As often happens after experiencing a family tragedy, husband and wife close ranks and devote more time to looking after their children than dreaming of escaping into a world free of problems. We were already in dreamland so could hardly complain
Our first winter in Spain was spent marvelling at the fact that there wasn’t any to speak of, except for occasional bursts of torrential rain which cascaded down from the gutterless rooves flooding the cobbled streets. The whitewashed houses turned grey, which would have been depressing if the sun hadn’t come out within twenty four hours, and the only inconvenience suffered was the resulting rising damp which one just had to accept.
To our delight Nicolas and Matthew, aged ten and eight, were soon able to speak Spanish fluently, coping admirably at school where reading, writing and arithmetic were fiercely taught but other subjects rather ignored. Religious instruction - that is Roman Catholicism - was left entirely to the village priest who seemed to prefer playing dominoes in the local bar to enlightening the younger members of his flock about the powers of the Virgin Mary and her son.. We neither sent the boys to church nor went ourselves and were never admonished by anyone for this sin. If we'd had doubts that ‘quitting the rat race’ might be an educative set back for our offspring, these were quickly dispelled for they were now growing up in a caring community and had a safe, traffic free village and countryside to play in with children who were more influenced by their down to earth peasant family values than television and twentieth century stress.
I had so far managed to keep our finances healthy by writing two more humorous books, one on the history of banqueting 'Eat, Drink and Be Sorry' the other 'A Bluffer’s Guide to Antiques' neither of which were likely to put me on the road to becoming an eminent author but, at Easter, a bizarre encounter set me on that very path.
Nicolas, Matthew and I were on the beach overlooked by the main Nerja hotel. They dug holes, filled buckets and built castles while I lay on my stomach reading. When I glanced round to check that all was well, I saw to my embarrassment that they had buried a complete stranger in the sand, an elderly white haired gentleman who was not objecting to this amusement but seemed to be instructing them on how to cover him completely and not let his toes stick out.
Mildly concerned, I sauntered over to make sure it was his wish to be so exploited and, to my astonishment, found myself staring down at an extremely famous face.
The man was Norman Fisher, chairman of the BBC Television Brains Trust, a programme I had regularly watched on Sunday afternoons in the past.
'Should I pretend that I don’t know who you are ? Your gravediggers are my sons,' I said.
'And very enjoyable company they are too,' he replied, pulling himself up and out of the sandy grave to shake hands.
'There are extraordinary coincidences in life,' he went on. 'the first is that I have just learned from your boys that you are Drew Launay, the author of a zany detective book I have brought down with me as holiday reading. The second is that I happen to be on the board of Macdonalds who published your excellent 'Caviare and After' and 'I Married a Model'.
The outcome of this unexpected meeting was a dinner with him that evening during which he informed me that he was also the Managing Director of another publishing house, Triton Books, and, as such, thought I was wasting my talent working on non fiction. He would gladly pay me an advance if I satisfied his editor that I could deliver a good novel and sign a six book contract.
I agreed immediately, committed myself to sending his editor the outline of an amazing story I said I had in mind, though not, in fact, having any ideas at all.
Shortly after, I had to go to London on another matter. While I was away, Eve invited a number of her Nerja friends up to Frigiliana for an endless party and, when, a week later, I got home from the airport late at night, I found the house commandeered by a colony of beatniks, some swimming nude in the pool, most lounging around in clouds of marihuana smoke.
My feelings were mixed. I knew a few of them who clearly regarded me as ‘square’ which made it difficult to be accepted by them and I wanted to understand why they so lacked ambition and could live off other people without qualms.
They were seeped in mythical flower power, a sub culture rooted in the opposition to the Vietnam war, an excuse to avoid all responsibilities. They quoted Alan Ginsberg, had been to the Woodstock rock festival, they embraced psychedelic experiments, blew their minds with LSD and explored alternative states of consciousness which inevitably led to sex with anyone convenient.
I watched Eve in kaftan and hibiscus flowers in her hair wandering among them, happy to be the hostess to this new trend, apparently unaware that without my sniffed at daily writing routine, which paid for this lifestyle, her sycophants would probably ignore her and sponge off someone else.
Among them, however, I found a young gum-chewing cockney girl whom I thought attractive. When I sat down, cross legged, beside her but refused a joint, she told me she thought my obvious irritation with everybody highly comical, adding that I shouldn’t be such a 'fuckin prick', then took me for a long walk up a mountain to study the universe.
The stars did not inspire me as much as she did and she eventually became the main character in the novel I wrote for Norman Fisher - The Girl With a Peppermint Taste.
Illustrations from 'Eat, Drink and Be Sorry'
Our first winter in Spain was spent marvelling at the fact that there wasn’t any to speak of, except for occasional bursts of torrential rain which caused water to cascade down from the gutterless rooves flooding the cobbled streets. The whitewashed houses turned grey, which would have been depressing if the sun hadn’t come out within a few hours, and the only inconvenience suffered was the resulting rising damp which one just had to accept, that and, in our case, the too soon visit of Eve’s parents who came to check up on our chosen way of life. They thankfully thought we were demented to live in such a primitive environment but unfortunately liked Nerja enough to rent a holiday apartment down there for an early summer holiday. They were never going to leave us alone.
Eve had an older sister Joey ( Josephine ) whom I have not mentioned before as she hardly played a part in our lives, she was an aloof young woman who took no interest in her younger sibling and seemed to me to only judge everyone and everything by the mores of the social set she admired. She preferred to frequent titled people, Debretts was her bible, the Tatler, Country Life and Queen magazines her main source of information about the world.
A year or so before our own wedding she married the heir to a shipping line, gave birth to a daughter but suffered a more than usually severe post natal depression which resulted in her coming under the care of various psycho analysts. She managed to get through a few unhappy years pf domesticity but these ended in an unhappy divorce and she returned home to live with her parents.
So it was that in May, Major Bill and Doris came down to stay in their rented flat with Joey for six weeks.
Eve and I went to collect the three of them at Malaga airport and were appalled by her condition. Joey behaved like a perplexed, troubled child, lifeless, unaware of her surroundings, totally devoid of energy or conversation. When I attempted to talk to Major Bill about what the doctors thought of her state of mind, he categorically denied that she was ill and that those who said she was were talking utter rubbish. He claimed that, as a child, she had always lacked energy and that all this business of sending her to psychiatrists was only the unnecessary meddling of her ex husband.
Concerned, Eve suggested Joey should stay with us up in Frigiliana where she could judge for herself the seriousness of the situation and, for the next few weeks, the poor girl lay inert on her bed not wanting to eat and only talking about an impending disaster from which she would not be able to escape, her feelings of distress and persecution becoming increasingly delusional.
Aware that Doris was incapable of standing up to her husband’s insistence that nothing was wrong, Eve and I attempted to drum some sense into Major Bill facing him with the fact that Joey was suffering from Manic Depression and should be flown back to London as soon as possible for treatment.
'Nonsense, nonsense, you’re all talking nonsense,' was his reply, 'Our flight back is booked for the 30th June and we’re not leaving till then.'
Unfortunately Joey perked up shortly after this confrontation which, as far as he was concerned, proved that we were all dramatising a minor problem and that he had been right all the time while we feared that her recovery was a clear symptom of Manic Depressive psychosis in which there are alternating moods of elation and depression.
With only two weeks to go before their departure date and Joey livening up, eating normally, wanting to go shopping with Eve and even insisting on going down to the beach to get a sun tan to please her psychiatrist with whom she suddenly claimed she was having an affair, we let things be and saw them off at the airport, all much happier than when they had arrived.
Four weeks later Major Bill rang from London to tell us that Joey had unaccountably fallen out of a 5th storey window of their apartment in Westbourne Terrace and died.
Eve went to London to attend the Coroner’s inquest, returning two weeks later with a full account of the appalling tragedy.
Joey’s death at the age of 43, was recorded as 'suicide while of unsound mind'. At about nine o’clock on the evening of July 24th, she had left the sitting room where she was watching television with her parents, gone to her own room, opened the window wide, taken off her shoes, arranged these neatly side by side on the floor, climbed up on the window sill and hurled herself into oblivion.
At the inquest Major Bill denied that she had ever been mentally ill, though she had been in psychiatric care for five years. He just could not bear the thought that people would think there was madness in his family - a 19th century man with Victorian values who was never to be forgiven by his younger daughter.
Eve’s guilt at not having argued Joey’s case more forcefully with her parents or taken her sister back to London herself, could not be shaken off easily and this, in turn, became a serious problem for us. She understandably found relief in the company of partying people down in Nerja, but the demons in the bottles she consumed slowly but surely took her over.
Photo of Joey
One September morning, while I was trying to inject a little humour into a chapter on Elizabethan eating habits for a commissioned book on banqueting history, an extraordinary noise shattered the air above the pueblo. The rattle of the shutters, windows and doors was quite alarming and, fearing an earthquake, I ran out into the street to see what was happening.
Hovering a hundred metres or so above the church, was a helicopter that looked menacingly like a great metal insect. Inside the glass bubble under, the rotating blades, sat an ear-muffed pilot and next to him a man with a large camera. Suddenly the machine seemed to be sucked backwards and upwards into the sky and within seconds it was but a dark dot on the horizon.
'They’re film people,' Eve said, returning from a shopping expedition.
'Really ? What film people ? '
'How should I know ? There’s a whole convoy of them coming up the hill.'
'I’m going to have a look.' The thought of a film being made in the area was exhilarating.
'Yes, I suppose you must.' It was said with the same disdainful tone she had used in the past whenever I had got excited over anything theatrical.
At the entrance of the village a crowd was milling around a number of lorries, a transformer, two limousines and a mobile canteen. A stressed continuity girl with a walkie-talkie glued to her ear was crouching in the shadows of a caravan puffing at a cigarette.
'What’s the film ?' I asked.
'Figures in a Landscape. Malcolm McDowell, Robert Shaw, Joseph Losey directing ' She blew a cloud of smoke at me making it clear she didn’t need people around. Film crews have little time for anyone not on the production. I moved away.
Malcolm McDowell had had a phenomenal success in the film "If..." the year before. Robert Shaw had had a phenomenal success as a nasty against James Bond in "From Russia with Love" and as Henry VIII in "A Man for All Seasons". Joseph Losey had directed "The Servant" and "Accident", both domestic trauma stories of the type I wanted to write, and these three gentlemen were going to work right here on my doorstep. I had to find out if there was anyone on the shoot I had worked with in television, but the tense look on the faces of the technicians suggested this was not the time to make enquiries.
I went home to plan a way to infiltrate the unit without making a nuisance of myself and there, sitting on the sofa in the living room drinking a glass of white wine with Eve, was young Malcolm McDowell himself.
I was astounded.
He stood up. Grinned broadly and shook my hand warmly.
'My sister, Gloria, worked with Eve as a model at Digby Morton’s when your book was published. She told me you were living down here, so I thought I’d call.' He then added
'Come up and see the shoot whenever. It’s just Robert Shaw and I playing two unidentified soldiers being chased by an unidentified enemy in an unidentified country'
The next morning I took Nicolas and Matthew up the steep slopes of a mountain to a small plateau where everything seemed to be happening. Most of the village had gathered to stare in disbelief at the amazing network of cables which powered the innumerable spotlights and at all the other bits of equipment that had been hauled up there.
Messrs McDowell and Shaw, in khaki uniform, their faces caked with mud, crouched in a hollow of the mountainside apparently hiding from some danger or other. Joseph Losey sat in a canvas chair just looking at them. The lighting cameraman was taking his time choosing a shot.
'It’s very boring,' Nicolas said, 'Can we go home now ?'
My attempt to enthuse them with the thrills of movie making had understandably failed and the hope I had of them one day becoming film directors who would put my books on screen faded.
Before the production moved East along the coast to film the pursued soldiers escaping from blazing cane fields, Malcolm invited me to join him for a location lunch in a rambling old mountain farmhouse used as an HQ for the unit.
I found myself sitting at a table alone with Joseph Losey, Robert Shaw and Malcolm. It was a golden opportunity for me to do a bit of hard sell, to pitch one of my stories, but the atmosphere between the three of them was painfully unpleasant. A belligerent Shaw stared menacingly at Malcolm throughout the meal, clearly wanting to pick a quarrel, while Malcolm totally ignored him. Losey studied them both like a tired father in charge of two silly children, then Shaw suddenly stood up and, sneering at Malcolm, pointed at me and for no apparent reason said 'I don’t like your friend,' and left.
I hadn’t said a word.
Losey looked apologetically at me. 'It’s not personal. You’re the only one Robert can pick on as you’re not part of the production, the problem is that he is just learned from his agent that Malcolm is to get top billing over him because "If..." is so successful. He can get very aggressive after a few drinks and he started early, which suits me, as he’s playing Malcolm’s cantankerous old sergeant and the two hate each other.'
Some units, I’d heard, are happy with the film crews getting on. Others not. In this case it was very much the latter and eventually all left and I never saw any of them again. But, a few months later, a less stressed army of Hollywood actors and technicians turned up to film in Nerja - and I certainly managed to make the most of that.
1 Malcolm McDowell
2 Robert Shaw3 Joseph Losey
I didn’t.... Dig, that is.
I wasn’t allowed to.
In England, in Somerset for example, when I called in some builders to convert our little chapel room into an antique shop, I helped them with a bit of cementing here, a bit of painting there and made them lots of cups of tea.
Not in Spain. Not in Andalucia. I was the owner of the property, a señor, a caballero, an hildalgo, so I was not to lift a finger, let alone dirty my hands. My job, if any, was to watch and approve and, though I had a state of the art wind-up measuring tape in a rather smart leather case, Manolo, the builder in charge, was a professional and preferred the well tried method of the stride, or his foreman’s feet - size 48. He did, however, appreciate the fact that I wanted to be of some use and, as I had a car, occasionally asked me to go down to Nerja on vital errands.. Thus I learned the Spanish for a length of string, half a kilo of nails, a pick axe handle and a packet of lethal black cigarettes. If you want to learn a foreign language there is no better way than to do so by acting as goffer to a native builder.
I was content and so was Eve despite the major hiccough caused by my talking too much. The gamble we had taken was proving beneficial. We arranged for the boys to have private Spanish lessons and they got the hang of the language quickly, learning more from the children they played with than from the retired professor who was more often than not lost in a cloud of brandy fumes and heavy cigar smoke.
When the pool was finished and the village kids heard about it, they came knocking at the door, some in swimsuits, most in underpants. One girl of twelve who claimed she could swim, leapt excitedly into the deep end, thrashed the surface, gurgled and blew bubbles to the great amusement of her friends, and after a few seconds Nicolas anxiously gripped my arm and said he thought she was drowning. A second look at the floundering girl confirmed his fears, I dived in fully clothed and effected a dramatic rescue, after which I reluctantly decided that the joyous naivety of the villagers might sometimes be simple ignorance..
Without a telephone and little contact with the U.K, no bills and very few letters bothering us ,we were able to relax like never before and enjoy the fact that we were now on holiday for ever.
August was our first taste of real heat. We discarded clothes, learned to close all windows and shutters to keep the house cool, remain motionless if not asleep between 2pm and 6 pm, and mainly live by night. It was wonderful.
Most days we went down to the Nerja beaches favouring one which had a mile of sand and a single merendero ( beach café ) that excelled in fried eggs and chips and the inevitable paella. There were very few tourists then due to a lack off entertainment in the town other than one quite sophisticated bar, run by a couple of gay Australians, where we met a number of long haired Americans, young men who were escaping the Vietnam call-up and claimed to be artists but didn’t seem to paint, or writers who didn’t seem to write. With my strict discipline of completing at least three thousand words a day , I found Eve’s apparent admiration of their laid back, pot smoking way of life somewhat irritating, and I caught myself wishing that she might be tempted into a liaison with one of them which would annul my misbehaviour.
They were an odd bunch, these Americans, and they made me feel more staid than I believed myself to be. Their wide travelling experiences in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and the Far East, made me realize how ignorant I was of the world. Their language was peppered with rude expletives which surprisingly shocked me. Only a year before, Kenneth Tynan had offended millions of British viewers by uttering 'fuck' on television and I had thought this repressed reaction ridiculously naive, but now found that I too was being sniffily reserved. I put it down to my public school upbringing where, I realized, I had obviously been more brainwashed than I cared to believe..
I was also surprised that I didn’t miss London at all and relieved that I no longer had to compete with the more successful authors whose portraits had sneered at me from the pages of the Sunday supplements. I felt guilty that I had no desire to review other people’s books for the literary pages of the broad sheets, which my publishers would have welcomed as it was a sure way of getting reviewed oneself, but I disliked the necessary cow towing to the whims of agents, Fleet Street editors and PR executives. In short, I had successfully quit the rat race and, right then, I was extremely happy in the company of the children all day, and peacefully writing outlines of brilliant ideas which might or might not bear fruit. Besides, at the back of my mind, in case we spent all our money too quickly, there was always the possibility of finding work in Almeria, a hundred kilometres East along the coast, the land of the Spaghetti Western where, rumour had it, film studios might soon be built and maybe a second Hollywood would be on my doorstep.
As it happened, I learned that a famous film director was to shoot an epic story in and around Frigiliana that autumn, starring two famous British actors. In case I managed to corner one of them, I fished out my file of 'Unpublished Material' and stapled a few of the superlative storylines which might be turned into an Oscar winning movie.
1. Supervising the digging of the pool
2. The finished pool
3. The patio of the house
On the 21st June 1969, I was sitting in the only bar in Frigiliana which had a television set and where everyone had congregated to watch the historic landing on the moon.
At 3 0'clock in the morning half of those who were sitting there waiting for something exciting to happen had fallen asleep with the boredom of the programme. Diagrams had been shown, scientists no one understood had talked for hours about spaceships and rockets, and the only person benefiting from the occasion was Antonio, the bar owner, who hadn’t stopped serving black coffees and cognacs to keep everyone awake.
Then, from outside, came the familiar clip clopping sound of a mule cloming up the steep cobbled street to the bar. It was Paco with his beast of burden on the way to his vineyards up on the Southern slope of the mountain. Paco, if not over bright, was a hard worker who trekked up there once a week and stayed for several days minding his crops.
He tied the mule's rope to the bars of a window and came into the bar, straw hat askew on his balding head, his huge teeth protruding beyond the lower lip, his gums receding, his fingers and hands ingrained with the dark earth he had been working all his life.
He stared bewildered at his fellow workers sitting there in the comparative darkness.
'Que pasa ? Why aren’t you all on your way to your fields or in bed with your fat ugly wives ?'
he grumbled at everyone.
'The moon,' came the reply from a few tired voices.
'The moon ?' Paco repeated, then, after a long pause, 'What of the moon ?'
'The moon is on television,' Antonio said pouring him an anis seco and hot chocolate.
Paco stared at the television high up in a corner of the bar. There was a picture of a space ship door opening and a man in a rubber suit and helmet coming slowly down the steps.
'Ahora ! Ahora ! Ahora !' the commentator shouted with great excitement. 'Now, now it’s happening. Now the first man ever is landing on the moon !'
Puzzled, Paco looked from the television screen to the audience to Antonio.'
'Children's television at this hour of the morning ?'
'The first man ever to land on the moon is doing so right now' Antonio informed him. 'It’s a major historic moment. Sit down and watch.'
'A man on the moon ! It’s a film hombre !'
'No Paco' Antonio said patiently, 'That man there, coming down the steps, is a real astronaut. He was sent up there by rocket with two others. It’s happening right now.'
Paco was unsettled
'What’s he going to do up there ?'
Antonio shrugged his shoulders unsure of the answer.
'Well, what is he going to do up there ?'
'He’s dancing,' someone in front of the set shouted, and the tension was relieved by laughter.
The mule snorted outside.
'A man on the moon ...' Paco muttered to himself. He drank his chocolate and downed the anis seco. He left the bar, went out into the roadway and looked up at the offending moon.
He untied the rope and led his mule on up the steep cobbled street.
Antonio picked up the empty glass and cup and put them in the sink. Then the clip clopping of the mule was heard coming down again.
'How is he going to get back, your man on the moon ?' Paco, standing in the doorway, was truly concerned.
'It’s very complicated' Antonio said. 'They have retro rockets which return the spaceship to earth'
'But when ? The moon will be gone soon.'
'It will only be going as far as we are concerned. It will only be going down behind the hills Paco. It will still be somewhere.'
Paco’s brow creased with the pain of difficult thought.
'What’s his name, the man on the moon ?'
'I don’t know,' Antonio was getting irritated, 'Some Americano.'
'Does his mother know ?'
'Does his mother know what ?'
'Does his mother know that he’s up there ?'
'Well of course she knows. The whole world knows ! What difference does it make ?'
'Antonio,' Paco said quietly, straightening up, 'I have been working in the campo since I was a niño. I know the moon, I have had conversations with the moon, I know what it does and what it does not do, but she might not understand.'
'His mother ?'
'Yes, his mother Antonio. His mother might not understand. When the moon has gone she may be afraid that he has gone with it. When it gets smaller, when there is only half of it, or a quarter of it, she might be afraid he could fall off. Would your mother understands it if you said you were going to the moon ?'
Antonio sighed deeply. 'These people know what they are doing.'
'I hope so,' Paco said turning away. 'I hope so.'
And when he was a little distance up the street, he stopped and shouted back.' I hope he had the sense to take a parachute !'
Paco's mule
Antonio's bar
And so it was planned.
I was to go to London from Nerja in Spain to enjoy the Christmas merriment with my lovely daughter, her partner, his mother, her cat, the neighbours, their dog, and the fox at the bottom of the garden, and I packed some clean socks, a shirt of two, wrapped the presents - a Spanish fan, a couple of flamenco dolls, miniature bottles of sangria, a pair of castanets...the usual, then on my way to a lunch appointment with a couple of friends... suddenly, quite suddenly, in the street, a very unpleasant pain gripped me round the chest. It didn’t exactly suffocate me, it didn’t stop me breathing, but it was like having massive indigestion between the armpits and I, having read about such things in my medical dictionary, remembered a quote :
Angina Pectoris is a condition where pain in the heart is caused
by an inadequate blood supply to the heart muscle which may
lead to a heart attack and instant death.
Well, it couldn’t happen to me, not at Christmas, not when I was about to go to lunch with friends and then London. So I ignored the malaise, joined my friends, didn’t eat too much, the pain slowly disappeared and I thought little more about it.
On the way home, however the pain attacked me again.
I sat down on a conveniently close bench, doubled up, refused to believe that I was suffering from anything serious, but things got worse and I pressed the panic button.
With a hand shaking so much that I could hardly hold my mobile steady, I rang my son who lives close by, and weakly managed to mumble....'Matthew...I’m not feeling very well......'
He is one of those efficient young men who can be relied upon to summon up a fire brigade or SAS army unit within minutes and, within minutes, he was with me, bundled me into his car, whisked me off to the local clinic where a heavy duty male nurse took my pulse, stuck a number of electrocardiograph suckers on ankles, wrists and chest, pronounced me an emergency and ordered son to take father to the nearest hospital forthwith.
We were told to remain in 'Urgencia' for six hours during which I was given X-Rays, blood tests, ECGs and aortic angiograms while paramedics held my hand, my pulse, stuck state of the art thermometers in my ear and, eventually, informed me that I had had a heart attack, that I had to stay in the hospital for treatment till they were satisfied I had a chance of staying alive, would I get someone to get my pyjamas and toothbrush.
'But I’m going to London tomorrow!' I protested. 'On Friday I’m going to see my daughter’s solo exhibition in a Chelsea Gallery.. On Saturday a family party.......'
'Explain to your father that he is on deaths’s door and to just do as he is told,' Matthew was instructed.
A half hour later I found myself lying between lovely clean sheets with lovely fluffy pillows behind my head, various tubes emanating from a hole pierced in the top of my hand to a water bottle hanging above my head and four or five nurses circling my bed to make sure I had everything I needed.
'Let go...' I told myself. 'You are beyond the point of no return...You are no longer in charge of your own life, what’s left of it, ....give in to those who know better than you...worry if you must about all the upheaval the cancellation of your London visit will cause to others but accept the fact that it is not your fault and there is absolutely nothing you can do about these new circumstances except die if you insist on rebelling.'
So it was that this year’s Christmas has not turned out quite as it was planned. Melissa, my lovely daughter, flew over in a blind panic so we could cry over the tragedy together, Nicolas, my older son winged his way over from Los Angeles, various members of the family made all the right noises and I felt like a complete fraud because the moment the first ECG suckers were planted on my breasts, the pain disappeared and never came back.
I’m home now, after an anxious week, fit as a fiddle, providing I avoid salt in my food, never drink alcohol again and consume seven different kinds of pills for the rest of my life before breakfast. I should add that on the 12th of the 12th of the 12th I had celebrated my 82nd birthday which, on learning this, prompted the surgeon who at one time during the proceedings inserted a couple of metal and plastic tubes into my circulatory system to say, 'At your age you have to expect setbacks.'
Seasonal greetings to all and a big THANK YOU to the staff of the incredibly efficient hospital and to the lovely friends and relatives who where concerned for me.
Eve was English. If there was anyone who could overcome setbacks, rise above unpleasantness, ignore what she didn’t want to know and keep a stiff upper lip, it was her. After I quite unnecessarily and stupidly told her that I had had an affair and she walked out of the house into the Frigiliana street, I watched her from an upstairs window, pause before straightening up, throw her cigarette away, stamp on it and walk off with a determination that suggested she had made a decision about the situation. Wether that decision was favourable for me or disastrous I, of course, had no idea.
So I waited. I sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to imagine what she was thinking, what she was going through and managed to convince myself that what I had just told her, what I had just confessed, had been a shock but not that upsetting. It could, in fact, be a relief, a release for her from having to pretend that all was well between us when, for some months now it had not been. On the other hand this was perhaps just wishful thinking on my part and the emptiness in the pit of my stomach made itself known again. Then I heard, with great relief, the boy's voices and laughter. I leapt to my feet, looked out of the window. They were coming home for lunch with Eve, all holding hands.
So we sat down round the table on the terrace and had a happy meal as though nothing at all had happened and, once they had gone off to play again, Eve went to have a siesta which had become routine, leaving me to clear the plates and wash up.
She never asked another question. My infidelity was never mentioned again. It was not forgotten, certainly not forgiven but, apart from several nights when it seemed to me that she deliberately turned her back on me in bed, the unsettling episode passed.
We now started to look for a property to buy in earnest. We wanted an old village house which could be converted into something exceptional.
After two days of asking around, an elderly man stopped us in the main square and said he had a ruin for sale which we might like to have a look at. We followed him up a cobbled alley to a large building behind the 16th century church. He pushed open a massive double door that was falling off its hinges and bid us enter.
It wasn’t so much a ruin as a disaster area, and vast. The mud, boulder and stone walls were nearly a metre thick, the roof had collapsed, he suggested it might be wiser not to go up the stairs as the wood was rotten and the upper floors were dodgy, then he led us to a huge patio and up some steps to six large cement vats. With a smattering of Spanish, signs and waving of the hands, we gathered that we were in the pueblo’s ancient Moorish soap factory.
We moved through an archway to what might have been termed a garden if there had been a bit of greenery and less dust, beyond this was a half acre rubbish tip.
The old man looked at us and shrugged in way of asking if we were interested.
I asked how much.
'Wan tousand fife hondrid powns esstairlinge,' he said in badly rehearsed English.
'For the house ?' I said.
'For todo. La casa, el jardin, el campo. Todo.' The house, the garden the rubbish tip, everything, or so we understood. One thousand, five hundred pounds sterling.
Eve and I managed not to exchange excited glances. If we’d understood correctly it was an incredible bargain.
I made a face, I shrugged and told him we would let him know mañana.
Twenty four hours of ceaseless discussion and endless calculations followed.
The next day we went back to the ruin to take measurements. Once the vats were removed there was a surprisingly large area to play with and if the rubbish tip was cleared there would be room for a swimming pool and various terraces.
We got down to drawing plans. The living room and an open plan kitchen would give onto a central patio. A master bedroom with en suite bathroom upstairs, a room each for the boys, a guest room, another bathroom. It was all possible.
We made an offer, it was instantly accepted and word went round the village that we were completely off our heads.
The next day, the old man introduced me to the best builder in Andalusia ( Manolo, his nephew ) and I took him straight to the ruin and showed him our plans on site.
He looked around, sighed, shrugged his shoulders, lit a cigarette, puffed out a cloud of smoke and was kind enough to convey nothing derogatory when a slight prod of his finger caused a whole wall to collapse.
There would be difficulties in getting the material up the narrow cobbled street, there was also no water nor electricity, but if I was ready to pay a little more up front his brother in law, the village plumber and electrician, would get these connected quickly. With five other cousins, an uncle and someone else’s father, he’d get what we wanted done. It would take six months. His estimated cost was incredibly low.
We shook hands, There was no point in signing a contract, he didn’t value pieces of paper but he would start work as soon as I had got the deeds of the property and a permit to rebuild had been granted by the Ayuntamiento - the local Town Hall.
It took six weeks, several trips to Malaga, countless photocopies of our birth certificates, passports and bank accounts before we had all the necessary documents in hand enabling Manolo and his seven men to start work half way through May.
The Andalusians have the reputation of being slow, indolent workers. This is not so. Anyone making a study of their character will soon realize that they do not care a fig about success but that they will work very hard for is enough money not to work at all.
Five months and three days after they had started pulling down and rebuilding, our Spanish house was ready for us to move in. We arranged for our stored furniture in Somerset to be shipped over, bought everything else that was more suitable for a house in the sun than for one in the rain and, once installed, turned our attention to planting the garden and building the longed for swimming pool.
1. The living room before renovation
2. The living room after
