by Alan Laycock
She chuckled and patted my arm again. “No, I understand it perfectly. As Malcolm has pointed out to me, why would a man who can make good money just by introducing one person to another want to slave away like a Chinaman in a sweatshop? They’re his words, by the way.”
“I suppose there’s some truth in what you say.”
“I’ve told you this for your own good, Alan.”
“Yes.”
“With this man John, and others like him, you must use your quiet charm to steer him around to the subject of houses, then subtly hint that this area is a good one and… well, you know the rest. Not everyone can do that, Alan, but I saw that you had that ability when Malcolm and I came over, and if you can sell a house to him, you can sell one to anybody.”
I shrugged modestly.
“And with Malcolm with you on Wednesday, the poor man hasn’t got a chance. Now, it’ll be lunchtime soon, so will you eat with us and get to know the guests, or will you go home?”
“Er, it’s Inma’s first full weekend off for ages, so… er...”
“You see?”
“Yes, I see.”
“Do come for breakfast at eight tomorrow though, then you can sort out the trips.”
I smiled and nodded. “Oh, yes, I’ll be here at eight, if not before.”
She shook her head and smiled. “You are funny, Alan. Hasta mañana.”
“Hasta mañana, Angela,” I said, before trudging off to my Clio, but I soon cheered up, as every word she’d said had been true and on Wednesday I’d be working my wizardry on John, touch wood.
The next morning I drove the five most eager trippers slowly up the wide but rather rough track to the top of the Carche mountain. It was a dull, breezy day down below, but blowing a gale on the mountain, so after standing around like disconsolate penguins for a few minutes, we clambered back into the Toyota and I suggested driving into town for a look around and a coffee. On hearing their lukewarm murmurs of assent I ought to have enthused like a seasoned Redcoat about the churches, the pretty old streets, the wide avenue and the buzzing hostelries, but I had to concentrate on the descent and by the time we were back on tarmac a pregnant silence had descended on the company. Pregnant with what, I didn’t know, but try as I might I couldn’t manage to utter more than the occasional banality, until the polite lady by my side pointed out a ‘Se Vende’ sign and asked if it meant that the tumbledown house was for sale.
I confirmed that it did, before gradually and involuntarily launching into what turned into a shameless sales pitch regarding all the wonderful properties one could buy at knock-down prices, due to Spain’s slow recovery from the economic crisis… and on I droned until a man in the back asked me if I sold houses for a living.
“Oh, not exactly, but I have been known to introduce people to… er, other people and help them to… ooh, look, here we are. The town looks a bit scruffy and modern from here, but there are some lovely old buildings that haven’t been pulled down yet, and a nice market, though it’s not on today.”
“Are there any good places for drawing?” asked a stout, red-faced lady impatiently.
“Yes, there’s… let me see...” I began, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of any more picturesque spots than the town hall square, occupied by a small roundabout around which traffic constantly circled, so I dropped them off near the bar terrace and went off to find somewhere to park, no easy task in a town where little provision had been made for parking since the 1960s, I guessed, as it’s always been more profitable to build flats than car parks. As I toured the one-way system of narrow streets I recalled the day when I’d bought my mountain bike from Arturo in Vicente’s bar and then ridden the wrong way along one such street. Ah, such days of innocence and discovery! Now here I was, stressed out in a huge car, attempting to park before joining my charges, who would probably be standing around like disconsolate ducks, waiting to berate me for wasting their precious morning.
In the event I needn’t have worried, again, as I found them seated around a terrace table, drinking coffee and chatting away like old friends, having bonded easily in my absence, so I slipped into the spare chair, ordered a cortado, and did what I do best in company; namely beam, nod, chuckle and throw in the odd monosyllabic comment. One lady soon trotted off down the street to sketch a church she’d spotted, while another had a go at the fountain in the middle of the roundabout. Then a portly chap happily began to draw an ancient Seat 600, before getting annoyed when an even more ancient man drove it away. The other two people, a couple in their forties, hadn’t brought their pads and I jokingly asked them if they were saving themselves for later.
“Er, yes,” said the slim, hatchet-faced man, before glancing at his wife.
“We’re… beginners, you see, so we’d rather wait until Tina teaches us how… best to start,” the previously serene lady stuttered in an accent not altogether unlike Angela and Malcolm’s.
“Ah, did you sign up for the course quite late?” I asked, beginning to put two and two together, or rather eight and two, as I suspected that the big man had somehow inveigled them to come along to make up the numbers.
“Yes, we decided at the last minute,” he said in a deep, lilting voice. “Felt like trying something new, you know.”
“Ah, good. Oh, I believe there are other guests at the hotel from your part of the world,” I said with a conniving smile, as I didn’t care a hoot why they’d come and assumed that Malcolm had footed the bill.
He grinned. “Yes, I think the two couples we saw at breakfast are from… our part of the world.”
“I believe they stumbled upon the hotel the other day,” I said, resisting a strong impulse to wink, as she hadn’t yet twigged that I was, or soon would be, in on the cunning ruse to bolster Angela’s morale.
“Yes, one chap said they’d been passing and decided to drop in.”
“For four nights,” I said.
A short but significant look then passed between them and her face relaxed. He and I would probably have gone on skirting around the subject, but as the car sketcher had wandered away and the fountain sketcher was plunged in creative thought at the other end of the table, she murmured that her boss had persuaded them to come.
“Malcolm?” I mouthed.
“No, not the big boss, but he’s behind it. I was offered a week off with pay, and a free holiday, so we came.”
“And the other two couples?”
“The same, I think, but we’re not supposed to talk to them. I think they’ve got the best deal, as they can go off in their hire cars, but we have to stick around and pretend to like drawing.”
“It’ll be fun, and we can eat and drink as much as we want,” he said, before beckoning the waiter and ordering a large beer.
When I saw the church sketcher approaching I told them we could go out for a drive another day.
“We’d like that,” she said.
When the company had reassembled, had another drink, and mutually admired each other’s sketches, which weren’t at all bad, I paid the not inconsiderable bill and went off to fetch the car. Poor, unsuspecting Angela, I thought, before wondering how many more subsidised guests Malcolm had lined up and how long he’d keep it up for. I’d ask him on Wednesday, I decided, so that he’d know what a perceptive pitch and putt partner he had.
22
“You don’t need to be bloody Maigret to cotton on to that, Alan,” Malcolm said on the third fairway when John had gone loping off after his well-driven ball. Driven, not pitched, because the big man had decided that the proper course at Monforte was a more fitting scenario for seducing the man into buying a house. He’d paid for our rounds and even hired a set of clubs for John, though I still had to share his bag.
“You should have told me about the special guests though, or I might have put my foot in it.”
“You’re more likely to now, as you’re about as good at concealing your feelings as a whipped puppy.” I flinched as he whipped a five-iron from the bag which it w
as still my privilege to carry. “I’d stay away from the Norfolk folk, if I were you. I do not want Angela to find out, understand?”
“Yes.”
“How’ve your outings been then?”
I told him that after my first dithering attempt to entertain them, I’d subsequently played the strong, mostly silent type and that the better weather had enabled them to sketch on the mountain, which they’d enjoyed very much.
“Good. Play your ball, as the hotshot’s waiting for us.”
I almost made the green with a grass-cutting wallop.
“John’s pretty good, isn’t he?” I said.
“Yes, not much of a player my foot, but I’ll put my envious feelings aside and show you how to sell a house,” he said, before slicing his shot.
“Bad luck.”
“I did it on purpose, you chump.”
“Er, shouldn’t I be the one to broach the subject of houses with him? Angela told me I ought to get some practice.”
“How can I trust you not to mess up when you’ve forgotten my crib sheet again?”
“I didn’t forget. I just haven’t finished it yet,” I said, as it was proving no easy task to fit everything Malcolm might need to know on a single sheet, which I was determined to do, with a view to gallantly handing them out to potential house buyers, along with my card. It had been Inma’s idea, of course, but one I meant to execute to the best of my ability.
Once all our balls were on the green, Malcolm murmured that my masterclass was about to begin.
“I’m all ears,” I replied, before sending a ten-yard putt to within a foot of the hole, receiving a thumbs-up sign from John for my fine effort. “Should I have played it worse?” I whispered.
“Play as well as you like, as long as he wins,” he muttered. “John! I can’t get used to this bloody putter,” he bellowed after bobbling his ball straight past the hole.
John slid his own ball in from six feet, before approaching Malcolm and grasping his arm, the reckless fool. I needn’t have worried, yet again, as the colossus proved to be putty in the slim man’s hands and allowed himself to be moulded into an ergonomically sound putting position.
He potted the putt, or is that in snooker? Anyway, the ball went down and Malcolm thanked him effusively, seeming like an entirely different person from the one I knew. He even looked smaller as he hung onto John’s every word while during the next half dozen holes he taught him not only how to drive and chip, but also to perform approach, lay-up, punch and flop shots – John’s words, not mine – until by the halfway mark Malcolm’s game had improved considerably.
“You haven’t even mentioned houses yet,” I hissed at the tenth tee.
“All in good time, lad. Can’t you see what I’m up to?”
“I think so.”
The trouble with golf is that when someone is imparting a non-golfing masterclass on the course, you have to try to get your ball close to theirs in order to catch it all. I believe that John eased off on his drives in order to give Malcolm something to aim at, but my ball always fell either eighty yards short or thirty yards wide, so I only got the gist of what Malcolm was saying to him, mostly on the greens.
On the eleventh hole their talk was of retirement abroad in general terms, and by the twelfth Spain had been identified as the prime destination for excellent golf and, of secondary importance, lifestyle. Little was said on the thirteenth – maybe Malcolm was superstitious – but on the fourteenth the Valencia region was featuring, more specifically Alicante by the fifteenth. Inland Alicante was outplaying the busy, expensive coastal area on the sixteenth, while the seventeenth was given over to reflection. On the eighteenth green Malcolm told him that Alan was a handy man to know if he ever considered looking into property in the lovely but inexpensive area around the hotel.
“Is that right, Alan?”
I glanced up after putting and Malcolm gave me the nod.
“Yes, I know the ins and outs of it pretty well, I suppose,” I said, before crouching to adjust my laces. Would Malcolm think it a good idea for me to introduce John to Juanca, or ought I to take him in hand myself?
“Alan knows the most trustworthy estate agents around there. Don’t you, Alan?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And the best builders, eh, Alan?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Alan helped us to buy the hotel and also found us the builder. We’re ever so pleased that we met him.”
“It’s a fine hotel,” said John. He sank his putt and shook the losers’ hands. “Thanks for the game, and now let me buy you both lunch. I’d like to talk some more about houses and things.”
Having been warned away from the nice Norfolk couple, I was unable to fulfil my promise of taking them out and about, but the next morning I deftly separated John and his wife Susan from the others after breakfast and whisked them away in the Toyota.
“We had a landscape class this morning,” Susan murmured from the back seat.
“Yes, but Alan’s going to show us some lovely landscape with houses on it, aren’t you, Alan?”
“That’s right,” I said, trying to assess Susan’s mood through the mirror. I deduced that John had been sharing his new enthusiasm for buying a house in the area with her ever since returning from our long and garrulous post-golf lunch, during which I’d eased my way into the conversation while Malcolm gradually eased his way out of it. Oh yes, I’d told him, I knew all the estate agents and all the builders within a radius of twenty miles and was in no doubt that the charming, honest Juan Carlos – using his full name in order to avoid wanker jokes – and the dour but supremely capable Cristóbal were the cream of a frankly dodgy crop. This last bit caused Malcolm to wince, due to the ambiguous nature of the statement – were they not dodgy, or just less dodgy? – but John lapped it up anyway and on our return he trotted off to tell his wife where they were going to spend their retirement.
Now, peeking into the mirror, I wasn’t altogether sure that she’d bought this lifelong package deal of his, so rather than risk clamping up or, even worse, babbling myself out of a sale, I decided to drive straight to Juanca’s and place them in his capable hands. I’d warned him that we’d be coming sometime in the morning, so he was hard at work in his office when we entered at half past nine.
“Ah, hola, Alan. How’s it going?” he said from the desk upon which lay a plethora of papers.
“Muy bien, Juanca. Here’s the delightful couple I told you about. He’s as keen as mustard, but she’s not sold on the idea yet,” I said rapidly, in case they understood a bit of Spanish, although he’d told me they knew very little. “John, Susan, this is Juan Carlos, the man who found my sister’s wonderful chalet, my partner Inma’s charming cave house, and the neglected mansion which the builder Cristóbal transformed into the hotel where you’re staying.”
Juanca, already on his feet, appeared to float around his desk, before shaking their hands and welcoming them to the area, all the while assessing their respective states of mind, I knew. We were soon crossing the street to the bar, where the owner greeted him more effusively than usual, as did a few of the regulars who he’d persuaded to receive him joyfully whenever he entered with new foreigners. It cost him a few drinks, he’d once told me, but was worth every cent, and on this occasion it seemed to do the trick with Susan, as she smiled brightly on seeing these scenes of brotherly bonhomie.
“Are people here always so cheerful in the morning, Alan?” she asked me.
“Usually, but especially now, with so many months of warm sunshine to look forward to,” I said, though most local people found the summer heat tremendously tiresome, especially those who had to work outside.
Over coffee, Juanca showed great interest in his guests, quizzing them about their stay at the hotel and not mentioning houses until John brought up the subject.
“We wouldn’t mind seeing a few chalets with pools,” he said.
“Yes, we can do that, today or another day,” Juanca said airily, before
asking them how the drawing and painting was going.
Susan told him it was going fine, while John nodded obediently.
“Well, I don’t want to keep you from your course, but I could quickly show you a few places and then take you back to the hotel, if you like.”
This I understood to mean that my presence wasn’t required, which I didn’t mind, as although they were a pleasant couple, I hadn’t bonded with them especially strongly and I could see that Juanca knew that he’d have to work his magic on Susan, John already being hooked on the idea, thanks mostly to Malcolm. While crossing the road I quietly asked Juanca if the Frenchman had chosen his unfinished chalet yet.
“Almost. One that was scarcely begun. Good news for my cousin, and for us. You can go now,” he murmured, before ushering them into his Audi.
“Are you not coming, Alan?” Susan asked cheerfully.
“I’d like to, but I’d better get back to the hotel.”
“OK,” she said, before shutting the passenger door, Juanca having positioned his prey by his side.
Pleased by my morning’s work, I drove back to the hotel and on spotting Tina and her students down by the pine trees I found myself climbing into my Clio. It was Inma’s midweek day off, after all, and if I stayed there was a danger that the Norfolk couple might collar me and ask me to fulfil my promise of taking them out. Malcolm had ordered me to stay away from them, so, as Jesús might have said, what could I do? The fact that Angela might have liked me to stick around did cross my mind, but the prospect of seeing that smug so-and-so Gerardo tipped the balance, so I sneaked off down the drive, feeling very much like a truant.
“I feel like a truant,” I told Inma when I got home and joined her on the patio.
“Yes, it’s naughty of you really.”
I filled her in on my house sale prospects.
“Hmm, the Frenchman sounds promising, but the English couple, well, that might take more time.”
I leaned back in Zefe’s former outdoor chair and stretched luxuriantly. “Ah, I’ve got all the time in the world.”
