by Joe Cawley
The kitchen, two bedrooms and white-tiled bathroom housed the cheapest of cheap mismatching fixtures and fittings. Wardrobes leant at jaunty angles, bed frames wobbled precariously, and personal injury threatened at every turn. Wooden kitchen chairs nipped at cheeks, plug sockets leapt from the walls, oversized bows of exposed electrical wires dangled from the ceiling, and razor-sharp aluminium window frames could only be closed with the persuasion of a mallet.
Upstairs was a separate apartment with its own entrance. We knew it was occupied, but its occupants remained a mystery. Alison had heard movement above but never actually seen who lived there. According to her, a car was occasionally parked halfway down the 150 feet of broken concrete that constituted a driveway at the side of the house. All we saw was the occasional twitching of a net curtain as we paraded back and forth along the garden path with boxes of books, crockery and knick-knacks.
A big concern with our move to Tejina was Fugly. Cats are wont to try and relocate to their original home, so to prevent this we had to lock her inside the house for the first week while we cleaned, arranged our furniture and bedded in.
While Joy scoured the white floor tiles and degreased the pine dining table in the kitchen, I set about refitting the light switches and electrical sockets that had popped from the wall. The faint whiff of burning as I did so triggered memories from the early days of Smugglers when I was electrocuted after running cables from a nearby house. A phantom tingle ran through my right arm again.
Grubby floral curtains concealed kitchen cupboards which were just cobweb-ridden spaces underneath the sink and granite worktop. We evicted the half-empty bottles of cleaning fluids, buckets, bricks and bugs that had made their home there and repopulated the spaces with our pans and crockery.
In the living room, our L-shaped sofa was positioned to afford views of the TV and the barranco through the sliding patio doors. It was the only place where the sofa would fit without creating an obstacle course, but it also forced those who sat on it to stare at a trio of worryingly large cracks in the wall behind the pine TV cabinet and shelves. Those with more structural engineering knowledge would have applied their skills to either remedy the situation or more likely have gotten the hell out. We decided on a more pragmatic route – out of sight, out of mind. Indoor plants of varying heights were bought and positioned to mask the danger.
And all the while, Fugly whined. She was not a happy cat. The unknown traumas that had plagued her tiny mind to date seemed to triple amidst the carnage of change, and her depression plummeted to the point where she wailed like a banshee day and night. Normal cats could be placated with love and attention. Her mood would only be lifted by sinking her teeth and claws into whatever she could reach.
Unsurprisingly, Fugly’s venomous nature won us no favours from Rigsby, the nickname we had assigned to our new landlord due to his uncanny likeness to the dour property owner in the 1970s British sitcom Rising Damp. Rigsby was not only the landlord of our house, he was also its builder. I suspected that the construction had been something of a suck-it-and-see challenge, the kind you take on after a few too many beers with a mischievous crowd: ‘I bet you can’t build a house out of wheelbarrows and birds’ nests.’
To be fair, at first sight, and ignoring the diarrhoea-coloured paint, it looked like a proper house with all the right assets in the right places – namely walls, floors and a roof. It was only through closer examination that its flaws were exposed.
The same applied to Rigsby himself. He had the appearance and manner of a friendly uncle, eager to please and with a warm smile. But on the second or third encounter, I began to notice his physical quirks.
It was evident that he wore a black hairpiece. It was also evident that any labelling indicating front and back must have worn off. Some days he would arrive with a neat synthetic side-parting high on his forehead and a tuft of black fanning over his collar at the back; on other occasions, the side-parting would be at the back of his head and the tuft would fan out above his eyebrows like a startled scarecrow. Many a morning the tuft would hover over one of his ears. Its positioning was as unpredictable as his infrequent visits.
We estimated Rigsby’s age at somewhere in the upper forties, low fifties range, which meant that presumably he still worked. The low rent he received from us, and any profit from the produce grown in the barranco would surely not be enough to support a family. It later emerged that he owned a succession of self-built rental homes throughout the municipality, which in Tenerife terms put him in the bracket of property baron.
The contract we signed was certainly not amateur, either – thirty pages of legalese including an inventory of every item in the property from teaspoons to bedheads, plus a list of rental conditions that covered everything from prompt monthly payments and party restrictions, to flea infestations and animal prohibitions.
Fortunately, his anti-pet stance had been softened when he’d reluctantly agreed to Alison moving in with her two dogs a few months earlier. When we showed him our seemingly innocuous white bundle of fluff (from a safe distance, of course), he voiced no objections. On his second visit to see how we were getting on, however, he witnessed the bundle of fluff’s true colours. Standing on her hind legs, she tore towards him like a shrunken, rabid polar bear.
‘Qué está? Qué está?’ (What is it? What is it?) he asked, pointing, mouth open in surprise as he hastily backed down the garden path.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two weeks after Fugly’s introduction to Rigsby, Joy and I were sipping a musty local wine on our terrace as the sun sank behind the silhouette of La Gomera, Tenerife’s nearest neighbouring island. ‘Why are we throwing a party?’ I asked.
‘To celebrate. A moving-in do to show people where we live. I’m proud of this place, aren’t you?’
I looked at the mustard-coloured cube of breeze-blocks blighting what was otherwise a pretty pastoral landscape. ‘I’m proud of the views.’
‘There you go,’ said Joy. ‘We can show off the views.’
I peered around her hand as she began to scribble down names.
We had intended to have only a small party, make it low-key. But as so often happens with events like these, things got quickly out of hand.
First there was the guest list. ‘Just our closest friends,’ I suggested as Joy sat, pen poised over paper.
The pen hung in the air for a few uncomfortable seconds. ‘We haven’t really got any close friends,’ admitted Joy.
We pondered this for a while. It was true. We had become social hermits, content in our rural isolation. ‘Well that’s good. This patio won’t hold that many anyway,’ I said, trying to find a positive. The low-walled garden covered in volcanic cinders couldn’t accommodate more than about thirty people. There was also a two-inch-wide crack along the length of the paving at the side of the house. The weight of too many people could conceivably cause it to break off and go flying into Rigsby’s neat furrows at the edge of the scrubland.
Not having any real friends was a common moan in Tenerife, as in any place with a large and transient expat population. Despite this, our guest list grew, in direct proportion to the wine consumed that day. And so did our aspirations.
One person who wouldn’t be coming to the party was Nan. Yet another fall had put her back in hospital for a week. With the reluctance you’d expect from someone who’d enjoyed adult independence for over seven decades, she’d eventually agreed that continuing to live in her two-up two-down terraced house in Clitheroe was no longer viable, and David had found her ‘the best room in the best nursing home’ in the Ribble Valley. Nan needed twenty-four-hour care and deserved to have someone looking after her, even if it meant sacrificing self-sufficiency.
By the time two empty bottles of Viña Sol lay on the black ash garden, we’d decided on Smugglers-themed food, including the return of our ever-popular Hawaiian burgers, and we were tottering around the garden trying to find the best place to put a live band.
If hangovers serve
any purpose, it’s to bring you back down to earth the morning after. Which is why our lofty ambitions were thankfully scaled down over morning coffee.
The weather gods were in a particularly jolly mood on the day of the party. Wisps of white cloud came and went like curious neighbours watching the transformation of our cement and volcanic-gravel garden into a colourful jamboree of fluttering banners, balloons and tablecloths.
Overcoming our reluctance to get reacquainted with patrons from our Smugglers days, we had decided to combine the housewarming party with a Smugglers reunion. We were still receiving so many invites to meet up again that we figured rather than endure individual evenings, we could bring everyone together in one big social event. Besides, we needed to get the numbers up to a reasonable, though not dangerous, level. We didn’t want to look like we had no friends, after all.
Frank, the dour truck driver from Oldham was the first to arrive. Like most of the old faces, we hadn’t seen him since the bar days. Unlike most, he hadn’t kept in touch, but Joy and I were both curious about what he was up to. Maybe he had finally overcome the obstacles that had been thrown in his way, including inadvertently marrying a lesbian and having an alcoholic as a flatmate. Perhaps he was living life to the full now he had unburdened himself of both.
He wasn’t. ‘Why the hell would you want to live in a dump like this?’ He sauntered into our garden, hands in pockets, shoulders rounded as if weighted with chains.
‘Good to see you again, Frank,’ said Joy cheerfully. She gave him a peck on each cheek.
He grunted.
I held out a hand. ‘Frank! Long time!’
He turned back to Joy. ‘Still with that useless twat then.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Didn’t bring a bottle or anything. Thought you’d probably still have plenty from the bar. Do I have to get myself a beer or what?’
I watched through the kitchen window as the patio started to fill with faces from our other life. Joy had already slipped into hostess mode, greeting the ex-patrons like long-lost friends with earnest warmth and what looked to me like genuine smiles. She was a formidable actress alright! Or maybe it was genuine, and I was just a miserable, unsociable git. I decided it was probably a combination of both as I carried two jugs of sangria into the fray.
‘Hello,’ said a low voice over my shoulder. A bespectacled man with a wispy comb-over, sagging shoulders and downbeat eyes smiled nervously. It was Roger, the ex-community president of El Beril. At least I’d heard he was ‘ex’. The rumours were that he’d been kicked out of the role by a young, dynamic German bungalow owner who’d been lobbying the complex owners non-stop for months. But out of the corner of my eye I saw what looked like a clipboard. Surely he hadn’t come to our party with a checklist?
‘For you,’ he said quietly, offering me the flat package. ‘And Joy, of course. A little housewarming gift. Is that Smugglers sangria?’ I poured him a glass. He held it aloft. ‘To new beginnings.’ For the rest of the party he stood alone, nursing his glass to his chest and nodding formally at the others, unable to join in.
Wayne, our bar odd-job man, had claimed a place on the gravel. He was sitting side-by-side with a man I didn’t recognise. Their plastic chairs were turned away from the gathering crowd and they stared over the barranco as if watching a game of cricket.
Wayne was still the same: scruffy, near-black hair tied back in a ponytail, and a black Rolling Stones vest revealing inked ladies and sharp-toothed tigers. ‘Want some?’ he hissed as he sucked in aromatic smoke through clenched teeth.
‘No thanks, mate. How you keeping?’
‘Oh, you know, up and down, bit of this, bit of that. Nice place you got here, mucker.’
‘Thanks. Needs a bit of work.’
‘You know where to come.’
I smiled at the man sitting next to him, waiting for an introduction. The man stood and shook my hand, firmly.
‘John.’ There was a faint accent – Dutch, German perhaps. He stood tall, with a calm confidence. ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming?’
‘No, not at all. More the merrier and all that.’ Who the hell was he? ‘I feel like I know you, but—’ I felt a tap on the shoulder.
‘Joe! How damned decent of you to invite us.’ It was Michael and his shy wife, Sheila, both in their sixties. Our distant ‘neighbours’.
We had invited them partly to break the ice and partly to make sure they wouldn’t call the police if the noise kept their goats awake or whatever. Joy and I had progressed from polite nodding as our car passed theirs to waving across the barranco when one or both of us were hanging washing out to dry.
Michael wore a permanent grin and a neatly pressed pink shirt. This, along with his loud, confident tone, suggested financial success, a suspicion backed up by the bottle of vintage red that he presented to me with pride. ‘Châteauneuf-du-Pape,’ he announced, pushing it into my chest. ‘Save it for yourselves.’ He leant in. ‘It’s not for this riffraff.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, and dangled a half-empty jug in front of him. ‘Sangria?’
‘Erm, no thanks. Champagne? Cava?’
‘We’ll have two glasses of sangria, won’t we, Michael.’ Sheila smiled apologetically. ‘He can be such a snob.’
We had also tried to invite the people living upstairs, having knocked on three separate occasions. Each time we heard a shuffle of feet on the other side of the door, but they were always scuttling in the opposite direction.
Over Sheila’s head I spied the net curtains in the second-floor apartment twitch again. A stern lady pulled on the shoulders of a wide-eyed toddler, drawing her away from the window. I smiled up, hoping for a reaction, but the child’s face remained expressionless as she disappeared behind the shabby lace.
I tried to work my way back to the stranger across the garden, but Joy intervened. ‘I think you need to check on somebody,’ she said, worried.
‘Who, the guy in the corner with Wayne?’
‘No. Our little girl. I thought she was locked in our bedroom, but the door’s open. I think somebody has let her out.’
Damn. If there was one thing that could spoil the party, it would be an escaped psychotic cat. However, she was nowhere to be seen.
‘JOE?’
I instinctively ducked and turned to see Justin beaming at me from the doorway. At the Smugglers, this lanky pre-teen had a habit of magically appearing from nowhere, and his teleportation skills were obviously still intact. His thought processes were completely different to us humans too. It was entirely possible he was an alien.
We first realised this at the bar with the daily bursts of illogic that he spouted while trailing after us as we mopped or restocked. ‘So,’ he would always begin, ‘if Buster [our bar cat] thinks he’s a dog, what does he see when he looks in the mirror?’ Or ‘Why do people wear trunks when they swim in the sea but not when they go out in the rain?’
‘Justin! Scared me to death. How you doing?’
‘I’M ALRIGHT.’ He pointed to his ear. ‘I GOT A HEARING AID.’
‘Ah, right. Is it switched on, only you’re talking REALLY LOUD?’
‘NO. I’M SAVING THE BATTERY.’
‘For what?’
‘IN CASE THERE’S AN EMERGENCY.’
I knew I probably shouldn’t have asked, but I did anyway. ‘Like what?’
‘LIKE IF I WAS CROSSING THE ROAD AND SOMEBODY SHOUTED A CAR WAS GOING TO HIT ME. IF THERE WAS NO CHARGE LEFT ON MY BATTERY, I’D BE DEAD.’
‘But how will you know when to turn it on?’
‘I JUST TOLD YOU.’ Justin looked at me as if I was simple, but before I could point out the flaw in his logic, he shouted again, only louder. ‘WHAT’S THAT?’
I turned towards the direction of his finger. As I did, a flash of white exploded from the top of the kitchen dresser, bounced off the side of my neck and skidded, cartoon-like, through the kitchen doorway into the garden.
I followed as the admiring ‘Aahs’ turned to pained ‘Ows’, and then to quiet screams.
On seeing so many people, Fugly had panicked, lashed out at anyone who’d dared to so much as look at her, and leapt over the garden wall. From there, with a concrete barrier between her and the burgeoning crowd, she hissed, snarled and generally was as menacing as she could manage.
Just as the panicked screams of our guests subsided, they rose again from around the wrought-iron chairs and tables in the middle of the garden. Heads swished away from Fugly and towards the melee as drinks were spilled, chairs vacated and children whisked off the black ash.
‘They’re biting – the lizards!’ cried Justin’s mum, now standing on one of the chairs.
We’d never experienced vicious lizards in Tenerife, but, sure enough, we watched as they darted out from under the rocks and nipped at bare toes. The biggest was a good eighteen inches from beak to tail, and where previously a swish of the foot or flick of the hand had sent them scarpering back to their crevices, today, no amount of shooing would dispatch the grey scaly brute or his gang members. It was a reptile revolution, and what a day to have picked!
The twenty or so people who’d been socialising in the ashy garden area rushed to the safety of solid concrete. Or at least they thought it was safe.
I could see there were too many people on the part of the paving that had a huge crack. ‘Move back,’ I urged, but too late.
Justin had put his full weight on the wall as he leant over to try and placate Fugly, who was still threatening to attack from the rear. Then he disappeared. Along with a six-foot section of wall.
‘Justin!’ screamed his mum.
‘Fugly!’ screamed Joy.
