We moved into the casa on the 1st of February, as planned. Some of the floors had been concreted and we had a cold water tap up and running and a functioning toilet (the latter being my main requirement before occupation). The building would continue all around us, with the men turning up at 8am on the dot six days a week (until 'summer hours' began and then the generator would flick into action at 7am). So all day long there was the constant noise of the 'grupo' as they called it, the cement mixer and Benjamín shouting orders to the labourers. We stayed out as much as we could, helped by the fact that Benjamín would say one day that he needed three bags of cement and a couple of tools, to which we'd reply:
'Es todo? Because, as you know, we have to go all the way down the coast for it and don't want to have to go tomorrow.'
'Si, si, es todo.'
The next day, he'd say he needed us to go and get tiles, and off we'd traipse again.
And so we lived in dust and dirt, sleeping together on two sofa-beds in one room. The kids went off to school like urchins (not helped one day, when, as Avril was leaving for school, Benji flicked watery cement into her face and onto her clothes as a joke – she burst out crying and I had to clean her up and change her clothes).
By March we were able to use a second room to cook on our free-standing gas cooker, powered by a bombona and we prepared food on a little butchers block from IKEA. We ate perched on the sofa-beds in semi-darkness, as we had to keep the shutters closed, with no glass due in them for some time (until the outside walls were all finished which wouldn't be for months). Years later, people would look at the house and you could tell they were thinking, weren’t we jammy, having such a beautiful house, and I'd think, 'yeah, and most of you wouldn’t have put up with months of living on a building site.'
Although the bath was in place quite quickly, the hot water boiler couldn't be connected because of some bureaucratic nonsense (okay, it had to have a boletín, to check it was safe). But I got so that I was so desperate for a bath I could have cried. Then I had the brainwave of boiling up all the saucepans and kettles I could find and pouring them into the bath – sounds obvious, but it hadn’t occurred to me. Even with only a few centimetres of water in it, it was bliss. It was like the old days of the tin bath and water boiled over a fire. I was at one with my forefathers. I also felt a wonderful freedom and independence.
This was because I'd been trying to cadge the odd bath up at Helen's in Adreimal. I was desperate because although we had two showers at the cortijo I hated showering, especially in a cold cortijo in winter. So, a few times over the autumn on market day, I'd go to Adreimal and then drop by Helen's.
'Do you mind if I have a bath?' I'd say after we'd had a cup of tea.
'No, that's fine,' she'd answer.
'Right.'
Off I'd go to the bathroom. I'd then return to the living room.
'Have you got a towel?' I'd ask as there would be appear to be none in the bathroom. She'd pop out of the room and return with a miniscule hand towel. Then, there would be no shampoo in the bathroom and I'd have to ask, could she please let me have some? We were supposed to be best friends.
It came to the crunch when I called in and Helen was chatting to her neighbour, little Carmen, over a cup of tea and I joined them and sat for nearly an hour, without being offered a cup.
'She's giving you a message!' Adrian declared. And it all became clear.
I should have noticed the signs, but because she always had this jolly facade I didn't pick up on them. I'd believed her when she'd made a solemn promise that Steve working for us (or standing around and getting paid for it, as the case may be) would never affect our friendship... It had damaged it irreparably.
As one door shuts however, another opens, and we discovered that we had some wonderful neighbours in the village – Josefina and Paco. No sooner had we moved in than there would be carrier-bagfuls of chirimoyas (custard apples), tomatoes and mangoes left outside the front door. And over the next few months and years Josefina would invite us for countless meals of arroz, which is what they called paella and she would look after Tom and Avril and feed them egg and chips if we were going to be late coming back from a shopping trip; she would water the garden when we were away. We tried to reciprocate in a different way (she wouldn’t have liked my primarily vegetarian dinners – ‘Y el carne?’), by baking cakes for her and Paco (chocolate banana cake, bara brith, walnut and honey teabread...). And we'd do her heavy shopping of beer and milk and take her to hospital appointments. She particularly liked a trip to the coast with me. She looked nervous if Adrian drove, clinging the whole time to the inside handle of the door and lurching her whole body backwards (as I do every time a 'plane I'm on takes off).
Pretty soon, we were going out together regularly. Being my senior, she would try and boss me about. She’d reluctantly agree to enter a cafe so I could get my morning caffeine fix. But the whole time she would sit (raring to get going on the round of market day tat if we went to Almuñécar), rarely willing to drink anything herself. Sometimes I’d persuade her to have a manzanilla or a tila. I’d flick through Ideal, while she just sat with her own thoughts. Not having had the luxury of learning to read and write she had nothing to distract herself. But unlike other people who don’t read a lot (for example our handyman in Wales or my Dad) she didn’t then yack nonstop.
She was terrified of escalators, which she saw as some new-fangled thing. I found this out when we got on one at Al Campo one day; she grabbed hold of me as we were going up, lost her balance and I had to use all my strength to pull her upright with one arm as I clung to the banister of the escalator with the other. She nearly pulled me backwards with her and let’s just say she’s powerfully built; we would have both been goners. Not all the neighbours were darlings of course. In Spain, if you have one good neighbour, you have another one sent from the Devil himself.
To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636
And also another of our completed projects:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271