He wonders how she does this.
He has never been outside of Britain, barely ventured beyond Scotland, and a part of him feels even now that he should be out there, in the heat, exploring the city. Broadening his mind, gathering “material” for his writing. And hopefully what might pass for a tan on his pallid, northern skin. But it isn’t this part of him that is making the decisions right now. And, anyway, his personal tour guide is clearly on her break.
At least it will give him an appetite for those wee plate things she has told him the locals like for their dinner.
6
“Aqui estamos, pase por favor!”
Pablo lets the triumphant thump of baggage on the briskly unlocked door tell William just how proud he is to be ushering his new British guest into habitacion 381, Hotel Herrera, Casco Antiguo, Sevilla.
Indeed, were William watching the old man’s face and not simply hurling his laptop bag in weary relief onto the inviting king-sized bed, he would notice a degree of proprietorial satisfaction more normally reserved for people who have single-handedly reinvigorated a crumbling building marked for demolition. Or at least possess it in its entirety.
But all that William sees is a large chamber in semi-darkness, with its shutters sensibly closed. It could, at first glance, be any hotel room in the world (save for the UK, where a kettle and tea bags are provided as a matter of course and to avoid riots.)
Dumping the suitcases on the racks provided, the stocky driver/porter/Jacobo-of-all-trades scoots with impressive agility across the refreshingly cool bedroom, neatly avoiding a low, oak-like table in the centre of the room. He flings open the shutters, bombarding himself and everything around him with radiant if somewhat merciless, midday light.
Adding tour guide to his resume, Pablo beckons his new guest over, in the certain knowledge that this William Sutherland will go loco over the tastefully tiled and curling, wrought-iron balcony, with all that lies sunnily beyond.
But William, still understandably shaken by recent events (or non-events), is already at the minibar. He is relieved to discover sufficient miniatures of a Scotch to which he is not entirely indifferent and which is hopefully non-hallucinatory.
He reckons he needs to return as soon as possible to that – he struggles for the word – stasis, yes, in which he recognises that he lives and in which he is thankfully just about able to manage his work. Whilst he would be the first to concede that the balance of his life is most probably far from perfect (and, come on, whose is?) it suddenly feels a whole lot more stable than the heart-thumping, body-trembling anxiety he’s experiencing right now in this unsuspectingly pleasant room.
There is a large and rather beautiful bouquet of flowers on a nearby table. But his troubled mind barely takes this in, as he finally obliges a perfectly back-lit Pablo with the requisite attention.
“Catedral!” enthuses the old man, pointing excitedly, as if William might otherwise fail to spot one of the grandest and most breathtaking places of worship in the civilised world, just a few hundred metres from this railing. “Muy bien.” Even the man’s heathen guest can detect that the fervour bubbling over in room 381 is as much spiritual as architectural and William has the good grace to endorse it.
“Aye. Muy bien. Multo muy bien.” Which seems to do the trick. And he has to concede that the massive and overwhelmingly ornate, Gothic cathedral, so golden in the unremitting sunlight, is indeed worthy of a proudly pointing finger.
“‘Hagamos una iglesia tan hermosa y tan grandiosa que los que la vieren labrada los tengen por locos,’” quotes the old man, although William recognises only a word relating to madness at the end and wonders if it is referring to him.
The moving and slightly oil-stained finger moves on and upwards to the soaring bell tower, once Moorish minaret and now landmark of every local guide book and postcard and T-shirt in Seville, standing proud against the midday sun.
“La Giralda! Muy famoso.”
A vague memory stirs in William. Yes! They walked all the way up that tower, surely they did. He and Lu, as he used to call her in those days. It’s the sort of thing they would have done, when they had all the energy in the world and that same world didn’t sit like a rock on their shoulders. And curiously, to his surprise, there hadn’t been any steps, at least not until pretty near the top. “There were ramps!” he cries out. “Huge ramps. Aye. For the horses.” Pablo’s face is a tableau of incomprehension. “Ha! And she tells me I never remember anything!”
“Ah, felicitationes!”
“Excuse me?”
William knows this word, but he isn’t certain on what the old man is congratulating him. His prodigious memory? Then he sees the bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket of ice on a side-table, with a small hotel-card around its golden neck. William reads it and nods, not totally thrilled.
“From my partner. Sandy.” As if Pablo cares. “Gracias, pal. I’d better not be seeing the bill for this when I get back!”
William decides to open the bottle there and then. Taking it onto the balcony, he sets it down on a small, tiled table. Yet, as ever, the call of his silent mobile proves too strong. He proceeds to dial a number, hardly aware that Pablo has parked the old retainer schtick and is watching his every move. But William knows, as he makes the call, that the old guy is still around. They never leave without their tip.
“Ah. Spanish answer-phone,” he explains, over his shoulder, as he watches visitors down below stream into the cathedral. He wonders if there’s an entry fee – they could be making a fortune. Mind you, the upkeep… “Hello… hola…” No, still rabbiting… dear Lord, sounds like he’s reciting Donkey-bloody-Oaty! … Ah… finally! “Hola, Señor Barbadillo? It’s William Sutherland here. From London. ‘Matheson Sutherland’? Er… Ron Parfitt suggested that I – we – I’ll call again, shall I?… Aye. Er – adios.”
William remains on the balcony, as he tries to open the bottle. He decides he has to make another call.
“This was all my daughter’s doing, Ped… Pablo. Well, her and the so-called ‘artiste’ she went and married. I’m calling to thank her now. Say we’ve arrived. If she’ll ever get off the bloody phone.” William tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice. No need to display your emotions to the staff. “No, clearly too busy for her old dad. Ah well. Care to join me in a wee—?”
He turns to find that Pablo has gone. Saved me a euro or two, thinks William, as he finally pops open the champagne.
The cork flies onto the empty balcony directly adjoining his. William finds himself wondering, as he always does, if a potential client might be staying there. Stranger things have happened. In fact, they’ve already bloody started.
“Let the party begin,” he tells nobody at all.
7
Luisa is also on the phone, although she can barely hear anything above the clamour of the swirling crowds.
She remembers this historic, metal-arched bridge, The Puente de Isabel II, or Puente de Triana as she used to call it and assumes the locals still do. She can just about glimpse the muddy River Guadalquivir below, as she moves westward with the joyous masses, a different swatch of Nazarenos and apparently most of Seville. Making for the ever-vibrant and proudly distinctive Triana district, on its almost-island. Every week seemed to be a festival here, she recalls. The bars, the flamenco, the street music. But perhaps this is because she was young.
And just perhaps she can feel young again, she thinks, on such a special week. As young as she is trying to sound, in this curiously difficult courtesy call to her daughter.
“Well, for me, memories,” she responds lightly to the effusive, yet clearly anxious, trawl from London. “Of course. Wonderful memories. But, Claire darling, you know your daddy: he never remember anything… No, no bullfight!”
She finds herself smacking her hand against her bulky leather bag and shouting at her mobile, as if to show the totally di
sinterested world processing around her that Luisa Sutherland has no intention of ever watching an animal killed for sport. “We do not go the last time, my darling, so not this. You do not see me dead at the corrida!”
Luisa only half-hears her amused daughter talking about methinking and protestething too much – which she knows is just her funny way of speaking. The older woman’s nostrils are suddenly assailed by an aroma that, despite the anatomic impossibility, goes straight to her heart.
“Churros!” she says out loud.
Now her daughter laughs, that uninhibitedly rich and infectiously dirty roar. Encouraging her – go on, Mum, you’re on holiday – as if the pancreas gives its customers breaks the way credit card companies are wont to do.
Luisa is at the tiny, kerbside stall now, surrounded by jostling patrons of all ages. Each one a part of that blissful, time-honoured ritual – the dipping of a steaming, deep-fried choux pastry coil ecstatically into rich hot chocolate, followed by a hungry stuffing somewhere near the region of the mouth. Around them Christ and his wooden disciples wobble and sway to the relentless beat of the drums. And she wonders once again why God, in whom she no longer believes but still chastises on a regular basis, would make something that tastes so good contain within it such potential for harm. Not unlike sex in many ways, she ponders, wistfully.
“No,” she tells her daughter, “no churros,” thereby informing herself.
She moves reluctantly away and swiftly changes the subject. “Perhaps your daddy, he will go see the bulls fighting this time.” And now, naturally, the question comes. And the mother answers with a harmless lie. “Er, yes, he is here. Si. Of course… But he walks very fast up ahead, as he is doing always.”
Luisa finishes the call with a kiss and puts on speed, as if trying to catch up with her mythical husband. Scuttling through the crowds and into Triana, she surprises herself with her dogged determination. Why did the middle-aged Spanish lady cross the bridge? What exactly, she wonders, is on this other, so perceptibly different side of the city, this earthily picturesque arrabal with its craft markets and potteries and tile factories, that is making her so anxious to find it? And what yearning has impelled her to follow and now overtake this particular procession? One of so many in this extraordinary city, flowing, like the river, in all different directions?
She thinks she knows, but she isn’t as yet certain. Even her recall, universally acknowledged as far superior to that of her spouse, isn’t faultless. Nor is she sure why she is tapping her mobile again, finding a number that isn’t in its official memory but is firmly lodged in her own.
Yet, before it even connects, to a distant office some thirteen hundred miles away, Luisa Sutherland, late of Madrid, now settled in suburban Richmond, finds herself frozen to the spot. Eyes shaded and unblinking, quietly impeding the turbulent surge but quite unable to move.
The newly arrived tourist makes her own tiny almost-island, as she stares at something right in front of her.
Something that sends an almost electrical tremor juddering through her system.
Something she thought she might never see again.
Luisa isn’t yet as certain in her mind as she is in her heart. So she burrows deep into her capacious but sensibly inexpensive leather bag. Her Mary Poppins bag, as William once called it, not entirely with affection (since, on a recent occasion when he had to hold it for her, the bloody thing nearly wrenched his back). From its infinite depths she fishes out a small, fake-leather photo album, brand new despite its incongruity in this digital age.
She can sense that her movements are unnecessarily frantic, as she flicks it open, scrabbling for a page. She knows that she can’t actually calm down and that she doesn’t fully wish to.
Finally she sees it.
A photo of a small, prettily tiled courtyard, a stone fountain at its centre, with a spouting, snub-nosed cherub doing the honours and stone benches all around. Embraced by abundant orange trees bestowing some welcome shade. It’s an image from thirty years ago, most probably to the day. And there, smiling into the expertly adjusted lens, is a gangling young man with a straggly beard almost the same hue as his strikingly red and less strikingly managed hair. Despite the unrelenting sunshine, he holds a small, black folding umbrella.
Luisa looks back into the courtyard, outside whose closed gates she stands transfixed. It is empty now, but the fountain, the stone benches, the faded, old tiles are much as they were three decades ago. Even the trees seem unaltered. She finds herself staring upwards at a small, first-floor bedroom window, its freshly painted shutters swung open to welcome the Easter light. Luisa wonders who is behind those shutters right now and if they might be anything like…
“Hello… Luisa… darling…?”
The crackly voice on the phone spirals her back to earth. Just as the surging, chattering, churros-fuelled crowd picks her up like flotsam and drags her helplessly onwards towards the next busy square. The next procession.
So she doesn’t see the heavy front door of Hostal Esmeralda opening.
Now (1988)
8
Will Sutherland, of Govan, south-west Glasgow, knows that, in order to be a proper writer, you have to balance your reading time carefully with those moments when you should actually be putting pen to paper. No point citing your influences, if they have influenced nothing more than a vague ambition or a nagging dream. And in those circumstances, who in God’s name is going to ask you anyway?
So back into the fading, plastic sports bag that he always carries, bouncing over the cheap but essential suntan oil and equally essential duty-free Marlboro, drops the latest le Carré. And out come the worn, yellow notepad and requisite chewed-up Biro. The gentle trickle from the fountain soothes him, as he squats on its comfortingly cool surround, legs that haven’t seen shorts since childhood (and won’t be seeing them any time soon) outstretched onto the tiled terrace. Despite wifely entreaties his toes are still firmly encased in sensible, un-summery shoes. He makes sure his pale, northern face is gently shaded by trees from the ferocity of the noonday sun.
Will is just about to start scribbling, in the rare but welcome Spanish silence, when he senses that there is someone else close by.
He can almost feel the foreign eyes staring at him.
Will looks around to see a handyman or gardener (or both) whom he hadn’t even noticed. The man is quietly tending some flowering plants, in beautifully ornate ceramic pots, that sit in a corner of the courtyard. He is small but solidly built and quite swarthy, with the sort of tan, Will reckons, that comes not from basking in the sun but labouring under it. He is convinced that there is a difference, as indeed there has to be between lines etched by toil and those simply doled out by nature.
The man’s stare begins to take on a quality of permanence, which disconcerts its object.
“You’ll know me the next time, pal,” says Will, with the confidence of a guy whose accent is impenetrable.
The handyman turns back to one of the orange trees surrounding the courtyard and deftly picks a luscious low-hanging fruit that sits glistening in the sun. He bites into it with almost theatrical relish and smiles invitingly at Will through strong, juice-stained teeth. The young man nods and the older guy tosses another orange his way. Will catches it one-handed and immediately sinks his teeth right through the skin, giving it an even bigger bite.
The shock is immediate and his face contorts into a mask of pure repugnance.
Unfortunately, just as a lovely young woman emerges from the hallway.
“Will? I am not nice for you?”
He stares twistedly at his new wife, who is looking so fresh and soft and utterly disconcerted. Instinctively she gazes down at her crisp, brightly flowered dress and slim, bare legs, then back at her grimacing new husband.
“Eh?” says the sour-faced young man, before he understands. “No – no, Lu. Jeez! It’s the bloody orange!”
It was almost worth the anguish for the radiant, open-hearted smile he receives, a smile that elides into a giggle so uninhibited that it sets the large camera around her neck swinging wildly.
“They are not for eating! Mermelada. Marmalade, si? Silly… Willy.”
He acknowledges her “English” naughtiness, laboured as it is, with a raised eyebrow, as he rises from his perch. Will knows that he could listen for hours to that gentle, laughing voice, like the tinkling of the fountain but with the earthiest undercurrent, and believes that he always will.
Before he moves on, he swiftly clicks his neck, arches his back and bobs his head north and south. The young woman waits patiently, as she has already learned to do, then nods towards his bag. A small, black umbrella has slipped out and almost into the fountain. He retrieves it and notices the amused handyman shaking his head.
“Reckon we should see just a tiny, wee bit of Seville, now we’re here?” he asks her, “BETWEEN WILD AND FRENZIED BOUTS OF CALEDONIAN COPULATION!”
This is clearly for the benefit of the older man, who can no more understand it than Lu. But her attention has moved on – she has caught hold of a scraggy, white cat, who either belongs to the hostel or thinks he does. She is nuzzling it to her breast with almost maternal affection. Will can’t understand why, despite the cosy charm of the picture, he suddenly feels such discomfort and an even less explicable impatience. It isn’t as if they have a schedule – there is absolutely nowhere they need to be.
He tries to park his irritation, even as he acknowledges its familiarity. He’s being childish. Perhaps it is simply the drums that he can hear in the distance, moving closer beat by beat, sending their insistent rhythm to his heart.
A Meeting in Seville Page 4
