A Long Walk in the High Hills

by A Long Walk in the High Hills- The Story of a House, a Dog

  So, if the area is so special, I want to know, why can’t we bury the ugly telephone lines and perhaps drop a water pipe in the trench while we are at it? Ignacio is horrified. Who ever heard of such a thing? It is a fact of life in Spain that one good idea shouldn’t be spoiled by another. That’s too much to expect. If electric has to go in, the road is ripped up and filled in. When water has to be put underground it’s no problem to tear up the road again. The water company doesn’t have anything to do with Gesa and neither have any truck with state-owned Telefonica.

  Having established I’m in a fix I decide I need a new lawyer, someone I can speak to, a Mallorquín versed in the subterfuge and obfuscation of his fellow islanders, a man who knows how-things-work-around-here, who can, perhaps, come and hold my hand.

  Don Señor José Feliu, who has a twinkle in his eye like the wolf in the picture book I’d found in the skip, sits in a glamorous office overlooking the old city walls of Palma. José Feliu is the patriarch of an established family law firm, his father and grandfather were once chief justices in an old Spain when José was young and dispatched to Britain to learn English in a solicitor’s office, picking up a romantic fluency in the language thanks to a pretty girl who coaxed out the Don Juan in him.

  I’m made comfy in a brown leather chair for the first of what will become many fireside chats with Snr Feliu and ask him what he thinks I should do about getting electricity. It is a tiresome subject to which I expect a weary, legal response. But no. I’m treated, instead, to a passionate soliloquy, where my worries are wrapped, my concerns shelved and the problem half-solved. He delivers, as if in a juicy whodunit, a cast of characters only he is qualified to describe and only he can fathom. In other words, I should leave everything to him, he will personally go and see Ignacio and whoever else needs seeing to sort it. I will soon have no more problems.

  Soon I am skidding down the ocean freeway to the Gesa offices again, this time with José Feliu, who’s not a bit enamoured with my driving, in the passenger seat. We’re greeted importantly and courteously by the boss of the place, who knows José Feliu well, and there is much shrugging and gesticulating followed by another session of filling and signing of forms while José Feliu lectures me on why, as a beautiful woman, I should enjoy my life and not concern myself with these things. When I tell him it is all right for him, he lives in a house with electricity, and hasn’t been threatened with his house being burned down, he says I should leave the worrying to him. This is what he is here for. Like the story of the lamb in the pink spotty dress snatched by the wily wolf who won’t let go, I feel I’m in no position to argue.

  Back in the village life trundles on. Whenever I see Mario on his scooter ever so slowly manoeuvring his way to work, a basket stuffed with greenery on the back, he’s wearing a crash helmet. He is, I guess, setting a good example because Mario has been enlisted at the new primary school in the village to teach children all about plants. It is an inspired choice. Mario, who won’t kill a weed if he can help it, is now raising and propagating plants, which means he raids everyone’s gardens for cuttings and takes them to the school to show little ones how to plant, tend and grow. Some of the money collected to pay for the thanksgiving feast after the forest fire has gone towards buying young trees, which the children have planted round the school. Local people thought it a fine way of showing youngsters how much it takes for a tree to survive and what it means when a tree dies, and now one of the best gardens in the village thrives at the local primary. It seems to me, Mario has found a life here steady and sustainable and enviable. I wish I had a smidgeon of his patience and forbearance.

  Instead, I am getting twitchy about rumours of development in the village which threaten its uniqueness. This village, which is almost as far as you can get from Palma, manages to fare better than most. Living here is still cosy but with the accelerated construction of new motorways on Mallorca, villages like this once lost in the country are in danger of becoming suburban, open to fast cars minutes rather than hours from the airport, no longer a beat behind the rest of the world. Soon the rock star, Annie Lennox, who has a house in the mountains, will raise her voice warning islanders to be ‘very very careful’ about concreting over the beauty of the place. Mikhail Gorbachev, the ex-Soviet premier, will deliver another warning when he visits the north of the island, but whenever a ban on building is declared there’s a splurge of development as permits already in the pipeline get fast-tracked.

  One of my favourite bits of wasteland, a magnet for seed-eating birds, is across the road from the school. It’s rough and untreasured. Most locals take for granted the wildlife hiding here, but if this is ever built on there’ll be no more waist-high thistles sporting the most magnificently blue flowers or prolific black figs tumbling from the tree in September, tempting small boys with their stickiness. There’ll not be a shortcut through the long grass to the main road either, useful for tired little legs, perfect too for playing hide and seek. Apart from the migrating birds which stopover and feast in fields like this there are always a dozen or so resident sparrows twittering and fighting in the dust outside the school. I have to slow down in my car to avoid them and then slow again for the local boys turning up for school who shove and push each other into the road. These children have a grand life with a lot of freedom. Sometimes they troop in a long crocodile past my house, holding hands and collecting flowers, learning about Mallorca.

  I wonder if the children will remember Jesus and his sheep who graze the pastures around them, a biblical scene on their doorstep, which once he packs up will be gone for ever. I can’t imagine anyone continuing to follow the sheep round the valley as he does night after night, even though his solitary wanderings and sleepy moments colour everyday life, especially for the folk who wake to discover half their garden’s gone.

  Jesus has moved his flock to the almond groves near the old manorial ruins on the back road, away from the burned hillsides beyond my valley, which I am nevertheless still drawn to. Now the pine trees are gone high stone walls girding the hills have been revealed. Built by generations of villagers to catch earth and grow crops, they now clearly display what were once well-tended groves with an odd, massive stump of a ravaged olive tree which must be hundreds of years old. All these, once lost and hidden in the pines, have now been brutally exposed by the fire, a palimpsest of a life long past. If I touch the blackened stumps of some of these thick olives I can still feel the heat of the embers at their heart. It is sad but it is easy now to walk on ancient footpaths so starkly defined, up into the mountains without wading our way through scratchy scrub. Kendi and I always return from these walks of wonderment with filthy feet.

  Even though these paths look lost they are not forgotten. Local people have acute recall of boundaries round their ancestral ruins, it is just that they choose not to visit them too often.

  It is rare to find locals walking the hills although there’s an interesting old man I usually see in Lorenzo’s bar talking to the other old men who must walk as much as me. He doesn’t smile much although there are deep creases round his very blue eyes. He is terribly thin and weather-beaten. I often come across him unexpectedly in the hills, usually sitting on a rock a little way off the path, his legs crossed, looking out towards the far horizon. Once when I was walking along the cliffs with two small boys who had come to stay he startled us. The sea crashed wildly below and there he sat, quiet and gnomish, observing us from a rock higher up. The boys responded, waving their hellos. It was the only time I ever saw him twinkle. I often thought that maybe he might like Kendi to keep him company on his long excursions into the hills but then I learned he was mourning the death of his wife and wanted solitude. I also discovered he’d once been a sea captain, which explains much.

  Those who most regularly tramp the hills of the Sierra Tramuntana come from the bleak northern cities leaving mounds of stones to mark junctions, spraying dots of paint, bright blue or yellow or red on rocks to show the correct way to go. They are mainly
German walkers in their middle age who arrive to enjoy the natural beauty of inland Mallorca where the sun, they hope, will shine. It is still a mystery to estate agents why Brits, on the whole, want crowded apartment blocks with sea views while Germans generally prefer more characterful homes on their own in the country. The island is certainly well mapped out, whoever is responsible.

  The forest fire has, naturally and temporarily, deterred these columns of walkers who prefer less burned-out sights, so the hills which were once alive to the surprising sound of yodelling have reverted to the more entrancing song of birds enjoying a new-found perch on bare branches.

  It always surprises me how a small island like Mallorca is able to add to the overall gaiety of European nations by attracting not only walkers but cyclists too, thousands of whom turn up in January and February to train on the inclines and bends of every minor road. They wear the works: Lycra, studded shoes, gloves, helmets, the lot, spreading their bright bikes three deep so that roads at this time of year are impassable. Bikers are, of course, a source of income for the roadside bars and restaurants in the off-peak months so they are always welcome.

  Ravenous bikers who climb the steep hill road out of Andratx and need a refuel before tackling Puig de Galatzo find the small bar in the village of Capdella a happy pit stop and if I happen to be there having lunch it’s an amusing diversion for me as well. The bar, like so many others on the island, has an unprepossessing view, but what it lacks in location it makes up in good food. Outside under a blue-and-white striped canopy amidst pots of busy lizzies and geraniums, tables are reserved which, facing south, catch the sun all day. Soon, platters of calamari grille, steak, pa amb oli and patata fritas will be dished up by a guileless young girl with a froth of brown curls. I’ve noticed, however, these men on their racing machines – and they are usually fellas – find it hard to prise themselves away from this convivial spot. A warm sun in late February over a cold glass of San Miguel can be, encouragingly, just a tad too tempting, even for the most dedicated.

  Exercise is, in fact, becoming quite a crusade although most politicians haven’t yet caught on, pumping cash instead into fast motorways, wiping out footpaths so that cars can race through tunnels but people walking can’t. Such shortsightedness will come back to bite them, I’m sure, as gym membership soars and walkers, who continue to risk their lives on busy roads, rebel. It’s still only relatively new but already exercise is having an impact, galvanising young and old into thinking of their health.

  The fitness bug is even adding fizz to the local fiestas. The high point of summer in Port d’Andratx is the fiesta of the Virgin Mary, the patron saint of fishermen. On 17 July the port’s fishing fleet decks itself in flowers and heads to sea carrying an effigy of their saint so that she might calm and pacify the water. This blessing of the sea is always performed at night, accompanied by lights, horns and music. The whole town turns out to watch Mary, draped in flowers and carried on fishermen’s shoulders, process through the dark narrow streets to a packed candlelit church where the seafarers’ liturgy is said. This blessing of the fishermen, usually on one of the hottest days of the year, has been going on since the fourteenth century but recently another, altogether more risqué performance, has muscled on to the quayside. The girls and boys of the local gym have taken to anchoring their exercise bikes to a stage specially erected in the open air where they rev up the fiesta, showing off their energy and biceps to an audience of mainly old ladies and young children.

  As the rock music begins, the dozen or so enthusiasts, decked out in tight gym gear, straddle bikes on either side of their leader, alert to his imminent command and their cue. Children are waiting, bobbing to the beat, old ladies behind hand-held fans are tittering but when the order to go is given the troupe blast into action and everyone’s riveted. The pedalling is compelling, every movement hit in synch with the backing track. Suddenly the perspiring legs of the girls and boys on the bikes start whizzing round faster and faster until the teacher thrusts his fist in the air and belts out ‘Arriba’, whereupon a dozen muscular bums lift up and head heavenward, where they gyrate furiously and rhythmically for a minute or so until ordered to descend so the gig can begin again. The old ladies are by now beside themselves.

  I bet it’s this hunky gym teacher who’s given Paco’s girlfriend the oomph to take up jogging. Paco’s girl is a cook, not the kind of person I’d ever imagine running. Her slow gait as she walks to the bar in a morning, smoking a fag, has never marked her out as athlete material so when I noticed her togged up in pumps and a track suit I thought it was only for effect until I overtook her in my car running along the road to the Port one early morning at around six. I am most impressed.

  The elegant wife of the local electrician, who must be in her seventies, has also taken up swimming and each day does several laps in Andratx swimming pool before returning to her housework. Ignacio too has joined in, although I notice some Sundays are reserved for an altogether more sedate activity.

  He meets up with his old schoolfriends in Lorenzo’s bar, because Lorenzo and the guys in their trilby hats make up the local bowling club, which seems to me to be an excuse to back-slap, shout at one another and smoke cigars. Beatriz is left in charge as the boys troop off to do a bit of male bonding and compete in village tournaments but come Monday, it’s back on the treadmill, the trilby’s been ditched and Ignacio slips into something altogether more comfortable: his tight running shorts.

  Since finding my house in the valley I hardly have a moment to think of things like gyms. If I am not walking the hills with Kendi I’m hacking back the abundant foliage that two springs in a Mediterranean year shower down. The wisteria puts on so much growth I have to unwind it from the telephone wire slung between the posts up the road, and carefully cut it free, although one year I misjudged and everyone got disconnected. The wisteria’s whippy shoots are piled in the middle of the field ready for the big bonfire in the wet season, along with prunings from the almond trees and olive branches which in a couple of seasons can grow as thick as a man’s arm. Since the plum tree died, a wild olive which was once so insignificant on the terrace has gone berserk in its new-found space. Soon I’ll have to get a saw to one of its branches banging against my bedroom window.

  The joy of experiencing lavender stuffed with bees and freesias scenting the morning air occasionally leads me astray and into serious digging, excavating holes to take important plants like a lemon tree or bay, which then have to be watched and watered. I had become passionate about jacaranda trees after my filming trip in Seville and spent days tracking down some semi-mature ones in a garden centre in the middle of the island. They arrived on the back of a truck and now cascade their lilac blue petals over my land, although they took some nurturing in their early years.

  My plan to leave everything wild, to enjoy the growing green shoots after a parched summer and the abundance of wild flowers which turn up almost while I’m not looking takes great restraint, especially when there are so many tempting wonderful plants to procure. I love my bank of plumbago, for example, which froths powder-blue flowers over all my walls. I planted cuttings by the dozen and watered and weeded until now they’re rampant – unlike the delicate white trumpets of the brugmansia with their bewitching night-time scent, plumbago doesn’t demand too many cooling drinks on a regular basis. The brugmansia, however, like the jasmine falling over and around it perfumes every room of the house. I can forgive these delicate plants anything.

  Perhaps the flower of most delight to me is the tender bee orchid, which flourishes in the tussocky grass on the hillside. To arrive from a cold damp England and find these inquisitive flowers, in such unpromising terrain, sunning themselves in the same familiar place is uplifting. It is hard not to stop and consider these fragile flowers surviving and thriving, when back in the UK they’re so rare and threatened now.

  This blossoming of the year casts a potent spell with its explosion of colour and variety as spring turns to summer then into sp
ring again but like the little bee orchid I can’t hang around too long. Another break away is imminent and this time it will be for longer.

  I have, on impulse again, bought a farm in North Yorkshire which needs tons of loving care, but casting a deep shadow over my going is Kendi and her predicament. I cannot abandon her now and yet I don’t know how I am going to cope. At least I don’t have to do something immediately, there is still time.

  ten

  The pungency of wood smoke hangs in the valley on this JL clear and lovely day in early November. I’ve been away in the States and my first thought is to find Kendi and buy fresh fruit, bread and other provisions, although I reckon it might be best to collect what I need in the village first and pick Kendi up on the way back. It will mean a detour, following the longer track up behind the village to avoid her seeing me.

  The track forks halfway, at the house where Ramon, Ignacio’s cousin, lives. Ramon’s house has roses round the door and peach and apricot trees in the garden. Small ripe apricots, dewy and luscious, and pulled straight from the tree are divine and Ramon, knowing this, runs out and pours great handfuls into my basket when I pass by. I like Ramon because he is effusive. He looks a little like his cousin with dark lively eyes and is always getting into scrapes with pretty women. When he’s in love his orchard is tidy and well watered, but when there’s a blip everything becomes as unshaven as him. Car wrecks appear, washing on the line turns grey after weeks flapping there and the long grass overreaches itself. When things get really bad, his mates from the village come and do a big sweep up, hacking back the weeds, tilling the earth, making his des res desirable again so that another glamorous female, like a migrating bird, will hopefully swoop in and sweep him up.