Chapter Thirteen
“Semana Santa – is very romantic this time of the evening, no?”
Will is too busy for Andalusian dusk or romance. He is checking the menu outside a classy restaurant, in a narrow, lopsided building on the winding old Calle Sierpes. A second later he collapses onto the cobbled pavement, clutching his chest. Lu looks down at the writhing figure and gasps.
“Will – querido!”
People hover around, faces showing a mixture of horror and fascination, but mostly fascination. Music plays obliviously from lively pavement cafés up and down the busy, tree-lined street. As Lu kneels down beside her stricken lover, the onlookers graciously stand just a few millimetres back.
“Brandy, quick,” he mumbles, grimly. “But not that Fundador stuff. Cognac – as it’s a special occasion.”
He’s not sure whether his new wife is going to laugh or cry. Happily, she decides on the lighter option and smacks him.
“Bet your pal Pope John Paul 2 gets his cut this week,” continues an encouraged Will, standing up, unscathed. “‘Luigi, I weel take ze tapas bars, you do ze marzipan nuns.’”
“You are idiot,” she says, smacking him. “And el Papa, he is Polaco, not Italian.”
People wander away, looking for tapas, chopitos, processions – anything but young love making a fool of itself in their wondrous city.
“Details. Have you seen these bloody prices, Lu?” He laughs but when he looks at her his smile has gone. “Mind you, one fine day—”
“We do not have to eat in the expensive restaurants, carino,” she protests, because she already knows this tune by heart. “We have only to eat together.”
He brushes the long, shiny hair from her face and kisses her with a gentleness that surprises even him.
What is it about this person that makes his anger, an emotion he truly feels he must have imbibed with his mother’s milk, fuelled with his father’s hobnailed kicks and nurtured since with unwavering passion, seem to diffuse like incense into the balmy, orange-blossomed air?
They don’t notice the man who now approaches, speaking in a fluent Spanish that makes Lu spin round in wonder.
“Dios mío!” she cries, in the city where He is most probably listening.
“Bloody hell!” cries her husband, ignoring the occasion.
His new Mrs Sutherland already has her arms around the beaming interloper and is chattering excitedly in Spanish. The young man grins at Will who shakes his head and smiles affectionately back.
“Away ye go!” continues the temporarily deserted husband. “And remind me again of the Spanish for ‘what in buggery are you doing here, you posh Scottish tosser?’”
The young man, who’s clearly too tall and fair to be a local, favours Will with a reply that is so posh and Scottish that it barely sounds Scottish at all.
“Didn’t actually learn that on my year here.”
“Bet you heard it often enough.”
“I tried to call you at your digs. Must have just missed you.”
Will looks puzzled. “We only just found our ‘digs’!” He separates his wife from the newcomer and puts his own arm around him, pulling him away. “I know it was your first time, Sandy, old chum,” he says quietly, “but the best man’s job usually ends with his speech.”
“Damn,” says the taller guy, smacking his own forehead.
“Paloma!” yelps Lu, in delight. “Is Paloma! I speak to her from telephone in hostal but she never say this thing!”
Now Will gets it too. “Jesus! The sodding bridesmaid!”
“But never the blushing bride.” Sandy smiles, winking at Lu. Will clocks this, but his bride is already scouring the crowds at the pavement cafés.
“Paloma is here, Sandy?” says Lu, looking around.
“Well, not here here but we’re meeting up again later on.
She’s got a job down the road. At the casino.
” He can see his friends staring at him.
“She invited me, guys, at the wedding! For Semana Santa, with her folks on the other side of town. Would’ve been churlish to refuse.
Could’ve caused a diplomatic incident.” If Will rolls his eyes any more, they will spin out onto the cobbles.
“Now don’t you fret, oor Wullie, I won’t cramp your hard man of the Gorbals style. ”
“Govan, actually,” mutters Will. “Different class of squalor,” but Sandy is already kissing Lu goodbye and starting to dance his way down the heaving street.
“Later,” he cries. “Flamenco, disco, casino! Och, no, you dinna dance, do you, Guillermo?”
“Don’t you worry, pal,” calls Will, “I’ve got all the moves.”
He looks at Lu, who is laughing. He laughs too. “Can you believe that guy? My ma used to practically curtsey when I brought him home from uni.” He shrugs. “Bet even your mama would approve of him.”
Lu doesn’t say anything, because there’s nothing she can say that would help.
She wishes she could have changed the last few days, that her parents could have seen what she sees, tried even for a moment, just for her, to locate what it is that she loves.
But, more than anything, she wishes that their opinions didn’t matter.
She is sure that they don’t matter to her – well, she’s pretty sure, or at least they don’t matter to her as much as they clearly do to the man she has chosen.
Perhaps because, for Will, they are simply another part of a sad pattern that is now almost a part of him.
She watches him as he looks back longingly into the smart restaurant, with its huge hams hanging from the dark wooden beams and the fashionably cracking azulejo tiles on the walls.
“Well, mebbe not today,” he concedes. “But here’s a promise, darling.
On our last night here we’ll – we’ll go to this real snazzy place, with a rooftop terrace open to the sky and a rare view over the whole of Sevilla.
There’s one I ticked in yon book of ours.
And we’ll share a huge bloody cocktail.”
“With the cherry on the top, sí?” says Lu, realising with a start that she no longer has the guidebook. No matter – she knows the city by heart. She must tell Will about that poor sweet fallen man she met. The one who made off with their brand-new gift.
“Aye. And one of those wee, wooden brollies!” he enthuses. “But, for now, I saw this nice, cheap caff in a square just down the road.”
He takes one final look into the cool, darkened restaurant.
He can make out a middle-aged couple near the window, sitting in total silence, with their most probably exorbitant bottle of fine red Spanish wine.
“We’ll come back here when we’re unspeakably rich – and famous.
Won’t be long, my darling! Won’t be long. ”
Lu just sighs and points her camera at Will.