I WAS EIGHTEEN when I last went to Majorca, and had a riotous time, dallying with a plumber called Ernesto, and a taxi driver called Juan, before ending up in the muscular arms of a telephone mechanic called Angel.
With such fond memories I was wildly excited when Meon offered us a villa in the north of the island. Leo my husband was not. He abhors the whole idea of the Bally-awful islands, as he calls them, and, sourly opening a file entitled ‘Bloody Majorca’, gloomily forecast airport strikes, customs hold-ups and drunken tourists being sick into ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hats.
His sense of outrage increased when he learnt we were flying out on the first day of the test match and, even worse, had a woman pilot. To his intense disappointment, the plane landed on time, the directions across the island were perfect, and the villa – L’Olivar d’Availl – quite ravishing. Like the nicest private house, it had a vast drawing room, five bedrooms, four bathrooms, and sun-trap terraces everywhere.
Even more crucial at 10 p.m. to travellers too weary to go out was a full fridge which included two cooked chickens, cheese and several bottles of wine. At midnight the tiles were still warm on the terrace outside our bedroom. In the garden below cypresses pointed black fingers at huge stars and a full coral pink moon reflected in a swimming pool longer than a cricket pitch.
We were woken by goat bells, cocks crowing and farm dogs barking. Feasting on croissants and apricot jam, I saw two thin stray cats peering down from an olive tree to see if the new arrivals were soft touches. They were. In the supermarket three miles away in Puerto Pollencia, we bought tins of Whiskas ‘con sardina’. Leo perked up when he saw Fernet Brancas on special offer, but winced when Emily, my fourteen-year-old daughter, and her friend Catriona who’d come with us, purchased such exotic Majorcan delicacies as baked beans, tomato ketchup and Philadelphia cream cheese.
One great plus was that both children were marvellous at amusing themselves, frolicking like porpoises for hours in the turquoise pool, or devouring Mills and Boon novels with screams of laughter. Further plusses were a sweet villa supervisor who popped in to see we were all right and direct us to the best beaches and restaurants, and a wonderful maid called Maria who made the best paella I’d ever tasted.
Dining out in Majorca is cheap but patchy. We found a good restaurant in Puerto Pollencia called Hibiscus, and another in Cala San Vicente called Mary y P, where you dined under a canopy of ivy. I developed a passion for Rape Soup, a fish stock duster-yellow with saffron and groaning with mussels, prawns and crab claws. Other restaurant outings were less successful. Zarzuela was merely lumps of cod in Brown Windsor, and the grilled squid could have acted as a rubber fetishist’s willy-warmer.
We made a few trips to the local beaches: Cala San Vicente, which reeked of sewage; Formentor, by boat, which yielded much to gaze at. Since I last visited the island the women have gone topless, a phenomenon emphasised by the fact that the Majorcans stick their chests out three inches further, whether on land or sea, than any other nation. To avoid being impaled by a massive aquatic brunette, Leo scuttled up the beach.
Mostly we spent our days at the Villa L’Olivar, swimming, sunbathing, watching the dragonflies cruising like Prussian-blue helicopters across the exquisite pool.
By day three we were feeding six cats. Leo, buying ten tins of Whiskas con sardina, was asked by a helpful English tourist if he realised he was buying cat food.
A fat woman glared at me. ‘There’s that Linda Porter writes for the Mail,’ she said.
‘No it’s not,’ said her friend. ‘It’s Gilly Potter.’
Another bonus of the villa was the perfect waste disposal provided by six goats, who survived somehow in a burnt bladeless field next door and who ate everything we gave them including the Mail on Sunday. Goat Cuisine, said Leo.
One problem about holidays, if you normally lead a pressured life, is how exhausting it is doing nothing. Nor can I unwind unwined, so I was left with hangovers at dusk and dawn. I had to face the fact too that despite valiant efforts to be jolly, poor Leo was bored out of his skull, not just by the prattle of three teenagers (he includes me) but, because I don’t drive, by having to ferry us round on every trip. The children’s needs were also different from ours. Having devoured Mills and Boon in the sun all day, they were raring to get off with Sting and Rupert Everett look-alikes in the evening. It was too far for them to walk to Pollencia; anyway we felt they shouldn’t be left entirely unchaperoned. But there was no doubt the presence of parents inhibited the hovering Angels and Ernestos, who would have snapped the two girls up as the villa cats pounced on scraps if they’d been alone. Nor do the discos really get going until around two in the morning, by which time, having been woken by assorted cocks at dawn, one was nearly asleep.
By the sixth day, three more cats arrived, and a billy goat, who, despite being hobbled, jumped over a wall, and really enjoyed baked beans and The Spectator. The word had obviously got round. In the afternoon a beautiful grey mare and her mule friend trotted up the drive, rushing round scattering hibiscus petals, until an embarrassed owner retrieved them. Perhaps we should start a restaurant called Olivar Cramwell.
Seven in the evening was the witching hour, when the setting sun slanted across olive and almond groves, gilding the pale grasses, warming the parched brown earth, and turning houses and rocks an apricot pink.
We usually drank before dinner on the front at Puerto Pollencia, watching the crowds, the yachts swaying in the harbour, and the lovely soft colours of the windsurfers’ sails.
As teenage girls pedalled by on bikes, with boyfriends with skin as smooth and brown as butterscotch standing on the pillion, Emily and Catriona’s longing was palpable. Oh Life where is thy Sting!
On the day we left, the weather tactfully went cloudy. Leo, whose bathing trunks had lost their elastic, walked up and down the pool, hands behind his back like Prince Philip to hold them up. The cats all had Falstaffian bellies, the goats finished up everything including Woman’s Own.
I wished it had been more fun for Leo, but felt, despite a shortage of Angels, the children and I had had a lovely time. We reached Palma airport to find the place in chaos, with all flights hopelessly delayed by a strike. Having lost a fortune trying to ring England, Leo came back with the information that This Was a Major Cock-up, and We Certainly Wouldn’t Be Home To-night.
‘I say,’ whispered Emily. ‘Daddy’s really really cheered up.’