A Lizard In My Luggage (24 page)

  I notice that she has tears in her eyes. Exhausted and at the end of her tether, her hands are shaking badly. A voice bellows from downstairs. It's Alan.

  'Come on!' he roars, 'We'll find your Play Boy thingy later, Phillip. Hurry up or we'll go without you.'

  Desperate measures are called for. I shoo Susie out of the room and tell her to go downstairs and wait for us. She agrees hesitantly but assures me that I'm wasting my time trying to reason with her son. As soon as she's left, I sit on the floor next to the sobbing child. He is unnerved that his mother has gone.

  'It's all right, you can stay at the house if you like, but I do think you're brave.'

  Phillip fixes me with his tough little almond eyes. 'Why?'

  'Well, you are in
bruixa
country.'

  'What's that?' he snarls.

  'The
bruixa
is the witch of the Tramuntana mountains.'

  'You're a baby!' he says contemptuously. 'There aren't such things as witches.'

  'As I say, you're a brave boy. Good luck.'

  He stares hard at me, a nasty sneer on his face. 'So what does she do, this witch?'

  'She steals children with the help of her pack of fierce, flying mountain hounds. Of course the poor children are never seen again.'

  I walk towards the door.

  'Where are you going? Where's Mum?' he says a tad nervously.

  'Well, we're all off now. By the way, when the
bruixa
comes for you, try to keep your eyes scrunched shut and hide under the bed and, fingers crossed, her hounds won't find you.'

  He gets up slowly. 'You're lying!'

  'I'm afraid not. She loves naughty children with blond hair and brown eyes. The naughtier, the better. Goodness knows how many children she's stolen and gobbled up in the last year.'

  He jumps up, his face solemn. 'Will she get me if I come on the treasure hunt?'

  'Well, if you're a good boy and stick closely with all of us, it's nigh impossible for her to steal you away.'

  He nods his head and meekly follows me down the stairs. I help him on with his jacket and gloves and usher him out into the sunshine. Angel, together with Ollie and his friends, Gunter and Ignacío, are crouching by a tree prodding the ground with sticks where they have discovered an enormous ant's nest. When Phillip appears they race towards him and drag him over to show him their find. Alan and Susie are talking by the gate but she stops, her mouth dropping open at the sight of her subdued and obedient son. We walk across the field together in the direction of a small track that leads into the forests and the mountains beyond. The children race ahead of us. Susie paws at my sleeve agitatedly.

  'Will they be safe? Shouldn't we be holding their hands?'

  Barraged with frightening stories of child abduction in the British press everyday, I'm not surprised my friends become paranoid about their offspring. I should know, when living in London, I was worse than any of them.

  'Susie, up here in the villages, children as young as four walk home alone. It's a different world.'

  She sighs and shrugs her shoulders. 'Just the same, let's catch them up.'

  The children have stopped to watch a couple of fish swimming in a small stream at the bottom of our field. Phillip is absorbed.

  Susie tucks her arm under mine. 'Tell me, what did you say to Phillip?'

  'That he'd be gobbled up by the big, bad witch of the mountains.'

  She gives a cynical snort. 'Yeah, right! Nothing like that frightens my little horror anymore.'

  We walk on silently, the children and Alan beating a noisy path before us. Snow clings to the lower peaks of the Tramuntana range and high above, a solitary rock juts out at the mountain's edge, dark and jagged like the bewitching silhouette of a giant witch's chin.

  I am sitting at my old scuffed desk idly scrolling through my e-mails and browsing comments sent by readers of my Saturday column in the
Majorca Daily Bulletin
. I have had a hot, luxurious and scented bath for the first time in months now that the bath taps in my bathroom have been fitted and actually work. Up until now we've made do with a shower. Even the walls have been tiled although the floor is still cement layered with thick grime. Ah well,
poc a poc.
The house is silent now that Ollie's birthday guests have gone home and all I can hear is the velvety, rhythmic purring of Inko as she sits curled under my chair. Outside, an ebullient, mischievous moon peers over the jagged mountain ridge, waits till I look away and then hoists itself up a fraction. No matter how diligently I keep vigil, it continues to rise in small imperceptible moves until it reaches its full height as if by magic and suddenly a luminous bubble of light is hovering outside my window like an impatient peeping Tom. Tonight, I pull open the shutters and gaze into the pond below. It is still and the frogs and my friendly toad are nowhere to be seen. Can I blame them on a frosty night like this? I shiver and close the window.

The builders are crashing about in the
entrada
with the front door wide open as they plod in and out with tools and materials. I'm trying not to get over-excited but with any luck our new enlarged stone fireplace will be completed today. Up until now we've made do with a small hearth that doesn't afford much heat beyond the
entrada
. The thought of having a huge blazing fire in the hearth is enough to bring me out in a cold sweat of anticipation. I shiver with the chill knowing that we won't have central heating fitted for some months. The enhanced fireplace will be a start. Meanwhile we will continue to make do with fingerless mittens, thick sweaters, woollen scarves and socks. Catalina is bustling around the builders, breaking up a cardboard box and sweeping up leaves that have blown in through the French doors.

  'Always much dirt,' she says accusingly, prodding one of the builders with her brush. He leaps away and cackles with laughter. She turns to me. 'Hey, you forget your Spanish class?'

  I look at my watch and realise that I'm running late. Grabbing my exercise books and jacket, I bolt out of the front door. The turf is hard and crusty underfoot as I walk briskly along the lane. Nearing Rafael's house I see Franco sniffing cheerfully in the hedgerows outside his pen. Loud Hispanic music is belting out from the windows of the
finca
. I give the dog a pat as I walk by and plod on. Ten minutes later, deep in thought about my Spanish verbs and nearing the office of Fransisca, I hear heavy panting and am alarmed to see Franco tripping along some distance behind me. Knowing that he is not allowed past our lane, I attempt to steer him back up the road and in the direction of Rafael's house. At the corner of the street, I see Margalida Sampol chatting with some elderly friends. I wave to her and she scrunches up her eyes before the penny drops. 'What are you doing with Rafael's dog?' she asks in puzzlement.

  'It won't stop following me,' I reply helplessly.

  She confers with her friends who begin calling the dog's name. This achieves nothing given that the mutt is already over-excited and now barks madly at the sound of his name. Margalida makes the sign of the cross and shrugs her shoulders. Meanwhile, several bemused locals stop to watch my dismal attempts at coaxing him home. Have they nothing better to do? I decide to run on and give him the slip but he mistakenly thinks this is a game and bounds along, finally knocking me over and covering me in dirt and spittle. An old lady in black garb starts to cackle and soon various passers-by join in the fray. They all seem to know the dog's name and to my dismay cry out, 'Franco!
Venga! Venga!
' which makes the stupid animal grow even wilder. The big-hipped
duena
, the boss of our local grocery shop, comes out on the pavement and waves to me.

  'I see you have a new friend!' she chuckles in Spanish.

  Oh very funny. Meanwhile her husband attempts to catch Franco by the collar but the boxer evades him, pawing me frantically and licking my hands in between excited barking. My small band of loyal spectators titter with amusement as I stand helplessly in the street outside Fransisca's office. In a flustered state I buzz her intercom.

  '
Si?
'

  'Fransisca, it's me but I've got my neighbour's dog down here.'

  '
Vale
, OK,' she says. 'Bring him in if you want.'

  'You don't understand. I don't want him here at all.'

  She struggles to hear me above the barking and sounds a little perplexed.

  'Then why did you bring him?' she asks.

  'I didn't. Listen, I'm just going to call Alan and I'll be with you.'

  '
No problema
,' she says and the intercom goes dead.

  Alan is impatient when I call him on my mobile. He asks why on earth I took the dog with me. I try to explain above the din of barking.

  'Calm down.' I hear him say. 'I'll get Rafael to fetch him.'

  Fifteen minutes later Rafael arrives at the office to reclaim his pet. Franco is lying on the tiled floor listening attentively to the lesson in progress. Grinning from ear to ear, my sporty neighbour bounds over and kisses me on both cheeks.

  '
Hola!
Everything good? So you take my dog for lessons of
Español,
eh? You don't think Franco speak good enough Spanish?'

  He rocks with laughter while Fransisca enthusiastically recounts the whole tale at my expense. That's one of the keys to life here, being able to laugh at oneself. Anyone with a dangerous sense of self-importance or
gravitas
would be strongly advised to get straight back on the next plane for London. When I first met Catalina's husband, Ramon, I remember telling him rather loftily that I ran a public relations company. He gave me a look loaded with irony and asked whether I could also do anything useful like sewing or cooking, so I'm catching on fast. After much guffawing and belly laughs, Rafael leads Franco from the flat by his collar. At the door, the dog turns and gives me what I take to be a large canine grin, his wet, red tongue lolling out of his mouth, as if he too is enjoying the joke.

It is eight in the evening as we arrive at Fransisca and Hans's flat which spreads across the top floor of an apartment block on the perimeter of the town. It is clean and modern with a huge white living space that gives on to a veranda overlooking the busy main road to the port beyond which lie the Tramuntana mountains. I first met Fransisca and Hans, when enrolling for classes at their language school. For several months now Fransisca has patiently persevered with teaching me Spanish despite my erratic timekeeping, for I too am falling under the spell of
mañana, mañana
. En route to her office, I am easily waylaid, engaging in gossip with neighbours, and dishing out food scraps to roving dogs and feral cats along the path in the belief that I have all the time in the world. Then there are my frequent hops back to London which mean cancelling lessons, often at short notice, and putting homework on a back burner. While Fransisca and her disciples teach, Hans runs the business, skilfully juggling the diaries of their foreign clients and, on the phone, switching between languages with the speed of a baton in a relay race.

  Despite my tutor's efforts I do not feel I have progressed as quickly as I would have liked but this has more to do with my initial naivety in thinking I could be truly fluent in a matter of months, just absorbing the language by osmosis. The reality is that learning a language properly, and by that I mean understanding its nuances and poetry, takes time and dedication. Unfortunately, there is no magic chip which, once inserted, has you babbling fluently in the lingo, and all those feckless friends who merrily tell you on departure that learning a new language is a cinch are what we call in Mallorcan complete
mentiders –
liars. In fact, in most cases, the people who brag about the ease of mastering a foreign language have seldom attempted to do so themselves and often have a dismal grasp of their own. The key to linguistic success of course, is to listen to the locals and attempt at every opportunity to participate in conversation, regardless of how humiliating or embarrassing the consequences might be. However, Alan learned the perils of following this path some months before when at a dinner party he spoke of his love for
pajaras,
slovenly bitches, instead of what he meant to say;
pajaros
, birds. As they say, what a difference an 'a' makes.