by Les Cowan
David and Gillian pulled up in the car park and headed in, loaded up with party food. David did the heavy lifting and Gillian kept her hands out of sight – too much excitement in one day and all that. But she was floating, her two favourite men around her.
“So this is the young man?” Archie inquired in mock Morningside when Gillian introduced David. “I’ve heard so much about you!”
“All good, I hope,” David replied conventionally, not quite sure how to play it. “Happy birthday. They tell me you like this sort of stuff.” From behind his back he produced a nicely boxed bottle of eighteen-year-old Highland Park.
“Thank you kindly, sir,” Archie intoned, planking the box at his feet. “And they tell me you play tenor, which makes you not all bad. Wrap yourself around this and tell me you’ve brought it with you.” He held out a large glass of red wine.
“Sadly not,” David admitted. “Just birthday cake. Gillian says you used to play professionally, Mr Lockhart.”
“House band at Ronnie Scott’s. And Archie, for goodness’ sake. Backing Stan Getz was a nightmare. He was having an affair with Astrud – Gilberto’s wife. You know – the original girl from Ipanema. Well, she was an absolute peach but Getz was drunk more than sober. It could get a bit rough getting them on stage but the dressing room was horrendous. She’d be crying and begging him to sober up, trying to get me to hide his booze. He’d show up late, fall asleep when he should have been going on – all that stuff. But when you got them in front of a mike, well, that was something different. She sang like an angel and he played like a demon. They brought the house down. That was the beauty of being in the resident band. You got to play with all the greats: Paul Desmond, Ben Webster, Mulligan of course. I even backed Mulligan and Desmond together. That was a dream. Let me tell you how that happened…”
It did Gillian good to see her dad in such good form. She had heard his jazz stories so many times she struggled to look interested, but this was a new audience and he was playing it for all he was worth. And David was genuinely interested. They were both in their element. She slipped away to help the staff get the food and drinks sorted. Eventually all was ready, the lights clicked off, and the cake emerged. Gillian led the singing; the old man took a mighty puff and extinguished all eighty in a single blow. Then it was paper plates and piles of party food. David went off and struck up snatches of conversation with other residents and staff.
“Sorry Ros couldn’t be here,” Gillian whispered in her dad’s ear. “I think they had the holiday booked for ages.”
“And I suppose my eightieth birthday was a complete surprise? I know – October holidays and all these kids.” He took a sip from his glass and tugged his waistcoat down.
“Anyway, on a more important subject, how are you doing, Gilli? What are you thinking?”
“About what?”
“You know about what. You and him, the boyfriend. How’s it going?” Archie grabbed a passing sausage roll and popped it in whole while Gillian took a sip of her red grape juice. He always did have an alarming knack of cutting right to the chase, which didn’t seem to have been softened by the years. David stood at the other end of the room, apparently all ears to the problems of maintaining Spitfire engines in the North African desert.
“Well, there’s a bit of news there, Dad. I was going to tell you later once we were on our own.”
“Sounds promising. Would that be good news then?”
Gillian nodded and smiled.
“David proposed on the way down here. I didn’t see it coming or I would’ve told you sooner.”
“Well, well. And how are you feeling about that, honey? I imagine you must have said yes or we wouldn’t be talking about it.”
She nodded.
“I said yes, and I’m feeling good – really good. We’ve been together almost a year. I’ve been wondering myself where it was all going, even where I wanted it to go. But now it’s happened I feel at peace about it. It’s been kind of a growing thing, I suppose – more than fireworks.”
“Like Mama Cass then?” Archie asked cryptically.
“Sorry, you’ve lost me there.”
He sang a couple of lines from “It’s Getting Better” in a gravelly voice till they both ended up in fits of laughter. David raised one eyebrow at the other end of the room and hoped the joke wasn’t on him. Gillian just smiled serenely back.
“And he’s a vicar or minister or something, isn’t he? I suppose he can’t be a priest. Not now anyway.”
That made her laugh again.
“He’s a part-time pastor of a little church in Newington, remember?” she reminded him. “And he teaches Spanish for a living. But he was leader of a huge church in Madrid. He’s part Spanish actually. I’ve been there. It’s absolutely awesome. They do a tremendous job with drug addicts and alcoholics – all of which David started and led. Then two years ago his wife was murdered by a drug gang – some sort of retribution for loss of earnings with all the addicts that had given up. He found it really hard, packed it all in, and came back to Edinburgh. His mum was Scots and he was brought up here. That’s it in a nutshell.” She thought perhaps now might not be the time to say that since meeting David Hidalgo she’d been attacked, abducted, shot at twice, reduced to a nervous wreck, and was currently helping solve a murder made to look like a suicide and unravelling a money-laundering conspiracy – but regardless of that, she felt 100 per cent in love and none of that seemed to matter.
Archie twisted round in his chair with some difficulty and kissed her on the cheek.
“Congratulations,” he said. “I take it he loves you?”
“Apparently so,” Gillian smiled back. “He’s a really sweet man. It’s not always obvious though. It takes a bit of time to get to know him. But I think you’ll like him when you do.”
“I like him already,” Archie confirmed, taking another sip. “He brought me a bottle of Highland Park. And what about the religious bit? I hope you haven’t signed over your life savings and taken the pledge.”
“Well, I do make a small contribution from time to time,” Gillian admitted with another laugh. She seemed to be doing a lot of laughing tonight and all without a sniff of alcohol. She guessed she must be a happy girl.
“You know what I mean,” Archie persisted. “I tried to bring you girls up to think for yourselves. Not to get pulled into the hocus pocus. I hope you haven’t let me down.”
“Not at all, Dad,” Gillian said reassuringly. “I go to church, read my Bible, pray a bit, ask questions. I haven’t signed up for anything but I’m learning. And if anything it’s actually making more sense the further on I get.”
“When I was young you had to leave your brains out with the hats and coats,” Archie snorted, “and I still think faith just means seeing how many impossible things you can believe before breakfast.”
“I’m not going to argue with you on your birthday,” Gillian replied with mock seriousness. “I’ll just say I used to think that too – or something like it. But I’m beginning to see it’s a bit more complicated. I haven’t sold my soul and church is great. Loads of really kind folk I’ve come to value. So there you are.”
“Well Gilli, I just want to see you happy, not hurt. You know that.”
“Course I do.”
“And he’s a kind man?” Archie glanced across at the animated expression on another old man’s face as he told David about the day he met Monty in person, and the way David grabbed a plate of smoked salmon on brown bread and passed it round the group of old ladies in the corner while still listening with rapt attention. “He is.”
“You love him?”
“I do,” she nodded.
“So do what you need to do, honey. And if I get a pair of these fancy robotic legs we keep hearing about I’ll walk you down the aisle.” Then he did a quick double take. “There will be a wedding, I suppose? A man of the cloth and all that.”
Gillian smiled again.
“There will be a wedding. Give us a ch
ance; I’ve only just said yes, but probably sooner rather than later. You’ll be the first to know.”
“Ok. Don’t leave it too long. I want to toast the beautiful bride and the Highland Park won’t last forever.”
Gillian smiled again, her face getting sore from the strain.
“Love you, Dad,” she said in his ear.
“You too, honey. You too.”
“And happy birthday again.”
As the bridge rolls, pastries, cheese puffs, and lemon meringue – not to mention the whisky – took their toll, Archie began to nod a bit. Juanita came over and whispered that maybe they should give him time for a nap then maybe he’d get a second wind in an hour or so. Would that be ok? “Of course,” Gillian said, and thanked her for how well they were looking after him. She collected David, who was still engrossed in the tales of the Desert Rats.
Marine Parade was getting distinctly chilly by that time of year and that time of night. They wrapped up warm and clung to each other in the face of the biting wind. They walked a hundred yards or so in silence, Gillian gripping his arm.
“Did I do the right thing?” David suddenly asked without explanation.
“Asking me to marry you?”
“No, I don’t need to check on that. I mean shopping Sandy to the police. He thought he was talking to me in confidence and I had the whole thing relayed to DI Thompson. When I phoned him to say Benedetti had asked for a meeting he wanted to be present first of all and I said no. Then he wanted to wire me for sound and I agreed. Was that ok?”
“In the light of what Alexander Benedetti has been up to I think that’s a minor matter. You said he seemed relieved when Charlie came up.”
“Yes… I think so. He said he just wanted it all to be over. He was mainly worried about the effect it would have on Sonia. I think he expects to go to prison and has sort of come to terms with it.”
“How do you think she’ll take it?”
“Not well, I imagine. The whole thing just makes my blood boil; nothing but victims in every direction – Mike, Sam, Sonia, even Sandy himself, I suppose. Guilty party and a victim at the same time. He broke the law but he was also conned. And we still have no idea where all that money comes from – drugs no doubt, plus who knows what else, which means another bunch of victims. I still can’t get over the fact that the whole thing is hidden behind a church. No wonder we get such a bad reputation.”
Gillian tightened her grip on David’s arm and pulled in closer.
“Hang on a bit,” she said. “There isn’t any we in this. You and I, Southside, Juan and Alicia, Warehouse 66, Mariano and Maria, all these guys – all of us – we’re not PGC. I don’t feel the least apologetic to be part of a church that does good just because there are others that don’t. The people that lump it all together have probably never been to a decent modern church in their lives. All they know is marriages, births, deaths, and the odd scandal they see on the news. It’s not the same. The police just need to shut it down, get the bad guys, and send them to prison so they can stop spreading whatever poison they have. Sandy and Sonia can recover in time. They were looking for the right thing, just in the wrong place. That can be fixed. Stop worrying; you did the right thing. Absolutely.”
They walked on a bit further. The Forth bridges could just be seen in the distance behind Cramond Island.
“I absolutely love you,” David said. “It makes things so much different to have someone to talk it over with. Juan’s a great guy but, well, it’s not the same, you know?”
“I do. And I’m relieved it’s not the same. I’d be worried if it was.”
By the time they got back to the party Archie had recovered and was propped up behind his drums. An old dame in her nineties was perched at a piano playing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountains When She Comes”. A few of the brighter souls were trying to remember as many of the proper words as they could. David and Gillian came in hand in hand. Archie spotted them, nodded at the choir, and rolled his eyes. They waited until the final chorus had died away, then went over to where he was grimly wiping his forehead and helping himself to another refreshment.
“Hi Daddy,” Gillian said. “That sounded good.”
He gave her a look and continued a slow shuffle with brushes.
“You might say that, my dear. I couldn’t possibly comment. Anyway, you look like the cat that got the cream. Find a lucky bag in the street?”
“Maybe,” she replied. “I never showed you this, did I?”
“Showed me what?”
“Something sparkly,” she said and flashed her left hand.
Archie didn’t miss a beat.
“About time too,” he said. “And you, Mr Whatever-your-name-is. Treat her right or I’ll send round the horn section to sort you out. Some of these trumpet players are mean dudes!”
Chapter 14
HACIENDA
It was a pleasant but somehow disorientating sensation having so many well-wishers, maybe like the sort of instant celebrity Big Brother winners and viral Youtube stars are prone to. Everyone claimed to have seen it coming long before they did, which apparently gave them a sense of ownership and possibly even a hint of smugness. “Finally, brother,” Juan said with feeling when he heard the news. “Me vuelves loco, amigo. And Alicia too. But I’m glad you’ve seen sense at last. Now what?”
“Don’t think we’ve got that far yet. Maybe next spring.”
“But we need a fiesta right now, no?”
“I guess so.”
“Hacienda, Sunday night, eight o’clock. Leave it to me.”
Gillian went into work the following morning feeling like her head was on another planet. She should have been working on essay questions for the new first year intake but couldn’t seem to get down to business. She didn’t want to make a big deal of it among her colleagues but somehow it couldn’t be helped. Becky the secretary noticed first and from there the news spread like wildfire. Even Stephen Baranski had the grace to offer his congratulations. Head of Department Gary was very complimentary. “What a relief,” he said. “I thought you were going to take up with that bloke from Harvard two years ago. Then we’d have lost you to the States. Congratulations. And I have a conference on ‘Regional Languages on the Celtic Fringe’ for you in Galicia at kind of short notice. Hope you can get your head out of the clouds long enough for that.”
What few were aware of was what it had cost them both to get to that point, and the questions that were still in the pending tray. David had counselled so many young folk about the need to choose a firm believer as a life companion that he couldn’t help now feeling a bit sheepish. “When the passion fades, as it eventually will,” he used to say, “you need to be built on the same rock – have the same goals and connections.” Now the old certainties didn’t seem quite so secure. He had once thought he and Rocío were built on the same rock, that if they just kept their eyes on what they’d been called to then they didn’t need to worry about the risks and dangers. But it hadn’t worked out that way. On the other hand, he had found happiness again and was willing to give God the benefit of the doubt. There was a big difference, he’d finally realized, between “making sense of things” and “coming to terms” with them. He still couldn’t say what sense everything made, but he had somehow managed to sign a non-aggression pact with reality and maybe that was enough. Unexpected love had come his way. She wasn’t going to be handing out tracts on the street any time soon but maybe neither was he. She was on a journey; a fact they were both aware of and treated with respect. Who could say where that would end? David was often struck by how often her questions, comments, and probing hit the nail on the head. Why do you do this? Why not that? Have you ever thought about trying something else? Can you see how this must feel to outsiders? That makes no sense. David at least had the presence of mind to realize that love and affection isn’t a matter of theology. As the Spanish so nicely put it, he had found la otra mitad de la naranja – the other half of the orange. That was enough.
Juan, who might have been expected to take a harder line, certainly had no problem with it. “You love each other,” he said. “You complete each other. You belong together. Who do you think you’ve got to thank for that?” When the moment finally came it was wasn’t hard to decide at all. He had popped into Macintyres on Frederick Street and took less than ten minutes to choose a diamond solitaire in a gold band. He’d never done anything more right in his life.
For Gillian, the idea of a relationship where religion was a factor seemed weird. Without it ever being in her top ten issues, she’d always seen Scottish “churchianity” as pretty irrelevant, end of story. Believe what you like, she’d once have articulated, but don’t force it on me, don’t judge my morals or those of my friends, and don’t expect me to take a message seriously in twenty-first-century Scotland that comes from a Middle Eastern oral tradition built on ethnic cleansing and stoning adulterers. Except that David wasn’t a sociological concept or a religious point of view. He was a bloke with his own beliefs, as well as his own doubts and uncertainties. At times it seemed more of the latter than the former. He was a guy who would once have believed a shed load of stuff she just couldn’t get her head around, but then all at once he was hanging on by his fingertips – “his jacket on a shoogly nail”, as her dad might have put it. So, guess what? David Hidalgo was on a journey too, and that meant it was never about barricades and slogans. They were simply groping tentatively forward hand in hand. More important than dogmas and doctrines, he was a man of integrity trying to get it right, not just looking out for number one. In fact, she sometimes thought he should put himself a bit higher up the pecking order. So, when the little black box appeared and a diamond solitaire twinkled from inside, she didn’t hesitate. He was a clever, good, even godly, man who loved her and would never deceive her. A kiss in the car outside the butcher’s in the rush hour wasn’t perhaps the most romantic moment in her life. Or maybe it was.