And this is why he was so in love with her.
William is about to pursue the conversation when he realises that there is no need. She wants to talk. Amazingly, for Lu Sutherland, his happening by was simply one of fate’s more kindly acts on this cruellest of evenings.
“He has so much of the anger inside of him, Gordon,” she says, stroking the cat more firmly. “I know why this is. Of course I know why is this.”
“From his shitty childhood,” amplifies William helpfully, before her curious look signals to him exactly what he is doing. “Er – I’m guessing,” he adds a bit feebly. “But you can usually tell these things.”
“Si,” agrees Lu, innocently. “From his father. His father who is dead. This man was very—” She stops, a bit embarrassed.
William senses that to go any further would be, for her, an unforgivable breach of trust. He isn’t going to encourage her. She’s hardly likely to tell him anything he doesn’t know, but it might be more than he would wish to hear. He wants so much to ease her discomfort. He also wants rather a lot to pat her hand, but he knows that this isn’t appropriate and there’s a good chance she might squash the cat.
“It’s okay.” He turns to look at her and this time a genuine sincerity burns in his eyes, surprising even him. “Trust me, Lu, he will learn to move on. To behave like a – well, like a grown-up. To tame that anger. Or at least re-channel it. And, you’ll see, he’ll be less like his nasty, vicious drunk of a dad with every day that passes.”
You’re off on one again, William, he thinks, his lower back starting to twinge, as if on cue. New stuff coming up for you, stuff you didn’t expect, revelatory stuff, but rein it in, pal.
“With your help and support, Lu. Naturally.”
It is only as these words unwrap themselves that he realises they began somewhere deep in his heart, where he seldom goes. He becomes suddenly thoughtful. “Although he may never actually thank you for it.”
She smiles at this kindly, if disconcertingly prescient, older man, who is now getting up to stretch in a manner that seems curiously familiar. Perhaps it’s a Scottish thing. He seems so wise, but of course thirty years of a good marriage – or at least a marriage that has endured – must provide some insights.
“I hope this is right,” she says. “I see all this good inside of him. I do, Gordon. But who can know?” She smiles, not entirely in happiness. “Poor Sandy. And he just say this night he want to give Will a job.”
William says nothing. The expression clouding his face says everything.
“Que?” she says, then adds “What?” for his benefit.
William deepens his troubled look, knowing he has a captive audience. “Can an old guy offer you a serious piece of advice, Lu? You and Will?” He takes her nod as a green light and moves forward at speed. “NEVER mix business with friendship! Never. Ever. Recipe for disaster. Guaranteed.”
“Not much chance of that now!”
They both spin round at the sound of the voice.
Will looks extremely sober and equally sheepish. With a huge measure of contrition thrown in. William’s heart goes out to him and for a moment he almost forgets exactly who this young man is. This rangy, red-headed guy with hands held suspiciously behind his back, who has rudely interrupted such an important tête-à-tête. A patently anxious young man, he ignores William completely and stares, guilty and unblinking, at his wife. Their wife.
William is surprised to hear the coldness in Lu’s greeting. He had always thought that came later. But, of course, he reminds himself, the headbutt incident didn’t happen first time round.
“How is Sandy?” she asks.
“Bloody sore, but still laughing.” Will attempts a chuckle himself. “You have to admire his stamina.”
“Do you?” mutters William ruefully, although it is patently none of his business. They turn to him, as if just remembering he is here. “I heard about the fracas,” he explains.
“Fracas,” says Will, in William’s voice, which is obviously not hard to do. “Great word. Fracas.” He stares hard at the unexpected third party. “What’re you doing here this time of night, Gordon? Hunting more Nazis?”
Before William can bang on about the nocturnal stroll, his practically photographic memory and the roots of coincidence, Lu begins to sniff quite loudly. So of course all eyes go back to her.
“What is this smell?”
She can’t stop sniffing. William has a go but isn’t sure whether a smell can travel thirty years. And, if it can, whether he’d really want to be here when it arrives.
Will is a picture of innocence. “Well, I don’t know, Lu. Hospital, mebbe?”
She hands William the scrawny white cat and moves towards her grinning husband.
Happily for the older man, the young couple don’t notice that the transferred cat has instantly become its own skeleton. William drops it in horror, praying that it reverts back to cat and he doesn’t have to explain a pile of bones on the ground. It certainly disappears from his view. William is not a particular fan of cats and dead ones hold even less appeal.
Meanwhile, Lu is trying to move around Will, but he keeps turning away, so that she can’t discover what’s behind his back. This goes on for some seconds. Whilst, to anyone else, it would most probably be sick-making, like a lovers’ mouth-to-mouth chewing-gum exchange, William is totally fascinated. He finds himself taken by his own former playfulness and his young wife’s gleeful willingness to play.
Finally she manages to double-guess Will and land up behind him, where she finds a greasy paper-bag and a tiny cardboard pot.
“Churros!” she yelps, triumphantly.
“Not exactly The Ritz, Seville,” he says, apologetically.
“No, is better! I LOVE the churros.”
“You can only eat them if you promise to get chocolate all over your wee Iberian face.”
“There is not another way!”
William watches with genuine enchantment as Lu grabs one of the doughy coils and dips it into the still-warm and nicely sticky chocolate. Her young husband can’t stop smiling at her. Yet William can detect the apprehension there, the burning need to make reparations and the justifiable fear that an oily snack may not quite be enough.
He has no idea of time, as he gazes at the loving young couple, with unexpected warmth and an infinite sadness. William knows that he is smiling but is clueless how to desist and return to his more pressing agenda. Nor if he even wants to. He can almost feel the anger in his eyes dissolve into an embarrassing moisture, as this attractive pair play silly buggers just inches from where he sits.
Finally, Lu remembers that he is still there. “Oh, Gordon, I am sorry for this. Churro?” William shakes his head. He would dearly love one but it would be way past its sell-by date. Like him, probably.
“So, Señora Sutherland,” says Will. “I did a very bad thing, didn’t I? A wee bit of a Glasgow thing. Very bad.” He looks so serious. “Am I forgiven?”
To William’s surprise, Lu turns back to him. “What do you think, Gordon? About forgivingness?”
I’m sorry?
William looks like he doesn’t think anything.
He appears totally speechless. And gormless. As if someone has casually asked him for his take on the latest advances in string theory, rather than sharing an instantly accessible concept that has been around since humans became human. His raddled mind churns wildly, as he processes the extraordinary yet stupidly obvious notion his wife’s younger incarnation has just hurled at him like a grenade. He knows that he has to say something or he will just appear rude.
“Forgivingness? Hmm. Well…” Come on, William, Gordon, whoever I bloody am. “Well, I suppose, if ‘forgivingness’ is the way a couple can get back – you know – to how things were…”
His speech fades, his turbulent mind absorbing the words he has just heard leavi
ng his mouth. As if they’re front-page news to him too.
“This is what I think!” cries the young wife, in elation. And William believes for a moment that he is very wise.
Lu stuffs a churro into Will’s mouth and follows it up with a long, chocolatey kiss, both of them totally unfazed by their audience watching unblinkingly from nearby. The older man feels almost like one of the family.
William is relieved that they are totally oblivious to the turmoil churning deep inside him, unaware too of the insights he feels almost privileged to have been afforded.
Will the younger clearly isn’t finished. “I’ve fallen on my sword with Sandy,” he says, “but I need to make it up to you, Lu.”
“You give me churros!” she laughs. But Will just shakes his head. This clearly isn’t sufficient.
William has absolutely no idea how the notion now galloping into his brain like a Spanish stallion has arrived there, nor what the hell it thinks it is doing. He just knows he has to run with it.
“Mind if I make a wee suggestion?” he says.
30
The building wasn’t always a casino.
William thinks that it was probably built as a palace. He assumes, rightly or wrongly, that in this once-royal city most grand buildings of a certain era were originally palaces or some ducal equivalent. Proudly flaunting those ornate carved crests at their top and the grand, balconied windows below, they were clearly ideal spots for looking down on warriors marching past in triumph or for being envied by peasants looking resentfully up. But he really doesn’t have that much of an idea and, to be honest, he hasn’t the time to mull on history right now.
He is simply relieved that the place remains here thirty years on, still lit up like Christmas and still with a constant flow, through its revolving doors, of not particularly smartly dressed or attractive people, some looking more cheerful than others.
He is also hugely impressed that he recalls where it was, although a surreptitious visit to Google Maps didn’t exactly hurt.
He does wonder briefly, as the curious threesome stroll together down a thankfully quiet side street, how he would have been able to explain Google to his young friends, had they caught him at it. He could of course have informed them that he had only just invented it (the name a cool abbreviation of, say, his own fine Scottish handle – ‘Gordon… Ogilvy’ – and the whole thing simply a prototype) but he had a feeling that the pocket-sized phone would have freaked them out well before he could have segued into enhanced lying mode.
It suddenly reminds William of a book he loved as a boy, one that his favourite teacher had loaned him, because he must have recognised that here was an imagination at work. It was Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. Dear Lord, he hasn’t thought about this in years. Or of the kindness of Mr Paterson at Govan High, the first guy who persuaded him that, despite his provenance, he could be something, that he could write himself into a career, although the man most probably hadn’t been thinking of slogans for portable air-compressors.
“So this is your brilliant reconciliation plan?”
The young man’s dour scepticism shocks William out of his reverie. “We came here on our honeymoon, Will,” he explains, enjoying a rare excursion into truth. “Nearly lost my shirt.”
“Terrific,” says Will.
“I do not like juego – the gamble – Gordon.”
“I know, Lu,” says William, who recalls only too well. Then, realising that he shouldn’t know this at all, he recovers swiftly. “I know how you might feel. See, I didn’t like the juego either. Until I discovered I was psychic.” And are my bollocks ever going to stop coming out of my mouth? he muses quietly.
“Yeah, right, Gordon,” says Will, who doesn’t believe the bollocks either. “And I’m the third witch in Macbeth. C’mon, Lu.”
“I see blood,” says William, “like the bite of a vampire. Only lower down.” They are staring at him now. He has grabbed their interest, almost despite themselves. “Will, you were nipped on the shin in Madrid by your in-laws’ little dog. And all they said was you’d better not have infected him.”
“What sort of dog?”
“Oh, for pity’s—! Well, it wasn’t a Scottie.” He turns to a seriously impressed Lu, with a knowing smile. “How do you think I was such a good Sherlock Holmess?”
William – detective, psychic, master of coincidence, eponymous inventor of Google – has no intention of accompanying them through the revolving doors, however convinced they now are of his “powers”. It was bad enough just walking here.
He has deliberately remained a few feet behind the youngsters, watching as they glide unwittingly through the bodies of people who look to William as corporeal and contemporary as himself but might as well have been ghosts to his 1988 counterparts. He certainly didn’t wish the same thing to happen in reverse and for Will or Lu to witness him ploughing through their fellow travellers and their bulky cameras, without a second glance.
He tells them what he believes they need to know, in as much detail as he can muster from the first time round, then slips tactfully and quietly away.
To his surprise, he now knows what he has to do.
***
Will thinks he has died and gone to Monte Carlo.
The small casino is as heart-achingly glamorous as he imagined it would be, the movies being his only real frame of reference.
Okay, the men sitting at the tables aren’t in slim-fitting tuxedos or look like oily oligarchs just off their yachts. And the women haven’t all poured themselves into gorgeous gowns that glimmer under massive chandeliers, along with the tiny beads of excitement that lie like translucent pearls on their stupendous cleavage. But the tables are there, brimming with decks and chips and card shoes and roulette wheels. And the staff are suitably smartly dressed, possibly more so than the clientele, each one dealing and shovelling and croupiering with such skill and élan.
Will Sutherland is as happy as a dog with two dicks and informs Lu of the same.
And now he spies a couple who complete the picture, making it truly beyond worthwhile.
The man is about Gordon’s age, but so much classier, with a full head of rich, silver hair and a tan that Will is convinced won’t fade with the season. From his wrist a chunky gold Rolex the size of Big Ben appears to be sending beams of wealth out into the room. The Rolexed arm is made even more impressive by being confidently rested on the naked back of its owner’s considerably younger and more beautiful companion.
Lu takes this in then observes that her husband isn’t just taking it in but laminating it, framing it and sticking it on the biggest wall in his dream house. So she gives him a nudge that manages to be simultaneously playful and corrective.
He shrugs an unconvincing apology and tries to recall what Gordon has just told them. Struggling at the same time not to wonder why the hell they should believe this curiously omnipresent old guy for a single second.
Okay, I’m getting something. Now try to remember exactly what I’m going to tell you. At 2AM the staff will change…
There are no clocks in the place and, of course, Will’s watch is at the bottom of a Triana fountain. So he takes Lu’s hand and holds it until the tiny watch face informs him that the time is ripe. And, sure enough, Gordon’s next prophesy is equally accurate, as they knew it would be, although God knows how he got there.
The croupier on the largest table is a local girl, someone you both know…
Lu and Paloma hug in excitement. Paloma laughs self-deprecatingly at her outfit, which her friends reassure her looks lovely.
… But it won’t do either of you any good.
Paloma’s work-station is the roulette table and she manages it with the utmost seriousness. Will knows that it would be a difficult concept to explain to Lu, but he can see that his wife’s best friend from art school is earning the money s
he needs without any hint of parody or condescension. In fact, quite the reverse. Smiling no more than common courtesy demands, she appears to take a huge pride in her professionalism. Her long, slender arms poised for action, she is interested only in making profits for the house, without hopefully upsetting too many punters or straying pilgrims.
Will is tempted to put all he can afford on the date of their recent wedding. Number six. Nombre sei. Good as any.
You might be thinking – I’ll put all I can afford on our wedding date. Number 6.
Him again! That voice in his head. Somehow it sounds so familiar to Will, and not just because of the Glasgow accent. But he only met the guy last night. Okay, Gordon was back again this evening at the café, hovering next to him at the urinals and, ah, yes, again just now at the hostel, when Will made the walk of shame. But the man is still a stranger, if not quite a perfect one.
Well, don’t. Put it on – hold fire, it’s coming – yes – no – yes – Will, your dad’s birthday!
This surprised both of them. But not as much as the explanation.
About time the belt-wielding old shagger did something for you, isn’t it? Oh. Er – sorry, went into a bit of a fugue just there.
Will glances briefly at Lu and smiles. She doesn’t return it, as she is too busy preparing her fulsome lower lip to be firmly bitten by small, strong, perfect teeth. Which she does to maximum effect as soon as he puts half his chips on 17 and Paloma spins the wheel. Lu grabs back the remaining chips as the teasing, taunting little sod of a white ball whirls swiftly round and smoothly round and slowly round, with that jarring, clickety-clackety rattle that sounds like nothing else in the world.
“C’mon, you bastard!” says Will, a bit too loudly. Talking about the ball but also perhaps about the date that inspired it. Seventeen – seventeen – SEVENTEEN.
A Meeting in Seville Page 13