The Songs of Manolo Escobar

by Carlos Alba

  ‘Who run away?’ Papa asked menacingly.

  Cheryl’s face turned scarlet and her voice faltered. ‘I’m not saying anyone’s . . .’

  ‘You say I run away? Who tell you I run away?’

  ‘I’m not saying anyone has run away, Mr Noguera, I was just making the point . . .’

  ‘You nae make point. You nae come in my house and talk about what you know nothing. You grow up in country with money in nice house with food and plenty of clothes. You nae know wha I do.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .’

  ‘You know wha age I leave school?’

  Cheryl breathed deeply as though to compose herself, but her hands were shaking. She shook her head.

  ‘Twelve. I leave school when I twelve and by thirteen I fight in war. So you nae tell me I run away. You shut your stupid mouth.’

  ‘Pablo, that’s enough!’ Mama shouted.

  ‘I’m sorry. Again,’ I said as we stood at the bus stop.

  ‘It’s all right, honestly. I shouldn’t have said what I did,’ she mouthed, almost in a whisper, tears running down her cheek.

  ‘But he had no right to speak to you like that.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to offend him. It just came out wrong. I wasn’t passing judgement on him. He took it the wrong way.’

  I wondered if she was right. She was eighteen years old, and even then I recognised it was her prerogative to be direct and guileless. Papa had suffered in his youth, but I didn’t see why those closest to him had to suffer too as a result. He’d misrepresented what Cheryl had said – wilfully, I strongly suspected – and I was too mortified to admit that such episodes were common.

  ‘He still had no right. He may have endured terrible times, but it was seventy years ago. I don’t see why he still acts like his life’s in danger.’

  ‘Francoist killings and revenge attacks went on long after the war ended. It was Franco’s intention to eliminate all opposition. So I understand your father’s fear and anger, I really do.’

  I braced myself against the driving wind and rain, and Cheryl stood close to me with her chin tucked into her chest, squeezing my hand tightly. The lights of the bus appeared on the crest of the hill in the distance.

  ‘Why don’t you come back to my flat? I don’t want to be alone tonight.’

  She raised her head slightly, and despite the darkness I could see her blushing.

  ‘What about Max Miller?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t worry about Bobby.’ she said, smiling.

  I was woken the following morning by shards of winter sunlight streaming through the curtains. Cheryl’s golden hair was fanned across my chest. I felt rested and more confident, clever and attractive than I could remember. I leaned over her and switched on the radio on the bedside table. The morning news was all about Spain, where the rebellion appeared to be petering out. The king had made a television address, offering his reassurance that all necessary measures would be taken to defeat the rebels.

  It was half-past eight and my first lecture was due to start in thirty minutes. ‘Cheryl,’ I whispered, gently shaking her awake.

  She opened her eyes and smiled.

  ‘There’s something I’ve been wondering,’ I said.

  She nodded her permission for me to ask.

  ‘Why do they call you Dolores? Max and all those guys in the SWS.’

  ‘It’s a nickname, after Dolores Ibárruri, La Pasionaria.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘She was the leader of the Spanish Communist party. She coined the phrase “iNo pasarán!”, they shall not pass – meaning the Fascist rebels.’

  ‘And is that what you believe?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t let you pass by, did I?’ she said, and kissed me on the lips.

  15

  ‘How are you, Kevin?’ I asked, breaking the silence of the early-morning newsroom.

  I beamed what I thought was an authentic, endearing smile. Several of those dotted around the office raised their heads slightly above their computer screens and lowered them just as quickly. Kevin, who was speedily going through the daily newspapers, looked up and frowned.

  ‘Sorry?’ he asked as though it was an accusation.

  ‘How are you?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘I’m fine,’ he replied before returning to the papers.

  There was a photo on his desk that I hadn’t seen before. The picture featured three people – a woman and two children – sitting astride expensive mountain bikes in a sunny Alpine location. I looked closer. The figures were surprisingly attractive, beautiful even – all flashing, white teeth, healthy golden complexions and freshly-laundered primary colours.

  ‘That’s never your wife?’ I blurted out. ‘I mean, is that your wife?’

  ‘Yes, that is my wife. And my two daughters, aged ten and twelve.’

  ‘She’s gorgeous,’ I said. ‘I mean, she’s very nice.’

  The others in the room shuffled uncomfortably and returned to their screens.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Kevin said uncertainly.

  I looked at the picture again. His wife really was very attractive, sexy in fact – ludicrously so, considering whom she was married to. She had blonde hair that kinked over her forehead, framing a face dominated by pouting lips and demure film-star eyes. She was wearing a yellow cotton dress with a bodice that only just managed to cup a pair of stunningly fulsome breasts. She looked like a model, a trophy wife, if that was possible with Kevin. I consoled myself with the thought that she must be lacking in personality and intellect. He’d been lucky enough to bag a beautiful wife. A beautiful, intelligent wife was beyond him. The odds against it were too high.

  ‘What does she do for a living?’ I asked, smiling.

  ‘She’s a psychiatrist,’ Kevin replied.

  After work I wandered distractedly along the rough-hewn back streets, past the pawn shops, ethnic cafes and cheap rents, in the direction of the tube station. London to me was increasingly a city of the past rather than the future, of cracked paving slabs and pot-holes, streets unplanned and unfinished, buildings plotted randomly like gap-toothed smiles, with poorly maintained exteriors defaced by unintelligible graffiti and the long, iron-streaked scars of leaking pipes.

  It was late afternoon and the sun was setting but still bright, its rays fleeting and unreliable respite from the biting chill. I’d left home without a coat, and all I had to keep out the cold was my suit jacket. I pulled up the collar tightly around my neck and dug my hands deep into my trouser pockets. A thin, crisp layer of silver ice coated the pavements, giving them a veneer of respectability they didn’t deserve.

  I arrived home to find the house in disarray. I’d been away for less than a week, and in that time Ben had turned the house into a slum. Magazines, food wrappers and empty cigarette packets littered the surfaces and various items of clothing lay discarded where they’d been shed. The kitchen had a warm stench of decay, and the worktops were strewn with discarded carrier bags and polystyrene containers. On the floor lay fragments of discarded toast and a chunk of orange Cheddar, shrunk and cracked like a dry river bed.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ I thought. ‘Is this my future?’

  Ben appeared, yawning, in the doorway. He was wearing a pair of crumpled boxer shorts and a t-shirt that said ‘PISS OFF’ in bold lettering.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ I demanded.

  He sauntered lazily into the kitchen. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean why are you living like this? You told me you were old and responsible enough to look after yourself. So why is the place falling apart?’

  He plucked a bowl from the cluttered sink and rinsed it under the cold tap before emptying the remnants of a box of breakfast cereal into it. A few flakes dropped out, along with a mound of what looked like sawdust. He retrieved a milk bottle from the fridge and sniffed its contents before splashing some on to the cereal and sat down at the kitchen table, clearing a space for the bowl.

  ‘It
’s not falling apart, I just haven’t got round to cleaning the place, that’s all.’

  ‘Ben, it’s six o’clock in the evening and you’re eating breakfast.’

  ‘Give me a break, Dad,’ he said defensively. ‘I haven’t got my shit together yet.’

  ‘Why weren’t you at school?’

  ‘I’ve left school, I’m at college.’

  ‘Don’t be a smartarse. Why weren’t you at college?’

  ‘I’m studying for my mocks. Natalie and me were up until four this morning revising.’

  The events of recent weeks crystallised suddenly into a coherent, elegant thesis – Ben and Cheryl were in this together, and I was the victim.

  ‘Take a look at yourself, Ben, you’re a mess. You’ve got no drive or self-discipline. You’re living in a shithole and you don’t seem to be bothered. What kind of way is this to live?’

  He snorted derisively. ‘What do you care?’

  ‘That’s not fair, Ben, I work hard to keep this family –’

  ‘I haven’t seen you for weeks. Where have you been?’ he said loudly.

  ‘I’ve been in Spain. I had important things to sort out . . .’ I began, immediately recognising the ludicrousness of what I was saying.

  ‘Spain? Important? What’s more important than being here with your family?’

  I didn’t have the strength to argue. I shook my head and left, walking slowly upstairs before collapsing on to the bed. I closed my eyes and tried to recall the last time Cheryl and I had had sex. It could have been six months ago, or it could have been a year – or more. I found myself envying Kevin, actually desiring that I could swap places with him, however fleetingly, to occupy his holiday snaps, with his shiny children and his busty, luscious wife.

  My mobile phone rang and Cheryl’s number flashed up. ‘Hi, it’s me, how are you?’ she asked.

  My heart raced and my mouth dried up instantly. I hadn’t imagined that hearing from her would make me feel so anxious. ‘Fine. And you?’

  ‘Ben told me about Papa. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, well, what can you do?’

  ‘How is he? I mean, how’s he coping?’

  Why should it be that she could walk out on me and devastate my life, and then decide to be magnanimous when it suited her? She wasn’t expressing concern about my feelings or even those of my father – this was about servicing her conscience.

  ‘I’m busy, Cheryl, what do you want?’

  She paused. ‘Umm . . . I want to know how your father is.’

  ‘He’s ill. He’s dying. Now, is there anything else?’

  ‘I’m concerned about your dad, Antonio. There’s no need to be hostile.’

  She was right, and I felt embarrassed. ‘I know you are. Sorry, I’m tired. So where are you staying?’

  ‘I’m staying with a friend, just until I get myself sorted out,’ she replied, a little too fluently for my liking.

  ‘Anyone I know?’

  She paused. ‘No, no one you know, just a friend.’

  I wondered whether to say what I was sure she already knew, that I’d been to Max Miller’s flat. ‘Is it someone from work, perhaps?’ I asked.

  She paused again, this time a little longer. ‘Look, I don’t want you to come looking for me, Antonio. I just need some time to think things through, to sort myself out, and then we can meet to discuss where we take things.’

  ‘I know all that. I just wondered who you were staying with.’ I was quite pleased with the reasonableness of my tone.

  ‘I told you, I’m staying with a friend and it’s no one you know.’

  ‘Is it a male friend or a female friend?’

  ‘What are you getting at, Antonio? There’s no one else, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said emphatically. ‘Look, I’m not going to continue this conservation because I don’t think it’s getting us anywhere. I’ll give you a call when I’m ready to talk.’

  She hung up. I hated being cut off like that, but I was glad I’d asked the question because it had stopped my mind whirring. Now I was convinced she was lying.

  16

  ‘You are terrible, but I like you.’ ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You are terrible, but I like you,’ Uli repeated in a monotone.

  A cold silence ensued, the soundproofed windows sealing us from the bustling Berlin traffic eighteen storeys below.

  ‘Hello, honky tonks, how are you?’ he said in the same unsmiling tone.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, the penny finally dropping. ‘Dick Emery. No, it’s awful.’

  ‘You think so?’ he asked, looking slightly hurt.

  ‘No, I mean it’s “You are awful, but I like you”, not “You are terrible”.’

  ‘Ah yes, you are awful but I like you. I am also finding great humour in the mother-in-law jokes of your Jimmy Tarbuck,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘A man, he walks into his house and says to his wife, “Pack your bags, I won the football pools” . . .’

  By a stroke of luck my mobile phone rang at that point, and I pulled it quickly from my pocket. I told Uli I was expecting an update on my father, who was ill, and hurriedly left his office.

  The call was from Fermin at the library in Lerida, who told me he was sorry to say he had bad news. He said he’d looked into my grandparents’ alleged murder but could find no evidence to support my father’s story. There was, he said, a Nationalist advance on Alguaire early in 1938, but there was no record of villagers being shot or of their bodies being dumped in a field.

  ‘The problem is that there are very few people still alive who might remember such an event,’ he said.

  I felt more demoralised than I could have imagined just a few weeks before. Papa had been so certain of his facts that he’d been able to identify the general area of the grave in the olive field.

  ‘We could commission a thermal imaging test, but it is an expensive business for an organisation such as ours, and we would not do so unless there was convincing supporting evidence.’

  ‘I see.’

  Fermin could hear the disappointment in my voice and he tried to remain positive, insisting this was not necessarily the end of the matter.

  ‘Could you ask your father if there is any other information he could provide us about the event? Even small details that do not appear relevant to him may still be useful in helping to build a picture we can attempt to corroborate further.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure there are no other existing members of your family who might be able to provide additional information? Often it helps to have an alternative perspective, because people’s memories are not always reliable, no matter how sure they think they are.’

  ‘No, my father is the only surviving member of his family,’ I insisted.

  ‘That’s very unusual. He has no siblings, no aunts or uncles or cousins?’

  ‘Not that I am aware of.’

  ‘You should ask him if it is possible that some members of his family, no matter how distant, may have survived. If he thinks it is possible, we could use our website to post an appeal for them to get in touch. A lot of families have been reunited in this way.’

  I’d hoped to be able to give Papa news of a positive development. I felt sure that, despite his protestations, he’d welcome my involvement if it led to some kind of resolution. This was a setback, and it made me realise it wasn’t going to be as straightforward as I’d hoped.

  I hung up and steeled myself to return to Uli’s office. I still found it slightly surreal that I was here at all. I’d been on a train travelling to Blackpool for the start of the third party conference of the season, having missed the first two, when Prowse called me, ordering me to Berlin first thing the following morning. Improbably, it seemed Uli had been impressed with me during our previous meeting, and he wanted to talk with me again. He volunteered no further information and I knew better than to ask. I pointed
out that Kevin was expecting me to attend the party conference, but he said he would ‘take care of Kevin’, which had made me smile.

  I knocked gently on Uli’s office door and entered. He was tapping sporadically on his computer keyboard, staring intently at the screen. Without looking up, he waved a hand imperiously to usher me in, and I made my way gingerly across the thick-pile carpet to the seat I had previously occupied. His screen was positioned at a slight angle, visible enough for me to see that he appeared to be surfing a film website.

  ‘Look at this video, Antonio. You like Carry On, yes?

  I sat down, rubbed my forehead and sighed. ‘My father’s dying, I’m getting a divorce and I need to be back at work, Uli. Can we get to the point about why I’m here, please?’

  I was astonished at my bluntness, but I felt somehow fearless. It had occurred to me on the flight to Germany that I could no longer think of a single redeeming feature of my job or the people I worked with. With this realisation, Uli’s power over me had seemed suddenly to diminish. He gazed at me with an expression of vicious incomprehension, and for a moment I thought he might summon a posse of security guards to usher me from the building. Instead, he smiled. ‘We are having some plans for your newspaper,’ he said slowly and deliberately.

  ‘Oh really.’

  His attention returned momentarily to his computer screen. He tapped several keys before looking up and swinging his chair around, confronting me with another ingratiating smile. ‘We are moving your newspaper to China.’

  I choked. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Yes, this is what we are doing.’

  ‘But it’s a British newspaper. How can you produce a British newspaper in China?’

  ‘We transfer production to Guangdong.’

  ‘But the journalists will remain in Britain, surely?’

  He shot me a look of irritation. ‘No, journalists will be in Guangdong, with the exception of perhaps one or two in London.’

  I wondered whether this was some kind of old comedy routine he was rehearsing. ‘But it’s a British newspaper.’ I knew I was repeating myself, but I couldn’t think of a more profound way of registering my confusion.