A Long Walk in the High Hills Read online

  Now all I want is to take a walk, perhaps to the village to pick up some fresh bread and enjoy the day before it gets too hot. The walk won’t take long, the village is about a mile down the road, in a bowl of almond and olive orchards sheltered all round by the pine-clad hills of the Sierra Tramuntana. From the backstreets of the village more tracks lead up and on to the high plateau, footpaths into a wilder landscape of dramatic cliffs and soaring hawks. When the rains fall here racing down the mountain slopes, ‘torrentes’, deep man-made gulleys, catch and funnel the floods before they reach the village, channelling them straight out to sea. In the dry months, the village’s torrente sprouts clumps of cane and masses of bright blue morning glory, a secret hiding place for feral cats only a few paw prints from the main street, which runs east to west. Three grocery shops, a butcher, an ironmonger, two bakers, two banks, a carpenter, a tobacconist, an electrician, a post office, a hairdresser, a primary school, a garage and two bars march along its length.

  The village was once situated higher up the valley but drought in the eighteenth century forced families down into lower-lying land where wells could more easily be dug to catch springs. It must have been extremely tough for the people who lived here then. At the turn of the twentieth century, years of uncertainty and near starvation during a series of desiccated harvests led whole families to leave the island and find their fortunes in Cuba or France. Those who returned from Nantes with fortunes made from growing and selling vegetables built grand, art deco homes with cupolas, four storeys high to catch whatever breeze was blowing.

  They renamed the main street ‘the road of the French’, in memory of their exile, an architectural wonder today, although more modest two-storey dwellings like the local bar must have been here many years before. On my first morning in my new house I head to this bar, Sancho’s, for what will become a lifetime addiction to strong coffee.

  Sancho and his wife Pepita throw open their bright green shutters early each morning, carrying out tables and chairs to arrange under the geraniums flowering in the window, cramming the narrow pavement in front. The bar doesn’t close until the last customer leaves. Keeping count of these long hours across the road is the old church clock whose bell marks every quarter hour, half hour and hour twice over with the loudest gong. I guess the folk living nearby are used to it, for this clock doesn’t differentiate between night and day, insisting on doing double duty when most are thinking of their beds, hitting midnight with twenty-four sleep-busting bangs. This idiosyncratic way of telling villagers the time started in the years when most were out working in the fields. It was a resounding reminder of the hour if, for some reason, they missed the chimes the first time round.

  The coffee machine in Sancho’s hisses and gurgles through the day, first for the workmen who pop in to have a cognac or a cana (a beer) and then for the more leisurely, the artists and writers, who arrive later in the day from homes scattered round the district to catch up on local news before picking up groceries or newspapers from one of the three colmadas, tiny grocery shops hidden within the back alleys of the village.

  Sancho seems to have a perpetual twinkle which hits high octane whenever he spies an attractive woman. For some reason he is forever chewing a matchstick which is permanently clamped between his front teeth. ‘¿Que tat?’ How are you today, Sancho? He might respond, ‘¡Magnifico!’ or maybe, if I am lucky, ‘¡Musculo!’, bending his elbow to show how strong a fellow he truly is. A gigantic wink always comes as part of the deal. Sancho was born in Soller in the north of the island where all the oranges and lemons grow and when you talk to him about this place, his eyes mist over. Today he is voluble about a couple of trees being planted by the council, in a nearby cul-de-sac. A woman is telling him how the greenery will enhance the village, but Sancho is having none of it. ‘Problemas, muchas problemas,’ he says, shaking his head. The foliage is only going to encourage youngsters to hide and get up to mischief. Sancho is knowledgeable about things like this because he was once a cop in Barcelona.

  His bar is just one room deep and has eight marble tables with chairs. There are several black-and-white sketches and watercolours from appreciative clients on the walls, including one, incongruously, of a river scene in Wales along with a list of forthcoming fiestas. A large fan whirs overhead. At the back of the bar, close to the stairs leading to Sancho and Pepita’s living quarters above, is a table where mail is left. The bar acts as a kind of dead letter drop, post being easier to leave here than deliver to houses at the end of goat tracks in the district. Which means everyone knows who’s up to what. The overspill from the post table often ends up on the stairs wedged between bottles and cartons waiting to be ferried out to crates in the back garden. There is always a lot of rummaging going on at the back of the bar.

  A tiny window above the post table opens to a spectacular view of the mountains but the regulars here aren’t into appreciation of the landscape this early in the morning, there are more pressing concerns. Like shouting at one another. Above the noise of happy chatter I manage to order a black coffee and an ensaimada (a local speciality, a yeast pastry twirled into a flat bun and drizzled with icing sugar), as Sancho dives into his sweety jar to dispense goodies to the little ones who have come into the bar that morning with their parents. From the takings of this small enterprise Sancho and Pepita have raised a family: two girls, Pia and Sofia, and a son, Paco, all now grown. My café Americano hits the spot.

  I’ve squeezed into a corner table in the window to get a better view of early morning village life and am beginning to feel slightly disorientated. My breakfast routine of rising at three to shine on live TV back in Britain is beginning to kick in, my mind at this hour in the morning racing. I have been coming round to thinking that now might be time to try something fresh, to reconnect with a grown-up world away from Breakfast on the BBC, but embracing a less hectic rhythm is obviously not going to be easy. Perhaps my immersion in a ruin in Mallorca in high summer will nudge me towards change ever so gradually and give me perspective on where my career might lead.

  Certainly, as each day passes I’m discovering something new around me. I hadn’t counted, for example, the scattering of almond trees in front of my house, until now. There are twenty. Some as thick as an oak, others just tiny sprigs, their leaves wilting in the heat. Dozens of wild olive trees race along the boundaries and here and there stand overburdened fig trees, desperate to deliver their bonanza of juicy black fruit. Wading through the tall dry grasses towards the house, clutching my barra of fresh bread from the village, I am struck, again, by how remarkable are the gnarled, old fruit trees, aligned a few steps from the front door still giving shade and sustenance. To have them survive until now is a blessing. What is particularly pleasing is the ancient plum, its great crown bent over, like an umbrella, shaped as if to protect the house from the sun but of course it has positioned itself for a ripening.

  This morning I wish I could lie out under its shade but a rattle from a generator has erupted further up the valley, quickly followed by another, calling me to join the chorus. I can see it’s addictive, this noise pollution, because it’s vital to existence here. Without an active generator I won’t have running water in the house, so Johnny’s genny, lurking in the darkness of the dunny, will have to be tackled. Once that’s licked I can plug in a cable, which will power the submersible pump in the cisterna to lift rain water up to a tank in one of the front bedrooms where it’ll tumble by gravity to the kitchen and bathroom below. It all sounds complicated but I’ve been assured it is very straightforward.

  First, though, the cisterna needs checking. It’s onion-shaped, a massive black hole at the front of the house, dug centuries back to catch every available drop of rain from the roof. A big iron key hanging on a board inside the house opens the cisterna’s olive wood door for me to lean in and check the water level. Down in the blackness, the cisterna harbours what look like the tentacles of a giant squid but are in fact the whitened, tangled roots of the vine which has
pushed through the clay lining into the depths to draw in vital moisture. It’s all a bit creepy but through the gloom I’m relieved to see I have enough rain water to last a few more weeks.

  It’s surprising how much water one person can use when it is hot. And of course, in August, there is usually no rain. Hardly a drop falls in summer but with plenty of water underground I can relax. I won’t have to engage just yet with the water tanker and the deposito.

  The deposito is another of Johnny’s contraptions skulking at the back of the house under the brambles. It acts as a backup supply to the cisterna and has a heavy lid with a bit of electrical cord attached to help lift it for a quick inspection. The deposito is where the water tanker, if it can make it up the track, drops its load.

  The cacophony of generators in the valley must have been running for over an hour now so I can’t put it off any longer. I have to grapple with the genny in the dunny but as soon as I attempt to coax it into action it does what I guessed it would: rebel. No matter how much I pull the cord to catch a rev I get no joy. Have I overdone it on the choke? I decide to wait to let it cool or de-coke or whatever it has to do. I mustn’t panic: I have to conquer this misery-guts of a machine because the two of us are in this bind together.

  Finally, after about ten minutes and a lot of spluttering, the genny hits its stride. I adjust the choke lever and let the machine run, clattering along with its neighbour for another hour until mine finally runs out of fuel and dies. But I’m ready for it. Like an alchemist, I have a row of different polythene containers lined up ready for action. A sticky bottle of pinky-red oil, a five-gallon drum of petrol and another to mix the two together. Hey presto, two-stroke. After the genny’s gone off the boil, I’m back in business.

  Thankfully, powering the house with light and heat is an altogether more sophisticated affair. Every Tuesday a clanking wagon reels into town giddy with the weight of a hundred bottles of gas. If I’m there to meet it, I can exchange my empties for full for a few pesetas but even empty bottles weigh mightily and full ones can lay a girl out cold. The drill, apparently, is to deposit empties the night before at Sancho’s because his muscular son, Paco, will help lift the refills into the back of a car the next morning. A full bottle of gas is a killer no matter how I look at it. And I’m going to need three of the brutes a week. One will be hooked to the fridge, another to the hot-water boiler, and the third to the gaslights in the sitting room. If I run out of gas for lights it’s back to candles.

  It’s only when I relate the dos and don’ts of power and light and water to friends who want to stay that I come over all shaky. Everyone, it seems, thinks it’s ridiculous that I have gone and bought a house with no running water or electricity. The house has a telephone line but that’s about it. What was I thinking? I can’t think of a good explanation either. It all sounds too potty for words. The price of solitude, well, not for long anyway.

  As I step into the coolness of the stone house, my eyes adjusting to the dark, the phone begins to ring. I have only been on the island a couple of days and already I’m being asked to leave. It is CBS in America, calling to firm up a meeting in London to talk about a new show launching in New York. It sounds interesting. They want to pitch a proposal to me but unluckily my trip will coincide with a visit friends of mine have already booked with their children. Now they’ll have to cope on their own.

  The next few days are spent in a hot fug of activity. The weather has turned sultry and getting the house into shape quicker than I had planned is proving wearisome. Happily, however, I’ve discovered the second bar in the village, the one run by Lorenzo and his pretty wife Beatriz, along with Lorenzo’s mother and father. It is set back at an angle from the main street which lends it an exclusive air. It’s also a bit quieter than Sancho’s, and calmer. Perfect for me just now.

  Lorenzo roars off most mornings on his motor scooter, a cigar welded to his lips, his helmet askew, to deliver newspapers in San Telm, or at least that’s his excuse. It seems to me this job is simply a way of catching up on cheery happenings over the hill, stopping off at the many bars along the seafront to get the gossip. Lorenzo is a robust, imposing chap who, like a lot of Spanish men, appears bemused at being so doted on by the women in his life. He effects an air of patrimony which endears him to his contemporaries – the carpenters, builders and plumbers who went to school with him and still live and work close by. Beatriz, with her thick dark curls, does day duty, rustling up some mean tortillas for her hungry customers before Lorenzo returns to take on the night-time bar crowd. Evening drinking kicks off on the pavement tables but if there’s an important football match, particularly a game between Madrid and Barcelona, the room inside bursts.

  This bar is also big into lottery tickets which are a national obsession. Ever since Spain launched its first lottery back in 1763 the payouts have escalated. Now, the richest, ‘El Gordo’ – the fat one – is drawn out of huge golden drums on TV in December and as tickets are limited you can imagine the excitement. I’m well into it already.

  Lorenzo and Beatriz’s bar hasn’t been altered in years. A family, whose grainy photos from a century past hang round the walls of its single room, has been content to leave well alone. The bar inside is edged with art deco pink and green ceramics, there are encaustic tiles on the floor in grey and cream, marble-topped tables and the cleanest lavatory in Mallorca.

  Although there are only a dozen houses separating Sancho’s bar from Lorenzo’s both families in this small village work in happy tandem. When one takes a day off, the other stays open. Both serve the best coffee in the world, but as Sancho’s bar is the nearest, I guess this is where I’ll regularly make footfall.

  A fortnight later and the house now sorted, I’m reciting the drill for survival to my friends’ children, George who is eight and his four-year-old sister Rosie, hoping to make it sound an adventure. George is quiet and listens intently. Rosie, distracted, is unhappy to discover there is no TV but for some reason perks up at the prospect of sleeping under a mosquito net. My nervousness at how they’ll manage begins to abate by suppertime. I’ve cobbled together a charcoal grill outside and, with the children happily enjoying a meal of chicken and salad made from the wild spinach, fennel and herbs they’ve picked earlier in the field, everyone begins to relax. As a full moon floats up into the warm summer sky and stars begin to glitter, a strange squeaking creeps into our conversation.

  ‘Mummy, what’s that in the tree?’ asks George who is sitting opposite me, staring into an expanse of wild olive trees in the field. His mother gets up to peer into the semi-darkness. ‘Something’s running up the tree,’ he insists. She concentrates on the tree but can’t make out a thing, telling him, finally, to be quiet.

  A little while later I catch George, his eyes wide, still looking in the direction of the olive trees. He has stopped eating and is riveted. I move to join him and follow his gaze. ‘Why are there rats in the trees?’ he wants to know.

  It is, indeed, quite a sight. Dozens of rat-like creatures big and small are hurtling along the branches like squirrels, squealing and calling to one another. George doesn’t offer up any more observations, so I quickly suggest the children get ready for bed while the rest of us spend what’s left of the evening trying not to make mention of unwelcome rodents.

  I have to fly out to Britain late that night, leaving my friends to handle the vermin problem as best they can. Three days later I’m back to tales of wonder and woe. George has spent most of the time in his bedroom, windows firmly closed on the hottest night of the year, afraid the creatures might creep into the house. They have all, I am grandly informed, been kept awake anyway by the sound of them jumping up and down on the roof although, luckily, they have not seen any sign during the day. ‘Rats take siestas,’ Rosie pronounces as she fetches her bucket and spade to retreat to the beach. I am a heartbeat away from following her.

  I clap eyes close up on one of the culprits the day Rosie and George depart. Quietly reading in a chair under the v
ine I feel something watching. There, framed in a smoke outlet in the bread oven, are two bright eyes and two furry little ears. Its face is very cute, less rodent-like, more bushbaby, but when I look again it turns and, with a twitch of a rat-like tail, disappears. I put the book down and go to investigate but there isn’t a trace. Well, that isn’t quite true. At the back of the oven, a pile of almond husks has been neatly stacked, each husk has a hole where the essence of the almond has clearly been sucked out. It occurs to me that I obviously live in a house with many more inhabitants than I’d bargained for. I’m just not sure what, exactly, lurks within its deepest recesses.

  Thankfully the ‘squirrels’, as I have now less menacingly dubbed these nocturnal athletes, have decided to lower their profile on my return to the island, cavorting on my roof a little less regularly. Or perhaps I’m just getting used to their partying, falling asleep regardless. Even the offer of a life-changing new TV job with CBS, which has come sooner than I expected and got me thinking, is not enough to keep me awake at night. Something about this place must be working.

  Certainly the ants are. There must be millions of them in Mallorca, burrowing and building in the hot sun. I am absorbed with their cleverness and often drop crumbs to see how many race in to lift seemingly impossible weights over huge obstacles, like my big toe, hauling their booty back to their nests in the ground. Only the cicadas in the trees have the same busy energy as the ants in the hottest part of the day. The big black ants with the sharp bite mainly live in massive mounds in the field but come to the house to fight for every morsel with their tinier cousins who have made themselves at home under all the floors and in cracks in every corner. Ants pile out when the fridge opens, clean up the work surface in the kitchen and march in straight black lines up the whitewashed walls in the sitting room. If I am not careful they can also sneak in under the lid of the sugar bowl or burrow away in the tea caddy. I have also known them chew through plastic lids to get at rice or spaghetti. With ants I am always on patrol.