by Carlos Alba
Mama served up plates of plump kidney pieces in a rich brown sauce, served on a bed of fluffy rice flavoured with saffron. There was a tension in the air, an implicit sense that everyone knew why we were there and that we had things to discuss, but that no one was willing to break the silence. I decided it would have to be me.
‘So, Mama tells me you want to go to Spain.’
Papa looked up from his plate.
‘Si, I go Spain,’ he said quietly.
Silence resumed. I was waiting for him to elaborate but he continued eating.
‘Do you want to explain why?’ I asked.
‘I nae explain. I go, this is all.’
‘And you don’t think that suddenly deciding to return, at the age of eighty-three, to a country you’ve spent the past seventy-odd years avoiding deserves a bit more explanation than that?’
‘I think it’s a good idea for him to go,’ Pablito chipped in.
‘Oh, Christ, that’s all we need,’ I said.
Pablito threw his fork down on his plate.
‘Well, why not, if that’s what he wants to do. I’ve said for a long time he should go back.’
‘We’ve all said for a long time he should go back, and he’s always refused, so what’s changed?’
‘Well, he’s decided he wants to go, and I think he needs our support, not your negativity.’
‘He’s eighty-fucking-three years old.’
‘Hey, you watcha yer mouth,’ Papa growled.
‘He’s eighty-three. Mama’s seventy-nine, and he suddenly wants to jet off to sip sangria on the Costas. Don’t you think that’s a bit strange?’
I turned to Papa.
‘What about the dangers?’
He ignored me and carried on eating.
‘What about the army generals waiting to seize power, the old scores waiting to be settled, the murderers still walking the streets, the Falangist agents in the Guardia Civil – all the things that have stopped you going back for most of your life?’
Still he ignored me.
‘Have you asked Mama what she thinks of the idea?’
‘She is okay,’ he whispered defiantly.
‘Have you asked her if she’s okay?’
Mama had been sitting silently, her reddened face following the conversation back and forth as though she was watching a tennis match.
‘That’s just so like you, Papa, to assume that Mama will do whatever you say.’
I put my cutlery down but Papa continued to eat.
‘She is my wife, she dae wha I say,’ he said blithely, chewing on a piece of kidney.
Mama shifted uncomfortably.
‘Let’s just drop it,’ she implored. ‘We can discuss it another time.’
We finished eating in silence. After the meal, Papa and Pablito returned to the living room where, I was astonished to see, they had managed to tune in their satellite contraption to a Spanish football match. Mama prepared a pot of tea for them and laid out a plate of toasted, sugar-glazed almonds before returning to me in the kitchen.
I couldn’t help noticing how tired she looked. She’d always appeared older than her years, but she’d lost weight recently, and her hair had turned silvery white. A network of lines had appeared, pinched around her mouth, making her face look like it was drawing in on itself.
We washed and dried the dishes and then sat down at the table, chatting about a number of peripheral issues, all except the important matter at hand.
When the football match ended, Pablito said his goodbyes and left to return to the studio flat in Docklands where he’d lived since his divorce eight years before. Papa walked slowly upstairs and retired to bed.
I needed a drink, so I retrieved the wine from my holdall and opened it, promising Mama I’d put the empty bottle out with the rubbish. She looked on uneasily, but when she was sure Papa was in bed and asleep, she joined me in a glass and immediately appeared more relaxed.
Although Pablito was older than me, I was the one in whom Mama confided. There were always certain areas where we never ventured, principally her relationship with Papa. I knew how devoted to him she was and how much loyalty she gave him.
‘Well, whatever it is that he’s up to, and clearly he’s not saying, at least you’ll get a holiday out of it,’ I said.
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ she replied.
‘Whatever it is, it’s manageable. If he wants to write to town clerks, let him do it. Go on holiday, enjoy it, and keep him away from Lerida.’
‘No, you don’t understand. He’s dying,’ she said.
It was said almost as an aside, and I had to get her to repeat it to make sure I hadn’t misheard.
‘It’s true, he is dying.’
I was increasingly aware of my parents’ mortality, and I’d often wondered how I would learn that either of them was dying or had died. I reached for a packet of cigarettes Papa had left lying on the kitchen table. I hadn’t smoked for years, and the moment I lit one I realised it wasn’t going to help. I stubbed it out.
‘What is it?’
‘Cancer,’ Mama said.
It wasn’t a complete surprise. He’d experienced severe back pain the previous year, which he’d put down to a slipped disc until it had spread to his stomach. I’d been getting regular updates on his health from Mama until about six months before, when they’d stopped. I hadn’t pressed her for details because I’d figured that, if the news was positive, she’d have volunteered it.
‘He doesn’t know,’ Mama said, doing her best to hold back the tears.
‘How can he not know?’
‘The doctor thought it would be best coming from me but I don’t have the strength to tell him.’
‘Does he suspect?’
‘Yes, he must.’
‘Hence the sudden desire to return to Spain?’
‘I’ve said too much. I promised him I wouldn’t talk to you about it.’
‘To me?’ I asked, surprised that I’d been singled out for such censorship.
‘To anyone.’
I knew she wouldn’t say any more. She never willingly spoke about Papa behind his back. She had no choice but to tell me he was dying, but I could see that the pain was almost unbearable for her. Anything more would be a betrayal too far.
‘Does Pablito know?’
‘No, he’ll take it very badly.’
I wondered whether to be offended at the implication that I’d take the news less badly, but I forgave her. We both knew things were more complicated than that. I also knew that Pablito would have to be told.
‘How long has Papa got?’ I asked her.
‘Not long,’ she replied.
3
For most of my childhood Mama and Papa were the only Spanish people I’d ever met. We couldn’t afford to visit Spain and our relatives couldn’t afford to come to us. Mama kept in touch with her mother and sisters by writing to them, and I’d seen the photographs they frequently sent with their letters.
Papa had no surviving family – all we knew about his past was that he’d been raised in an orphanage near Barcelona before he went to Morocco, where he had met Mama. In a tattered leather suitcase that he kept stashed under his bed were a few reminders of his earlier life – pathetic items, vague with age, whose alien images and crude textures spoke of a distant past. When my parents weren’t around, I would creep into their room and open the suitcase, trying to weigh its contents against what I knew of my father’s life. There was a fragile cigarette packet with a barely legible motif, made up of the initials of what I guessed was the tobacco company – Compania Appendattaria de Tabacos – and a small booklet with a blood-red fabric cover, bearing a gold-crested image of a muscular factory worker and the words Confederación Nacional del Trabajo Espana. Inside were a few bible-thin pages of official verbiage and, on one of them, my father’s name and date of birth written with a fountain pen. There was also a postcard with a strange picture unlike those on any of the smiling holiday cards I was used to see
ing. A red, yellow and purple flag gave way to an eerie ink etching of factories and smoking chimneys. Emblazoned across the bottom were the words ‘Viva La Republica’.
Then there was Papa’s collection of Manolo Escobar LPs. They sat next to the gramophone, under the television in the living room, and were brought out and played with religious regularity every Saturday night. Each time the singer had a new record out, Mama’s sisters would send it through the post. Papa had all of them, beginning with a recording of Manolo’s legendary breakthrough performance at the Teatro Duque de Rivas in Cordoba in 1961. On the earliest black-and-white covers he had slicked-back hair and marply-pressed suits. He was handsome, like a film star, but he also seemed slightly scary, as though he had a temper that you wouldn’t want to test. As the years passed, his portraits became mellower, his face fuller and more lined, and slowly I lost my fear.
I couldn’t understand the words he sang, though I began to believe they were directed at me, that he knew about the problems I faced, with Max Miller and my dual nationality, that he was telling me, through his songs, how to deal with them. I used to wonder what it would be like if Manolo Escobar was my father. His life seemed to have run in parallel with Papa’s, and often I would imagine that my father was a famous singer and that Manolo Escobar packed bags on to aeroplanes at Glasgow Airport.
Over breakfast one morning, Mama announced we were to meet our Spanish grandmother for the first time. Her mother, Abuela, as we were instructed to call her, had won a few thousand pesetas in the Spanish lottery, and she was coming to spend the summer with us.
I was curious to see what a real, authentic Spaniard from Spain looked like in the flesh. At the same time, the last thing I needed was a further reminder of my differentness.
Abuela had written to say she’d be arriving at Glasgow Airport on an Iberia flight from Madrid. She couldn’t be precise about a time, or even a date, because she’d been told that, to qualify for a cheap ticket, she’d be required to fly at short notice in the event of a late cancellation. All she could tell us was that she’d be arriving on a Sunday evening some time soon.
Papa didn’t want to spend the money on telephone calls to Spain to find out whether she’d secured a seat, so it was decided that we’d all wait at the airport every Sunday until she stepped off the plane. We were able to sit in the staff common-room with Papa and his bag-handler colleagues and drink tea while he chatted and joked with them. After the first couple of Sundays, when Abuela failed to show up, Mama and Pablito decided they would rather stay at home, and it was left to Papa and me to make the trips. It was one of the few occasions I remember spending any proper time alone with him. We fell into a routine where I would tell him jokes I’d learned at school and he would laugh, though I could tell he didn’t understand half of them. He seemed happy and relaxed, and that was enough to satisfy me.
During one such trip, I asked him to tell me a joke. He said he couldn’t think of one, but he offered to tell me a funny story instead about something that had happened to him when he was a child. I was intrigued – anecdotes about his past were rare. He told me how, when he was very small, his mama regularly sent him to the local shop to buy a tiny amount of salt for cooking. It was the first time I could remember him mentioning either of his parents.
‘I thought your mama and papa died,’ I said.
‘Si, they die.’
‘But you remember them?’
‘A little.’
‘So what age were you when they died?’
He became agitated at my questioning.
‘You nae ask questions, you listen,’ he ordered.
He continued with his story. He would usually be playing with his friends when his mama asked him to go to the local shop, and he hated the chore of having to walk to the end of the street. Then one day he asked her why she didn’t give him money to buy a week’s worth of salt so that he wouldn’t have to go to the shop every day.
‘She laugh and laugh, and she say tae me, I nae afford tae gie you money to buy salt for one day, never mind for a week.’
He stopped talking, and I studied his face, expecting him to continue, waiting for the punchline, before the realisation dawned that it had already been delivered.
‘You nae think this is funny?’ he asked with a hurt expression.
I fought for the right response so as not to disappoint him.
‘So you said, “Why don’t you give me money for more salt?” and she said –’
He interrupted, his voice cut with irritation. ‘We have very little money, my family, you understand?’
‘Yes, I got that bit, it’s just . . .’ I stuttered.
‘My Papa, he work in the olive fields, and he get paid every day only a very small amount.’ His voice grew louder and more agitated.
‘Oh, right, I see,’ I said with a laugh, trying my best to rescue the situation. ‘So you didn’t know that you were so poor you couldn’t buy more than a day’s worth of salt?’
He looked at me sceptically, sizing me up, then his lips curled reluctantly into a smile.
‘Yes, we were poor,’ he said slowly and quietly. ‘Very poor.’
After four more abortive trips to the airport, Abuela finally arrived. She waddled through the international arrivals gate like a squat, grandmother-shaped blancmange, dressed all in black, with thinning white hair and the teeth as large as a thoroughbred’s.
After spotting Papa, she swept over to him and they embraced in a swirl of mutual cheek-kissing and voluble, indecipherable lingo. Their animated blabbering continued for several minutes until the other passengers had filed past to the baggage reclaim area. Then Papa pointed in my direction and she came homing towards me, wielding a walking stick in one hand and a large black handbag in the other. She eyed me up and down, making several comments in Spanish, before gathering me into her fleshy arms and pulling me into a tight embrace.
I’d never been this close to an old person before. She had an acrid, unfamiliar smell, part days-old sweat, part cheap perfume. Her aged skin looked cracked and leathery, but was pillow-soft to the touch. When I kissed her face, my lips left a deep divot which remained for several moments before the skin regained its fullness.
At the baggage carousel Papa collected two large, battered trunks that looked like relics from another age and lifted them on to a trolley. We made our way to the car park at an agonisingly slow pace, dictated by Abuela, whose rickety, banana-shaped legs struggled to cope with the pressure of her weight. As I followed behind, I noticed her baggy black tights sagging around her knees.
We arrived home to an emotional reunion with Mama on the doorstep. There were tears and loud cries of joy that set curtains twitching on the other side of the street. They exchanged bursts of guttural, rapid-fire conversation, their dialogue so strident and lively, and accompanied by such expansive, arm-waving gestures, that several times I thought they were on the verge of coming to blows. However, as I was to learn, that was just the natural level at which they conversed.
They talked and talked and talked, well into the night. At some point Abuela opened one of her trunks, amid considerable fanfare from Mama and Papa. On top of the piles of black clothing was a horde of food – colourful, exotic and unfamiliar. There were packets of biscuits and sweets; tins of assorted fish and seafood – almejas, mejillónes, calamari, boquerones and pescaditos; jars of plump green olives, stuffed with peppers and anchovies; a thick red chorizo the size of a baseball bat with white streaky veins, and small, shiny morcilla black puddings.
Every item was held aloft, squeezed and sniffed, unscrewed, uncorked, kissed and caressed as Mama and Papa delivered an emotional eulogy to its merits. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I recognised the sentiment. Every sight and smell, every occasion on which these items had played a central role – at lunches, dinners, parties, weddings and baptisms – carried with it an eloquent testimonial. Through food, they relived a past about which I knew nothing.
Mama and Pap
a might have been Spanish, but they’d lived in Britain long enough to be more or less accepted. They spoke English, though heavily accented, they dressed like natives, and their demeanour was, for the most part, naturalised. Abuela, in contrast, stood out like a manzanillo olive in a fish supper.
She was loud, aggressive and opinionated. She spent her days splayed across our sofa, eating compulsively and holding forth on issues of pressing Mediterranean importance. Despite having carried two giant trunks of clothing all the way from Madrid, she wore the same black nylon housecoat and slippers every day. According to Mama, she had worn black since the death of her husband a decade before, as a mark of respect, the only exception being her giant, baggy, dishwater-grey knickers.
Her laundered underwear became a neighbourhood landmark. Three pairs of giant pants, hung in a row, occupied the entire washing line, flapping in the summer breeze like parachutes caught in a tree. Word spread and Mossparkers came from far and near, from the outermost reaches of the estate, to point and stare, to gasp and snigger, to marvel at their gargantuan vastness.
Grandmothers weren’t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be petite, demure and withdrawn. They committed themselves to acts of domestic industry, slaving over pots of soup. They sucked boiled sweets, did the Evening Citizen crossword and collected their pensions from the Post Office. They kept themselves to themselves and they never knowingly expressed an opinion that post-dated 1945 or was more controversial than the apparent shrinkage of Fry’s Peppermint Cream bars.
Abuela, it seemed, had something to say on every subject. Most of her opinions were directed at Papa. She was loud, angry and unceasing, her voice throaty and rasping like the sound of a holed exhaust pipe on a second-hand car. In the seclusion of our home, I wondered what the neighbours would think of her trumpeting tones, heard through the insubstantial dividing walls. Outdoors, in shops, cafés and restaurants, I shuddered at the attention of onlookers, captivated by this voluble foreign sideshow, all dressed in black.
Lengthy conversations between Papa and Abuela started at breakfast and meandered through the day, reaching a dizzying crescendo late at night. They were largely one-sided, Papa occasionally lobbing in a word or two and prompting another verbal battering from Abuela. Mama and Pablito generally remained silent on the sidelines.