At the height of her career, TV presenter Selina Scott desperately needed a retreat. An unexpected invitation took her to Mallorca, where she found the respite she needed
The track began gently, winding through a cluster of village houses where fat black grapes draped over each backyard before veering off, getting steeper, leading up through a rocky gully. As I began to climb, a flash of brilliance, a hoopoe bird suddenly darted out of a bush, racing ahead, beating me to the top. I just caught its brightness as it descended into a valley of almond and olive trees, in the middle of which sat an ancient farmhouse.
The place was deserted. Intrigued, I stepped off the path, wading through a field knee high with wild fennel to take a closer look. At the front of the house an old vine propped on a gnarled branch of holm oak sprawled across canes, offering shade, sheltering a simple wooden table and a couple of stick chairs. A gaudy splash of purple bougainvillea clung to the periphery, struggling. All around were old stone walls, beginning to slip.
The shuttered house had two arched doors made of massive pine planks, whose primitive nails and blackened ringed handles gave the place an air of working antiquity. A stone bread oven, perfectly crafted and still in use, leaned against the side of the house, its smooth floor at waist height. The oven must have baked a mountain of bread over the years. I was so absorbed in the peace of this early Mediterranean morning that a raucous squawk from the hoopoe as it rocketed out of the bougainvillea startled me. I suddenly realised I was a little too close to someone’s home in this completely unexpected pocket of Mallorca. Any minute whoever owned this place might turn up and find me. Reluctantly I left.
That brief holiday spent in the sun and sea of Mallorca was the beginning, luring me to look again. A few months later and I was back, to meet an English couple who owned the farmhouse in the enchanting valley. I’d been told they had to sell because they needed to return to the UK, so on impulse I agreed to see them, with no intention, of course, of actually making an offer. It was March, a damp, grey day in Britain, when I reacquainted myself with the island. I’d been warned by all those who knew me well that to take on a project like this was madness when I was so immersed in TV.
Sheila and Johnny were waiting, sitting at the old table under the makeshift pergola when I showed up, desultorily proffering a glass of rainwater from an old earthenware jug. Obviously I wasn’t what they considered a serious contender. The water tasted peculiar.
Sheila and Johnny were middle-aged and also, it struck me, a little defeated. While Johnny untangled a strand of stray tobacco from his pipe it was left to Sheila, slim and blonde and slightly defensive, to make a tentative sales pitch as a shaft of sun caught a spider in mid-spin tumbling from the vine above.
Read the full article in out August 2009 issue.