“Have I got something on my neck?” he asked, craning his head this way and that in the bathroom mirror.
I stopped scratching my bites for a moment and examined him closely. To my astonishment, on his neck were two puncture wounds, side by side, perhaps an inch apart.
“What is it?” he asked. “Mosquito bites?”
“No, there aren’t any lumps, just two holes...”
“Well, what are they like?”
“I know this sounds silly, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve been bitten by a vampire.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I’m just saying that’s what it looks like.”
“Here, hand me that antiseptic cream. Vampires indeed!”
“Well, something’s bitten you, that’s for sure. Perhaps we should sleep with a crucifix in the bedroom in future.”
“Very funny.”
“Or pop into the church and get some holy water?”
“Enough!”
He applied the cream, which seemed to have a soothing effect as he stopped complaining after a while. We sat in the kitchen, deciding what jobs to tackle that day.
“The dishwasher is working now,” said Joe, sipping his coffee. “And the Internet’s back. I checked on our boxes’ progress, by the way. According to UPS tracking, they’re still in Bahrain.”
“Not even left the country yet?”
“Nope. I think I’ll give the chicken area a good cleaning out today, then we can go and get some new hens next week,” he said, changing the subject.
“Good idea. Poor Regalo must be lonely. I’m still on mould and fungus duty today, I think.”
I looked round the kitchen. So much to do! Everything needed cleaning and airing. Cobwebs needed removing. A lick of white paint wouldn’t go amiss. Deep in thought, I was only distracted when I heard a faint buzzing noise. Mosquitoes during the day? Surely not! The buzzing grew louder and I concentrated on the sound.
“Joe, can you hear buzzing?”
Joe creased his brow, listening.
“Yes, I think I can...”
Now it was unmistakable, louder, more insistent. If it was a mosquito, it would have been the size of a goose.
“It sounds like a giant bee...”
We swung our heads this way and that, trying to locate the source of the maddening buzz.
“It’s coming from the dishwasher!”
A monster bee trapped in the dishwasher? Joe jumped up and reached out to open it. Before he could pull the door open, we heard a fizzle, followed by a blue flash and a CRACK! The unmistakable smell of burning reached our noses and black smoke seeped from under the counter and round the sides of the dishwasher.
“Quick! Pull the whole thing out!” I shouted.
As Joe gripped the sides of the appliance and heaved it out, we could already see flames lapping up the wall. They flared from the electrical socket, lighting up the dark area. He snatched up the nearest available items: the apron I had won at one of El Hoyo’s fiestas, then a new tea-towel with ‘Welcome to Bahrain’ splashed across it and finally my favourite cardigan. He smothered the flames and the crisis was averted.
“What on earth caused that?” I asked after we’d fanned the smoke outside and muted the smoke alarm.
Joe shook his head. “It wasn’t me, I promise. I just fiddled with the controls, I didn’t touch the plug or the socket.”
“That was scary! What if we’d been asleep? Or out?”
“I agree, I’m going to check every socket in the house. The chicken coop will have to wait.”
I was just adding ‘more smoke alarms’ and ‘fire extinguisher’ to my shopping list, under ‘bleach’ and ‘chickens’, when somebody hammered on our front door.
“English!”
It could only be Paco.
“Joe, let Paco in, will you?”
“English!” said Paco, crashing in. “I have brought you vegetables.”
He dumped the heavy crate on the kitchen table and I crossed off ‘vegetables’ from my shopping list. Red, yellow and green shiny peppers vied with deep purple aubergines and prickly, fat, green, cucumbers. Enough to feed the Barcelona football team. I thanked him.
“I cannot stay,” said Paco, as Joe reached for the brandy bottle. “We are going down the mountain for a few days.” He stopped, sniffing the air. “What is that smell of burning?”
Joe explained and showed him the melted, burnt-out plug and pointed to the dishwasher, now back in its place.
Burnt-out plug
“A bad business,” said Paco. “Imagine if you had not been here and the fire had reached your gas bottle in the next cupboard! Whhomph! Your house, my house and El Hoyo would be gone!”
I blinked. Paco wasn’t making me feel any better.
Paco roared with laughter. “I have forgotten one more vegetable that you must have. Wait, I will fetch it from my house.”
He stamped out and returned a few minutes later.
“For you,” he boomed, thrusting two heads of garlic joined by a long piece of twine into Joe’s hands.
Joe stared at them, puzzled, then looked at Paco, waiting for enlightenment.
“Hang them round your neck when you go to bed!” roared Paco and thumped the wall with his fist, bending double with laughter. “I see you have been bitten by a vampire!”
Joe’s hand flew to the wounds on his neck.
“Everybody knows I grow the best garlic!” bellowed Paco. “No vampire will bother you now!”
“I don’t think that’s very funny,” said Joe as Paco stamped off, still guffawing, slamming the front door behind him.
We didn’t solve the mystery of the neck bites, although Paco later guessed a spider may have been the attacker. I’ve never seen big spiders in Spain, not even in our log pile. I’ve seen far bigger, hairier spiders in Britain, and, of course, Australia.
I was reminded, however, of an incident many years ago when my sister-in-law and her partner had moored their boat in the local marina. Paul woke to find two punctures on his neck, just like Joe’s and the Spanish doctor who examined him reckoned they were spider bites. So perhaps Paco was right.
Whatever the cause, Joe didn’t take the garlic to bed that night and I liberally sprayed our bedroom a few hours before bedtime. All vampires, spiders and mosquitoes stayed away but that didn’t mean we had a peaceful night.
At around one o’clock, I woke to a tapping noise. It was muffled but regular and insistent. It sounded as though it was coming from next door but I thought it unlikely because I knew Paco’s family had gone down the mountain for a few days.
Old Spanish cottages can have walls a metre thick and I was always surprised when any noise from next door penetrated through to us, but it did. I lay awake, listening.
“Joe!” I prodded him. “There’s a funny noise coming from next door.”
“Wah?”
“Can you hear that tapping noise?”
“Mm...”
“What do you think it is?”
“Dunno. Sounds like hammering, or something. Go to sleep.”
Hammering? Even if Paco was in, he would never do any hammering at that time of night. The noises suddenly stopped and I drifted back to sleep. Later I was disturbed again by the same rhythmic noises. I checked the clock on my bedside table. Three.
“Joe!”
“Wah?”
“There’s that noise again!”
“Go to sleep.”
I lay still, trying to work out what it could be. Burglars? No. A woodpecker? Ridiculous. Deathwatch beetles? Unlikely. A nocturnal DIY project? Ludicrous.
Eventually it stopped and I slept again. Until 4.30am. The noise was back and I had a raging thirst. Ignoring the noise, I slipped out of bed and tried to find my slippers in the dark. I didn’t want to turn on any lights and wake Joe again. I made my way to the kitchen barefooted and groped for the light switch.
To my absolute horror, I saw black shapes scuttling across the flo
or and into the shadows. Even to my bleary eyes they showed up in sharp contrast against the white floor tiles. Cockroaches!
I ran back to the bedroom and woke Joe.
“Joe! We’ve got cockroaches in the kitchen!”
“Wah? We got wah? Right…” and he resumed his snoring.
I gave up trying to rouse him and went back to the kitchen. No cockroaches to be seen, but I knew I hadn’t imagined them. I drank a glass of water, staring at the floor the whole time, my bare toes curling in disgust. Then I added ‘cockroach killer’ to the shopping list before climbing back into bed to snatch a few more hours’ sleep. The noise from next door had stopped.
In the morning, I let Joe sleep on while I examined the kitchen again and checked ‘cockroaches’ on the Internet. The results didn’t cheer me up at all.
When Joe arose, I reminded him about our little problem and, this time, he was much more attentive.
“How many did you see?”
“Loads!”
“How many is ‘loads’?”
“Well, there must have been about … six.”
“Hmm… Not exactly a plague then?”
“Don’t be facetious. I’ve just Googled ‘cockroaches’. I read that if you see a few, then it’s likely there are dozens more around, just hidden.”
I glanced round the kitchen floor, half-expecting to see eyes peering at me from every crevice.
In England, cockroaches rarely crossed my mind. I didn’t know much about these resilient creatures then, but now I could probably answer questions about them on the TV show, Mastermind.
There are three main types of cockroach: the American, Oriental and German. Did you know that a cockroach can live for a week without its head, can run at 3 miles an hour and can hold its breath for 40 minutes? Did you know cockroaches have 18 knees and that their mouths work sideways?
All very interesting, but it didn’t help with the extermination of the wretched things in our kitchen.
“Would you mind doing the shopping on your own? I want to give the kitchen a really good clean and wash the floor. Here, I’ve made a list.” I handed it to him.
Joe glanced at the list. “I’m going to need a trailer to bring that lot home.”
“Well, don’t go to the chicken shop. We can do that together later in the week. Regalo will just have to wait a few more days for some company.”
Joe set off down the mountain and I washed and disinfected the kitchen floor. Then I swept the front doorstep, which always made me feel very Spanish. Further up the street, the Ufarte twins were playing with the wooden camels on their doorstep, while Granny Ufarte snoozed in her armchair in the shade.
I waved, but the twins were too immersed in their camel game to notice me. Their little Yorkshire terrier, Fifi, snuffled up to me and I was glad that Joe wasn’t around. Fifi still nursed a deep hatred of Joe and the sight of him would have set her off on a yapping, snarling, nipping fest.
Roberto and Federico rounded the corner pushing the pram in front of them. As they approached, I leant on my broom and peered into the pram.
“What a lovely baby!” I said. “What’s her name?” Really I wanted to ask whose baby she was.
The baby was dressed all in pink, with a matching sunbonnet and little pink shoes embroidered with daisies. I cooed into the pram and she gurgled back.
“This is Emilia,” said Roberto proudly, while Federico fussed with the baby’s pillow and adjusted her toys.
“Is she staying with you?” I ventured.
“Emilia is ours.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” I knew that gay marriage was now legal and I’d heard that adoption by same-sex partners was also now permitted. Judging by little Emilia’s sunny smile and her beautiful clothes and pram, she had fallen on her little pink feet. She was lucky to have found such devoted parents.
“I’m glad we saw you,” said Roberto, always the more talkative of the two. “We were talking to Juan and Maribel Ufarte and they said you used to babysit for them, before you went to the Middle East.”
“Er, yes...”
My hands tightened their grip on the broom. I could see where this was heading and I didn’t know how to stop it.
“They said you love children.”
“Yes, but...”
“Perfect!” said Roberto, clapping his hands and smiling at Federico beside him.
“In the winter, Federico and I want to take salsa classes down the mountain. You can look after Emilia!”
“I...”
“It will be just once a week, for an hour or two. We will tell you the times when we find out.”
Federico nodded in agreement.
“We...” I started, but couldn’t think of a response.
“That’s good, then. We will see you at the grand opening. Hasta luego!” and they were already turning away, pushing the pram in front of them.
I groaned and rested my forehead on the broom handle. I was going to have to pick my moment to tell Joe about that. And what grand opening?
Just then, Paco’s front door opened and Sofía skipped out, giggling, closely followed by a handsome young man. They didn’t see me and the young man carried on pinching her bottom as she flapped his hand away half-heartedly.
“Stop it, Alejandro! Somebody will see!”
So Paco’s house hadn’t been empty last night! His daughter had stayed and so had Alejandro, her new boyfriend, the millionaire’s son. Suddenly the nocturnal noises made sense. The pair were so wrapped up in each other they didn’t notice me in my porch. They locked their door and swung off up the street, arms around each other.
I looked across the valley and saw our car descending the twisting road into the village. Joe would be home in a few minutes. I wondered if he’d managed to purchase all the things on my list. Knowing Joe, he would have forgotten the most important items and come home with utterly random stuff instead.
3. Creatures Great and Small
Barbecued Garlic Bread
Joe lugged in the last of the shopping bags and dumped them on the kitchen floor. Spain is rather behind with recycling, but stores had just stopped issuing free plastic carrier-bags and our extra-strong re-usable Carrefour bags were lined up like a battalion of soldiers.
“Did you manage to get everything?” I asked.
“Yup. And before you ask, yes, I did get the cockroach killer.”
Joe can read my mind like a psychic. He was still catching his breath from bringing in the shopping and I decided that now was not a good time to tell him about Emilia and our future babysitting task.
Instead, I busied myself putting things away and finally found it: a flat, red, plastic gadget with holes in the sides. It came with little insecticide blocks to be inserted in the holes.
“Cockroaches, are you watching?” I said, waving the contraption around. “Tonight you will be dead!”
“You know the building the council were working on when we left for Bahrain?” asked Joe.
“Um, yes. By the square?”
“Well, it’s finished. They’ve finished painting it now. I drove past it and had a look.”
“That’s a surprise! Spain doesn’t have any money.”
“Not only is it finished, but there’s going to be a grand opening in a couple of weeks. I passed Geronimo and he told me about it.”
“Ah, that explains something the Boys said today.”
“You saw the Boys?”
“Oh, only briefly, when I was sweeping the front doorstep. The baby is theirs, adopted I assume. She’s gorgeous. What’s the building going to be used for?” I asked, deftly changing the subject.
“The downstairs part is going to be a bar, according to Geronimo.”
“Well, he’ll like that! I bet he’ll be their best customer.”
“And the rooms upstairs will be a surgery for when the doctor visits. And offices.”
“Gosh, no more going to Marcia’s house to see the doctor then?”
“Nope, El Hoyo is get
ting very modern.”
That night, we set the cockroach trap, baiting it according to the instructions. I slept easier, trusting that would be the end of our problem.
But cockroaches have been around since prehistoric times and they managed to survive much longer than any dinosaur. It would take more than a red, plastic gadget to end the cockroaches in our kitchen.
The following morning, I found two corpses on the floor. Well, it was a start. Shuddering, I swept them up, noticing that they were still alive, lying on their backs, their legs (and all 18 knees) still twitching.
“I’ll stand on them,” said Joe.
“No! You can’t do that! I read on the Internet that they may be carrying eggs and you’ll just spread their children all over the house.”
Each morning produced a few more corpses, but I knew they were just the tip of the iceberg. I imagined the armies of cockroaches lurking in the shadows of my kitchen, looking at their watches, just waiting for us to go to bed.
The next time Joe went down the mountain, cockroach killer was still on the shopping list. But this time he returned with three cans of spray.
Cans of cockroach spray
“Spray?” I asked. “Are we supposed to stay up all night in the dark and spray them as they appear?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Read the side of the can.”
So I read the modo de empleo carefully and, that night, followed the instructions to the letter. I sprayed at floor level, all around the edges of the room, paying particular attention to the gaps beside the cooker and fridge. The smell of it was diabolical, but it needed to be done.
Success! My labours bore fruit. Twenty black carcasses awaited me the next morning. Each morning produced more corpses, but the numbers were declining most satisfactorily. After a week, I’d used all three cans and disgusting black bodies no longer littered the kitchen floor. I disinfected all the kitchen cupboards (cockroaches can climb and fly) and heaved a huge sigh of relief.
However, I confess to having a sneaky admiration for the cucaracha. They’ve been around for millions of years and scientists maintain they are capable of surviving a nuclear blast. But that doesn’t mean I would welcome them into my kitchen. Believe me, if one so much as pokes its head out from behind the cooker, it’s history.
Two Old Fools in Spain Again Page 2