A Lizard In My Luggage (2 page)

  The view from the courtyard to the pinky-grey Tramuntana mountains is formidable if you can prise your gaze from the clutter on ground level, for the front of the house resembles a builders' merchant's, choking with boulders of yellow chalky stone, great planks of pine timber crushing small patches of yellowed weeds, wire tightly bound in prickly bales and sacks of cement spilling over on to the uneven ground in ugly ochre tinted piles. I listen for the mobile phone, now distracted by its muteness. Why isn't anyone calling me? Have the phones gone down in the office back in London? Has my battery died? Surely someone, somewhere, simply must be trying to get hold of me, and where is Alan, my hardy Scot? He and our son, Ollie, were supposed to have been here eons ago, leading a procession of removal vans from the town roundabout to the house. Admittedly this is no mean feat. This
finca
, our
finca,
is set amidst a bewildering labyrinth of winding roads and tiny, narrow cobbled lanes, fields of olives, oranges and lemons and decoy houses that pop up along the way and bear a striking similarity to our own in shape or size of stone, but in fact belong to somebody else.

  To add to the frustrations of the first-time visitor, the journey is beset with hazards of a Mallorcan kind: crater sized potholes from which gaping coloured pipes of an unknown nature spew forth, one-way signs which locals ignore but tourists don't, spontaneously reversing water carriers and tractors, kamikaze mangy dogs and cats that leap gamely at moving vehicles, elderly senyoras, bundled like mummies in black swaddling, who topple onto the road, their walking sticks raised in perpetual protest, and finally, garrulous locals. The latter is the real bummer. Mallorcans are oblivious to the time constraints of others. They will happily slam on the brakes in the middle of moving traffic to wave or gossip with a friend in a passing car or pop out to buy a loaf from the local
supermercat
, leaving the engine running, while you sit, exasperated in their wake, unable to move, impatiently awaiting their return. Horns will start blasting after five minutes but it's all a good-natured game on the part of the locals and the offender, once armed triumphantly with bread stick, will return to the car to be greeted like a hero with wolf whistles, smiles and whoops, while the mystified foreigner looks on wretchedly, excluded from the fun but caught up in the inconvenience.

  The removal vans are coming from Palma, Mallorca's capital, and were due to arrive at eleven. Anticipating the disaster if we left them to their own devices up here in the mountains, we insisted on acting as scouts, leading them to the house. Therefore, more than an hour or so ago Alan, Ollie and I sat hot and irritable in a sweltering hire car in a local lay-by waiting for them to arrive at the designated time. Foolishly, we had not reckoned on Mallorca
mañana
time which means you arrive within an hour or so of the time you originally agreed. After thirty minutes of heated discussion with Alan about their whereabouts, I had recklessly insisted on getting some provisions on foot and walking back to the
finca
alone. It was a decision made hastily and under the influence of a sadistic sun. Alan had accused me of being ridiculously impetuous and likely to end up with severe sunstroke striding out uncovered in such heat.

  Ignoring his entreaties, I scrambled out of my side of the car, observing a brief exchange of stealthy and complicit looks between Ollie and his father. Crossly, I had to accept that no sooner had I left than Alan would be puffing on one of his putrid cigars and brokering a deal with Ollie to keep shtum later. Despite my spirited lectures on the subject of smoking and its dire consequences, Alan defiantly continues his tobacco habit, albeit more sneakily and, where possible, away from my prying eyes. Rather like an accomplished thief, he is good at covering his tracks and removing evidence of the crime, but the odd cellophane wrapper trapped under a car seat or cloying odour of a recently puffed Cuban delight refusing to disperse, even with the most pungent of air fresheners, often betrays him.

  I certainly needed some fresh air. So, mincing like a poodle at Crufts up the precarious, stony lane which leads to the house in my slingbacks, I had practically thrown myself at the front porch, expecting a heroine's welcome from my husband and a dozen sympathetic and swarthy men carrying boxes. Instead I met with the hostility of nature, a thousand beady eyes and rustling limbs hiding in the grasses, wall crevices and murky pond, glaring at this ill-equipped and fey female from an alien universe daring to invade their world.

  This surely is the first time I have ever stood this still for so long in years. The last occasion must have been about aged six during the silent spell of a pass the parcel game. I'm not good at being slow. My sister always says I was born with the engine of a Porsche crammed into the body of a Mini. It's true, I don't like hanging around, and I'm beginning to wonder what on earth I've done making this move to Mallorca. If I were in London now my ear would be superglued to an office phone, hands meanwhile tapping away on the computer keys, while I'd be mouthing instructions to someone in the office. There would be noise and manic activity, couriers arriving and taxi drivers barking down the intercom. A paper cup of cold Starbucks coffee would be perched on my desk, a blueberry muffin, hardly touched and stale, peeping out of a paper bag, ready for instant disposal in the bin. I worked it out one day, just for the hell of it. How much did I really spend at Starbucks? Way too much. Let's just leave it at that.

Five years back when Alan and I first came to Mallorca, it was like a game. We were on holiday in a rented property supposedly to relax, but within two days I was on the mobile to London making umpteen corrections to a client document, while he lay serenely by the pool with a glass of cold cava, immersed in
The Garden
magazine. Once the Scotsman has this horticultural fix in his grasp, he is immune to everything around him. As I stalked around the garden like a demented stork trilling into my mobile on some exigent business, he calmly turned the pages, seemingly without a care in the world. At one point he looked into the distance and said with a sublime smile,

  'Ah, yes!
Quercus ilex
and
Prunus dulcis
, the evergreen holm oak and the almond tree.'

  Then he sighed contentedly as if he had just solved the final mystery of the universe and resumed his reading.

  When Toni appeared like
deus ex machina
before us in the garden, I wondered what genie I'd rubbed up the right way. Tall and bronzed with a chiselled cheek you could strike a match on, he stood smiling down at us like a benign God. I shook myself out of a sweet reverie and sized him up as a suave Spanish salesman. Despite the heat, he oozed charm, not sweat, and had the effortless elan of a man with a mission in an impeccable cream linen suit and sinfully pricey looking shoes. It transpired that the owners of our holiday
finca
were putting it on the market and Toni was handling the sale. Later, as we all sat mulling over a glass of wine on the spiky lawn, I was hooked.

  'So you have other
fincas
for sale?'

  Toni slid me a roguish grin from under a thick beetle-black fringe. 'So you want to buy?'

  'No,' muttered Alan decisively.

  'We'd like to look,' I interjected tetchily.

  'No, we don't.'

  'Do.'

  'Good. Well, come and see me tomorrow. Here's my card.'

  The following day, we found ourselves bumping up the very same track I have slogged along today. From the back of Toni's smart four-wheel drive with its spotless olive interiors and subtle scent of Dior's Eau Sauvage, I could see rising before us a vast stone wreck, beaten in, forlorn and unloved, its windows tiny black indents crossed with metal like decayed teeth in a brace. Small holes peppered the facade from which pigeons, like police marksmen, would poke their heads, ducking back in when they heard any noise. As we walked across the courtyard a metal sign hanging drunkenly on its side announced in gaudy red and rusted letters: '
CUIDADO
CON EL PERRO
'.

  'The dog has gone, I presume?'

  'Of course,' sniggered Toni, tutting at me. 'Is probably dead.'

  'The
finca
's in a bit of a state. When was it last occupied?'

  'Old people lived here, you know. Now they dead and there are, as we say,
muchas
brothers. Maybe there will be problem with
esciptura
, the title deeds of the house. Is lot of work. Come, I have many other houses with no problems.'

  I shot Alan a look. 'What do you think?'

  'What do you want me to think?'

  'It's an incredible place.'

  'Hmm, and free, I suppose?'

  We explored the interior of the house, opening rotten, worm-infested shutters to let in the light. It was like a Mallorcan equivalent of Satis House in
Great Expectations
and for a moment I half expected to see a mantilla clad Senyora Havisham claw her way down the ancient, creaking staircase. Gigantic cobwebs with arthritic limbed spiders hung in loops from the ceilings, and long battalion lines of centipedes, ants, moths and beetles shrivelled with age lay perished on their backs in every room as if defeated in some ancient battle of the antennae and proboscis.

  Several floors had caved in as well as part of the roof which now let in rough wedges of bright light above our heads. Old wooden beams supporting ceilings still intact had been ravaged by insects and, when poked with a stick, released small explosions of splintered wood and dust. Bizarrely, every room was sparsely furnished and decorated with random objects enshrined in dust, as if the geriatric tenants were still occupying the place but had given up on any housekeeping. Propped up against a mould-ravaged wall in the kitchen stood a rickety-legged, water-stained pine table. Choked with thick grey soot, it housed a clutter of yellowing church pamphlets curled at the edges, festering mugs with chipped rims and two empty brown beer bottles. Cheap religious memorabilia hung on the walls and lined a chipboard cabinet in the dining room and in a downstairs bedroom, above an ornate mahogany bed, a beseeching Jesus looked on, eyes upturned to his heavenly Father, rosary in hand. On a sideboard in the hall, a small metal framed print of the Madonna, her head ripped off so that the torn paper billowed around her shoulders like a snowy stole, stood stoically, awaiting its eventual fate. At the Virgin's feet, a sepia photograph of an old couple dressed in
pagès,
'country folk' garb, and smiling shyly, lay grubby and creased. I picked it up, wiped it on my shorts and gently put it in my bag. Up on the landing we discovered a depiction of Saint Francis of Assisi, with obese and grotesque Friar Tuck dimensions, holding a mouse which he appeared to be kissing or devouring, depending on your perspective. Toni and I wandered around the dark, claustrophobic rooms upstairs, with their grimy concrete floors and small window holes obscured by black iron grills. The rooms led one to the other across the top floor of the house like a series of empty dungeons whose prisoners had escaped. Alan, who had gone ahead of us, stood transfixed at a window in his own reverie, gazing through the bars out to the garden and field beyond.

  As we explored the various outhouses, we came across a table hewn out of old pine, its surface rough and dyed red, and sliced up as though Mad Max had been let loose on it. Several rusty instruments of torture, saws, knives and axes drooped from a lax piece of filthy rope overhead.

  'Is slaughter table,
si
,' said Toni with mock solemnity. 'Many lives have ended here.'

  'Just humans, I hope?'

  'Mostly,' he grinned. 'But occasionally a pig or hen.'

  The basement held the greatest revelation. Left as it must have been for twenty odd years, the air smelt dank and sweet and white paint powdered on our clothes as they scraped the inner wall on the way down the dark, crumbling steps. Lining every wall were bottle upon bottle of hand pickled preserves: olives and onions, cucumbers and tomatoes, fruits and liqueurs, all intact in simple glass bottles, their contents outliving their elderly owners. Hanging down over our heads were row upon row of dried tomatoes, basil and rosemary, cracked and gnarled with age but still holding the colour and vague aroma of their kind.

  'This could make a great guest bedroom,' I mumbled to myself.

  'Or a tomb,' my Scotsman rejoined laconically.

  We stumbled back up into the main
entrada
, a dark hall with rank, mildewed walls and a pitted concrete floor.

  'We'll take it.'

  Toni examined his shoes and Alan looked at the Madonna for inspiration but she had already lost her head.

  In an effort at male solidarity, Toni frowned slightly. 'Senyor, is important you see shower and toilet first.'

  Alan growled almost imperceptibly. 'I didn't think there was a bathroom.'