Parrot in the Pepper Tree (24 page)

Manolo, who’d been smiling to himself throughout these discussions, looked stunned. ‘Months?’ he spluttered. ‘It’s only a swimming pool.’ Manolo had orthodox views about how pools were built, having worked on a few in his time. The one unassailable rule was that they took no longer than six weeks. More than that and the workmen were either incompetent or robbing you blind, or both.

I explained yet again how this was going to be very different from your average chemical pool, and that we were going to create a whole new eco-sphere with cunning contrivances to keep the water clean and pure.

Manolo heard me out and then, resuming his habitual smile, asked: ‘So, no chlorine, then?’

‘No, Manolo,’ I answered. ‘No chlorine.’

Over the next fortnight, Trev hurled himself into calculations, diagrams and settings like a man possessed. The floodgates that had too often held back his visionary schemes now opened wide under our patronage, and the ideas came bursting forth. He lived the project, breathed it, slept it, drank it and ate it. The eating took the form of odd bits of greenery stuffed artlessly into a wholemeal bun: an odd diet that turned out to be an attempt to regain the affections of his girlfriend. She had, apparently, given him the boot (by email), because what she was after was a full-blooded vegan partner, and Trev’s half-baked vegetarianism fell way below the mark. We knew there was some justice in this, as when Trev came to eat with us he would hunker down to a plate of roast chicken like a proper trencherman.

From time to time, in order to see computer projections of the project, I would pay a visit to Trev’s van. This was parked in the shade of an olive tree on the far side of the river. From the outside it looked ordinary enough, the sort of van you might hire to load up a market stall, except that it had two large solar panels propped beside it on a rock, with a cord trailing back into the engine. On sunny days these panels provided more than enough electricity to run his computer and domestic appliances and on dull ones he could always charge up his solar batteries with a drive. He had also managed to find the nearest spot to El Valero where you could use a mobile phone and I would often come across him sitting on the hill with his laptop, surfing the Internet.

The only thing at odds with this technological Tardis were the van doors. When Trev first told me they were difficult to open, indicating that I should stand back while he did so, I assumed they must work on some state of the art time-lock device. In fact, they were dented and just needed to be kicked hard in a particular spot and then wrestled open with the handle. It was nice to see an old-fashioned method enduring.

Trev seemed able to turn his hand to almost any mechanical or electronic task, forging solutions with a mixture of science, art and Heath Robinson make-do. As the eco-sphere project took shape, he adapted the windscreen-wiper-motor out of our old Land Rover and fitted it up to drive a bank of solar panels that moved with the progress of the sun, lying perpendicular to the sun’s rays all day and winding back at night to the starting position. The capacity of the panels was calculated to drive another motor — lifted from a defunct cement-mixer — that turns the waterwheel, whose lifting capacity is calculated in turn to move the entire volume of water of the pool three times through the filter, using the twelve hours of sunshine that we enjoy on an average summer day.

Throughout proceedings, the aesthetic consideration remained paramount, not least because Trev is also an artist. He shows his art works under the name of Val Dolphin (which has rather more pull in Bohemian circles than Trevor Miller) though the art is apparent in everything he designs. His pool steps, for example, sweep down in a spiral that calls to mind the interlocking leaves inside the aperture of a lens or that masterpiece of Bauhaus aquatic sculpture, the Penguin Pool at London Zoo.

All of this was exactly as I would have had it, except for one small failing — a failing that threatened to engulf our grand endeavour in a fog of rancour. Trev was an absolute perfectionist. He had no toleration whatsoever of errors and viewed even tiny deviations from his plans as jeopardising the entire project. Quite possibly he was right. But it was hard on both the soul and coffers to pull work apart and start all over again because a step, say, was two centimetres out, or the materials were discovered to be not quite up to scratch.

There was also the problem of lost days where we did nothing but wait for new parts to be sourced or materials to arrive, leaving Manolo, Jaime and me to do sporadic stints of labour when the right materials were to hand. And then with summer just around the corner and no swimming pool in sight, I cracked. Manolo and I had been working hard on completing the weir that separated the fish pond and sump. The sump was where the water was gathered for lifting by the waterwheel into the sand filter. For a whole day we’d struggled to get the levels right. It was slow, back-breaking work but we kept at it, knowing that the end was at last in sight and we could soon move on to another task. Then Trev appeared on the scene in his neatly laundered, off-white overalls, watched for a while and shook his head.

‘No, no, that won’t do at all,’ he called. ‘That’s way off.’

‘What do you mean?’ I spluttered.

‘It’s way off. It’s not level. You can see it’s not level, even from here. I’m afraid you’ll have to do it again.

Manolo shrugged but I was ready for battle. ‘Now look here, Trev,’ I said. ‘What the hell does it matter if it’s a tiny smidgeon out? It’s only a pool for heaven’s sake — it’s not the bloody Hanging Gardens of Babylon.’

Trev wheeled round as if stung.

‘Alright. If you want to botch it up, then just say. It’s your money and you do what you want with it. Me, I want to do a good job and create a thing of real beauty. You think about it, Chris. You give it some good, hard thought.’ And with that he stomped off the site in the direction of his van, one finger rubbing hard at the side of his nose.

Deflated, I sat on a rock. Of course, Trev was being too finickity, but this was no way to handle things. I looked round at Manolo and Jaime but instead of backing my outburst, they both looked as if they thought I was in the wrong and had made a mess of it.

At lunch, I talked it over with Ana.

‘You’ve got this far,’ she said, ‘You might as well finish the thing off properly. It’s a pity to spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar.’

‘Yes, I know. You’re right.’

That afternoon I strode down to the site and set to with a sledgehammer, demolishing our weir. Trev reappeared towards the end of the day.

‘So we’re going for the thing of beauty,’ he confirmed, looking at my pile of rubble.

A GOOD ANTIDOTE TO THE COMPLEXITY OF EXISTENCE IS TO GO and start up a tractor. Taking advantage of Manolo’s absence one weekend, I decided to go down and do a little tractor work. I began by cultivating the field below the stable, a piece of land that hadn’t been turned over for years.

The effect of watering and the hammering of the sheep’s hooves had made the surface like concrete. I had to pile rocks on the cultivator to make any impression on the soil, and even then it just broke into thick grey clods. After a few passes, though, a fine sweet-smelling tilth began to appear, and the work became a pleasure. At the bottom of the field is a line of lemon trees and each time I passed beneath them the tractor’s smokestack would shoot up and a shower of pale petals would fall on the tractor and me, and cover the earth with a mosaic of creamy white.

The chugging of the tractor, the soil furling over the cultivator shares, and the quiet flurries of petals, induced in me a sort of trance. Agriculture can be beautiful, I mused. I looked round at the terraces of carefully pruned orange trees, the anarchic tangle of vines over by the stable, and the alfalfa thickening up for the first cut, and allowed myself a satisfied sigh. It’s true that I wasn’t the most proficient farmer and that despite years of hard, sometimes back-breaking work, we were no nearer to earning a living wage from the farm. But there are other ways to profit: for one, there is the privilege of enriching our own environment — a tiny patch of the earth, green as an oasis and framed by mountains, rivers and a clear canopy of sky.

My mind drifted along, a little complacently perhaps, thinking about all the stones we had picked out of the fields, about the soil itself — which, each time I dug it over, seemed a little richer, a little darker, heaving just a bit more with bacteria. Life seemed pretty good. And then my reverie was broken by a loud whoop from Ana, up at the house. She was waving from the terrace, having just got back from town.

I whooped back, to signal I was coming up, and watched her walk slowly back towards the kitchen. Even from that distance, half-masked in a mass of excitable dogs, I could tell something was up. I stopped the tractor and set off for the house.

Ana had a letter to show me, a formal one in an official-looking envelope that she had picked up from the post office. It was from the
Confederación Hidrográfica
— the River Authority — and it stated, as simply as governmental language will allow, that because the
acequia
that belongs to our farm was not officially registered, the
Confederación
would not be able to offer us any protection if it were disputed in any way. As no one had shown the slightest interest in disputing our
acequia
— our source of irrigation for the farm — this struck us as ominous. The letter ended by inviting us, should we require any clarification or assistance, to visit the
Confederación
in its lair in Malaga. It was signed by one Juan-Manuel Baldomero.

I looked at Ana. It was clear this boded badly, but I couldn’t quite say why or how. Ana, who is rather more adept at deciphering coded threats, was equally puzzled. ‘It’s very odd,’ she pondered. ‘I thought maybe this was to do with reviving the hydroelectric scheme, but then why didn’t they send it when the project was first mooted? I can’t help wondering if they’re preparing the ground for something even worse.

Ana was referring to plans that had been around for a while to build a hydroelectric generating station upriver from our farm. This would have involved drilling through several kilometres of mountain to divert the river. It would fill the valley with heaps of debris, jeopardise all our water supplies, and create a potential health hazard from high voltage power-lines. The plans, though, seemed to have been shelved over a year ago. It made no sense that they should need to dispute our
acequia
to revive them now. I looked around for the envelope in case it might hold a clue. But it was gone. Porca, on the basis that Ana’s enemy was his own, had removed the offensive article and was busy shredding it from his fastness on the shower taps.

Two days later Ana and I set off to Malaga to see Juan-Manuel Baldomero. The headquarters of the
Confederación Hidrográfica
was an unprepossessing red-brick building, near the city’s botanical gardens. We ventured inside, trying not to look too apprehensive. Of course Señor Baldomero was not there; he was apparently having a morning coffee. But we could wait for him,. they said. We sat on a couple of wooden chairs in a corridor outside his grand and spacious office.

The door was open, so we could easily verify the truth of the fact that he was indeed not there. Meanwhile, people wandered past us, with huge sheaves of papers and files, and occasionally a crisply dressed man or woman would stop and politely ask us what we were doing there. ‘We’re waiting for Juan-Manuel Baldomero,’ we would answer — ‘He’s having coffee.’

‘
Claro
— of course,’ they’d reply. ‘He would be having coffee at this time of the morning.’ And they would go on their way.

Ana and I chatted in desultory whispers, the way you do waiting for a headmaster or a hospital consultant. More people stopped and expressed an interest in what we were doing there. We would show them the letter. They would pore over it with an expression of concentration, then hand it back saying: ‘You need to see Juan-Manuel Baldomero about that.’

‘That’s right, we’d concur — ‘He’s having coffee.’

‘So he is, so he is.’

As the morning ran its course, we started to get to know the inhabitants of the
Confederación
pretty well. An awful lot of their work seemed to consist in carrying sheaves of paper from one office to another. Still, they were friendly enough folk, and when they had seen us for the umpteenth time, they just smiled at us, having run out of things to say.