Settling In for Round Two

The most immediate of our problems, ie the lack of anywhere to lay our weary heads, was resolved by the kind intervention of Abel’s best friend and fellow student of pharmacy; Ricardo.

Ricardo wasn’t his real name; in fact Rajesh wasn’t even Spanish, but an Indian Hindu. His parents were the owners of a chain of jewellery shops along the coast of Málaga province, and had lived in various countries on the African continent before finally crossing ‘El Estrecho’ and settling in Spain.

And whilst his parents were keen to communicate with me in English (typically of many well-educated Indians it was an English that would have rivalled the queen’s) Ricardo, on the rare occasions we reluctantly indulged in my mother-tongue, instead boasted a rather unexpected Californian drawl, thanks to his attendance at a plethora of different International Schools.

When in Granada, Abel’s friend lived in an amazing apartment on the tenth floor of a building adjacent to the Jardines de Triunfo. But as he spent every weekend, and all the holidays and study time at his parents’ home in Málaga, he was kind enough to offer us the use of the place whilst we searched for a home of our own.

Even if we hadn’t been completely devoid of other options, our answer would still have been a most resounding YES!

The enormous picture window in the sitting room framed an utterly unspoilt view across the city to the Sierra Nevada. I must have photographed the snow-capped peaks of Mulhacén (named after the penultimate Moorish king, Muley Hacén who was reportedly buried at its peak) a hundred times from those windows.

We even eschewed the comfort of the master bedroom in favour of the sofa-bed so as to ensure that vista was the first thing on which our eyes alit upon waking – after all, it was highly unlikely we would ever be able to afford a similar sight from our own windows, so it had to be made the most of…

For although poor uncle Abdel Latif had rung to insist he would be paying back his wife’s theft, instalment at a time, and despite Abel’s monthly allowance from his father in Morocco, we were by no means out of the woods financially.

After much to-ing and fro-ing (the university city was full of predictably grotty student accommodation) we finally found a cheap but suitable place. Unfortunately, as we had been guided there by an oily estate agent, that mistake saw us parting with an additional one month’s rent for the fifteen minutes of his precious time that he spent showing us round.

The flat was in a little cul-de-sac called Callejón de Yeseros off the very picturesque cobbles of the Real de Cartuja. It formed part of a house built very typically round an open air courtyard, and which had recently been sub-divided into seven neat little compartments by an enterprising local.

We were given a tiny one-bedroom place at the back of the building that had windows overlooking the central courtyard. It was very simply decorated, but clean and practical, and we were thrilled at the sign that our luck appeared finally to have turned.

Coincidentally, all the other flats had been rented out to Abel’s countrywomen, so the place was filled with Arabic chatter and music night and day (the ‘night’ bit wore a little thin after a few months, but as these particular Moroccan girls don’t seem to come with volume control, or much of neighbourly conscience, we just had to grin and bear it).

When Abel recommenced his studies at the Facultad de Farmacia, which handily for him was just up the road from our new abode, I began the search for work.

Dire was not the word, and after several fruitless weeks of tramping the streets distributing my Cv to unimpressed hoteliers and restaurateurs, I decided to try another tack and improve my chances by doing some sort of course.

Luckily I still had some savings tucked away back in the UK, giving me the luxury of being able to spend an additional few months concentrating on improving my Curriculum vitae, whilst Abel and I survived on a pauper’s diet of rice and tinned tomatoes.

After some indecision, I finally settled on an administrative course at a little institute about ten minutes walk from the house; and then pushed the boat all the way out by signing up for additional (and very cheap) French and German classes at the university language school…

And thus back to school I went – it was becoming obvious that my stint in Granada would leave me thoroughly educated if nothing else.

The administrative course I had chosen was entirely in Spanish (unsurprisingly as we were, after all, in Spain) and touched on subjects that I would have had consummate difficulty with even if they had been in English: contabilidad (accountancy) and cálculo mercantil (commercial calculus) being especially difficult for someone who spectacularly failed their maths GCSE.

I confess to finding even the modules on Excel and PowerPoint a struggle. Nevertheless, on I battled in the hope that it would all suddenly burst into clarity as I thumbed my way madly through an invaluable Diccionario de Español Comercial in an attempt to make sense of the endless terminology.

Following another course at the same time was a girl, a few years younger than me, who I could hardly have failed to notice; for she was legless.

Not in the Brit on a Saturday night way, but literally bereft of legs.

It took me while to fully realise this, as she got about very nimbly on a pair of crutches and wore trousers with some sort of padding and shoes where you would expect shoes to be. The truth only dawned when I saw her folding her legs entirely the wrong way whilst getting into her mother’s car.

I never did discover what had caused Belén’s disability: she never spoke about it and as morbidly curious as I couldn’t help but being, I somehow managed to reign in my natural nosiness and resisted crossing the line of decency by asking.

However she did let something of an entirely different nature slip during one of our many coffee breaks: she was not from the city of Granada but from a small village out in Granada province, near the town of Guadix.

Any guesses as to the name of that village?

No? Well try La Peza: home to the faithless gypsy, no less. Even more amazingly it transpired that her first serious relationship had been with his younger brother, and thus we discovered that we had an awful lot to talk about…

Trying (and no doubt failing) to mask my uncontrollable curiosity, I listened with feigned nonchalance as I was updated on the ten months since I had last set eyes on Manolo.

Belén eagerly recounted how although Manolo and his teenage love, María, had not married, they had gone to Mallorca together for the summer season – only for María to return to her parents’ home in Jaén within a month, complaining that her gypsy fiancé had been hitting her.

Even more astounding than this already very astounding bit of news, was that her parents, despite being payos (non-gypsies), and therefore not necessarily bound by misogynistic gitano principles, had told their seventeen-year old daughter that as she had chosen Manolo, she was just going to have to stick with him and make the best of a bad situation.

And thus the poor girl had been unceremoniously returned to Mallorca, and to a fate that history did not, at that point, relate.

Of all the things I had imagined Manolo’s future to bring – continuing infidelity leading to an illegitimate child or three with associated claims for child support and, if there was justice in the world, some sort of nasty and incurable genital rash –  Manolo The Wife Beater was not a scenario that had entered into any of my casual ex-related fantasies.

Had there been any signs during our time together?

What turns a man from nothing more than a cad, into a perpetrator of domestic violence?

Certainly Manolo had been a liar, a cheater, a manipulator of sanity and of feelings; I had never had a moment’s concern for my physical safety during our years together, but were those behavioural characteristics merely a precursor to more sinister behaviour?

Did he swap an opinionated English girl for a teenage española who would be easier to dominate? Or was it the teenage española who had proved to be inconveniently feisty where the English girl had rolled over, doormat-like?

The questions raised by this sad and sordid scenario did not rest easily, so when my fellow I.T crammer invited me to a fiesta back in her home town, I had no hesitations in turning her down.

Some dogs are best left slumbering…