As ever, William has absolutely no idea where he is going or what he is doing. He knows simply that he has to keep moving. And, curiously, or perhaps not so curiously considering the events of this week, he is just beginning to trust in something beyond himself to tell him the answers.
It will come, whatever it is, good or bad. He is certain it will come.
Soon would be good.
Now?
He knows it surely won’t come from the old guy in the smart denims ambling cheerily across the lobby towards him, even though William finds himself strangely pleased to see him.
“Hola, Pablo,” he says amiably, as he rushes by.
“Watford Football Club – very nice strip. Yellow with a little black.”
William stops.
There could even be screech-marks on the wooden flooring, from the old trainers now firmly back on his feet, as he judders to a halt inches before the revolving doors. He is not quite certain if what he has just heard is what he just heard.
“Who supports Watford?” he cries into the air conditioning. “And when did you learn sodding English?”
He doesn’t have the time or the energy to delve deeper into the nodding retainer’s education. Let alone his arrant duplicity.
Because he knows exactly what the driver/porter/lift attendant/wily old sod is trying to tell him.
59
The Café Amarillo, with its bumblebee-yellow awning and newly repainted black surround, appears much the same as in William’s previous incarnations.
Luisa hasn’t changed either.
She looks just as she did when he left her, another lifetime and a matter of hours ago. Except that now her bulky suitcase squats beside her on the pavement and she is smoking, something that this Luisa hasn’t done – or at least he hasn’t caught her doing – since a time when their world collapsed in on itself and they each sought comfort in whatever way they could.
A world only William knows he has restored, once and for all, with its seasoning of sorrows and joys. For better or for worse – how can he ever truly be sure?
He doesn’t approach her straight away. Perhaps, he reasons, it is pure fear that battens him down in this quaint plaza, now pleasantly cooler in the gone-midnight darkness. Or it could be that he simply wants to drink her in, like the white wine she quietly sips at the by-now deserted café, scarily certain that his days of being able to do this, days he now so desperately wants, are not simply finite but quite probably non-existent.
Of course he knows so much about himself that he didn’t know before this night – and is overwhelmed with feelings he has never allowed himself to feel. Yet William is swiftly discovering that it still takes two.
Or, in this case, more than two. The old lady and her surly helper, who run and possibly own the café, are looking wistfully in William’s direction, as if willing him to drag the sad-looking woman with the suitcase away, so that they can please close up, for pity’s sake, and have some well-earned rest. Use of force cannot be far away.
Taking the hint, William walks slowly towards the table.
Luisa appears so lost in her thoughts, watching the smoke from her cigarette drift upwards in the breezeless air, that it is some seconds before she senses his presence.
She raises her head to look up. There is little warmth in her eyes, only sadness. And resignation. He can hardly be surprised, yet the relief of simply seeing her right here beside him, the original, authorised version, seems to overwhelm the reality of their situation and momentarily dampen his fear.
“You don’t smoke,” he says.
“Now you are telling me.”
William is so full of things to say to her, after all that has happened. Meaningful things, words that would probably change everything. Yet they seem to be dissolving unvoiced into the air, like the smoke from her cigarette. Desperate to start afresh, he can manage nothing fresh nor even how to start.
“Did you call the police to find me?” he hears himself asking and wonders why he did.
In the silence, he ponders that if “alternative” William, the bronzed one with the A-list hair (the presence of which he can still feel like some sort of follicular memory) has now never actually existed, where on earth has this current one been spending his time since he and Luisa last met? He must have been somewhere. Perhaps it will come to him in time, he thinks, as some of the more inane, game show memories recede. He hopes so. He would be rather interested.
“I think I would have called the police,” he concludes.
“Then you are much better husband than I am wife.”
“No. No, I’m not, Luisa. I’d like to be. Not better – I’d settle for as good as.” He looks determined. “And I can be—”
But he doesn’t finish, because Luisa is leaning towards him and sniffing loudly.
“I know that fragrance!” she cries. “You have been with me, haven’t you?”
“Not the way you think!” William feels quite outraged, even though he couldn’t swear to her that the notion has never, for a single moment, entered his deluded head. But not now. He has eyes for only one Luisa now, yet in his heart he fears that it is already too late. That this beautiful, stately and sadly under-appreciated ship has sailed.
“Are you going to leave me, Luisa?” he asks, adding quietly, “I can’t honestly say I would blame you.” He thinks for a moment. “Why didn’t you leave me, in all these years – if it was so bad?”
When Luisa finally responds, it is as if she is talking to herself. “I do not know, William. I do not know. Perhaps because it was never bad enough,” Then she turns to him. “But now I tell myself that, in a marriage, not bad enough to leave is not a good enough reason to stay. So I think I must go.” She pauses. He doesn’t dare interrupt. “And so I take the cab. I go to the airport.” She laughs, but without much joy. “But I have not flown home alone in thirty years.”
“I wish I could give you a better reason for staying.”
She looks at him and shrugs. Which seems so very far from hopeful.
He senses the grumpy young waiter moving closer, desperate to clear the table and send the two old farts on their way. On our way to where, he wonders. Back to that barren place where we’ve been for so long?
William knows that he must do something.
It needs to be not an ounce short of epoch-making and must encapsulate all that he has learned along the way, the sum total of everything that he has discovered on this long and tortuous journey deep into the heart of Sutherlandness. It has to be of the moment, which he now concedes, despite all the strategies and projections, is all that there is. It needs to come from somewhere at the essential root of his newly enlightened being. A truth so profound that it will resonate in an instant and strike a hopeful new chord within the souls and minds of the two of them. Uniting them once more, like two flares meeting in the night-time sky and surging upwards with impossible brightness.
Unfortunately, he still can’t think of a bloody thing.
Not a sausage.
Zero. Less than.
His brain feels as dry as his tongue. There is far too much stuff from this crazy week roiling around inside his woolly head. And he is so awfully tired.
Away ye go!
The excruciating seconds pass. With them, his marriage. And his life.
Suddenly, from nowhere, he hears the sounds.
Not drums this time. Or trumpets. Simply words. New words. Words that seem to fly out of his mouth – combinations of syllables he had no idea were even in there. Words he has, of course, known in harmless isolation most of his adult life but never imagined he would string together into such a simple yet volcanic sentence.
“Señor? Some musica, por favor? For the dancing!”
Despite being married to a Spaniard, William has never been readily cognisant with how exactly “oh, for fuck’s sake!” t
ranslates. Until now, as he hears it emerge unambiguously from the mouth of a grumpy waiter. But he is gratified to see the old woman, who has clearly been listening, smack her sullen young colleague sharply on the neck and send him back cursing into the café.
He is not so gratified to watch the disdain grow on the face of his current wife. “You cannot fix a marriage by dancing,” she mutters. “You especially.”
“Can – if you believe in miracles.”
She shrugs, not wishing to be party to any more lunacy, on this or any night. “William, please, it is very late.”
“You’re not the first person to tell me this,” he says. “Not even the first Luisa,” he adds to himself.
He holds out his hand to her.
She sees it trembling, just inches from her own and looks up into his face. She can’t pinpoint exactly how or why, yet somehow the man looks different. And perhaps – who knows – he is different. She will believe this when she sees this.
Luisa Sutherland, for the time being still of Richmond, finds herself rising gracefully, if a tad wearily, from her chair, as if refusal might further unbalance her increasingly peculiar husband. The relief on that husband’s face is matched only by the astonishment on her own, as to where her weary body is apparently leading her.
He takes her arm gently and with some relief. Perhaps it is this simple.
About four seconds later the ear-shattering riffs of an obscure Spanish heavy metal track, with a particularly grating flamenco tinge, blast out from the café’s speakers into the square, shocking any stragglers and traumatising every pigeon nesting in the eaves of the great cathedral.
William turns to see the young waiter staring defiantly back at him. Dance to that, you Brexiting British arsehole.
For a moment, William is fazed and can’t move.
This isn’t aided by a nagging itch inside his shirt, which impels him reluctantly to remove his hand from Luisa’s. While she stands bemused beside her table, wondering whether this lunacy will ever end, William dips a hand down under the dull, brown cheesecloth to produce a squashed but still remarkably vibrant red rose, courtesy of Señora Barbadillo. He can’t explain why this should still be on his person, whilst his hair weave is no more, but isn’t he slowly learning that life is not here to be questioned? Therein lies madness and he reckons he’s already used up his season ticket to that particular destination.
Better simply to go with the flow.
Ignoring the painful decibels, he hands the flower to Luisa with a courtly flourish. Not overly charmed by where it has been, she takes it gingerly from his outstretched hand. He watches without breathing as, quite tentatively and despite her better judgment, she begins to soften. Slightly.
And so they dance.
Sort of.
Moving quietly, hands together but long-familiar bodies barely touching, they shuffle against the deafening music. Unsurprisingly, and due not entirely to malice in the chosen track, the whole enterprise feels desperately, discordantly uncomfortable. And sad.
Hardly the stuff that dreams are made of. Or the kindling of hope.
Only one solution springs to mind. And it’s certifiably bonkers. Yet, in a week of abject dementia, it seems to William Sutherland, late of Govan, Glasgow, almost normal.
Summoning all his available strength he swiftly pulls a stunned Luisa far more tightly towards him and spins her around at speed, so that they’re standing beside each other, hip to hip. Leaning his right hand over her shoulder to join hers, he abruptly pulls her left arm in front of him with his own to link hands. Once locked in place and knowing that she can’t escape, he skips forward with her into the square.
“What the hell?”
“Just a touch of the Gay Gordons,” he explains, as he segues into a jerkily recalled but still recognisable highlight of ‘Scottish Country Dancing for Disadvantaged Eight-Year-Olds.’ “Although I’m not Gordon any more. Nor, of course, am I—”
She attempts to end the madness once and for all, to pull away as he prances at an ever-increasing and distinctly erratic speed away from the café and the tables and the din. But, despite herself and her enchainment, she finds that her protests are less than half-hearted, as she suddenly can’t seem to stop herself from finding it funny.
So, despite the pain and anger and sheer disbelief, and the grumbling desire to knee her infantile husband in the un-kilted crotch, she starts to laugh. Softly at first, but building gradually in both volume and lack of self-control.
He gazes at her in amazement, as they wheel around. He has forgotten what a glorious, full-throated, raspily Spanish laugh she has. And how very beautiful she can be when her wild, chestnut eyes sparkle and her still-lustrous, dark hair shimmers. She lets the mirth that has never truly forsaken her fly out of her soul. A mirth made even richer by the sharp, distinctive tang of pure alarm.
When did I last make you laugh, thinks William.
Luisa’s own memories are stirring. She had forgotten that this man she married three decades ago used to be fun. There was anger, yes, and passion, and a whole trossach of sadness. But within this, and despite the history, wasn’t there such an infectious, almost disarming, love of life? Where did it go? Didn’t he more than once pretend to be a bull in bed? Bare his bum on a fountain? Regularly leap on walls or sing in the street?
Wasn’t this part of the whole, bloody, loco attraction? And isn’t this why she is still here, after midnight, in this winding-down square?
The remaining café staff watch the display in stunned bemusement. Passers-by, on their way back home or to their lodgings, stop for a moment to catch this respectable-looking, not unattractive, middle-aged couple, who are most probably British and therefore drunk.
A huge, yellow street-cleaning truck moves in and starts its work around them. Like a fellow member of the dance.
60
By the time they re-enter room 381, with the heavy suitcase pulling once more at his dodgy spine (hey, old pal!) and the worst music they’ve ever heard in their lives still thumping in their ear-drums, William and Luisa Sutherland have left their singular dance routine far behind them.
Yet, somewhere, they are still dancing, even if the steps are a bit hesitant and the tune more than a touch ragged.
As he switches on the light, William finds himself wondering who might be here this time, in the room that his precious – and mercifully restored – daughter kindly booked for them. Tazmin, returned with her cheap castanets and tapas tummy, to forgive him and see if their relationship/her career can take that second chance? Luisa, the famous but lonely writer of children’s books, dreaming of the children she never had nor ever lost? Perhaps even good old partner Sandy, come to whisk his latest mistress away and afford her the attention she deserves but of which she has felt so cruelly deprived.
He wouldn’t be altogether surprised to find Pablo there, between the sheets, ready to offer them bilingual words of wisdom as a highly exclusive turn-down service.
But no, thankfully it is just the two of them, closer perhaps than they have been in years, yet still with that familiar distance lingering.
William is the first to speak. Even though there is probably no need and knowing, after the terrifying chaos of the past few days, that it might be infinitely better not to.
“I’ve fallen head over heels with three women since Wednesday, Luisa. And all of them have been you.”
He sets down the suitcase, with some relief, and moves as if to hold her. But this time his hands don’t caress her face or embrace her body. Instead they find themselves waving somewhat helplessly in the air, as if trying to encompass something that is too big ever to be contained.
“I’m so sorry, Luisa.” This is all he feels able to say. He hopes to God it is enough, but knows they have so far still to go.
“We could be saying the ‘S’-word to each other all night,” she sighs.
Luisa nods wisely, although not having been party to his wilder machinations, she isn’t exactly certain as to what she is nodding. But he thinks he detects a faint but definite look of contrition, which they both know isn’t the most regularly accessed feature in either of their repertoires.
“I also, William. My mama, she is always saying to me – Luisa, if you want to know the truth about yourself, ask two New York Jewish lesbians.”
“I loved that bitch for her wisdom.” He pauses, as the thoughts roller-coast in. And – hopefully – the right words with them. “I kept looking at that young couple, Luisa, and only thinking about what I’d lost. Seems about bloody time I started appreciating what I’ve got.” He can’t quite meet her gaze, as if he is suddenly sheepish about revealing too much. And, Lord help him, coming over all sentimental. Yet neither can he find it within himself to stop as the words finally start pouring out. “You’ve always taken care of me, you know. All these years. I just hope I’ve…” He shakes his head. “Mebbe in the only way I knew how.”
To his relief, she nods, and he takes this as genuine. Perhaps, in its own way, he thinks, the advice he gave young Will last night didn’t go totally unheeded over the decades. Then he decides he’s not going to go there any more. He’s exhausted and his head hurts.
“What about your ‘Highland fling’?” he asks. Back on all too solid ground.
They stare at each other. She says nothing and ensures that her face and body are completely still, so that they say nothing either.
After a few seconds of this, he walks out onto the balcony.
He looks over at the sleeping city, wondering whether you can sense from the air and the sounds and the smells that something has ended. That the most important week of the year is over and normal, unmagical life, the life that plays no tricks with time or memory, that offers no mystery or miracles, will resume with the dawn. It’s not even a bank holiday here, he reminds himself.
A Meeting in Seville Page 27