A Lizard In My Luggage Read Free Page A

linen suit and sinfully pricey looking shoes. It transpired that the owners of our holiday finca were putting it on the market and Toni was handling the sale. Later, as we all sat mulling over a glass of wine on the spiky lawn, I was hooked.
    Â Â 'So you have other fincas for sale?'
    Â Â Toni slid me a roguish grin from under a thick beetle-black fringe. 'So you want to buy?'
    Â Â 'No,' muttered Alan decisively.
    Â Â 'We'd like to look,' I interjected tetchily.
    Â Â 'No, we don't.'
    Â Â 'Do.'
    Â Â 'Good. Well, come and see me tomorrow. Here's my card.'
    Â Â The following day, we found ourselves bumping up the very same track I have slogged along today. From the back of Toni's smart four-wheel drive with its spotless olive interiors and subtle scent of Dior's Eau Sauvage, I could see rising before us a vast stone wreck, beaten in, forlorn and unloved, its windows tiny black indents crossed with metal like decayed teeth in a brace. Small holes peppered the facade from which pigeons, like police marksmen, would poke their heads, ducking back in when they heard any noise. As we walked across the courtyard a metal sign hanging drunkenly on its side announced in gaudy red and rusted letters: ' CUIDADO CON EL PERRO '.
    Â Â 'The dog has gone, I presume?'
    Â Â 'Of course,' sniggered Toni, tutting at me. 'Is probably dead.'
    Â Â 'The finca 's in a bit of a state. When was it last occupied?'
    Â Â 'Old people lived here, you know. Now they dead and there are, as we say, muchas brothers. Maybe there will be problem with esciptura , the title deeds of the house. Is lot of work. Come, I have many other houses with no problems.'
    Â Â I shot Alan a look. 'What do you think?'
    Â Â 'What do you want me to think?'
    Â Â 'It's an incredible place.'
    Â Â 'Hmm, and free, I suppose?'
    Â Â We explored the interior of the house, opening rotten, worm-infested shutters to let in the light. It was like a Mallorcan equivalent of Satis House in Great Expectations and for a moment I half expected to see a mantilla clad Senyora Havisham claw her way down the ancient, creaking staircase. Gigantic cobwebs with arthritic limbed spiders hung in loops from the ceilings, and long battalion lines of centipedes, ants, moths and beetles shrivelled with age lay perished on their backs in every room as if defeated in some ancient battle of the antennae and proboscis.
    Â Â Several floors had caved in as well as part of the roof which now let in rough wedges of bright light above our heads. Old wooden beams supporting ceilings still intact had been ravaged by insects and, when poked with a stick, released small explosions of splintered wood and dust. Bizarrely, every room was sparsely furnished and decorated with random objects enshrined in dust, as if the geriatric tenants were still occupying the place but had given up on any housekeeping. Propped up against a mould-ravaged wall in the kitchen stood a rickety-legged, water-stained pine table. Choked with thick grey soot, it housed a clutter of yellowing church pamphlets curled at the edges, festering mugs with chipped rims and two empty brown beer bottles. Cheap religious memorabilia hung on the walls and lined a chipboard cabinet in the dining room and in a downstairs bedroom, above an ornate mahogany bed, a beseeching Jesus looked on, eyes upturned to his heavenly Father, rosary in hand. On a sideboard in the hall, a small metal framed print of the Madonna, her head ripped off so that the torn paper billowed around her shoulders like a snowy stole, stood stoically, awaiting its eventual fate. At the Virgin's feet, a sepia photograph of an old couple dressed in pagès, 'country folk' garb, and smiling shyly, lay grubby and creased. I picked it up, wiped it on my shorts and gently put it in my bag. Up on the landing we discovered a depiction of Saint Francis of Assisi, with obese and grotesque Friar Tuck dimensions, holding a mouse which he