Hammond Innes - Medusa

‘What did Miguel want?’ Miguel Gallardo was the contractor we used when there was maintenance work we couldn’t handle ourselves. He was now building a villa out on Punta Codolar, a bare, bleak headland in the north of the island that was crisscrossed with the half-completed roads of a new urbanizatión .

‘He needs help,’ she said.

‘Money?’

She nodded. ‘It’s all this build-up of trouble in the Med, of course — Libya in particular. The American he’s building for has suddenly got cold feet and wants out. He’s offering Miguel the whole place in lieu of what he owes him.’ She reached out, her fingers gripping my arm as though she had hold of the villa already. ‘I had a look at it with Petra when you were delivering that boat to Ajaccio, and now he says we can have it, as it stands, at cost. We pay Miguel’s account, and that’s that — it’s ours.’ She gave me the figure then, adding, ‘It’s a chance in a million, Mike.’

‘Miguel to complete, of course.’

‘Well, that’s only fair.’

‘It’s barely half-completed, remember.’ But it wasn’t the cost of completion I was thinking about. It was the political tension building up locally. ‘There’s been windows broken, one villa set on fire, another smashed down by a runaway road roller …’

‘That’s just a passing phase.’ I shook my head, but she went on quickly: ‘It won’t last, and when the panic is over, a lot of people will be cursing themselves for putting their villas on the market at knockdown prices. I’m thinking of the future.’ The cups and plaques on the shelves behind her glimmered bright with memories of days gone. What future? She kept them so well polished I sometimes felt it was the crack shot, the Olympic sailor, the image she had of me, not myself, not the essential lazy, mediocre, ill-educated — oh hell, what deadly blows life deals to a man’s self-confidence! Maybe she was right, polish the mirror-bright image, retain the front intact and forget the human freight behind. And now she wasn’t thinking of us, only of the child. She had less than two months to go, and if this was another boy, and he lived … I hesitated, looking out to the bay. She had a good head for business and a highly developed sense for property, but politically — she was a fool politically. ‘It’s too lovely a day to argue,’ I said, thinking of the smell of cut grass on the Bisley Ranges, the whiff of cordite in the hot air, gun oil and the targets shimmering.

‘You’re going sailing, is that it?’ Her tone had sharpened.

A bit of a breeze was coming in, ruffling the water so that the surface of the harbour had darkened. She had always resented the sailing side of my life, my sudden absences. ‘I’ll take the dinghy, and if the wind holds I’ll sail across to Bloody Island, see how the dig’s going. You coming?’ She enjoyed day sailing, for picnics and when the weather was fine.

‘Petra’s not there,’ she said.

The phone rang and she answered it, speaking swiftly in Spanish. A long silence as she listened. Then she turned to me, her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It’s Miguel. He’s had a firm offer.’

The bell sounded from below and a voice called to me urgently from the chandlery. ‘Tell him to take it then,’ I said as I went down the stairs to find Ramán standing at the back of the workshop by the storeroom door, his teeth showing long and pointed as he smiled nervously. He had picked up Lennie, the Australian who did most of our repainting, but when they had arrived at the villa near Binicalaf Nou they had found the patio door ajar. It had been forced open and one of the bedrooms had been occupied. Both beds had been used, sheets and blankets grubby with dirt, a filthy pile of discarded clothes lying in a corner, and in the bathroom a tap left running, the basin overflowing, the floor awash. He had left Lennie clearing up the mess and had come back to pick up lime, cement and sand, all the materials they would need to replaster the kitchen ceiling immediately below.

We went through into the store, which was virtually a cave hacked out of the cliff that formed the back wall of the building. I don’t know what it had been originally, probably a fisherman’s boathouse, but it was bone dry and very secure, almost like having a private vault. As we went in Ramán said, ‘No good, these people, senor. They make much dirt.’ And he added, ‘I not like.’ His long face was tight-lipped and uneasy.

If only I had gone for a sail earlier … But it would probably have made no difference. There are days in one’s life, moments even, when a whole series of small happenings come together in such a way that in retrospect one can say, that was the start of it. But only in retrospect. At the time I was just angry at the way Soo had acted. Instead of telling Miguel to take the offer, she had called out to me as she put the phone down, ‘I’ve told him we’ll match it.’ She came halfway down the stairs then, clutching at the guard rope, her eyes bright, her mouth set in that funny way of hers that produced holes like dimples at the corners of her mouth, adding breathlessly, ‘I’m sure we’ll get it now. I’m sure we will.’

I was on my way out to the car with a cardboard box of the things Lennie would need and I stood there, staring up at her flushed, excited face, thinking how quickly one’s life can be caught up in a web of material responsibilities so that there is no time left for the things one really wants to do. But it was no use arguing with her in that mood, her big, very white teeth almost clenched with determination, and in the end I went out, kicking the door to behind me.

My anger drained away as I headed out of Mahon on the San Clemente road, the sun a welcome change after weeks of cloud and blustery outbreaks of rain. The sudden warmth had brought the wild flowers out, the green of the fields a chequerboard of colour, yellow mainly, but here and there white splashes of narcissi. And there were kites hanging in the blue of the sky.

I passed the talayots by Binicalaf, my spirits lifting as they always did approaching this area of concentrated megalithic remains, the stone beehive-like mounds standing sharply outlined. The place where Lennie was working was on a track to the west of Cales Coves. It was about the nicest of the fifty or so villas we looked after. From the main bedroom you could just see the first of the coves, the cliffs beyond showing the gaping holes of several caves. He had cleared up most of the mess by the time I arrived, the sodden plaster stripped from the kitchen ceiling. It could have been worse, but it was unfortunate the squatters had picked on this particular villa, the owner being a man who argued over almost every item on his account. ‘Where are the clothes they left behind?’ I asked, wondering whether it was worth bringing the Guardia into it.

Lennie showed me a dirt-encrusted bundle of discarded clothing. He had been over it carefully, but had found nothing to indicate who the men were. ‘Looks like they been digging. Two of them, I reck’n.’ He thought perhaps the rains had flushed them out of one of the caves. Some of the old cave dwellings were still used and in summer there were women as well as men in them, kids too, often as not the whole family wandering about stark naked. ‘It’s like snakes out in the bush,’ he muttered, holding up a filthy remnant of patched jeans. ‘Always discarding their old skin. There’s usually bits and pieces of worn-out rag below the cave entrances.’

In the circumstances there didn’t seem much point in notifying the authorities. Lennie agreed. ‘What the hell can they do? Anyway, look at it from their point of view, why should they bother? It’s another foreign villa broken into, that’s all. Who cares?’ And then, as I was leaving, he suddenly said, ‘That girl you’re so keen on, mate — ’ and he grinned at me slyly. ‘The archy-logical piece wot’s digging over by the old hospital …’ He paused there, his pale eyes narrowed, watching for my reaction.