Relatively Dangerous (6 page)

In Barcelona they’d met an Irishman—a bit of a rogue, but amusing—who’d told them that Nirvana was an island called Mallorca. They’d sailed there on the ferry. They’d arrived on an island which was not yet tainted by tourism, except in a few places, and where there was beauty around every corner. But not the solitude he needed. No matter how deserted a coast might appear to be, or how isolated a house among the almond trees, a closer examination would disclose other houses nearby and even a short acquaintance had shown that the Mallorquins were a gregarious people who believed everyone else to be the same. (Had he foreseen what would overtake so many of these beautiful coastlines he had admired, but regretfully discarded because of nearby houses, he would have fled the island.) So he’d turned his eyes to the mountains and in an old and incredibly decrepit Fiat, in parts literally held together with string, they’d climbed up into that harsh, often threatening world so alien to the soft, cultivated plains below.

They’d found the old house completely by chance. They’d stopped for a picnic and had decided to have a short walk afterwards, looking at the wild flowers, and during this they’d suddenly come in sight of the house half way up a slope (shades of that home in Wales), little more than a ruin, backed by terraces whose walls were crumbling and whose land was neglected.

It had taken them two days to identify the owner and when they’d asked him how much he wanted for it, he’d stared at them in perplexity. Of what possible use was this abandoned, isolated place to two foreigners? No matter. He’d named a price that was, to him, astronomical. Translated into pounds, the sum had been so little that Swinnerton had immediately agreed. In the eyes of the owner, this had confirmed the fact that all foreigners were simple-minded.

Their currency allowance did not permit the purchase of a house, as cheap as that was, so Swinnerton had done something which had amazed him even as he did it, since never before had he knowingly and willingly broken the law. He’d returned to the UK, drawn fifteen hundred pounds in cash, stowed the banknotes in his suitcase, and told the hard-faced official at the airport that the only currency he was taking out of the country was the legal twenty-five pounds.

It had taken them six months to have the house rebuilt. The workers had come from Estruig, a village at the foot of the mountains, travelling to and fro in a vehicle that was half motorbike and half car. He’d paid them four pesetas an hour and they’d eaten lunch—a hunk of bread coated with olive oil and air-dried tomatoes—in their own time. They’d often sung as they’d worked, sad, wailing songs whose Moorish ancestry was unmistakable. They’d chatted to the Swinnertons in a jumbled mixture of Spanish and Mallorquin and laughed uproariously, but without the slightest meanness, when there’d been obvious misunderstandings. For the first time he could remember, he had not been frightened by people whom he did not know well.

When the house had been finished, the well had been deepened. The foreman had said that the señor was lucky, it was a good, sweet well that would flow all the year round so that he would never be short of water. Coming from the Welsh mountains, it had never occurred to either of them that they might be. After the well had been lined with sandstone blocks, and the manual pump installed and tested, the men had repaired the walls of the terracing. When he’d asked, somewhat diffidently as he remembered conditions back home, if they’d mind very much clearing the land at the same time, they had not replied that they were builders, not gardeners, but had willingly cleared the land. Then the Swinnertons had found two men willing to work as gardeners, also paid four pesetas an hour, and in a very short time the terraces had become filled with colour,

There had been no electricity and the distribution of bottled gas had not yet become commonplace, so she had had to learn to cook on a charcoal stove and the lights had worked on poor quality paraffin. In the winter, which could be cold at that altitude, with snow lying for several days, they would have a log fire in the sitting-room and a brasero under the dining-room table to roast their legs while leaving their upper halves to chill.

Very happy, he’d written a great deal of poetry. At first, he’d tried to get his work published, but his style was emotional, his themes simple and understandable, and his construction traditional, so that it was considered pedestrian and only the occasional short poem was accepted by a magazine which needed fillers. Soon, he’d ceased to bother to send out his work. After all, every single piece was a love poem addressed to Valerie and it was only her appreciation that mattered.

They occasionally heard that the outside world was changing, but thought that this didn’t concern them. Perhaps the cost of some things was rising from time to time, but their needs were simple . . .

The tourist industry expanded and prosperity flooded the island. Wages rose. Peasants who had eaten meat only during the winter when a pig was killed, now bought it at the butcher throughout the year; children grew up without ever discovering what it was like to be truly hungry; fincas increased in value from a 100,000 pesetas to 500,000, to a million, to five million; bicycles gave way to Mobylettes, Mobylettes to Seat 600s, Seat 600s to a bewildering choice of gleaming, luxurious cars; men left the land and worked in the bars, restaurants, hotels, discotheques, the women left their homes during the day and worked in the hotels and the homes of the thousands of foreigners . . .

The Swinnertons discovered a bitter truth: as Canute had known, it was impossible to slow down or stop the tides. He had never bothered to have his investments managed, naively assuming that what had been good in the past would be good in the future, and some of his shares had become virtually valueless and others hadn’t appreciated as much as was necessary in times of inflation. As his income remained, at best, steady, prices and wages soared. Wine which had been ten pesetas a bottle rose to eighty. The gardeners demanded a hundred pesetas an hour, then a hundred and fifty; soon, it was two hundred . . . There came a time when the Swinnertons were finally forced to face the facts. If things continued in the same vein, before long they’d no longer be able to afford to live in their house. And when they couldn’t and had to sell—for a price which would not reflect inflation because no Mallorquin would now live in such isolation and all those foreigners with money lived by the sea—they would be faced with moving into a tiny, noisy, stifling flat or returning to the UK.

At first, Valerie had thought it was the worry about their future which was making her husband look so drawn and had suddenly aged him, but initially she could not discuss the matter because he had tried to shield her from the facts and she did not want him to realize that she was just as aware of them as he. Then, with icy certainty, she had realized there must be something physically wrong with him. He’d tried to evade any medical examination, but in the end had been persuaded to see a specialist in Palma; the specialist diagnosed cancer.

On the morning of the day he’d died, he had looked out of the window and up the terracing and had whispered the wish that he could be buried up there, among all the free beauty instead of the confines of a cemetery. She had told him he was being ridiculous to talk about burials, while silently swearing to honour his wish.

The law on the island concerning burials was strict, as it had to be with the heat in summer, and it did not permit a burial away from an authorized cemetery. But he had died in his own bed and it was not the custom for a doctor to pursue a case if he was not specifically called in by the patient, so that the doctor who had been treating him would never on his own initiative call to find out how he was. In any case, she would have defied a thousand laws in order to carry out her unspoken deathbed promise. So somehow she had managed to carry his emaciated body up to the terrace with the twisted, tortured, centuries-old olive tree which he had nicknamed the Laocoon, and there had buried him.

By then, there was only one gardener—the younger of the two—and he was simple-minded. He’d once asked how the señor was and had then forgotten the subject. And up on that terrace, David Swinnerton’s body remained undisturbed, amid the wild beauty he had so loved . . .

‘Señora.’

The call cut across her sad, yet comforting thoughts. She looked around and watched the gardener approach with his shambling walk.

He came to a stop. ‘Señora.’

She waited patiently. Tomas Mesquida so often had trouble in expressing himself.

‘I need . . .’ He fiddled with his thick lips. ‘I need more money.’

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t pay you any more.’ Her Spanish was fairly fluent, though her accent was poor.

‘My mother says I must have more or I stop.’

The foreigners had taught the Mallorquins to be avaricious and now money had become their god. To point out to Mesquida’s mother that it would be very difficult for him to find another job and therefore it was surely better to continue to work here for a slightly lesser wage, would be a waste of words; she would never understand that something definite was better than the image of something more. Valerie turned, flinched at the stab of pain from her gouty foot, looked up at the twisted olive tree. If he left, the garden would quickly revert to a wilderness because she could no longer do the work.

Mesquida waited, then, when she remained silent, went over to his rusty Renault 4. He stood by the car for quite a while, as if expecting to be called back, opened the door, settled behind the wheel, drove off.

She turned and, limping slightly, went into the house. There was the sound of the old grandfather clock—one of the pieces they’d brought from Wales—striking the half hour. It reminded her that she was meeting the Attrays for coffee. Since her husband’s death, she’d seen quite a bit of the few English residents who lived in, or near, Estruig, rightly judging that for her own mental sake she needed human contacts. In any case, she’d never been the natural recluse that he had.

She went upstairs to the bathroom to find there was no water. Slowly, and most of the time painfully, she returned downstairs and went out to the pump. It was becoming more and more of an effort to work it and normally each weekday Mesquida filled the tank on the roof. If he left her, she’d have to do it all herself. . . An electricity line had come within a kilometre of the house a couple of years before and the electricity company had asked them if they wanted to be connected. The estimate had come to two million pesetas . . .

Twenty-five minutes later she left the house and went down to the small stone shed in which she garaged the ancient Seat 850 which was kept going by faith, hope, and the charity of the garage who so often didn’t fully charge her for the work they’d done.

She drove down the often precipitous road to Estruig, which was built on and around a small hill that stood a kilometre away from the mountains. She parked in the main square, crossed to the cafe, and looked for the Attrays, but they were not there. She wasn’t surprised. They were very poor timekeepers. She sat at a table, newly vacated, and picked up a copy of El Dia which had been left on it. She could read Spanish quite well. On the fourth page, underneath a lurid description of a suicide, complete with photograph, there was a short article which said that the man who had died in the car crash near Fogufol had been identified as Steven Thompson, an Englishman. Her expression became bitter.

Mike Taylor replaced the telephone on its stand, turned, rested his elbows on the bar. Whoever had said that life on the island consisted of one long crisis was dead right. Not very long ago, he’d been wondering how in hell they’d ever pay for the alterations in the kitchen which the bloody inspector had demanded be done before they received their licence to open the restaurant (there was little doubt, but no proof, that the inspector had been prompted by one or more of the established restaurant owners), and no sooner had that problem been solved than he was presented with a fresh one. His work permit had just been refused. True, his lawyer said that they’d probably win the appeal, but there was bound to be delay. And unless they opened soon, they’d miss the main season which was when any tourist-based business had to make enough profit to last through the rest of the year. He looked through the nearest window at the bay. That view was worth a fortune. Diners with any souls would sit outside, in the shade of the palm trees, staring at so much beauty that they’d never notice whether the meat was tough—what meat in Mallorca wasn’t?—and would feel impelled to order another bottle of wine . . .

‘Well, is the maitre d’ satisfied?’

He turned to face Helen as she stood in the doorway of the kitchen. ‘If you’re interested, I’m thinking of committing suicide.’

‘If you come to a decision, do it outside; so much easier to clean up the mess.’

‘I’d die much happier if I knew I’d died a bloody nuisance.’

She left the doorway, went behind the bar, put her hands round the back of his neck and brought his head forward so that she could kiss him. ‘What total disaster has occurred this time?’

‘That call was from Ferrer. They’ve refused the work permit.’

‘No.’

‘Bloody yes.’

‘Oh well, I suppose we shouldn’t have expected it to go through first time. Stop worrying. Pablo will sort it all out.’

‘Why are you always revoltingly optimistic?’

‘It makes life more fun.’

‘I suppose you do realize that if we don’t get a work permit . . .’

‘Relax. We will. I’ve complete faith in Pablo.’

‘I don’t suppose you know how he feels about you?’

‘Someone told me that his nickname’s Don Juan.’

‘If he ever dares make a move in your direction, his nickname will become Dona Juana.’

She chuckled as she unclasped her hands and stepped back. ‘I’ve nearly finished. When did the builders promise faithfully on the pain of excommunication to start work?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Then there’s just a chance, I suppose, they’ll turn up tomorrow . . . As soon as I have finished, let’s go for a swim?’