by Carlos Alba
I wandered through the nearby woodland and over a couple of hillocks, among the acres of fern and the droppings of a multitude of rabbits. Suddenly I heard an eruption of noise from the bank of the loch. I rushed back in time to see Pablito grappling with his rod, while Papa gave him rapid instructions. At last, some excitement. The rod was bent, with the line held tightly in place as Pablito fought to steady himself. He was struggling to hold firm and was slowly dragged into the loch.
‘Despacio, despacio,’ Papa called. ‘Slowly, slowly.’
There was a flurry of splashes at the point where the line disappeared below the surface of the loch. Pablito steadied himself and took a proper grip on the rod, and, as he transferred his weight on to his right leg and hauled the rod back over his shoulder, weakening the tight resistance on the line, he began to wind the reel clockwise until the line went tight again. The flapping became more intense, catching Pablito off-balance, and he slipped, landing on his backside. He let go of the rod.
‘Rapidamente, rapidamente!’ Papa shouted. ‘Quickly, quickly!’
I was breathless, and I willed Pablito to rescue the situation. He got to his feet, drenched, and waded deeper, catching hold of the cork handle of the rod before it was dragged out of his reach. As he hauled it back, I heard the reel whirring freely as the fish pulled on the line.
‘Wind, wind!’ Papa shouted.
Pablito steadied himself and grabbed hold of the handle of the reel, winding it so quickly his hand became a blur. When the line was tight again, he heaved the rod over his shoulder and wound up the slack. I could see he was getting tired, but with Papa shouting encouragement he kept going.
Suddenly the splashing stopped and the rod straightened. Pablito stood upright and continued to wind the reel, but the resistance had dropped and he became more relaxed. After a few moments I saw the fish emerging, breaking the tension of the water surface, flopping and splashing in the shallows, heading towards us. Judging by the fight it had put up, I was expecting a shark. It wasn’t quite that, but it was still pretty big.
Papa waded into the loch and lifted the end of the line. The fish emerged with the hook caught through its bloody lip, flapping wildly. I felt a pang of pity. Papa pulled on the hook, breaking through the gristle of its jaw. Spurts of blood splashed on to the rocks. The fish was wriggling so much it slipped from Papa’s grasp. He reached down and grabbed it firmly between his hands and battered its head against a rock.
‘What are you doing?’ I shouted.
Papa looked at me.
‘I kill it,’ he said neutrally.
‘No, don’t do that,’ I pleaded. ‘Throw it back.’
Papa and Pablito looked at one another and laughed. The fish was still struggling, so Papa whacked its head on the rock again, and it went limp.
The other two stood admiring their catch, debating its size and weight. Papa reckoned it was at least three pounds, and Pablito agreed. It was around two feet long, silvery grey, with flecks of blue and red – a magnificent rainbow trout. Papa dropped it into a polythene carrier bag, which he left at the bank of the loch with a couple of rocks placed on top to stop it drifting away. Pablito re-baited his rod and cast again, and we all settled back, bursting with self-satisfaction.
There was a mood of togetherness – Pablito might have caught the fish, but now he willed us to do the same. I asked Papa if I could wind his reel in if he got a bite, and he said I could. We discussed Pablito’s catch in the smallest detail, going over every stage, from the first twitch of the line to the successful landing of the fish on the shoreline.
I’d never talked so freely with Papa, making comments and offering opinions that he took seriously. After a while we drifted on to other subjects – football, boxing, fruit machines, street games. Papa took a long draw on his cigarette and reclined on a patch of lush moss, with his head resting on a rolled-up sleeping bag. I was sitting in front of him on a large rock, whittling a twig with a gutting knife that I’d found in the fishing-tackle box.
‘This is how I imagine Scotland,’ he said, sighing wistfully.
‘What do you mean, Papa?’ I asked.
‘When I live in Tangier and I offer job here, I think this is how it will be – big mountains, calm water, green fields, beautiful peace.’
He wasn’t normally so openly thoughtful, and I was taken aback. It was at times like these, I’d learned, that Papa could sometimes be encouraged to talk about his younger days. ‘And what was Tangier like?’ I ventured.
He peered at me for a moment, and I was worried he’d stop talking, but then his head dropped and he breathed deeply. ‘There is a lot of Spanish in Tangier at this time. It is then a very exciting place . . . very, how you say, cosmopolitan. All Spanish in Tangier, they work in hotels. I have good job then – restaurant manager in the Hotel Continental, the best hotel in city.’
‘What was it like?’
‘It is big hotel, floor tae ceiling it’s, how you say, mosaics with small tiles, all piece together like painting. In Moorish style. Rich guests, they come from all over, from Spain and France and America. We have famous writers and movie actors, all the time they come there.’
He was quiet for a moment and then he sat upright and laughed out loud, prompted by something dredged from the back of his mind. ‘You know who I serve dinner?’
‘No, who?’
‘Wha’s the name a this guy, this big Hollywood hot-shot guy, who act in film . . . wha’s it call?’ He slapped his forehead, frustrated at his poor memory.
‘Humphrey Bogart,’ Pablito prompted, as he returned from the lochside where he’d been checking his rod.
‘Si, Humphrey Bogart. Humphrey Bogart. Wha’s the name they call him . . . Bog . . . Boga . . . Bogus?’
‘Bogie,’ Pablito corrected.
‘Si, Bogie, I serve Bogie.’
I could tell Pablito had heard all of this before. Papa lay back down on the moss, chuckling to himself, before sitting upright again. ‘You know wha he eat for dinner?’ he asked me.
‘No, what?’
‘Roast beef,’ he announced triumphantly. ‘I serve Humphrey Bogart roast beef. Nae other place in Morocco you get roast beef at this time, only in the Hotel Continental in Tangier.’
He stared at me, and I smiled enthusiastically.
‘Wow, that’s magic, Papa.’
‘There is photograph of him in this hotel, I bet, still to this day. You nae believe me?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I insisted.
‘You go see, in Hotel Continental, in Tangier, a photograph of Bogie in bar. After he eat roast beef, served by me, by your Papa.’
He sprawled back again, staring at the sky. It was early evening and the sun was setting over the top of Beinn an Dothaidh, casting a long, dark shadow over the blue, still loch. The heat of the afternoon had dissipated, and the midges were starting to emerge now in force. We hadn’t brought anything to repel them, and I felt them burrowing into my scalp and the back of my neck, forcing me to slap my head and face every few seconds. I could see they were irritating Pablito too, but they didn’t seem to bother Papa, who lay still on the ground.
‘Tangier is rich at this time,’ he said after a few moments. ‘Everybody, they want come and spend money – businessmen, actors, writers, royals, these boys . . . how you say?’
‘Playboys,’ Pablito chimed in.
‘Si playboys. It was international city, run by many governments, so no one make rule. Anything you wanna dae in Tangier, you dae, anything you wanna buy, you buy.’
‘So why did you leave?’ I asked.
‘The Moroccans, they get independence, and is nae same any more. Now people they are told “you nae do this, you nae do that”. The rich they no come and there is nae money, nae job.’
Papa announced that he was hungry. Pablito opened the tin of salmon and, using the gutting knife, smeared lumps of it on to roughly torn chunks of crusty bread. He filled a saucepan with water from the loch and heated it over the stolen Primus stove
to make tea. Papa made a comment about what good value it had been, and I cringed. The tea tasted bitter.
Dusk was closing in, and there had been no activity on the fishing lines since Pablito’s catch. Papa had run out of cigarettes, so he suggested that we go to the bar in the nearby hotel.
‘What about Antonio?’ my brother asked. ‘They won’t let a thirteen-year-old boy in the bar.’
‘Ach, he sit in van,’ Papa said dismissively. ‘We nae be long. Is nae problem, eh son?’
We’d passed a small, whitewashed hotel at the turn-off from the main road, and I guessed from the familiarity with which Papa and Pablito discussed it that they had visited it before. They stripped and washed in the loch, and from the overnight bag recovered from the van Papa produced a pair of slacks, a neatly pressed shirt and smart, polished shoes, which he changed into.
He filled the saucepan with water from the loch and heated it over the Primus so that he could have a shave. He’d even packed a bottle of aftershave. He splashed some on to his cleanly shaven face and clapped his hands together loudly. I suspected this was part of a well-worn fishing-trip ritual.
‘Okay, we go,’ he said enthusiastically.
During the short drive to the hotel I tried to resume our earlier conversation.
‘So what made you come here, to Scotland, from Tangier?’
Pablito sighed.
‘I work in Hotel Continental, and this customer, a rich businessman, he say, “You come work for me. I give you good job, you run my hotel in Scotland.”’
‘What, just like that?’
‘Si, just like this. He say, “I have hotel, how you say, a la costa.”’
‘At the seaside,’ Pablito said with bored resignation.
‘Si, at seaside. He say, “I pay for you come”. I say, “I nae even speak English”. He say, “I pay you learn”. I say, “Wha about my family?” because I married tae your Mama and we have Pablito, and he say, “You bring them. I give you house tae live. You earn plenty money.”’
He shook his head and laughed. ‘You know wha I think?’
‘What?’ I replied.
‘I think I come tae Scottish village like on bottle of Glenmorangie, you know, Glenmorangie whisky with cottage and sheep and beautiful water on label?’
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I nodded anyway.
‘This is all I know of Scotland, from bottle of Glenmorangie in bar of Hotel Continental, nothing else. I come tae Scotland and you know where I arrive?’
I knew the answer, but I also recognised it was not the time to provide a response. This was a punchline he wanted to deliver himself with as much drama as he could muster.
‘Saltcoats, stinking bloody Saltcoats,’ he spat. ‘This shithole full a stinking bloody chip shops and borrachos from Glasgow.’
We arrived at the hotel and pulled up at the car park. It was on the edge of a small village – just a post office and a few cottages – but I could tell from the noise emanating from the bar and the multitude of motorbikes parked outside that it was an attraction. Pablito said it was one of the most popular stops on the route of the West Highland Way. That explained the pile of rucksacks near the entrance.
‘Wait here,’ Papa told me. ‘We nae be long.’
He strolled across the car park with the dry gravel crunching beneath the smooth leather soles of his Italian shoes. Pablito hesitated, as though he wasn’t comfortable with the arrangement, but then he turned and followed Papa. They opened the door to the bar, releasing a loud blast of traditional fiddle music, and disappeared inside.
A few minutes later, Pablito emerged with a bottle of Coca-Cola and a packet of crisps that he handed to me with a sheepish look before returning to the bar. The Coke was warm, and the crisps were soft and stale. I had no appetite for either.
There was no radio in the van to listen to, so I moved into the driver’s seat and fiddled with the gearstick, the handbrake and the various buttons and knobs for a while, and then I got out of the van and wandered to the far side of the car park, peering over the bridge on to the gushing river below. I looked across the open moors to the red, craggy hills in the distance, then climbed down the riverbank and collected a handful of stones, which I lobbed into the water.
After a while, when I could no longer stand the midges, I made my way back to the van. As I crossed the car park I heard the sound of clapping and whooping along to the music. It just didn’t seem fair that I should be stuck outside, missing out on all the fun.
I opened the door to the bar and peered inside. The room had a warm, comfortable atmosphere, with a thick, deep-red carpet and dark, sturdy furniture padded with tartan fabric. The white, roughly Artexed walls were hung with paintings of Highland scenes and a mounted stag’s head. Behind the bar, dozens of malt whisky bottles formed an impressive display. A sea of half-empty glasses and mixer bottles blanketed the dimpled copper-clad tables.
The customers were dressed in hiking gear or bikers’ leathers and most were drunk. Two heavily-built men dressed in kilts were playing a traditional reel on a fiddle and a squeezebox. Papa and Pablito sat immediately beside them, talking to two women. I only managed to get a proper look at the one seated next to Papa. She was quite pretty, with blonde hair in a feather cut like Suzi Quatro, and she had large, sticky-out tits that were clamped tight inside a pink t-shirt. She held a cigarette in one hand and a pint of beer in the other. She was staring intently at Papa, who was talking at some length, as if he was telling her a story. She inclined her head towards him, draped her hand around the back of his head and pulled his face closer towards her ear. The gesture was so intimate it made me feel as though I was intruding.
I returned to the van and sat inside until it was dark. I hoped the customers might begin to drift off, but if anything the bar was getting busier as more cars and motorbikes arrived. At one stage I was sure I heard the familiar strains of ‘Porompompero’ emerging.
I curled up on the passenger seat and tried to sleep, but there was nothing to cover me – we’d left the sleeping bags in the tent back at the fishing spot, and the night’s coldness was closing in. Eventually I could bear it no longer and I returned to the bar. I opened the door and peered inside. Through the crowds and clouds of smoke, I made out Papa, in the same seat as before – only now Suzi Quatro was sitting on his lap. Pablito had a stupid look on his face. He was talking to another woman, who had dark hair and was wearing a denim bomber jacket. Pablito tried to pull her on to his knee, but she resisted and slapped him on the chest playfully. I fought my way through the bodies and grabbed Papa by the arm.
‘Can we go now? It’s freezing outside,’ I pleaded.
His face reddened and he manoeuvred the girl off his knee. ‘You wait in van. We only be one minute.’
I returned to the van and waited for another twenty minutes. In the end I got out and walked around briskly to keep warm. Eventually, after another hour or so, the door of the bar opened and people started to drift out, into cars and on to motorbikes. Papa and Pablito were among the last to leave, and behind them Suzi Quatro and her friend teetered across the car park, clutching a bottle of beer in each hand, singing ‘Viva Espana’ at the top of their voices.
‘We drop girls at their tent,’ Papa said casually.
Papa drove, with Suzi Quatro in the passenger seat, and her friend, Pablito and I sitting on the bare metal floor in the back. The smell of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke made me feel nauseous.
‘How dae ye say dildo in Spanish?’ the friend asked.
They both erupted in braying laughter.
‘Aye, and blow job. How dae ye say blow job?’ Suzi Quatro added.
‘Hey, I have young son, you watch language,’ Papa said angrily.
We stopped at a field located off” the main road about two miles from the hotel, where a small canvas tent was pitched alongside two motorbikes. Everyone got out of the van and Suzi Quatro disappeared into the tent, emerging seconds later with a bottle-opener. She unca
pped two bottles of beer and handed one each to her friend and Pablito. She uncapped a third and handed it to Papa, but he refused and she drank it herself.
‘Papa, can we go now? I’m freezing and tired,’ I implored.
Suzi Quatro disappeared back into the tent and emerged with a sleeping bag, which she handed to me.
‘Here you are, wee man, wrap this round yersel,’ she said.
As she stood in the glow of the van’s headlights, I caught sight of her face properly. It was lined and baggy and coated in a heavy layer of make-up. It was clear she wasn’t as young as her dress implied.
‘You sleep in van, we nae be long, only two minute,’ Papa said.
Reluctantly I took the sleeping bag and climbed into the vehicle. There was a strong smell musky of bodies and cheap perfume from the quilted nylon, but at least it was warm. I huddled down into it and tried to sleep.
The sound of chatter and laughter stopped and everything was silent. I climbed into the front passenger seat and tried to look out of the windscreen, but it had steamed over with my breath. I rubbed a small circle in the bottom corner with the sleeve of my jumper to act as a spyhole. Papa had switched the headlights off, so it was difficult to make out what was going on. I squinted through the darkness, just managing to make out Pablito and Suzi Quatro’s friend kissing.
After a few moments Papa and Suzi Quatro emerged from the tent. Papa’s shirt was hanging out of his trousers, and she was wearing a long t-shirt that stretched over her thighs. As he walked away she slapped him on the back of the head, and he stopped and faced her. I thought he was going to hit her, but he turned away.
‘Mi cago en su padre,’ he shouted. It was a phrase Mama had banned him from using in the house. ‘I shit on your father.’