by A Long Walk in the High Hills- The Story of a House, a Dog
After Madrid Mallorca took a little getting used to again, rats or no rats. Ten o’clock at night in the capital meant going out, eating or clubbing, not heading for bed by candlelight. Sleeping for Madrilenos, I was astounded to discover, was from anywhere between three or four in the morning. How they managed to turn up for work at 8.30 and not indulge in a siesta in the afternoon was miraculous but Madrid, then, was full of verve. It was preening itself on being the European capital of culture and our media partners in Madrid were right on the beat, lunching us late with risotto and ceps, gilded bream and albarino wine in celebration.
Everywhere, it seemed, was charged, focused on catching up fast with Spain’s more prosperous northern neighbours. Soon, this commercial dynamism would spread and catch on in places like Mallorca, but I did wonder when I returned that year to a building site in a valley on the edge of Europe what on earth I was actually doing there.
It wasn’t helping that I had begun to take on responsibilities I shouldn’t have. Like Jake, the grey-and-white kitten who’d come out of the torrente in the village one morning, introducing himself by dabbing his paw as I nibbled my ensaimada. We shared the breakfast pastry because he was very hungry and next morning, he was there again, but this time badly cut from fighting. One of his eyes had closed up, lumps of fur were missing and his nose was bloody. Did anyone own him? Blank looks all round. He was just another feral cat struggling for survival, so I purloined a box from the bar, shoved him in and carried him home. He screamed and spat all the way.
Rafa was leaning against the cisterna, idly waiting for Cedric the plumber to arrive, when Jake leapt out of the box and galloped for cover under the honeysuckle, his ears pinned to his head, terrified. ‘He’s here to help keep the rats down and you’re going to help look after him.’ I tried to sound assertive.
Boris, who had just emerged from the dunny, shook his head. ‘He’ll go straight back to the village,’ he warned, ‘this is not his territory and who’s going to feed him ven you’ve gone?’
‘The cat doesn’t stand a chance,’ I replied, ‘with all the others fighting for scraps of food, and I’m sure Emmy Lou will feed him until I return. I can’t see there’ll be a problem especially as Jake can live in the bread oven, in a warm box with a cushion. At the very least, he’ll frighten off rodents and keep you guys company’
None of them appeared particularly impressed by this suggestion as Jake continued to cower under the honeysuckle. And then Cedric made an appearance. Here was another bundle of fun on the scene.
Cedric, a cockney whose blond beard disguises a mournful demeanour, had come to discuss a new bathroom with Boris. Cedric is also an electrician and a man of many parts, having learned a very useful trade as a telephone engineer back in the UK. Cedric has been in and out of most homes in this part of the island to fix things and is well up on who is with who and what they get up to together. He isn’t given to being loquacious, he doesn’t need to be, because Dottie, who he lives with, has it all clocked. Dottie, with her blonde curls, has two children with Cedric, and together they embrace village life, which means being regulars at both bars, observing all that goes on in them. Dottie, therefore, is a joy to talk to.
While the men discussed the septic tank, a rain cloud came over and poured down. I was in the sitting room when Jake gave up his sulk and shot out, wet through, from under the bush landing smack in the middle of my feather-cushioned sofa. He looked like a cat with a good eye on a mission. He had decided, I think, to stay.
His wounds healed and soon Jake and I settled into a routine. I was determined he would live outside, he was even more intent on being in. He ingratiated himself, following me around, watching with interest the comings and goings of the house. At night I would put him to bed in the bread oven but by next morning, he’d be hanging upside down from the guttering outside my bedroom window, tapping on the glass, miaowing for me to get up and let him in. Then he’d leap on my bed and as close to my ear as a cat like that can get, begin the mightiest purr. His oddest habit however was reserved for my feet. He loved nibbling my toes. Anyone’s toes, actually but mine in particular. I got so that it was always a dash in the morning to find shoes, otherwise if he got to my feet first he’d never let go.
I’d had a phone call from Joe a couple of days after Jake came to live with me wanting to know how I was coping with the new genny and reminding me that it would need a service before long. He’d had an idea. He could come and stay in the house when I was away filming and rig up a system that would store power in batteries. It would mean I wouldn’t have to cart heavy gas bottles around and he could also service the generator while he was at it. He made it sound so easy and enticing, turning my house into a proper home, almost like being on the grid.
He also thought my place was heaven for children and would I mind if he brought his boys along too? Now this was something I hadn’t anticipated. Mallorca was my bolthole not a holiday camp. Joe also had a complicated love life. His sons were from a previous marriage but he always seemed to have at least two women on the go at the same time, neither of whom knew about the other. I didn’t want anything to do with his domestic arrangements but couldn’t figure how I was going to get out of this innocent and, on the surface, kindly suggestion. I told him I’d think about it and hoped, somehow, he and his bright idea would simply go away.
It is a shimmering May morning, Cedric is under the sink, cursing at the rusted water pipe which has seized solid. Jake is wide-eyed, watching, so I reckon this is a good moment to go find a wisteria I’ve promised myself. The walk to the garden centre in the port is a bit of a hike, but blackbirds are busy nesting, clacking at one another across the field, and I have nothing urgent to do. The rain last week, I notice, has loosened one of the fence posts round Kendi’s enclosure so it’s leaning at an angle, ready to collapse. The old man is inspecting the damage as I wander by and wonder if this might be my opportunity to sneak in later when he’s gone. I pretend I haven’t noticed him.
Everywhere is very fresh and green, all the flowers are out, white and bright blue daisies, oranges still hanging from orchards in almost every back garden and in the garden centre there are more exotic, tantalising plants. Towering palms, luxuriant bougainvillea, mimosa, jasmine, all thriving in perfect condition, but a tiny lapse in watering once they’re replanted in the tough old clay of my valley and they’ll conk out and die. I have lost too many to be tempted today, but Boris has promised he will water a wisteria and wants me to find a scented brugmansia too. He’s got just the spot for them.
As my plants tuck easily into a basket and are light, I’ve decided to follow the old road back, through what is known locally as L’Estret, the nightingale valley, which will take me a bit longer to get back to the village. The road is single track and veers around derelict casitas, full of potholes and blind bends. As I walk up the hill I notice there’s a building set back off the road and somewhere near I can hear whimpering. It’s a dog but as I can’t see exactly where it is, I assume it’s tied up somewhere, waiting for its owner to return. The crying drops a little but now it seems to be coming from inside the building, which is chained and padlocked. I can’t find a window but I know for certain a dog is in there, trapped. I’ll have to go and get help.
Luckily I catch Cedric as he’s just getting in his truck to leave. He’s a bit disgruntled because the problem with the pipe has meant he’s late for his other appointments. I’m breathless with the fast hike up the hill. ‘You must come and help break open a padlock on a casita down the road.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ he says, ‘you must be joking.’
‘But there’s a dog shut up and it can’t get out.’
Cedric doesn’t show any emotion, just says, with a sigh, ‘jump in’. It doesn’t take long to get to the place and to wrench the padlock and hinge off the door, although he’s lecturing me, all the while, on why you can’t go breaking into other folk’s property because ‘we’ll both be sent down’.
As the d
oors creak open, in the far corner, in the blackness of an empty building, a large dog is chained to the wall. There’s an empty bowl lying close by. The dog is emaciated and frightened. ‘Oh, Cedric,’ I start to wobble, but he is matter of fact. ‘Let’s go and report this to the police in Andratx because we’ll be done for stealing if we take him. In any case, the creep who’s responsible will only get another dog if this one goes missing.’
At the police station we’re given the sympathetic treatment, but basically they’re not interested. Some locals protect their property by locking dogs in them, so what? They can only do anything if there is no food or water. They know who owns the dog because he lives locally, so Cedric insists, in Spanish, that they must go and sort him out. Meanwhile, we are given the name of a German woman who runs a small animal refuge in the town who the police say will come and take the dog while they deal with the owner.
It’s dispiriting. The refuge is in a backstreet, its rooms packed with kittens in cages, the garden crammed with strays. I don’t know how she doesn’t go mad, but she says she is happy to help and comes with us to rescue the dog, which staggers out, meekly letting us lead him away.
Cedric tries a pep talk on the way back to the house. He has four dogs, all of them abandoned, two he found as puppies left at the side of the road. Emmy Lou picked up two pups thrown out at the local tip, he says. Everyone he knows has opened their home to unwanted dogs on the island. There’s nothing else they can do. Lots of local people love their pets, he says, and the children at the school are being taught about animal welfare, so there is hope.
As Cedric leaves me at the bottom of the hill to walk on up, I can see Kendi through the hole in the fence. She’s on her own, so, calling her name gently, I clamber through the gap into her enclosure. She starts to bark, one big woof followed by another, until I’m almost touching her. Suddenly she trys to bolt backwards, yanking her chain, afraid that I’m going to do something horrible to her. The best thing, I decide, is to crouch and keep on talking, carefully offering my hand, my palm up so that she can inch forward to investigate. Soon, she’s crawling forward and I’m able to rub her soft brown head and her muzzle, as she makes funny little yelping noises of appreciation and starts peeing in spurts. I wish I’d brought something nice for her to eat but she doesn’t seem to care. She’s delirious at the attention she’s getting. What I really want is to let her off the chain so she can stretch, although it crosses my mind she might take off and I’ll never see her again. But what the hell, after my miserable afternoon with the other dog in the casita, I unclip her collar and she’s off, round and round the compound, her tail between her legs, leaping bushes, knocking over buckets, with a mad grin on her face.
She is getting too excited but still she keeps on going, making big circles with me the object of her joy. After about ten minutes, on her umpteenth pass, when I notice she’s slowing a little, I call her and am amazed at how quickly she obeys, slinking towards me, her head down. To anchor a lovely dog like this is torture, but I tell her I’ll see her again soon as I have to go, carefully over the fence and up to the house, not daring to glance back.
It’s like stepping into a haven, walking into the old kitchen where Mario has left a fire burning in the iron stove. He’s put a tumbet in the oven for me, a simple Mallorquín dish of fresh aubergine, tomatoes, onion and peppers cooked in layers in olive oil which will take a couple of hours to cook, so I’ve time to look at Boris’s handiwork before the light disappears.
He has been busy. The ground has been cleared and tiles laid ready for an outdoor eating area which will have stone benches, a charcoal fire and a wisteria wrapped round. It is all very artistic and cosy and Jake thinks so too, leaping into one of his more appreciative pirouettes.
On a thorn in the thicket of the hill a small brown bird has started to sing. It’s getting dark but its song is exquisite and haunting. It is a nightingale and soon another will break forth from another bush on the opposite hill, singing its heart out, higher and higher it lilts, until I can hardly bear any more.
We have come to Seville with the King and his entourage, just ahead of the heat, having filmed first in wild Extramadura, close to the border of Portugal, where the Conquistadores were born. This bunch of daring, desperate men left their isolated hilltop villages to conquer Peru and the Inca Empire. Spurred by their greed for gold, men like Pizarro and Cortes left Spain from the River Guadalquivir in Seville to return home with a new world and a taste for potatoes and peppers.
The creative tornado whirling through Spain has coincided with the five-hundred-year anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Americas. It seems every pavement in Seville, the city from which Columbus sailed, is blue with the blown blossom off the jacarandas as the King arrives on this important anniversary to tour the city’s latest prize, Expo. We are here to try and keep up.
Paloma, our sound recordist, is a gypsy girl from Seville. She has long dark hair, twinkling eyes and an effusive personality which is mostly kept in check by our handsome young cameraman, Alberto, who plugs into her sound gear and pulls her along behind him. I don’t really know how much experience either of them has in TV production but they come as a team, determined not to let anything faze them. It probably helps that Paloma is half English – her last name is Dunne, her father having fallen in love with a flamenco dancer – because Paloma’s passionate nature is tempered by her sense of the ridiculous.
My Spanish crew hasn’t been scheduled to work the day the King whistles from the Alcazar Palace, but Paloma turns up anyway to help lug equipment and steer us round her home city. She’s momentarily taken aback at the sight of Juan Carlos calling from on high, but then mirth breaks her face and she begins to laugh. I’m restless, checking my watch, ready to jump and go the moment the King strides out, while Paloma continues to guffaw. Suddenly the cars in the outer courtyard glide forward and we’re after them, off to the cathedral of Santa Maria, the largest of all Roman Catholic cathedrals, where the King will take mass, and then on to the Universal Exposition – the World Expo – held in a gleaming white installation on the banks of the River Guadalquivir. It’s a long, very hot day and we wrap only when the King finishes his tour.
Paloma, however, is not for stopping – she is set on taking us to see the other side of her city, across the new and crip-plingly expensive Alamillo Bridge to a place called El Vacie, a shanty town, sinister and desperately poor. This is Spain’s underbelly, filled with gypsies and dereliction.
That night as the sun goes down, Paloma manages to squeeze us into a small backstreet bar, for a little entertainment. Soon, nonchalantly, an Andulacian man and woman dressed in black, she with scuffed red shoes, start tapping as though they’re unable to find the right rhythm on the floor of a makeshift platform and in moments they’re off on the wildest flamenco I have ever seen, winding in all those watching, including Paloma, who shout and sway in perfect pitch, mimicking the beat in the bar.
It’s obvious everyone here can dance flamenco, only waiting their turn to take to the stage and keep the night pulsing.
‘Paloma, what was so funny this morning?’ I manage to ask in a lull in the dance.
‘Oh, it’s only that it occurred to me that you and I were standing in the Patio de las Doncellas when the King whistled at us,’ she grinned. I look blank. ‘It means Courtyard of the Maidens,’ she went on, ‘the place where the Moors demanded one hundred virgins every year from the Christians as a gift. And there we were,’ she grinned, ‘just the two of us, all these years later.’ And off she went, giggling again.
I needed to get back to Mallorca and to stand down the crew so that we’d get time to prepare before our next rendezvous at the Olympic games and Barcelona. Although I’d got clearance to follow the royals, I knew that in the oppressiveness of a Spanish summer in a city frantically trying to cope with an avalanche of visitors, this was not going to be the easiest of gigs. Crown Prince Felipe, the eldest son of Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, had be
en chosen to lead the Spanish Olympic team into the Montjuic Stadium and security, particularly with the threat from Basque separatists, would be tight.
Back in Mallorca, meanwhile, Jake had been enjoying himself, getting out of bed late to join the builders for breakfast and then again lunch promptly at one for morsels of sobrasada sausage, a Mallorquín speciality. Boris persuaded Emmy Lou to come and feed Jake on the days they weren’t there, so a very relaxed and happy cat was awaiting me on my return. I still hadn’t decided, however, what to do about that other headache, Joe. I wasn’t in any rush to install an all-singing all-dancing lighting system when this was summer and I was spending most of my time outdoors anyway. Winter would be different, but then that was a long time off and I certainly couldn’t think about that just now. Joe could wait.
I had much more important things to do like organising Boris, who needed guidance. He’d packed up on the stonework at the front, because he was bored etching out the old lime mortar. Years of hot sun had penetrated the surface, he said, and it would be far easier to put his signature Mallorquín cement wash over the whole house to protect it from the elements. He would do a piece for my approval. When I got back from Seville the house looked just like a mud hut. ‘No, no, it looks awful, Boris.’ So Boris, mortified, had to switch on the genny and pressure-hose it off while Rafa carted away the debris. All in an uneasy silence.
By evening he’d perked up. ‘Vill you come for supper tomorrow night?’ asked Boris when all the rest had revved off on their bikes. ‘Eloise wants to meet you and ve can talk about the house. I have an idea.’
Whenever Boris comes up with a new idea, I’m worried because I know he’s worried. If things aren’t going right, like a displacement activity, think of something else to do. But I was being curmudgeonly. I would love, I said, to come for dinner.
I’ve noticed in my field an explosion of blue chicory flowers opening and closing as the light comes and goes, the petals blue when the sky is blue and grey as it fades and gets dark. Everywhere feathery wild fennel sways high above the other grasses attracting swallowtail butterflies and, in clumps near the back door, wild spinach has taken a firm hold. I have a harvest out there, all I need is guidance on how to make these aromatic herbs do the bossa nova with one another.
