Benefit of the Doubt

by Les Cowan

  It was David more than Paco in shock now as they headed out into the balmy Madrileño night and pulled out a couple of chairs at the bar across the Plaza.

  “So you and Papa were friends. You studied together. He went into journalism – what did you do?”

  “Teaching.”

  “Teaching what?”

  Paco switched effortlessly to perfect English with a slight 1950s Home Service accent.

  “English is such a simple, direct language, don’t you think?” David nearly choked on his San Miguel then smiled in spite of himself. Something about the older man was growing on him.

  “Maidenhead for six months – Spanish teacher in a small secretarial college. Then Bournemouth for another six months. While I was safe on English soil your father was getting into more and more bother here.”

  “I know. He told me about those years. But he never mentioned you. Why not?”

  Paco smiled again and took a sip of his Rioja. “I’m afraid we had what you would call a ‘falling out’. Over ideas of course. Nothing personal. And temporary, I’m happy to say.”

  “What ideas?”

  Paco paused before answering.

  “David. You are a modern – even postmodern – man. You are not fooled by tradition and culture. You know the church here was hand-in-glove with Franco, sustaining the dictatorship. And before that propping up the aristocracy, maintaining the status quo – all that ‘keep us in our proper stations’ nonsense. Social order is not a bad thing, but when it’s an unjust order then it is. Your father hated that. I did too. We rejected the faith of our fathers and mothers. It was natural for young men searching for a new way. So your father found Marx. I found another way. He didn’t accept my choice as legitimate so we were never as close after that.”

  “But that’s what I’m asking. What was your way?”

  Paco took another sip and looked around him with interest at the few other drinkers, late night revellers just having one last drink on their way home, an elderly couple supporting each other out of the metro entrance.

  “You’ll forgive my hesitation. Prejudice is not a nice thing. We’ve had a lot of it in Spain. You think you’re not prejudiced but when I tell you what I do you’ll find out whether you are or not.”

  “Try me.”

  “Ok.” Paco looked him straight in the eye with a hint of the hunting owl in his expression now. “I am the pastor of an iglesia evangelica. An evangelical church. It’s just along the road, just past Congosto Metro.”

  “But you said you were a teacher?”

  “I am. At the present Alcalá University.”

  “So you lecture in English?”

  “Not as much as I used to. If you stop teaching and spend all your time on committees, they call you a professor. But I am also a pastor. That’s my calling.”

  “So a Protestant?”

  “Si, claro. But not just by designation – you know, what you have to put on the forms. It’s my conviction. I believe it. I follow the founder.”

  “I see.” David was thoughtful, taken aback in spite of his determination to be open-minded but also intrigued. “So I can see why you and Dad would fall out. He hates religion.”

  “Ah well. That’s a misunderstanding, if you’ll permit me. For me it’s entirely relationship and nothing of religion.” He drained his glass and set it down. “Anyway. Enough. We’ve had a taxing few hours. Both of us. If you would be good enough to run me home perhaps then you can get back to your own life. I’ll call the insurance company in the morning. I owe you a debt of gratitude, caballero. I have no idea what happened on that bend. One minute singing along to Silvana Velasco then upside down with a briefcase on top of me. Pity. I was quite attached to that little Fiat.”

  David dropped Paco off in one of the maze of back streets behind Congosto, surprised to find a university professor living in such humble – not to say somewhat rough – surroundings.

  “You’re a lot like your father, though you maybe don’t think so,” Paco pronounced, holding the open car door.

  “I don’t think so,” David replied with almost a laugh. “He was a campaigning journalist. Maybe you’ve heard? I sell whiskey and cheese to the middle classes.”

  “But you pulled me out of the wreck with petrol fumes all round. No thought of the risks. There might be some point of connection there, don’t you think?”

  David didn’t argue but neither was he convinced. Political corruption and cottage cheese – not much obviously in common. Was his father disappointed? Probably, but then he had lost his cutting edge too now. He had partly chosen Malaga for the golf, for goodness sake.

  Leaving Paco behind he threaded his way up onto the A3 to Valencia in one direction or back to Madrid in the other. Avenida Mediterránea. Valencia was definitely tempting. Somewhere warmer in winter and cooler in summer. And more relaxing, less stressful than Madrid. Less fraught with nasty surprises. Suddenly, on the take off to the M40 ring road heading north towards Chamartin it struck him. For the first time in months he had spent a happy, engrossing couple of hours interested in someone else’s problems rather than his own. Rocío and her constant cloud of sadness hadn’t entered his mind. Was that a bad thing? He felt oddly revitalized from the evening. Paco was full of surprises. David had called out to the void for answers and heard nothing back – well, unless you counted a careless driver wrecking his nice new BMW as a transcendental response. But at least the Fiat 500 and its inattentive driver had taken his mind off things for a bit and that was worth something.

  Ok. Deep breath now and back under the water. What would be behind the door this time? He almost hoped for nothing and no one. Cases packed and gone, maybe a note on the table. No more marriage – though they weren’t even married. But no more madness either. What a relief. He could surely rebuild; he wasn’t even thirty yet – plenty of time. What had happened to them was nobody’s fault. Just one of those things. Es lo que hay, the wonderful, utilitarian Spanish expression there was no exact equivalent of in English. Literally, “it’s what there is” but meaning more “that’s the way it is” or “take it or leave it”. An expression of Spanish stoicism born of centuries of decline and exploitation. When the landlord jacks up the rent, when your child dies of diphtheria, when your woman leaves you and goes back to her mother in Jaen or just when there’s only hard, day-old bread left. Es lo que hay.

  He parked the car and got into the lift, his stomach having that momentary sinking feeling on the way up, physical equivalent to his mental state. Keys in the lock. Fiddle and fumble. A turn and a push. Then a shout from the kitchen.

  “Hi. You’re back. Dinner’s just ready. Chicken with paprika, your mum’s recipe. Want to open the wine?”

  Rocío didn’t explain and David didn’t enquire. They ate. She seemed relaxed and normal – or what used to pass for normality among normal people. Nowadays that made it abnormal. They washed up tiptoeing round, just chatting about nothing in particular. They were on their way to bed before David even thought to tell her about the accident and the ghost he’d met from a past he didn’t know existed.

  “He knows Papa and says he used to help feed me when we lived in Spain. Before we went to Edinburgh. How weird is that?”

  “Sounds interesting. Can you introduce me?”

  “Sure. Why not?” David thought for a moment. “Actually no – I don’t know where he lives and I don’t have a number. I just dropped him off in the street.”

  “But he told you he was the pastor of a church near Congosto.”

  “Right.”

  “So we’ll go to his church.”

  “Ok.” David shrugged. “No problem.” How many weird events could happen in twenty-four hours? “You’ll have to confess though. You know – ‘no idols nor false gods’.”

  “I can add that to the rest.”

  The remainder of the week seemed to
pass in a blur. An unspoken truce was characterized by ordinary things ordinary people do but that they hadn’t done together for months. Shopping at the local Mercadona. A walk in the Retiro. Washing and ironing. Even sex for the first time in months. Afterwards David chatted about some new customers that might prove quite remunerative. She dropped into her office to talk about coming back to work and told him all the gossip. It was like a thousand tons of snow piled up at the head of the slope. Nobody speaking too loudly for fear of setting off the final vibration that would set everything careering down the hill destroying anyone in its path. But so long as it was staying where it was…

  They decided to try to find Paco that Sunday evening and spotted the premises after a short search. The service seemed to have just got going as they tentatively edged in at the back. Thirty or so middle-aged and older Spaniards in pews faced a low platform in a poorly lit hall. There were one or two darker Latinos and a few gypsies in black from head to foot, and a gaggle of teenagers smirking and fooling about at the back. Everyone was standing singing so they found a space and tried to catch up. Paco, up on the platform, spotted them but only gave the slightest twitch of a eyebrow. The congregation sang with surprising enthusiasm and energy while the old man was hopping about, waving his arms in a kind of manic mix between cheerleading and conducting. Eventually it came to an end; everyone sat. Paco opened his Bible and read.

  David had little to compare it with coming from solid, respectable atheist stock on one side and “Christmas and Easter” on the other, which practically amounted to much the same thing. Still there had been school assemblies his father had tried to get him out of but he had tolerated or ignored like the rest of his peers. Blah, blah, holy blah they called it and that was all the impact it made. Paco was different though. He read, then explained, not as it related to Roman Empire provincial Jews but for twentieth-century Spaniards. No cheap jibes at the Catholics, lots of personal anecdotes and a couple of jokes that made David smile in spite of himself and glance at Rocío. She was sitting forward as if she was watching the final of the Copa del Rey with Real 2-1 down to Barça and ten minutes left. Engrossed. After a final summary, a closing song, and a benediction of sorts the tea trolley was wheeled out by an ancient Señora in a pre-war headsquare and people began to shuffle forward. David took a coffee and looked round but Rocío had already cornered Paco and was explaining something – doing that Spanish thing where the import of communication seems to be more in the gestures than the words. He was listening attentively then talking back in a way both earnest and pointed. It looked like father and daughter, or maybe like an uncle and a niece. For all his distrust of clergy David felt he somehow – surprisingly – trusted Paco and whatever he was saying.

  They went the next week too, then the one after that. Then it became sort of accepted but not talked about, in the same way that there was a cessation of hostilities in general. What Paco preached about each week and the mysterious fact of persistent religious observance – when Marx, Freud, Mendel, and Feuerbach had made it all so patently ridiculous – was carefully skirted around. Rocío got back to work. David stopped worrying about what was going on behind the door when he came home. By now it was obvious that at least one of them was living more and more for the weekend but not in the usual way. And it wasn’t David. The only jarring note came one day when he once referred to her sudden interest in religion.

  “It’s not religion,” she fired straight back. “I’m not sure where it’s going but I need to find out.” Almost exactly what Paco had said to him that night in the bar. Maybe he was more prejudiced than he thought. Still, no harm done. They weren’t Moonies or Mormans at least. Personally he would have preferred some sort of mild Buddhism if they had to be religious – sorry relational – but neither Chamartin nor Vallecas had many ashrams open to the public. In any case Paco was the draw, not dogma.

  “Just watch him. He’s a sly old fox,” was his father’s only response when David spoke to him about it briefly in one of their very rare phone calls. “He’s not a liar though. He really believes everything he’s saying. You can be sure of that.” That was maybe something.

  It was during a Saturday wander round the gardens at Aranjuez that she dropped her bombshell.

  “I’ve decided to convert.”

  “From what? I didn’t know you were anything.”

  “That’s true, but I don’t know how else to say it that doesn’t sound American.”

  “But Protestant?”

  “I prefer Christian.”

  “I thought Catholics consider themselves Christians too, don’t they?”

  “Of course. But this is different. I just don’t know how else to say it. I said a prayer when Paco was preaching last Sunday. I want to follow a different way, that’s all.”

  “Ok – fair enough. I won’t get in your way. I respect Paco and his little flock. Just don’t expect me to follow you.”

  “Of course not. You must decide for yourself,” Rocío added in such a matter-of-fact tone that David knew she had rehearsed the line.

  “Do you mind if I ask why? I guess it must be to do with what you’ve been through the last few years.”

  “What we’ve both been through,” she corrected him. They were holding hands, walking round the fountains and flowerbeds, the traditional summer palace of the Spanish monarchs spread out behind them. “Well, yes and no. It’s not been easy. On you too. But it’s not just that. I want something to live for that has a meaning. Politics is beyond redemption. We’ve all lost too many friends in La Movida to think that just getting wasted is what it’s all about. I just think it all makes sense. Human weakness. The need for some sort of solution from outside. We need something outside the resources we’ve got.”

  They walked on in silence.

  “You’re impressed by Paco, aren’t you?” David asked.

  “Of course, but it’s not just him. There are stories of people coming to faith just from reading the Bible or praying on their own. Even through dreams. No human input at all. It just makes me think there is a power beyond us and it’s got something to say.”

  “What happens if Paco lets you down – feet of clay and all that?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” David stopped and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

  “Just one more thing: I’ve got to ask you about the night I came home after the crash. What changed? You were suddenly so different.”

  Rocío stared into the distance, shaking her head. “I can’t really say for certain. I was packing a case and came to the photo albums. I sat down and started looking through them. I just thought we’ve lost six lives in the past few years – is that any reason to lose two more?”

  Chapter 5

  Hacienda

  By the time they stepped back onto Buccleuch Place the snow was heavy and constant, covering the cobbles in a puffy undulating layer like ripples on a duvet. An amber sheen reflected from every flat surface in the glow of the streetlights. The faces of the tenement buildings had softened with what looked like aged overhanging eyebrows on every ledge and crevasse. Up and down South Clerk Street the early evening traffic was beginning to build.

  Hacienda was not part of a trendy chain of Spanish-themed restaurants designed for young people just back from Ibiza and did not have strings of plastic onions, garlic bulbs, and peppers hanging from glass fibre ceiling beams. There were no bull-fighting posters and no plastic vines up the pillars. Instead it had the atmosphere of a small family restaurant in a country district. The floor was red tiled, the walls white, the dozen or so small tables covered in bright cotton cloths, and prints of rural scenes hung on the walls. Groves of olive and almond trees on sun-baked hillsides were overlooked by Moorish castles and the white-topped Sierra Nevada in the distance. A bit of the warmth of southern Spain enveloped visitors whatever the weather was doing outside. David and Gillian pushed op
en the door with a swirl of snow behind them.

  Juan – owner, head waiter, maître d’ and odd job man – looked up from behind the bar, spotted David, dropped the dishtowel he was polishing glasses with, and came striding out with a broad grin.

  “Señor David. ¡Bienvenido! ¿Como estas? And your companion? Encantado Señorita.”

  “Hola, Juan – te presento Gillian, one of my language students. Gillian – Juan – maker of the best rabo de toro outside the peninsula.”

  “Tan amable Señor David. Alicia! Señor David is here. With a companion.” A petite, dark-haired, golden-skinned young woman emerged with a look of pleasure and stood beside her husband.

  “Señor David – you are neglecting us. We’ve hardly seen you since you got your own place. And there are so many people at church nowadays, we never get to speak properly. Though we’re enjoying the sermon series. Anyway, it’s good to see you now. And welcome to your friend. Bienvenida a Hacienda. First time?”

  “No – not at all – quite a few times. I love your paella!”

  Juan was studying Gillian’s face now she had taken off her hat and cape.

  “Por supuesto. I thought I recognized you. Come.” A little table in an alcove out of sight of other diners had a reserved sign on it. Juan snatched it up, stuffed it in his pocket, ushered them to their places and swept off to get the menus, which he produced with a flourish.

  “Something to drink? ¿Qué quieres? What would you like, Señorita?

  Gillian ordered manzanilla with iced lemonade. Juan noted it on his pad with slightly raised eyebrows.

  “I’m impressed, Señorita. That’s not a common order.”

  “I was at the Feria de Abril in Seville two years ago and got the taste. It’s what they drink in the Casetas – the marquees on the showground.”

  “I know. Sevilla is my home town. We went to the Feria every year. Señor David – why is she studying? She should be teaching!”

  “So it appears.” He made it two of the same and Juan went off to look out the Manzanilla Gitana.