“How the crap do you know that?” asks Will, not unreasonably.
“She’s psychic too!” exclaims William, in desperation. “We belong to a club. Can I borrow my wife for a second?” He grabs her. “Jaffa! No – Fanta!”
Luisa stands, using Will’s shoulder to support her. “It was so good to meet you again, Will. After so long.” She smiles with a sadness that goes right over the young man’s head. Giving one of her especially deep, soulful, Iberian sighs, she follows her husband away from confusion and towards the exit.
Lu watches them with undisguised fascination, as if she senses an argument brewing. Then looks back thoughtfully at her husband, who is preparing himself for the kill.
34
“I owe YOU an explanation? You’re screwing my bloody business partner!”
William and Luisa Sutherland are conducting the argument of their lives in full, if indifferent, earshot of random spectators, as they hastily leave the Maestranza. Indifferent save perhaps for one young woman down below in the Sol, who would look at anything rather than the artful slaughter that holds everyone else rapt and breathless.
William has no idea where they are going, geographically or emotionally. Yet, like the spectacle they are forsaking, he senses an impending climax he is powerless to control.
“And your best friend,” responds Luisa, her anger equalling his own. “See – even here you are putting the business first!”
“Because he is giving you the business first!” William points back to the Sombra, although by this time they are outside the Plaza de Toros and the spectators can be heard but not seen. “And now you’re bloody coming on to – to me!”
And to think I was going to absolve you, he muses. Well, sod “forgivingness”. Yet, even amidst the madre of all rows, he can’t help mulling that he has left a great potential client back there, rapidly losing his potential.
They could, of course, remain stationary and continue their argument, perhaps in a quiet corner or a deserted street. But William and Luisa are not well-versed in the etiquette of all-out, stand-up rows, as they don’t form a major part of their disputational repertoire. It would seem that William has quite successfully trained himself out of them, scary as they were, since his more volatile youth. With Luisa’s calming assistance. Something she now appears to regret, as she reckons she would far prefer the spiky firebrand she just left to the distant automaton she feels he has become.
Whatever the reasons, the sheer momentum of their flare-up propels them away from the historic building and towards the banks of the swiftly flowing Guadalquivir. They find themselves crossing the familiar bridge into Triana, although a trip down memory lane is probably the last thing they need right now.
Luisa tries to stare into her husband’s face, ensuring that her words bear their intended weight, but shorter legs mean that she has to walk that bit faster just to keep up with him. William has no intention of slowing down, despite having no obvious destination in mind. So her words come out in a breathless rush, bouncing off his stiffening back, which isn’t quite as she would wish them delivered.
“Tell me this,” she pants. “What sort of a husband is it who is so married to his work, he likes more to screw his laptop?”
“At least it responds to my touch,” he fires back, walking even faster, as if in a rush to return to his past.
“Oh no, William. Oh no. It is not me who is dead inside.”
Now he stops. Now he turns.
“Just keeper of the dead,” he says quietly, but not quietly enough. He watches his wife’s face crumble, as if the underpinning, always so precarious, has finally fallen away.
“Bastardo!” she spits. Then does the same in translation. She shakes her head and mutters to herself, in the way one does when pretending a comment is not for other ears. “Sometimes I think you do not remember even his name.”
Before he can answer this, not that an answer springs readily to mind in the face of so monstrous an allegation, she scrabbles into her heavy bag. Out comes the little photo album. As he watches, wanting to protest but still not finding the words, she flicks desperately through it. He briefly sees again the photo of Will and Lu at the Yellow Café, taken by the “older” Luisa – the snapshot that certainly wasn’t there when she first thrust the album at him.
Finally, she comes across the treasured one of that beaming little boy, with what she always called his lapis lazuli eyes and the blond hair tinged with red. She thrusts the photo in front of William’s face, a gesture that makes passers-by wonder unsurely if the man is losing his sight or the woman is losing her mind.
“Jamie Eduardo Sutherland! Ring a bell, si? JAMES! Like your papa. So that ‘good can come from bad’. This is what you say, yes?” Her voice begins to crack and not just because of the unaccustomed shouting. “But where is the good now, William? Where is it now?”
She walks to the end of the bridge and then stops, unsure of where to take her anger and her misery. This time William hesitates, but only for a moment. He knows that he must follow her, because there seems nowhere else to go. With the discussion and perhaps with the world.
Memories begin to flood in, flowing with the speed of the river just below their feet. But he senses there are certain places where he cannot go. Not here. Not now. If there was ever a time for silence…
“Just do not say it!” She has turned back to him and is staring him out.
“Easter Sunday.” He had not meant to say it. But he said it.
“He said it!” she tells a bemused passer-by, in disbelief. The elderly woman, dressed entirely in black, just shakes her head, which Luisa takes as a sign that this thoughtful stranger is just as appalled as she is.
“What’ve I got to lose, cariño?” retorts William, in self-defence. “How’s this for total recall? Stroke of midnight. Easter Sunday. Year of our Lord, 1988. Very last night of our honeymoon. The bells were damn sure ringing then, for me and my girl. AND IF YOU HADN’T COME ON SO BLOODY STRONG—!”
“Me? You were like La Giralda in your pants!”
If she had hoped that no one nearby would understand English, Luisa is soon disabused. A couple of young lovers, laden down with plates and tiles from one of the Triana showrooms, suddenly burst into giggles and stagger away, so as not to offend the older, Spanish-looking woman, who is being pretty offensive herself. They daren’t look – although they do – at the poor old, balding guy, who is becoming quite red in the face.
“Perhaps I should have thrown an ice-cold sangria on it,” hurls Luisa, unfazed. What the hell – nobody knows her here in Seville. Not even herself. “Then I would not be ‘up the duff’ as you say it. And you could be the huge, famous man and write the wonderful novels about Nazis and whores. While I go out and ‘win the bread’ for us, yes? Our deal. Our big bloody deal!”
“You had dreams too, Luisa! Your art – your photos. Our kids’ books.” He laughs wryly. “One ‘el preservativo’! See – that’s a word I remembered. From the farmacia. Bit too bloody late. If only I’d trusted my Spanish, rather than my wife.”
She glares at him then walks angrily, tearfully away. Without even thinking, she finds herself moving towards the Hostal Esmeralda, the scene of the crime. How did they end up here?
How did they end up – here?
To her surprise, she feels William’s warm hand circling gently around her wrist. She looks down at it and the elegant watch that was once so special, then up at him. As their eyes meet, welling with tears they would rather nobody witnessed, William suddenly knows what he must do.
“You wish it too, don’t you, Luisa?”
He can hardly breathe, but he has to complete the thought, even though he is certain that she does not and will not understand. “That things could have been, you know – different.” She stares at him now and shakes her head, as if he is simply stating the obvious. Even when he says something that in
truth is so totally overwhelming. “That we could change things.”
Now she laughs. A sound bereft of mirth. Or joy. Or hope. “Things? ‘Things’? Just look at us, William!”
Without being aware of it, they have reached the ornate, tiled gates of the hostel itself. But they don’t look in. They don’t see the stocky handyman turn from his pruning and watch them as they stare at each other, before they move off in separate directions.
Because there is nothing more to say.
Back in the hushed Maestranza, Lu hides her tearful face in Will’s shoulder as the lifeless carcass is dragged bloodily away.
35
William Sutherland thinks there is probably nothing more poignant than a married couple lying next to each other in the darkness, neither partner sleeping yet neither one of them acknowledging the other’s state of wakefulness. But, somehow, rather than saddening him, it seems to etch resolve even deeper into his mind.
When, some hours into the night or early morning, he finally hears familiar noises that tell him his sleeping partner really has succumbed to the weariness overwhelming her, he slips gently out of bed.
He begins to dress in the dim light seeping through the curtains.
After he has completed this tricky endeavour, and is hopefully not resembling the unmade bed he just left, William stares down at Luisa. He whispers into the darkness, at a level he knows, from his own restless nights’ experience, is unlikely to wake her.
“Goodbye, Luisa,” he says, tenderly. “We’ll get there, cariño. It’s going to be okay.”
Of course, William has no idea if this is true, nor indeed whether the “there” to which they’re going to get is even attainable in this jumbled world that exploded for both of them just a couple of days before. He simply knows that anything has to be better than where they are in this moment. And where, as he realises now, they have been for far too long.
Now that he has, in some revelatory way, been reintroduced to the woman he married and with whom he has managed to live for three sometimes turbulent decades – this regularly infuriating yet so often disarming woman, the unique and intrinsically decent person to whom he now realises he owes so much and for whom he believes, despite yesterday, despite a host of yesterdays, that he has genuinely learned to feel “forgivingness” – he is certain that he has to try to make things right again. To make things work again. For both of them.
Before he loses her forever.
William has never felt more resolute nor more determined in his life. Nor more convinced that resolution and determination count for bugger all when you don’t have the vaguest notion what you’re doing.
36
He could do the walk to Hostal Esmeralda in his sleep. Which is probably just as well.
There is no one in the freshly scrubbed streets as William leaves the hotel (where, for once, he doesn’t bump into the ever-wakeful Pablo). Nor is there much evidence, save for shop window displays, that one of the largest and most spectacular religious festivals in the world is currently at its height.
The cathedral itself appears to be sleeping, as if storing energy in its ancient stonework for Easter Sunday, Domingo de Pascua, the most important day of all. Energy sapped, thinks William, from the hundreds of poor artisans and craftsmen who most probably expired during its construction. And then he thinks that such thoughts, whilst vaguely poetic and metaphysical, aren’t really getting him anywhere much, so he stops thinking them.
He has no idea how long he spends on the old bridge, by now so familiar, gazing down at the gently mesmerising river, with no proper idea where it has begun nor indeed where it is going. For William this is just a halting point on his mission, until the time is sensible to proceed.
He really does wish that he has a proper, definitive plan. A honed-until-foolproof, long-term strategy for the future, with Sutherland and Co as the brand. But none has occurred and if he thinks that watching an endless stream of muddy water will clear his head and sharpen his focus, he is seriously disappointed.
The Hostal Esmeralda is just awakening, as he pushes open the gate. There is no one in the courtyard but the shutters of his old bedroom, their bedroom, are open. He hasn’t quite worked out how to explain his being outside their door so early in the morning and he knows that ‘just passing’ won’t hack it this time. But in this brave new world, where different rules apply and lying through one’s teeth feels perfectly normal, he is confident that something will occur.
The tiny reception desk is unguarded, which he takes as a positive omen, so William is able to slip through and up the stairs without being observed. He looks around but after thirty years he can’t honestly say that the creaky staircase or the old tiles adorning the walls ring the slightest bells. Nor does the bedroom door when he finds himself outside it, wondering how to proceed.
He has no need to wonder for long, as the door suddenly opens. Reeling back against an available wall, he feels suddenly sick with the prospect that this is happening today, now, and is the initial phase of his master plan, which isn’t a plan at all but some species of desperate and clearly unrealisable dream.
The occupant of the small, first-floor room appears just as surprised as William. He is a man of a similar age, but better skin-tone, to the stranger on his landing. Yet he bids him a hearty Australian (or Kiwi: William is never quite sure) good morning and slips past him down the stairs to enjoy his desayuno.
William doubts whether the man he just encountered is aware that he has been sharing a tiny room with a couple from the late Eighties, but he knows that he shouldn’t hang around to find out. He has not the slightest clue as to what to do next and doubts that he will have any firmer ideas after a good breakfast.
But at least he will have had a good breakfast.
***
It is well after nine when he finishes what was indeed an excellent breakfast. He supposes that, if anyone can do a Spanish omelette, these guys can, and recalls with affection the myriad tasty omelettes he has enjoyed over the years at home, with Luisa and quite often with their small family or close friends. Sandy included, which makes him decide he won’t think about omelettes any more right now.
He is not thinking about anything constructive when he finds himself on a bench in a small but delightful square, rich in statuary and bitter oranges, not far from the hostel. He is struck by the acres of emptiness inside his brain. William Sutherland, still apparently of Matheson Sutherland, whose mind is usually churning at such a rate, either with future plans or financial worries, strategies, campaigns and dreams unfulfilled. He would do what the gurus advise and simply trust in the power of the universe, except he thinks that’s a load of crap.
As the city comes to life, the benches around the square fill with bright-eyed tourists. William watches them as they pore over maps on their phones and tablets, or more likely, he reckons, hit social media for their first fix of the day, indulging in the cyber-schadenfreude that only kicks in when flaunting to less fortunate connections back home a side of paradise they possibly won’t ever afford. (Or at the very least aren’t enjoying right now.)
A large Nazareno all in white parks himself next to William.
They exchange a polite nod, which is all the more impressive when your head is masked and conical. Had he even wished to begin a conversation, which William doesn’t, he doubts that they would readily find a suitable topic in common.
It is when he checks his watch – a habitual gesture, as there is nowhere in particular he needs to be and he has absolutely no idea where he is going – that he senses a pair of eyes examining it with interest. When he looks up at the eyes, which of course are all he can see of this closeted man, he is surprised to observe that they are staring at the timepiece in what has to be pure admiration, as no one wouldn’t linger this long merely to ascertain the time.
If William Sutherland didn’t trust the universe before, he does now.
As at last he remembers.
37
It takes William a good half-hour to find the small jewellery shop, which turns out to be just around the corner from the Hostal Esmeralda.
He might have deduced this, with his Holmesian skills, had he really thought about it. But the frustration of tramping around the several streets abutting the square is far outweighed by his current elation, as he strolls down this final, exquisite little shopping parade. It appears unchanged over the centuries, save for the large, ground-floor windows and the merchandise behind the glass.
The shop is empty, so he decides to wait outside, until – well, until whatever he hopes will happen actually does. Or doesn’t. In which case, he realises, he is totally stuffed once again.
“Señor?”
He spins round. A young man in a smart, grey suit has come out of the shop and is smiling at him.
“Mm?” responds William.
“Can I help you?”
“How did you know – that I was a Brit?”
“I have special powers. The government – they often call me in.”
Ha bloody ha, thinks William. But he tells the man “I’m just waiting.” He realises this sounds a bit odd, so he extends the wrist of his left hand from under the sleeve of his vaguely summery jacket. “I bought this watch here. Well, actually, my wife did. Your name was on the box – still got it, somewhere – and we were staying just round the corner.” The young man is nodding, with professional interest. “She came here thirty years ago – this very morning. I think. Yeah. Pretty sure. Before you were born.”
“I do not think so, Señor.”
“You must be older than you look.”
The assistant points across the road “I think it is there that she bought this.”
William looks at where he is pointing. It is a small, specialist CD shop. He gawps at the young man in confusion.
A Meeting in Seville Page 16