Nyctophobia (3 page)

‘It’s the one, Mateo. It’s perfect. And the agent says we can get it cheap because they’re desperate to get it off their books.’

‘There’s no such thing as a cheap house, even in the recession. Sabinillas has terraces and a sea view – I thought that was what you wanted.’

‘I thought so too, before I saw this.’

Later we sat on the bed going through the papers. He studied the prospectus on his laptop and considered the problem. ‘Maybe we could break the contract. It could end up costing money. Basically, it would be a bribe.’

Looking back, I must have been incredibly naïve. I said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘What usually happens is that the accountant makes a discreet exit from the room while business is concluded, and then cash changes hands. Welcome to Spain’s famous grey market.’

‘Let’s go back and see it together,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll get the keys from the agent. I know you’ll love it.’

So, the very next day, that was what we did.

As we approached from the potholed road leading off the A-377, I remember being struck by the same sensation as before. At first glance the house didn’t seem to be there at all. It was because of the cliff. It looked as if the rock-face had swallowed it.

Mateo opened the BMW’s window and tried to catch glimpses of it between flashing firs and cork oaks. When he did, he saw what I saw – green wooden window frames set in pale stone, every pane of glass appearing to catch the sunlight perfectly, reflecting tall panels of gold. The frontage was like a stage flat, revealing no depth at all. Before either of us could understand what we had seen, it had gone again.

The radio station was playing Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’, and the song seemed disrespectfully loud in the stark, silent countryside, so I turned it off. I followed Mateo’s gaze and looked once more. There was another break in the tree-line, again revealing the high stone walls inset with glittering windows, but it didn’t seem possible that they could be the same walls, because the drive had curved around now and we were heading upwards, directly toward the house.

It didn’t look quite so isolated from the rest of the world this time around. After leaving the motorway we had coasted along a dozen miles of undulating, deserted road, not the graceful lanes of Southern England that provided endless views, the stuff of childhood holidays, but bare blacktop causeways laid down across the land to link villages by the only routes that could cut through stubborn rock. You didn’t alter the land here; you worked around it.

We hardly saw another vehicle, and this was the end of the peak tourist season. I wondered what it would be like in winter. Earlier we had stopped in a village so deserted that the only indication of life was the clatter of cutlery being used inside houses. Hyperion House didn’t even have the benefit of being attached to a hamlet. The only houses within sight were derelict barns that looked as if they had been abandoned fifty years ago.

It wasn’t surprising. The countryside had been slowly decanting itself into the cities as each new generation turned down rural life in favour of finding urban work. Who wanted to be a farmer and get paid peanuts by supermarkets when you could find a job in a city company, and hang out in the cool barrios of Madrid or Malaga?

I had done something similar in London, and had burned my fingers badly enough to know that I would never go back. It was a new start, and this time it would work because I had done something I’d insisted I would never do; the evidence was banded in gold on my left hand.

There was something indefinably theatrical about the building. I thought of the Adelphi, which had once been a separate district of London. Its main terrace was a block of twenty four houses, but it was fronted with a vast fake neoclassical façade. Hyperion House had something similar. It was as if the view had been folded back on itself in incorrect proportion, the better to be enjoyed by an audience.

I remember this distinctly; it was 11:00am. The sun was punching its heat down through a sea-blue sky, and the house was aglow with colour and light. But it still looked incorrect, an Alice in Wonderland dwelling that might suddenly play tricks on you, closing its doors, changing its walls and twisting its corridors until you’d never be able to find your way out. I thought nothing more of it at the time.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ said Mateo, glancing over and reading my mind. He drove with his left arm leaning on the door, so casual that he might have been at the tiller of a boat.
Why can I never appear as relaxed as that?
I wondered, but of course I already knew the answer. ‘It looks like the windows are angled out slightly.’

‘They have to be to make the whole thing work,’ I said absently. ‘The front appears bowed so that it catches the sun at every point, but it’s not. The windows are offset at slight angles.’

‘You noticed that?’

‘Of course. It’s what I was trained to do.’

‘Sorry, I forgot.’

‘Do you know how hard it must have been to build this kind of house here?’ I said. ‘It would have started with a spring, the discovery of water coming down from those mountains. A well would have been dug. The land would then have been cleared by hand, and the trees cut down with axes in early spring, in a way that would make them fall onto each other. After that they would have been left to dry out over the summer, so that the stumps could be burned and uprooted, and all the rocks would have been removed with chains and horses. The cliff could only be cut with pick-axes. Labourers would have been found in the nearest village, transported and probably housed here during the construction, an incredible undertaking.’

‘I didn’t think of all that.’

‘And the result is a real box of tricks. Julia said the architect was crazy, but I got the feeling she thinks everyone is crazy, including the banks, the housekeeper and her husband.’ I studied the vista, excited by it. ‘The trees are planted with exactly measured spaces so that you catch perfect glimpses of it from the driveway, like a giant zoetrope.’

‘You think it was planned that way?’

‘I’m betting every last detail was planned. You’ll be able to see more easily once we get inside.’

The road swung around to the left again. It felt as if we were closing on the house in a great spiral. But then the amber rocks parted and there it was in all its glory, framed in wild green planting. Hyperion House was too large for a family of three and was absurdly remote.
But look at it,
I thought,
so beautiful that it really does seem to be glowing, actually glowing in the late morning sunlight.

‘Check out the lawn,’ said Mateo. ‘It’s like something you’d find in the Thames Valley.’

‘The gardener’s been with the house forever. Apparently you have to stand upwind of him. We don’t have to keep the housekeeper on.’

‘How are you with domestics?’

I laughed. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never had one. Would I be expected to lay down the law?’

‘For all the good it will do you. If they’ve been with the house that long, they’ll merely see us as tenants passing through. You just have to be gracious, and if you want to lay down the law switch to using their formal names, that usually works. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll charm them, and I’ll back you up. You’ll soon learn to be the lady of the house.’

‘My god, what a bizarre idea.’

‘Are you really sure this is what you want?’ Mateo asked.

‘I won’t know until I’ve tried,’ I admitted.

‘It would be strange for you at first. I mean, it’s pretty isolated. That’s what’s keeping the price low – well, that and the fact that it’s an albatross for the bank.’

‘I’ve checked out the distances. Ronda’s not that far, and there are other towns. Estepona’s on the coast, Marbella’s not hard to reach and has great shops, and of course I can head over to London on EasyJet if you don’t mind funding me,’ I said.

‘No, of course not.’

‘And I’m sure I’ll find myself a project, and Bobbie will be with me for a while at least.’

‘I guess you’ll make friends in the village. Gaucia is only –’ he checked the mileage, ‘– seven kilometres away.’

‘I know there are bound to be a few problems. I’m an inner city gal – I don’t drive. For me, going to South London is always a culture shock. It’s going to do my head in for a while but I’ll find ways to cope. I promise I won’t go mad and do a Mrs Danvers.’

‘Good. One crazy woman in my life is my limit.’

‘Are you referring to my mother or your ex-wife?’

‘Okay, make that two. Anyway, you could easily learn to drive while you’re here.’

‘I have to learn to speak Spanish first. I can say
por favour
and
gracias
.’

‘It’s a start.’

We parked and crossed the drive. Elegantly framed by the cliff behind and entirely of a piece with itself, the house looked as if no-one had ever considered adding an extension or a porch for fear of spoiling the overall effect. It was a perfect example of urban rococo that might have been lifted from Barcelona’s Gracia barrio and carefully reset here in the harsh countryside. It seemed to have been born in perpetual light, its façade aglow and warm to the touch. Only the sides were lost in the black shadows of the olive trees and the wall of rock that nursed its back. All around us I could hear birdsong and the buzz of bees, so many of them that I could actually see them swarming in the distance.

Around the edges of the sloping red-tiled roof, interspersed with the urns, were languorous caryatids and squat but friendly-looking gryphons with beaming infant-faces. Beneath these guardians ran a terracotta frieze of classical figures, a parade of healthy young men and women dancing through bounties of fruit and flowers. Okay, the paintings were a little tacky but they added to the overall charm of the place.

I sensed Mateo was immediately drawn to the house and found myself praying that he would love it, but the decision was hardly mine to make. I had no money of my own. I mean, we were married but we hadn’t yet set up any joint accounts. I didn’t want to rush him on that score – it would have seemed pushy and ungrateful. And I
was
grateful, for everything he’d done so far.

We reached the main gate and I dug out the keys, wondering if Julia had managed to get the doors to the servants’ quarters open at last.

‘Please do me one favour, and wait until you’ve been around the whole place before you say you hate it,’ I pleaded.

‘
You
like it,’ he said simply. ‘That’s all that matters to me.’

I was always amazed that he could be so smooth without sounding glib and insincere, even when he was wearing his big gold cufflinks. ‘It’s better that you see it first,’ I said.

Above, the gryphons looked down on us with benevolent smiles.

CHAPTER THREE

The Party

I
HADN’T INTENDED
to get married; I had just wanted to upset my mother.

What happened was this; we were at a party in Pimlico, not my usual neck of the woods, but Anne, my mother, was there on business. I remember watching three tanned and tightened wives in mini-dresses dancing very carefully to Katy Perry’s ‘Telephone’, ageing hipsters living it up while the kids were at boarding school. Anne would have called them her friends, but they were nothing of the kind. One of them waggled a crimson-tipped claw at me to come and join them, but I declined the invitation. As if. I didn’t belong there. They knew it and I knew it, but I was just about the youngest person in the room, and age opens doors.

The crimson claw was in her late forties and had a Swarovski crystal-covered Hello Kitty handbag hooked over her arm. She moved like she’d just had a hip replacement.

This is what happens to rich women from the home counties,
I thought.
Their husbands go away on business from Monday to Friday and they regress into the needy teenagers they raised. If I ever move out of the city to do that, shoot me.

I headed off to sneak a vodka, something I was expressly forbidden from doing by my mother. I’m not a child, it’s just that I’d been down that road before and it had led to a few problems, and Anne didn’t want me embarrassing her in front of her clients.

The kitchen was typical of a weekend apartment – tiny, white and steel and barely used – in contrast to the vast, stripped brick and oak beam parody of a castle refectory that our hostess, Sandy Fellowes, had back in Somerset. The men had been driven away here, some leaning out of the rear balcony to smoke, not quite pushed into the rain by their need for nicotine, but certainly hiding from their wives.

The party was for Sandy, who was turning fifty with a vengeance. At that moment she was locked in the bathroom doing coke with her personal trainer, which struck me as a contradiction in terms. Sandy had gone to secretarial college with my mother when such places were still popular, then failed upwards in publishing for a while, but the idea of a career had never really been in her plans. She soon married a man who handled wetland development in Brussels, which meant he was away for five weeks out of six, and Sandy now considered herself widowed in all but her bank accounts. Her screechy girlfriends were clustered in nearby Somerset villages and lived separate lives from their men, concentrating on the four S’s: shopping, spas, salads and sex, none of which they could be bothered with at home. Occasionally they came up to London and stayed in clubs like Home House and The Arts, or in the last of the affordable Chelsea flats.

I was there because my mother needed accompaniment, being clinically unable to attend a party alone, and because she needed to work the room. Anne’s reasoning was, as ever, barbed, ‘It’s not like you have anything better to do this weekend, is it, darling?’ She ran an online auction site selling discount designer handbags, so it was business more than pleasure, even though the sideline allowed her friends to treat her with condescension, as the English do with all shopkeepers. She fawned around them, and laughed and joked like she was one of them, but everyone knew we lived across the river in Vauxhall, and not the nice regenerated part either.