Two Old Fools in Spain Again (2 page)

I tore my eyes away and scanned the rest of the procession.

“Joe, can you see those two figures nearly at the top of the hill? One fat one and one thin one? With the two little dogs and a pram?”

Joe stared, screwing up his eyes.

“Yes... They look familiar, I recognise the big one’s bald head. Isn’t that Roberto and Federico?”

The Boys, as we called them, were a married couple, one of the first gay couples to marry after a law was passed in Spain legalising same-sex marriage. The Boys lived in the house slightly above us, on the land that used to be our orchard. They were a nice couple and none of the villagers seemed to object to them, which surprised me as our neighbours were staunchly Catholic.

I watched the two men crest the hill. I’d never seen them walking anywhere before. Their idea of exercising their dogs had always been to let them roam free in the village for half an hour in the evenings.

“I wonder what they’re doing pushing a pram?” I wondered, swatting at a mosquito circling me hungrily. “Come on, let’s go in, I’m being eaten alive.”

2. Pests

Sizzling Chicken Wings and Paprika

S
ummer nights in southern Spain are hot, even if one’s bedroom is a cool cave-room, as ours was. In addition to the heat, mosquitoes adore me and are prepared to travel for miles just for a taste of my blood. They never touch Joe, much to my annoyance, but zoom straight to me. Unless I use gallons of insect repellent, they will happily feast on me all night.

After the first few uncomfortable nights with the high-pitched whine of mosquitoes ringing in my ears, I tried to remember to spray the bedroom before we went to bed.

Unfortunately, that night I forgot. Every mosquito in Andalucía celebrated and phoned its friends and relations.

“Come on!” they sang to each other, “It’s Veeky for supper tonight! She hasn’t sprayed, let’s feast!”

By morning, I was a mass of red, itchy bumps. Joe had not a single mosquito bite, but he hadn’t entirely escaped.

“Have I got something on my neck?” he asked, craning his head this way and that in the bathroom mirror.

I stopped scratching my bites for a moment and examined him closely. To my astonishment, on his neck were two puncture wounds, side by side, perhaps an inch apart.

“What is it?” he asked. “Mosquito bites?”

“No, there aren’t any lumps, just two holes...”

“Well, what are they like?”

“I know this sounds silly, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve been bitten by a vampire.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I’m just saying that’s what it looks like.”

“Here, hand me that antiseptic cream. Vampires indeed!”

“Well, something’s bitten you, that’s for sure. Perhaps we should sleep with a crucifix in the bedroom in future.”

“Very funny.”

“Or pop into the church and get some holy water?”

“Enough!”

He applied the cream, which seemed to have a soothing effect as he stopped complaining after a while. We sat in the kitchen, deciding what jobs to tackle that day.

“The dishwasher is working now,” said Joe, sipping his coffee. “And the Internet’s back. I checked on our boxes’ progress, by the way. According to UPS tracking, they’re still in Bahrain.”

“Not even left the country yet?”

“Nope. I think I’ll give the chicken area a good cleaning out today, then we can go and get some new hens next week,” he said, changing the subject.

“Good idea. Poor Regalo must be lonely. I’m still on mould and fungus duty today, I think.”

I looked round the kitchen. So much to do! Everything needed cleaning and airing. Cobwebs needed removing. A lick of white paint wouldn’t go amiss. Deep in thought, I was only distracted when I heard a faint buzzing noise. Mosquitoes during the day? Surely not! The buzzing grew louder and I concentrated on the sound.

“Joe, can you hear buzzing?”

Joe creased his brow, listening.

“Yes, I think I can...”

Now it was unmistakable, louder, more insistent. If it was a mosquito, it would have been the size of a goose.

“It sounds like a giant bee...”

We swung our heads this way and that, trying to locate the source of the maddening buzz.

“It’s coming from the dishwasher!”

A monster bee trapped in the dishwasher? Joe jumped up and reached out to open it. Before he could pull the door open, we heard a fizzle, followed by a blue flash and a CRACK! The unmistakable smell of burning reached our noses and black smoke seeped from under the counter and round the sides of the dishwasher.

“Quick! Pull the whole thing out!” I shouted.

As Joe gripped the sides of the appliance and heaved it out, we could already see flames lapping up the wall. They flared from the electrical socket, lighting up the dark area. He snatched up the nearest available items: the apron I had won at one of El Hoyo’s fiestas, then a new tea-towel with ‘Welcome to Bahrain’ splashed across it and finally my favourite cardigan. He smothered the flames and the crisis was averted.

“What on earth caused that?” I asked after we’d fanned the smoke outside and muted the smoke alarm.

Joe shook his head. “It wasn’t me, I promise. I just fiddled with the controls, I didn’t touch the plug
or
the socket.”

“That was scary! What if we’d been asleep? Or out?”

“I agree, I’m going to check every socket in the house. The chicken coop will have to wait.”

I was just adding ‘more smoke alarms’ and ‘fire extinguisher’ to my shopping list, under ‘bleach’ and ‘chickens’, when somebody hammered on our front door.

“English!”

It could only be Paco.

“Joe, let Paco in, will you?”

“English!” said Paco, crashing in. “I have brought you vegetables.”

He dumped the heavy crate on the kitchen table and I crossed off ‘vegetables’ from my shopping list. Red, yellow and green shiny peppers vied with deep purple aubergines and prickly, fat, green, cucumbers. Enough to feed the Barcelona football team. I thanked him.

“I cannot stay,” said Paco, as Joe reached for the brandy bottle. “We are going down the mountain for a few days.” He stopped, sniffing the air. “What is that smell of burning?”

Joe explained and showed him the melted, burnt-out plug and pointed to the dishwasher, now back in its place.

Burnt-out plug

“A bad business,” said Paco. “Imagine if you had not been here and the fire had reached your gas bottle in the next cupboard! Whhomph! Your house, my house and El Hoyo would be gone!”

I blinked. Paco wasn’t making me feel any better.

Paco roared with laughter. “I have forgotten one more vegetable that you must have. Wait, I will fetch it from my house.”

He stamped out and returned a few minutes later.

“For you,” he boomed, thrusting two heads of garlic joined by a long piece of twine into Joe’s hands.

Joe stared at them, puzzled, then looked at Paco, waiting for enlightenment.

“Hang them round your neck when you go to bed!” roared Paco and thumped the wall with his fist, bending double with laughter. “I see you have been bitten by a vampire!”

Joe’s hand flew to the wounds on his neck.

“Everybody knows I grow the best garlic!” bellowed Paco. “No vampire will bother you now!”

“I don’t think that’s very funny,” said Joe as Paco stamped off, still guffawing, slamming the front door behind him.

We didn’t solve the mystery of the neck bites, although Paco later guessed a spider may have been the attacker. I’ve never seen big spiders in Spain, not even in our log pile. I’ve seen far bigger, hairier spiders in Britain, and, of course, Australia.

I was reminded, however, of an incident many years ago when my sister-in-law and her partner had moored their boat in the local marina. Paul woke to find two punctures on his neck, just like Joe’s and the Spanish doctor who examined him reckoned they were spider bites. So perhaps Paco was right.

Whatever the cause, Joe didn’t take the garlic to bed that night and I liberally sprayed our bedroom a few hours before bedtime. All vampires, spiders and mosquitoes stayed away but that didn’t mean we had a peaceful night.

At around one o’clock, I woke to a tapping noise. It was muffled but regular and insistent. It sounded as though it was coming from next door but I thought it unlikely because I knew Paco’s family had gone down the mountain for a few days.

Old Spanish cottages can have walls a metre thick and I was always surprised when any noise from next door penetrated through to us, but it did. I lay awake, listening.

“Joe!” I prodded him. “There’s a funny noise coming from next door.”

“Wah?”

“Can you hear that tapping noise?”

“Mm...”

“What do you think it is?”

“Dunno. Sounds like hammering, or something. Go to sleep.”

Hammering? Even if Paco was in, he would never do any hammering at that time of night. The noises suddenly stopped and I drifted back to sleep. Later I was disturbed again by the same rhythmic noises. I checked the clock on my bedside table. Three.

“Joe!”

“Wah?”

“There’s that noise again!”

“Go to sleep.”

I lay still, trying to work out what it could be. Burglars? No. A woodpecker? Ridiculous. Deathwatch beetles? Unlikely. A nocturnal DIY project? Ludicrous.

Eventually it stopped and I slept again. Until 4.30am. The noise was back and I had a raging thirst. Ignoring the noise, I slipped out of bed and tried to find my slippers in the dark. I didn’t want to turn on any lights and wake Joe again. I made my way to the kitchen barefooted and groped for the light switch.

To my absolute horror, I saw black shapes scuttling across the floor and into the shadows. Even to my bleary eyes they showed up in sharp contrast against the white floor tiles. Cockroaches!

I ran back to the bedroom and woke Joe.

“Joe! We’ve got cockroaches in the kitchen!”

“Wah? We got wah? Right…” and he resumed his snoring.

I gave up trying to rouse him and went back to the kitchen. No cockroaches to be seen, but I knew I hadn’t imagined them. I drank a glass of water, staring at the floor the whole time, my bare toes curling in disgust. Then I added ‘cockroach killer’ to the shopping list before climbing back into bed to snatch a few more hours’ sleep. The noise from next door had stopped.

In the morning, I let Joe sleep on while I examined the kitchen again and checked ‘cockroaches’ on the Internet. The results didn’t cheer me up at all.

When Joe arose, I reminded him about our little problem and, this time, he was much more attentive.

“How many did you see?”

“Loads!”

“How many is ‘loads’?”

“Well, there must have been about … six.”

“Hmm… Not exactly a plague then?”

“Don’t be facetious. I’ve just Googled ‘cockroaches’. I read that if you see a few, then it’s likely there are dozens more around, just hidden.”

I glanced round the kitchen floor, half-expecting to see eyes peering at me from every crevice.

In England, cockroaches rarely crossed my mind. I didn’t know much about these resilient creatures then, but now I could probably answer questions about them on the TV show,
Mastermind
.

There are three main types of cockroach: the American, Oriental and German. Did you know that a cockroach can live for a week without its head, can run at 3 miles an hour and can hold its breath for 40 minutes? Did you know cockroaches have 18 knees and that their mouths work sideways?

All very interesting, but it didn’t help with the extermination of the wretched things in our kitchen.

“Would you mind doing the shopping on your own? I want to give the kitchen a really good clean and wash the floor. Here, I’ve made a list.” I handed it to him.

Joe glanced at the list. “I’m going to need a trailer to bring that lot home.”

“Well, don’t go to the chicken shop. We can do that together later in the week. Regalo will just have to wait a few more days for some company.”

Joe set off down the mountain and I washed and disinfected the kitchen floor. Then I swept the front doorstep, which always made me feel very Spanish. Further up the street, the Ufarte twins were playing with the wooden camels on their doorstep, while Granny Ufarte snoozed in her armchair in the shade.

I waved, but the twins were too immersed in their camel game to notice me. Their little Yorkshire terrier, Fifi, snuffled up to me and I was glad that Joe wasn’t around. Fifi still nursed a deep hatred of Joe and the sight of him would have set her off on a yapping, snarling, nipping fest.

Roberto and Federico rounded the corner pushing the pram in front of them. As they approached, I leant on my broom and peered into the pram.

“What a lovely baby!” I said. “What’s her name?” Really I wanted to ask whose baby she was.

The baby was dressed all in pink, with a matching sunbonnet and little pink shoes embroidered with daisies. I cooed into the pram and she gurgled back.

“This is Emilia,” said Roberto proudly, while Federico fussed with the baby’s pillow and adjusted her toys.

“Is she staying with you?” I ventured.

“Emilia is ours.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” I knew that gay marriage was now legal and I’d heard that adoption by same-sex partners was also now permitted. Judging by little Emilia’s sunny smile and her beautiful clothes and pram, she had fallen on her little pink feet. She was lucky to have found such devoted parents.

“I’m glad we saw you,” said Roberto, always the more talkative of the two. “We were talking to Juan and Maribel Ufarte and they said you used to babysit for them, before you went to the Middle East.”

“Er, yes...”

My hands tightened their grip on the broom. I could see where this was heading and I didn’t know how to stop it.

“They said you love children.”

“Yes, but...”

“Perfect!” said Roberto, clapping his hands and smiling at Federico beside him.

“In the winter, Federico and I want to take salsa classes down the mountain. You can look after Emilia!”

“I...”

“It will be just once a week, for an hour or two. We will tell you the times when we find out.”

Federico nodded in agreement.