Medusa

The villa Miguel Gallardo was now building stood right on the point, a little south and east of one he had completed two years before. There was a turning place nearby, but instead of swinging round it, I edged the car into the cul-de-sac beyond where it dipped steeply to the cliff edge. A tramontana was beginning to blow and even before I had switched the engine off I could hear the break of the waves two hundred feet or so below. I sat there for a moment, looking out towards the coast of France, remembering how it had been two years ago when I had taken a boat over to Genoa and a tramontana had caught us, a full gale, straight off the Alps and as cold as hell. We had been lucky to get away with it, the boat leaking and one of the spreaders broken so that we could only sail on the port tack.

I put the handbrake hard on, turned the wheels into the rubble of rock at the roadside and got out of the car, the breeze ruffling my hair, the salt air filling my lungs. God! It felt good, and I stretched my arms. There were little puffs of cloud on the horizon, the scene very different from the quiet of the southern coast, no protection at all. The urbanization, when it was built, would be facing the open sea and the full brunt of the north winds, so why the hell buy a villa here? I tried to see it in summer, all white stucco and red tiles, cacti on the retaining wall, passion flowers and bougainvillaea, with trailers of morning-glory over a Moroccan-style façade. It would be cool in summer and a breathtaking view, the dreadful hotels of Arenal d’en Castell hidden by the headland and the rock coast stretching east all the way to the lighthouse of Faváritx on the dragon-toothed finger of land after which it was named.

The engine of Miguel’s cement mixer started into life and I climbed back up the slope, making for the gaunt skeletal structure of the half-completed villa. He was waiting for me at the foot of a ladder lashed to the wooden scaffolding. ‘Buenos dias. You come to inspect, eh?’ He was a thickset man with a long, doleful face and a big hooked nose. He was from Granada, from the Arab district of Albacein, and claimed kinship with both Moors and Jews, his family going back five centuries to Ferdinand and Isabella and the Inquisition that followed their conquest of the last Moorish stronghold in Europe. ‘Iss your property now.’ He said it hesitantly, seeking confirmation, the inflexion of his voice making it a question rather than a statement.

‘Let’s have a look at it,’ I said.

I saw the sudden doubt in his eyes, his dark, unshaven features solemn and uneasy. ‘Okay, senor.’ The formality was a measure of his unease. He normally called me by my Christian name. ‘But you have seen it before, also the plans.’

‘I didn’t know I was buying it then.’

‘And now you are?’ Again the question in his voice, the dark eyes watching me, his broad forehead creased in a frown.

‘Let’s have a look at it,’ I said again. ‘Starting at the top.’

He shrugged, motioning me to go ahead of him. The scaffolding shook as we climbed to the first storey, the heat-dried wooden poles lashed with ropes. Everything — boards, scaffolding, ladders — was coated with a dusting of cement that only half-concealed the age-old layers of splashed paint. A younger brother, Antoni, and a cousin whose name I could not remember, were rendering the southern face of the building.

‘It will be a very beautiful villa,’ Miguel said tentatively. ‘When we have finished it, you will see, it will look — pretty good, eh?’ He prided himself on his English.

We climbed to the top, and he stood there looking about him. He was one of a family of thirteen. Back in Granada his father had a tiny little jewellery shop in one of those alleys behind the Capila Real, mostly second-hand stuff, the window full of watches with paper tags on them. I think his real business was money-lending, the contents of the shop largely personal items that had been pawned. ‘Buena vista, eh?’ And Miguel added, ‘You can have a garden here. The roof is flat, you see. And the lookout … all that sea.’ His tone had brightened, knowing I was a sailor.

‘There is also a fine view of the water tanks on the top of those bloody hotels at Arenal d’en Castell.’

‘You grow some vines, you never see them.’

‘In tubs and trained over a trellis? Come off it, Miguel. The first puff of wind out of the north …’

He looked away uncomfortably, knowing how exposed the position was. ‘It will be nice and cool in summer. It was good here when we make the foundations.’

We worked our way down to the ground floor, which was almost finished. He was using one of the rooms as an office and we went over the costings. I suggested certain adjustments, chiefly to the lighting, cut out the air-conditioning and one or two other luxuries I considered unnecessary, agreed a price for completion, and we shook hands on it.