Lizard in my Luggage (eBook)

It's noon. A fat gecko, its eyes as large as marbles, locks on to me with an unblinking stare as I grapple with a crude, rusty key, the size and weight of a small hammer, just above his head. I want him to move but he hugs the wall like a watchful Spider-Man, daring me to engage key with lock. I know it's a male, a he, just by the way he surveys me. Everything in this country is machismo so why shouldn't that include geckos with big ant guts? He's looking disapprovingly at my bitten painted nails, orange kitten heels, fake designer handbag from a trip to Dubai, and thinking, for crying out loud, what's a house like this doing with a woman like that? He's a good psychologist too. He knows I don't like insects, snakes, small, fast moving vertebrates and anything with multiple legs, hairy limbs and antennae. And exactly why am I faltering at the door? Am I seriously scared of a lizard? Get a grip. I push the key firmly in the lock. Simultaneously, the reluctant, portly custodian of the house shimmies up the door and ducks into a groove in the stone wall. Vanished into a smudge of darkness. Good riddance. I shudder and attempt to turn the key. It won't shift and here I am, up a dirt track drive in the sort of heat that could melt bones and trigger tantrums. Cicadas are hissing accusingly at me from the grey contorted olive trees and a voyeuristic frog is peering over a discarded can in an old septic water tank, willing defeat. This is no simple Yale or Banham lock. It is blackish and seigneurial, displaying a few distinguished brown spots of corrosion at the edges, and fashioned out of wrought-iron from centuries ago. However, the key, its faithful lifelong partner, is old and battered with age and unable to engage in happy union as once it might. I use the time-honoured practice of the short tempered and impetuous, and start kicking the door. It shudders but refuses to budge. Four hundred odd years of Spanish craftsmanship and solid oak are not going to give way to a petulant, hot and bothered Londoner with a blatant disregard for anger management. There's a strange humming in the distance, an angry, gnawing sound that grows louder until it soon explodes into a cloud of hot, powdery dust three feet from me. A young man with tight, black curly hair and a set of teeth and comely muscles normally reserved for matinee idols is silencing the engine of a motorbike and waving cheerfully at me. Oh God, who's this? Do I have to share the humiliation of being incapable of opening my own front door with a total stranger, and a foreigner to boot? He saunters over to me with a look of concern and it's not just for my sanity. 'Is problem wees door, si?' He sibilates his words smoothly, referring to me as senyorita, young lady, not the more matronly senyora, indicating that he's either in public relations, an inveterate liar, or in need of good specs or possibly all three. Still, he speaks some English. This will at least spare him from having to endure my spoken Spanish which has only recently graduated from Teletubbies greetings to vocabulary worthy of the Peter and Jane books. To make matters worse, he is speaking in Mallorcan, the local dialect, which naturally poses even greater hazards for me. 'Well, I can't turn the key. It's stuck. Can you try?' 'No problema, senyorita. Is very old.' In Mallorca nothing is a problem, until you have a problem. He wrenches the key round and it emits a squeal of anguish. Then with a quick kung fu arm movement he strikes at the door and it creaks open, allowing a shaft of ruby light to caress the marble floor. I throw him a gracious smile and push my sunglasses back over my hot, damp hair.