the Paras proud.
Next day, back in my shabby espadrilles, I manage to see Nico, briefly, on my way to collect Kendi. Pointing at her ears, I ask him what has happened to them because they’re now bleeding. ‘It’s the flies,’ he says. ‘She gets bitten by the flies. I am putting a, how do you say it, mixture on her ears.’
I let out a long sigh. What next? ‘Nico, you must let her off the chain all the time because she can’t get away from the flies,’ I say. ‘This is very serious.’
Nico looks hurt. ‘I cannot. My father has to go to Son Dureta this week,’ he tells me. ‘It’s his breathing. We have to go in each day to see him.’
‘So what is going to happen to Kendi if your father’s ill? How are you going to cope?’
‘Oh, I will still feed her,’ he says.
‘But she needs exercise, you can’t tie her up all day!’
Nico shrugs.
Kendi’s not interested in such matters, she’s gearing herself to jump like a jack in a box at the two dogs tied up at an old farmstead further up the track. I have her on a lead as we quietly pass their place. The bigger of the two is lying with his head between his paws, dreaming, but Kendi’s not having any of this, she puts on her biggest bark, shocking him out of his reverie so he leaps straight up, snarling and straining at the chain. It is all over in a moment but the sudden drama of all this can’t be good for any of us. Particularly as it happens every single day.
Kendi can curl up into a little dog when she wants. It’s because she’s used to her tiny kennel, I guess. At my place she’s bagged a favourite chair under the vine, which she tucks herself in and round, crossing her slender feet at the front so that her paws drape down loosely while she sleeps. If I’m reading she’ll seek me out, tiptoeing round to shuffle up, her head gently edging on to my lap
so she can make eyes at me. If I resist, it’s an offered paw and ears tight back and if this love-up fails it’s back to a firm nudge with a brown wet nose. She’s very quick to buckle, though. A cross word and down she’ll go, cowering, before rolling on to her back in submission. If I attempt to pull her up she’ll yelp as if I’m about to hit her, her spirit is so timid and worn down. At these times I try not to chastise, only glad when she sometimes shows an occasional flash of wilfulness in her careering off, round and round the field peeping out from behind the bushes, not coming when I call.
She’s become firm friends with a small wiry dog whose owner, Marie, a German girl, is the latest renter of Lauren’s house. When the pup first clapped eyes on Kendi he was so terrified he didn’t come near for a week but his inquisitive-ness got the better of him and one day he shimmied through the gate when Kendi asked him in to play and soon they were into chasing one another, a wild game only ending with the two of them collapsing in near exhaustion on the terrace. Watching them play makes the thought of Kendi and what’s about to befall her saddening. I can’t imagine how Nico is going to manage if his father is ill. It means I am going to have to actively think of how she can be rehomed, but prising her off Nico won’t be simple. She’s his property and Mallorquíns don’t give these things away so easily. I can’t take her to Britain, no matter how much I would love to, she would have to go into quarantine for six months and that’s something I cannot begin to contemplate. Perhaps Marie, who has grown fond of Kendi, might offer her a home. I sound her out. She says when I tell her Kendi’s story that she would love to take Kendi back to Germany as a playmate for her pup but ‘Berger Allemand’, as she calls Alsatians, were Hitler’s favourite dogs, and today those with far-right views often have them as pets. She feels she can’t be subjected to such a stigma.
The following morning, a Monday, a team of Ignacio’s men arrive early at eight to start on the walls round the swimming pool. They’ve come on motorbikes and old cars, hitting quite a speed over the bumps on the track. An hour later after they’ve all had breakfast under the old olive tree, Pepe arrives with the day’s building equipment, turning the decidedly wobbly road even wobblier with the weight. I’ve noticed large ruts have appeared and craters too. I’m sure Gunther is not pleased. He’s done his bit to keep the road passable, digging channels to take away the rain water. All this heavy use is doing serious damage.
Later that morning I’m on my way to Andratx when a little way down the track I come across a tree lying across the road, which is strange. There hasn’t been a gale. I can’t think where it’s come from, but as I’m hauling it away, Gunther arrives. He’s in full road-repair kit, his trousers clamped with string round his ankles, heavy boots and a brown handkerchief on his – so far – unsweaty brow. ‘Good morning, Selina.’ He’s at his gap-toothed best.
‘Hello, Gunther, what can I do for you?’
Gunther ambles over and helps lift the tree. ‘I vant to talk about the road.’
‘Yes, I guessed you might, but why did you need to blockade it?’
‘I vant to speak seriously to you about it.’
‘All you have to do is ask me to stop and I will stop.’
‘That is not the point,’ he says. Gunther then turns his guns on Ignacio, who I sense he resents, blaming him for the damage that has been done to the track.
‘Gunther, before you say any more, let me go now and get Pepe to come and speak to you. You can tell him how you want it repaired.’
Gunther seems satisfied with this suggestion. Pepe meanwhile is deep into choosing which stones he’ll use for the rebuilding of the wall and so, basically, doesn’t want to know. I have to insist. Gunther has blocked the road. ‘¿Como’
‘Yes, Gunther wants to speak to you.’
‘Senorita Selina, me busy, mucho trabajo.’
‘Yes, I know you have much work to do but Gunther has put a tree across the road and you have to come with me and speak to him.’
I enunciate all this very slowly. Pepe looks at me as though I’ve taken leave. Now he knows for sure I’m loco. I’m beginning to think I am too.
Pepe and I wander down to meet Gunther who immediately regales us with the right way to repair the channels, mimicking how he’d use a spade to go down deep, explaining that this is the proper way, the Mallorquín way of doing it. Pepe, being Mallorquín, folds his arms, eyes rolling. Gunther, who’s got the audience he craves, wants to take us further down the track to show us where the canals should go but Pepe decides now is the time to stop this lunatic and says the best thing is to speak to his boss Ignacio about the road. At this reasonable suggestion, Gunther then does something most odd. He throws his arms up above his head and then falls to his knees in the dust, prostrating himself, kissing the ground and at Pepe’s feet intones, ‘Oh, Ignacio, oh, the great and magnificent Ignacio.’
Pepe’s mouth drops open as someone witnessing an act of gross indecency might.
Pepe finds it hard to speak to me as we leave Gunther sprawled on the road and return to the house. I have a feeling he blames me for this uncalled-for interruption to his work, but what can I do? At least I’m not the only one round here who’s nuts.
As work round the pool progresses and the walls rise again thick and strong my fury at Boris begins to dissipate. His design and eye for proportion I am forced to admit has been masterful, transforming the place with its surprising vistas and cosy, private places. So what if Boris’s wall wasn’t built to last, its replacement hasn’t taken long to erect. Once the pool has been filled with water I’ll never want to sunbathe anywhere else.
Ignacio has instructed Pepe to borrow an old water bowser and pick up several loads of fresh spring water from the mountain on the other side of the village to fill the pool. Julio, another of Ignacio’s guys, is helping out. They’re both in the cab of a decrepit truck with a tanker on the back, all smiles. The filling of the pool looks like it’s as much their treat as it is mine so carting ten loads of water, which they think they’ll need, is going to be fun. Well, it is until the fifth load runs away with them. Everything had been going smoothly. They’d made trip after trip, tipping the water straight into the pool before trundling off for more. They’d been gone too long which made me go looking and when I ran into the river of water running down the road it wasn’t long before I found Julio and Pepe in a state of near desperation. Their tanker had hit one of Gunther’s channels and rocked so violently it rammed into a concrete post. Things, as far as Pepe was concerned, weren’t good and Gunther, if not me, was definitely to blame.
Cedric isn’t having a good day either. Back at the house, limping, he is muttering about the underwater lights which won’t illuminate. ‘Fucking hell,’ keeps erupting from the darkened pool house.
‘What’s the matter, Cedric?’
‘Don’t ask me, I’m only the fucking plumber.’
When I try placating him with how much worse it has been for Pepe and Julio today, what with all the water running away, Cedric launches forth with ‘Only a bird like you,’ – or words to that effect – ‘could do this to a guy like me. What made you think a fucking pool was going to work with no fucking water or electricity?’
‘But Cedric,’ I shout back, ‘remember you’re the expert round here and I do have a generator.’
That evening with the pool half filled and the men finished for the day I feel I deserve a dip. It is heavenly, the warmth in the air and the fading light makes me feel I could float here for ever. I’m just coming round to believing that my perfect pool has been worth all the effort when something black swoops in and hits me. It’s a bat. A big one. Then there’s another and another. They’re scooping up water in mid-flight, dipping and rising, jerkily, just as taken with this new attraction as I was a moment before. Now, I’m the kind of girl who likes bats, but only when I can see them, not up to my neck in water in the dark when I can’t.
The christening of the pool, I rapidly decide, will have to wait until the wildlife has
done its thing and as the pool gets topped up in the days ahead, other creepy-crawlies come to make its acquaintance. Exotic dragonflies zip in, so too water beetles, paddling round until they get so tired I have to fish them out. The bats get into the rhythm, allowing me to have my dip before they take theirs, usually in late afternoon. They take up residence in the tiles under the porch and hang upside down to get a grandstand view of when I’m in and when I’m not.
After the pool is finished Ignacio’s men start cleaning and revealing the stones on the house that Boris said couldn’t be done. This gang of men are strong and resourceful and work so hard at something they are clearly so good at that my quirky little place turns, almost overnight, into a spectacular artwork. All I need to make life lovely is electricity, which means my attention turns full-time to Ignacio, the only person who thinks it possible and the only one foolish enough to tell me so.
The next step, he says, is to put together a project, to get everyone who wants electricity in the valley to pay their share, only then can he go to the Ayuntamiento and get the right ‘permissions’. I try telling him I have done my best already and failed. He isn’t downhearted. No, the moment he gets everyone’s signatures, he says, he will dig up the road and Gesa will definitely come and lay an electricity cable powerful enough to feed every house. It is all so simple.
Which of course it wasn’t. First, as I had already discovered, not everyone wanted electricity and the ones that did made out they didn’t. Then Ignacio suddenly found he had another ‘project’ to do for a cousin of his lower down the road and only after he’d finished this, he said, could he start on ours, but the clincher for most subscribers who were halfhearted at best, was that after ten years anyone could nab a piece of what was about to become a very expensive piece of action and not pay a cent towards it.