A Long Walk in the High Hills

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

  That night I have a perfect little guest who knows how to use a litter tray, and sleeps through the night without a squeak. This is getting heavy. I am now down to wondering how I can smuggle him (being ginger it was, of course, a boy) in my hand luggage and take him with me when a truck rolls up and out get Isobel and Rebecca, thank God, carrying a cat box. ‘Now don’t you worry,’ says Isobel, taking the kitten, ‘One of our ladies is a cat lover and has five cats of her own but says one more won’t make any difference. This lucky kitten is going to a happy home.’

  I know it shouldn’t be like this but when I finally make the plane to fly back to the UK having deposited Kendi at Nico’s, I feel so enormously relieved I fall fast asleep and don’t wake up until we’re touching down at Heathrow.

  eleven

  I’m leaning into the sea wall and the wind is blowing strong from the south, churning the waves, throwing saltpray in my face. It is wild and refreshing, unusually so. This stretch of coast is usually filled with holidaymakers enjoying the sun but today there are only a few walking on what remains of a beach, most of which has disappeared in the winter storms. The undertow of the sea has exposed boulders and driftwood and gouged out a channel where the torrente runs, discharging rain water in rivulets. It could be any beach in winter, but this is Easter in the Mediterranean and soon more sand will need to be brought in, brushed and combed and sectioned ready for the summer’s sun beds and thatched umbrellas.

  I’ve come here because there’s an all-day party in the castle on the hill and it’s getting crowded. It’s a special fiesta, one the locals look forward to each year because it is in a beautiful place, in the courtyard of the old fort, built originally to repel bandits but now an inviting setting for a spectacular picnic in Easter Week. I’m pleased to see Mario has arrived with his new girlfriend, Elena from the colmada. She’ll keep him right.

  In spite of the activity up at the castle, I’m managing, in this idyllic spot, to focus on what I must do next. I’ve already made the decision to close the house and return to Britain, feeling now is the time to get back into harness and quell my restlessness, although the prospect of leaving is sad. I came to this place to escape and already the handsome black cat who lives under the lentisk bush on the sea front has arrived, purring and pressing against me. She is an old friend. I have known her pretty much the whole time I’ve been on the island, bringing her water when it’s hot, amazed at how smart she is, weaving through the crowds on the beach in high summer to find me. She’s survived the culls and the closing of the cafés in the winter because she hangs around the only bar open all the year, so her being here now is surely a sign of good luck.

  Kendi is enjoying the waves, barking as they crash and catch her paws, still not convinced having wet feet is part of the deal, but she’s wearing away energy and that can only be good. I haven’t been here long and the sharp sunshine is stinging. I’ll get burned if I’m not careful so, soon, we reluctantly say goodbye to the beautiful cat and leave.

  On the cusp of a hill, on the way out of San Telm is a simple, whitewashed cemetery. It lies on the southern edge of the bowl of the valley just before the winding road tips over and down to the village so I often have to pass it although it’s a place I rarely visit. It is not at all gloomy but it’s a sombre reminder of something I prefer not to have cloud my days. Today, however, as it’s Easter Week and the people of the village are in my thoughts, I’m drawn to it.

  The cemetery stands alone, its high stone wall framed by a thicket of wild olives and pines, so it’s peculiarly quiet and has its own carved stone well. Thick wooden doors, which are never locked, open on to a sunlit arena, like a Roman amphitheatre, where all round sit the boxes of the dead. The oldest tombs are on the left, family graves carved to form a wall of golden stone whose sarcophagi, like large letter boxes, open at the front.

  There is no avoiding the inscriptions on these tombs. They’re stacked one on top of the other, four high, etched in a nineteenth-century flowery hand marking the names, the date of death and the age of those deposited here.

  Each column of tombs is crowned with a gabled roof and a stone cross. Immediately next to these four are four more, then another four, and another, the remains and memories of those who have lived and worked in the village over the last one hundred years. Vich, Flexas, Porcell, Pujol, Alemany the names recur as the men and women inscribed on the stone keep their mother’s names along with their father’s. Here the story of the village is told. A close-knit community burgeoning into something stranger as the remains of different people with different backgrounds begin to be interred here. The new names, however, are in the main segregated from the old. They have been put in their own enclosure to the north, a chillier less ornate remembering.

  Under one of the crosses in the main cemetery it says ‘Familia de Baltasa Porcell’, the family grave of Balthazar Porcell. Other stone inscriptions, nearby, mark the demise of other local characters with biblical names, Angel, Gabriel and Jesus. Along with their age sometimes their relationship to one another is recorded, a brother, a wife or a husband. Nowhere does it say what they died of.

  Almost every tomb has an oval enamelled photograph of its inhabitant mounted on the front, which is a good idea. The men, it seems, are serious, their wives serene. Most are in their seventies and eighties, dressed in their Sunday best, their hair combed as if to say look where we’ve ended up, look what we’ve achieved.

  Occasionally an exotic note disturbs the roll call of unaffected rural names. A colonel awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, we know not why, lies three down from the top in one of the older drawers. Unfortunately there is no photo of him.

  You have to walk past the old men and their moustaches to get to the new burial site. Here they’ve economised on space, digging down to make an extra tomb underground and taking off the stone crosses to make way for another grave higher up. These are more filing cabinets than gothic hidey-holes, one of which has ‘Bob’ laid to rest inside. In felt-tipped pen someone has scrawled ‘we luv ya Bob’ across the front.

  I’m not sure if Bob is in fact still in there. After some time the desiccated remains are scraped out, ready for the next laying-in.

  If ever there’s a need to find out who’s died recently in the village it can be seen all too clearly here. Mateo, José and Juan, the three old friends of Sancho’s, are all in residence, sadly; they must have passed away within months of one another. Their photos are up to date because they’re wearing their favourite baseball caps. What upsets and surprises me most is Rafa. The young builder who looked like a conqueror must have died and I hadn’t heard. He has his head cocked to one side, his inscription says he was only in his thirties. I wish I knew what had happened to him.

  There is a day in Spain that remembers the dead more than any other. All Saints’ Day on 1 November is also known as Todos los Santos, or the Day of the Dead. It is an important public holiday when people come with flowers and candles to give their ‘ofrendas’, offerings to the departed, usually almond cakes and flowers. The roads are packed with cars. This is the day when souls apparently find it easier to visit the living and so the local markets overflow with gladioli and lilies which end up in cemeteries like this all over the island. It’s easy to forget sometimes that Spain is a Catholic country except on this day when whole families congregate in cemeteries to tend graves and tell stories about their loved ones. Today the cemetery is peaceful, the only sound, birds singing in the trees and I’m glad I’ve come here to complete the circle, to be reacquainted with those I feel I knew.

  The forest framing the cemetery is where the fire blazed. A small path goes from here up into the hills where the scorched earth is now greening. The burned trees, which once stood skeletal against the sky, are softened with wild broom and flowers, almost as if the fire never happened. Already young pine trees are shooting up so that in a few years the slopes will be forested again and the walls and old paths submerged from view. Kendi loves walking here ma
inly because there’s no one around and she can gallop freely in the direction of my house. She now knows her way home.

  It’s been a sombre walk but I have a message waiting for me which is about to change Kendi’s life. Someone called Robert Winsor wants me to call. He’s been reading about Kendi in the local paper and has left his telephone number. Kendi and I turned up at a charity fete on one of my ‘socialising Kendi’ excursions and had our photo taken. I’d mentioned I was looking for a home for her.

  On the phone Robert Winsor tells me he devotes his time raising money for underprivileged children in Mallorca but he knows a woman who he believes may be able to help me with Kendi. ‘She’s called Glenda,’ he says, ‘Glenda Dean, and I will introduce you if you can come to Santa Ponsa on Saturday’

  Santa Ponsa, again. I wonder if Glenda Dean is a member of the Ladies’ Club. Either way I can hardly wait to see her.

  It takes me a while to find her. Her secluded house, tucked into a hillside of pine trees, is reached by a long paved drive flanked with showered lawns, banana trees and palms, like one you’d find in Miami Beach. Two Great Danes, gentle dogs that come up to my shoulder, greet me sedately, paddling off to find their mistress, swaying and sashaying slowly towards the sound of voices coming from under a gazebo in the garden, taking their time, unwilling to do anything so common as hurry, like a couple of flunkies on dope. If Kendi came to live here she’d bustle these two along.

  Robert and Glenda are having cocktails by the pool. Robert is wearing gold and seems to be a bit of a dynamo with his multifarious interests and deserving charities. Glenda is a glamorous Miss Moneypenny, blonde and tanned and savvy, a woman who ran her own public relations firm for big City dealers before selling up to live a luxurious life in the sun. If high finance is her background, her passion, I’m about to discover, is dogs and their welfare. After pressing a Bloody Mary on me Glenda comes straight out with her offer. She wants to give Kendi a lift back to Britain. She has a plane, a private plane, so Kendi can walk straight on and off with no hold-ups and no hold.

  The Bloody Mary has suddenly become the best I have ever tasted.

  ‘Do you mean that?’ I cannot believe what I’m hearing. I’d been coming round to thinking how Kendi might enjoy living in Santa Ponsa after all and now this.

  Glenda is matter of fact. ‘Of course. I hate the idea of any dog being put through hell in the hold of a plane. I once had to do it with one of mine and I don’t know who was more stressed at the end of the flight, me or it. Never again.’

  I want to say I haven’t given any thought to Kendi coming back to the UK, that I want her to stay on the island, but how churlish is that going to sound when here is someone prepared to make the major obstacle, the journey back to Britain, as easy as boarding a bus: no forcing Kendi into a cage, no delays, no horrendous noise and confusion, just turn up and hop on. I feel elated and anxious all at once.

  Glenda is brisk. ‘You must come and meet the gang,’ she says.

  ‘Gang?’

  ‘Yes, there’s a group of us who get together to raise money for the Calvia refuge. I want you to meet Martha and her husband who are full of fun and will help you get Kendi’s passport sorted out. We’re having lunch at the club today with my husband, Stephen, you must come along.’

  I’ve left Kendi in the car, not sure how she’d cope in a posh house with its posh dogs, but Glenda insists that she wants to meet her and walks me up the drive with the two Great Danes, Robert and a rescue spaniel who’s appeared from behind a pot of geraniums. I’m getting nervous because Kendi may feel threatened and growl. I don’t want her to blow her one opportunity of getting out of here.

  Glenda, however, is not fazed. ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ she enthuses as Kendi leaps at the window, baring her teeth. The Great Danes aren’t a bit perturbed either, but I’m not for risking an encounter just now. ‘I’ll set off to the club,’ I offer, a bit too hurriedly, ‘and give Kendi a quick walk before lunch. See you there.’

  A scrawny and unkempt Kendi slinks into the back seat as Glenda’s sleek hounds amble back to the pool while I make a mental note that my dog is definitely going to have to smarten up if she’s being invited to fly private.

  Lunch is outside on the patio of the Santa Ponsa Club overlooking the rolling golf course with me, Glenda, Martha and their husbands, Stephen and Mark. It is lovely to relax with the sun on my back. Everyone is supportive, assuring me they’re up for this bushtucker trial which will see Kendi, apparently a celebrity on the island, out of here fast. The pity is, if she had been going to Germany she’d be there by now. Britain has a double dose of rabies tests; Germany has just the one. If a dog is rabies free and has the antibodies, there is no hindrance to it flying. This probably explains why so many strays find their way to Germany from Mallorca. It’s easier to get them there. Kendi has to have several more tests and injections before they’ll let her out.

  Martha is tall, assertive and expressive, she is one of those Englishwomen made of steel girders who lives practically permanently in Mallorca. Like Glenda, she doesn’t believe in messing around and the mention of councillors in Calvia gets her fizzing. It gets them both fizzing. Martha’s taken on the Calvia council over strays and engineered fund-raising to support a happier solution to the problem, backing the local sanctuary, but she’s up against it.

  Over a lunch of sole and lobster, Martha tells me Glenda has raised a staggering amount of money in a one-day golf tournament, which is supposed to go to the refuge but Calvia council refuses to give permission for it to happen. It’s the same old story. Like the other refuge in Palma, the women who work their socks off for the animals don’t want to offend those with the power to shut them down. It’s a sad state of affairs in a country signed up to enthusiastic clubbiness in Europe.

  Martha says anything she can do to help she will. If I need her to check on Kendi, while she is with Nico, she will. So on this cheerful note we get down to setting the dates of our departure. Before I go, I promise to check in with Glenda again when I have all the paperwork.

  Kendi is sick on the way back. It’s all too much for her and I’m seriously concerned about how she is going to manage the thousand-mile journey by plane if she can’t cope with a titchy trip in a car. Kendi’s car sickness has been a problem from the beginning, but I tell myself to be a bit more like Glenda and cool down. If she isn’t hyped then neither should I be. What’s more important is my coming to terms with having Kendi for ever. If this trip comes off then Kendi’s new home will be very different from the one she is used to. It will be cold and windy and wild. Her paws will be wet more often than dry. I daren’t contemplate how she’s going to be able to adapt, particularly as she’s not a puppy. Anything, however, can happen before then.

  The next morning, as the sun lights up the valley I discover, under the olive trees in the field, a wedge of wild artichokes shielded deep in luxuriant foliage, ready to pick. I fetch a basket and knife and trim away. Soon I have a gift of eight purple artichokes to take to a friend who has invited Kendi and me to supper. Gina and her husband Tommy have a fabulous house in the mountains of Mallorca and as Gina has already gone through hell to bring back a poor dog she found lost in Greece, she knows I need my confidence building.

  ‘Now she’s going to be an international traveller,’ she had enthused over the phone when I tell her we’ve both got a lift back to the UK. ‘Kendi needs to learn a few manners.’

  A couple of days later I’m cruising with a car-sick Kendi round the tight bends in the centre of the island, leading to Gina and Tommy’s hilltop retreat. Coveys of partridge whirr into the setting sun as we turn off the road and everywhere, it seems, is wilderness. Hares weave in front of us, slowing us, as the single-track road makes for lights in the distance and a courtyard where Tommy is waiting. Kendi is wearing a new blue collar for the occasion, but even so she still looks like a bedraggled wolf with her nibbled ears and unfortunately begins to behave like one.

  ‘Don’t worry, d
on’t worry,’ says Tommy as Kendi gets out of the car in a crouch, trying to find an escape route. Gina has appeared and is not having any of this nonsense. She soothes Kendi and leads her gently into a glamorous room full of soft sofas and low lights where a log fire and Helen and Kiki, friends of Gina and Tommy’s, are there to greet us. Unfortunately they’ve also brought their three effervescent black-and-white spaniels. I can feel my heart speeding as Kendi sets off on a circuit of these well-behaved folk, rangily rounding up her prey. She’s never seen a gathering like it. There’s some growling and one of the spaniels, a female, lurches at Kendi. The silky conversation is suddenly torn. This is Gina’s moment. In her lovely home with its luxurious furnishing she’s not a bit fussed, focusing instead on a poor dog, overwhelmed. She knows what Kendi needs, reassurance, and she’s there to give it her. Stroking Kendi tenderly, Gina coaxes and tells her how welcome she is and soon Kendi relaxes on the rug, happy to have found such a good friend in this strange new place.

  For a dog whose whole life has been the confines of a dirty kennel it can’t get more surreal than this. Here dinner is served with silver cutlery by candlelight. A table laid with a pristine damask cloth drapes down, an inch above the floor at nose level. Soon food will appear which smells divine. Kendi has never encountered the likes of it but reckons lurking amongst all these expensive toes in the folds of the damask cloth might be her best bet. I pray she won’t disgrace me.

  As the conversation turns to the political shenanigans on the island Kendi begins to grumble. A low mumble at first, and then a full-blown growl emanates from near my feet. A spaniel has crawled under the cloth to check out Kendi and Kendi is not having it. There’s a snarling and something belts out into the sitting room, it’s black and white so it’s not Kendi, and the conversation dips and picks up again.