A Lizard In My Luggage (21 page)

  She titters. 'Is that garlic you're using?'

  'You don't like it?'

  'Indeed, but I usually cut it Zen style, to release the energy flow.'

  I ignore her and hurl the chopped pieces into the pan.

  'Now listen, I don't want to put you out while I'm here. I'll just do my own thing. However in the mornings I'd appreciate a lift to the sea for an invigorating pre-breakfast swim. You must be up early for work anyway.'

  'Charlotte, the water will be freezing. Are you mad?'

  She looks fleetingly afraid, as if I've uncovered a hidden truth.

  'Of course I'm not mad,' she says heatedly. 'Cold water's good for you.'

  Wearily I explain that it will have to coincide with Ollie's morning school run to Palma and that we will have to leave her on the beach for an hour or so before picking her up on the return trip.

  'But I can't possibly wait there until you've returned from the school. I just want a quick dip. Oh, I suppose you don't have such things as spas here, do you?'

  'Amazingly, we country plods do!'

  'Right, well I'd like a massage and a facial if you could arrange it but only with someone good.'

  My friend Cristina runs the luxury Aimia Hotel in the port. I shall have to beg her sublime beautician, Anette, to take pity on Charlotte.

  'I'll sort everything out for you.'

  'Bless you,' she says sweetly.

  I hear Alan's heavy tread in the
entrada
and serve out the food, thankful that we have only two days to endure.

  There's an urgent rapping on the bedroom door. I wake up with a start. A voice is calling tremulously in the darkness.

  'It's me. Charlotte. You must come. There's a bat in my room.'

  Alan is snoring gently, blissfully unaware of the scene unfolding before me. Still capable of exorability, I groan and stagger out of bed and down the stairs with her to the basement. She is wearing a jacinth coloured silk kimono and kitten heeled, mink trimmed slippers which scrape on the marble steps. She appears bony and ornithoid in the half-light, her long chestnut hair scraped back from her face in to a loose plait. Without makeup she seems vulnerable and childlike. I step into her room. A small bat is circling the rafters unable to find an escape route.

  'I was doing some Pilates on the floor with the French doors open and it just swooped in,' she sniffs.

  I resist the desire to ask why on earth she is doing Pilates at this time of night. Some things are best left unsaid. Alan had told her to keep the shutters closed and the door open. I wonder why he bothered. I turn off the lights to a stifled cry of alarm from Charlotte.

  'Shh! It will go, just give it a minute.'

  In a moment it has glided out into the field. I stomp off upstairs and am just extinguishing the hall lights when Charlotte hisses at me from her basement door.

  'Please don't turn out the lights.'

  'Why ever not?'

  'I'm afraid of ghosts.'

  I'm hitting the bottle of cava earlier than I should do, but I'm in survival mode now. We've had a fraught day with Charlotte which began at 6 a.m. when she lay in the field on her duvet intoning vowel sounds and doing Buddhist chanting. The noise was so loud that both Alan and I woke up in synchronisation, convinced that a stray bull had entered our land. After driving her to the beach an hour later, we all waited in the car until she'd bathed, then deposited her back at the house, before racing off to Ollie's school. We needed the break. Most of the day she lay slumped on a lounger with a blanket, book and a half written fashion article that she never seemed to have the heart to finish. We fetched her iced water which, in the reflection of the kitchen window, I saw she topped up surreptitiously with a clear liquid from a bottle in her handbag. Her agent rang once or twice about her breakfast time slot on television in which she superciliously lectures the nation on its appalling lack of style and poise. Now and then she pounces on some poor viewer, a gormless housewife or overweight fashion victim and gives them a makeover. Invariably they come off worse, plastered in make-up, and their hair whisked up into the sort of disastrous pile-up you only ever see on motorways. She dresses them in cheap branded clothes, provided free by opportunistic PR people who welcome the publicity on a prime time show, and then parades them in front of the millions of silent viewers who mercifully remain invisible to her wretched guinea pigs. I imagine the majority must sit sniggering by their television sets. After lunch, Charlotte set off for a walk to the town and returned later with four pairs of shoes, a bikini and a bag of nectarines which she devoured in one go. For the last hour or more she has been having a siesta in her room.

  Tonight Catalina and Ramon are joining us for dinner and with seared tuna, asparagus and wild rice on the menu, I feel all should go as planned. Ollie opted to eat earlier and after completing his homework went to bed with a good book. A few brief conversations with Charlotte convinced him that it was safer to stay out of her way. At eight o'clock when our guests arrive I'm feeling wonderfully mellow. Two glasses of cava and all is well with the universe. Dinner is on the point of being served but Charlotte fails to appear. Finally Alan knocks on her bedroom door and calls her name gruffly. She emerges, radiant and perfectly groomed in a purple dress suit, more suited to shopping in Bond Street than supper in a mountain
finca
. Ramon politely steps forward and shakes her hand before taking his seat at the table again. I begin serving the food while Alan lights the candles. Charlotte makes herself comfortable and examines the tuna carefully. 'Oh good, it's rare,' she says almost to herself. Ramon helps himself to a roll from the bread basket. He taps my arm.

  'You want to know how your turkey's doing?'

  'Ah, tell me. Is it going to be ready for Christmas?'

  He shakes his head and titters before he and Catalina start laughing uncontrollably.

  'What's so funny?' I seem to have missed the joke.

  'The turkey is huge!' exclaims Catalina. 'Ramon is worried you won't fit him in oven.'

  'What?' says Alan with alarm. 'How big is it?'

  'Oh, thirty kilos, maybe?' says Catalina.

  Alan drops his knife. 'Impossible! That's almost double the weight of Ollie!'

  Ramon is now hooting. 'No, Catalina! Is only about twenty kilos.'

  Alan throws me a look of panic. 'That's about three stone. There's no way that'll go in our oven. What have you been feeding it on, Ramon?'

  'Well, he greedy. He eats more grain than others.'

  'It must be obese!' yells Alan.

  'It's OK,' says Catalina, wiping her eyes. 'We kill him early if he grow too big.'

  'But we can't have it too early,' I say with a nervous giggle.

  'We feed him less now and maybe he grow more slowly,' Catalina replies weakly.

  With only a month or so to go until Christmas, I can't imagine this monster bird shrinking enough to fit in our oven. Charlotte has been sitting quietly until now, listening in confusion and growing horror.

  'What are you all talking about?' she demands.

  I explain that Ramon has been rearing a Christmas turkey for us.

  'It sounds like a freak of nature to me. Besides, I could never eat an animal I've reared, it's too barbaric.'

  Ramon gives a grunt. 'But you're happy to eat a turkey from butcher?'

  'That's different.'

  'How?' says Ramon.

  'Because you haven't got to know it.'

  Ramon doubles up while Alan tries to control a snort.

  'Oh you're priceless, Charlotte,' he says.

  She sips at her water and purses her nose. Catalina rushes to the rescue, complimenting Charlotte on her frock.

  'You have so many wonderful clothes!' she exclaims.

  Charlotte blushes with pleasure. 'Yes, I have.'

  Ramon chews thoughtfully on his tuna. 'I have two shirts, two pairs of trousers, and two pairs of shoes. Why would I need more?'

  Charlotte is momentarily unsettled. 'Yes, but Ramon, aren't you a builder? My job is a little different.'

  He shrugs and shovels some rice in to his mouth. I notice that Charlotte is picking at her food.

  'Is it OK?'

  She sighs wistfully. 'I have to watch my weight. Life's a constant diet.'

  'Pity the poor worms,' scoffs Catalina. 'When I die, at least they have a good fiesta, no?'

  Charlotte's face crumples in disgust. Alan uncorks a bottle of red wine and sniffs the cork. 'Give me a curvy woman any day.'

  'A shapely woman is best, for sure,' Ramon opines.

  I throw Catalina a desperate look. She winks at me conspiratorially.

  'You like your job, Carlotta ?' she questions politely, gratefully accepting at the same time a large glass of deep red wine from Alan.

  'It's hugely stressful writing and performing everyday and of course I have streams of fan mail to answer from my television show and newspaper column. It's amazing I find time to view the new collections each season. I'm constantly on a plane.'

  'If you don't like it,' says Ramon laconically, 'you could do something more worthwhile.'

  There is a glacial tone to her reply. 'Oh, and what might that be?'

  He sips at his Coca-Cola. 'You could be a cook or shopkeeper maybe, but you would need to train.'

  Alan gives a snicker. 'Just think, one day we could be dining out at Ca'n Carlotta.'

  Charlotte puckers her lips. 'Somehow, I think not.'

  'And do you consider your job worthwhile, Ramon?' she asks waspishly.

  'I build houses, like Stefan, the brother of Catalina. That's all. It's just a job. There are more important things to do.'

  'Oh really, such as?'

  He puts down his fork and fixes her with an iron stare. A ghost of a smile plays on his lips. 'To live, Carlotta. To live.'

  There's a cool wind whipping at the edges of the porch and the gravel courtyard is swollen with rain from the night's storm as Charlotte, draped in a peach pashmina and white linen dress, wafts into the courtyard ready to depart. Pere the plumber has just arrived to fix the broken tap and gawps in genuine amazement at the apparition before him. The Jimmy Choo slingbacks seem to captivate him. Quite rightly, he's wondering what in heaven's name this woman is doing wandering around in flimsy summer apparel on a wet, cloudy day in November. Charlotte wanders listlessly over to the small pond in the front garden and peers into the depths.

  'Oh those damned frogs of yours!' she exclaims. 'They have kept me awake with their rasping every night. You'll have to get rid of them.'

  I stalk over to the edge of the pond. 'No way, José! I couldn't live without my musical frogs. In fact, the big toad and I have a special understanding.'

  She considers me carefully. 'You really are becoming more eccentric by the day. Try to spend more time in London, darling.'

  Pere the plumber, easily one of the most handsome studs in the valley, saunters over with an immaculate Colgate smile. Charlotte surveys his bulging biceps with wonderment. He kisses me on the cheek and shakes her hand.

  'My God! He's absolutely gorgeous,' she hisses at me. 'He can't be a plumber!'

  'He sure is and very happily married so hands off.'

  'What a waste!' she says sadly.

  We walk to the car where Alan is trying to squeeze Charlotte's three Louis Vuitton cases into the back of the Renault.

  'Alan, you really must get a decent car some time,' she fusses.

  'Well, the Porsche is on order. Just trying to get the colour spec right,' he says wickedly.

  'Oh very droll,' she snaps. Then air kissing me on the cheeks, she gets into the car. Pere disappears into the house with his toolkit, heading for Charlotte's vacated bathroom. Despite the cloudy day, I'm feeling elated that Charlotte is on her way.

  Alan starts the engine and rolls down his window. 'I'll see you later.'

  I wave as the car moves slowly out of the drive and down the stony track. Once it's disappeared, I nip over to the pond in search of my toad. He's nowhere to be seen. Catalina has warned me that the frogs will be gone very soon and won't be back until the spring. In fact, it's unusual that they're still hanging around and I half expect to find them gone any day. I sit on the edge of a rock and dip my fingers in the icy water. There's a loud plop and he suddenly appears, eyeing me intently. Is he still going to be my wise cracking Yankee friend today or should I make him more, let me think, Latino? No, a Latino toad just wouldn't work. I'm going to keep him to a fast talking American script. I let him go first.

  'Jeez! Where d'you pick up that broad? She was a piece of work.'

  I shrug philosophically. 'You mean Charlotte? Oh, she's OK, just a product of London.'

  'Well, let's hope she stays there. Anyway, it's getting pretty cold around here so me and the boys are heading off soon.'

  'Where will you go?'

  'Here and there. Catch up on some relatives in other ponds, lie low until the warmer weather, I guess.'

  I'm sad that there'll be no quacking and barking from them for some time.

  'You'll be back in the spring?'

  'Sure,' he says. 'We like it here although you gotta control that cat. She's already sniffing around, trying her luck.'

  'OK, I'll have words with her.' I get up and watch as he dives clumsily into the water. Someone gives a diplomatic cough and there behind me is Pere wearing a curious expression on his face.

  '
Lo siento!
I disturbed you?'