‘What?’
‘It’s going to be a Persian garden.’
‘Sounds good,’ he said.
‘We’d need water.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Lots of it. And space up on the plateau for a large square type of arrangement divided in four.’
‘OK.’
‘With rills and gullies and channels and pools criss-crossing the garden.’
‘Blimey,’ he said. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. Some way of representing rivers of honey, milk, water and wine. Symbols. Mosaics or something somewhere.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Oh yeah, and maybe a minaret.’
‘Is that all?’
‘What do you mean, is that all?’
‘No Tower of Babel, Golden Temple, Taj Mahal?’
I slapped him on the leg. This was what he loved about me: my energy, my enthusiasm, my contribution, the same qualities I loved in him.
For a few brief days, we swapped designs for the quarters, the waterways and the plants we needed to make this Persian garden. I suggested large pools for the still water, but he opposed them, saying they’d attract mosquitos. I wanted fountains for the gushing water, he thought them too noisy. I designed some mosaic motifs to represent the rivers of milk, honey, wine. He dismissed them. With each disagreement, the awesome challenge we had taken on began to gnaw away at my confidence and I began to leave things to him. After all, he was responsible for the hard landscaping, wasn’t he? I could suggest some plants nearer the time, before we moved in. In truth, what seemed to happen is that I got lazy. It happens sometimes when you live in someone’s shadow. I brought it on myself, though, and lived to regret it.
A cold Christmas
A few weeks later, not long before Christmas, I opened the curtains early one morning and gasped. Winter had arrived! The first frost had descended on Grindleford Road and although it didn’t usually reach my walled back garden, the side and front gardens, which face north and east respectively, were glinting with a layer of icing sugar in the pale sunshine. Monday to Friday I am often alerted to frosts while still abed, as neighbours, some of them early-morning commuters, scrape their car windscreens loudly and leave their engines running for five minutes before setting off for work. It’s a combined urban alarm clock and weather warning. But this morning being Sunday – nothing. The neighbours were still asleep.
My friend Sally came to collect me for our usual Sunday morning run on Hampstead Heath and relayed how she had had to scrape the ice off her windscreen before fetching me. This may sound like nothing out of the ordinary to country dwellers, but a frost for us city folk is very unusual, ice even more remarkable, and the subject of notable commentary amongst urban gardeners. Although Sally lives only half a mile away, she’s further up Highgate Hill and gets considerably colder temperatures there. So this was an important topic of conversation, the kind that some Londoners feel defines them.
‘What’s it doing up your way?’
‘Icy.’
‘How icy?’
‘Thick. Would send a middle-aged stockbroker with a briefcase flying on his way to the tube.’
‘Wow.’
‘What about you?’
‘Thin. Any pensioner on her way to Tesco’s.’
That’s one of the reasons I love London so much. There are so many little corners, so many pockets of different microclimates. There are high-walled gardens that protect plants in the winter and then bake them dry in the summer, exposed roof gardens which, even with glass screens, have to withstand the buffeting of constant winds, dark, damp sunken gardens behind high terraces that can be weighted down by a stubborn frost for the entire day if the sun can’t stretch her neck up above the rooftops.
Surprisingly, there are even joined-up back gardens where neighbours have pulled down their walls and fences to create communal spaces or to open their backs up to woods or scrubland. This is the closest we urban gardeners ever get to wilderness and because we’re near some disused railways and woods in Highgate, there are several examples in our neighbourhood. In these secret places brambles close over pathways. In the spring, cowslips burst untrammelled through the undergrowth and tree saplings that no one pulls up get a firm hold. You would imagine that Londoners would want to secure their properties with barriers and boundaries. But many want to open up the spaces and let nature in.
Anyway, by the time Sally and I began our run past Highgate Ponds it was evident she wasn’t telling porkies about the extent of the freeze. Glass puddles had been cracked open by dogs and early runners and shards of ice were scattered across our paths. The ponds themselves weren’t frozen, nor were the muddy ruts we decided to run through, but it was definitely one or two degrees colder up on Hampstead Heath than in Sally’s garden in Highgate, which was one or two degrees colder than my garden a mile away. How odd to be muffled up with thick socks, cowls and mittens when I knew that on our site in Spain the odds were certain that a sun with still plenty of warmth in it was flooding the almond groves with a white-gold light.
That night, we had twelve for dinner, including George, who had returned from Spain to England for Christmas and stopped in London on his way home to Lytham St Annes. He reported solid sunshine on the Costa del Sol throughout December. This news sent a shiver of envy around the table.
‘How’s the earth moving, George?’
‘Fine, thanks Kaz. All in good working order. Even at my age.’
‘Not yours, you git. The earth moving on site. You know, our site.’
‘Not started yet. But the equipment’s arrived. We had to shore up the road across the ridge to take the weight of it. We only lost two diggers and one workman off the edge.’
He knew how to play me.
Christmas approached. Knowing I could hardly keep the lid on my passion for our project, I wrote as restrained a note as I could that year on my Christmas cards alerting family and friends to our venture: ‘Everyone is well. We’ve had a good year and the big news is that Stan and I have bought a hilltop in Spain and are building a house.’
After writing these lines, I stuck my fist in my mouth, not quite believing it.
There is a poster on the back of a toilet door in the Wellcome Institute on the Euston Road, a quote from Sir Henry Wellcome, that reads, ‘Never tell anyone your plans until you’ve achieved them.’ Ooops. Too late. It was a boast I would live to regret.
A romantic gift
At Christmas, our house smells of cinnamon, wood smoke, and candle wax. Everyone comments on how deliciously warm and homely it feels and I bask shamelessly in their approval. But the truth is, it’s about the only home-making success I’ve ever managed. I try very hard, but I’m more of a domestic whore than a domestic goddess. Each year I cheat and buy a winter candle from the White Company. That’s all that’s needed. It saves all that wine mulling, cranberry boiling and thyme bruising that Martha Stewart advises.
Not much of a cook at the best of times, I was standing by the hob fishing slippery tortellini out of mucky water with a slotted spoon.
My mother, whom we refer to as the Duchess, wandered into the kitchen.
‘Any more of those sherry liqueurs, dear, or did I finish the box already?
Lottie shouted from the other room.
‘Mum… you know that glitter eye-shadow you’ve bought to put in my Christmas stocking? Well, can I have it now, ’cos I want to wear it to the party tonight?’
Matthew landed in front of me.
‘I hate wrapping presents. Mum, you’ll have to do it for me!’
If I hadn’t just had a stern word to myself about maintaining family harmony through the festival period, I would have smacked the lot of them with the slotted spoon.
Just then, Stan returned from work and opened the front door in a funny kind of way. He sort of slipped in and shouted to Matthew to come back out with him. There were whisperings in the hall and the next thing I knew, my mother had backed me into the kitchen and began as
king me inane questions about the ingredients I was using in the gravy. There were sounds of a kerfuffle from the front door and as it got louder Lottie ran in giggling and put her hands over my eyes. Matthew and Stan lifted something onto the kitchen table in front of us, then everyone stood back.
I opened my eyes. An enormous box the size of a new telly with a big red ribbon round it sat on the worktop.
‘Go on. Open it.’
‘Is it a telly?’ I asked excitedly.
‘No. Open it.’
I pulled the ribbon away and peered inside the box. Something plastic and white peered back. Stan cut the cardboard away and revealed a replica model of our house in Spain, perfect in every detail, just as he had designed it.
‘You wanted a house and garden,’ he said. ‘Here it is.’
I dropped the slotted spoon and burst into tears.
Scraping the plateau
By the beginning of February 2007, we were heading out to Spain again to inspect the earth moving, which had just begun. A full six months after we first saw the site we were finally building. It had seemed an eternity. Our virgin site was about to be ravaged.
Because of the scale of our ambitions for the larger house and garden, we needed about 4,000m2 added to the plateau. The plan was simple. Stan had instructed the bulldozers to start in the middle of the plateau and begin pushing the soil outwards to lower the plateau and create additional edge all around. Although it sounded like a dangerous job, the men were used to working near precipices and knew to be careful around the edges. We didn’t want them tumbling off the plateau into the valley below. How would we explain it to their wives?
Muscle Manuel was the foreman, a local who had beady, knowing eyes and a ready smile. Like many of his countrymen, he had taken the opportunity to move away from subsistence farming and take on building work as developers moved this way and that across the Costa del Sol. Unfortunately, as we discovered later, Manuel knew less about building than he did about olive farming. He spoke no English, but seemed to be in control of his team. He bossed around the other builders as if they were his own family. Probably they were. I didn’t ask. Anyway, the work had started and there was no turning back now. In the quiet of the valleys, the noise of engines would surely attract the attention of the neighbours on adjacent hillsides. I imagined them out with their binoculars saying, ‘Hey Maria, guess what? That site that was sold last year… They’ve started building at last. I bet it will be one of those flash haciendas the Brits love, with columns and arches and a big pool with a balustrade around the terrace.’
‘You know, José,’ says Maria, taking the binoculars off him, ‘Manuela told me the Gomez brothers got millions of euros for those two scratchy bits of scrub. That’s how come Alessandro bought his oldest son a penthouse apartment in Puerto Banús and Pedro moved into a luxury retirement home in Antequera!’
‘You’re kidding? That place where Antonio the Goat died? Your millions don’t last long in there.’
‘And the younger sister, the one with the runt site beneath the plateau? She cleared the land as if she was about to start developing it and the fools paid double the price it was worth!’
‘I wonder why they’re pushing all that soil around…’ says José, taking back the binoculars and adjusting the focus.
We had decided on a visit at this time because, apart from a childish fascination with dumper trucks, Stan thought the earth moving was quite a creative moment and wanted us to experience the sculpting of the land. He’d had sleepless nights worrying that if we didn’t announce our presence every now and then, they would ignore his plans for our beautiful house and put up a hacienda with crenellated balconies and an orange crinkle-tiled roof.
This fear wasn’t exactly unfounded. An example of the cavalier approach to our property popped up shortly before Christmas when Placido, our solicitor, emailed us to say that since we’d given him power of attorney, he’d opened a bank account for us in Colmenar and we’d better put some money in it quick, because the bills were starting to come in. He was right, we did remember asking him to do it, but the fact that he had gone ahead and made a whole load of decisions on our behalf came as a bit of a surprise.
As most readers will know, to open a bank account in the UK, you need first to prove that your money is clean and not the product of ‘laundering’ in shady deals. At the very least, you need to provide utility bills, proof of residence, copies of passports. Placido provided all of this on our behalf, but it seemed to happen without much input from us. Then in the UK there is the usual three-hour meeting, during which the bank’s new business development official explains all your options and tries to sell you insurance. Placido made no attempt to contact us in advance to ask us if we had a preference: ‘Which bank would you prefer?’ and ‘Which branch would be best?’ or even, ‘Do you want a current account or a high-interest deposit account, or both?’ It was a done deal, basically. So you can see why we needed to be on site as often as our schedules and pockets would allow, just to remind the builders and advisers working on our behalf that we were the client and were taking a personal interest in what they were doing.
It was a beautiful January morning when we arrived. The sky was so blue it could have sucked you up into oblivion. As the road meandered up to the site, I turned to Stan.
‘Why did nobody tell us about this?’
‘About what?’
‘About this! Look. The almond blossom. No one in the whole of Spain thought to mention it. This is the most stunning sight. This is better than the cherry blossom in Japan but no one knows about it. Maybe they’ve just become complacent after thousands of years and don’t notice it any more.’
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’
‘Or maybe they want to keep it a secret for themselves. Maybe if people knew about it they’d come in droves every January to see it. The locals need a break from us tourists some time during the year, so there’s a regional collusion not to mention how jaw-droppingly beautiful it is.’
As we climbed and the almond trees became more numerous, the blossom on them melded together and began to glow pink and white like bits of candyfloss or dandelion seed, and as the natural trees merged in with almond farms, the picture became complete. Miles and miles of these puffballs of colour stuck like cotton wool onto black trunks. They were glorious. Legend says they were introduced to Andalusia by the 11th century Moorish ruler of Seville whose favourite wife, Al Rumaikiya, was homesick for the winter snows of her childhood home in colder climes, and to please her Al Mutamid had the plains and hillsides surrounding the city planted so thickly with almonds that when it blossomed the entire countryside looked as though it was blanketed by a late winter snowfall. I couldn’t wait to see how they looked on our land.
Unlike the slopes belonging to our neighbours, who farmed their almond trees, none of our three plots had been planted purposefully or farmed, so nothing on our property is laid out in neat rows. Instead, the almond trees exist where Mother Nature scattered her seed, and she scattered it quite randomly. Nonetheless, they are beautiful and plentiful across all the slopes beneath the platform, some a long way down towards the arroyos, some only a few feet from the top, their flowers and fruits touchable just by leaning over. I sat in the car imagining how our blossom would look. Then it suddenly struck me. Oh shit. The almond trees.
‘Stan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are they dumping the soil they’re scraping off the platform?’
‘Just below the plateau. Why?’
‘What, all the way round? Three-sixty? Or just on one side?’
‘I presume,’ he said, ‘that they will have tried to distribute it evenly.’
‘But there’s stuff growing just under the rim of the platform.’
‘No there isn’t.’
‘Yes there is.’
‘What stuff?’
‘There are trees. Almond trees.’
‘Well, I told them to push the soil evenly. I presume they
will have shoved the soil off the edge between the trees.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
But I sat on my hands and imagined the worst. We parked the car and I ran straight out to the edge without saying hello to anyone. All my fears were confirmed. It was a massacre. Without a thought for what was below, the builders had scraped the soil and dumped it right out of the bulldozers’ blades onto the slopes below. I ran round and inspected the circumference, dodging the diggers. They had totally covered four or five mature almond trees with soil and rubble on the east side and several more olives on the southwest edge. In a particularly poignant tableau, two of the almonds were lying on their sides, their blossom-laden branches sticking up above the landslide like the arms of a bejeweled dowager thrown into the sea from a listing Titanic. They would never survive.
‘Oh no! Stan, look at those poor trees. Look what they’ve done!’ I almost wept.
‘Fuck.’ Stan turned and strode off to give the digger men a stern talking-to.
I just could not believe it. They must think that trees are two a penny in Andalusia and could easily be replanted. Or maybe they thought that because these weren’t farmed trees, and we weren’t making any money on them, they mustn’t be important. I stood there trembling with anger but couldn’t think of anything that could be done. We were too late. The trunks of these trees were almost totally submerged and to dig them out or try to right them now would be too difficult, given the angle of the slope and the direction they were leaning.
Little did I know, these were only the first of our many casualties – casualties that would have to remain there for ever, just below our horizon, like dead soldiers killed in our own trenches, visible just over our edge. They lay embalmed in agony in their graves, a persistent reminder that what can take nature thirty years to grow, can take thirty seconds to destroy.
‘Come on,’ said Stan. ‘What’s done is done. Aren’t you being a bit melodramatic about this, Kaz?’
The Gardens That Mended a Marriage Page 8
