Two Old Fools in Spain Again

by Victoria Twead

  The plane touched down in Melbourne very early in the morning. As I made my way outside to look for my daughter and son-in-law, I shivered. They say Melbourne can experience four seasons in one day and that early September day was definitely winter, especially after the sunshine of Spain.

  Then, all thoughts of climate vanished as I saw them. A flurry of hugs and kisses, all of us talking at once and the first sight of my granddaughter. Four weeks old, oblivious, rosy with sleep, warm and smelling faintly of milk and baby powder. Had my own children ever been so small? Of course they had, but how quickly we forget.

  The timing was perfect. Cam had finished his paternity leave and was going back to work. I felt I could be useful helping with Indy and giving her mother a break to catch up on some sleep or have her hair done. Indy was a good baby and Karly was a natural, relaxed mum. Each day melted into the next, filled with laughter, nappies and mountains of washing.

  Looking after a newborn meant we didn’t go on many outings, but Australia still provided plenty of wildlife to entertain me. The garden was home to a pair of possums who peered at me from the fence as I hung tiny baby items on the washing line. I pushed raw carrots into the fence to lure them so that I could watch them feed.

  Raw carrots for the possums

  “Watch out for drop bears,” Karly warned. “Don’t walk under the trees.”

  “Drop bears? What are drop bears?”

  I knew all about koalas but hadn’t heard of drop bears. I’m a huge fan of David Attenborough and nature documentaries and I know quite a lot about bears. I know about polar bears, black bears, grizzlies, sloth bears, sun bears, giant pandas and even spectacled bears. But I’d never heard of a drop bear.

  “They’re very dangerous, look out. They’re related to koalas but they’re carnivorous. They sit in the trees looking down, waiting to drop on prey passing underneath.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “No, honestly! I never knew about them before I moved to Oz, either.”

  I was dubious. I knew my daughter too well. She and Cam had warned me about Cam’s parents’ two fierce dogs. They said they were a matching pair of Mexican fighting dogs and that I should be extremely wary of them. The Mexican fighting dogs turned out to be a couple of very timid elderly Chihuahuas.

  “You have to be really careful when you walk in woods round here because of the drop bears,” Karly repeated, “but you can take precautions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, apparently, if you carry a hanky soaked in your own pee, that puts them off.”

  I stared at her.

  “Or if you smear Vegemite on your neck,” she added.

  We were both laughing now.

  “And if you hold a fork behind your ear, that’s good. Drop bears really don’t like that. And if you talk with an Australian accent, you’re safer than if you talk with a Pommie accent. Stop laughing! I was told all that stuff when I moved over here and I believed it!”

  “Honestly? You believed it?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, I don’t!”

  Later, still chuckling, I looked up ‘drop bears’ on Wikipedia:

  A dropbear or drop bear is a fictitious Australian marsupial. Drop bears are commonly said to be unusually large, vicious, carnivorous marsupials related to koalas (although the koala is not a bear) that inhabit treetops and attack their prey by dropping onto their heads from above. They are an example of local lore intended to frighten and confuse outsiders and amuse locals, similar to the jackalope, hoop snake, wild haggis or snipe hunt.

  Unfortunately, the creatures of Australia don’t necessarily stay outdoors. One evening, little Indy decided to become Monster Baby instead of being her usual Angel Baby. Cam was already asleep as he had to be up for work early next morning. Karly and I took it in turns to wheel the pram up and down the living room and finally Indy settled and went off to sleep. Very carefully, Karly picked her up and took her upstairs to her cot.

  The next thing I heard was a stage whisper from the top of the stairs.

  “Mum! I can’t come down!”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Look!”

  I looked at the wall where she was pointing, halfway up the stairs. There, stock still, sat a huge black spider.

  Australia is well known for its variety of scary spiders, from the massive huntsman to the vicious red-back. There are mouse spiders, funnel webs, trapdoor and wolf spiders. Most of them deliver a nasty, painful bite that can make one very ill and treatment should be sought immediately. I didn’t know what variety this enormous spider on our wall was, but Karly did.

  “It’s a white-tail!” Karly hissed. “If it bites you, it’s really painful and it’ll make you sick and swell up. And if you are allergic to it, you get a reaction like gangrene and it eats your flesh away.”

  I stared with horror at her and then at the spider high on the wall.

  “You’re not joking, are you?” I asked hopefully. “Like the drop bear?”

  “No! I’m serious! What if it gets into Indy’s room?”

  I’m a real coward when it comes to spiders. I respect them and am fascinated by their skills and ingenuity, but they still terrify me. Even English and Spanish spiders that are relatively small and harmless, fill me with terror. It’s an unreasonable fear which, unfortunately, Karly inherited from me.

  I recalled Joe’s spider bite. It was swollen and itchy, but a walk in the park compared with a bite from one of these Aussie beasts. The knowledge that I’m allergic to bee and wasp stings and react badly even to humble mosquito bites, didn’t fill me with any more confidence.

  “What do we do?”

  We stared at each other, white-faced and shuddering.

  “I can’t get close enough to kill it.”

  “Neither can I.”

  The spider appeared to be listening and twitched.

  “What if it starts running? What if it hides and we can’t find it?”

  “Okay,” I said sounding much braver than I felt. “I’m going to get the Dyson. I’ll vacuum it up. Keep watching it in case it moves.”

  At the top of the stairs, Karly gripped the banisters, eyes locked on the spider on the wall.

  I pulled the Dyson out of the cupboard, giving myself a severe talking to as I did so.

  Come on, pull yourself together. It’s just a spider. You can do this.

  I attached the nozzle and pulled out the extension tube as far as it could possibly reach.

  “Mum! Quick, it’s moving!”

  I refused to look. A stationary spider is frightening enough, but a scuttling one is much worse.

  I pulled out the cable and plugged it into the wall. The cleaner hummed into life.

  Hurry up! You can do this! Just suck it up!

  The spider was still again and I swear it was staring at me.

  What if it jumps at me?

  For a full thirty seconds I stood there, poised, extension tube in hand, unable to do the deed.

  Do it!

  So, I did. I inched forward and stretched up until the nozzle was beside the spider. It began to scuttle away sideways but the vacuum was too strong. The spider clung to the wall for a second then shot up the tube with a soft thud.

  I dropped the tube with a clatter and left the machine running, just to make sure. I didn’t want to risk the spider climbing back down the tube and out. I should have felt proud of myself, but I didn’t because I hate killing anything. That poor spider didn’t know he had entered forbidden territory.

  Luckily, neither Indy nor Cam woke up and the crisis was averted. However, for the remainder of my stay, I couldn’t help checking out the walls and dark corners for any more lurking arachnids.

  Our days were kept busy with baby care, but there was still time for other stuff. Cam and Karly took me to the local park at dusk to watch the possums. Well-accustomed to humans, these possums were tame enough to accept pieces of carrot from one’s hand. Wherever you looked, possums ran up and down
the trees and allowed themselves to be photographed from just feet away.

  As I crouched down to snap a mother sitting on the grass with a baby peeping from her pouch, I didn’t see another possum approach, probably hoping I had something edible in my hand. Just as I took the photo, he popped up in front of me, providing me with the most audacious photobomb I have ever seen. (For those like me who have never heard that word before, ‘photobomb’ means to spoil a photograph by unexpectedly appearing in the camera’s field of view just as the picture is taken.) This cheeky possum did it perfectly, very close up and the resulting photo had us laughing hysterically.

  Possum photobomb

  Another evening, we went to the St Kilda area of Melbourne in search of fairy penguins. These are the smallest penguins in the world, the adult being just 30 cm (12 inches) tall. There is a colony of fairy penguins that nests in the rocks at the end of a long walkway and every evening they return from the sea. Crowds gather nightly to watch the spectacle and there are volunteers who are happy to tell you fairy penguin facts. Flash photography is absolutely forbidden as these penguins have no eyelids and the bright flash can cause epileptic fits.

  We parked the car and pushed the pram along the beach just as the sun was dipping into the ocean. We joined the waiting throng, all scanning the sea for a sign of the returning colony. There was an air of anticipation and excitement. They’d arrive soon, we were told and clamber onto the rocks of the breakwater below us.

  Twenty minutes later, the sun had all but disappeared leaving just a light patch on the distant horizon. As yet, there was no sign of the fairy penguins.

  Unfortunately, six-week-old babies don’t give a fig for fairy penguins. Indy stirred, grunted, woke up and yelled, demanding to be fed. No amount of jiggling the pram would pacify her, she was hungry and determined to tell all the waiting penguin watchers about it. Reluctantly, we turned away and hurried back down the walkway.

  We never saw the fairy penguin colony swim home or clamber up the rocks, although I did catch a glimpse of one or two hiding amongst the boulders. It was unlikely I’d ever get the chance again because Cam and Karly were planning to leave Melbourne and move back to Sydney in a few months. Their property in Sydney was currently being rented out.

  One day, Karly and I discussed the move.

  “We can’t wait to get back to Sydney and live in our own house again,” she said. “And it’ll be nice to have Cam’s parents nearby. Cam’s really looking forward to working for the Sydney company again too and we’re hoping the hours won’t be so long so he can spend more time with Indy.”

  “Will you move back into your own house or rent another?”

  I knew that their house was lovely and in a fashionable part of Sydney, but I also knew it wasn’t a house designed for a growing family.

  “No, we’re going to tidy it up and then sell it. It’s a beautiful house but it’s more for young professionals. It’s not really a family house. We’re going to need a proper garden and we’d like to live closer to Cam’s parents.”

  It’s astonishing how fast a baby grows. I was there when Indy started to focus properly, eyes following her mother and father as they moved around the room. I was there to see her first smile.

  But, all too soon, my weeks in Australia drew to a close and I had to leave the little family. Bittersweet, as I missed Joe and our home in Spain, but I didn’t want to miss any of Indy’s growing up either.

  Then I was kissing them all goodbye and boarding the plane back to Spain, wondering what had been going on in the village while I’d been away.

  20. Senior Moments

  “So you had a good time and Indy’s gorgeous.”

  “Of course she is, she’s absolutely scrummy and she’s such a good baby.”

  I paused for breath. I think I’d been talking nonstop since I arrived back in Spain. I described how we coaxed smiles out of Indy, what Melbourne was like, what the Australian weather was like, the animals I saw and all sorts of other unimportant stuff. We’d tried chatting on Facebook, but the difference in time always made it difficult. We’d agreed it would be easier to catch up with everything when I returned.

  “I’m glad it all went well and it’s good to have you back,” Joe said.

  “Karly and Cam are coming over to the UK and Spain next summer, isn’t that fantastic news? They want to show Indy off to all the British friends and relations.”

  “That is really good to hear! It’s such a long trip to and from Australia, watching Indy growing up from afar is going to be difficult,” said Joe.

  He didn’t need to tell me that. There was already a dark struggle going on inside me. I felt ripped in half. Half of me wanted to stay in my beloved Spain, while the other half of me yearned to pack up everything and move to Australia.

  But it wasn’t as easy as that. At our age, to move to Australia would mean applying for a horrendously expensive visa. We would need to pay approximately 50,000AUD (£28,000 or $47,000) each to be allowed to stay in Australia permanently. I couldn’t see how that could ever be possible.

  “Anyway, what’s been happening in the village while I’ve been away?” I asked, shaking off my thoughts. “Any gossip?”

  “Well, the chickens are fine, laying eggs when they feel like it. Sylvia, Felicity and Snitch are in the garden most of the time. Lola Ufarte and her partner are still next door. I think they are doing some house renovations because they keep drilling into their walls.”

  “And Paco and Carmen?”

  “Yes, they’ve been up every weekend as usual. It’s been grape-pressing time of course. Paco was telling me he no longer does it up in his cortijo. He’s joined forces with Alejandro Senior and they’ve built a huge barn down in the valley. He took me to see it and it’s got a huge mechanised wine press and modern galvanised barrels storing all the wine. It’s all very industrial. There’s also a fireplace, a massive one, a kitchen area and a huge table in the centre.”

  “Paco couldn’t afford a place like that!”

  “No, but Alejandro Senior can.”

  “Have you seen Judith and Mother at all?”

  “No, but that reminds me. I saw Pancho the mayor last week and he said he’d be in touch about those English lessons you promised him.”

  “Oh no! What did you say?”

  “Don’t worry, I told him you were away in Australia.”

  “Whew!”

  It didn’t take long to settle back into village life. It was autumn and the leaves of the Spanish oak began to crisp and turn rust-brown as the days grew shorter. And soon it was fiesta time again. It seemed like only yesterday when the Reverend James Andrew Montgomery and his awful wife, Mavis, had been our guests.

  The arrival of the villagers, with their friends and relatives, marked the beginning of the weekend’s festivities. Over the weekend, the procession carrying the village saint passed our front door as usual. Paco was invariably one of the bearers, but I didn’t see him. In fact I hadn’t seen him at all for the whole weekend. Neither had I seen Carmen or Little Paco. (Not so ‘little’ now, Little Paco was seventeen and taller than both his parents.) Instead of Bianca and Yukky barking and shouts and laughter coming from next door, the house was silent and the front door was locked. It was most unusual.

  We had seen Judith keeping an eye on Mother, who was dancing in the square with Alejandro Senior. Marcia sat on a kitchen chair in her shop doorway, knitting something shapeless, hairpins slipping from her hair. Uncle Felix appeared and sat on the bench next to the shop entrance. I hadn’t seen any of the Ufartes but then I didn’t expect to.

  On the Sunday night Geronimo let off a final explosion of fireworks and, following the usual mass exodus, the village fell silent once more. It wasn’t until a fortnight later that we discovered why Paco and his family hadn’t appeared at the village fiesta and it wasn’t a happy story.

  We’d been making curry and discovered that we’d forgotten to buy sultanas, an ingredient we loved to include. It wasn’t disast
rous, just irritating. The nearest shops were at the bottom of the mountain, quite a long drive and just not worth the effort for sultanas.

  But then we realised we had no plastic bin bags for the rubbish bin. To cap it all, the fire alarm started beeping intermittently, informing us that the battery needed replacing.

  “I might just as well go down the mountain and get some sultanas, a battery and some bin bags,” Joe said, grabbing the car keys. “Being a Friday I bet the supermarket will be packed. I’ll probably be a couple of hours.”

  He returned with a glum face, scratching himself irritably.

  “What’s the matter? I asked, as he dumped the shopping on the table. “Problems at the shop?”

  “No, worse. Much worse. I was reversing the car into our garage and I was so busy making sure I had enough space on my side, I didn’t check the other. I scraped the car and ripped the wing mirror off.”

  “Oh.”

  I was sympathetic because I knew the garage doorway was extremely narrow, but I was also annoyed because he never bothered to fold the mirrors in. It wasn’t the first time he damaged them while reversing into the garage, although this time it sounded more serious.

  “But that’s not all. While I was trying to fix the wing mirror I put the keys down on the bonnet of the car. I couldn’t do anything about the mirror so I left it, picked up the shopping and closed the garage door. Just as I snapped the padlock together, I realised I’d made a big, big mistake.”

  “What?”

  “I’d locked the keys in the garage.”

  “Oh no! Haven’t we got a spare key for that padlock?”

  “I hope so.”

  We searched high and low for a duplicate key. We looked in all the obvious places like the key rack and then the not-so-obvious places like the kitchen junk drawer where miscellaneous objects go to die. I looked in old handbags, coat pockets and in the tool shed. No key.