A Lizard In My Luggage

by Anna Nicholas

  DONKEY WORK

  Ollie is scowling at me and scuffing one of his new black shoes against a wall. I don't bother to chastise him. Around us are children of all ages tearing about, screaming, laughing, babbling in various languages and playing with balls. Sun-kissed parents in shorts and T-shirts appear to be cheerfully exchanging news. I don't spy any designer labels and there are few nannies, for that matter. The noise is intense. A tall, smiling woman in a red jacket whom I recognise as the headmistress is standing surrounded by teenage girls, all of them vying to kiss her cheeks. I'm mesmerised, imagining that this must be some sort of new term ritual. Several gangly youths are slouching along towards a similar group some way off. Maybe two rival gangs? But no, now they're all laughing, calling out and falling on each other with bear hugs and hand shakes. A school where it's cool to hug?

  'So will anyone speak English?' hisses Ollie, hoisting up his oversized grey school shorts. His skinny legs are covered in bruises and scratches, the spoils of football and treacherous ant hunts. I make reassuring clucking noises. His wavy blond hair is tousled and kissing the tip of his nose so I vainly attempt to smooth it back with my hand. He flinches, mortified, his blue eyes flashing angrily at me. 'What on earth are you doing? Someone might see!' He peers round furtively.

  'Well, you look like a Komodo dragon. I should have got your hair cut.'

  'Komodo dragons don't have hair,' he sniffs disdainfully.

  My son may only be six but he has a great way of putting me in my box.

  A small boy about his age runs up to him.

  'Do you like football?'

  Does a Scotsman like whisky?

  Ollie nods.

  'Do you speak Mallorcan?'

  'Maybe,' he says. Enigmatic as ever.

  'I'm Sebastià. See you at break.'

  Ollie nods gravely and Sebastià trots off.

  A school bell sounds and there's bedlam. Everyone's running to take his or her place in line. They seem to know the procedure. We don't. Suddenly I feel a little hand in mine as Ollie looks up at me pleadingly.

  'Where do I go, Mummy? Where? Quick!'

  I turn round to make sense of what's happening but the headmistress is already bearing down on us, beaming like a jolly Butlins Red Coat, enveloping my son in a huge embrace. She grasps his free hand and gives me a reassuring wink.

  'Come with me, poppet. Mummy will be back later.'

  He throws me an inscrutable look and walks with her to the back of a line of small children. I stand transfixed. Will he be OK? Should I accompany him? As if reading my mind, he looks back at me and shakes his head, indicating with his eyes that I should go.

  I think back to his previous sanitised existence at St George's in Pimlico run by the ghastly Priscilla EggertonSmith. On one of the last days of the school term, I had deposited him as usual on the front steps where all the other little boy bugs were collecting in their stripy green shirts, grey woollen shorts and caps. The hideous Eggerton-Smith, with rotund white chignon sitting squat on her head like an albino toad, bent towards him frostily. 'Good Morning, Jamie! Remember polite boys shake hands in the morning.' She proffered a plump, ring-smothered hand, the nails blood-red.

  'My name isn't Jamie,' he said in quiet fury.

  'Hand please?'

  'No!'

  'No? Well then you'll stay on the steps until you remember your manners. Stand aside please.'

  Brushing us impatiently away with her hand as if we were a pair of tiresome gnats, she theatrically carried on shaking the hands of her cowed pupils. I remonstrated angrily with her but she fixed me with a cold stare and snapped, 'Manners are key at St George's. No exceptions to the rule.'

  The bell finally sounded, the last straggler had gone inside and still my small son stood resolutely on the doorstep, glowering at her, tears in his eyes and with utter defiance stamped on his little chin. I was frantic to get to a meeting.

  'Oh for heaven's sake, he's only five…' I began.

  'Very well, Jamie. No break today,' she barked angrily, ushering him roughly up the steps. I sprang after him and caught his arm tenderly.

  'It's all right, Mummy,' he whispered, 'I won.'

  But it wasn't all right. It was a travesty and had I been carrying a pair of scissors, I might just have disabled her albino toad of a hair bun and lain it to waste in the road, waiting to see it flattened by a speeding car. The parents at the school were no better: anorexic mothers in Armani dresses with full make-up and five-inch Jimmy Choo heels who swished up the steps, nannies in tow, wafting Coco Chanel and boredom. And their husbands? A rare sighting but occasionally a frazzled banker would roll up in a limo, instruct his driver to deposit a child on the steps as it were a bag of refuse, and then drive away.

  One anxious, toothpick-thin American mother called Cecily Withers constantly tried to ensnare me with invitations to infant parties and coffee gatherings. I politely declined but on the fifth attempt, I took her aside and explained that I worked. She winced and the edges of her mouth drooped. 'Oh my God, really? You poor thing.'

  'No actually, I like to work.'

  She stared at me in awkward silence for a second. 'That's just fine then. Well, I'd best be going. Have a great day.' She never spoke to me again.

  Then there was Joan Hedges whose child, Edward, spent every evening at some private crammer class or other, be it swimming, chess, piano, flute, Egyptology or Serbo-Croat. She insisted on taking my Mallorca address when I walked home from school for the very last time. Reluctantly I fished out an old bus ticket from my handbag and scrawled down our details on the back. After all, she'd never really get in touch, would she?

  I drive back to the mountains from Ollie's school in Palma and coax the car up the mouth of the track, wondering whether Pere our plumber has managed to fix a bad leak in the bathroom. Alan was disappointed not to be with Ollie on his first day at school but Pere could only visit early in the morning and since water was gushing everywhere, he had no choice but to stay at home and wait for him. As I level with the first house there's a sharp knock at my window and there on the other side of the glass, squinting at me, is the troll on the bridge. She's wearing a stern expression again and her gnarled fingers grip a stick, which is raised in the air. I slam on the brake and roll down the window in trepidation. She talks breathily in local dialect and when I look baffled, wanders off returning with a small bunch of hand picked flowers which she thrusts at me through the open window. 'Senyora Sampol,' she says, indicating herself. Then as an after thought, 'Margalida. Benvinguts.'

  I tell her my name and thank her. To my relief she drops the local dialect so that we can at least converse in Castilian Spanish, the language that is spoken across much of the mainland. She tells me her eyesight is terrible, so bad that she can barely see her own hands. This, she says, is bad when you are an eighty-six-year-old widow. She is happy we have moved here and hopes we'll be good neighbours. As I rev up the car to go she peers foggily into my face.

  'How old are you, senyora? Maybe twenty-five?'

  Senyora Sampol's eyesight is definitely far worse than I'd thought.

  Catalina is scrubbing the concrete floor in the kitchen to the accompaniment of the Gypsy Kings. The older sister of Stefan, our builder, she has been working here at the house for a month now, popping in for a few hours each day to help me set up my office and share the cleaning as well as babysitting Ollie. However, Catalina does far more than this. She is the eyes and ears of the valley, a local intelligence bugle arriving with a mountain of news and gossip each day to keep us au fait with neighbourhood affairs. Having spent some years in London and California as an au pair she speaks English fluently and is relied upon hugely by the local English speaking community in her village. Walking with Catalina through the town can be a lengthy business as she is stopped and greeted enthusiastically by locals and foreigners alike at every step.

  Perhaps her greatest claim to fame is that she is a superb cook, spending many a patient hour showing me how to prepa
re local dishes such as paella, delicious meatballs known as albondigas, and croquetas filled with meat and vegetables. Like a nurse with a drug addict, she has gradually weaned me off thoughts of Tesco on-line and prepackaged hummus from Marks & Spencer. As part of her therapy we have spent afternoons together hunting for hidden delicacies on our own land such as edible fungi, wild asparagus that grows in the hedgerows and bleda, Swiss chard. But there's a strange metamorphosis taking place because I'm actually having fun, getting covered in mud and grime, and loving it. A few months back whoever would have believed this is how I'd be getting my kicks?

  I dawdle in the kitchen over a cup of mint tea, the leaves freshly picked from the garden, and the local British newspaper, the Majorca Daily Bulletin. Ollie is safely ensconced in school. Never have I seen him so happy and carefree. For the first time that I can remember, he actually nagged me to get him to school early so that he could play with his new friends before line-up. Catalina rises and stretches her back before sloshing the dirty water from her pail out into the backyard. Then she begins washing a large pile of chard in the sink, its leaves and stalks covered in tiny white snails and mud. She plucks them off quickly, engulfs the greens in water to rid them of silt, giving me a wry grin when I pull a face.

  'You scared they going to bite you?'

  'Give me time. It's not quite like M&S pre-packed, that's all.'

  She throws her head back and laughs. 'Come on girl, the poor snails are more scared of you. I find all these leaves in your own garden. Soon you won't need to go to market, eh?'

  'Yes, but I like going to the market, Catalina. How else can I practise my terrible Spanish and what on earth would Teresa and the other stallholders do for laughs?'

  She giggles. 'You think speaking Spanish is hard. Just wait till you start learning the Catalan-Mallorcan dialect.'

  Yes, that little challenge is yet to come. Still, despite my reservations I've heard that the local town council is offering free Catalan lessons for foreigners and I'm feeling strangely tempted to sign up. I look through the French windows and see the tall shadow of Alan struggling with a pair of bushy young cypresses behind a wall. It's like watching a bizarre shadow play. Catalina steps away from the sink where squeaky clean green leaves are now ready for the pot, and follows my gaze. She shakes her head and tuts.

  'What's The Moro doing? Planting more of his trees? Home! Soon you'll have forest, not garden.'

  I laugh. Moro, a term of endearment and a throwback to tempestuous times in Mallorca's history when Moorish pirates made many violent assaults on the island. Catalina and her family use moro to describe Alan because his skin effortlessly absorbs the sun like litmus paper so that he appears browner than the locals themselves. Catalina gets back to her cleaning then pushes back her long dark hair with hands covered in soapsuds and looks up at me disapprovingly.

  'Remember I say Rachel rings from office in London? She want you to call her.'

  Rachel rang an hour ago but it's unlikely to be urgent so she can wait.

  'You go to the town for shopping today?' Catalina persists like a mother chiding a loafing teenager.

  'Probably,' I mutter, reading the small ads with mock interest. We have bought this local British newspaper every day since we came here and now I have met Jason Moore, the editor, and agreed to write him a weekly column. It will be largely about London news and gossip. My monthly forays back and forth to England should provide plenty of copy.

  'Don't forget you take Ollie to football tonight. At the pitch, Antonia's brother, Felipe, will give you inscripció, OK?'

  How could I possibly forget my son's admission or should I say inscripció to the local football club? It will be the highlight of his and Alan's day.

  'Another thing,' says Catalina, tapping me on the arm. 'Remember tomorrow is bull running in my village. You come have breakfast with Ramon and me afterwards.'

  'That's if you're still alive.'

  'I strong woman, you know. I can run faster than a bull.'

  'I sincerely hope so. Don't count on me to come and save you.'

  She whips me lightly with a tea towel, waggles her finger in the air and pronounces, 'Next year you'll be running with me.'

  'Ni muerta!' I mutter. In other words, over my dead body!

  I turn over the page of my newspaper. I really should call the office, I suppose, but I'm enjoying this feeling of indolence too much. Do I feel guilty? Strangely not. After years of pushing myself to the edge of reason, I am basking in having time out so I shall sit here a little longer being idle and contemplating nothing in particular. Everything can wait. A gecko darts up the wall in front of me and hides behind a painting, its emerald face peeping out absurdly at the corner. I half expect it to start nodding and emitting a fragrance with Eastern promise. Catalina gives me a nudge.

  'You want a turkey?'

  I wonder if I've heard right. 'A turkey? What for?'

  'Christmas, of course! Ramon bought some turkey chicks long time ago in Sineu market which he's been feeding up for Christmas.'

  'But it's only September.'

  'You think a turkey grow in five minutes? Per favor! It takes many months.'

  I say we'd love one of her home reared turkeys and thank her profusely, although I'm already worrying about the execution scene come Christmas. I hope I can duck out of that one.

  'Hey, you help me fold the sheets now. Lazy woman!'

  I yawn and slowly rise to my feet, trotting meekly after Catalina out of the kitchen and up the sunny garden path to the washing line where dazzling white sheets cavort in the breeze.

  She pulls off the pegs and together we stretch and fold the crisp sheets ready for ironing. She stops suddenly and peruses the nearby mountains.

  'It's a beautiful day, isn't it? Look at the sky, as blue as your eyes, no?'

  I laugh and peer up above me. There's not a streak of a cloud in the sky, just an uninterrupted baby blue blanket of warm air and a dazzling sun. What more could a girl want?

  The town's football pitch is only a 15-minute walk from our finca but Ollie insists that we drive there, given that walking is still a new concept to him. Poc a poc. Having parked the car in a nearby street, we cross over a small stone bridge adjacent to the entrance. At this time of the year the torrent, the river, is usually dried up but after a stormy night water gushes downstream from the craggy mountains and the wild ducks quack and splash about in the cold foam, like a gaggle of giggly girls. On one side of the fast flowing river is a narrow road leading to several mountain villages beyond and on the other, a strip of orchards and gardens where rabbits and hens cautiously peep out between the long grass and trees when they think no one's looking. We enter the football ground, and take in the scene. There's a modest bar to the left, heaving with locals, children with gelats, ice creams, old men sucking on puros, mothers gossiping over café amb llet, milky coffee, and local builders propping up the bar. In front of the bar is the pitch itself which somehow seems enormous to my untrained eye but then this is the first time I've ever seen one up close, never having been a fan of the game in London. The towering Tramuntana mountains form an impressive backdrop behind it and to the sides there are distant villages where wisps of smoke can be seen rising from the chimneys of seigneurial stone fincas. It's still sizzling hot even though it's late afternoon so heavens know why the home fires are burning up in the hills. It must be the wood stoves often used for cooking. Children of all ages in polyester green and white football strips are milling about, pushing past and looking us up and down as if three Martians have landed in their midst.

  'Why are they staring at us?' whispers Ollie.

  'Well, it's pretty obvious we're the only foreigners here and also that we don't have a clue what we're doing.'

  As usual I have the patience of a bee in a jam jar and abandon the boys in search of someone in authority. Eventually I glimpse an official looking man in shorts and T-shirt with a whistle, so stalk on to the pitch and ask whether he can direct us to Felipe, th
e club manager. He gives a friendly smile.

  'I'm Felipe.'

  'Fantastic! I wonder whether your sister Antonia might have mentioned me? '

  He lapses into perfect English. 'Yes, don't worry. I was expecting you. Welcome. Your son can start in the under sevens today. Come with me to the office and fill in his application.'

  Alan and Ollie amble across the pitch towards us and I make some hasty introductions.

  'You speak excellent English,' says Alan.

  'Well, I teach at an international school in Palma so I should.'

  He turns to Ollie. 'You speak Mallorcan dialect?'

  'Un poc,' replies Ollie softly, his eyes downcast. 'We're learning Mallorcan and Castiliano at school.'

  Felipe puts an arm round his shoulder. 'Then surely you know how to say run and goal in Mallorcan?'

  'Of course!' he replies a little heatedly.