The Songs of Manolo Escobar

by Carlos Alba

  He had an unambiguous disregard for the conventions of human interaction. He didn’t speak much, but he listened to everything, assimilating its implications, calculating its possibilities. Despite his lack of social graces, he was fearsomely good at his job, and that made him, within his narrow professional ambit, untouchable.

  I didn’t even know if Kevin was married. I wondered if he had some kin – an elderly mother, perhaps, with whom he still lived, who brushed stray items of breakfast from his clothing before he left for work. I thought he might be gay, non-practising and sexually repressed of course, telling anyone prurient enough to inquire that he was still playing the field, or that he just hadn’t met the right girl.

  He was one of the few members of staff who referred to Clive Prowse by his first name, a practice that carried an implicit entitlement, like they were friends who just happened to work together. In reality Prowse had no friends, or none prosaic enough to work for him. Most people in the building called him by his surname, spitting it through pursed lips, or they referred to him simply as The Editor. The very mention of his name was enough to instil fear, more so in recent weeks when any brush with senior management carried with it the threat of redundancy.

  Prowse’s office was large and, by comparison with the rest of the utilitarian concrete-and-glass building, absurdly plush, with its dark wood furniture and deep bordello-red decor. He ushered me in and introduced me to Uli, who shook my hand from a seated position. I’d met him once before, during his guided tour of the newsroom shortly after his company, Bayerische Zeitungsherausgeber, had bought out the Mercury Group titles, but I had no expectation of him remembering me. He’d tried to ingratiate himself with the staff then by demonstrating his encyclopaedic knowledge of vintage British comedy – according to his Wikipedia entry, he had the world’s largest collection of Norman Wisdom memorabilia – but it had fallen embarrassingly flat, as few people could make out what he was talking about through his thick German accent.

  ‘What is your opinion of your new leader?’ he demanded curtly, our hands barely having parted.

  I was unsure whom he was referring to. Was there some tier of new management in the building that had passed me by? Or was he, perhaps, fishing for compliments?

  He sensed my hesitation. ‘You are the political chief of your paper, no?’

  ‘Oh, you mean our new prime minister,’ I said, the penny dropping.

  ‘Uli wants to pick your brains,’ Prowse explained, nervously motioning for me to sit down.

  I eased myself into a leather armchair while Prowse took his place behind his desk.

  ‘Well, he’s the only millionaire I know who buys his clothes from Asda,’ I said, smiling. ‘Still, I suppose he has a little pile of Boden cashmeres that he keeps at the back of his wardrobe like a guilty secret.’

  Uli’s expression didn’t alter. ‘What taxes will he reduce?’ he demanded.

  ‘I believe he’s against any tax cuts at the moment until the economy recovers.’

  ‘I am talking to your treasury minister, who is telling me of foreign leveraged investment programmes and offshore portfolio investment possibilities.’

  ‘Well, you would seem to have better contacts in the government than I have,’ I said, smiling. ‘They don’t talk to us because we didn’t support them in the election.’

  Prowse rested his chin on his cupped hand and stared intently at the Anglepoise lamp on his desk.

  ‘And he had some very interesting ideas concerning tax mitigation,’ said Uli.

  ‘Sorry, tax what?’

  ‘Mitigation. For large corporate entities.’

  ‘You mean tax avoidance?’ I said.

  ‘Mitigation,’ he corrected.

  ‘Well, whatever you call it, I wouldn’t say it’s much of a priority for our readers, most of whom are on the minimum wage.’

  Prowse’s chin slipped clumsily from his palm, and his face reddened as he attempted to regain his composure. ‘Antonio’s preparing for the start of the party conference season,’ he said, obviously flustered.

  Uli eyed me with scepticism. ‘Where is this accent from? You are English, no?’

  ‘Scottish,’ I said emphatically.

  His eyes widened. ‘You are knowing Ronnie Corbett?’

  ‘Umm, not personally, no.’

  ‘I am finding the sketches of the Two Ronnies in the women’s clothes very funny,’ he said with an unsmiling glare.

  I nodded uncertainly. The oppressive silence unnerved me, and I felt coerced to fill it. ‘I once saw Benny Hill at an airport,’ I ventured.

  His eyes appeared to moisten and a rare smile creased the fleshy folds of his face. ‘Ah yes, Benny Hill – a great, great, great man,’ he said wistfully.

  I couldn’t face going home to an empty house, so I phoned Max Miller. He picked up on the second ring and sounded flustered and hesitant when I suggested dropping by for a chat, claiming he had too much work to do. I felt angry.

  ‘Oh, come on Max, surely you can give me an hour,’ I pleaded. He always seemed to be at the disposal of any dysfunctional misfit who needed re-housing or had to be kept out of jail. And now, when I wanted a friend to talk to, he wasn’t available.

  He prevaricated, but I wore him down and told him I’d be round in an hour. ‘Make it two,’ he said. ‘I’ve got things I need to do first.’

  Max Miller had rented the same two-bedroom flat in Wandsworth for years, sharing it with a succession of lodgers, but now he was living alone. I pressed the buzzer of the modern yellow-brick block and waited, but there was no response. After a minute or so I pressed it again and it crackled into life.

  ‘Hold on, I’ll be down shortly,’ he said.

  He arrived at the front entrance a few moments later wearing an old parka.

  ‘The flat’s a bit of a mess. Let’s go somewhere for a coffee,’ he said, striding off down the road.

  ‘I don’t care what your flat looks like,’ I said, struggling to catch up with him.

  ‘No, there’s a small place round the corner, come on.’

  He led me up a short, narrow sidestreet which barely started before it ended, abruptly and apologetically, at a graffiti-covered railway arch. The pavement was black with oil leaking out of the workshop of a second-hand-car garage. On the far side of the garage was a shopfront with whitewashed windows and a hand-painted sign above the door that said ‘Nav’s Caff’.

  Max Miller led me inside. A kettle and a glass display with a few wan-looking sandwiches appeared to be the establishment’s only concessions to its stated purpose. A man I assumed to be the eponymous Nav stood resolutely behind the sandwiches.

  We ordered two coffees and sat down at one of the plastic tables.

  ‘So, what’s going on with you and Cheryl?’ Max Miller asked.

  ‘She’s left me.’

  He didn’t seem surprised. ‘Just like that?’ he asked dryly.

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘What led up to it?’

  That was a difficult question, and I felt tired just thinking about it.

  ‘I don’t really know – that’s what’s so troubling. She’s been in a mood over the past few weeks and we haven’t been talking, but there was no big bust-up or anything. Then, when I arrived home from Spain, she wasn’t there. I wasn’t that surprised, so I guess I must have seen it coming.’

  ‘What was Cheryl working on?’

  It was a question I wasn’t expecting, and it threw me. ‘Sorry, what do you mean?’

  ‘What was she doing at work?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What did you give her for her last birthday?’

  It clicked. ‘Oh, right, I see where you’re coming from. That’s typical of you to take her side.’

  ‘I’m not taking her side – and why does it have to be about sides anyway?’

  I felt betrayed. ‘Because it does, that’s all. And you’re taking hers.’

  ‘Go on – tell me, what did you give her for her l
ast birthday?’ he demanded.

  I remembered her last birthday, I’d been late home after doorstepping the leader of a paedophile ring in Cumbria. Or was it Northumberland? Anyway, I’d bought her something in a boutique in Carlisle or Penrith or somewhere like that. Only what was it? ‘I can’t remember, but it was bloody expensive, I’ll tell you that.’

  Max Miller smiled wryly.

  We chatted some more, but we had to leave because I was desperate for a piss and Nav didn’t have a toilet. Max Miller suggested I pop into a pub on Wandsworth Road.

  ‘What’s the matter, don’t you want me in your home or something?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, blushing.

  His flat was compact, colonised by flat-pack furniture and reminiscent of one of the tiny showcase areas in Ikea that demonstrate how comfortably people with no imagination can live. It was late afternoon and the dull sky cast a gloom inside his living-room. He struck a match and lit a handful of tea-lights floating in a water-filled glass bowl. Using candles rather than electric bulbs was one of Max Miller’s most irritating affectations. I excused myself and made a dash for the bathroom.

  Another habit, which annoyed me, was the way he left small piles of paperback novels placed strategically throughout his flat. Standing upright on the cistern were well-thumbed copies of The Go-Between, If This Is a Man and Leviathan. The effect, I guessed, was to convince visitors that he was both romantic and humane.

  I returned to the living-room and sat down on a small, cramped sofa, rubbing my hands to generate some heat. On a coffee table sat copies of books by Umberto Eco and Richard Dawkins, along with some New Age tract that looked like something Cheryl would read.

  ‘Look, I don’t want to rush you, but I’ve got a lot of work to do,’ he said.

  I did feel rushed, and slightly self-pitying. He was supposed to be my friend, and I didn’t impose on him often. In fact, I couldn’t remember an occasion when I’d done so before.

  ‘What about a quick coffee?’ I pleaded. ‘I couldn’t drink that stuff in the café, it was rancid.’

  He sighed.

  ‘Okay, but you’ll have to make it yourself. I’ve got three family conferences to prepare for.’

  The kitchen, like the rest of the flat, was prim and immaculate. I often wondered how Max Miller managed to keep his place so spotless when it had such a procession of chaotic individuals traipsing through it. I filled the kettle and searched the cabinets for a jar of coffee. In one of the cupboards I came across a bottle of organic wheatgrass cocktail, exactly the same brand Cheryl used – she claimed it helped to purify her blood. I stood in the doorway to the living-room and held the bottle up.

  ‘You don’t know where Cheryl is, do you?’ I asked.

  Max Miller’s pale features reddened. ‘Me, how would I know where she was?’

  He never could lie convincingly.

  10

  It was the weekend of my thirteenth birthday and, for the first time, I was allowed to go fishing with Papa and Pablito. Papa was against taking me on the trip – he said I was too young to spend a night in the outdoors, but Mama insisted he bring me along, if only to stop my endless begging. Joining this grown-up, exclusively male pursuit felt to me like a step towards adulthood.

  Fishing was one of the few activities Papa still took part in after Mama forced him to stop playing cards for money with his fellow baggage-handlers. When there was a card game on he often stayed out through the night until breakfast time, arriving home looking dirty and unshaved, with his shirttail hanging out over his trousers and his eyes red and pinched. On those occasions he’d either be deliriously happy, kissing us all in turn and laying out banknotes like a cover across the kitchen table, or he’d be foul-tempered, not speaking other than to demand coffee and cigarettes. Then we knew we’d be in for a difficult week. Mama had eventually put her foot down.

  Fishing, on the other hand, was permissible. Papa went on these overnight trips two or three times a year, initially with his workmates and latterly with Pablito. I envied those times they had together, when they set off in high spirits and returned ruddy-faced with contented smiles, their spirits replenished.

  More often than not they came back empty-handed, but, as Papa pointed out, catching fish was not the main thing, it was the taking part that counted. He and Pablito seldom volunteered details of their expeditions other than brief references to the weather, and Mama and I rarely asked. It was as if we knew this was a space they shared, that was exclusive to them.

  For me, that only added to the mystique, and I was excited to finally be part of it, to learn more, to occupy the same space, close to Papa. I pored over the items in his fishing-tackle box that sat under the stairs, marvelling at those obscure objects – the plastic, weightless floats, the shiny metal spinners and coloured fly lines, the lethally sharp hooks of varying size, the lead weights – running my fingers over their irregular shapes and pondering their purpose. I marvelled at the geometry and engineering that went into the construction of a fishing reel, a perfect tool that appeared to serve its purpose so smoothly and completely. Instinctively I knew I’d be at home by the riverside or on the banks of a loch.

  The night before our trip I barely slept, willing the hands of my alarm clock to move closer to morning. I’d never been away from home, or Mama, before, and I felt sure this was where my relationship with Papa would begin proper, father and son, something at last to bind us, something we could plan for, discuss and look forward to. I could barely contain my excitement.

  The day before we left I accompanied Papa and Pablito on a trip to buy a small Primus stove, which we’d need to heat soup and boil water. The one they had used on previous trips had given up the ghost. We went into a shop on Victoria Road that sold camping equipment, and near the doorway we saw one that was ideal in the middle of a display that included a tent, a picnic table and various other camping accessories.

  Papa approached the sales assistant to inquire about the price. It was ten pounds – too expensive, Papa said. As we left, I watched with a sense of exhilarating horror as he lifted the stove from its display, bundled it inside his jacket, and carried on walking out of the store.

  My heart pounded as we paced speedily along the crowded street. I was convinced that the eyes of hundreds of shoppers were trained on us and that at any moment I would feel the firm, apprehending arm of the law on my shoulder. When we reached the car, Papa and Pablito laughed uproariously and warned me not to tell Mama. Back at home I felt complicit in their crime, expecting the police to appear on our doorstep and the three of us to be led away to cold, darkened cells.

  The following morning we were up early, dressed in old clothes suitable for the countryside, preparing to leave. Pablito went into the garden with a shovel to dig for worms, and Papa gathered the items we’d need to subsist – the stolen Primus, a saucepan, old ginger bottles for water, tea bags, a loaf of bread and a tin of John West salmon. He packed everything into the back of a battered old van he’d borrowed from the airport, along with an overnight bag and three moth-eaten sleeping bags.

  We set off, buoyed by a sense of release, loudly singing ‘Porompompero’ by Manolo Escobar. I mouthed the occasional word I remembered in the verses and then joined in with the chorus, which was easy.

  Porompom pón, poropo, porompom pero, peró, poropo, porom pompero, peró, poropo, porompom pon.

  I’d no idea what it meant, and it sounded daft. If any of my friends had heard me, I’d have been mortified, but it was a happy song, and that was all that mattered. When we stopped singing, Papa teased Pablito about how few fish he was going to catch. I’d never seen my father so cheerful and liberated.

  The van stuttered noisily through the Highlands, its rasping exhaust pumping oily black fumes into the vast, tranquil expanse of Loch Lomond, and then the Cairngorms. We passed through Fort William and pressed on until we reached the hamlet of Bridge of Orchy, where we turned off down a remote single-track road. It ran alongside the
banks of Loch Tula and was punctuated by signs warning of boulders falling and deer crossing. Papa and Pablito pointed out remembered landmarks, arguing between them about the location of the best fishing spot.

  We settled on a stretch easily accessible from the road, sheltered by a circle of overhanging trees. It was a hot and still summer’s day, and clusters of midges congregated in shafts of sunlight. Swathes of rough purple heather covered the hills, which rose grandly from the glacially smooth loch. There was a smell of peaty freshness, and the silence was broken only by the occasional whoosh of a car passing in the distance. I’d never witnessed anything so achingly beautiful – it was as though the scene had been conjured up especially for me, for my first fishing trip.

  While Papa lit a cigarette and admired the view, Pablito set about preparing the rods, attaching reels and tackle. Then he grabbed a handful of worms from the jar and selected the fattest; he pinched it between his fingers to stop it wriggling and clumsily skewered it on to the fishing hook. The tip pricked the worm’s skin and a small squirt of green slime trickled over Papa’s nails. He repeated the procedure another two or three times until the worm was wound around the hook, then he did the same with the other fishing rod.

  Papa explained that there were only two rods, so we’d have to share. He ordered me to stand back while he cast. He turned so he was facing away from the loch with his rod held outstretched, then he spun a hundred and eighty degrees, releasing the line from the reel and sending the weighted, baited hook far out on to the water. I heard the soft plink of the worm hitting the surface of the loch. Then he gently laid the rod down behind a large rock, its tip pointing in the air. Pablito cast his line, not gaining quite the distance that Papa had managed.

  And that, it appeared, was that. They seemed content to stare blankly at the rods, Papa drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. I’d been expecting more. I wasn’t quite sure what, but I thought there must be greater excitement to fishing than this, something that would hold my imagination. After twenty minutes I was bored, so I suggested we move to another spot where there might be more action, but my proposal was met with frowns of disapproval. After an hour of fruitless contemplation, I decided to go and explore.