Chapter Four
Now that they are a few miles further in on the hearse-like drive to Hotel Herrera, William Sutherland might well be thinking to himself that this is indeed more like it.
Were he not totally disinterested in even glancing out of the window.
Narrow streets of ancient and often quite grand buildings, almost caramel in the sunlight, would otherwise warm his eyes. People thronging these impassable thoroughfares in huge, sweaty, city-clogging numbers.
He could hardly miss the more intimate landmarks; colourfully tiled (so many tiles!) and plant-filled forecourts, 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 funereally passing eye to see and the assailed 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 the cameras. And some, but not all, of the awe.
Should he bother to look.
When he does finally glance up from his phone, 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 dusty 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 hood.
One that falls right down like a loose, shapeless snood 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 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 detect the ears of each person in that same 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 percussive and increasingly 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 the hotel. Is up to you.”
With the groan of a devout long-sufferer, William throws open his door, just missing a passing elderly lady of around one hundred and ten 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 off willy bloody nilly. This isn’t Richmond! Are you sure we can trust…?”
He nods towards Pablo, who clearly isn’t Richmond either 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, possibly therapeutic ritual.
Now he is ready and able, if not necessarily willing.
“Just be careful,” he says, concernedly. “You’re not twenty-two any more.”