Cat on a Hot Tiled Roof (eBook)

A door slams shut. Someone's clomping about downstairs. There's an intruder in the house and a damned noisy one at that. I sit frozen in my seat, momentarily distracted by the raucous croaking of the frogs in the pond beneath my window. Give it a rest, boys, this is no laughing matter. There's a sudden crash, and the sound of tinkling glass. Something dull and heavy, perhaps a wooden chair, keels over with a muffled thud. That's it. My blood's up as I hurtle barefoot out of my office eyrie with heart in mouth and pen in hand, ready to face my foe. So much for the amateur heroics, but what exactly have I in mind? Some twisted logic about the pen being mightier than the sword? Hotly, I descend the stairs, the marble reassuringly cool beneath my feet. A deep groaning rends the air and I stop dead in my tracks. There in the middle of the entrada is my adversary. It's observing me dispassionately with glazed eyes, jaws caught in a sideways motion as if chewing thoughtfully on gum. I slowly level with it. There are no horns in evidence, nor a flicker of intellect for that matter, so I rightly surmise I'm dealing with a cloven-footed dumb blonde. I'm very cross. 'What on earth do you think you're doing in here?' She averts her gaze a tad sheepishly, fleetingly surveying the damage strewn around the large sunlit hallway. A spat with an incensed Sumo wrestler might have created less havoc. Lying drunkenly on its side is a kitchen chair, its buttermilk cushion trampled and caked in mud. Spiky shards of sun-seared glass from what was once a chunky rectangular vase adorning a coffee table glint on the cream marble tiles. Toppled oak logs, until now piled neatly at the side of the grizzled old stone fireplace, have rolled under a bench, some even venturing boldly as far as the French doors. Earthy hoof marks have smeared the glass panes of the windows and clots of dry mud collect around the front doorway. 'Well?' I say, tapping my foot impatiently. No reply. If there's one thing I've learned since living in rural Mallorca, it's that sheep really are obtuse. Try and communicate with one of these bundles of boucl and you hit a stone wall. Amphibians are different. For the last few years, I have spent many a happy moment conferring with an ungainly toad and a chorus of musical frogs in my pond, so much so that I've come to miss them in the winter when they've gone. Of course some might balk at the idea of talking amphibians but, trust me, with a little imagination anything is possible. The sheep now gives a little shake of her ears and clops clumsily backwards, tottering like an old girl in oversized, high-heeled shoes. Her bedraggled Rasta locks hang limply over a huge girth, the dingy white wool matted and streaked with dirt. I tut loudly to which she responds with a low rumbling expletive of an ovine kind. The wide entrada gives on to the kitchen where, beyond cool terracotta tiles, the back door beckons. It's flung wide open. Gracelessly, she makes a bolt for it and careers off in the direction of the swimming pool. I pad out onto the patio under the piercing scrutiny of the sun just in time to see my bulky intruder do a quick gambol around the terrace before scrambling down a stony bank into the orchard. The Tramuntana mountain range which coils around our golden valley like a craggy grey lizard, dotted with clumps of dark pines and silver green olive trees, is pasted high in a dazzling cerulean sky. I place a hand over my eyes and watch as an eagle catches the wind and glides majestically over the terraces that lead up behind the finca, our old stone house. This is a not a day to be huddled over the computer in my office lair writing bits and pieces to earn a crust, but when, quite...