A Meeting in Seville Read online




  Praise for A Meeting in Seville

  ‘I really enjoyed this book. A superb achievement. I loved the way it played disconcertingly with time and mixed humour with poignant emotion in a pacey and suspenseful story which was at times surprisingly eerie. And it offered genuine insights into the complexity of relationships, marriage, and the even more difficult journey of self-awareness.’

  David Lister, The Independent

  ‘An intriguing and moving tale by an experienced comedy writer at the top of his game.

  Charles Harris, bestselling author of

  The Breaking of Liam Glass

  ‘A Meeting in Seville is an effortlessly enchanting romantic dramedy. Paul A. Mendelson deftly uses magical realism to tell an emotionally earnest and intensely relatable story of two people finding an incredible opportunity to save their marriage and become, at last, who they were meant to be. This is a simple story well told, with moments of true poignancy, heartbreak, humor and hope. A lovely novel.’

  Cameron Cubbison, Development Consultant,

  Co-founder Screencraft Consultancy Los Angeles

  ‘A heart-warming romantic comedy that is not only a trip down memory lane but also a poignant reminder of what can happen when life gets in the way. Fresh, imaginative and touchingly real – this story radiates love.’

  Emma Clipp, Journalist (Daily Mail, Metro)

  ‘At the core of Paul A Mendelson’s intricately observed and witty novel is the story of a couple who return to Seville to mark their thirtieth wedding anniversary. What follows is a clever and at times dark story as it skips between the past and the present with revealing consequences. A very well written book which evokes the heat and drama of Seville – and of a couple’s marriage.’

  Alex Gerlis, bestselling author of The Best of Our Spies

  ‘A time-travelling love story that challenges us all to recapture the best of our younger selves. Writing with warmth and wit Paul A Mendelson never makes it easy for his characters but always intriguing for the reader.’

  David Ian Neville, Producer BBC Radio Drama

  ‘Enormously warm, funny and disturbingly too close to home. A ‘what if’ scenario that all married couples should dread. Another triumph from Paul A Mendelson. I couldn’t stop reading.’

  Leonora Meriel, author of The Woman Behind the Waterfall

  Praise for In the Matter of Isabel

  ‘A wonderfully funny debut novel’

  The Independent

  ‘A titillating thriller that is both warm and endlessly funny’

  Ardal O’Hanlon

  ‘Fizzes with surprises’

  Andy Hamilton

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

  The Book Guild Ltd

  9 Priory Business Park

  Wistow Road, Kibworth

  Leicestershire, LE8 0RX

  Freephone: 0800 999 2982

  www.bookguild.co.uk

  Email: [email protected]

  Twitter: @bookguild

  Copyright © 2018 Paul A. Mendelson

  The right of Paul A. Mendelson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This work is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.

  ISBN 978 1912575 930

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  To the extraordinary young woman with whom

  I honeymooned so many years ago in Seville.

  Where the story began.

  “Sometimes,” said Julia, “I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.”

  Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

  “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

  Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1.5.167–8)

  “Och, away ye go!”

  William Sutherland, 1988 and 2018

  Seville, Spain

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  The ball of candle wax is still small; he began it only last year.

  Gnarled and knobbly, it sits in his quivering palm. Suddenly he grabs it between tiny thumb and forefinger and thrusts it out in front of him, expectantly. Hopefully.

  The young boy senses the intensity of darkness, despite the tailored lighting all around. Perhaps it is the lateness of the hour or the daunting solemnity of the occasion that adds to the sensation. Even though the people surrounding him appear far from solemn and he’s not yet quite sure what this particular night is all about.

  He desires one thing only. More, he is certain, than he has ever desired anything in his life. Not that he ever looks back. Or even forward. There is only now.

  And here it comes.

  The biggest candle he has ever seen, slowly dripping its own scalding essence as it moves down through the dark, sultry air towards his outstretched hand. The flame almost frying his fingers. He can see only the eyes of his benefactor; all else is hidden.

  More wax glides towards him, adding to his store, to last year’s solidified bounty. If some of it drops onto his sweaty hand, sizzling the skin, so what? Provided the aggregation justifies the pain.

  Maybe this year he will beat the rivals in his classroom.

  Maybe this time will be his triumph.

  It’s going to be a very special week.

  Now (2018)

  1

  “I do know how to pack a suitcase, Luisa.”

  William Sutherland is not in a holiday mood. He rarely is when he’s about to go on holiday and seldom is
even when he’s actually there. Apparently it’s something to do with his never having had holidays as a child. Or being Glaswegian. Or both. William is not prone to self-analysis. He only gleaned this particularly unhelpful observation from his wife, Luisa, the one who’s trying to help him pack his suitcase and getting little thanks for it. The one who had bags of holidays as a child.

  “I know you do, William. I know also you are angry if shirts have the creases.”

  “I should have packed last night,” he mutters. “If I hadn’t had that bloody report to write for Sandy. We don’t want to keep the kids waiting.”

  Luisa shakes her head. She knows they will be packed and sorted in plenty of time and the kids – who aren’t really kids at all, not any more – wouldn’t mind waiting. Not after a lifetime of being hurried. She is feeling slightly lightheaded, which she thinks may be because she is teetering on the edge of diabetes and hasn’t yet eaten, even though it’s still very early. Far too early for her metabolism and her liking.

  But somewhere she knows that this particular feeling isn’t her pancreas playing up. It is because she is sick with fear.

  “Can I make you some eggs?” she offers.

  He doesn’t answer. She is sure that he has heard but she can’t yet be certain, even after thirty years, whether he is mulling or simply ignoring.

  Finally. “Er, no. No, thank you. I’ll just have my cereal.”

  Luisa knows that, to William Sutherland’s Catherine wheel mind, eggs take time but cereal you just pour straight out. So she isn’t going to argue that they’d be ready for him by the time he’s through. That in fact it would be swifter for him than preparing his own morning muesli and fruit concoction. She simply nods and closes the bedroom window, muffling the familiar sound of Surrey rain they’ll soon be leaving well behind.

  He can hear her walk into the kitchen and the humming begin.

  It’s a humming of childhood Spanish melodies, of which she’s not even aware but which either enchants or irritates him. More often, these days, the latter.

  William sits on the newly made bed, removes his glasses and releases the breath he has been holding in. He realises that this will waste valuable packing seconds, but he also feels that he deserves it, given the circumstances.

  He looks blearily around the bedroom.

  He can’t deny that it’s a comfortable room, sunny even, despite the weather. And most probably decorated and furnished in the best of taste, albeit a tad continental. Luisa is the one with the flair – this has never been his province. The bed works, at least for sleeping, although his sleep is never great. (This reminds him – he must ensure that he’s packed all his pills. Some in the suitcase and the same again in the front compartment of his battered laptop bag, just in case their baggage goes to La Paz.)

  The only feature in this expensively cosy room he could definitely live without is the painting, if you could call it that, above the bed. It’s there because William refuses to hang it in the living-room, a decision that Luisa has tactfully passed off to its creator, their son-in-law, as wanting to have it where they can wake up to it every morning. Which they bloody do, although William tries very hard to keep it just outside his peripheral vision. At least this is one opinion he shares with his wife – it really isn’t a very good painting. And unfortunately, in this case, knowing the artist doesn’t afford it the least extra cachet.

  Luisa has left her wardrobe door ajar. Moths will get in while we’re away, he thinks crossly, although he’s not totally sure if moths still do that. He suddenly recalls the smell of mothballs in the old tenement flat, one of several lingering smells from childhood, still there on his mother when they’d carried her out. A potent smell yet one of the comparatively harmless ones. Except, of course, to moths.

  This week, he is being told, is a time for remembering. As if he didn’t have enough to do.

  He catches himself in the mirror and puts his glasses back on. William has never been taken with the way he looks, although Luisa has often told him how attractive she finds him. Not for some time now, that’s for sure, but he does believe that on those historic occasions she genuinely meant it. Even if he sensed there was always the implication that others might see things differently.

  For the life of him he can’t see it now, even with his vision restored. All he can see is that proud terrain, where his once-untamed, almost maple-red hair ran luxuriantly free, now a somewhat desolate archipelago of wispy, balding grey. And below still half-closed, pastel-blue eyes lie the clearly permanent gullies that time and life have dug into milky, Scottish, sun-shy skin. Bit jowly too, Father William, he thinks, and a future candidate for Red Nose Day – probably the result of too many business lunches, mostly at his expense and for too long not converted into business.

  Perhaps he should go easy on the paella this week, although he suspects that eating for Britain might be the one thing he will enjoy.

  The doorbell interrupts his assessment.

  “William,” calls Luisa, “they’re here!”

  “Bugger. Shit. Hell,” he mutters, before telling himself that he should be quite relieved they’re so early when he had been expecting them to be artistically late.

  He stuffs a final shirt into the case. One that Luisa recently bought for him, on her way back from quietly delivering six others to the Help the Aged shop.

  Sod the creases.

  ***

  “You’re going to have such a wonderful time, you two. I’m so jealous.”

  “Si. I cannot wait, Marcus. It has been so long,” says Luisa to her son-in-law with appropriate excitement, from the back seat of the small car, because she knows how to play the game. Then she remembers to add, once again, “Thank you so much for – everything.”

  The eager young man swivels round awkwardly in his seat, to nod acknowledgement. A gangly nod, trendy NHS-style glasses bobbing on his beaky nose, dirty-blond hair in need of a good cut swirling with the car. It’s a kind face, she thinks again. A face that will keep her beautiful daughter happy, she hopes, if never in luxury, although can we ever truly know about these things?

  “Oh, Mummy, you don’t have to keep thanking us,” laughs Claire. “It’s our pleasure. Really.”

  William can see his daughter smiling in the driving-mirror. That adorable, gap-toothed smile. The darkly beautiful, wonderfully mischievous face. Their eyes meet and for a moment he softens. For a moment the familiar numbness recedes.

  “Think you’re ever going to learn to drive, Marcus?” he asks. He can hear his wife sigh softly beside him. William doesn’t care.

  “Doubt it, William,” laughs Marcus, trying bravely if unconvincingly to rise above the familiar disdain. “Artists make rubbish drivers – ask the insurance companies.”

  “Make rubbish pictures too,” mutters William, but mercifully almost to himself.

  “You’ll probably be amazed how the memories come flooding back to you,” says Claire, who hasn’t been alive long enough to have the sort of memories she’s talking about but has an unshakeable faith in romance. “And remember how you told me, Mummy, that the two of you promised yourselves you’d go back one day?”

  “Did we?” says William, who remembers no such thing. “Well, that must have been a long time ago, darling.”

  Nobody comments, so the words hang uneasily in the still-dark, pre-rush hour air. Not unexpectedly, their English teacher daughter moves things along with a vaguely appropriate quote.

  “‘The past is another country. They do things differently there.’”

  William immediately responds, as if challenged. “LP Hartley, The Go-Between.”

  “Loved that old movie!” cries Marcus. “Julie Christie and—”

  “We’re talking about the book,” grumbles William, his favourite game with his only daughter crassly interrupted. “And, at the risk of being a wee pedant, it’s ‘foreign country’.


  “Correct! Just testing. So what’s your holiday book this time, Daddy?”

  “What do you think?” interrupts Luisa. “Company Report numero 6432!”

  The entire car must feel Marcus tense. It certainly hears his intake of breath.

  “Away ye go!” William mutters, crossly. “Got a lot of work on? Mebbe a few bills to pay?”

  Luisa can see her daughter wince at the familiar question marks in her father’s voice. The younger woman leans over to stare concernedly at her parents in the mirror. Not easy, as their older heads aren’t exactly together. She stares for a few seconds too long, considering she’s also switching lanes on a tricky, four-lane motorway. Words unspoken, shrugs exchanged.

  William thinks, not for the first time, that life is so full of looks and shrugs and winces and nods that perhaps we need never really speak at all. Which would suit him just fine and cut out all that unnecessary small-talking he’s never fully mastered.

  It would certainly save him having to tell Luisa about the meeting he intends to set up while he’s out there.

  “Will you folk be needin’ to book a pick-up for the way back, guvnor?” chirps Marcus, in an accent of his own devising, to break the silence. Yet somehow it appears to do quite the opposite.

  The AVE train pulls out of Madrid’s brand-new Atocha station. Overflowing, the young man muses, with businessmen, holidaymakers and, most probably, considering the destination, pilgrims, although this is a word he associates with Chaucer and Bunyan, not a world approaching the dawn of a new millennium.

  He cannot wait to leave this city, even though he knows that it is most probably splendid and he has only been here three days. Not enough time to “do” the museums and galleries (which, for him, is no misfortune). But sufficient to make him seriously question that famed Spanish hospitality and love of family about which he has been told so much.