Parrot in the Pepper Tree (15 page)

Winter passed, and with the arrival of the first months of spring, white stars began to appear amongst the dark leaves of the orange trees and the first heat of the year began in earnest. In Tokyo and Los Angeles, temperature inversions create clouds of smog that hang for days over the city, choking people to death. In Sevilla, which is the most romantic city in the world, the heavy cloud of orange-blossom scent that envelops it in spring and early summer drives people mad with love.

At the Monreal, the object of all our madness was Laura, an American who was learning to dance flamenco. She had curly chestnut-coloured hair, a turned-up nose and wide hazel eyes, and moved with the graceful swish of bamboo leaves in the wind. Everybody was crazy about her, but moving ethereally among the musicians she seemed to have no inkling of the effect she was having upon us.

The air at the Monreal thickened with sexual rivalry and we rushed into combat with our guitars. The poor girl must have had little sleep for our interminable serenading, while during the day hopeful accompanists would line up to offer their services for her dance practice. Alas, I wasn’t even in the running for this honour, being easily outgunned by Xernon and the rest of the group’s virtuosos.

It was an all too familiar tale but again it advanced my musical skills. One night I had been practising with Paul, a fellow student, down in the Maria Luisa park, when he began playing a light classical piece called “Romanza”, I listened with rapt attention. The tune was indeed romantic, utterly so, and touched with a deep poignancy, but most of all it was simple. I thought if Paul could give me a bit of coaching, I might soon get the hang of it and be in with a chance at last with Laura. Paul, who was gay and thus out of the chase, said he’d be happy to help.

It wasn’t quite as easy to learn as I’d imagined but eventually I mastered the piece and had only to wait for an opportunity to perform it. None came. Each time Laura appeared on the roof one of my betters would muscle their way to the fore with some fiery flamenco piece and monopolise her for the rest of the practice. Meanwhile, I’d pick away at my “Romanza” with a dreamy expression on my face, from my stool behind the washing, with the likes of old man Herb drowning out my finer moments.

I decided to take action. One afternoon when Laura had disappeared into her room, I followed and knocked timidly on her door. She opened it with a not entirely impatient look of enquiry on her face. ‘I’d like to play you a tune,’ I blurted. ‘I think it might help you to relax after all that dancing.’

There was a pause. Laura smiled, a sad, slightly off-centre smile and replied. ‘Okay, but promise me it’s not that piece you’ve been playing all week on the roof. I really could not bear to hear you crucify that again… I mean, not right up close.’ And

then she added, puzzlingly, ‘You see, that movie was just
so
beautiful and
so
upsetting and
so,
like, true, that I want to keep it fresh in my mind? Laura was clearly one of those people who believed in being cruel to be kind — an odd notion because I imagine most people prefer their kindness unalloyed.

‘Yup, of course, no problem… that’s fine,’ I managed to mumble as I backed off down the corridor. But even without the humiliation ringing in my ears, Laura’s comments had stumped me. What on earth was all that about a movie?

Xernon passed me. He was struggling to hold back a smirk, then, realising I was genuinely in the dark, he stopped to elucidate. ‘You’ve been playing the theme tune from that French film,
Les Jeux Interdits,
you dork, didn’t you know?’ I still looked blank. ‘You know, that old black and white movie that has been showing down at Plaza Nueva?’ I shook my head. ‘About a poor orphan girl and her dead dog in occupied France?’

Finally the smirk broke free, spreading across Xernon’s face like a rash. ‘Not exactly flamenco,’ he commented.

Romance at the Monreal was a fine and character-forming thing. But what I had really fallen in love with was Spain. And having done so, what I really wanted to be was Spanish, or what I then imagined Spanish to be: olive-skinned and brown-eyed, a deft hand with a sharp knife and an orange, a natural guitarist, a Don Juan.

As the months went by, I realised that I wasn’t going to cut it. My nose went English-red; I tended more to the reflective than the excitable; I was — let’s face it — a rotten guitarist; and my skills as a seducer were hampered by a tendency to mental paralysis when faced with the object of my affections. In addition, my money was spent. Sevilla was drawing to a close for me.

As the summer heat became intense, I took a carriage to the station and boarded a night train full of soldiers. The train took me to Barcelona and from there I hitch-hiked to Paris, where I played guitar in the Métro to replenish my funds. There was a long tiled corridor at the Étoile station, where I made my stand. Its acoustics were remarkable, making a quietly-plucked Spanish guitar sound like a full orchestra, and, amongst other things, I played “Romanza”, It was a way of exorcising my humiliation and I liked to think the middle section was shaping up nicely. People stopped to listen by the dozen, and seemed to go pensive and a little melancholic before dropping a fat coin in my hat.

It turned out that
Les Jeux Interdits
was playing to full houses at the Étoile cinema. My luck was in. In a short time I had enough money to buy a ticket home to England.

Back under northern skies, my guitar ambitions were gradually replaced by new and rather contradictory passions — farming and travel. My time in Seville had left me hooked on the idea of flinging myself into unknown seas, while a brief stay on a sheep farm in the Black Mountains in Wales and a job on a farm in Sussex gave me a glimpse of a career path without suit and tie. For the next twenty years I farmed, for the most part, with an odd stint helping to research travel guides. The guitar would just occasionally resurface in my life — one winter I got a Saturday night slot playing at a Russian restaurant in Fulham — but it would be nearly twenty years before I found myself back in Spain with time on my hands for another crack at flamenco.

A COUPLE OF DAYS AFTER LEAF HAD CAUTIOUSLY PICKED HIS WAY back over our bridge, I had another phone call from London. This time it was my publisher, Nat, calling to say I’d been invited to talk at the Hay Literary Festival. She went on to enumerate the advantages for a writer of appearing at this gathering of book folk on the Welsh borders, but my mind had begun to drift. I was recalling the time when I’d stayed on that hill-farm in the Black Mountains and first learned how to shear sheep.

‘Of course I’ll come, if they want me,’ I enthused at once. ‘The countryside around Hay is as nice as it gets, and I could look up some old friends? Nat seemed relieved and talked on matter-of-factly about what a pleasant break it would be; she and Mark, the other half of my publishers, would drive down and meet me there. Then by way of parting she added that I shouldn’t worry at all about reading from or discussing my book — ‘just be yourself,’ she said, ‘and you’ll be fine?

That’s when the nostalgic sheep-shearing images evaporated and the realisation dawned that I was to address a literary audience. I turned to Ana and Chloe — perhaps they could come too? But no, it was too short notice and the animals and school would have none of it. So it was that two weeks later, dragging an odd assortment of books in a leather bag (well, I could at least pass muster as a reader), I stepped apprehensively into the ticket and reception area at the Hay-on-Wye festival office.

A light spattering of rain was replenishing the puddles at the centre of the festival courtyard, while slithery duckboards conducted the literary-minded to various tented auditoria. Nat and Mark were easy to spot, splashing around in the puddles with their toddler, near a door that led into a primary school classroom, transformed for the week into an authors’ reception room. I joined them just as a small knot of people paced past and some heads turned.

‘That’s Vikram Seth, I think, said Nat. ‘He’s talking in the tent next to yours — same slot, sadly, so we’ll all miss him.’ I turned to see the back of one of my favourite authors disappearing into another tent, just as two women swathed in kagouls pointed in my direction, whispering in a loud, excited hush, ‘It’s him! I’m sure it is!’ This was heady stuff. I straightened up and beamed back at them as an arm lightly touched mine to guide me out of the way. ‘Thank you,’ murmured Bill Bryson in passing.

I don’t think I need to try and illuminate the blur that followed, except to say that a sympathetic festival organiser steered me through the door of the primary school classroom, poured me some wine and introduced me to my co-panelists Monty Don, the garden writer, and Adam Nicolson, author and newspaper columnist. I recall doing little more than smiling and gulping, with my eyes fixed on a small cardboard spider that dangled on one side of Adam’s head, painted, apparently, by “Megan, aged 6yrs”, Before I could ask for another glass, the kindly organiser was ushering us all in and out of the rain again and onto a stage. My publishers and their toddler smiled wanly from some seats next to the tent door. It was the sort of smile that you might use to cheer a relative in the dock.

Adam began talking and reading from his book. I don’t think I’d ever longed for someone to be long-winded before — and he didn’t oblige. He was pithy and funny and, it had to be said, literary. I picked the dirt from under my nails and waited for my awful exposure, for someone to stand up at the back and say, ‘That man’s not an Author — he’s a sheep-shearer.’ Instead Monty Don swung into the gentlest of introductions and asked me to read a passage that he’d marked out. It was a description of my first ever shearing expedition in the Alpujarras, when I’d had to face down the scepticism of the local shepherds about using electric shears.

I looked down at the page and suddenly realised that I hadn’t a clue how to read it. It wasn’t that my literacy skills had deserted me but I just hadn’t any idea what the voices of the different shepherds bantering with each other should sound like in English. At the time we had all spoken in Alpujarran Spanish and in the book I had side-stepped the issue of regional voices by recording their idiosyncratic grammar and leaving their accents to the imagination. Monty looked at me, Adam looked at me. The rain drummed patiently on the roof of the tent as if waiting also. I picked an accent, more or less at random and flung myself on the mercy of the hall.

The first shepherd announced his serious doubts about the safety of his flock in the voice of a Pantomime Pirate, a kind of Ben Gun—Cornish. I coughed and tried again. He was answered by a Somerset lad who had evidently spent a lot of time in the Transvaal. I stopped once more. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Nat get up and, in a crouching tip-toe, leave with their toddler under her arm. Mark was staring fixedly up at the roof of the tent, seemingly amazed to find that it was made of canvas.

I continued. The first shepherd had settled into an altogether quieter and more manageable Sussex country voice. That was fine, but I — the narrator — had somehow turned into Prince Philip. I ground to an appalled halt.

‘I’m sorry,’ I started to say, ‘I really don’t know where all these strange accents have come from? But my words were obliterated by a ferocious thrumming on the roof of the tent. It seemed that God, in answer to my fervent prayer that the ground should open up and swallow me, had arranged for the skies to open instead. Perhaps he hadn’t quite got the hang of my accent.

I leant back, saved by the elements, and watched as Nat swept back into the tent with a sleeping child in her arms. She smiled broadly at me. While the rain continued none of us could do anything more than smile. It was impossible to hear a word that anyone spoke, even if they were next to you. I pictured Vikram Seth, smiling and waiting on the stage of the tent behind and thought what a great leveller rain is.

After the deluge the audience and panel exchanged thoughts in the most relaxed manner imaginable about farming and literature. Then we all wandered out into the brilliant sunshine to a tent where piles of books were waiting to be signed. I couldn’t help but notice a herd of cows plodding across their damp field above the festival grounds as if intending to join the queue.