Cambridge International AS & A Level English Language Paper 1 Question 1b

Next stop the ten-acre farm.

We trundled back up the track to the road and turned right. The road started to rise gently and passed through a cut in the red soil and rock where small clumps of wild rosemary and other plants clung tenaciously to the vertical sides. When we emerged at the far end, Terry pointed across a parched meadow to a derelict building that looked worse than the one we’d just left. But we knew from the photograph they’d sent us that this wasn’t it. ‘That’s part of the farm – this bit of meadow too – but the main house is just behind it. See?’

Jutting out from above a bunch of billowing fig and walnut trees we could just make out the rise and fall of the roof and catch glimpses of sandy-coloured walls through the green leaves. The hire car bumped off the road again, brushed past some olive trees and scraped across a seam of rock that bulged in the track just before the final rise to the house. The sun was high and the air was still as we pulled up in the dappled shade of one of the trees and got out.

Mother’s Garden blew us away.

The whole setting – the house with attached red stone barn, the overgrown terraces, the vistas and the lush vines running away beyond the fig trees – was unbelievably beautiful. There were holes and cracks in the rendering, small patches of dull, grey cement slapped on here and there and evidence enough that it was in need of love. But despite the blemishes it was enchanting. It had symmetrical three-storey towers at either end, mottled walls the colour of the bleached earth, and a sundial at the centre above two balconies while the vine above the front door was straining to reach. I remember thinking, ‘Come on, concentrate, boy. This is amazing, yes, but look for problems. Anyway, you can’t afford it. It’s nearly £100 000. YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT.’

I repeated this mantra countless times as the elderly owners, Enric and Nuria, spent an hour and a half showing us round the house, walking the land and telling us it was derelict when they bought it twelve years before. For all their love and care the place still looked battered and bruised. Inside, some of the walls were scarred and flaking, floor bricks were broken and wiring sockets were hanging out of the wall. The older window frames carried the scars of woodworm and rot.

But it’s habitable, said my heart. It’s got four bedrooms, a shower room, an open fire and two wood burners, water pumped from the well, electricity, and a great big barn. Part of the roof has been replaced. There is a huge water reservoir, a cottage you can rebuild, not to mention healthy vines and almonds and olives. How many olives did he say?

A hundred and thirty? How many vines? More than seven hundred? And what about the space round the house – the barbecue, the bread oven? Come on! COME ON!

That afternoon, evening and most of the night we talked about Mother’s Garden, trying to imagine what it would be like if – a big if – we found ourselves living somewhere as incredible as that. We played with the idea of how we might survive, what our budget would be, where Ella would go to school, what the pattern of our lives would become, dreaming as we had done so often before after seeing farms and cottages in Norfolk which in truth were beyond our reach but which for a few heady days so fired the imagination that the dark realities were forgotten.

After leaving the farm we went on to another dilapidated finca1 that was half the size and half the price and had none of the same charm or outlook.

By this time, Maggie and I were soaking up every detail of the place, checking out the school, the grocers, the bakery and the swings and seesaws shaded by eight plane trees beside the ages-old and now peaceful spring-fed washing pools that resembled a Roman bath, and where it wasn’t difficult to imagine the chatter and clothes being slapped onto stone.

1 finca: Spanish word for farm