A Lizard In My Luggage

by Anna Nicholas

  Alan wanders up to my desk a little later, clutching a dog-eared letter bearing an English stamp which he tells me the postman delivered yesterday. He plods off, deep in thought. It is rare to receive letters here because the postman seldom makes the effort to locate our finca in the labyrinth of mountain country lanes and paths and, quite understandably, gets confused by the lack of street names. Instead he deposits our mail at the town post office and our telepathic powers are supposed to divine when a letter has arrived. Therefore I am puzzled by the appearance of this renegade missive. I rip open the flimsy envelope – airmail weight – revealing a shaft of powder blue sheets covered in large rambling scrawl. I don't recognise the handwriting but suddenly stiffen when I decipher the name at the bottom of the third page. Joan Hedges. I remember back to my son's last day at St George's school and my foolish gesture of giving this mother my address in Mallorca, never expecting her to make contact. I skim read the letter which centres entirely on the heroic exploits of her six-year-old prodigy, Edward. According to our Joan, Edward is now learning Egyptology, advanced chess, the violin, the piano, flute, karate, drama, sailing, can count up to one hundred backwards in French, do the 12 times table and is a whiz in the kitchen. Naturally he has been advanced a year ahead of his age in school and is taking the leading role, Joseph, in the Christmas nativity play. She adds that Christmas will be spent in Russia where Edward will be tutored in chess, skating and Russian doll making. I am about to scrunch the pages into a ball for instant disposal when a juvenile thought occurs to me. I peel open the creased letter, note the address and rattle off a typed reply as follows:

  Dear Joan,

  It was a delightful surprise to receive your letter today and to hear all Edward's news. Our little cherub seems to be adapting well to life in Spain although at six, we are a little concerned that he has only reached A level standard Spanish despite several months' tuition here. Nevertheless, he appears to be enjoying Plato's Republic in the original Greek and Homer's Odyssey which is one of the reading for fun books, chosen for his year group. Last week he received a standing ovation for one of his solo piano performances at the Palma Auditorium but we are keen to see him progress beyond Mozart to something more substantial. As for hobbies, he's excelled in astronomy and advanced maths this summer and should be completing his aviation exams in the next few weeks. Well, must dash, got to pick him up from his tai chi grand masters class. Keep in touch.

  I print it off, scrawl my signature with a flourish at the end and am about to throw it in the bin when the phone rings. It's Rachel.

  'Busy?'

  'Very.'

  'We've got that perfume pitch in two weeks. Just wondered if I could run the proposal by you.'

  'You mean Heaven Scent?'

  'The same.'

  'Have you suggested a complete re-naming and re-branding job?' I tease.

  'Of course not. It's making twenty million dollars for the company each year so why should they care if the name's naff?'

  Someone's shouting below my window. 'Gotta go, Rachel. Just e-mail it over.'

  I open the window, feeling like a slovenly Rapunzel. Beaming up at me is Fransisca, my ebullient Spanish teacher, clutching a letter. This is thrilling. Two letters in one day. I mutter 'Un moment,' and tear down the stairs. It appears that she and her German husband, Hans, are holding a pre-Christmas fiesta and we are invited. I open the invitation, lovingly written in gold ink and decorated by hand, and promise to attend. She hugs me goodbye and saunters cheerfully along the path, exhaling white breath into the icy air. Alan sidles up, his hands pushed into the pockets of his jacket.

  'I'm off to plant faves. Wondered if you could give me a hand?'

  How can I possibly resist? Planting broad beans has to be an experience on a cold wintry day and offers a wonderful diversion from answering e-mails. I go indoors, retrieve a warm jacket and join him in the field. There is a white frost on the soil which looks like fine mould and the grass along the hedgerows is soaked in dew. My wellies make a swishing noise as I plod through the weeds and dandelions to the centre of the terrain where Alan has dug a series of shallow trenches. He is fiddling with two bags of seeds.

  'Can you start planting at that end?'

  'Sure. How exactly do I plant?'

  He shakes his head sorrowfully, patiently explaining how to complete this simplest of tasks. An hour later and the faves are happily bedded in the soil. Alan announces that he needs to post some letters so bounds towards the house to find the car keys while I pull off my muddy boots with red raw, ice-cold hands and head for the kitchen to put on the kettle. Catalina is busy sweeping the entrada and gives a wry smile when I appear before her with rosy cheeks.

  'Has Alan gone for his Spanish lesson with Paula?' she quizzes.

  'No, that's tonight,' I reply. 'The highlight of his day.'

  'You are very naughty!' she says waggling a finger at me.

  Shortly afterwards, I am back upstairs in my office when I hear a scream and a loud exclamation of 'SUSTO!', the Spanish equivalent of, 'Oh my God!' I rush to the entrada to find Catalina gripping a broom at the bottom of the staircase leading to the cellar. The word susto always implies shock or fear so I know something is up. She is poking gingerly at the cellar door with the handle and muttering 'Susto' under her breath.

  'Are you alright?'

  'No, there is mouse.'

  'Where?'

  'In cupboard.'

  She bangs on the door and this time a small streak of fur whizzes up the staircase to the entrada and disappears into the fireplace. Catalina shrieks.

  'Déu! There are TWO!!'

  I have already, cravenly, alighted a chair and am watching her as she stands with broom upturned like Britannia with her trident.

  'How do you know there are two?'

  'The other one was different colour.'

  How she has deduced what colour the speeding fur ball was, I have no idea, but I'm not going to argue the point.

  'What are we going to do?' I ask lamely.

  Catalina views me sternly and strides over to the fireplace, chases the small rodent from its hiding place and shoos it out of the French doors with the brush.

  'There is still one in cupboard,' she says grimly. 'We need the cat.'

  Inko is slumbering on a kitchen chair and isn't remotely interested in the drama unfolding around her until she is unceremoniously dumped in the cellar cupboard with the door closed behind her. We stand tensely outside. After a few minutes of silence, there is a frantic scratching and Inko's familiar mewing.

  Catalina opens the door a fraction and the cat squeezes past and leaps up on to the chair next to me. It arches its back and whines pathetically.

  'You feed too much the cat,' says Catalina, glaring at it. 'He is lazy.'

  She is of course right. Inko is thoroughly spoilt and overfed and, although Catalina uses her he's and she's indiscriminately, is female and very manipulative. Courageously, Catalina enters the large walk-in cupboard and clatters around, poking the broom into plastic bags and wicker baskets, cardboard boxes full of cleaning materials and the toolbox. Nothing moves. After ten minutes of assault, she rests the broom against a wall and admits defeat. We decide to close the door but at that moment I spy a small terracotta air vent high up on the wall that leads directly out into the garden. Our interloper has, it seems, already made its escape to freedom.

  The front door bangs and Alan appears, peering at us over the banister. He's holding a pile of mail collected from the post office.

  'By the way, posted that letter for you,' he says cheerily.

  'What letter?'

  'The one on your desk. Put it in an envelope and addressed it.' He wafts out to the garden, glimpsing the contents of several opened envelopes as he goes. I scramble upstairs to check that my flight of fancy to Joan Hedges is still on my desk but it's gone. Too late. Somehow I suspect that this may be the last time I shall ever hear from her.

  Fat Phillip is sitting on the bedroom floor of
Ollie's room gurning about his lost Game Boy while his stressed mother, Susie, Silk Cut cigarette hanging from her lower lip, searches frantically for it in his rucksack. I pop my head round the door and suggest that he may have left it back at their hotel.

  'Don't be stupid!' fizzes Phillip furiously.

  His mother looks up and remonstrates with him. 'Darling! Don't be so rude. Apologise immediately.'

  'No!' hollers the little beast.

  I look at his large, podgy face, round and white like a ball of lard, and decide that he really is the most charmless child I have ever had the misfortune to meet. Back in the days when he and Ollie attended St George's school, they had shared a passion for Digimon swap cards but that's about as far as the relationship ever developed. Of all the mothers at St George's, I had a genuine fondness for Susie Simpson because she was real. A single mother and freelance journalist forever on the edge of a nervous breakdown, she smoked like a dragon and drank wine with the gusto of a hydrophobic. Her lumbering son, Phillip, was the school misfit and a year older than the rest, who bullied the other kids, ripped up storybooks and ruined the school nativity play. Susie despaired, never seeming to realise that indulging his every whim, did nothing to curb his maladjusted behaviour. And here they both are, spending a long weekend at a bijoux hotel in the north of the island which she is reviewing for the travel pages of The Times. When Susie called, requesting to spend a day with us in the mountains, I could hardly refuse, and as Ollie would be celebrating his birthday, I thought it might be fun for him to see an old friend from London.

  Alan treads heavily up the staircase and beckons to me. I skip down a few steps to join him.

  'What's going on in there?' he whispers crossly.

  'Phillip's lost his Game Boy.'

  'His what?'

  'Oh, never mind. Look, we'll set off on the treasure hunt as soon as the other kids arrive and hopefully he'll forget all about it.'

  He shakes his head impatiently and plods back down again. I put on my best smile and enter Ollie's bedroom. Susie is leaning out of the open window gazing pensively across the orchard in a world of her own. She is scrawny and unkempt and her hair hangs lankly about her face. Distractedly, she draws deeply on a cigarette and shivers. It is wintry and fresh but the sun is shining, an ideal day for walking in the hills. The two children are now playing a game of snakes and ladders but Phillip is already growing restless and is gazing around the room, in search of something to destroy. I clap my hands together cheerfully.

  'Right chaps, let's get our coats on because we're going on the treasure hunt shortly.'

  Ollie leaps up in anticipation. Since moving to Mallorca, treasure hunts have become his passion. In the absence of television and electronic toys, we have created the treasure hunt as a ploy to get him walking in the mountains and away from the house bound pursuits of his erstwhile sedentary London life. Now, at weekends, we set off into the hills with a hand drawn map indicating treasure points along the way and Alan or I sneak off in advance to place booty in fairly easy to find spots. Each hunt is themed differently and treasure takes the form of coins, little toys, or coloured objects. Today we have devised a mammoth toy hunt for him and his two best friends and Phillip, which should take us on a six-mile circuit. Angel, Pep's son, has kindly offered to come along to help supervise the younger children. We have pre-prepared a lavish tea for our return and have invited Catalina, Ramon and their daughters together with Pep and Juana.

  Phillip is wailing and has thrown himself on the floor in a fit of pique. His dishevelled fair hair splays out from his head on to the rug and his eyes blaze. Susie throws her cigarette stub on to the gravel outside, closes the window and comes over and kneels beside him.

  'Please, darling, don't do this. Not now.'

  'I HATE WALKING! I don't want to go on some stupid treasure hunt with stupid children. I'm staying here.' He's blubbering hysterically now.

  Ollie steps over him dispassionately and runs down the stairs when he hears a car roll up outside. The others, Ignacío and Gunter, have arrived and Angel is waiting in the courtyard, kicking a football about in the gravel. I suggest to Susie that Phillip will be fine when we get going.

  'No, you don't know him,' she says bitterly. 'He'll be a monster. I'd better stay with him. He'll ruin everything for everyone else.'

  I notice that she has tears in her eyes. Exhausted and at the end of her tether, her hands are shaking badly. A voice bellows from downstairs. It's Alan.

  'Come on!' he roars, 'We'll find your Play Boy thingy later, Phillip. Hurry up or we'll go without you.'

  Desperate measures are called for. I shoo Susie out of the room and tell her to go downstairs and wait for us. She agrees hesitantly but assures me that I'm wasting my time trying to reason with her son. As soon as she's left, I sit on the floor next to the sobbing child. He is unnerved that his mother has gone.

  'It's all right, you can stay at the house if you like, but I do think you're brave.'

  Phillip fixes me with his tough little almond eyes. 'Why?'

  'Well, you are in bruixa country.'

  'What's that?' he snarls.

  'The bruixa is the witch of the Tramuntana mountains.'

  'You're a baby!' he says contemptuously. 'There aren't such things as witches.'

  'As I say, you're a brave boy. Good luck.'

  He stares hard at me, a nasty sneer on his face. 'So what does she do, this witch?'

  'She steals children with the help of her pack of fierce, flying mountain hounds. Of course the poor children are never seen again.'

  I walk towards the door.

  'Where are you going? Where's Mum?' he says a tad nervously.

  'Well, we're all off now. By the way, when the bruixa comes for you, try to keep your eyes scrunched shut and hide under the bed and, fingers crossed, her hounds won't find you.'

  He gets up slowly. 'You're lying!'

  'I'm afraid not. She loves naughty children with blond hair and brown eyes. The naughtier, the better. Goodness knows how many children she's stolen and gobbled up in the last year.'

  He jumps up, his face solemn. 'Will she get me if I come on the treasure hunt?'

  'Well, if you're a good boy and stick closely with all of us, it's nigh impossible for her to steal you away.'

  He nods his head and meekly follows me down the stairs. I help him on with his jacket and gloves and usher him out into the sunshine. Angel, together with Ollie and his friends, Gunter and Ignacío, are crouching by a tree prodding the ground with sticks where they have discovered an enormous ant's nest. When Phillip appears they race towards him and drag him over to show him their find. Alan and Susie are talking by the gate but she stops, her mouth dropping open at the sight of her subdued and obedient son. We walk across the field together in the direction of a small track that leads into the forests and the mountains beyond. The children race ahead of us. Susie paws at my sleeve agitatedly.

  'Will they be safe? Shouldn't we be holding their hands?'

  Barraged with frightening stories of child abduction in the British press everyday, I'm not surprised my friends become paranoid about their offspring. I should know, when living in London, I was worse than any of them.

  'Susie, up here in the villages, children as young as four walk home alone. It's a different world.'

  She sighs and shrugs her shoulders. 'Just the same, let's catch them up.'

  The children have stopped to watch a couple of fish swimming in a small stream at the bottom of our field. Phillip is absorbed.

  Susie tucks her arm under mine. 'Tell me, what did you say to Phillip?'

  'That he'd be gobbled up by the big, bad witch of the mountains.'

  She gives a cynical snort. 'Yeah, right! Nothing like that frightens my little horror anymore.'

  We walk on silently, the children and Alan beating a noisy path before us. Snow clings to the lower peaks of the Tramuntana range and high above, a solitary rock juts out at the mountain's edge, dark and jagged like the
bewitching silhouette of a giant witch's chin.

  I am sitting at my old scuffed desk idly scrolling through my e-mails and browsing comments sent by readers of my Saturday column in the Majorca Daily Bulletin. I have had a hot, luxurious and scented bath for the first time in months now that the bath taps in my bathroom have been fitted and actually work. Up until now we've made do with a shower. Even the walls have been tiled although the floor is still cement layered with thick grime. Ah well, poc a poc. The house is silent now that Ollie's birthday guests have gone home and all I can hear is the velvety, rhythmic purring of Inko as she sits curled under my chair. Outside, an ebullient, mischievous moon peers over the jagged mountain ridge, waits till I look away and then hoists itself up a fraction. No matter how diligently I keep vigil, it continues to rise in small imperceptible moves until it reaches its full height as if by magic and suddenly a luminous bubble of light is hovering outside my window like an impatient peeping Tom. Tonight, I pull open the shutters and gaze into the pond below. It is still and the frogs and my friendly toad are nowhere to be seen. Can I blame them on a frosty night like this? I shiver and close the window.