It was a scene of carnage. Red juice splatted the street and shattered watermelons lay strewn around, all jagged edges and pink glistening flesh. The tailgate of the farmer’s trailer must have dropped and his load of watermelons had escaped, bouncing and rolling down the mountain road.
Melon shards
Joe and I gaped at the mess, then silently collected all the undamaged watermelons, rolling them into a pile for the farmer to collect when he returned. As for the huge shards of damaged watermelons, we knew who would appreciate them. As we daubed pink paint on their house, our chickens feasted on watermelon.
Our first visitor, my niece Becky, arrived. She offered to help paint the chicken house, which was very kind of her. Except there was a problem. Becky was absolutely terrified of the chickens.
“They won’t hurt you,” I said, “they’re really gentle.”
Becky was brave, but the painting session was a noisy one. Every time a chicken got too close, she’d shriek and make a dash for the gate.
Nevertheless, the chicken house was eventually painted. Surprisingly, the finished job looked rather good, if a little, um … pink. Some of the chickens had pink streaks where they’d rubbed against the wet paint, but they soon wore off.
We learnt a lesson from the experience. When buying paint, always check, then double-check that the label says blanco, not arcilla. Arcilla actually means ‘clay’ but, I promise you, it’s pink. Very pink.
Before visitors arrived, they often asked if they could bring anything for us from England, items that we couldn’t purchase in Spain. We usually asked the Gin Twins to bring bayonet-type light bulbs as the Spanish screw-in type didn’t fit our English light fittings. We asked niece Becky to bring Italian seasoning as we missed our spaghetti bolognese.
“Do you have any requests?” I asked Joe as our latest batch of visitors were preparing to fly out.
“Yes! I’ve been craving bacon. Can you ask them to bring a few packs?”
Delicious serrano ham and all kinds of wonderful pork products are easy to buy in Spain, but good old English sausages and bacon are impossible to find. Of course, during our year’s stay in Muslim Bahrain, pork hadn’t been on sale at all. I estimated we hadn’t tasted bacon for at least 10 years. I hadn’t missed it at all, but it seemed that Joe had suddenly developed a hankering for it.
“I can’t stop thinking about bacon,” Joe said with a dreamy look in his eye. “I’m fantasising about it. I can almost smell it.”
“No worries, I’ll ask them to bring some.”
Our visitors arrived and so did three packs of bacon. Joe thanked our friends but as soon as they’d left the room, he started complaining.
“Only three? They brought only three packs? Don’t they realise I’ve been suffering terrible bacon withdrawal symptoms?”
“Don’t be so ungrateful. It was kind of them to bring any at all.”
“Well, don’t plan any bacon-based meals while they’re here. I want to save this little lot until after they’ve gone. I’m hiding this.”
True to his word, he tucked them away at the back of the fridge behind the sauces and ketchups that were seldom moved.
We enjoyed our friends’ stay but as we took them back to the airport, I felt Joe’s impatience.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked as we drove home. “Why are you driving so fast?”
“No reason.”
“Yes, there is. Something’s on your mind, that’s for sure.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Joe drummed his fingers on the steering-wheel, feigning nonchalance.
“Come on, what’s on your mind?”
“Well, if you must know, I’m planning a sandwich.”
“You’re what? You’re planning a … sandwich?”
“Yep, we’re going to stop at the supermarket and I’m going to buy some fresh bread, lettuce and tomatoes. I’ve been dreaming about this. I’m going to make the best bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich in the world.”
Back in our kitchen, Joe unpacked his purchases and laid them out. Then he reached for a pack of bacon, running his fingers over the smooth, cold plastic before snipping it open with scissors.
“Now, don’t interfere, I’m making this myself. I’ve been rehearsing it in my mind for days. You don’t want one, do you?”
“No, thanks, I’ll just make myself a coffee.”
Joe lit the hob and heated a little oil in the frying pan. He peeled several slices of bacon out of the pack and laid them lovingly into the hot oil where they sizzled. Humming to himself, he poked them gently with a spatula, moving them around a little.
“I’d forgotten how good bacon smells when it’s cooking,” I said.
“Don’t think you’re getting any of this, you’re too late. I offered and you said no. This is all for me.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t want any of your wretched bacon.”
Joe was in a world of his own as he carried on with his preparations. He pulled off a few choice leaves from the iceberg lettuce and sliced a tomato with surgeon-like precision. Then he cut the freshly baked bread, still warm from the bakery.
The scene was set. The BLT was almost ready.
“Stop staring at me, you’re putting me off.”
“Sorry, I can’t help it,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve never seen you so engrossed in making a sandwich.”
Joe spooned and spread mayonnaise on the bread and laid out the bright tomato slices evenly, topping them with the crispy lettuce. Then, with a flourish, he placed the bacon slices on top, finishing off with another slice of bread. I had to admit it, it did look good.
He stood back and stared at the sandwich waiting on the plate.
“What a sandwich,” he whispered. “Not so much a sandwich as a work of art.”
“Well, go on then, eat it!”
“Not yet, I need to take a photo of it first.”
Having snapped it from all angles, he went to put the camera away.
“Don’t you dare touch it while I’m gone.”
“Huh! I value my life too much.”
When he returned, he stared at the sandwich again.
“Are you going to eat it now?” I asked.
“Yes, but there’s no rush. This sandwich was made with love. It’s probably the best sandwich in the world. You can’t rush these things.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, just eat it!”
But he couldn’t. He’d invested too much into that sandwich. It was just too beautiful to eat.
Having circled it a few times, he finally picked up the plate.
“This sandwich deserves to be savoured. I want to be alone when I eat it.”
I rolled my eyes, exasperated. “Oh, for goodness’ sake! Do whatever you want. I’m going to get some writing done.”
I left the room to allow him to continue his love affair with the sandwich in peace. An hour or so later, I went back into the kitchen.
“How was the sandwich?” I asked, but the kitchen was empty. There was no sign of Joe or the sandwich.
I went out into the garden. Joe was nowhere to be seen. I went up the outside staircase and found him on the roof terrace, fast asleep on the sunlounger, the empty plate still in his hands.
“Joe?”
He woke up with a start and sat upright.
“How was the sandwich?”
He looked at me, then stared at the empty plate.
“I never ate it!”
“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.
“I just sat down and stared at it. I was imagining biting into it and deciding which end to start. I wanted to savour every second. I guess I must have fallen asleep.”
“So where is it?”
We both looked down at the floor. There was the sandwich. Well, most of it. The once glorious sandwich had fallen apart and the tomato slices had tumbled out and were already covered in ants. The creamy mayonnaise had disappeared, melted into the bread. The lettuce was limp and wilted from lying in t
he sun.
And where was the bacon?
Gone.
“Cats,” I said, picking up the mess and putting it back on the plate.
“Blasted cats!” said Joe furiously. “I can’t believe it! The cats sneaked up and stole my bacon while I was asleep!”
“If you had just eaten the stupid sandwich instead of worshipping it, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“I can’t believe I never even tasted it!”
I made Joe (and myself) another BLT. Joe maintained it wasn’t anywhere near as beautiful as the first one, but this time he didn’t hesitate before eating it. We both agreed it was delicious.
The phone rang very early one morning. I immediately knew who it was as my daughter had told me that she had a hospital visit scheduled. They were hoping to discover the gender of the baby.
“Mum, it’s me!”
“Hi, Karly, good to hear you. Did you find out?”
“Yep! It’s a little girl! We are going to have a daughter!”
“Oh my! I’m going to have a granddaughter! Does that mean you’re going to stop calling her Wolfgang or Grug now?”
How did the poor little unborn mite get saddled with those names?
“Yep, we’ve got to start looking at names properly. The hospital says everything is going according to plan and the baby is the right size and everything.”
“Oh good, that’s great news. And your due date is still early August?”
“Yes. Cam’s parents are going to fly down from Sydney and stay a while when the baby is born.”
“Okay and I’ll book my flight. I think you’ll have lots of help in those first couple of weeks and Cam will have time off work to be with you. I’ll come over in the first week of September. Can’t wait!”
“I can’t wait either! I can’t wait for this baby to be born and I can’t wait to see you!”
“Time will fly, you’ll see.”
By the end of June, the sun was often unbearably hot and the villagers were arriving for their summer break. Children played in the streets, mopeds and scooters buzzed and the evening promenade up the mountain road resumed. Only the Ufartes’ house remained quiet and empty. Then, in midsummer, we heard activity again and wondered who was living there now.
“I hope Maribel has come back,” I said. “It would be nice to see the kids again.”
But it wasn’t Maribel, or her husband, Papa Ufarte. Lola had returned and to nobody’s surprise, she wasn’t alone.
Lola’s new companion had long, unkempt hair and a furtive way of looking at one. His jeans were torn and dirty and he made no attempt to talk to us or any of the villagers. I didn’t much like the look of him and it seemed other people shared my view.
“You mark my words,” said Carmen, “that new man of Lola Ufarte’s is not to be trusted.”
“Do you know anything about him?” I asked.
“No and that is what worries me. In a village like this, we all know about each other.”
We didn’t see much of either Lola or her new man. They kept to themselves and rarely emerged from the house except to drive noisily away in a rusty old van with a dangling exhaust pipe that nearly scraped the ground.
And all the time, on the other side of the world, my granddaughter was growing.
17. Birthdays
Steak with Paprika and Herbs
‘Your baby is now the size of a coconut and is getting closer and closer to being able to breathe on her own. Her skin is getting smooth and soft and her gums are rigid. Her liver and kidneys are in working order.’
My daughter, Karly, was speaking to me on the phone from Melbourne.
“We’ve done some great eBay shopping for Grug and bought a second-hand cot, pram and chest of drawers-changing-table thingy and nappy bag. Cam has sanded down and repainted all the furniture and it looks amazing. We’ve saved an absolute fortune,” my daughter told me on the phone.
“Oh, well done! Any more thoughts about her name?”
“We’re thinking of calling her Bunny after the Duracell advert where the bunny never stops moving. We keep changing our minds but we have a shortlist of about six now.”
“You’ll know which name is right for her when she arrives,” I said. “At least you can stop calling her Wolfgang or Grug.”
“That’s true. What’s the weather like in Spain now? It’s cold here in Melbourne.”
“Hot! We try to go to the beach at least once a week and the doors and windows stay open permanently.”
“Well, by the time Wolfgang arrives and you come over, spring should be well on the way here.”
It always surprised me how very hot the Spanish sun was. I couldn’t touch the handrail of the outside staircase without scalding myself and the chickens stayed in the shade until evening. They looked their very worst in midsummer as they lost feathers and developed bald patches as they moulted.
“They look like roadkill,” Joe observed more than once.
“Poor things!”
“They look about ready for the pot,” said Joe.
“Sssh! They’ll hear you.”
We had never eaten our own chickens but we delighted in eating their eggs. No matter how hot the summer became, they always presented us with eggs, which I thought was very generous of them, considering the heat. I’m sure I wouldn’t have bothered. The eggs were always rich with gloriously orange yolks. That is until one particular day.
It was a Sunday and I was boiling eggs for breakfast. I hummed to myself as I cut the buttered toast into soldiers and popped the eggs into the eggcups.
“Lovely!” said Joe as he sliced the top off his egg, but his expression soon changed.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“This egg. It’s got no yolk!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, “all eggs have yolks.”
“Well, I assure you, this one hasn’t.”
He was right, of course. His egg had no yolk. It was the first of many and, believe me, a breakfast egg with no yolk is no joke.
I looked it up on the Internet and apparently it can happen sometimes. It occurs when something or other inside the hen becomes detached and is most commonly found with elderly chickens. We guessed Regalo was the culprit as she was the most advanced in years, but we never found out for sure.
Naturally, my Facebook friends were full of suggestions. “Make meringues, or an egg white omelette,” they said.
But there was something very unappetising about those yolkless eggs and I couldn’t bring myself to use them. We learned to recognise which were yolkless because the shell was slightly rough and contoured. Whenever Joe or I came across them, we’d set them aside and put them in a carrier bag to dispose of later.
By July, I was getting really excited. In just a few short weeks our granddaughter would be born and I would be jetting across the world to meet her. Joe and I had discussed it at length and reluctantly decided I should go alone. I was desperate to be there to meet and help with the new baby, but we had commitments in Spain, animals to care for and flights to Australia are hugely expensive. Joe would have to be patient.
As our granddaughter prepared to make her entrance into the world, Joe was approaching his own birthday.
When one reaches our age, birthdays cease to be magical and are more of an unwelcome reminder that the years are ticking by. There was no way that Joe could have had a better birthday than the one he had in 2010. That year his birthday coincided with the final of the World Cup, which Spain won. An unforgettable day for the Spanish and for us.
“What do you want to do for your birthday this year?” I asked him.
“Nothing really, it’s just another day. Unless you want to ply me with drinks and entertain me with the Dance of the Seven Veils. That would be good, I’d like that.”
“Not a chance.”
“Well, let’s just have a day at the beach and then go for a nice meal afterwards.”
“You don’t want to do anything different?”
/> “Nope. No surprises please, I don’t want any fuss.”
We always go to the same part of the beach and hire sunbeds and a parasol for the day. The sunbeds have thick, comfortable mattresses and the parasols are big Balinese type ones thatched with straw or something similar. What could be better than lying stretched out on a comfy sunbed with a good book in your hand, listening to the waves lap and dozing occasionally?
The Spanish are very sensible about exposure to the sun. They flock to the beach in the morning, but at around one o’clock, when the sun is at its highest, they shake out their towels, pack up and leave. The beach almost empties, until five o’clock when they all return after a siesta.
Very few tourists or expats used the part of the beach that we favoured. At one o’clock the mass exodus began and we soon had the beach to ourselves. Well, almost all to ourselves because we shared it with a couple of ladies a short distance away. A glance told me that they were foreigners like ourselves, perhaps English or German.
I dozed off and awoke to see the pair coming back up the beach after a swim in the sea. Sadly, I noticed that one of the ladies was badly deformed with large misshapen lumps all over her torso hidden by her blue swimming costume. That’s odd, I thought. Poor thing, I’m surprised I didn’t notice it before. I turned away and read my book again.
Some time later I was too hot to read any more.
“Fancy a swim?” I asked Joe, but he was fast asleep.
I walked down to the water’s edge just as the two ladies were also returning for another dip. To my astonishment, both ladies looked totally normal and there was no sign of the ugly lumps I’d noticed earlier. As they approached, I heard that they were English.
Once in the water, we struck up a conversation. The ladies were on holiday, staying at a friend’s apartment and were full of praise for the area. The sea was gentle that day and very clear. As we chatted, the lady in the blue costume suddenly dipped below the water. The other lady explained.
“Don’t mind my friend Lizzie,” she said. “She loves Spain so much that whenever she sees a bit of rubbish in the sea, she picks it up.”
Two Old Fools in Spain Again Page 12