The Reluctant Expat: Part Four - Settling Down

by Alan Laycock

  “Yes, Cristóbal’s a man of few words, but plenty of action. The whole team are working like mad and I’m sure it’ll be finished before the end of April.”

  “I expected nothing less,” he said, before draining his mug. “Come on, let’s have a look then.”

  We scurried into the house and I expected Cristóbal to be there to receive us, but as he wasn’t I led them around the ground floor, making pertinent comments. Angela said hola to the workers we came across, many of whom gawped at the giant who just nodded or grunted, clearly taking everything in. When they saw Rafael and David’s bedroom, the other one being upstairs at the time, neither of them seemed to mind. We found Cristóbal waiting at the top of the main stairs, his dark hair speckled with dust. He wiped his right hand on his overalls and grasped Malcolm’s great paw, before smiling and nodding at Angela.

  “So you muck in too, do you, Chris?” Malcolm said.

  “What?”

  “You also work, with your hands,” I clarified.

  “Of course.” He looked at Malcolm. “The work goes good. Little to see now, but going good.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Have you made progress with the paperwork?” Angela said.

  “I had, but with this change in plans, now I start again, but no problem,” he said, daring to give Malcolm a slightly irritated look.

  The big man clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re making enough money out of this, so get it done, lad.”

  “Yes, no problem. Come, I show you the work here,” he said, before guiding us around the first floor, making brief, grammar-free comments until we reached the easternmost part of the house, where he pointed out of the window. “That is best place to build little chalet for you, about thirty metres from hotel.”

  “Haven’t you seen our van, man?” said M.

  “Yes, nice autocaravana. Good for now, and big, but small to live. A house better, in future.”

  “Yes, well, shall we go down?” I said, not wishing him to test Malcolm’s patience.

  “First the hotel, Chris, then we’ll see, eh?” he said, amused rather than annoyed.

  “What would you like to do now?” I asked them as we descended the stairs.

  “We’ll go somewhere for lunch,” said Malcolm.

  I nodded and began to fish out my car keys.

  “Not in that little thing. Here, drive us somewhere nice.”

  I came to a halt with the shiny Hymer keys in my hand. “Er, I wouldn’t want to scratch it.”

  “Don’t be soft. I want to see how it feels to be a passenger.”

  I glanced at Angela.

  She smiled. “You drive there and I’ll drive back. He won’t be happy until we’ve both told him how wonderfully she handles. Don’t worry, she’s fully insured.”

  “She handles wonderfully,” I said as we approached the town, as it felt very much like driving Juan’s van, though I kept reminding myself that it was much longer. I chose a smart restaurant on the outskirts with a big car park and it was with some relief that I handed back the keys and led them inside.

  Over lunch we talked about the work on the hotel and Angela described how she’d like the grounds to look.

  “I want to have lawns on either side of the pool, and I’d like to clear the ground under those pine trees, plant some more, and put a few benches there. I want my guests to be able to go off alone to read, draw or just think.”

  “She’s still convinced that she’ll get lots of arty types to come, Alan,” Malcolm said with a grin.

  I knew better than to grin back. “Hmm, is that artist you mentioned still going to come, Angela?”

  “Not that one, but another is provisionally booked from the fifth to the thirteenth of May.”

  I nodded. “Oh, that’s very soon after opening, isn’t it?”

  “I plan to open on the sixth. The staff will start before then, to train and get everything ready, then if all goes to plan we’ll open with a full house. I want the staff to see that I mean business, so they’ll tell everyone how quickly we filled up. As soon as Tina signs her contract I’ll start advertising the course. I’ll call it something simple like ‘Painting and drawing retreat in southern Spain,’ and make the first one quite affordable. Tina’s done courses of this type before, so I can leave it to her to organise it.”

  “What kind of artist is she?”

  “A fairly conventional one. She paints portraits on commission and things like that.” She tittered. “Malcolm didn’t like the sound of the first one I considered, did you, dear?”

  “Hmm, her paintings looked like the work of a raving lunatic and her sculptures were just piles of stones.”

  “She’s well thought of.”

  “Not by me. This Tina seems more like my cup of tea.”

  “Where will you advertise?” I asked.

  “In The Guardian, I think,” she said.

  “Flaming lefties’ rag,” said Malcolm mildly.

  “And The Telegraph. I’d like to get a good mix and give them a wonderful experience, so that they’ll talk about it too.”

  All this seemed rather ambitious to me, but she appeared to be sure of herself, and as financial backing wouldn’t be lacking my thoughts turned to what role she might have in mind for me. As I’ve said, I had no wish to commit myself to the venture on a full-time basis and suffer the drudgery I’d so far avoided in my singularly undynamic life. I’d have preferred to speak about it alone with her, lest Malcolm lumber me with undesirable tasks, but as procrastination would only make me fret about my destiny, over coffee I broached the subject in my inimitably forthright way.

  “So, er… Angela, what, er… do you have in mind for me once the hotel opens, if anything?”

  She chuckled. “What do you have in mind for yourself, Alan?”

  “Well, er… maybe to keep an eye on things, like I’m doing now.”

  “Do you want to manage the place?” Malcolm said brusquely.

  “No. No, I–”

  “Thought not. We’ll need someone experienced anyway, as we’re not planning to stick around all the time.”

  “Unless there’s a course on, dear.”

  “Unless there’s a course on.”

  “Why don’t we just wait and see, Alan?” Angela said. “It would be good if you didn’t make any other plans for late April and May, then we could take it from there.”

  “Yes, that might be best.”

  Malcolm finished his coffee and sighed contentedly. “I’m satisfied that Chris is doing a good job, but do pop round at least once a week, there’s a good lad.”

  “Yes, and I could start the van if you like.”

  “Yes.” He narrowed his eyes and gazed at me with his chin in his hand, rocking his head from side to side. “You ought to take a holiday, you know. Get away somewhere with that lovely girl of yours.”

  “Yes, we might.”

  “Before we open.”

  “Before we open, yes. I’ll be heading up north soon, with my friend Juan, in his van, to pick up some goods,” I said, to show him that I was a man of action.

  “Good for you. We’re going to head south now, to try to find some warmer weather.”

  “Are you not sticking around for a while?”

  “What for? I’ll have another look around this aft, then tomorrow we’ll be off at the crack of dawn, for a week or so, then we’ll come back and leave the van.”

  “I’ll drive you to the airport.”

  “Thanks.” He picked up the keys and swung them to and fro before my eyes, grinning like a well-fed hippopotamus.

  “Yes, I’ll start her up regularly after you’ve gone home.”

  “Take a trip in her sometime, Alan.”

  I smiled like a petrified dolphin. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t… I couldn’t…”

  He raised a finger as big as a small child’s arm. “I didn’t pay over a hundred grand for a van just to have her sat there most of the time.”

  “I… well…”


  “Don’t lend her to anyone else though.”

  “I…”

  “You could go away with your sister and brother-in-law,” said Angela. “It easily sleeps four.”

  “Well, that’s very kind of you both,” I said, blushing like a virgin bride.

  “It’s because we trust you, Alan,” he said.

  “I appreciate it.”

  “To look after the van.”

  “Yes.”

  “And to make sure the hotel’s finished in good time.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, see about those lawns that Angela mentioned, will you?”

  “Yes, though it’s a bit cold now.”

  “April will do. Get them to bring them in rolls, you know, and send me the bill.”

  “We’ll do a sketch when we get back, Alan, now that it’s finally stopped raining.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But don’t turn into one of those bloody yes-men, Alan,” said he.

  “No.”

  “Drive us back. Angela can have a go tomorrow.”

  “Ye… OK. I’ll just pay the bill.”

  “I’ll pay.”

  “No, I’ll pay,” I insisted.

  “All right.”

  “How did it go?” Inma said when I walked through the door just after dark.

  “Muy bien. Look at this,” I said, showing her a blurred photo on my phone, a naff camera being one of its few advanced features.

  “A big motorhome, outside the hotel. Is it theirs?”

  “Yes,” I said, before describing the events of the day over a cup of tea.

  “I’m glad they’re pleased with everything and that you haven’t committed yourself to anything you’ll regret,” she said after hearing me out like a dutiful wife, I mean partner.

  “Oh, no, I told them straight that I wasn’t going to be a wage slave.”

  “A what?”

  “Er, a person who goes to work for somebody else every day, I suppose.”

  “Like most people?”

  “Yes, but, I mean, you don’t want me to tie myself down at the hotel, do you?”

  “Not really, or I’d scarcely see you in summer. Like Angela said, you’ll just have to see how things develop.”

  “Yes, though from April I’d better be available. I thought we might take a holiday before then, maybe with Cathy and Bernie,” I said, leading up to my momentous news.

  She looked puzzled. “We could, I suppose.”

  I held up my phone and slowly brought it before her eyes, which I suppose was my idea of a kind of drum roll.

  “We could go in this.”

  “What?”

  I turned it round and saw that the screen was blank. After a prod I tried again.

  “In this.”

  “In that?”

  “Yes. Malcolm… they said we could use it.”

  She shrugged. “Hmm, that’s nice of them.”

  “You don’t sound too excited, Inma.”

  “I’m just concerned that you’ll be so scared of bumping it that you won’t be able to relax.”

  “Bernie can drive. He’s never bumped a vehicle in his life, or so he says. If you want us to go with them, that is.”

  She smiled and grasped my hand. “I’d love to, in that or in the car.”

  “Oh.”

  “Alan, when I worked at the pharmaceutical company my boss once lent us a little motorboat that he kept in the marina at Denia, to use while we were on holiday, you know.”

  “Right… er, right.”

  “Natalia was small then and we had a great time speeding about in it.”

  “I see,” I said, Inma’s past life flashing before my eyes, but failing to see what she was leading up to.

  “Yes, it was great, then when we got back to work in September I was asked to do all sorts of extra tasks and my husband’s workload increased too. One has to be careful where bosses are concerned, Alan. They rarely give you something for nothing.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe they think like that, not Angela anyway. Besides, they’re not my bosses in the same way that yours was.”

  “True. Oh, Rosa says that Agustín wants to sell his Seat Ibiza. It’s only three years old, but he’s yearning for one of those Nissan Qashqais that seem to be fashionable now. I thought we might buy it. They just want the same amount as the dealer would give them.”

  I grasped her hand and smiled. “The cornflakes box is your oyster, my dear.”

  “Does the mean that we’ll buy it?”

  “Sí, cariño. Bernie can sell your old one. It’ll give him something to do.”

  7

  “What do you mean, it’ll give me something to do? I’m rushed off my feet,” Bernie said when I called him a few days later while gazing at our sleek blue Seat Ibiza – a 1.2 TSI with only 34,450km on the clock – over the patio wall. “And why haven’t I seen the new car?”

  “You were out yesterday when we called round in it at about five.”

  “I was on my field and Cathy had gone to yoga.”

  I realised that it had been a while since I’d called, despite my New Year’s resolution to cycle over to lend a hand on the allotment every week. “Right, so you’ve got the field?”

  “Yep.”

  “And Cathy’s taken up yoga?”

  “Correct. She’s been three or four times and she loves it. I often find her tied up on her mat, practising.”

  “She was a flexible girl, as she did gymnastics, but is she still bendy enough to do yoga?”

  “Why don’t you come and ask her yourself?”

  I heard Inma getting ready to leave. “Yes, I’ll come over and spend the day with you.”

  “About time. If I’m not here I’ll be at the field or in the bar.”

  While Inma drove her new car, I messed about with the baffling console.

  She chuckled. “We’d better read the manual. I’ve never had such a modern car before.”

  “Bernie will find a buyer for the old one, as he can’t really be all that busy.”

  “All right.”

  The bar was buzzing with breakfasting workers when we arrived at about half past ten, and while I was drinking coffee at the bar and catching up with old Juan Antonio, Randi arrived. Despite spending so much time with food, she’d lost a bit of weight and looked tanned, radiant and, I must say, extremely attractive, even in a duffle coat and woolly hat.

  “How are you both?” I asked.

  “We’re well, but it’s been cold, hasn’t it? I’ve walked here very fast to warm myself up.”

  “It’s been cold at night, yes, but I thought you’d be used to it, being from the frozen north.”

  “In Norway we had central heating,” she said glumly.

  “What are you using now then?”

  “Gas heaters and a wood fire.”

  “A stove?”

  “No, just a fire in the fireplace. Oh, Alan, the heat goes whoosh, straight up the chimney.”

  I tutted sympathetically. “No, you need to get a wood-burning stove, Randi. Much more efficient.”

  “I know. Bernie told me they’ve been using the stove all day long, as well as the air conditioning at times. I told Arvid and he just said that one has to be tough in the country, the foolish man. I’d better start work,” she said, and entered the kitchen.

  “What was all that?” said Juan Antonio.

  “Sorry, we should have spoken Spanish. Oh, she says she’s a bit cold in the house,” I said, still rather stunned by her calling Arvid foolish, as although he undoubtedly was, a few months earlier she wouldn’t have dreamed of openly disparaging him.

  The old man grinned mischievously. “In the house she may be cold, but she spends little enough time there.”

  “Always here, is she?”

  “Here and elsewhere, but my lips are sealed,” he murmured, his eyes implying that he wouldn’t need much persuading to unseal them.

  Just then Bernie arrived, but instead of making a beeline for his fa
vourite brother-in-law he stopped to chat to two oldish men dressed in blue overalls like him, except that his were newer. Although they were speaking quietly I heard the words tractor, plough (noun), frost, rocks, plough (verb), olive trees, crazy foreigner, almond trees, and ‘you’ll see’.

  “Juan Antonio, do the farmers here tease Bernie?”

  “Tease him? I don’t think so, no, as they always seem interested in what he has to say.”

  “Hmm,” I said, tuning in again when he’d ambled out.

  “…unpredictable… possibly… glut of almonds… international markets… probably… low prices… olives… olive oil… you’ll see,” were among the words that Bernie uttered as they huddled around him, scratching their heads or bellies. He then raised his hands, nodded his head, clapped them both on the back and wandered over.

  “Putting them straight, were you?” I said.

  “They resist change, poor men, but they’re coming around to my way of thinking. Rosa, un cortado, por favor.”

  She smiled and nodded at the grizzled man of the soil, him having neglected to shave for a couple of days. “How’s the car?” she asked me.

  “Great. It’s like new.”

  She sighed. “I know, but men are so foolish about cars. Agustín simply had to have that Japanese one.”

  “Better he buy some land and tractor,” said Bernie, confirming my suspicion that although he seemed to speak Spanish with greater fluency, grammar was still an unopened book to him.

  “He hasn’t got time for that,” she said.

  Because he’s working to pay for a twenty-odd grand car that he doesn’t need, I thought but didn’t say, as someone has to buy the new ones.

  “The land is the future,” Bernie told her. “When no electric or petrol, all go back to land.”

  “Yes, Bernie, you’ve already told me that,” she said.

  “I like to play the environmental catastrophist from time to time,” he said outside the bar.

  “What’s the great Norwegian environmentalist up to now?” I said, still pondering on Juan Antonio’s unsubtle hints regarding Randi’s movements.

  “Well, I suppose all his cycling makes him green, though his allotment’s looking pretty green too, but not with vegetables.”