Chapter Sixty
Yet, somewhere, they are still dancing, even if the steps are a bit hesitant and the tune more than a touch ragged.
As he switches on the light, William finds himself wondering for a moment who might be here this time.
Tazmin perhaps, returned with her cheap castanets and tapas tummy, to forgive him and see if their relationship/her career can take that second chance?
Luisa, the famous but lonely writer of children’s books, dreaming of the children she never had nor had ever lost?
Perhaps even good old partner Sandy, come to whisk his erstwhile mistress away and afford her the attention she deserves but of which she has felt so cruelly deprived.
He wouldn’t be altogether surprised to find Pablo himself between the sheets, ready to offer them bilingual words of wisdom as a highly exclusive turn-down service.
But, thankfully, it is just the two of them, closer perhaps than they have been in some while, yet still with that familiar distance lingering.
William is the first to speak. Even though there is probably no need and knowing, after the terrifying chaos of the past few days, that it might be infinitely better not to.
“I’ve fallen head over heels with three women since Wednesday, Luisa. And all of them have been you.”
He sets down the suitcase, with some relief, and moves as if to hold her. But this time his hands don’t caress her face or embrace her body. Instead they find themselves waving somewhat helplessly in the air, as if trying to encompass something that is too big ever to be contained.
“I am so so sorry.” This is all he feels able to say. He hopes to God it is enough, but knows they have still so far to go.
“We could be saying the ‘S’-word to each other all night,” she sighs.
“You’re right. Perdón, Luisa.” She has the grace to smile, which gives him the courage to carry on. “I seem to have been trying to change everything this week, don’t I? Wives. Lovers. Kids. Everything, that is, except my bloody self!”
Luisa nods wisely, although, not having been party to his wilder machinations, she isn’t exactly certain as to what she is nodding.
“Perhaps I also am doing it this week, William,” she concedes. “This really looking at who I am. My mama, she is always saying to me – Luisa, if you want to know the truth about yourself, la verdad, ask two New York Jewish lesbians.”
“I loved that bitch for her wisdom. So what did you learn?”
Luisa mulls on this. “That while most things are your fault,” she concludes, “not everything is.”
“Seems fair,” agrees William, resignedly. “I kept looking at that young couple, you know, and only ever thinking about what I’d lost. Seems about bloody time I started appreciating what I have.”
He can’t quite meet her gaze, as if he is suddenly sheepish about revealing too much.
And, Lord help him, Glasgow hard man, coming over all sentimental.
Yet neither can he find it within himself to stop, as the words finally start pouring out.
“You’ve always taken care of me, you know, carino.
All these years. I just hope I’ve…” He shakes his head. “Mebbe in the only way I knew how.”
To his relief, she nods, and he takes this as genuine. Perhaps, in its own way, he thinks, the advice he gave young Will last night didn’t go totally unheeded over the decades. Then he decides he’s not going to go there any more. He’s exhausted. Semana Santa is over. And his head hurts.
“What about your ‘Highland fling’?” he asks. Back on all too solid ground.
They stare at each other. She says nothing and ensures that her face and body are completely still, so that these say nothing either.
After a few seconds of this, he walks out onto the balcony.
He looks out at the sleeping city, wondering whether you can sense from the air and the sounds and the smells that something has ended.
That the most important week of the year is over and normal, unmagical life, the life that plays no tricks with time or memory, that offers no mystery or miracles, will resume with the dawn.
It’s not even a bank holiday here, he reminds himself.
He hears a sound and instinctively looks to his left, onto the balcony adjoining his own.
As if that other Luisa might have stepped out for a moment, in her bare feet and funky pedicure, to check a hundred emails and breathe in some orange-scented air.
And with it perhaps some resilience, before embarking on her pre-arranged meeting, a reunion that could bring some semblance of companionship at this latter, lonely stage of her life.
Something William now believes is a universal human need.
He finds himself so glad the balcony is dark.
The sound, a clicking, has come from behind him.
He turns to find Luisa at the doorway, aiming her smart little camera in his direction.
Whilst this touches his heart, it also saddens him that it should feel so alien.
Unsurprisingly, he recalls their first time in this city, when he was dressed in charity-shop clothing but had a mass of first-hand hair to be proud of.
And Lu would forever hoist up that bulky machine she wore constantly, like a massive necklace, making him smile simply by smiling first.
The camera flashes and he blinks. He knows that this time he can ask to inspect the result straight away, but it isn’t the first idea that springs to mind. “Maybe one together?” he suggests.
Luisa stares at him, as if he has proposed a sexual activity seldom performed without a safety-net.
But she nods and very deftly sets the timer.
Placing the camera gently on the wooden rail of the balcony, she looks to William, who is finding himself unsure where to stand.
She yanks him briskly into the target area, yet it’s still far from easy – finding a position of togetherness.
It feels quite strained, but somehow they manage.
Until he suddenly strikes a pose.
“I danced flamenco!” he reveals, twisting his body and raising his arms.
“Madre de Dios!”
The camera flashes from its perch, capturing, for all time, William Sutherland in defiant flamenco pose and spouse Luisa with her mouth wide open. They stay still, even when the task is done, simply enjoying the early-hours daftness.
A small puff of wind breezes in from nowhere.
They hardly notice it, until the camera begins to wobble.
William instantly de-flamencos and rushes over, arms outstretched.
Too late – Luisa’s precious little camera disappears over the edge.
They hear it make violent contact with the paving slabs below.
He turns to Luisa, distraught over her loss and deeply apologetic, although he is pretty sure that it wasn’t his fault.
But, to his surprise, she simply shakes her head. Let it go.
Where did that come from?
He burrows into his pocket and pulls out his trusty old mobile. “Plan B!”
She looks at him in disbelief, as he fiddles clumsily with the camera function. She knows that he never takes photos. Mind you, until just now she would have told anyone that her husband never dances. Today, suddenly, he is Joaquín Cortés.
As she might have predicted, the technology is beyond him. Or else he is still too nervous to work out the basics. So, instead, with an exultant cry of “oh, sod it!”, he chucks the offending yet once so very precious object over the side to join her shattered camera.
Luisa can only gasp, as if this is the most reckless thing she could ever see her husband – or indeed any fifty-three-year-old, workaholic marketing consultant – do. But William Sutherland is on a roll. And now, in this same mood of reckless abandon, he begins to reach for his laptop bag.
“NO!” she screams.
“Och, alright,” he says.