'Which Barbie do you think is the more beauty, this one or the pink one?'

FRIENDS AND FOREIGNERS.

HOWEVER MUCH YOU MAY FIGHT AGAINST IT, IF YOU LIVE abroad where there are other expatriates, you become part of what is known as the Foreign Community. Initially, I struggled hard against this notion but as the years pa.s.sed I grew more relaxed about my status as a foreigner and more willing to appreciate the ties that, by language, humour and shared experience, bound me to my compatriots.

Being a part of a foreign community is a bit like being at school. Among other things seniority bestows respect. In our part of the Alpujarras, the most senior member by age, time served, and a natural proclivity towards seniority, was Janet. She had moved here in the early Seventies and built a large house on the outskirts of Tijolas, at the beginning of our valley, which she proceeded to enclose with a highly imposing wall.

Romero once told me with a smirk of how a horsedealer of his acquaintance had once scaled these walls. He tethered his horse nearby and swung himself up with the aid of a stout creeper and a handy tree. His intention, once inside the garden, was undoubtedly to surprise the lady occupant, but his plan went badly wrong. As he dropped from the wall into the shrubbery, he was set upon by Janet's pack of Appenzeller dogs, one of which gave him a nasty bite in the a.r.s.e. He flew back over the wall and rode painfully into town where he promptly denounced Janet to the police for keeping a dangerous animal.

For those with less nefarious intentions there's a small blue door that you can knock upon. Ana and I, having been invited to lunch by Janet the summer after we moved to El Valero, knocked and waited politely, as befits newcomers visiting the gentry. The top half of the door flew open to reveal her pack of slavering dogs. Janet stood amongst them, knuckles clenched round the handle of a long leather whip which she flailed to left and right, cursing the dogs roundly.

'Come in, come in, quickly, quickly, and don't mind the dogs. Just keep your hands above your heads, they'll get used to you. Down, you b.u.g.g.e.r!' And with a deft boot and a lash of the whip she floored a particularly disagreeable specimen that was hovering around our throats.

We shuffled in, hands up, and the door slammed behind us. 'Welcome, my dears!' shouted Janet above the awful din. 'Wait there a minute while I deal with these brutes. Some meat should keep them quiet.' She disappeared with the dogs at her heels, leaving us trembling by the door. Soon she returned with half a dozen split cow's heads, red and meaty, which she hurled onto the lawn. The dogs crashed through the shrubbery and leapt in s...o...b..rous delight upon the head-bones.

'These are my children, you see,' beamed Janet as she discarded her whip. 'Now, what shall we drink before lunch?'

We settled for wine and sat down at the table beneath a vine-covered trellis one of a sequence of DIY-looking follies. Lawns dotted with exotic trees rolled across to a huge stone-flagged pool with a cla.s.sical gazebo at the end. We sipped our wine and gasped politely at the garden.

'You must excuse me a minute, I'm just putting the finishing touches to the lunch. Help yourselves to more wine.'

We helped ourselves and went to admire a fish-pond, full of fish and frogs, among them a tiny green tree-frog that Janet had imported from exotic climes. Sitting down again I noticed a snake lying by the pond contentedly eating a fish.

'Now there's a most singular phenomenon,' I remarked to Ana.

'Perhaps we should say something . . . '

'Janet, is there supposed to be a snake eating fish by the pond?'

'What?' from the kitchen.

'A snake, there's a snake eating your fish.'

She shot out of the kitchen. 'A snake? Where? . . . so there is. I know him he's been taking all the fish for the last couple of months. This time I'm going to fix the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Wait, Chris, hold him there while I get something to kill him with. I know what'll settle his hash! Hang on there, don't whatever you do let him go!' and she shot back into the kitchen.

I looked quizzically at Ana, and back at the snake.

'How the h.e.l.l am I supposed to keep it there?'

The snake fortunately didn't seem much disposed to move. It was still peacefully eating its fish . . . or rather Janet's fish. I could hear a frenzied rummaging in the kitchen, and furious cries.

'Where oh where is the b.l.o.o.d.y meat tenderiser? Where in the name of h.e.l.l has the thing gone?! . . . there it is! Is he still there, Chris? You still got him?'

'Yes, still here.'

She came hurtling out of the kitchen, brandishing the meat-tenderiser, leapt into the bushes and lunged for the snake with her weapon, whereupon the head of the utensil fell off.

'b.u.g.g.e.ry! Now the head's come off! Can't they make decent tools in this accursed country? And now the b.l.o.o.d.y snake's slithered off again.'

She sat down at the table and took a slug of wine.

'Oh well, it was a d.a.m.n good try. Perhaps I'll get him next time. Right, let there be luncheon!'

And she produced a sumptuous six-course Indian meal, all freshly prepared. As we worked our way through it she told us the story of her life. How she was thwarted by the Mau Mau uprising in her attempts to qualify as a vet in Kenya, and forced instead to study the subject at home, coming through with a pretty thorough knowledge of animal ailments and their treatment. She now runs a free clinic from her home and does a first-rate job of fixing up all the local cats, dogs and horses. Doing this she enjoys her happiest hours.

When she is not attending to sick animals, Janet told us, she studies. She was currently working through maths and physics and veterinary science, and in order to prevent her outlook on life becoming too earnest, was reading Swiss satirical magazines in French and German. Try as I might, I found it impossible to imagine the Swiss as a fund of satirical humour. I said as much to Janet. 'Yes . . . yes, Chris, you're perfectly right. They don't have any humour at all. In fact, the Swiss have the sort of sense of humour you'd expect a dog to have!'

Thank heavens for Janet, she's a true eccentric and, for all her bluffness, unfailingly generous. She has also become a staunch friend of Chloe's. 'I've never had much time for babies, Ana,' she boomed on her first visit after Chloe's birth. 'Animals are a lot less trouble and serve you better too as a general rule. But I have to say that's a d.a.m.n fine baby you've got there. I'll tell you what I'm going to do, I'm going to knit it a parrot. Nice little fellow like that, what it needs is a proper woollen parrot. I used to be pretty good at knitting years ago, you know, but it got in the way of the veterinary studies, so I stopped it.'

Sure enough, within a couple of weeks a bright woollen parrot, an amorphous woollen bag with a couple of flaps on the side and two b.u.t.tons for the eyes, turned up. Janet had also knitted a white tam-o-shanter to keep the little fellow's head warm. Stuffed with straw it would have made a handy pack-saddle for a donkey. But that was not all: she had also carpentered a beautiful high-chair with the seat upholstered apparently in some rare tribal cloth, and made a wooden chest to keep Chloe's clothes in. Treasured gifts.

There seems to be a preponderance of eccentric women among the foreigners here. Some of them have husbands in tow, but they tend to be vapid creatures who fade into the background and are of little account. Amanda and Malcolm are one such couple: typical, in their way, of the orgiva New Agers. Malcolm has long white hair and a penchant for loose flowing clothes. Rodrigo, whose flock of goats ravages the wilderness around Amanda and Malcolm's land, is unable to accept that Malcolm is a man. Rodrigo always refers to them, and he refers to them a lot, as there are constant disputes between them, as 'those two Englishwomen'.

Before coming to Spain, Amanda made a living as an organic farmer on the Welsh borders, and in the Alpujarras she was soon recognised among the ex-pat community as the person to consult on all matters horticultural and botanical. I sought her out one hot June morning to ask her advice about Lavatera olbia Lavatera olbia, a flowering shrub that is indigenous to central and western Andalucia. A friend in England, who is a seed-merchant, had started giving us the odd order for wild flower seeds, and had asked for a kilo of the lavatera lavatera. Try as I might, I couldn't find a single specimen of the plant. So I set out with Chloe gurgling away on the seat beside me, on an expedition to try Amanda's botanical expertise.

I came upon her, clad in white muslin, thumping away with a mattock in her vegetable patch. As I bounced along the rough mountain track that led to her home, she straightened up as she saw me, swept the hair from her eyes and asked: 'Who is this that comes to visit me when the moon is rising in Aquarius?' People had told me about Amanda's enthusiasm for astrology but even so the question caught me off my guard. I looked down to see if Chloe could shed any light on the issue, but she had succ.u.mbed to the noonday heat and fallen fast asleep.

'Er . . . my name's Chris, Chris Stewart. I'm told you're an expert botanist. I need some information about some plants that might grow around here.'

'People are very kind to say that. I'm sure it's not true, but let's have some tea anyway and I'll see if I can help you out.'

Amanda had not come across any of the lavatera lavatera I was after but was clearly a repository of knowledge on Alpujarran flora. We drank tea beneath a rose-covered arbour and talked about botany, the mountains and Rodrigo, as we gazed across the Mediterranean at the faint outline of the Rif in Morocco. Chloe, meanwhile, dozed on in my lap. I was after but was clearly a repository of knowledge on Alpujarran flora. We drank tea beneath a rose-covered arbour and talked about botany, the mountains and Rodrigo, as we gazed across the Mediterranean at the faint outline of the Rif in Morocco. Chloe, meanwhile, dozed on in my lap.

'Rodrigo is too bad, you know, his goats are absolutely destroying the countryside. I've told him about it time and again but he takes not a blind bit of notice. Soon Rodrigo and his wretched goats will have us living in a desert. You do know, don't you, that the Sahara Desert was a green and fertile garden until Rodrigo and his ilk started having their way with it?'

'I had heard of such a thing, yes.'

'Well, the answer, I'm convinced, is to plant retama all over the dry parts of the mountains. Retama will put up with pretty much anything . . . except goats.'

'Retama? You can't be serious!'

Retama is a tall woody shrub with long silver leaves and deep roots. In spring it scents the hills and valleys throughout southern Spain with its pendulous showers of yellow blooms. There's an awful lot of it about and it's of little apparent use. Persuading Rodrigo to plant retama on the hills would be like trying to get a British dairy-farmer to sow docks and thistles.

'I'm perfectly serious,' she insisted. 'Retama is the thing. I have actually had a talk with Rodrigo about my idea, and I do believe he is slowly coming round to it.'

'I'm the first one to approve of a bit of original thinking,' I said, trying not to be dismissive, 'but I can't really see the idea taking root, so to speak. Retama is pretty, and it's drought-resistant with those long long roots, but beyond providing a bit of seed and frond for the goats to . . . '

'Wretched goats! I'm not going to plant it for the goats, Chris. In order to build up a viable ecology in this area we must start to get the goats out of the equation.'

We talked around the subject until it was exhausted, Chloe was awake, and her supper beckoned. I made my excuses, casting a lunch invitation for Sunday as I started the Landrover. 'Oh and bring your . . . bring, er . . . '

'Malcolm, you mean Malcolm, I take it. Yes, I'll bring him, too.'

'That,' said Amanda, pushing back the sleeves of her muslin dress and jabbing at the fly-trap that I'd hung on the stable wall,'that is a disgusting contraption. How could you do that?'

The offending trap was an American patent and a device of which I was rather proud. It consisted of a plastic bag full of water and some mephitic muck that is apparently so irresistible to flies that they crawl happily through a plastic funnel in order to drown themselves alongside a sodden and evil-smelling ma.s.s of their peers. I was lured into buying it by the bizarre testimonial emblazoned across the packet: 'With your wonderful fly-trap we were able to enjoy our annual barbecue without flies. Where we have our barbecue is right by the hogpens!'

'Surely, Amanda, one has to draw the line somewhere,' I protested, 'and flies fall a long way beneath the line I've drawn. Look at the misery they cause the horses and sheep, to say nothing of the misery they cause us.'

'Us? You, you mean. Flies don't bother me at all, nor Malcolm.' A snort of a.s.sent sounded behind my left shoulder. 'If you're at peace with yourself and the world around you, then the flies won't trouble you. It's as simple as that.'

Now I knew that Amanda was serious about the flies because I had heard from a woman who had once stayed at her house that she experienced similar tender feelings towards scorpions. Scorpions do not as a rule like water but for some reason they would come scuttling in from all corners of the surrounding country to fall into Amanda's pond and drown. So distressed was Amanda by this that she had a net prepared to fish out the poor mites, as she called them, and return them to the world of stones and scrub from whence they came.

My informant had good reason to be impressed by these actions. She had been stung on the mouth by one of Amanda's poor mites in bed. This was despite the fact that she was a woman at peace with herself and her surroundings, although naturally anyone would lose a certain amount of faith in their surroundings after an event like that. It did seem a shame that not all creatures shared Amanda's vision of the universe.

Amanda and Malcolm had arrived early for lunch and we had been showing them around Ana's vegetable patch. Ana edged the conversation tactfully away from our wanton slaughter of flies and onto the safer ground of natural fertilisers, as we prised Chloe from her sandpit and walked up to the house.

'Isn't it one of G.o.d's greatest miracles that the dung of the beasts carries all the elements essential to the growth of the plants that feed the very creatures that produce the manure that feeds the plants . . . and so on,' I rabbitted, anxious to display my organic credentials. 'The more I think of that particular fact, the more delighted I am by the organisation of the universe.' 'Being vegans, of course, we don't use animal manure,' Malcolm replied, 'only our own excreta and seaweed.'

There was a pause.

'You're making a bit of a rod for your own back there, aren't you, Malcolm?' I suggested. 'I mean, importing seaweed when you're living in the mountains surrounded by copiously dunging animals?'

'Yes, it makes things much more difficult, of course, but we try not to use the products of any animal that is exploited. Animals should be wild and free like us.'

I looked hard at Malcolm. Wild and free were not the first two adjectives I would have hit upon.

'We don't wear leather shoes or woollen clothes, either.'

'Well, it certainly is a hard path you choose. But lunch must be ready now. Ana has prepared a meal that we hope will be acceptable in every way. It's amazing how you have to think to do it.'

Ana had indeed excelled herself. She presented us with a delicious-looking dish of aubergines, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes and garlic, all bubbling together in a spicy sauce of soya-milk yoghurt.

'I'm afraid we can't possibly eat that.'

'You what?!'

'We don't eat peppers or aubergines or tomatoes or potatoes. All those vegetables are Solanaceae Solanaceae, members of the deadly nightshade family. They're poisonous.'

'You'll enjoy the garlic then, just pick around the rest.'

The first thing you hear is a whistle that sounds like a tutubia, except that tutubias rarely come down to the river, preferring the scrub high in the hills. Then comes a rolling river of bells and you realise that it's Rodrigo calling to his goats. Up the river they come, in a dozen or more streams, picking their way over ledges and boulders or browsing by the water's edge while Rodrigo waits above the bank, keeping watch from beneath the brim of his ancient straw hat.

There's truth in what Amanda says about the destructive capacity of goats. Sheep are bad enough but goats are in a different league. A goat will stand on its back legs and reach eight feet in the air, ripping all the leaves and branches off the trees to that height. They are prodigious climbers and scramblers, sure-footed and fearless beyond belief, and their delicate pointed feet are like little jackhammers, scrabbling away earth banks, stone walls and the edges of terraces.

Kid, however, is delicious to eat, fetching a higher price than lamb, and on terrain where no other creature could survive, goats sustain themselves and produce a couple of litres of milk a day not just ordinary milk, but milk with almost miraculous properties of healing and nourishment. So, in spite of the opposition of the ecologists there will always be goats and their goatherds in the Alpujarras.

I often walk across the lemon terrace and down the rocky ramp into the riverbed to pa.s.s the time of day with Rodrigo.

'Hola!' I greet him.

'Que?' he asks.

That 'que?' means 'what?', but not just an ordinary 'what?' It is delivered expansively, the head c.o.c.ked, the palms upturned and stretched wide, and spoken loud and long. It means 'How are you doing? How's the wife and the little one? How's your life and how is the farming and the crops?' I can't say it like Rodrigo does. It takes many years of walking with only goats and your own thoughts for company before you can manage the delivery of that particular 'que'. I have to be more specific.

'How's your wife, Rodrigo?'

'Ay, Cristobal, she's bad, very bad. She can hardly walk now, she's had a hard life.'

'I'm sorry to hear that.'

'You see, Cristobal, life is but a breath. We come into this vale of sorrow, we're here four days, and if we get a chance to do some little good, do someone a favour, then we've done well and we can be a little happy perhaps. But then we're cut down and gone, just bones and dust. In truth we're no different from the dumb beasts, these goats I walk with.'

A p.r.o.nouncement like this is best received in silence. I know Rodrigo well enough by now to respect the sincerity behind his awkward philosophising. Rodrigo has a truly generous spirit.

'I saw you talking with the Englishwomen yesterday. Were they saying things about me and the goats?'

'Well, mainly they were talking about the goats, Rodrigo. They don't like them at all, that's sure. It appears that they busy themselves out on the hill planting retama and then your goats come along and eat it.'

'Cristobal, why would anyone want to plant retama in the secano secano? I can't see it.'

'It's strange, I know, but they say it is good for the soil it stops the erosion. Anyway, I think they'd rather you didn't take your goats near their place.'

'There is a Via Pecuaria there and I have to pa.s.s it to get to the land above El Picacho. One is ent.i.tled to graze the Via Pecuaria. Look, Cristobal, I don't want to be a bad neighbour to them if they want to plant retama on the hill then that's fine with me, but there's not so much grazing about that I can afford to leave a secano secano like El Picacho. As the goats pa.s.s they will of course eat the young retama; it's only natural. You see my point?' like El Picacho. As the goats pa.s.s they will of course eat the young retama; it's only natural. You see my point?'

'I do, I do.'

And thus continues the endless battle between the ecologists and the pastoralists.

Rodrigo gets lonely in the river. He walks all day every day of the year with his goats, and he's done so in these mountains and valleys for fifty years. He has seen whole weather cycles change the face of his world. Years of drought when his pencil-thin animals had to scuff in the dust for the tiniest shoot years when he needed all his herder's skill to seek out the places where, after months or even years without rain, some barely perceptible mist of moisture might remain. And years when for months at a time he couldn't get his horse across the swollen river, and had to go all the way down to the Seven-Eye bridge to get to his goat stable. Those were the easy years, he told me, when he could sit on a stone not a mile from his stable, with a couple of fertiliser bags tied over his head and shoulders the preferred way of keeping off the lashing rain and watch his goats gorge themselves.

Rodrigo had resigned himself to this harsh and lonely existence. It would never have occurred to him that one day his load might be lightened by someone to help and least of all a frail-looking Dutch sculptress. But that's how it worked out.

Antonia, the Dutchwoman in question, had begun spending her summers at La Hoya, a crumbling farmhouse, just down the valley from El Valero. The day we met her, on her first summer in the valley, she had walked up the riverbed with her big smelly old dog and was trailing from terrace to terrace behind our ram, looking out from a wide-brimmed hat and moulding his shape in a lump of wax that she was working with her fingers.

'I'll separate him and shut him in for you if you like,' I offered.

'No, I prefer to watch him moving around with the flock. I get a more natural result that way.'

The ram seemed to take a dim view of being modelled, moving off as soon as Antonia got a good vantage, and leading her on a stumbling trail around the stony meadow. The business was further complicated by the heat of the day, because the wax kept melting, and every fifteen minutes or so Antonia had to dip it in the cooling water of the acequia acequia. When she got back, of course, the flock had disappeared, and by the time she had found them the wax had started melting again. So I gave her a bucket which she filled with water and carried around with her.

By this method Antonia was able to make a certain amount of progress, and slowly the models took shape. She made a lot of sheep that summer, along with some bulls and goats and a wonderful rendering of Domingo's donkey, Bottom. When she returned to Holland to cast some of her models in bronze, she left a little menagerie of wax figures in a drawer in our house, to the great delight of Chloe.

Rodrigo lives high above La Hoya at La Valenciana, about an hour and a half on horseback, but stables his goats at the lower farm. Each morning, having seen to the needs of the cows, the pigs, the chickens and the horse, he saddles up and moves off down the steep hill. Arriving at La Hoya, he ministers to any goats that need attention, then takes them out into the river or up onto the hills. Even in the scorching heat of summer he never takes a siesta; there'd be no time to fit it in. Goats don't mind the heat at all.

All of a sudden a slight variation appeared in the monotony of Rodrigo's existence. La Antonia, as he called her, took to walking with him in the river, occasionally fashioning an animal in wax as they progressed. Rodrigo must be the only goatherd in Spain with a model of a billy-goat cast personally for him in bronze; it's an expensive process. When there was goatwork to be done, injections, wormings, washings and so on, Antonia would often spend the whole morning helping, and goatwork is a lot easier with two people than with one. On the odd occasion when it was necessary to put an animal out of its misery for one reason or another, Antonia would even kill goats for Rodrigo with a knife. Alpujarrenos do not like to kill animals. I have to do the same on occasion for Domingo.

Antonia made a difference to Rodrigo's life, day to day, but when Rodrigo's wife, Carmen, fell ill and was rushed to hospital in Granada, her presence became vital. After shutting the goats in for the night, Antonia would drive Rodrigo home, help him tend to the other animals, then take him to Granada and stay there while he spent the whole night sitting beside his sick wife's bed. This is the custom here, the family is expected to deal with much of the nursing.

The vigil continued for nine days, and then Carmen came home, at least a little better. Since then La Antonia has become an adored honorary member of their family. When she goes to spend the night with them at La Valenciana it's only with the greatest reluctance that they let her go. I've never been inside Carmen and Rodrigo's home but Ana has. She went up there one day with Antonia and of course Carmen invited them in. It proved impossible to escape without eating and drinking all of the most delicious and precious consumable items in the house. Ana said it was like visiting with the queen.

Antonia spends long spells in Holland, earning money for her work in Spain, drumming up patronage and commissions, and doing the bronze castings for the figures she makes. When she leaves the valley on these trips, Rodrigo walks with his goats and weeps a little. 'I think G.o.d sent me the Antonia, Cristobal,' he confided to me. While she's away he besieges us for news of her and judges minutely when a postcard might be expected.

Antonia is a real artist and she puts as much energy and artistry into her life as she does into her work. She gives and gives, and despite the fact that she's not very robust, nothing is too much trouble for her. And so life repays her, people love her. She's the only foreigner I know here who simply by being true to herself has become a part of the Alpujarra.