Driving Over Lemons Part 16

Eleanor was elegant, too. Whereas Richard did not place his appearance high on his list of priorities he would wear a huge pair of tennis shoes, long shorts and a shirt with the collar askew and a tie draped somewhere between neck and breastbone Eleanor achieved quite unconsciously an air of natural grace, as if instead of slogging up some dusty mountain track, she was hostessing a party on the vicarage lawn.

Chloe, for some reason better known perhaps to three-yearolds, had taken against the idea of the holy water and oil when we had explained it to her. This of course is the problem with leaving the business until the child has a will of its own. She flicked her head ominously and made it clear she didn't want to hear another word on the subject. Ana wrung her hands and looked at me appealingly. 'It'll probably be alright on the night,' I a.s.sured her. 'You know the way these things are.' I took refuge in my habitual optimism.

Introduced at lunch, Chloe regarded Richard and Eleanor with suspicion. They were, after all, very tall and imposing, and when they tried to weaken her defences by treating her as if she were a fellow human and by being nice to her, she sought refuge in silence. The next day, however, she was persuaded to accompany our guests down to the valley to give them a botanical tour. She was good at this; it gave her an opportunity to regurgitate the litany of botanical names she had learned on our seed-picking expeditions. But quite apart from revelling in sing-song Latin, she had a real love of plants and a good knowledge of the poisonous ones, which Ana had instilled in her before she could walk. To non-botanists, the sound of a three-year-old trilling out names like Adenocarpus decorticans Adenocarpus decorticans, Euphorbia characias or Anthyllis cytisusoides Euphorbia characias or Anthyllis cytisusoides might seem monstrously precocious though city children are just as fluent with the names of favourite dinosaurs. In any case, we doting parents thought it was marvellous, and Richard and Eleanor, to whom such names were as bread and milk, were roundly impressed. The discovery of their shared enthusiasm for plants broke the ice, and when they returned to the house both factions seemed charmed by one another. I was dispatched to buy the ingredients for a giant paella and to inform the previously warned guests that all was in readiness for the following Sat.u.r.day. might seem monstrously precocious though city children are just as fluent with the names of favourite dinosaurs. In any case, we doting parents thought it was marvellous, and Richard and Eleanor, to whom such names were as bread and milk, were roundly impressed. The discovery of their shared enthusiasm for plants broke the ice, and when they returned to the house both factions seemed charmed by one another. I was dispatched to buy the ingredients for a giant paella and to inform the previously warned guests that all was in readiness for the following Sat.u.r.day.

Susanne, a friend from the other side of town, was to be the G.o.dmother. She, like Domingo, was another person we wanted to draw into our family orbit. She had come to be a neighbour of ours as a result, so she said, of sticking a pin in a map of Europe and then moving lock, stock and barrel to the point thus decided upon. Like Georgina, she is one of those formidable young Englishwomen who steer their chosen course through the world quite oblivious of navigational hazards. Susanne is a gifted artist; she wanders the Alpujarra in her reprehensible wreck of a car, doing landscapes in pen and watercolour. As with astrologers, there is no shortage of artists in the Alpujarras, but Susanne's work, in its originality and the exquisite skill of its execution, holds its own with the best.

For the last few years Susanne has been confined to a wheelchair, due to crippling rheumatoid arthritis, but along with a disarming sultriness, she manages to maintain her unshakeable good humour. In her dark smoky voice she explained to me how the wretched disease was the result of unspeakable transgressions in earlier lives, something to do with supplying cosmetics containing white lead to the ladies of Minoan Crete, in the full knowledge of its harmful properties. Her eyes twinkled with delight as she growled out this singular story.

Chloe adores Susanne, because she is one of those people who are never too busy or too tired or in too much pain to fool around with children. She is one of the few foreigners in the Alpujarras whom I visit regularly, and she can always make me laugh. Anyway, the day before the christening, Domingo and I helped Susanne onto the back of the patient Bottom and waded with her across the river. Ana had had to leave early to collect her parents who were staying at a holiday apartment on the coast and, instead of waiting for the return of the Landrover, Susanne opted to process by donkey up to the house the only guest to realise my more romantic plans for the christening.

I had also invited some friends from the town, along with Cathy and John and half their neighbours from Puerto Jubiley. Wherever Cathy and John go, half the villagers go along for the ride but never more than half. There are two opposing factions in the village as the result of some fifty-year-old dispute concerning a poplar tree and a goat, and only one of the factions can be accommodated at any one time. For the christening we had the west of the river faction. Old Man Domingo and Expira were of course going to attend in their official capacity of G.o.dgrandparents; and then there were Bernardo and Isabel with their children, Fabian, Maite, and Chloe's beloved Rosa. Antonia, who by this time had become a very special friend of the family, was in Holland for an exhibition and so unable to come. In lieu of her presence she had sent Chloe a tiny sheep cast in bronze.

Along with Ana's mother and father, that made about forty people. So I borrowed two huge paella dishes and lit a great fire of rosemary and olive over which I placed the tripods. All morning the fire blazed away, scenting the breeze with its sweet smoke. The kitchen was cluttered with helpers making salads and dishes of dainties, and a great tub of fruity costa costa punch made its appearance. Somehow we gathered enough chairs and tables and cable drums for the company and Ana decked them with the snowy cloths I had dreamed of, setting arrangements of wild flowers on each table. Meanwhile Chloe played happily with Rosa and the accursed Barbies, composing new episodes in the dolls' lives to accommodate the bronze sheep, blissfully unaware of the preparations. punch made its appearance. Somehow we gathered enough chairs and tables and cable drums for the company and Ana decked them with the snowy cloths I had dreamed of, setting arrangements of wild flowers on each table. Meanwhile Chloe played happily with Rosa and the accursed Barbies, composing new episodes in the dolls' lives to accommodate the bronze sheep, blissfully unaware of the preparations.

At last the guests started to arrive, parking their cars by the bridge and scuffing up the dusty hill in their finery. The older members of the party who didn't fancy the trudge up to El Valero were ferried up the track in the Landrover. I placed the paellas on the fire and the drinks began to flow.

The Spanish contingent watched fascinated as Richard made adjustments to his robes. The older guests had little inkling of our religious persuasions and were perhaps expecting some sort of pagan rite. They shuffled carefully into a position from where they could bolt if things got out of control. With cries of 'a la misa misa', I managed to gather the English and a few of the bolder Spaniards round the altar, a consecrated cable-drum with embroidered cloth and flowers, and quieten them enough for Richard to give a moving and simple address and read some prayers.

'Why don't you translate what he's saying so everybody can understand it?' Ana whispered.

'Because I'm overcome by the gravity of the moment, Ana,' I lied. The truth was that I didn't have the necessary apparatus connected for simultaneous translation from Biblical English to Alpujarran Spanish.

Chloe was persuaded to abandon Rosa and the dolls for a while and step forward in her party dress with Domingo and Susanne. She was a robust, reluctant and slippery toddler, so the G.o.dparents had to dispense with the tradition of carrying the infant tenderly to the font, and stand awkwardly beside her instead. Chloe looked as if she was about to cut up rough but Ana managed to bribe her into a hesitant co-operation by flashing the edge of a bar of chocolate, kept at the ready in her pocket, and pointing meaningfully towards the altar. Chloe edged forward throwing side glances at the chocolate in the way that sailors keep a lighthouse in view when crossing onsh.o.r.e tides.

Richard looked magnificent in his beautiful robes, standing in the dappled sunlight beneath the acacia tree. He bent down and placed his hand gently on Chloe's shoulder, uttered the appropriate incantation and made the sign of the cross with the holy water and oil on her scrunched-up brow. Ana and I breathed a sigh of relief as she slunk back to Rosa clutching her chocolate. I like to think they shared it. It's no good just going through with the form of the thing, you have to act by its precepts.

As a climax to the service, and to the utter bafflement of the Spanish faction, the English then sang 'All Things Bright And Beautiful', this being the only hymn in which we could all pa.s.s muster. Chorus, then first verse, then chorus again, then a verse that Richard had written specially for the occasion, then a last chorus. Unaccompanied and a little wobbly at the start, the communal voices soon gathered in strength and soared across the valley, their song swelled by the rushing of the rivers and the call of a nightingale ringing out from the barranco barranco.

WATER OVER THE BRIDGE...

DURING OUR FIRST YEARS AT EL VALERO THE WEATHER HAD been more or less predictable. The summers were hot and the winters were mild. Although a feeling of nervous antic.i.p.ation would set in when we contemplated the onset of the fierce summer heat, we were surprised, when it actually happened, by how well we adapted to it. We soon learned to drag the bed onto the roof and sleep beneath the stars, to hang a heavy blanket over the door to keep the cool air in the house, and to put a bottle of frozen water in the struggling gas fridge. Winter weather was comfortable, cool and sunny, though with not quite enough rain to keep the flora of the hills in good fettle. Even during our own short time here we had noticed that the winters had seemed to become just slightly drier nothing dramatic but enough to leave an air of dejection about the trees and a desperation among the more shallow-rooted plants.

The river ran on easily and inoffensively through winter and summer alike, swelling briefly as the June heat melted the mountain snow, then returning to its lazy summer level. The rain and the river muddled along in their own way, apparently reluctant to give us any trouble, until the summer after Chloe's christening when we had our first taste of serious drought.

Almost no snow had fallen that winter on the mountains, and the spring rains fell feebly and dried up with a spate of hot winds coming up from the Sahara. By June the river was no more than a few brackish puddles among the boulders, and then in July, for the first time in living memory, the trickle of water in the Cadiar river stopped altogether.

Dead fish lay rotting in the dry pools and the paths of the valley were ankle-deep in hot dust. The gra.s.s in the fields at El Valero withered to brown and crackled beneath our feet, and the leaves of the trees shrivelled and curled. On hot summer evenings in previous years we would stroll en famille en famille down to the ford, and bathe in the pool, or sit enjoying the breeze and watching the swallows and bats put on their evening aerobatic show; but that summer it was difficult to imagine water ever running again in the river. The silence of the river was made more sinister by the insane screaming of the cicadas. down to the ford, and bathe in the pool, or sit enjoying the breeze and watching the swallows and bats put on their evening aerobatic show; but that summer it was difficult to imagine water ever running again in the river. The silence of the river was made more sinister by the insane screaming of the cicadas.

It's the Greenhouse Effect, said some . . . the hole in the ozone layer . . . El Nino . . . an unfortunate alignment of planets. The old men shook their heads and predicted dark times to come. The drought affected the whole of Andalucia and most of Spain. Rivers and springs dried up all over the province; wells were down to the salty sludge at the bottom; whole forests of trees, even the hardy Aleppo pines, withered and died. orgiva was limited to an hour of water a day, and there were bush-fires breaking out right across Spain.

Ana and I felt somehow let down by the river. We had bought our farm on its far side cheap, because n.o.body else wanted to take the risk and during all of our time here the river had been nothing but a good neighbour to us, entertaining us during the day and lulling us to sleep at night. It had left our bridges alone, it had permitted us to drive the Landrover through the ford at most times of the year, and it provided cool bathing to refresh us from the heat, and clear water to irrigate our crops. It showed none of the nasty tendencies we had been warned about and now it had gone and dried up.

I had found the idea of living close to a really dangerous and elemental force rather appealing but it had become about as elemental as a duck-pond in a munic.i.p.al park. It was a dying thing, it seemed. When I mentioned these thoughts to Domingo or his parents, they would shake their heads and look at me in consternation. Nonetheless, as September arrived and there was no sign of the thunderstorms that come to break the summer heat, people grew more and more concerned.

As if to compound the misery, towering banks of thunderheads would gather around the mountains, and then black clouds would boil up the valley, but not a drop of rain fell. As night drew on, the stars would appear through the gaps in the cloud and by the time midnight came the sky would be clear once again. Perhaps this really was a fundamental weather change. A number of foreigners thought this was the case and talked of abandoning their Andalucian homes. Barkis's rescuers, George and Alison, who live high up on the Contraviesa, were thinking of moving north to rain-sodden Galicia. They had created a water-garden with a pool and waterfall, right beside their house, but the spring that supplied its stream had dried up the year before and now there was barely enough water for the rabbits. Moving away was hardly an option for us, as we had already burnt our boats by buying a farm that no one else was likely to want. It was a relief, though, not to have to bother ourselves about that decision. Like Domingo, we would be staying come fair weather or foul, and the knowledge that this was so served to strengthen the bonds between us.

Then in mid-September it rained. A few heavy drops fell, sporadically at first, each one making a small crater in the dust. Little by little the drops coalesced into a steady drizzle. The colour of the land darkened and the air filled with the smell of hot wet dust and pine. The stones in the river glistened and with the pa.s.sing of the hours tiny rivulets and puddles began to form. A quiet sussuration became apparent where before there had been silence. By the morning, still with no heavy rain, the river was flowing again. With the lowering of the clouds everybody's spirits started to lift. It rained lightly for three days, enough to settle the dust and build up the flow of the river, and then it stopped. Everybody agreed that there had not been enough rain to water even the peppers, and that the time for rejoicing had not yet come.

September moved into October with no more rain, though something kept the river going. And then in November the downfall began, not with a deluge, just a nice steady downpour that kept on coming day and night, day and night. By the morning of the second day there was a terrifying flow of dark water racing down from the gorge. Effortlessly it shifted the bridge out of the way, pulverising the stone piers and sweeping the beams far down the river. And with each pa.s.sing hour it rose still more, bringing with it boulders the size of small buildings thundering like cannons as they moved through the awful tumult. The water was black and evil-smelling, and all the country round, normally so quiet, echoed to its monstrous noise.

The days of rain became weeks and our roof started to leak, the solar power died, and all the firewood was so soaked it was useless. The river thundered on, filling the valley with a sense of foreboding. As the earth became saturated with water, the hills began to crumble into the valleys. We would hear a roar and watch as hundreds of tons of sodden earth and rocks avalanched down the mountainside, bringing trees and bushes along with it. Much of the acequia acequia was destroyed by landslips so that there was not even a trace of its former path, and a huge ma.s.s of rock had slithered down onto the track. The only way to get things up to the house now was with the wheelbarrow. I had never imagined such awesome erosion; the mountains were literally being swept down to the sea. was destroyed by landslips so that there was not even a trace of its former path, and a huge ma.s.s of rock had slithered down onto the track. The only way to get things up to the house now was with the wheelbarrow. I had never imagined such awesome erosion; the mountains were literally being swept down to the sea.

We had no telephone, which had the effect of emphasising our isolation, though we were also pleased not to be worrying people by telling them how awful things had become. There were fourteen buckets and bowls dotted about the house catching drips, and the nearest thing to good cheer was a dull fire smouldering in the chimney.

Ana, with her usual foresight, had ama.s.sed a decent stock of tinned tomatoes and dried pasta to eat, some potatoes, onions and flour, custard powder and anchovies, but there was little else. We weaved around the drips in the house, trying to find amus.e.m.e.nts for Chloe and distractions from the minor ailments that were beginning to plague us; coughs, sniffles, wheezy chests and a la.s.situde that the damp pages of Juliette and a water-logged herb garden could do little to alleviate.

I remembered Expira and Old Man Domingo's warnings about the river and their dread tales of the Deaf One's daughter dying in childbirth, or the woman with acute appendicitis whose mule was swept from beneath her when she tried to reach the hospital. So this was what they had been talking about.

There was a way out from El Valero if an emergency arose but it involved a four-hour walk up the hill and along to Mecina Fondales. The bridge at Mecina was an ancient stone one built fifty feet above the river in a narrow gorge and usable at any state of flood. This way might have been an option for shopping, at a pinch, but less useful in cases of appendicitis.

As our enforced isolation continued, we became daily more disheartened and began to feel a little threatened by the ceaseless roaring of waters and the rain and mist that now never left the valley. Under normal circ.u.mstances we would do all we could to avoid going to town, but now we were almost reduced to tears by the thought of its unattainable delights.

And then one day as I was wandering about down by the river, I saw Domingo. What struck me about his presence was that he was on our side of the river. When I had finished expressing my astonishment, he told me that he had managed to walk across in a place where the river was wider and shallower, using a stout stick to support himself. He had just come to check that we were alright. 'What we need to do is fix up a cable across the river,' he announced. 'It's never been done here before because people are too old-fashioned to think of anything new, but I think it could be the solution to your problems.'

The next morning I stood on the bank of the river just upstream from the ford, waiting while Domingo sorted out a tangle of string and wire on the far side. After several tries he managed to throw across a stone attached to a line of string. I pulled on the string and steadily the wire cable pa.s.sed over the river. On the wire was a bag containing a spanner and a pair of bulldog clips. I pa.s.sed the cable around the base of the trunk of a stout bush and connected it with the bulldog clips.

When I had finished, Domingo connected his end to the trunk of a tamarisk, in a similar manner to my side but including a tensioning screw, which he then wound up as tight as he could. Then he snapped a shackle onto the cable, and, suspended beneath it on a rope, inched out across the water. The cable stretched as he reached the middle but he was still a good metre above the river, and in less than a minute he landed among the bushes on our side.

I clapped him on the back and laughed for sheer relief that he was safe, and delight that the thing was going to work. We then set to work putting in a couple more tensioning screws and reinforcing the anchor around the bush, and within the hour we had a safe and serviceable aerial cableway that we could use until the river dropped enough to build a new bridge.

Over the following weeks we refined the 'Flying Fox' with a smooth-running system of ropes and pulleys, a comfortable canvas bucket-seat, and a landing platform on either side of the river. Its only small disadvantage was that, except for those with a very outward bound sort of disposition, you needed two people to make it work, thus reducing the already thin incidence of single visitors. Chloe loved to be hauled across; it was the best swing she has ever known. We all got pretty skilled at using it, pa.s.sing across gas-bottles, sacks of animal-feed, sacks of shopping, a new water-tank, friends and neighbours and their children, some rams, and, on one occasion, a sick ibex.

The ibex had been found hiding in a bush by the ford one evening. It was stricken with the sarcoptic mange, a skin disease that the wild ibexes had picked up from flocks of sheep and goats. At the time the mange was sweeping through the ibex population and causing great concern to the Nature Protection Agency. Domingo suggested that we haul it across the river and take it to the Agency vet in town. We caught it, lashed the poor creature's feet together and hung it from the shackle. Then we swung it across the river and dumped it in the back of Pepe's Landrover, to the consternation of his dogs who were crammed to one side to make room. The vet bathed the ibex, vaccinated it and then released it a week later fully recovered. It took poor Pepe another week, however, to rid his dogs of the scourge.

When the rain finally stopped and the clouds lifted, we set about drying out the house, a matter of dragging outside anything that could be lifted and flinging open the doors and windows to let the sun and wind blast through. Then we began picking up the threads of our daily life. One afternoon, as I was hacking the finishing touches to a drainage channel from the sodden stable-yard, I was surprised to see Antonia walking up the path. 'h.e.l.lo,' she said in her carefully intoned English. 'I have brought something for you people all alone with no bridge. See, here are some cakes and this bottle, I think, will cheer you up.' It was always a pleasure to see Antonia and she was right about the Dutch gin, but it amazed me that she had appeared at all. 'How did you get across the river?' I asked. 'Don't tell me you can use the cable on your own?'

'Domingo helped me,' she answered simply. 'He will come and join us, he is making the cable more strong. He wants to borrow something.'

Sure enough, Domingo soon sauntered up the hill, casting critical glances at my attempts too little and too late to make flood channels. He sat down with us and drank some tea, a thing he very rarely does, and even helped himself to one of Antonia's cakes. Neither Ana nor I had ever known him to eat cake in our house before.

'I want to borrow the fencing pliers.'

'Of course. Why, what are you doing?'

'Putting up a bit of fencing to stop the sheep s.h.i.tting on Antonia's terrace,' he replied as if it was a routine farming ch.o.r.e.

That autumn Antonia had moved into the house at La Herradura, just across the valley, to get away from the turmoil of the building of a new battery rabbit and chicken farm at La Hoya. The owner of La Herradura was pleased to have Antonia living in the house at a peppercorn rent, as houses here seem to show their appreciation of a human presence by being slower to fall down. Domingo's flock, unable to cross the river, was grazing that winter at La Herradura, and the sheep, all two hundred of them, liked to gather in a tight huddle on Antonia's patio to shelter from the rain; hence the problem with the sheep-s.h.i.t.

Domingo apparently needed to borrow a lot of tools for whatever it was that he was doing at La Herradura because he accompanied Antonia on almost all of her trips back and forth to the house. We grew used to seeing them walking together up to our patio and, if it surprised us that Domingo seemed rather more sociable than before, and Antonia somehow happier and more spirited, we neither of us felt inclined to comment on it.

By the middle of April the water level had gone down enough for us to build a new bridge. Domingo and I, with Bottom dragging the heavy green beams, built it in a short day, a considerable achievement I thought. I had no more illusions about its permanency. I had learned my lesson about building in the river. As the snow on the high mountains melted with the heat of early summer, the river rose again, giving the new bridge a battering, but leaving it this time where it was. Then the river settled down to its summer level, flowing peacefully down the valley. Having shown us its wrath, it was a good neighbour again.

The summer that followed the rains was a rather more auspicous season. The sheep thrived on the lush gra.s.ses that now covered the hill, giving us a fine yield of lambs. The holiday cottage that we called El Duque, the old name for the land on that side of the river, was occupied week after week by guests who were delighted with the beauty of the exuberantly blooming countryside. Our seed-merchant friend from Suss.e.x came to stay, bringing a huge order for scores of different varieties, and the plants that were to bear the seeds responded to the mood of optimism by flowering in spectacular fashion. We felt ready for anything.

In September Chloe was due to start school. She was not quite four but Rosa had started the year before and Chloe was desperate to join her. She felt none of the trepidation of her parents about her coming ordeal. The day your first child starts school is a staging post of life, one of the many leaps into the abyss. We were horribly wistful at the thought of our only daughter lurching away from us in the orgiva school bus but tried to make a decent show of sharing her excitement at becoming a proper Spanish schoolgirl.

August nights can be hot. You sit outside, scantily dressed for coolness, and the sweat still pours off you, while the frenzied screaming of the cicadas and other hot-night creatures makes your head reel.

That summer there was one spectacularly sultry night. Sleep would have been impossible so, after a late supper, we three along with the two dogs went down to the Cadiar for a midnight bathe. The moon was full to illuminate our path and we took some candles to light the shadows by the river.

There was a pool in the river which we had made by spanning the gap between a couple of rocks with some tree-trunks, and filling in the dam with stones and brushwood. We set the candles on the dam and slipped into the cool water. Swimming upstream a little, we drifted back with the lazy current and watched the moonlight and the candle-flames glittering in the ripples on the dark surface of the water. The canes and willows on the banks stood motionless in the breathless heat of the night. The dogs sat patiently by the water and Chloe, sitting like a mermaid on a rock, droned sleepily on through a succession of Spanish nursery rhymes that Rosa had taught her.

All of a sudden the dogs leapt to their feet and growled, staring into the distance up the river. The moon had sunk behind the Serreta now, and apart from the pool of light made by our candles, the river was in darkness. I shivered a little anxiously, wondering what might be out there. We peered into the shadows but could see nothing. And then little by little a pale mist seemed to fill the valley. It swelled and then shrank, and then started to take on a more solid form as it moved closer towards us. We stood and stared, transfixed.

Bonka started to bark furiously, and then I heard the bells. It was Domingo's sheep moving down the moonlit river. I could just make out the tall shape of Bottom with her huge ears erect, at the head of the flock. As they drew closer I could make out Domingo riding the donkey; and behind him, with her arms around his waist and her head sleepy on his shoulder, was Antonia.

We slid like alligators back into the river and grinned at one another as they pa.s.sed.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Thanks to Natania Jansz and Mark Ellingham, my editors and publishers, for their encouragement, advice and friendship. They must at times have regretted the day we first sat munching oranges beside the river, discussing a book but if they did, they never let it show. Thanks also to Carole Stewart and Andrew Hogg for helping this book and its author along in a hundred different ways; to Domingo and his family; to Antonia and 'los del Puerto' for their unstinting friendship and neighbourly help; and to the ever-inspiring, ever-welcoming Ortega family, who run the Bar Mirasierra Bar Mirasierra, my 'office' in orgiva. Above all, of course, warmest thanks to Ana and Chloe, who have put up with me, curbed my excesses, stopped me getting uppity, and provided so much of the material that you have just read.

Chris Stewart DRIVING OVER LEMONS.

Chris Stewart lives in Spain with his wife, Ana, and his daughter, Chloe.