Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Spain (13 page)

The removal of the quails was insufficient to settle the disharmony in the poultry-house. The cross-currents of mutual antipathy continued to affect performance. So we prepared an appealing home for the hated chickens, an attractive, traditionally built stone chicken-shed with spacious outside recreation area and fox-proof door. In went the chickens and shortly afterwards we were thrilled to be presented with our first egg.

I gave the egg full culinary attention according to the French manner as retailed by Elizabeth David. First I plunged it in fiercely boiling water for a minute, then I took the pan off the heat and left it there for a further five minutes, then I rinsed it with cold water, and ate it. It was like no other egg I’ve ever eaten, done to exquisite perfection.

Unfortunately, as I was eating the egg, a stoat or a weasel was eating the chickens. And it was not very many weeks later that first the guinea-fowl and then the pigeons went the way of the others. Foxes, snakes, stoats, weasels, martens, wild cats, rats, were all lying in wait to discourage any move we made in the direction of poultry-keeping. Our skills and our facilities were not up to their onslaughts. However we tried to mend and patch the walls and wires of our poultry-places, the creatures of the wild outwitted us.

Reluctantly, we gave up the project. We had too many other tasks bearing down on us – not least the rebuilding of our own home – to spend any more time feeding fresh fowl to visiting predators. I consoled myself with the thought that this was only our first attempt. There’d be other chances to get it right and become the proud owners of the sort of happy and secure poultry-yard that you find in children’s books.

BUILDING THE HOUSE

FOR SOME MONTHS A STOCKPILE OF CHESTNUT ROOF-BEAMS had lain under a tarpaulin on a piece of flat land behind the house. It was a reminder to us of urgent work ahead, yet neither of us could summon up enthusiasm to get started. The leaks Domingo had forecast with the spring rains had not been so bad and placing a few buckets in strategic positions seemed a much easier solution than the wholesale dismantling of our home.

As summer arrived, however, a new problem presented itself, and one that finally goaded us into action. The hosts of creatures that had moved into the cane and brush ceiling in our bedroom began to breed and multiply, scuffling and skittering not six feet above our upturned and tremulously wakeful faces. As the heat of the night increased, the breeding and multiplying above us became ever more frenzied, and soon, as the population soared out of control, we found ourselves spattered with larvae, maggots and other young deemed surplus to requirements. This was hardly conducive to a good night’s rest. The roof would have to go. And while we were about it, we argued, we might as well make a few small adjustments to our living space.

Since moving into El Valero we had billeted ourselves in the larger of the two stone buildings. This stood on a steeper part of the rock with its
tinao
, or covered terrace, looking out across a wide sweep of the gorge with the rivers snaking below. To one side was the bedroom and to the other a small, windowless box of a room that passed for the kitchen, the surprisingly appointed shower room, and another long narrow room which shared the same fine views as the terrace and bedroom but had no glass in the windows. This rather limited its function as a sitting room and on inclement days, when we were forced off the
tinao
, there was little to do but sit disconsolately on our bed and stare out of the window.

Pedro’s old quarters, just below and to the east, were of humbler design and in much worse repair. They consisted of two interconnecting rooms: his kitchen with its hearth, and the dark, airless storeroom where he housed his hams, his tools and his bed. We hadn’t yet found a use for these rooms so we decided that they would be the best place to begin rebuilding work. If we knocked out the internal wall and added an L-shaped extension we could create a living room large enough to spread out our worldly encumbrances, and a kitchen for all weathers. Once we’d moved in we could start work on the rest.

Even in the wilder wilds of Spain you need permission to start tampering with external walls so I went to open negotiations with the town hall. Within the week a municipal policeman was dispatched to make the necessary investigations. He arrived on foot one hot May morning, the heat and dust of the valley having made no obvious impression on his impeccable uniform. His shoes still shone, his shirt remained perfectly pressed, and he positively bristled with authority and efficiency. We offered him coffee as a restorative and he told us that if ever we needed a friend in high places then he was our man. We were very impressed.

‘So it’s just one storey then, is it?’ he asked settling down to business. We described what we had in mind.

‘And you’re not going to use any asbestos in the construction?’ We assured him the idea was abhorrent to us.

‘Well then,’ he said, handing the coffee cup back for a refill, ‘you’ll be alright. You can do as you please.’

With the bureaucratic obstacles out of the way there seemed nothing to prevent our getting on with the work . . . except that I hadn’t a clue how to go about it. In my former life handyman-ism had been hateful to me. I was the sort of man who would baulk at putting a hook on a door, preferring to wait until someone happened along with the tools and talent for the job. At El Valero it was all going to be different. I would have to do things for myself. I looked around for some simple task that I could tackle as a way of easing myself into my new role as builder and site manager.

The stone walls of the little house were stuck together with mud, and much of the mud seemed to be falling out. Repointing the walls seemed rudimentary enough. On my next trip to Órgiva I bought a couple of sacks of cement, a heap of sand and a trowel. With a little hand-pick I scraped as much mud as I could from the joints between the stones and then set to with the trowel, refilling the cavities with a strong mix of sand and cement. It was satisfying in a tedious sort of a way, but it took me nearly a week to finish one stretch of about ten metres.

Just as I was stepping back to admire my work Domingo appeared.

‘I’m repointing this wall,’ I told him brightly.

He looked at the finished section through narrowed eyes as he sucked on a stem of grass.

‘What do you think, then?’

He shook his head and walked over to run his hand along the surface.

‘It’s twisted,’ he announced.

‘What’s twisted?’

‘The whole wall is twisted.’

‘So?’

‘It’ll have to come down . . . if you want, I’ll come over and give you a hand.’

Two days later Domingo arrived with tools and trestles and a set of straight-edges that he had just had made up in town. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘first we’ll take the roof off, then we’ll knock the wall down.’ And he pitched into the work like a wrecking machine. By the afternoon of the first day we found ourselves standing on a pile of rubble where a tolerably good and rather pretty house had stood a few hours earlier.

Were it not for my steadfast faith in the skills of Domingo I might have curled up and wept. But I knew I would enjoy the work ahead with my mentor-neighbour. Not that Domingo was a sensitive teacher; the idea wouldn’t have occurred to him. If I laid a stone that did not conform to his idea of the correct
postura
he would shout at me. ‘No!! Not like that. Dick in vinegar, man! If you lay them like that the wall will be shit, and when we come to put the roof on it’ll fall down.’ Then he would stump around to my side of the wall, grab the offending stone and thump it down so that it sat correctly.

‘Ah, like that you mean . . .’

Building in stone is a very inexact science. Each stone has seven
posturas
, local wisdom has it, and none of them is ever exactly right for where you want the stone to be. So the placing of each stone is a compromise and over each one a taxing decision must be made. It’s very wearing on the mind, but there is a tremendous satisfaction in seeing a wall rising steadily from the ground, as if by organic extension of the soil itself.

Little by little I learned, and Domingo was able to spend less time shouting at me and more placing his own stones. My job was to mix the cement and lay the inside of the walls, while Domingo saw to the more important outside facing. He seemed to be very good at it and in not too many days we stood back to admire a straight and imposing piece of masonry the very size, girth and essence of a wall.

‘Where did you learn to build in stone like this?’ I asked. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Why, here, working with you,’ he replied, as if surprised by the implication that he had ever wielded a trowel before. But he’d often seen it done, he hastened to assure me.

In the event it didn’t seem to matter that we were two entire novices. Domingo’s unshakeable self-confidence infected me, and within a couple of weeks we were both cocky and halfway competent builders. The architectural side of things we dealt with on pieces of scrap paper with a biro and a tape measure. Domingo had all sorts of fanciful notions of long-beamed porticos and stone pillars and arches, but I reckoned his plans were a little too ambitious for our humble mountain home.

We took a break before starting work on the extension walls where the new kitchen was to be sited. Domingo had fallen behind with his farmwork and I too needed to catch up on tasks left undone. But then on the day we were due to restart, Domingo failed to turn up. I humped a few stones about on my own but made so little progress it seemed a waste of time. He didn’t turn up the day after either. When I finally found him he seemed troubled.

‘What happened to you on Monday?’

‘I was in hospital in Granada. My mother’s been taken ill.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Cancer of the kidneys. They say she won’t last more than a couple of weeks.’ The last words were stifled in an attempt to prevent the tears breaking through.

I stared back appalled. This couldn’t be true. Expira was so healthy, such a solid, comfortable presence. How could she be dying? Domingo, in defeated tones that were heartwrenching to hear, told me a few sketchy details about Expira’s mysterious pains and an emergency referral from the doctor’s surgery. I groped around for some words of comfort and reassurance but there was nothing I could find in either language that came even close to the mark. Expira would have known what to say, but Expira was in hospital.

The thought prompted me to be practical. I arranged to go over and feed his livestock for him before taking some food and a few extra toiletries to the hospital the next day. Then I went back to break the news to Ana.

The next morning we met Domingo in the bar of the Hospital of the Virgin of the Snows. He had black bags beneath his eyes and had obviously been weeping.

‘All my mother’s relatives have come down from Barcelona and Zaragoza,’ he told us. ‘And all her sisters from the Alpujarra. They’re here, waiting . . .

‘They say it won’t be long now,’ he added quietly, as we trudged forlornly along the broad hospital corridors. As we approached Expira’s ward the corridor seemed to fill with black-clad figures. They were bent in attitudes of unutterable dejection; some of the old women keened quietly as they rocked to and fro. The men stood with their hands in their pockets looking down at the lino floor and wondering what to say. Some children were trying hard to play through the thickening atmosphere of gloom. ‘Shsshh!’ their parents admonished them.

Old Man Domingo was there, rocking quietly back and forth, his eyes downcast. We shook hands and mumbled . . . I didn’t know what condolences were in Spanish – only felicitations.

Then Domingo ushered us through the swing-doors and over to Expira’s bed. She was propped up against a huge pillow and, startlingly, she looked absolutely radiant. In fact, I’d never seen her looking so well. Perhaps it was partly the contrast of her tanned face against the white of the hospital nightgown and sheets. I wasn’t used to seeing Expira clad in white. But nonetheless, this was not the deathbed scene I had dreaded.

Expira dissolved into a huge smile and embraced us warmly. ‘Ay, how wonderful to see a couple of cheerful faces! Everybody here is so gloomy it makes me feel miserable. I wish they’d just clear off and leave me in peace but they won’t. They just hang around getting glummer and glummer.’

We gave her the bags of grapes and peaches that we’d brought along for her. ‘Well, you look pretty good to me, Expira – you look wonderful,’ I said.

‘And I feel fine too. I’m having a good rest. It hurts me a bit here, mostly when I laugh, but with all these muttonheads around me I don’t get much chance of that.’ She indicated the members of her extended family peering round the door.

We sat on her bed, one on either side, and did what we could to bring a little cheer to what Domingo reckoned were his mother’s last few days.

Later, as we left the hospital, he explained. ‘They’re going to operate on Friday on the growth on her kidney, but even if it’s successful it will only give her another week or so, another week of pain and misery.’

‘She doesn’t look that miserable to me, Domingo. She looks better than I’ve seen her for a long time. Are you quite sure about this?’

‘It’s what the doctor told us.’

We didn’t know what to think. We’d both been deeply upset at the news of Expira’s illness and its desperate prognosis, but felt our hearts lightened by the state in which we’d seen her.

‘She certainly doesn’t look like a dying woman to me,’ said Ana emphatically.

On Saturday morning I went across to La Colmena to see Domingo. He would break his vigil every day to come home and feed the chickens and rabbits and partridges and pigs. I found him whistling as he poked food through the bars of the tiny cage where an unfortunate male partridge lived out its miserable existence.

‘How did the operation go?’

He turned around and grinned a grin I hadn’t seen for a long time. ‘She’s alright. Much better. It wasn’t cancer at all.’ Apparently, at the end of the operation, while all the family were keeping tearful vigil outside the theatre, the doors suddenly flew open and a doctor burst out beaming. It wasn’t cancer at all, just a stone in the kidneys. There was no danger. Expira would spend a day or two in the hospital recovering from the operation, then she could go home.

Of course there was much rejoicing at Expira’s miracle, but Domingo and his father had had a serious shock. Things could never go back to being quite the way they were before Expira’s hospitalisation. As if by magic they gathered all their apparently scant resources and bought a flat in town – for cash. Expira needed rest from the relentless labour of running a
cortijo
and looking after the men in her family, and Domingo was determined that she should get it. The flat was immediately furnished with a freezer, a washing-machine and a huge TV whose colour system offered pictures in tones of red or green.