The King of Spain

by Robert Ford

  ‘They love a bungalow round here, don’t they?’ said Megan as they drove along the main thoroughfare, watching the squat constructions breeze past the window.

  The car turned on to Elm Park, and then along the straight to Sam’s house. He killed the engine, and for a moment they sat in silence.

  ‘So...’ said Sam, staring out through the window. ‘Here we are.’

  ‘It’s very nice, I think.’

  Megan moved first, wriggling out through the passenger door and onto the pavement where Sam joined her. She reached out and took his hand and then together they set off towards the house, up onto the front porch with its creaking floorboards and sorry peeling paint.

  ‘Hasn’t changed a bit,’ said Sam, bending low through the door to pick up some mail.

  ‘What were you expecting?’ asked Megan as she peered past him into the gloom.

  Sam looked up from the floor and there ahead of him was exactly what he had been expecting. The Bear was standing at the corner of the hallway, dressed in a pair of dungarees, a faded burgundy pair with small brass buckles.

  Straightening to face Megan, he took hold of her hands.

  ‘Are you OK? You look a bit...’ She was taken aback by his sudden blanch.

  ‘Sure. I’m fine. Just a bit weird to be back, that’s all. I need to go next-door for a while, check on Mum. You OK here? Or the lounge is through there.’ Sam pointed behind her, towards a door along the passageway.

  ‘Of course. Quite happy.’

  Megan squeezed his hand before heading off in the direction of the front room. Once she might have been concerned, but she now knew enough of Sam’s peculiarities to be able to step back, to allow him space at moments like these.

  As soon as she was out of sight, Sam set off across the hall, following the Bear along the passageway to the doors. Here Sam paused to collect himself, to gain some sort of control. Then, reaching forward, he turned the handle and allowed the Bear to enter ahead, to slip into the shadows beyond.

  It took Sam a moment for his eyes to adjust to the strange mix of light and shade within his mother’s bedroom. The loop of film still burned, clattering through the projector’s gate, so too the bleeping analogue equipment stacked to the right, a ramshackle embarrassment compared with the sophistication he had encountered at Edge Hill.

  The Bear scampered across the floor to the nearside of the bed, from where he turned to Sam, a paw held out inviting him to join. Sam nodded, almost to himself, before stepping forward across the room with slow, considered steps.

  It was hard to believe but she looked the same, his mother, absolutely the same as when he had left, something that was both reassuring and at the same time heart-wrenching - would she ever change, ever return? Looking down at her, Sam felt sorrow’s old, familiar bite, although it was a different kind of sadness now - a kind that was not crippling or debilitating in anyway, it was informed, realistic, grounded. Manageable, perhaps.

  Pulling a chair close, he sat down. He reached across the blankets and took her small warm hand in his, holding it tight. At the same time he could feel the Bear at his knees, the small arms and tiny paws latching on to him. But closing his eyes, scrunching them tight, he was able to resist the usual symptoms; he relaxed, cleared his mind and for the first time in as long as he could remember he didn’t think of his mother, or Hal, or Megan. He simply tried to exist in that space, to define it himself.

  Sam sat like this for some time, he wasn’t sure how long. It could have been minutes or hours, days even, the film’s rattle a soft mantra uncoiling through the dark around him. His breathing slowed and he absorbed the experience, as if these moments were to be their last together and were therefore memories that had to be curated, stored with care.

  Opening his eyes, he leaned across and kissed his mother on the cheek, a delicate kiss full of love and sorrow and regret. Then, quite suddenly, he moved away from the bed and walked across the room. He turned at the door to look back at the Bear, who stood with his arms by his side, feet together, a posture that lent him the look of a child, abandoned. And in that instant he knew that this would be the last time they would meet, that with the closing of the door the Bear would be gone forever.

  Despite its slim design, the door closed behind him with a welcome, solid thump as Sam stepped out into the corridor, back into the world.

  ‘Everything alright?’ Megan stood from a chair at the other end of the corridor.

  He lifted his eyes to Megan and smiled. ‘Fine. Everything’s fine now, thanks.’

  Megan smiled back. Sam had a flash of insight. Looking at this strange lank man that she had grown steadily to love, he read in her eyes, he appeared more vivid now, delineated, a strange effect that she could only presume was a by-product of the gloom that filled the house, a trick of the light.

  Instinctively they moved along the corridor towards each other, falling into an embrace, their bodies fitting lock and key. And there they stayed for some minutes, poised somewhere between a furious passion and a delicate felicity, a closeness that seemed to validate everything, all at once.

  There in that proximity, Sam had found a home.

  TO THE CITY

  Early the next morning they left the house and walked the ten minutes or so along the lonely streets towards the mainline station. Here they boarded one of the vast trains bound for the city; a train that looked something like a large snorkel, a long, black tubular middle graduating towards a curved, nozzle front, a train that smelt of beer and urine and fish.

  The journey took no more than twenty minutes, slicing through the whitewood landscape of the Estate until they could see the tall dark skyline of the capital ahead through the grime-laden windows.

  ‘You ever been to the city?’ Megan asked, squeezing Sam’s hand.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘You?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well. Here we go...’

  A vast honk heralded their arrival as the train slowed to meet the docking station at the platform. They picked up their luggage from the small plastic racks and disembarked, stepping from the train into a maelstrom of noise and activity. Indeed the platform at Kings Cross was extraordinary; thousands of people thronged the bitumen, great hordes of them, standing, milling, jabbering in every conceivable tongue, altogether a great, bewildering soup of dialogue and action.

  ‘What’re they all doing?’ Megan shouted ahead, following close behind Sam as he tried to force his way through the crowd.

  ‘Who knows?’ he managed to call back over his shoulder.

  And it was true. Why were they here, all these people? No one boarded the train; they weren’t interested in the least. Rather they sat or stood and talked, argued, ate, or simply idled.

  With quite some effort they managed to make it off the platform and out onto the Euston Road, not that leaving the station had any effect on the level of chaos with which they were confronted. Around them the pavements were flooded with people, a crowd not propelled by haste, but lugubrious and without direction.

  Sam led the way over to the nearby doorway of a derelict shop, a haven from the crowds. In front of them huge glass buildings lay all around, rising up towards a perfect sky, grey-white and without definition, as if skimmed with plaster, ready to be painted blue again one day.

  The short walk to St Pancras was hard work but passed without incident. For a time they wandered, lost in the crowds under the station’s huge, arching glass and metal canopy, bewildered by it all, nervous and excited both. Before too long they managed to find some food and a train that would take them to Europe - an overnight express calling at Paris, then to Madrid, arriving in Seville the next morning.

  Megan led the way this time as they stepped along the slim grey corridors of the train to their sleeping compartment; a rather compact space four feet wide with a sliding glass door, a padded bench on one side and another several feet above, both of which could be turned into beds when the time came.

  The train hissed, an asthm
atic wheeze as it slunk off in quite unremarkable fashion from the platform, out from under the station’s canopy and on its way. For most of the afternoon and into the evening Sam and Megan sat and watched the landscape unfold - first England, through the industrial zones heading south, and then under the channel and into France. The countryside’s forgotten, derelict appearance they had seen before, terrain familiar to them from their time at Edge Hill. What surprised them though was that this continued as they moved onto the Continent, miles and miles of ruinous, abandoned greenery flashing past the window as they sped on to Paris, reaching the vast, brooding capital by mid-afternoon. The city was, at least from the limited perspective of their carriage, strangely indistinct from what they had seen of Central London.

  The changeover here was swift, and before long they were off again, racing through tracts of open, empty countryside, until the skies darkened and the scenery was obscured under cover of night. They were both tired and although it was still early, it seemed as good a time as any to hunker down.

  ‘Shall I take the top bunk then?’ Sam said as they both stood looking at the uninspiring slithers of seat that were to pass for beds.

  ‘You are a funny boy, aren’t you?’ Megan replied, kissing him on the cheek.

  ‘Well...’

  Together they moved over and sat down, whereupon it became obvious that they might have some logistical issues. The bunks were bowed and so narrow that it was impossible to accommodate two people there for even a moment, let alone a whole night. Of course they persevered, huffing and puffing as they rolled this way and that until Sam toppled over the edge and onto the hard plastic floor of their compartment.

  ‘I’ll sue the train company. As soon as we’re home, I’ll file papers. Immediately,’ said Sam, realising that he was to be spending the night in the relative isolation of the top bunk.

  ‘You should sue. It is their fault you fell off.’

  They kissed goodnight before Sam turned out the main light and hopped up onto the top bunk, lying on his back listening to the clip of the train over the tracks. He rolled over and peaked behind the curtain, out through the window into the impenetrable darkness beyond. They had to be somewhere in southern France, he guessed, surging through the night, as if through space, such was the breadth of land they had passed without even the merest hint of illumination.

  Above and to the right was a miniature wall-mounted reading lamp, a rotating point of light similar to those found on aeroplanes. Sam turned and switched it on, then reached across to his bag and removed a package that was secured on the outside with several layers of bubble wrap. With great care Sam undid the tape, easing back the layers until at last Hal’s journal was revealed. He unpicked the twine that held the notebook closed around its middle, allowing the pages to fall open from the centre. Delving into the book, he studied the clippings, read here and there, trying as best as he could to decipher the illegible slant of Hal’s spider hand. He skim-read the stories and gazed at the photos, wondering at their provenance, their value insomuch as they were kept so safe for so many years in this private store. And all the time he couldn’t help but ruminate on what lay ahead. Would he recognise Luis? Would he look like Hal at all? What would he think of such a gift as this, a gift from a father he had not known? And what of the lunatic histories contained within, stories bereft of context now Hal was gone?

  It made Sam sad, sitting there leafing through the notebook. He missed his friend very much, and wished that Hal was still around, that his choices had been different. Tomorrow they would reach Seville; with any luck would find Luis. After that, though, the future seemed so uncertain, a great swollen mass of possibility that was impossible to comprehend.

  Sam lifted the picture of Luis again, studying it, moving closer and closer until the image appeared a work of pointillism. Somehow he felt that the more he looked, the more familiar with this image he was, the easier things might be for him over the days to come - a theory with no basis, but one that served the need for some kind of comfort.

  ‘Luis Martinez,’ he thought to himself, bringing the photo under close inspection once more. ‘Guess you’re the King of Spain now.’

  THE SEAGULL AND THE CRAB

  The train was slowing, noisy ceramic brakes gripping the sleek copper tracks as from ahead came the faint sound of announcements relayed through croaking station speakers, the sharp toot of whistles and the slamming of doors.

  ‘Trains really are quite romantic, you know,’ said Megan as she stared up towards the compartment ceiling from the lower bunk, trailing a hand over the cold metal frame.

  Above, Sam shifted about, trying to unpick his spine after a wretched night, an experience that had felt comparable to lying on the back of an enormous sneezing turtle for ten hours. It was early, around seven a.m., and by contrast to their arrival in London, the station at Seville was quiet and still. The building itself was large, a utilitarian construction of concrete and metal and glass, a vast, echoing space. Here and there stood small groups of ragged looking porters as well as other, more salubrious railway types, joined now on the concourse by the first few passengers to leak sleepily from the train.

  They disembarked and made their way outside, into a perfect winter’s day, a bright white sun sitting plump and round in a sea of cornflower blue. Sam hailed a taxi along the busy intersection and they piled in, bags stowed around them in the back.

  ‘Hotel Santa Maria,’ Sam asked.

  The driver, a large bearded man dressed entirely in black, looked out of the window and grunted. Sam repeated the request, holding a scrunched-up piece of paper in front of him by way of a cue card.

  ‘H-O-TEL SAN-TA MAR-I-A,’ he said using the raised voice and unnecessary articulation of the Englishman abroad.

  The driver turned and snatched up the note, holding it at arm’s length to allow for his vision.

  ‘Hotel Santa Maria. Santa Maria.’ He repeated, raking through his memory until finally he issued forth a rapid string of soggy consonants that may or may not have been a word.

  The driver shifted the gear stick and swung the car at speed into the flow of traffic, a reckless manoeuvre that brought upon them a shower of angry horns and at least one roaring Andalusian curse, none of which seemed to bother their indefatigable chauffeur, whose response was to tut and mutter and roll his great cannon-ball head a little from side to side.

  The remainder of the journey unfolded in silence, both Sam and Megan watching as they passed from the centre of the city into the narrow, sand-coloured backstreets of the old town. The contrast was stark, as if they had not been travelling through space but also through time, the ancient buildings, the alleyways, the nooks and crannies suggestive of a world long past.

  It was among these streets that they happened upon the Hotel Santa Maria, a small, three-storey building, a traditional structure with tall shuttered windows framed by intricate metalwork. Sam and Megan bade farewell to the taxi and clambered up the uneven stone steps into the reception area, a large open space with tiled floors and whitewashed walls; a perfect reciprocation of its outward appearance.

  Together they walked over towards the desk, behind which stood a small Japanese woman, dressed in a navy suit and white shirt.

  ‘Hola,’ the receptionist called over to them as they approached.

  ‘Hola,’ Sam and Megan chorused back.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ asked Sam, noticing that her name tag read KOMIKO.

  The receptionist smiled and turned to her computer terminal, making several quick strokes upon the keyboard before looking back up at them. ‘Yes,’ she said, almost as if her answer had come from the information displayed on the screen rather than from her.

  ‘Right.’ said Sam. ‘Do you have a room, for tonight?’

  Once again she paused, and smiled and checked the computer. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how much is it, please?’

  Komiko gave this some real consideration, as if she had never, ever, been asked this quest
ion before.

  ‘Thousand-seventy,’ she replied, sounding very much as if she had plucked this number from the ether, at random.

  Sam and Megan shared a look while Komiko beamed, smiling so hard she looked as though she might start to cry.

  ‘That’s fine then, thanks. We’ll take it. Just one night.’

  The process of registering and paying took a similarly meandering and unusual course, but ten or so minutes later Komiko ushered them to their room on the second floor, a tiny, sunlit space with a creaking double bed and a small chandelier suspended from the centre of the high ceiling. Having not slept at all the evening before Sam was exhausted. However, such was the weight of apprehension surrounding their task that now they were there in the city, he knew they had to keep going, had to try and find Luis and return the journal sooner rather than later.

  Sam leant forward on to the bed, looking down, hands scrunched to form fists.

  ‘We should go, shouldn’t we?’ He looked straight down towards the patterned blue and white throw that swamped the near end of the mattress. ‘Definitely, we should go.’

  The midday sun cast bold black shadows across the silent streets of the quarter as they bumbled their way towards the Calle La Guardia. Komiko had been kind enough to point them in the right direction, explaining in great detail the complicated route that would take them to Luis’s last known address.