A Meeting in Seville Read online

Then somebody plucks one out of his hand.

  “Hostal?” says the man urgently, to his new favourite customer, shouting above the noise of the station. “Very good. Very cheap.”

  “I like the last bit,” says the young man, shifting the bulging rucksack on his shoulders and examining the card. He adds a swift “Si, si,” which is almost all he knows. He shows her the picture, which is indeed appealing but could, of course, be doctored.

  “I know this wee street!” she cries, happily. “Is in Triana. Is ok.”

  “You go fast. Taxi. Andale!” urges the older man. “Say to hostal, it is Miguel.”

  The girl nods gratefully and moves off. The young man follows. He still needs to check out the place in their new guidebook – Hostal Esmeralda, he likes the name – to see if it’s one of the promising few he’s already marked out.

  No way are they taking a taxi.

  4

  Were William to bother peering out of the window now, on the hearse-like drive to Hotel Herrera, he might think to himself that this is more like it.

  Narrow streets of ancient and often quite grand buildings, almost caramel in the sunlight. People thronging the streets in huge, sweaty, city-clogging numbers. He could hardly miss the more intimate landmarks; colourfully tiled and plant-filled courtyards, ornately wrought balconies strung with riotous flowers and slightly less riotous underclothing. And glimpses, through the crowds, of pretty, tree-framed plazas. All there for the slowly passing eye to see and the soon-to-be bombarded ear to catch, as local shoppers and vendors mingle noisily with tourists and with those other locals who, for this wondrous holiday week only, are almost the same as tourists. Minus the guidebooks and the bottled water. And some of the awe.

  Should he bother to look.

  When he does finally glance up from his Blackberry, as if to bestow upon Seville the honour of a Sutherland’s attention, he sees something that – had he been a first-time visitor – might have sucked the heat right out of his body.

  As indeed, he now recalls, it once did.

  It is a person – judging by its size, a substantial male person – shrouded from sandalled toe to solid neck in a gleaming white robe, whilst the head and face are themselves enclosed and totally concealed in an almost excessively tall, conical white hat. One that falls right down like a shapeless mask onto the shoulders, the only barely identifiable features being dark eyes peering out through narrow slits in the fabric.

  William would dare anyone to witness this harmless, indeed penitent, vision and not instantly think of those chilling newsreels of the Ku Klux Klan. The same way he is sure no informed person of his generation can listen to the stirring Ride of the Valkyries without picturing helicopters spreading napalm.

  “Beginning to look a lot like Easter,” he mutters to no one in particular, then notes that the disconcertingly hooded figure is swinging a laden shopping-bag from El Corte Inglés, the celebrated chain store. Which, William thinks, is letting the old penitent side down just a bit.

  And now the drums begin.

  You can almost make out the ears of each person in that crowded street suddenly twitch and turn, like those of a more alert and wary animal, as adults and children stop whatever they are doing and cock their heads in the direction of the approaching, rhythmic, imminently thunderous sound. Even William senses something, like a change in the very texture of the air. Luisa and her new amigo abruptly end their conversation.

  “STOP THE CAR!” shouts Luisa. Once in English and then in Spanish.

  William, alongside his surprise, is intrigued that the English version comes first. Perhaps because, for the purpose of barking orders, this is by now her language of choice.

  Responding to the second bark, Pablo halts the minibus with a jolt. Despite the slowness of their journey, William and his dodgy spine bounce painfully against the minivan’s reinforced rear.

  “Shit! What are you – Luisa?” She is already opening her door. “Where the hell are you going?”

  “Please, do not swear. You come – please come, William.”

  “Come? Where come?” And why am I sounding like it’s not my language?

  “Here. Now. This. Or I see you at hotel. Is up to you.”

  With the groan of a devout long-sufferer, he throws open his door, just missing a passing elderly lady of around a hundred on her moped.

  “Away ye go!” he tells Luisa, using his trusty, catch-all phrase, as he shuffles round the paused minibus and gently grabs her arm. “You can’t just wander away willy nilly. This isn’t Richmond!”

  He nods towards Pablo, who clearly isn’t Richmond yet seems to sense instinctively that he is being singled out. The old man turns to him and gestures – GO! William hesitates for a few seconds, then lets go of Luisa, grabs his trusty laptop bag from the back seat and slams the door.

  Before he trundles off towards the accumulating sounds, he slowly clicks his neck, arches his back and bobs his head forward then to the rear a couple of times. Luisa waits, as she has always waited, unwilling to disturb this unbreakable ritual.

  Now he is ready and able, if not necessarily willing.

  5

  William has seen enough reportage in his time of rivers bursting their banks and flooding helpless streets with an intemperate fury. This is how the historic city’s winding passageways seem to him now, as a torrent of excited people flows unstoppably through alleys and calles, past bustling shops and rainbow stalls, jostling Catholics and non-believers alike.

  All surging towards the sound of the drums.

  Yet, being predominantly Spaniards, they are jabbering and shouting and munching as they scamper, some dressed very smartly, in Sunday suits and church dresses, out of respect for the occasion, and many of the women in fashionably high heels, despite the cobbles and the chaos. Dragging children, dogs, shopping trolleys and widowed grannies in their colourful wake.

  The shopkeepers and restauranteurs, who have seen it all before, attempt to divert them with goods and menus. They point to exquisite Andalusian crafts at bargain prices and empty tables that won’t be empty for long. Inevitably, a few tiny tributaries trickle off. But they’re matched by equally determined shoppers and diners pouring out, bags in hand and tummies full, anxious to swim with the tide.

  William finds himself fearing that Luisa will be toppled and crushed in the good-natured but no less unstoppable stampede. She’s quite solid and strong, perhaps a bit too solid, he thinks uncharitably, but her regular workouts haven’t made her any taller. Yet she weaves and winds through her compatriot throng with such relentlessly single-minded exuberance that it is he who is in more danger of being drowned.

  “Scusi. Perdón. MOVE! Luisa…?”

  He finally catches up with her at a small but tightly packed crossroads, in perfect time to catch what is clearly a massive and meticulously drilled procession.

  Even William recalls that this entire gang, numbering in their hundreds and perhaps even thousands – Nazarenos with their pointed hoods, humble penitents with their crosses, altar boys, bandsmen, churchgoers and clergy – will have set off some time ago from their own local parish church and are treading their slow, solemn way to the magnificent cathedral. Or maybe they’re coming back – he would have to look at the map. Not that he actually cares.

  But here they are, the guys in the conical hats, and not just in white this time. These intensely serious men, scores of them, many barefoot, sport hoods of the deepest purple and carry not shopping bags but massive brown candles or silver sceptres. Despite knowing that these are just ordinary, self-effacing believers, devout and peace-loving men of the community, processing in proud anonymity, they still give William the shivers. Calmly they ignore the ranks of justifiably rapt humanity lining the streets or waving from balconies, their eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead or the heavens above.

  This is no victory parade, unless the victory is tha
t of a religion whose ceremonies have endured, undiminished by outside forces, for hundreds of years. He has no idea of the pecking order or whether these anonymous guys are more or less important than the men behind them, men who are struggling – or pretending to struggle – with huge wooden (or pretend wooden) crucifixes.

  But the ones to whom his heart goes out, and for whom he feels a genuine respect, are the ranks of men directly under the gigantic object now heaving precariously into view. Cohorts of dedicated and strong volunteers, the costaleros, who move the table-like structure forward to the slow and exacting rhythm of the drum. They’re all burly, medium-sized men, of necessity roughly the same height, so that the ancient float or paso, a gleaming riot of burnished gold and silver, bedecked with velvet and candles and freshly cut flowers, maintains its finely balanced level as it proceeds.

  He recalls with incredulity that these thirty staunch believers are supporting, with their impossibly strong arms, the entire weight of the heavy beams and all the panoply that towers above them on the revered and immaculately sculptured floats. All they wear, to reduce any cranial impact as they bounce and sway under at least a ton of wood, are rough cloth turbans around their heads. Yet, all that the onlookers can see of these noble bearers, until they stop for breath and water or, he suspects, something stronger, are their firm, tanned feet in sandals or trainers, peeping under the thick wine-red cloth that falls almost to the ground.

  Like so many of the pasos that William is certain will process past him this week – and God knows there will be a host of them – this towering structure bears, within its classical depiction of a pivotal Mystery scene, the tortured yet still somehow benign figure of Christ on his cross. Surrounded by floral tributes and yet more candles, he gazes down lovingly on all. It would be either him or his poor mum up there today, sculpted yet almost too real, thinks William. They’re the headliners.

  William sniffs the air, scented with incense, freshly baked snacks and human sweat, and looks around for Luisa. She is nowhere to be seen.

  He is certain that she will turn up and is not entirely unhappy to be witnessing this undeniably impressive spectacle for a few moments on his own. Or indeed spending the entire day on his own, just him and the world and his laptop. Which he knows, if he thinks about it, is not how things should be.

  So William is not going to think about it.

  He rarely does, because thinking alters little and dwelling in regret doesn’t pay for dwelling in Surrey. On his office pin board is the quote “nothing is certain but death and taxes”, sent to him on a postcard by a jovial client, but he’s pretty certain that this is optimistic bollocks. He knows in his heart that some things are set in stone and precious little will change between the two of them, even on this week of supposed ‘connection’, like a Linked-In of the spirit. Except, of course, their financial security, if he doesn’t stay forever on the ball.

  So he mustn’t forget – he has to make that phone call. Perhaps the gentleman he will be calling is actually sardined within this or a similarly overstimulated crowd right now.

  Suddenly his attention is diverted.

  William finds himself standing next to a small boy, hardly more than six or seven years old and unusually fair for a local. He is clearly with his parents, a much darker Spanish couple, warm and loving, with whom he seems very much at ease.

  Something about the child stops William cold.

  He knows that he must not stare, that it would make the child and his parents uneasy, yet he finds that he can’t take his eyes off the boy. Short, newly trimmed Easter hair, with that barber’s trademark point at the nape, pale blue eyes, crushingly innocent face. And a smile of such wonder.

  William’s heart begins to pound, at the same time as his mind rebukes him for his foolishness.

  Not now, William. Not here.

  The boy is clearly unaware of William. Or of anyone. He is consumed by the procession and especially the float, as he stares upwards, open-mouthed, at the magic passing slowly by.

  “Señor – Señor!”

  The screech of the old gitano woman tears William away. A new scent has entered his awareness – hardly surprising as she is thrusting a sprig of rosemary almost up his nose.

  He shakes his head and backs away from the tiny and almost toothless Romani vendor. Not that there is much room for evasion in the solidifying crowd. She moves in deftly for the sell, staring into his glasses and his brain, muttering impenetrable incantations, which he assumes are about her crippling poverty and his desperate need for a herb best known for flavouring lamb. He waves her off with a vehemence that almost sends her entire stock flying. The shrieked imprecations hang in the air, as she shuffles off to another victim.

  And then he sees it. Ploughing towards him.

  A bus, of a kind he doesn’t recognise, but then how the hell does he know the buses of Andalusia? What he does know is that it has come out of nowhere. Hurtling down the narrow street directly opposite, which he had assumed was blocked off to traffic and pedestrians.

  It is approaching at such speed that he doesn’t have time to wonder why no one has noticed it and why they aren’t instantly scurrying away. Or indeed how come the Nazarenos around the massive float aren’t either fleeing in religious panic, coned hats wobbling, or rooting themselves in frozen fear to the spot.

  Why is no one screaming to God, when he can’t be that far away today?

  William calls out for Luisa but he can’t see her in the crowd. The sound of the drums and the golden, high-pitched trumpets is deafening.

  All he knows is that he has to save the child.

  Reaching out, he grabs the small boy by his tiny, warm arm and wrenches him tightly into his body, at the same time pulling and sidling both of them away as best he can, into the throng and out of the path of the relentlessly oncoming bus.

  The bus passes directly through the float.

  And straight through him and the boy. Like a vapour or a ghost.

  Touching nothing, disturbing no one.

  Well, no one except William, who just manages to glimpse beside the phantom driver, for no more than a fraction of a second, a young couple huddled close together. She has a bright red bag over her shoulder, he has longish hair of a not dissimilar hue. And then they’re gone, vanished. The passengers, the driver, the bus.

  And all sense of reality.

  “Señor!”

  The father is staring at William, as he yanks his confused child back into the safe harbour of his sane, Sevillano family. William notices, amidst the angry scowls and muttering, and a fist raised in righteous and quite justifiable fury, that the man has a small but vivid purple birthmark on his cheek, in the rough yet distinct shape of a star. This strikes some distant chord in William, but he is mostly busy noticing that the man is no more keen on being stared at than on having his child snatched.

  “William?”

  “Luisa! There you are. Did you see it?”

  The advent of his wife has probably saved William Sutherland, potential child-abductor, from being beaten to a deserved pulp, but such an outcome is not even on the fringes of William’s tormented mind right now.

  “See what? See you grabbing somebody else’s child?”

  “Luisa—”

  “What were you thinking?”

  He notices that the afflicted family are moving well away from him and further into the crowd, as if at this moment they would prefer to be mown down by a horde of crucifix-bearing penitents or a gigantic, centipedal saviour.

  “The bus, Luisa. Coming straight at us! It looked – old. Please don’t stare at me like that.”

  “Whisky on a plane. Is like three whiskies on earth. And you had three, so—”

  “Oh, please!”

  “And now you are smoking again.”

  “Brace yourself for the crack cocaine… Luisa…?” But he stops and sighs,
realising that this conversation is pointless and his delirium tremens a given. He shakes his head as if to reboot his troubled mind. Could it be the whisky – surely not – although God knows he needs one now. “Okay, fine. Well, maybe we should just check that Pedro’s not made off with our luggage. And I have to make that call.”

  “Or else you die. And his name is Pablo. Not every Spanish man is Pedro. So go.”

  “Luisa—”

  “Go. GO! I stay here.”

  He stares at her, as the all-too-familiar anger surges up and momentarily shunts aside whatever shock and humiliation has recently flooded his system.

  “This wasn’t my bloody idea, you know! This ‘trip’ – at my busiest time. What with – everything else.”

  Her hands move towards his neck. He doesn’t flinch as she releases the fraying strap of his laptop bag, which has become tangled, as ever, under his collar.

  “It is this place,” she murmurs, as she briskly straightens him out. “I cannot believe we have come back.”

  “We haven’t ‘come back’, Luisa.” He shrugs her off and begins to move away, back into the thickening crowds. “We’re just somewhere we’ve been before!”

  Luisa watches him as he shoulders his angry way through the masses, towards a less crowded street. Well before he is out of sight, she turns back to catch the tail-end of her first procession in so many years, before it passes her by.

  The bed is soft and so is she. So soft that he sinks into her like a weary traveller, finding a berth at last.

  And then the giggles begin.

  Laughter infused with the joy of finally being there. Alone together, after having been encircled by people. Whilst outside there are so many thousands more people, but folk they don’t know and who would pass him by without judgement or disapproval.

  He is so hot for her but he knows the heat isn’t all of his making. Even with the small window and those flaking, blue shutters wide open to the tiny courtyard below, the unfamiliar, subtropical air is so still and dry. There isn’t the whisper of a breeze to cool their coiled and sweating bodies. Perhaps they should close everything tight, he thinks, but wouldn’t this simply seal in the stifling air, with no hope of escape? She should know about these things, this is her country after all. But she doesn’t seem aware of anything beyond the two of them and this moment.