FRANCESCA DE AVALON - Chapter 13

Hopping between Madrid and Madrigal Sept 2006 - May 2007

In the first couple of years whenever I was at my fruit farm, Avalon in Madrigal de la Vera, I became house mates with umpteen different types of spider who did a great job of catching every kind of fly which found its way within the house. In the land, I found at least five different types of ant and endless grubs and beetles, scorpions, worms, moles and snakes. Pearlie killed and ate the scorpions as if they were nice little chunks of candy, but she mostly scoffed down lizards. I would spot one climbing the wall of the house but generally, it would be dead before I could admire its beauty!

The only creatures that gave me a real problem were the ground wasps.

I dug into one of their nests by accident and I was mobbed by them stinging me everywhere. I had to run to my swimming pool and dive in but they were with me all the way! I stayed under water for as long as I could and only popped up in the corner for a breath to see that they were hovering over the water waiting for me! Vicious little buggers!

Eventually they dispersed and I had to get to the doctor for help because my legs swelled up like balloons. The doctor gave me an injection which began to ease the swelling after a day or so but the pain was so intense that I sat in the river for hours until I went completely numb with the cold.

Refilling the water tank was always a nervous time for me. The roof and top of my water tower was buzzing with wasps so I devised a smoky fire in a tin can on the end of a long stick to drive them away whenever I had to go up there. Thankfully I didn’t get stung like that again.

During term time at school I would walk the dogs around the interlinked parks of Leganes early in the mornings and again after school in the cooler evenings. We often passed through an open plaza, lined with a few shops, bars and restaurants. During one walk with Pablo, we were hailed by a friend of his inviting us to call into his bar for a drink. He was saying that he had a female Groenendael dog who might like to mate with Rasta.

Curious, we went inside and the dog was brought out from behind the bar. She was young, feisty and gorgeous! Rasta’s ears went bolt upright and they played around, flirting while we chatted. Pablo gave the guy his phone number. It was agreed that we would bring Rasta to the bar when the female was next in season.

In his eight years of life, up to that point, Rasta had fathered four litters and each one had produced eleven pups, so I warned the bar owner what he might expect from this romance. He looked as if he did not believe me…. “Eleven?” he gasped, “Are you joking?” and I solemnly confirmed.

I had completely forgotten about this by the time we received the call a month or so later. After dinner, Pablo and I took Rasta to the bar and we simply let the two dogs go out into the plaza together while we watched from the bar terrace.

At the moment of engagement, when Rasta turned his body so that the two dogs had all their feet on the ground and were tightly locked together, I told the interested onlookers that the dogs would remain connected for twenty-seven minutes precisely. Again, I had the feeling that nobody believed me…. I laughed and settled down with my iced coca cola!

On the twenty-seventh minute Rasta disengaged, lay down and licked his crown jewels. Job done. That lovely female jumped all over him in a frenzy of excitement and joy. It was so sweet to watch.

Obviously I took Rasta to visit his lady friend at least once a week until she gave birth and even more frequently thereafter until the pups were weaned. I had to pick a pup and find an appropriate owner for it, as is traditional in such circumstances. So many people wanted that puppy that Pablo had a great idea. We put their names on slips of paper and I ceremoniously picked the winner blind-folded.

The new owner of this bundle of black fluff turned out to be one of our homeless friends who busked in central Madrid at the weekends. We cared for Rasta’s son for a few days and were very surprised by how strict he was with his eight-week-old son. Rasta seemed to expect absolute obedience and attention. I got a bit concerned that he was bullying and told him to ease off, but he ignored me and growled his instructions like a sergeant major on a drill parade!

When we delivered the puppy to his new human on the following Friday night, the guy burst into tears of joy! He immediately named the puppy Hijo de Rasta (son of Rasta) and we had a party right there on the street with all the homeless crowd making a huge fuss of Rasta and his gorgeous mini-me.

Hijo, (pronounced Eek-ho) could not have had a more devoted carer.
Every weekend we would make a point of finding them and Hijo was rapidly growing into a carbon copy of his father. I remember Rasta and Ben marching ahead of us as we came out of the Metro station. They knew precisely where Hijo was likely to be and they led the way at a pace. Hijo had become a minor celebrity on the Madrid busking scene. His charm had earned our friend considerable funds and contributions of food and toys from regulars. The busker would stand singing and playing guitar while Hijo would guard the collection tin and throw his head up to howl along when he heard his favourite songs. Eventually there was a girlfriend on hand to provide a proper home for the pair of them and we visited them there with gifts during the following Christmas festivities.

My teaching sessions were almost back to back and I was always juggling my time to cope with it all, especially when exam time came around at school. I was helping some University students and one professor with complex translation of their dissertations in several private evening appointments. I was still covering classes at the Academia and running to give the dogs adequate exercise in the early mornings and at sundown.

That second year in Madrid was even more hectic than the first!

At four in the morning, one Friday during early spring of that year, Ben suddenly started barking madly. I dived out of bed and found him in the lounge with Pablo and a friend who had been up all night, drinking.
Ben was trying to look down into the street from the balcony. The two guys said that they had no idea what was wrong with him. Ben ran to the main door of the apartment and was whining urgently, scratching at the door. At first, I thought he had an upset tummy and needed to go out, so I got dressed and we ran into the elevator. As soon as we were on the ground floor Ben raced to the gate yapping crazily and Rasta followed.

Out on the street, instead of heading across the road to the park, Ben began searching under the parked cars until he suddenly flopped down trying to get underneath one of them. I kneeled down beside him and was horrified to see Pearlie lying stretched out in the gutter, close to the car’s front tyre. She was not moving.

I carefully pulled her towards me and was sickened by the sight of a sharp twig, about half an inch thick, stuck right through one of her hind legs. She had fallen from the fifth floor balcony, through a tree and landed in the street!

I carefully carried her, unconscious, back up to the flat and laid her on the coffee table. Pablo and his friend seemed to sober up in seconds. At eight o’clock I placed Pearlie on a blanket in her cat box and I went to the local vet’s clinic which was just a few hundred yards away. The vet was just arriving and he found me, Rasta and Ben waiting on his doorstep.

He had bad news for me. Pearlie had broken ribs, a shattered pelvis and concussion. He had removed the twig but he warned me that she may not walk again. He wanted to keep her there over the weekend at least, but I insisted that, if she regained consciousness, in a strange place, away from Rasta and Ben, she would be very distressed. Eventually the vet gave in to my pleas and gave me instructions, incontinence pads, an empty syringe and pain medication. He gave me a card with his mobile phone number on it and told me to phone any time, if there was any significant change. I think he fully expected her to die or be paralysed.

We went back to the apartment and settled Pearlie, still unconscious, on an incontinence pad. I left her with Rasta and Ben sitting beside her and I went to work, already exhausted. At lunchtime, I raced home to find them still sitting as I had left them, but Pearlie’s eyes were open. I helped her to drink from the syringe, just a little water with the pain medication in it. She didn’t make a sound and she didn’t attempt to move. Over the weekend we were supposed to have been going home to Madrigal but that was out of the question now. Instead, we went out for several short walks but the dogs wanted to return to the apartment as soon as they had met their toilet needs. They kept their vigil at Pearlie’s side and they cleaned her coat when I tried to put food in her mouth. They even cleaned her when she defecated. They kissed her repeatedly and smiled at her. She slept a lot. Each time I changed her sleeping pad she lifted her head and tried to move. Her tail swished with the effort or the pain, I wasn’t sure which.

Unbelievably, early the following Monday morning, she began to drag herself around with her front legs, so I phoned the vet and he wanted to do a check up Xray. I laid her on a large tray, covered her with a blanket and we took her back to the clinic. Pearlie’s broken bones were correctly lined up by some miracle. She was going to recover!

Over the following month she dragged her non-functioning back legs until she got them to cooperate. Then came the day when she wobbled to her litter box and successfully used it. I could hardly believe how quickly she became fully functional after that. It was such a massive relief.

Pablo was still mentioning the punk girl occasionally. He said he was missing her. She lived in Valladolid, a city further north than Madrid, but one weekend we suddenly found her sitting with the homeless crowd in a churchyard in central Madrid. She said that she had left home and Pablo invited her to come back to the apartment in Leganes with us. He didn’t think it was safe for her to be sleeping rough.

Over the next few weeks, I tried to befriend this girl but she was markedly hostile towards me and I noticed that she completely ignored the dogs. She would drive Pearlie out of the lounge by stamping and hissing at her. I told her about Pearlie’s injuries but she looked at me with distain. “I don’t like cats!” she almost spat.

Without asking, she helped herself to my tobacco which I normally left on the coffee table. I began to keep it locked in my jewellery box after that.
I also made sure that Pearlie and the dogs stayed in my room when I was out. I really did not trust this girl to treat them right.

I noticed that Pablo was becoming very grumpy…. then I noticed a pungent, sweet smell every time their bedroom door opened. I did not recognise it but it certainly wasn’t any kind of perfume.

One evening, when Pablo and his punk girl were in bed, Fernando, being sociable, brought a couple of friends to meet me. One of them was Dutch and spoke perfect English. The first thing the Dutchman said, before we had even sat down, was:
“Are you on heroin?” which stunned me a bit.
“Why on earth would you think that?” I spluttered.
He apologised and said that he could smell it as soon as he entered the apartment. My mind flat-lined. I pulled a pained face at Fernando who rapidly put two and two together and looked furious.

“Where is Pablo?” he asked through clenched teeth.

Fernando had already disapproved of the punk girlfriend. Apparently she had been very rude to Chus, Fernando’s live-in girlfriend and business partner.
I explained that since the punk girl had moved in, Pablo and I did not see much of each other. They slept during the day and were usually out at night.

Fernando went to Pablo’s suite and banged his fist on the door. When Pablo appeared from the darkness within, he looked awful and Fernando wasted no time or words. The atmosphere was so tense that I looked round at Ben.
Sure enough he was on full alert with his hackles rising.

I quickly grabbed my coat and the dog leads and we left the apartment. I knew Fernando well enough to recognise a storm brewing and I did not want to be a witness as these two very close friends verbally abused each other at full, emotionally laden, volume. I don’t think they even noticed us leaving.

It is true what they say about Spanish people.
They are extremely passionate, both positively and negatively.

When I got back, two hours later, the apartment was silent and empty.
The lounge was a wreck. There was broken glass and upturned furniture.
I halted the dogs before they stepped into the chaos and I shut the door.

That was the last time I saw the inside of that room. From then on, Pablo became a monster. His punk girlfriend cut his hallmark long shiny black hair into a short style in imitation of her own. He lost a lot of weight and he never even tried to speak to me again.

—0—

You can find the previous chapters 1-12 beginning here.

This is my fourth book published exclusively on Substack.

ONWARDS!
xx

If you appreciate my novel but cannot commit to a paid subscription you could buy me a coffee at: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/FrancesLeader

Please note that all my work is entirely free to read and will never be hidden behind a paywall. My lovely paying subscribers contribute knowing this to be true and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them very much for their ongoing support.

The important thing is sharing on social media, especially on X and Facebook and Discord where I am permanently excluded because my work upsets the totalitarians. I can hardly understand it because I am such a delight! xx