Nyctophobia (8 page)

‘Well, you could never be frightened here,’ said Mateo. ‘Don’t you see? From now on, you’ll live your life in sunshine. The house is built in the lee of the mountains. There are no shadows. I sensed it the moment I stepped inside the door, and I could see you did too. Rosita says that even the cut flowers she sets out in the dining room stay in bloom longer because of the light. So let this be my gift to you.’

‘Everlasting sunshine.’ I pressed my head into his chest and tried not to cry. In the last few years I had become lost. Now I felt as if I had been found and brought home.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Staff

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Mateo took the car down to Estepona for a meeting with some supermarket managers, and as I had very little to do until my belongings arrived, I decided to start work on my project immediately. I began with Senora Delgadillo. I found her on the first floor, ironing.

Rosita appeared to resent the intrusion of the new wife into her private service area, and pointedly set the iron aside, staring ahead and awaiting instruction.

‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘please don’t stop for me. I just thought it would be good to get to know you a little. Mateo says you’ve been with the house for a very long time.’

‘I was born here,’ she replied, ‘as was my mother before me.’ She sprinkled water and smacked the iron onto white linen, snaking it, hissing, through the creases.

‘Then you must have seen many changes.’

‘Not really, no. The house is the same as it always was. But it will be good to have everything working again.’

‘Why, what’s wrong?’

‘The lights are always going out. Senor Torres tells me he will pay to have the electrics repaired. Also, many of the roof tiles are loose and cracked. This he will fix. And the garden buildings need clearing out. He says he will do this also.’

I was surprised that Mateo hadn’t mentioned his plans to me, but there was no reason why he should tell me everything.

‘He says you will write a book about the house. I hope people will not come here to stare.’

‘I don’t think you have to worry much, it’ll be an academic book, and we’re not exactly on the beaten path. Of course, the perimeter walls are still in place, so you can’t see much from the road. And I don’t suppose anyone is able to get in.’

‘This was built as a family home, and it will always remain so. It is a very happy place.’

‘So it appears,’ I said. ‘There has to be a catch.’

Rosita set aside her iron. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s just so perfect. It’s hard to believe that in this day and age you can still find such a home.’

‘Spain is suffering through very hard times, Senora. Many great houses are falling into the hands of
guiri
.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘The tourists from your country with the fair hair and the red faces. They are
guiri
.’

‘But surely if they restore these beautiful old properties and keep them from being ruined it’s a good thing?’

‘Only if they truly understand what they are doing.’

‘Your country has seen bad times before and survived.’

‘If you mean the
Generalissimo
, not all of us saw them as bad times, Senora Torres.’

‘But he kept dissidents in concentration camps, he censored everything, he used the death penalty and forced labour –’

‘He was a good Catholic. And he brought us the Spanish Miracle, many good years for the people of Spain.’

I could see it was time to change the subject before I got into trouble. ‘There are so many clocks in the house, will I need to wind them all?’

‘I take care of the clocks. A lot of them now have batteries. Jerardo changed them over for me. He is the gardener, also the handyman.’

‘There must be a lot to do in a property of this size,’ I said, deciding that a little female solidarity was called for. ‘I’ll need your help and advice. I think my husband is quite old-fashioned. He’ll expect me to run the house, and I’m rather nervous about that.’

Rosita warmed a little. ‘You must not be. The rules of Hyperion House are very exact. The rooms without light stay locked. As for the rest, every night the lights are lit ten minutes before sunset, according to the timetable. The clocks are kept working so that the lights can be turned on at the right time and can remain lit through the hours of darkness. I make sure that the rooms in use stay bright at all times, until the owners go to bed. This was what we always did here, and it is something I will continue doing.’

‘What was the last owner like?’

‘I don’t like idle talk about my employers,’ she cautioned. ‘But he was not an easy man. When he first came here he was not happy, but in the end he was very sorry to leave, even though he was dying. You may find the house hard at first,’ she warned, smartly cracking her sheet and folding it away in the cupboard behind her. ‘But I think in time you will come to care for it.’

I noticed a catch of reservation in the housekeeper’s voice. ‘Why would I find it hard?’

‘The light can be – confusing. This area is lonely. During the winter it is very quiet, a few farmers perhaps, no
turistas
, and for those from the city the country darkness can play tricks on the mind. But you must not worry. I promise you will be very happy.’

‘I must let you get on,’ I said, rising. ‘Thank you very much for the advice.’
Well, she was a bundle of laughs,
I thought, heading downstairs.
I can’t wait for the long winter evenings when Mateo is away on business. Perhaps we’ll play cribbage together, whatever that is. Perhaps I’ll start hitting the bottle again, like Jack Nicholson in the Overlook.

I went outside to take a walk around the grounds.

It still astonished me that such a sunbaked area could have yielded so magnificent a garden, even with a spring beneath it, but shade was afforded by the surrounding trees that lined the property, and there was a complicated watering system consisting of a network of fine black plastic tubes over the flowerbeds. They looked new, and had been discreetly inserted around the edge of the lawn as well.

I found Jerardo in a small summerhouse of white peeling wood, in the farthest corner of the grounds.

Short and tanned to the colour of the tree-trunks, he was so old that it hardly seemed possible he could still manage the gardening. He was bent over some seed pots, looking as though he belonged on the lawn of one of my mother’s Somerset friends, possibly as a gnome.

When I entered he ignored me, continuing to dig into the soil with his fingers. The room smelled overpoweringly of sour sweat and earth, but I tried not to let my distaste show. I waited. From the corner of my eye I could see a bright green lizard perched on a rock with something yellow in its mouth. The butterfly fluttered its wings feebly, and then the rest of it vanished into the lizard’s maw in a single swift movement.

I thought that Jerardo would rise and show some deference to the new lady of the house, but nothing happened. Finally I gave in.

‘You must be Jerardo.’

He turned to look at me. Cloudy blue eyes were set in a heavily lined face. The sun had drawn itself over his skin.

‘I’m told you’re the gardener and the handyman for the house.’

He looked at me blankly.

‘My husband talked to you.’

He continued to stare.

‘Do you speak English?
Usted habla Ingles
?’

Still he remained silent, watching me. I was trying to work out what to do when he opened his mouth and pointed. At the back of his throat was a waggling pink stub like a block of luncheon meat. It was clearly not a deformity; his tongue had been cut out. I tried not to look startled.

He seized my hand and put my fingers in his mouth, so that I could feel the hot dry stump wriggle beneath my touch. I yelped and snatched my hand away, but he took it again, dragging me from the summerhouse and leading the way between rows of corn at the rear of the garden. I allowed myself to be pulled along, annoyed that Rosita had failed to warn me adequately.

Jerardo cut across the lawn, which was segmented into four equal squares by paths of ochre sand. At the centre stood the stone sundial topped with the statue of the naked young man holding the black and white disc above his head. Releasing my hand he gestured at it, then pointed toward the house, but it was impossible to understand what he wanted me to know.

‘It’s very beautiful,’ I said, not knowing what else to say. He shook his head violently and pointed again to the line of shadow at the edge of the house. I stared in the direction of his raised hand, but I hadn’t brought my sunglasses outside, and couldn’t understand what he wanted me to see.

He grabbed my hand once more and placed it on the bronze figure’s arm. The sun had heated it so that it felt almost alive. I wondered if the sun had touched Jerardo, too, and quickly removed my fingers, leaving the gardener alone in the centre of the absurdly emerald lawn, its green geometry too perfect for this harsh climate, this wild and wilful land.

CHAPTER NINE

The Village

W
HEN
M
ATEO
R
ETURNED
I sat him in the drawing room and told him what had happened. I was surprised when he started laughing. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally, ‘I should have warned you about Jerardo. I’m used to people like him. Don’t worry, he’s not crazy, he’s just spent too many years in the sun and too much time by himself to ever develop social skills.’

‘What on earth happened to his tongue?’

‘Ah,
that
. You should come to the village with me next time, you’ll hear all the gossip. The story goes that when he was very young his father supported the Republican rebels and spied on his countrymen in the village. Some of the boys from the
Movimiento Nacional
didn’t take kindly to the idea that Jerardo’s old man was relaying their conversations to his pals in the workers’ party up in the hills, so they kidnapped the father and son. They made his father watch while they laid the boy on a table in the village square and hacked out his tongue with a can opener. The pair couldn’t stay there, so the owner of Hyperion House took them in, and Jerardo stayed on after his father died. Even now, when he drives his van in for supplies, he won’t stop for more than a minute.’

‘My God, how awful.’

‘Well, feelings ran deep about the war. It divided villages and split families apart.’

‘He tried to show me something but I didn’t understand.’

‘Just let him do his thing. If there’s anything you don’t like, tell Rosita. She’ll relay it to him. Remember, you’re the boss around here.’

‘I’m not just going to be the lady of the house, Mateo,’ I warned. ‘I want to get back to work and make something of myself, even if it’s as an architectural writer. I have plans – I can’t just sit around.’

‘Of course you do, but let’s take it one step at a time. Get used to this place first. Exert your authority, make all the changes you want but respect the past. That’s how we do things here.’

‘You mean the paintings?’ Rosita had warned us about not moving them. ‘I’m starting to kind of like them. They belong in the house.’

‘It’s your call. I know Rosita won’t be happy when I send in my man to take the remaining bits of equipment out of the basement. I’ve told her we’re going to improve the electrical supply, and she’s fine with that. This isn’t France, where everything’s frozen in the past. We adapt, but I’m sure we’ll find our own way of doing it. Come on, let’s have some dinner. Rosita went to the fish market this morning and is preparing something special.’

‘How does she get there?’ I asked, knowing that the market took place every Tuesday in Gaucia.

‘There’s a farmer over the ridge who picks her up. She does his mending in return and cooks him the odd meal. Everyone helps each other here. You’ll soon see.’

The great table in the dining room had been covered in old lace and laid out with thick white china plates filled with sea bass, squid and clams. Bowls of salad, inky black rice, fat long-stemmed onions called
calçots
, and stacks of tomato-bread sat between the piles of steaming fish. The sheer amount of food on display robbed me of hunger.

‘Rosita still cooks as if there was a big family here,’ said Mateo, reading my mind. ‘We can leave what we can’t eat for her and Jerardo. Anyway, we need to fatten you up, remember?’

I wished my mother had never mentioned my eating problems. ‘I’ll do my best,’ I promised, and began to serve. ‘Jerardo doesn’t look like he’s had a hot meal in years – or a bath – but I’ll ask Rosita to share the food out.’

‘Maybe he has a family of his own stashed away somewhere,’ said Mateo. ‘A bunch of tiny gnome-like people in the potting shed. Did you get a chance to take a proper look around the rest of the house?’ He accepted a platter of soft white squid carapaces.

‘I thought I’d start with the grounds and work my way in,’ I told him. ‘There’s a small barn full of insects and rotting hay behind the well. Oh, and the statue on the sundial, I presume it’s meant to be Hyperion’s son, Helios. I looked him up. Hyperion was one of the Earth’s twelve Titans, ‘The High One’. Helios was the physical incarnation of the sun. He’s mentioned by Keats and Shakespeare, and he’s in Marvel Comics. I haven’t found any reference of him holding the black and white disc though, but it must represent something; yin and yang, perhaps, the world held in balance.’

Mateo laughed. ‘It sounds like you’ve already made a start on the book.’

‘I’ve got the kind of mind facts stick to. I could bore you for hours with the history of windowsills. I want to get a real feel for the place first. It’s quite disconcerting to look at the house, get on with something and look back a few minutes later.’

‘Why?’

‘The shadows don’t move,’ I explained. ‘That’s when you notice the perpetual flat light. I really need to uncover the background history. I ran a few internet searches today but they didn’t lead anywhere. Usually you’d expect to find something.’