A Meeting in Seville

by Paul A. Mendelson

  “Aye, okay,” says Will, who also stares at William a bit oddly, now that his best pal’s movie-star looks have come into play. “Well, I think mister gorgeous out there just offered me a job. Probably via his old man. Writing bollocks for fun and profit.” He shrugs, thoughtfully, or as thoughtfully as he can, given the Rioja. “’The rich are different from you and me’, Gordon—”

  “‘—they have more money’. My Hemingway to your Fitzgerald. Highly appropriate, considering where we are. Spain, I mean, not the gents’. Well, here’s another good one for you, pal. ‘Never look a gift-horse in the mouth.’” William moves pointedly closer. “Unless of course he’s snuffling in the wrong place for his oats.” Which even William thinks is quite pithy, as well as on the nose. He also begins to wonder whether Will would miss the bloody point if it was tattooed on his inside leg.

  “Yeah. Well, I need money, Gordon, that’s for sure. But listen, me and Lu have got it all worked out. At least in the short term.” William just shakes his head. “And, in the even shorter term – I need fags!”

  He retrieves his glass, liquefied once more, and moves off, leaving William bitterly frustrated.

  Until Will suddenly stops at the door.

  He turns round slowly, as if finally absorbing what was just said. And looks straight into William’s eyes.

  Without a word, he walks out of the bathroom.

  “Well, that took its own sweet time,” mutters William, as the man emerges warily from the cubicle.

  27

  This night’s candlelit procession has no drums, no trumpets, no songs of worshipful joy. Save for the slap of sandals on the dark and ancient streets, it is solemn and silent.

  Which doesn’t mean that all its spectators are.

  At least three are standing huddled together on a tiny and most probably historic wall, whispering away happily as they angle for a better view and the intrepid photographer amongst them for a better angle. Whilst below and around them a bobbing, bouncing, shushing crowd of the devout and the merely enthralled – kids, cameras and churros in hand – shuffle in quiet-ish respect, firmly elbowing away those who block their eyeline, in the hope they won’t dare protest too loudly.

  Despite the fruity Spanish wine working its own magic around his system, Will is still not too far gone to appreciate that what he is witnessing goes beyond anything he might have imagined. He could hardly call himself religious and he’s far from spiritual. Yet, to watch ordinary, decent people, imbued with an unquestioning faith, recreate a spectacle unchanged through centuries – in a city whose history and grandeur overwhelm – well, it does something to his soul. Will isn’t sure exactly what, as he has no idea what a soul actually is or whether he really has one. He finds it all quite confusing.

  Made all the more confusing, this cloudless, indigo evening, by the encounter he has just had in a café toilet. With a friendly but troubled-looking man he has only recently met.

  “Beats the auld kirk for razzmatazz, eh, oor Wullie?” says Sandy, the drink causing him to whisper just that bit too loudly. “And silly hats.”

  To his own surprise, Will feels himself bristle.

  He reckons it has to be at the lack of respect his friend is showing towards a ritual for which his new wife, beyond the obvious photographic possibilities, has a genuine reverence. Lu’s Catholicism has never been much of an issue for him, because she has sweetly made a point of it not ever being so. Even if this meant standing up to her parents, who clearly regard him as the red-headed anticristo from the North. He feels that the least he can do is to show some deference to the faith she still observes and to the festival she has lovingly brought him almost two thousand miles to see.

  But unfortunately this feeling only lasts a few seconds, because he is a bit drunk and can never resist a comeback.

  “Do you think they use the pointy bits to jab open their cans of Irn-Bru?”

  “Sshh,” says Lu, while the guys giggle, but it comes out a tad spittily, as she has enjoyed quite a bit of that cheap wine herself.

  She knows that she probably shouldn’t be standing on such a narrow wall, or leaning over quite so far, but how can she resist? This way you can capture not just the flickering candles, reflected in the centuries-old, highly polished silver, but also the rapt faces of local children. Some of the little girls amongst them, she notes with a melting joy, are actually wearing seriously starched communion dresses and tiny white mantillas.

  “Course, we’ve seen it all before, haven’t we, cariño?” says Sandy, smiling at her.

  He accompanies this with a companionable, short-sleeved arm dropping itself across her shoulder, slightly disturbing the heavy red bag, along with her balance. If he feels the glare coming from the other young man on the wall, he doesn’t let on.

  “Er, Sandy,” mentions this young man. “My wife, now? Pal.”

  “Point taken, pal,” says Sandy, very slowly sliding his arm back across the downy nape of her neck. But he can’t resist a parting shot. “If you’d stuck with me, Lulu, you’d be sitting down there, with the alta burguesia.”

  He points to a carpeted section, cordoned off with a golden rope, where older members of the community and the better-heeled tourists sit on red velvet chairs and enjoy a more expensive silence.

  The wondrous paso, with its beloved and infinitely precious Virgen Maria on board, crucified son in her arms, seems suddenly so perfect, floating on high across a shimmering backdrop of night and stars. It is too much for a young art-lover, with any sense of beauty, to resist.

  Camera practically welded to her face, Lu leans over just that bit too far, in search of the ultimate shot. Her weighty, leather bag, already sliding off her shoulder, now swings round in front of her and she begins to topple. Sandy’s arms shoot out to support her, as do Will’s, but the taller man gets there first. And stays perhaps just that bit too long, his hands remaining on top of her pounding chest for a few brief seconds after normal gravity has been restored.

  A guy might expect a jokey reprimand for this or even a semi-stern look of disapproval. What Sandy doesn’t expect is to see his old university friend, his wiry carrot-top pal from Govan, lurch towards him at some speed, blue eyes ablaze. Nor does he anticipate Will concluding his swift trajectory with a flying headbutt onto his best man’s perfectly patrician nose. A collision so forceful that Sandy instantly loses his footing and stumbles backwards, bleeding, into the huddled mass.

  Lu is too horrified to scream, although others around her, including the poor victim himself, manage to express their surprise. She just stares in alarm at her scary husband, whose head is rearing back, as if in preparation for further assault.

  The silence isn’t going too well.

  Yet, some distance away, one interested spectator is as quiet as the grave. William Sutherland can’t say that he isn’t shocked by the sudden attack. But neither can he say that he isn’t quietly satisfied.

  He is far too absorbed in the drama even to notice that one of the large crosses passing noiselessly by is being borne by the stocky handyman from the Hostal Esmeralda.

  28

  Luisa Sutherland can’t recall exactly when her fear of heights began to take hold.

  She certainly doesn’t recall having had it as a young woman. Perhaps it isn’t a fear exactly, but an unease, a preference for not being in a place where she may be obliged to look a long way down. And a sense of – fragility. A certainty that everything in this world is breakable. She read once that vertigo at its core is an almost-overwhelming desire to jump. She may be feeling this now, as she clings so tightly to the balcony railing. Yet she cannot make herself loosen her grip and go back into the empty room. A room in which she has spent – and wasted – most of her long day.

  The German couple next door have already returned, hot and sticky, from whatever attractions the afternoon has provided. They have showered and dressed for the even
ing’s entertainment (after having, perhaps, become more pleasantly hot and sticky). Finally, they have taken the air on their own adjoining balcony, exchanging a few polite words with their neighbour, who clearly had even fewer words for them, despite speaking excellent English for a foreigner, and have then departed arm-in-arm to enjoy their still-sandalled evening.

  And yet here she stands, staring out at the stern cathedral, its Gothic countenance lit starkly against the dark, velvet sky.

  She doesn’t even turn when she hears the door to the bedroom open.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Luisa!”

  She wants even less to turn round now. Her husband sounds wired, manic. As if his voice is running, even though his body is still.

  “You won’t understand,” he continues, elatedly. “But don’t worry.”

  She stands unmoving, her fists firmly around the wooden rail. Not understanding, but still worrying.

  She only alters her posture when she hears sounds of a rummage – and is not totally relieved to discover that this time it isn’t her bag William is plundering but his own. The worn-out laptop sack that is almost like an extra organ. She had only appreciated quite how exercised he must have been on his last flying visit to their room, when she’d noticed that he had left this precious holdall ungrabbed on the bed.

  William appears beyond excited, sliding his hand almost sinuously into one of the soft, protective pockets. She watches, transfixed, as this elation switches instantly to alarm.

  Once again, he brings his own slim consultancy brochure out into the light.

  He glares at it, as if it is the most repellent item ever to have emerged from a person’s work case, even though he himself had carefully packed it there, alongside several of its glossy fellows, just the day before.

  Now he’s opening it, although God knows he could quote the whole document by heart. She can see by the way the pages fall that it’s their photos he is gawping at, like an idiot. His and Sandy’s. Matheson’s and Sutherland’s. Partners and pals. She recalls the morning of the photo session – William checking in with her for any catastrophic shirt ’n’ tie clash.

  Without wishing further to unbalance whatever is going on for him, but curious to know what exact manner of madness this is, Luisa treads lightly across the room.

  What she sees makes the situation no clearer.

  William is slowly running a shaky finger along the broken, off-centre nose of his partner, a ‘blemish’ the man had clearly contrived to make even more of a feature for the photographer by adopting a slightly cocky, off-centre stance. As indeed he usually does, thinks Luisa. Like a cheesy yet still appealing James Bond poster.

  The only word that springs to mind to describe her husband’s face is devastated.

  But, as she watches, a lot more words spring almost unbidden from between her tight and angry lips.

  “Why do you stare at this photo?” William isn’t listening. “TALK TO ME, WILLIAM! I don’t know – get angry this one time. Si? Throw something! An ashtray – no, here is no-smoking – a vase. Make the passion! Instead of being a – a robot. Yes. A fucking, walking-in-and-out-of-fucking-hotel-rooms robot!”

  He looks at her now, but it is a look of such helpless puzzlement that her heart almost goes out to him. Concerned that he might suddenly flare up, but not necessarily in the borderline-acceptable, vase-throwing manner she has just mapped out for him, she lowers her voice and speaks from a well of shared memory, from which he might yet manage to sup.

  “What happened to the boy who would break a man’s nose just because he is looking at me?”

  If William appeared astonished before, this seemingly innocent statement threatens to poleaxe him totally. And, yet again, his response to her is entirely off the wall.

  “You REMEMBER that? It only just—”

  She looks at him expectantly, even if his wording is a bit weird. At least he is raising his voice. A good, old-fashioned, perfectly normal fight, perhaps? The trouble with being pretty obviously in the wrong, she thinks, whatever understandable and all-too-human motivation she may have had, is that it makes it a wee bit more difficult to lead the charge onto the moral high ground. But not, she assures herself, impossible. And they’re finally engaging with each other. Aren’t they?

  But no – it’s back to his bloody brochure. Jesus!!!

  Luisa does a lot more sighing in Spanish, as she stares at him flicking through the familiar pages – pages he himself designed and supervised – in stupefying disbelief. Finally she scrambles across the newly made bed (she did at least allow the maids to do that – she needed the company). Hitting the room phone with shaky fingers, she is astonished at how swiftly the summons is answered.

  “Aah! El conserje, por favor.”

  Perhaps it is fortunate that she doesn’t hear William address the photo of his asymmetrical colleague. “What sort of an idiot would still be partners with a brutish ned like me?”

  “Hola? Necesito un boleto de avión a Londres… Londres… Si. Emergencia. Inmediatamente. Si… si… Okay. Muchas—” She turns back to him, hoping for the slightest reaction. He clearly hasn’t heard a loud Spanish word she has been saying. “How long do you keep looking at his bloody picture?”

  “Until it bloody vanishes!”

  Their eyes lock in a tableau of mutual bewilderment. And then her husband is across the room and out of the over-used door.

  This time with the laptop bag in his hand.

  ***

  William doesn’t even nod to Pablo when the lift doors open immediately upon his arrival.

  To be fair, he can hardly see the man anyway, squashed as he is behind the two ladies from New York. They greet him silently and not without suspicion. The sort of greeting you might give a wife-beater, should you suspect that his spouse may be lying in a crumpled heap just beyond the bedroom door.

  Yet, being both friendly and trapped, they decide to give him the benefit of the doubt. The slightly broader one, Marilyn, as he recalls, taps a guidebook. Between them they appear to own an entire shelf.

  “Going to the processions?” she asks, although she knows it would be pretty hard not to, as throughout this remarkable week they proceed to you.

  William is not in a talkative mood. So he just nods.

  “Y’know,” adds Shelby, gamely, “we shouldn’t really be here. Not this week of all weeks.”

  Despite his preoccupations, William sees no mileage in being rude. “Oh, I don’t think the locals have burned gays for a while now.”

  “She meant because we’re Jewish and it’s Passover,” says Marilyn.

  The elevator opens and William scoots. There is somewhere he has to be.

  29

  “I do not believe this!”

  Lu is starting to push open the heavy, wrought-iron gate, her trembling hand flat against the giant tile at its centre. Naturally, there is no reason why she should believe this, as it isn’t true.

  But William is quite convincing, as he points upwards to the small bedroom that looks out, as ever, over the pretty little courtyard.

  “Fact. I’m pretty sure it was that room right there. I was just, you know, passing this evening. Out for a wee stroll,” he explains, with a charmingly mystified smile. “And I recognised this place! Hostal Esmeralda. Aye. From – well, from when we stayed here back in 1958! What are the chances?” He can’t stop shaking his head in amazement. “But I never expected to see you staying here! Of all people.”

  Lu, who is genuinely mystified rather than just doing the face, also shakes her head in wonder. “Is big coincidence. This is word?”

  “‘God’s way of staying anonymous’,” says William. “Not me, sadly. Einstein.”

  “It is very late, Gordon.”

  William totally understands that now is possibly not the best hour to be trading obscure quotations from Swiss maths geniu
ses. “So why did I come across you walking back here all on your own, Lu?” he enquires, more pointedly. “On your honeymoon.”

  The young woman, from three decades ago, looks at him with such a sadness that he finds his heart melting, in a way he can’t recall having experienced for so many years. There was the wedding of course, not so long ago, his lovely Clairey and the painter, but this is different. Perhaps because he didn’t cause the wedding, far from it, yet he knows damn well that the tears now pooling in this beautiful young woman’s soulful and so familiar brown eyes are all his own work.

  She pushes the heavy gate a bit more, with his help. William can’t be certain but he senses that she doesn’t want this conversation to end just yet. He takes the chance and follows her into the courtyard. She can regard him as either a stalker or a friend – it’s up to her.

  When she sits on the rim of the fountain, cooler now that the natural oven known as Seville has dialled itself down, he joins her. It’s a bit precarious but he manages. And she tells him exactly what her new husband just did to his slightly naughty, but basically innocent, best friend. She may struggle with the terminology, yet her mime of a headbutt leaves little to the imagination.

  “A Glasgow kiss,” remarks William, but almost to himself.

  He notices that Lu, as she talks, picks nervily at her fingers. William knows the action so well – and recalls that Luisa, his current Luisa, was doing much the same less than an hour ago, in such differing yet still anxious circumstances. He wants so desperately to prise those lovely fingers apart, to stop the inevitable damage, but he doesn’t dare. Yet he can’t let it go. “You’ll spoil those artist’s hands,” he smiles.

  As she nods, she leans over, opening her arms. A white cat suddenly appears in her lap, as if from nowhere. William jolts for a second, until he reminds himself that he can see artefacts (and moggies) of her era only if they are actually being held by her or Will. There are clearly rules to this madcap game, but William wishes to heaven he knew who was making them. For now he can simply enjoy the sight of a delightful young woman offering a slightly scrawny animal the unconditional affection he recognises as so much a part of who she is. Or at least who she used to be.