1 – The House on the Hill
The
bright red jeep – a relic of World War Two, opened-topped and
hand-painted – bounced and swayed up the steep, stony mountain
track, brushing past stunted trees and clumps of herbs, which gave
out whiffs of scent as they were disturbed.
Perched
near the summit of a craggy hill was the house that we were heading
for – white, single-storied, the orangey-red tiled roof sloping
down to a flat terrace at one end, with steps leading up from ground
level.
My
possessions were piled high in a suitcase and assorted boxes and
bags, and I was precariously balanced on the spare wheel, behind the
driver. I tried to keep everything in place with one hand and myself
with the other, at the same time risking a glance back at the blue
Mediterranean far down below. My wife sat in front, next to the
driver. I’m going to call her Becky, although that isn’t her
name. Her long black hair glistened in the sun. She was slim and
attractive, ten years younger than me, and often taken for a
Spaniard. I never was then, with my shoulder-length hair and faintly
bohemian although unmistakeably English appearance.
On the
scrubby hillside on either side of the track were dusty cars in
various stages of disintegration, four in all, looking abandoned
rather than parked. This, I was later to learn, was almost invariably
an indication that an expatriate resident lived close by. Sure
enough, all of them had British licence plates, strictly illegal if
they had been there as long as it seemed they had.
None
of the cars looked as though it would ever move again, but I knew
that the one parked in the desultory shade of a withered tree could
be coaxed into life by pushing it down the slope and then jumping in
when the engine coughed itself awake, because I had seen it done. The
trick was to run alongside the vehicle being careful not to get left
behind, scrambling into the driver’s seat at the very last moment,
just before the car careered off down to the main road on its own.
The
town was out of sight, over the crest of the hill, though from the
patio the view was spectacular enough: a wooded valley surrounded on
three sides by looming mountains, outcrops of pale rock, isolated
white houses dotted here and there, and the road far below snaking up
from the coast with the odd slowly-moving car looking like a
lethargic ant.
After
a lightning visit to the house to leave my possessions I offered to
buy a thank-you drink in the town for bringing me, despite the fact that I had
topped up the tank at a service station on the way. So we clambered
back into the jeep and headed back down the track to the main road,
although it was a main road only by mountain standards, petering off
to dirt at its irregular borders, full of potholes, and with no
barrier to stop us from plunging down the ravine if we took a bend
too quickly, or had to swerve in a hurry to miss an oncoming car.
I held
my breath until we had negotiated the final bend safely and there
spread out in front of us was the town, a jumble of white houses,
flat-topped or with faded-red roofs, stretching down the hillside
nearest to us and up another one. Most were from two to four storeys
high, although a few had an extra floor. A grey stone church, its
slim tower topped off with a red pointed roof, was perched on the
summit of a wooded hill at the far edge of the town. Beyond were
parched fields stretching into the distance and then dark mountains
and behind the mountains more mountains.
The
panorama produced a little contraction of pleasure in my stomach,
just as it had the first time I saw it.
