A Parrot in the Pepper Tree

by Chris Stewart

  As the summer heat became intense, I took a carriage to the station and boarded a night train full of soldiers. The train took me to Barcelona and from there I hitch-hiked to Paris, where I played guitar in the Métro to replenish my funds. There was a long tiled corridor at the Étoile station, where I made my stand. Its acoustics were remarkable, making a quietly-plucked Spanish guitar sound like a full orchestra, and, amongst other things, I played “Romanza”, It was a way of exorcising my humiliation and I liked to think the middle section was shaping up nicely. People stopped to listen by the dozen, and seemed to go pensive and a little melancholic before dropping a fat coin in my hat.

  It turned out that Les Jeux Interdits was playing to full houses at the Étoile cinema. My luck was in. In a short time I had enough money to buy a ticket home to England.

  Back under northern skies, my guitar ambitions were gradually replaced by new and rather contradictory passions — farming and travel. My time in Seville had left me hooked on the idea of flinging myself into unknown seas, while a brief stay on a sheep farm in the Black Mountains in Wales and a job on a farm in Sussex gave me a glimpse of a career path without suit and tie. For the next twenty years I farmed, for the most part, with an odd stint helping to research travel guides. The guitar would just occasionally resurface in my life — one winter I got a Saturday night slot playing at a Russian restaurant in Fulham — but it would be nearly twenty years before I found myself back in Spain with time on my hands for another crack at flamenco.

  LITERARY LIFE

  A COUPLE OF DAYS AFTER LEAF HAD CAUTIOUSLY PICKED HIS WAY back over our bridge, I had another phone call from London. This time it was my publisher, Nat, calling to say I’d been invited to talk at the Hay Literary Festival. She went on to enumerate the advantages for a writer of appearing at this gathering of book folk on the Welsh borders, but my mind had begun to drift. I was recalling the time when I’d stayed on that hill-farm in the Black Mountains and first learned how to shear sheep.

  ‘Of course I’ll come, if they want me,’ I enthused at once. ‘The countryside around Hay is as nice as it gets, and I could look up some old friends? Nat seemed relieved and talked on matter-of-factly about what a pleasant break it would be; she and Mark, the other half of my publishers, would drive down and meet me there. Then by way of parting she added that I shouldn’t worry at all about reading from or discussing my book — ‘just be yourself,’ she said, ‘and you’ll be fine?

  That’s when the nostalgic sheep-shearing images evaporated and the realisation dawned that I was to address a literary audience. I turned to Ana and Chloe — perhaps they could come too? But no, it was too short notice and the animals and school would have none of it. So it was that two weeks later, dragging an odd assortment of books in a leather bag (well, I could at least pass muster as a reader), I stepped apprehensively into the ticket and reception area at the Hay-on-Wye festival office.

  A light spattering of rain was replenishing the puddles at the centre of the festival courtyard, while slithery duckboards conducted the literary-minded to various tented auditoria. Nat and Mark were easy to spot, splashing around in the puddles with their toddler, near a door that led into a primary school classroom, transformed for the week into an authors’ reception room. I joined them just as a small knot of people paced past and some heads turned.

  ‘That’s Vikram Seth, I think, said Nat. ‘He’s talking in the tent next to yours — same slot, sadly, so we’ll all miss him.’ I turned to see the back of one of my favourite authors disappearing into another tent, just as two women swathed in kagouls pointed in my direction, whispering in a loud, excited hush, ‘It’s him! I’m sure it is!’ This was heady stuff. I straightened up and beamed back at them as an arm lightly touched mine to guide me out of the way. ‘Thank you,’ murmured Bill Bryson in passing.

  I don’t think I need to try and illuminate the blur that followed, except to say that a sympathetic festival organiser steered me through the door of the primary school classroom, poured me some wine and introduced me to my co-panelists Monty Don, the garden writer, and Adam Nicolson, author and newspaper columnist. I recall doing little more than smiling and gulping, with my eyes fixed on a small cardboard spider that dangled on one side of Adam’s head, painted, apparently, by “Megan, aged 6yrs”, Before I could ask for another glass, the kindly organiser was ushering us all in and out of the rain again and onto a stage. My publishers and their toddler smiled wanly from some seats next to the tent door. It was the sort of smile that you might use to cheer a relative in the dock.

  Adam began talking and reading from his book. I don’t think I’d ever longed for someone to be long-winded before — and he didn’t oblige. He was pithy and funny and, it had to be said, literary. I picked the dirt from under my nails and waited for my awful exposure, for someone to stand up at the back and say, ‘That man’s not an Author — he’s a sheep-shearer.’ Instead Monty Don swung into the gentlest of introductions and asked me to read a passage that he’d marked out. It was a description of my first ever shearing expedition in the Alpujarras, when I’d had to face down the scepticism of the local shepherds about using electric shears.

  I looked down at the page and suddenly realised that I hadn’t a clue how to read it. It wasn’t that my literacy skills had deserted me but I just hadn’t any idea what the voices of the different shepherds bantering with each other should sound like in English. At the time we had all spoken in Alpujarran Spanish and in the book I had side-stepped the issue of regional voices by recording their idiosyncratic grammar and leaving their accents to the imagination. Monty looked at me, Adam looked at me. The rain drummed patiently on the roof of the tent as if waiting also. I picked an accent, more or less at random and flung myself on the mercy of the hall.

  The first shepherd announced his serious doubts about the safety of his flock in the voice of a Pantomime Pirate, a kind of Ben Gun—Cornish. I coughed and tried again. He was answered by a Somerset lad who had evidently spent a lot of time in the Transvaal. I stopped once more. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Nat get up and, in a crouching tip-toe, leave with their toddler under her arm. Mark was staring fixedly up at the roof of the tent, seemingly amazed to find that it was made of canvas.

  I continued. The first shepherd had settled into an altogether quieter and more manageable Sussex country voice. That was fine, but I — the narrator — had somehow turned into Prince Philip. I ground to an appalled halt.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I started to say, ‘I really don’t know where all these strange accents have come from? But my words were obliterated by a ferocious thrumming on the roof of the tent. It seemed that God, in answer to my fervent prayer that the ground should open up and swallow me, had arranged for the skies to open instead. Perhaps he hadn’t quite got the hang of my accent.

  I leant back, saved by the elements, and watched as Nat swept back into the tent with a sleeping child in her arms. She smiled broadly at me. While the rain continued none of us could do anything more than smile. It was impossible to hear a word that anyone spoke, even if they were next to you. I pictured Vikram Seth, smiling and waiting on the stage of the tent behind and thought what a great leveller rain is.

  After the deluge the audience and panel exchanged thoughts in the most relaxed manner imaginable about farming and literature. Then we all wandered out into the brilliant sunshine to a tent where piles of books were waiting to be signed. I couldn’t help but notice a herd of cows plodding across their damp field above the festival grounds as if intending to join the queue.

  When I returned from this literary trip, which included a few book-signings in local shops as well looking up my old sheep-farming friends, Ana and Chloë checked me closely for signs of uppity-ness. Chloë enjoyed hearing me recount how I had signed books for complete strangers in bookshops but seemed anxious that I might have become changed in some subtle, irreversible way.

  I knew what she meant. Interest in authors struck me as being a fleeting, giddy-maki
ng thing. The phone rang, and in proof of how suggestible I’d become, I picked it up expecting it to be a journalist pressing for an interview. Instead it was José Guerrero, my shearing partner.

  ‘YOU’RE BACK FROM OVER THERE. GOOD,’ he shouted. ‘TOMORROW WE’RE GOING SHEEP-SHEARING!’

  ‘No we’re not. I’ve just this minute got home.’

  ‘NO MATTER, THESE SHEEP HAVE GOT TO BE DONE. SEE YOU AT FIVE-THIRTY IN RAMÓN’S BAR.’

  ‘Look, I don’t want to go shearing tomorrow; I’ve already been away and now I want to get to know my family again.’

  ‘I’M COUNTING ON YOU, CRISTOBAL. YOU CAN GET TO KNOW YOUR FAMILY ON THURSDAY.’

  ‘Why can’t you shear them yourself?’

  But it was too late; the other end of the line was dead.

  Chloë wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about my heading straight off shearing, but Ana understood. She knows that I’ve never been able to refuse José Guerrero any favour.

  José is an original. He hides a nature of quiet thoughtfulness and warmth beneath a brash bumptious exterior. A couple of years ago he was diagnosed with cancer of the lymphatic system, which probably explains his curiously cadaverous appearance. His way of coping with the disease is to hurl himself into a life of constant frenzy. To be with him is exhausting; he burns you up with his relentless energy. The technique seems to work, though; the disease seems unable to take the pace, and each time I see him he is just a little better, taking a few less pills.

  Both Ana and I felt that a day’s grubby manual work with José Guererro might help to bring me back to earth from the rarefied realms that I had been inhabiting.

  At five o’clock in the morning there’s not a stitch of light in the sky, just the stars, and on that particular morning there was no moon. I rolled quietly from the bed and stumbled around trying to find my tee-shirt and jeans, then crept out of the house into the hot, dark morning. Trudging along the track, I strained to catch the sound of the nightingales singing over the crunch of the gravel and roar of the river. All around the great bellies of the mountains stood dense black against the imperceptibly greying sky. The pale yellow bloom of the gallomba lining the track glowed feebly and the scent of its flowers filled the night. Then I crossed the bridge, climbed into the car, and, flicking on the headlights, extinguished the spell of the morning.

  In Ramón’s the usual early morning suspects sat along the bar addressing themselves quietly to their coffees, manzanillas, anis and brandies. There was no sign of José so I took a stool and ordered an orange juice. A young man in a shiny tracksuit came in and started cracking jokes about football in a loud voice. The other members of the bar seemed to enjoy it, but my thoughts were drifting back to home and bed. Whatever had made me want to do sheep-shearing, on a day that the TV weather lady was just saying would be around thirty-five degrees?

  At half past six, José stepped into the bar and slumped down beside me. ‘You’re right on time,’ he said. ‘Good — let’s go.’ I knew he had said five-thirty but there seemed no point in arguing the point. José had overslept but he’s a man who doesn’t like to admit mistakes, and to be honest, he looked a bit rough, and like he didn’t need an argument.

  I slung my bag into the cramped and fetid cab of José’s van and squeezed in after it. He started the engine and slipped a tape into the machine. Full volume, hideously distorted.

  ‘You’ll like this, Babykin…’ he announced.

  ‘What?’

  ‘La música — it’s Baby Kin…’

  ‘Ah, you mean BB King?’

  ‘Sí, claro — I just got this tape. Listen, it’s an Elmore James song.

  José is crazy about the blues. Well, so am I, at a decent hour of the day. But José seems to have some sort of short circuit in his sensibility system so that he enjoys it blasted out at full volume even at dawn. Inspired by Babykin’s guitar riffs, he thrashed the little tin van mercilessly up the Sierra de Lújar.

  It was a hot morning even now, before the sun had risen, and we had both windows open which dispelled a little the miasma of sheepshit and cigarette smoke. As we climbed higher, the snow-capped crests of the Sierra Nevada began to reveal themselves, and beneath them the grey of the high mountains looming above the dim blue folds of the valleys. We wound on and on up the narrow mountain road, through thick banks of deep grass and flowers, over the little pass above Camacho, and headed east along the ridge and up to the highest point along the road, Haza del Lino. Here we stopped at the bar to ask the way.

  ‘Is Blas here?’ José asked the dark-eyed beauty behind the bar.

  ‘No, he’s up in the Sierra?

  ‘But he’s expecting me today. Didn’t he get the message?’

  ‘Mother!’ called the girl. A woman fresh from the frying in the kitchen peered round the door at José.

  ‘Ah yes. I didn’t give Blas your message because he didn’t come home last night.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘No way of knowing.’ The two women looked at one another doubtfully, then at José.

  ‘How do we find him, then?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s very difficult, the mother began, with a look that made it seem like it really was very difficult.

  ‘How, then?’

  ‘Well, you go along the road towards Venta de Tarugo… and then you take the first right…’

  ‘No, you’re better off going past Tarugo and left,’ offered an old man who sat at the bar.

  ‘Manuel, what do you know? It’s much quicker going down and then up…’

  ‘Manuel has a point, though…’ butted in another customer.

  And so it went on, a melee of passionate and apparently contradictory advice, until at last we emerged with a piece of paper marked with what looked like runes, and a self-appointed guide, called Miguelillo, who seemed to have a very sketchy command of local geography. However, he purported to know just where we would find Blas.

  Miguelillo got in the front and I stretched out across the back seat and watched the world, or that part of it composed of the Sierra de la Contraviesa, zoom by through the side windows. We turned down to Venta de Tarugo along a lovely little road, with flowers and grasses growing through the tarmac.

  We could see the sun now hanging fiercely over the distant Sierra de Gador. Every bend we wound around took us into almost complete blindness, the white light of the sun enhanced by the disgusting state of José’s windscreen and the fact that both sun-visors had long ago dropped off. To either side stretched rolling hills of vines, short stocks with long dark shadows cast by the low sun. A few men were out in the vineyards in the early morning cool, one man tiny and alone in a sea of vines, hacking away at the weeds with his mattock — a truly Herculean labour. Nobody lived here. I couldn’t imagine even sheep living here. On we went, and on and on. There were few side-turnings, no villages, no houses, nothing but the vines.

  Miguelillo looked increasingly bemused and it soon became clear that he scarcely knew who Blas was, let alone where he could be found. He was one of those people, and they are to be found everywhere in rural Spain, who hang around in bars waiting for something interesting to happen — say a ride in a car somewhere. Just in case we were left in any doubt as to his usefulness, he told us he had a psychological disorder that made him violent from time to time. He was alright mostly, but when he got wound up, he just couldn’t stop himself. He said it made it difficult for him to hold down a proper job. He told us all this with a smile that would charm your worst aunt.

  José, too, was all smiles, as he turned to Miguelillo and addressed him:

  ‘Hombre,’ he said. ‘All this is very bad luck, and me and my friend here count it a great privilege to have you with us as a guide today — even though you haven’t the first idea where the hell we are. But I’m just taking this opportunity to let you know that if you step just one tiny little step out of line, we will have no hesitation in hanging you by the balls from one of these cork trees. Cristóbal in the back there
now is very quiet and gentle-mannered, but he gets evil when he’s riled up, and there’s no stopping him. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  Miguelillo understood perfectly and said that he thought it extremely unlikely that he would turn nasty. I just watched the flowers of the roadside racing by outside the side-windows, and hoped that I wouldn’t have to get evil.

  Not long afterwards, after a couple of wrong turnings and no help at all from Miguelillo, who had decided to get out at a crossroads where there was a big shady fig tree, we happened upon the cortijo where we were to do our stuff. In order to try and build up some momentum I flung open the door and leapt out into the warm sunshine of the yard. A line of big dark men in blue boiler suits considered our arrival through a curtain of cigarette smoke, and beneath a walnut tree a couple of thin dogs scratched themselves on bits of rusty agricultural detritus.

  ‘How could anyone want to be anything other than a sheep-shearer?’ I exclaimed to José, as we set up the machinery in the barn below.

  The day started to unfold in just the way that such days do, the heat increasing and the sweat running and the flies swarming over us. But it didn’t bother us at all because the sheep were perfect. They sheared like a hot knife through butter, the wool furling off neat and clean. José, singing to himself, turned on the speed to make a competition of it. I speeded up, too, and all morning we raced through those wonderful fat sheep together. As the day drew on and the sheep heated up and started sweating, it got better still. A hot, fat, sweaty sheep is a shearer’s dream. By mid-afternoon we had finished the job, and were down at the house sharing a meal with the shepherd and his family.