...more

you, but now that I’ve all the time in the world to do so, I feel
compelled to stay where I am for a spell and work. I felt I just
had to get something off to you. Probably to tell you that I’ve left
the treadmill and am living in Spain as I’ve always wanted to. I’ve
a million things to tell you about life here, but it’d take too damn
long. Never in my life before have I barged into a set of circum-
stances, a way of life, that was more conducive to creation. In
two words, I’m happy. And right now I don’t care if I ever sell
a line. I think this part of the world would be right for you too:
If you want to know more write me and I’ll tell you all. At this
moment Fay and I are ensconced in a fine whitewashed shack
by the sea. The place is expensive by Spanish standards. Friends,
an Italian painter and his wife (Viennese) are renting a house
with running water, five large living-rooms, big kitchen, garden,
outhouse, bathroom, hunting quail in the corridors, for 1,000
pesetas a month! And there’s no such thing as winter in the
Costa del Sol! I read in my airmail edition of London Daily Mail
that England is froze. Every time you buy a shot of vino in a bar
in Spain, they automatically hand you something to eat! A piece
of calamare, an anchovy, a couple of olives and bread, octopus,
clams, free! Some days, if we care to drink say half a dozen vinos
we’re too full for supper! Shit! Does it sound like Paradise? It is!
It’s a shame you Irish bums prefer the city! Now I’ve got it off my
chest I can work. Forgive me if I’ve spoiled your day.
Right now the church bell is speaking with the voice of a well-
tuned garbage can beaten rhythmically with a dry meat bone . . .
Santo Dios goes the requiem . . . somebody died today. And it ain’t
me! Love to Olivia.

Roger

 P.S. the most expensive luxury around is a postage stamp! (hope
I get out the screamer habit).


Cortijo de Maro
Andalusia
27.2.61
Dear Dan,
Thanks for your letter. You’re thinking of coming here? Fine!
In my opinion there’s nothing to beat it between Gibraltar
(where the apes live) and windy Port Bou. Paloma, old Tarra-
gona, Alicante, Almeria—you can have ’em. I hope to be able to
work here. It’s quiet.
Originally a Moorish town, I’m told. The name means foun-
tains-in-abundance. There are fountains here, but who the hell
wants water, and maybe a dose of the shits, when cognac is only
22 pesetas a litre, and you can buy a litre of wine in a bar for 7
pesetas, and a peseta is worth about 1 ½ d.
To give you some idea of the look of the place. It’s built on a
kind of tableland with its backside to the sea. From the main
plaza you can throw stones down into the fishing boats. On the
plaza there are a couple of bars and a double line of palm trees
and crazy chestnuts like Japanese leechees that don’t bear fruit,
and a Town Hall with an anchor-and-chain emblem and a
plaque that boasts in good capitalized Spanish that El Caudillo
saved Catholic Spain from Communism. ¡Arriba España!
When you enter the plaza—Plaza de Jose Antonio Primo de Ri-
vera—from the narrow Puerta del Mar, the sea is slap before you.
To your left, a low railing prevents drunks from falling into
the halfmoonshaped and rather shitty beach below. There’s a
long building like a lock-up or calaboose and some poor cot-
tages, a double tier of them, under an overhanging bluff.
Bare-assed bambinos from the cottages use this beach as an
open-air shit-place. The tide rises and falls only a few metres and
doesn’t wash the caca away. The fishing boats are drawn up here
by pulley and tackle around a winch. Above is Florian’s Hotel,
muy típico Italiano. The beach is Playa de Calahonda. There’s an-
other one farther down, called Carabeo (meaning shit-strewn)
and a big one beyond that—Burriana: a kilometre long.
Facing the Town Hall is the Marisol, bar and restaurant; half
glass doors and wide windows looking into the plaza on one side
and towards the Cine Olympia and the church on the other. The
summer residence of the Puerto Rican ambassador is in the
church square. Next to the Marisol is a poorer bar which we pre-
fer. Balcón de Europa, formerly Bar Alhambra—you can still de-
cipher the old name over the door. A line of tables outside both.
Prices at the former a little higher than at the latter, where the
service is generally sharper. You will meet Miguel, a gentleman.
Every Thursday a gitano comes on a beat-up bicycle with a
kid goat roped on. He cuts its throat in a cramped passage full
of empty beer crates off the retrete. The carcass is hung near
the kitchen door and used during the week for tapas, which you
get free with the drinks. Muy bueno. The retrete smells bad. The
whiff that comes out of it is lethal. How the women squat over
it to pass water or anything else and manage to stand upright
after, beats me.
Sitting at one of the Balcón de Europa tables you can see Maro
up in the hills. The clouds over the sierras never come any closer.
Rarely. Between the half dozen high palms on this side (I am
writing this at one of the tables, getting into my fourth cognac)
and the half dozen on the other side runs the promenade, broad-
walk or paseo, where the entire population take their exercise in
the evening. You can see for many kilometres down the coast.
Very brown. Very wild.
King Victor Emmanuel named this paseo the 'Balcón de Eu-
ropa’ because of the view. During the Peninsular War it was
a Limey gun-site. The Limeys, being no respectors of Catholic
churches, knocked the top off a church that stood here formerly,
to get a better field of fire. The church—most of it—fell into the
sea. What was left was reconverted into a poor-class pension,
with a colonnade (the old cloisters) for foundations, under-
mined by a colony of rats. Su tropel de ratas. Nowadays, what
with the rats, rare tidal disturbances (it can blow here), sea ero-
sion and general wear and tear, not much is left standing. One
hears talk of a new luxury hotel to be erected on the spot. I’ll
believe it when I see it. There’s always talk in Spain; talk of im-
provements, modernization, urbanization, progreso—nothing
much comes of it, I’m glad to say.
The streets here are narrow and for the most part cobbled with-
out much motor traffic to speak of (most of this goes by on the
carretera, slicing off a small section of the town to the north);
what comes through is mainly of the mule and burro variety.
Occasionally something on wheels. The houses are painted
blanco-white, the doors generally open because of the heat—and
in August it can be really hot here. You can see through into the
patios, and even into the back gardens. The shutters are drawn
to keep the rooms cool. Nada más. Our love to Olivia and your-
self. Write. Live soberly.

Roger

 Cortijo de Maro
Andalusia
18.3.62
Dear Ruttles,
I enclose a few photos of our shack. It’s what the Spaniards
call a cortijo, which corresponds to a farm-with-a-farm-house-
attached. It’s never been rented before. Probably because of
this, or perhaps because the owner is already pretty rich (he
owns the town’s olive factory), I’m only charged 1,000 pesetas
a month, which is damned little. £6 English (or Irish). I’ve taken
a lease for six months initially which takes me right through the
summer traffic period, so I should have no difficulty in getting
it for the same price next August.
The house is on top of a hill and has a full 360 view of the sea
and the coast on one side and the sierras on the other. Between
them is farmland, the campo; olive groves and almond. The land
is uneven with a valley every half mile or so. The house is two-
storey and painted blanco-white, with long windows and two
terraces, as you’ll see from the photos. Muy típico. The kitchen’s
enormous, with a bank of three-tier wood burners which we
don’t use as we’ve had butane gas installed. There’s no water or
electric light. We have a butano lamp instead of the latter and for
the former I go into the village every morning to pick up sixteen
gallons of water from one of the fountains.
Fay’s got the biggest studio in all Spain. Thirty-five feet long
by twenty-five feet wide and a head clearance of at least sixteen.
There’s a grape-pressing area in the middle and a sump for catch-
ing the stuff. The bodega below her is as extensive as the studio.
It should be full of bloodstuffs but ain’t, not yet. We’ll kill a kid
when you arrive.
The owner of the joint installed a loo for us. Before that we
were commuting to the bushes and the country-side about was
beginning to look as though a paperchase had just passed
through. But it’s all right now. In between buzzing around with
water barrels, careering off to see if there’s any mail, enjoying the
luxury of a real stone shithouse, eating, drinking, sleeping, un-
derwater fishing, hiking the country-side, going to the bullfights,
getting locked up, sighing at the window, I write. It’s nice. For
the first time in my life I should be in no hurry, so I hurry. But
that’s nobody’s fault but mine. The fever is on me. I’m often bad-
tempered. I have a room set aside for it. You just take off the
shutters and bung them in the bodega. The view is terrific.
I spent a night in jail here for a suspected drunk-while-speed-
ing charge, with bail at ten thousand pesetas coming a bit high I
thought—it’s about £60. However, some of this I hope to re-
trieve. Fay, understandably enough, was riled with me. Enough
of that.
As for the work itself, it’s like walking into a treadmill. But
once in and a rhythm established it’s not so bad. I’ll have some-
thing to show you. Fay’s in the kitchen right now cooking sup-
per. I see the lights of the village seven hundred metres below
me, a mile away on the carretera. The lights moving out on the
sea are the big fishing boats what went out earlier from Burriana.
The butane lamp is hissing, my eyes are on a fresh glass of
brandy at my elbow (the fifth since I started this letter), the door
of the writing room is open behind me but I don’t think I’ll make
it tonight.
Some days I pitch a rock at a passing cat; others I like what I’m
doing so much that I can’t write any more but have to go out for a
walk. I could find you a place here without too much trouble.
And you would both love it. Just let me know in time. I have
made some inquiries. Christ there’s a whole book of shit to write
to you about, but soup’s up.
Power to your elbow, my friends. And love from Fay and
me.

Roger

 Cortijo de Maro
16.4.62
Dear Ruttles,
Look at this new postcard, a view from the air. The desolate
part off to the right where the new concrete slab chalets and the
parador are going up was once a forest of umbrella pines. Trees
cut for lumber, stumps pulled for firewood, earth carted off for
gardens. What’s left looks like Miguel’s face, maybe bleached. I
sometimes think his face—and others as eroded—got that way
from looking at what’s left under the sun. Either way, it’s what’s
left that won’t get away.
We made a budget today and found we were almost broke.
We left Canada with £1,400, but at the time of writing have only
about £130. We spent £220 on the boat. I bought a motor-vehicle
in Venice for £440, a DKW, and an excellent buy I think. We
stayed a week there, another in Rome (hell to drive in), a few
days in Florence, another few in Sienna, a week in Barcelona—the
money runs away. To cap it all was thrown in jail and fined, as I
think I told you. When do you think you will come?
Con abrazos muy fuerte.

Roger

■

I received other letters from Amory in those miserable times preceding and following my mother’s demise. All were on the same lines, all touched on the same theme, in all of them the promise (you won’t regret it) and the refrain (when will you come?). We left in the spring of the year following my mother’s death.

Epistolary (1)

 Lista de Correos
Nerja, Andalusia
Spain
February 1962
Ruttle, what are you up to, lad?
I’ve a hell of a lot of projects swirling around in my head, a dirty
eddy close to some sea-borne sewage pipe, and I can’t get on with
it until I’ve re-established contact wiv me foin Oirish friend.
True, amazingly, I wanted to come over and shake a bottle at
you, but now that I’ve all the time in the world to do so, I feel
compelled to stay where I am for a spell and work. I felt I just
had to get something off to you. Probably to tell you that I’ve left
the treadmill and am living in Spain as I’ve always wanted to. I’ve
a million things to tell you about life here, but it’d take too damn
long. Never in my life before have I barged into a set of circum-
stances, a way of life, that was more conducive to creation. In
two words, I’m happy. And right now I don’t care if I ever sell
a line. I think this part of the world would be right for you too:
If you want to know more write me and I’ll tell you all. At this
moment Fay and I are ensconced in a fine whitewashed shack
by the sea. The place is expensive by Spanish standards. Friends,
an Italian painter and his wife (Viennese) are renting a house
with running water, five large living-rooms, big kitchen, garden,
outhouse, bathroom, hunting quail in the corridors, for 1,000
pesetas a month! And there’s no such thing as winter in the
Costa del Sol! I read in my airmail edition of London Daily Mail
that England is froze. Every time you buy a shot of vino in a bar
in Spain, they automatically hand you something to eat! A piece
of calamare, an anchovy, a couple of olives and bread, octopus,
clams, free! Some days, if we care to drink say half a dozen vinos
we’re too full for supper! Shit! Does it sound like Paradise? It is!
It’s a shame you Irish bums prefer the city! Now I’ve got it off my
chest I can work. Forgive me if I’ve spoiled your day.
Right now the church bell is speaking with the voice of a well-
tuned garbage can beaten rhythmically with a dry meat bone . . .
Santo Dios goes the requiem . . . somebody died today. And it ain’t
me! Love to Olivia.

Roger

 P.S. the most expensive luxury around is a postage stamp! (hope
I get out the screamer habit).


Cortijo de Maro
Andalusia
27.2.61
Dear Dan,
Thanks for your letter. You’re thinking of coming here? Fine!
In my opinion there’s nothing to beat it between Gibraltar
(where the apes live) and windy Port Bou. Paloma, old Tarra-
gona, Alicante, Almeria—you can have ’em. I hope to be able to
work here. It’s quiet.
Originally a Moorish town, I’m told. The name means foun-
tains-in-abundance. There are fountains here, but who the hell
wants water, and maybe a dose of the shits, when cognac is only
22 pesetas a litre, and you can buy a litre of wine in a bar for 7
pesetas, and a peseta is worth about 1 ½ d.
To give you some idea of the look of the place. It’s built on a
kind of tableland with its backside to the sea. From the main
plaza you can throw stones down into the fishing boats. On the
plaza there are a couple of bars and a double line of palm trees
and crazy chestnuts like Japanese leechees that don’t bear fruit,
and a Town Hall with an anchor-and-chain emblem and a
plaque that boasts in good capitalized Spanish that El Caudillo
saved Catholic Spain from Communism. ¡Arriba España!
When you enter the plaza—Plaza de Jose Antonio Primo de Ri-
vera—from the narrow Puerta del Mar, the sea is slap before you.
To your left, a low railing prevents drunks from falling into
the halfmoonshaped and rather shitty beach below. There’s a
long building like a lock-up or calaboose and some poor cot-
tages, a double tier of them, under an overhanging bluff.
Bare-assed bambinos from the cottages use this beach as an
open-air shit-place. The tide rises and falls only a few metres and
doesn’t wash the caca away. The fishing boats are drawn up here
by pulley and tackle around a winch. Above is Florian’s Hotel,
muy típico Italiano. The beach is Playa de Calahonda. There’s an-
other one farther down, called Carabeo (meaning shit-strewn)
and a big one beyond that—Burriana: a kilometre long.
Facing the Town Hall is the Marisol, bar and restaurant; half
glass doors and wide windows looking into the plaza on one side
and towards the Cine Olympia and the church on the other. The
summer residence of the Puerto Rican ambassador is in the
church square. Next to the Marisol is a poorer bar which we pre-
fer. Balcón de Europa, formerly Bar Alhambra—you can still de-
cipher the old name over the door. A line of tables outside both.
Prices at the former a little higher than at the latter, where the
service is generally sharper. You will meet Miguel, a gentleman.
Every Thursday a gitano comes on a beat-up bicycle with a
kid goat roped on. He cuts its throat in a cramped passage full
of empty beer crates off the retrete. The carcass is hung near
the kitchen door and used during the week for tapas, which you
get free with the drinks. Muy bueno. The retrete smells bad. The
whiff that comes out of it is lethal. How the women squat over
it to pass water or anything else and manage to stand upright
after, beats me.
Sitting at one of the Balcón de Europa tables you can see Maro
up in the hills. The clouds over the sierras never come any closer.
Rarely. Between the half dozen high palms on this side (I am
writing this at one of the tables, getting into my fourth cognac)
and the half dozen on the other side runs the promenade, broad-
walk or paseo, where the entire population take their exercise in
the evening. You can see for many kilometres down the coast.
Very brown. Very wild.
King Victor Emmanuel named this paseo the ‘Balcón de Eu-
ropa’ because of the view. During the Peninsular War it was
a Limey gun-site. The Limeys, being no respectors of Catholic
churches, knocked the top off a church that stood here formerly,
to get a better field of fire. The church—most of it—fell into the
sea. What was left was reconverted into a poor-class pension,
with a colonnade (the old cloisters) for foundations, under-
mined by a colony of rats. Su tropel de ratas. Nowadays, what
with the rats, rare tidal disturbances (it can blow here), sea ero-
sion and general wear and tear, not much is left standing. One
hears talk of a new luxury hotel to be erected on the spot. I’ll
believe it when I see it. There’s always talk in Spain; talk of im-
provements, modernization, urbanization, progreso—nothing
much comes of it, I’m glad to say.
The streets here are narrow and for the most part cobbled with-
out much motor traffic to speak of (most of this goes by on the
carretera, slicing off a small section of the town to the north);
what comes through is mainly of the mule and burro variety.
Occasionally something on wheels. The houses are painted
blanco-white, the doors generally open because of the heat—and
in August it can be really hot here. You can see through into the
patios, and even into the back gardens. The shutters are drawn
to keep the rooms cool. Nada más. Our love to Olivia and your-
self. Write. Live soberly.

Roger

 Cortijo de Maro
Andalusia
18.3.62
Dear Ruttles,
I enclose a few photos of our shack. It’s what the Spaniards
call a cortijo, which corresponds to a farm-with-a-farm-house-
attached. It’s never been rented before. Probably because of
this, or perhaps because the owner is already pretty rich (he
owns the town’s olive factory), I’m only charged 1,000 pesetas
a month, which is damned little. £6 English (or Irish). I’ve taken
a lease for six months initially which takes me right through the
summer traffic period, so I should have no difficulty in getting
it for the same price next August.
The house is on top of a hill and has a full 360 view of the sea
and the coast on one side and the sierras on the other. Between
them is farmland, the campo; olive groves and almond. The land
is uneven with a valley every half mile or so. The house is two-
storey and painted blanco-white, with long windows and two
terraces, as you’ll see from the photos. Muy típico. The kitchen’s
enormous, with a bank of three-tier wood burners which we
don’t use as we’ve had butane gas installed. There’s no water or
electric light. We have a butano lamp instead of the latter and for
the former I go into the village every morning to pick up sixteen
gallons of water from one of the fountains.
Fay’s got the biggest studio in all Spain. Thirty-five feet long
by twenty-five feet wide and a head clearance of at least sixteen.
There’s a grape-pressing area in the middle and a sump for catch-
ing the stuff. The bodega below her is as extensive as the studio.
It should be full of bloodstuffs but ain’t, not yet. We’ll kill a kid
when you arrive.
The owner of the joint installed a loo for us. Before that we
were commuting to the bushes and the country-side about was
beginning to look as though a paperchase had just passed
through. But it’s all right now. In between buzzing around with
water barrels, careering off to see if there’s any mail, enjoying the
luxury of a real stone shithouse, eating, drinking, sleeping, un-
derwater fishing, hiking the country-side, going to the bullfights,
getting locked up, sighing at the window, I write. It’s nice. For
the first time in my life I should be in no hurry, so I hurry. But
that’s nobody’s fault but mine. The fever is on me. I’m often bad-
tempered. I have a room set aside for it. You just take off the
shutters and bung them in the bodega. The view is terrific.
I spent a night in jail here for a suspected drunk-while-speed-
ing charge, with bail at ten thousand pesetas coming a bit high I
thought—it’s about £60. However, some of this I hope to re-
trieve. Fay, understandably enough, was riled with me. Enough
of that.
As for the work itself, it’s like walking into a treadmill. But
once in and a rhythm established it’s not so bad. I’ll have some-
thing to show you. Fay’s in the kitchen right now cooking sup-
per. I see the lights of the village seven hundred metres below
me, a mile away on the carretera. The lights moving out on the
sea are the big fishing boats what went out earlier from Burriana.
The butane lamp is hissing, my eyes are on a fresh glass of
brandy at my elbow (the fifth since I started this letter), the door
of the writing room is open behind me but I don’t think I’ll make
it tonight.
Some days I pitch a rock at a passing cat; others I like what I’m
doing so much that I can’t write any more but have to go out for a
walk. I could find you a place here without too much trouble.
And you would both love it. Just let me know in time. I have
made some inquiries. Christ there’s a whole book of shit to write
to you about, but soup’s up.
Power to your elbow, my friends. And love from Fay and
me.

Roger

 Cortijo de Maro
16.4.62
Dear Ruttles,
Look at this new postcard, a view from the air. The desolate
part off to the right where the new concrete slab chalets and the
parador are going up was once a forest of umbrella pines. Trees
cut for lumber, stumps pulled for firewood, earth carted off for
gardens. What’s left looks like Miguel’s face, maybe bleached. I
sometimes think his face—and others as eroded—got that way
from looking at what’s left under the sun. Either way, it’s what’s
left that won’t get away.
We made a budget today and found we were almost broke.
We left Canada with £1,400, but at the time of writing have only
about £130. We spent £220 on the boat. I bought a motor-vehicle
in Venice for £440, a DKW, and an excellent buy I think. We
stayed a week there, another in Rome (hell to drive in), a few
days in Florence, another few in Sienna, a week in Barcelona—the
money runs away. To cap it all was thrown in jail and fined, as I
think I told you. When do you think you will come?
Con abrazos muy fuerte.

Roger

■

I received other letters from Amory in those miserable times preceding and following my mother’s demise. All were on the same lines, all touched on the same theme, in all of them the promise (you won’t regret it) and the refrain (when will you come?). We left in the spring of the year following my mother’s death.