In the months that followed Eve’s sister’s tragic death, our guilt at not having argued her sad case more forcefully with her parents could not be shaken off easily.
Of the two of us I was naturally less affected and escaped dwelling on the reality by losing myself in work, but Eve took a long time to recover and eventually did so because of two Americans who came unexpectedly into our lives.
Alan Tobias, a New York artist, was an arrogant individual with extraordinary charisma. Physically in the same mould as Mick Jagger, though not a look alike, he could be rude, demanding and mean, but appealed to us because of his cynical sense of humour. He had the ability of sensing everyone’s Achilles heel within minutes of meeting them and could be quite cruel if they did not respond to his whims.
I actually liked his company and found it convenient when I realized that Eve ( who first met him in a local bar ) found him disconcertingly attractive and helpful in making her forget the immediate past.
While I wrote, she went down to Nerja to sit for hours watching him hurl paint at huge canvasses with extraordinary precision, an action painter whose work would have been successful if he had not been his own worst enemy and alienated possible buyers with his attitude of not suffering fools gladly.
Eve and Alan became inseparable. They smoked and drank themselves into stupors most nights and when he was kicked out of his accommodation for failing to pay the rent, she suggested he should come and stay with us.
As I had not seen her so happy and animated for a long time. I agreed, aware that if she was having an affair or about to do so it would conveniently negate the guilt of my own past infidelity.
Alan moved in. He commandeering the terrace at the top of the house where he could lob streaks of colourful oils at large sheets of hardboard to his heart’s content and sleep on a mattress under the stars.
Overnight Eve became a mother to her four boys. Alan, Nicolas, Matthew and myself in that order of importance. She cooked lunches and dinners, no longer went down to Nerja but sat with him and a bottle or two of wine in the moonlight by the pool while I, more often than not, went to bed early to rise at the crack of dawn to keep up my writing discipline..
Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks passed, Alan painted, I wrote, the boys played with their village friends and Eve was at last at peace with herself.
She washed Alan’s jeans, T-shirts and underwear, albeit along with mine and those of the children, She was in love and I was genuinely happy for her. I had no idea how long such a menage would last nor to where it might lead, but I was very careful not to rock the boat.
Then one morning the phone rang. 'Could I speak to Alan Tobias ?' a chirpy, young female voice enquired.
'Who is it ?' I asked.
'Ellen, his wife,' she answered.
Alan had married a 20 year old Danish girl in the States and, when they had decided to live for a while in Europe, she had gone to see her parents in Copenhagen and he had come straight to Spain not wanting to meet his in-laws. He had told no one about her. She had rung from Malaga airport and was on her way to join him. The news devastated Eve.
Faced with this 'fait accompli' we had little option but to receive the young Mrs Tobias on her arrival. She was an undeniably attractive blonde, a little plump perhaps and not very tall. She was highly amused by the fact that her husband had wormed his way into our lives and managed to get his board and lodging free. It was, she claimed, something he was very good at.
That night the agitated sounds the couple made as they shared the mattress on the terrace directly above our bedroom kept me awake but completely shattered Eve’s composure.
Incensed at Alan’s duplicity and unable to control her rage, she leapt out of bed, dressed, grabbed the car keys and told me she would not be back till ‘they’ had left the house.
It took me the best part of the following day to get the Tobiases out of the house. Ellen understood my dilemma perfectly and was helpful, but Alan was not one to be graceful about his requested departure.
Eve returned that evening on learning that the coast was clear and, when the boys had gone to bed, we sat in the patio and discussed the future. I was really enjoying my new way of life but things had gone too wrong for her to be content. She needed more diversion than I and wanted to be surrounded by people. She suggested letting the house and renting somewhere down in Nerja for a trial period. She had heard of several places in the town which were amazingly cheap to rent, the problem was finding suitable people to whom we could let ours.
Nicolas and Matthew had however become great friends with two American brothers of their age who often came to swim in our pool. When their parents showed up one day to collect them and looked round the house, they asked if we had ever thought of letting it. The mother was keen to stay in Spain for a few months so that the boys could learn Spanish. An instant decision was made. We would rent it to them for six months.
They were a more serious couple than Eve’s usual flower people and when I discreetly enquired about their financial status, the father informed me, very casually, that he was the mayor of New York, John Lindsay, which suggested that payment would be guaranteed and our home more than well looked after.
Alan Tobias John Lindsay (mayor of New York in 1969)
One bright sunny day I was shopping in Nerja when I paused in front of a shoe shop to check if there was anything of interest. A tall man in a flat cap, tweed jacket, white trousers, the stub of a cigar stuck in his mouth, stooped next to me to study a pair of leather boots on display. His reflection in the window looked remarkably like John Huston. I turned and was astounded to see that it was John Huston, director, of The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen. etc. I smiled at him nervously, he grinned back, and walked off. I thought of following him, but instead settled down at a café to read a newspaper and saw, sitting two tables away George C.Scott - The Hustler, The List of Adrian Messenger, Patton. etc. The waiter enlightened me. A major feature film was going to be shot in the town, an American production with Spanish crew. I obviously wouldn’t know anyone involved, so I reluctantly left it at that. A few days later I was again walking around Nerja, this time with little Matthew, when we chanced upon the film unit setting up to shoot George C.Scott driving an open car down a narrow street and John Huston sitting close by in the director’s chair. Though it was midday and sunny, the car’s headlights were blazing. 'Daddy,' said Matthew concerned, 'The car’s headlights are on'. 'So they are,' said I, 'why don’t you tell that man sitting in the chair. He’s the director, probably hasn’t noticed and should be told.' Matthew, never one to be shy, went straight up to Huston, tapped him on the arm and said something pointing at the car. To my excessive joy John Huston placed his arm round my little boy’s shoulders and puffed out a cloud of cigar smoke. I sneaked up behind them. 'It’s called day-for-night,' the gravel voice explained gently. 'We put special filters on the camera lens that's over there, and when the film comes out it looks like night time.' I stepped forward ready to apologize for my son bothering him, but the continuity girl got to him before me with a problem, so I backed away. A few evenings after that when I was in a bar with Eve and a group of her flower power friends, a small, excitable, bright eyed crew-cut character, neatly dressed in pink shirt and sky blue trousers, joined us. He had met one of the American hippies on the beach earlier and introduced himself as Jack Martin, London based gossip columnist and European stringer for the Rhona Barrett Show in Los Angeles, a TV programme that reported the lives, loves, divorces and disasters of Hollywood celebrities. He was tailing George C.Scott wherever as rumour had it that the star was about to leave his wife. I learned from him that the film, The Last Run, was a thriller supposedly set in Portugal, and that an unknown young actress would be playing opposite Scott. He learned from me, after plying me with endless questions as columnists do, that I wrote books, that Eve had been a fashion model and that, among other things, she had been presented at Court. 'Bobby has to meet her,' he piped up. 'Bobby loves anything to do with the British Royals.' 'Who is Bobby ? ? I asked. 'Bobby De Haven,' he replied. 'Carter De Haven’s fabulously rich wife, heiress to the Firestone Tyre fortune. Carter, Gloria De Haven’s nephew is the producer.' 'Princess Margaret’s husband once sat on my knee,' I said to excite him even more. 'We were in a taxi on our way to a pyjama party, He was wearing a nightdress.' 'Oh, Bobby will love you for that. She will just love you. She must meet you as soon as possible.' A few days later Eve and I were invited to dinner by Jack Martin to meet the De Haven’s. . Bobby was glamorous, but so worried about showing signs of growing old that she had a small piece of Sellotape stuck to the middle of her forehead to remind her not to frown. I sang for my supper recounting details of the garden party I had attended at Buckingham Palace, elaborating a little on the Royals I hadn’t met and the debutante scene with its rigid etiquette. Carter, a rather worried man, did not take me too seriously but was entertained enough by my storytelling to suggest I should send him my new novel when it was finished. I was through the Hollywood door ! It wasn’t brilliant literature that got you anywhere, but frivolous gossip. A few days later I ventured into an area of Nerja I had not frequented before and, feeling peckish, found a little bar tucked away down a narrow lane where the overweight, rather morose owner poured me a huge glass of red wine and served me a tapas of chick peas. The place was dimly lit but, when I got used to the darkness, I spotted a couple smooching in a corner. She was young and blonde, he old enough to be her father, and it was only after rudely peering at them for a bit longer that I recognized George C.Scott and his leading actress Trish Van DeVere. Surprised, but happy for them, I left the bar and went home. The next morning I was, by chance, joined at a café table by Jack Martin. I casually mentioned that I had perceived the two stars in a passionate embrace, and his jaw dropped. Was I sure it was them ? Where exactly ? When exactly ? What were they doing exactly ? He wanted every detail. He then raced back to his hotel phone and, that evening, in Los Angeles, on the Rhona Barret Show, the news broke that Trish and George C were in the throes of a frantic affair, spotted in a romantic clinch in a dingy Spanish bar by a Barret ace reporter. Scott would shortly be divorcing his wife. The outcome of my snitching on the lovers proved fairly traumatic for them, though they eventually married, but amazingly beneficial to me. A year later Jack Martin, ever grateful, let me his luxurious flat in one of the most sought after Kensington squares for an unbelievably low rent. I lived there happilly for ten years - but more of what happened there another day.
John Huston. George C. Scott. Trish Van Devere.
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
