Chapter Fourteen
“Damn paparazzi!” says the balding man, as the flash goes off.
The restaurant is already quite full, mostly with tourists who aren’t inclined to wait until the absurdly late hours at which the indigenous population chooses to eat. Yet curiously only one couple, this quiet middle-aged couple, appears to register the flash of a camera on the street outside.
“They’ll track me down, wherever I am,” he persists, but notices that his partner still doesn’t give a smile. He can’t have missed one: he is staring quite hard into her face.
“Why do you look at me? All the time since we come here, you stare like you are seeking for something. It is not nice.”
“Can’t a guy stare at his wife in Spain? No wonder we Brexited.”
William knows that he can’t keep scrutinising Luisa, like a map that could tell him where exactly he lost his way.
So he checks his watch, as he so often does.
It’s an elegant object and far from new.
The leather strap has been changed several times, as has the glass, but the face, with its slim Roman numerals, seems – timeless.
He notices that Luisa is also looking at it, yet clearly not to check the hour.
Their eyes meet, as if a distant memory is suddenly being shared, not in itself unpleasant yet one of which neither chooses to speak.
“William, are you all right?” she enquires, with some concern. “That thing this morning – with the boy. And you are looking so pale. Even for you. This working, it makes you ill, I think. We are not so young now. And, please, no more wine this evening.”
He lifts the bottle, a tad tauntingly, then pours what little remains into his wife’s glass. His hand remains holding the stem, as if in some way he is holding on to her.
“Luisa, seriously, you have to listen. Please. It’s not the booze. Or the work – not that you ever actually ask me about the work… This morning, at the cathedral, when I tripped—.” He looks around at his voluble fellow diners. “Is it me or are Spaniards the loudest folk on earth?”
“Is not you. We are loud. You went to Catedrale, without me?”
“Aye. Er – sorry. We’ll go again. Together. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Well, that and the tapas!”
He must make sure he has the right words.
It has never seemed more important. Yet he has the abiding fear that once he hears these words, however apt and well-chosen, as they stream from his own quivering mouth, it will downgrade the momentous events of this afternoon to just the symptomatic display of a nervous, alcohol-induced crisis.
Which he may well have believed it to be, were it not for that worn guidebook now nuzzling against the ever-faithful laptop in his bag.
“You see, after I went off on my own—”
“Do you remember this place?”
Frustrated by the interruption, he nonetheless hears himself following her tack.
“I’d have remembered these prices! We never came here, I’m certain of it.
” A random thought strikes him and he isn’t sure why.
“Oh, by the way, thanks for the le Carré. Sorry. I should’ve said.
” He shakes his head. “I used to read so many novels, didn’t I?
” Now he’s almost talking to himself, as he looks around the bustling room, but seeing only a time long gone. “Even thought that maybe one day I’d—”
“William,” she interrupts again, “I think we should use these days. This occasion. To – you know. If you are not ‘too busy’.”
“No, I’m not ‘too busy’, Luisa,” he says, crossly. “And here’s my bloody starter for ten. I saw YOU today. The young you. Right there – in the cathedral!”
There! Now it’s out. He has said it. Make of this what you will. That your husband of thirty years is finally losing the plot, most probably.
“Aah,” she smiles, “and did I look like this?”
Out comes the photo album, as if he has simply plucked a tender memory from the ether and given her a welcome prompt. He is instantly confronted with a photo of their younger selves, in the courtyard of the Hostal Esmeralda. Taken no doubt by an accommodating member of staff or fellow guest.
“I make this book – for the occasion. ‘William y Luisa. 1995 to—’”
Luisa halts mid-pitch. She senses, through the uneasy stillness, a stiffening reluctance across the table.
Yet she decides to flick doggedly on, as though William, once teased by glimpses of what’s in store, like the trailer for a film he has been desperate to see, will find it impossible to resist.
She pauses at their wedding pictures. Harmless stuff. Heartening, in their innocent way. And then on to that photo of the Yellow Café, with William sitting under an umbrella – for heatstroke prevention this time, not showers – offering her his wave and that funny, vaguely uncomfortable, half-smile.
Luisa feels certain that William will warm to this, touched by happier recollections, but his anguished face soon tells her otherwise.
Perhaps he misses his red hair, she thinks, the way she misses her impossibly slim figure and the innocent sparkle in her eyes.
And everything else that speaks of being young and unburdened and having the rest of your life ahead of you.
Or perhaps, as Claire almost said, the past is a foreign country. And somehow they’ve mislaid their passports.
Yet she knows that it runs far deeper than this.
And that they both miss what’s missing – what got lost along the way.
Something that a few snapshots pulled from a handbag, like a conjuror’s dazed rabbit, can’t so easily retrieve.
Long-established fault lines, which a few days in a familiar city, however resonant the memories, may serve only to turn into chasms.
And still she turns the page.
Now a young Sandy sits there, at that same outdoor café, beaming into the camera. He has his arms around them both and his chair close to Lu’s.
Even more swiftly onwards. Through the years. Photos of children.
“I’ll go settle the bill.” William is on his feet and moving away. From her and especially from her fake-leather memory-bank.
Luisa drains her glass and shrugs at the elderly couple at a nearby table, who appear to have been watching them with barely disguised interest. She wants to tell them ‘I do ask him about his work’ then wonders if she does or if she simply complains about it.
She doesn’t notice her own husband looking back at her.
Rattled. And scared.
*
As he slips the restaurant bill into his wallet, which he does religiously, even when there isn’t the slightest chance that he might claim it back, William pauses.
He always takes this breath, perhaps just for a second and regardless of how pressed he is.
The photo inside the worn and tattered leather, of Claire as a small child, never fails to capture those tiniest bits of heart and mind that aren’t ground away or otherwise engaged.
He has barely registered the musicians playing in the busy street beside him.
A talented guitarist and a hyperactive trumpeter, they perform what he has to assume is authentic local music, tailored for maximum reach and generosity.
It is sufficiently on-message to cause little Spanish girls to leap up and practise their flamenco for clapping onlookers.
Some are even in their tiny traditional costumes, which they must have insisted that they wear tonight and perhaps all of this special week.
As he looks up, William notices another not-so-little Spanish girl, moving with accomplished grace in her comfortable footwear to the local beat. Playfully clapping her hands and stamping for her smaller companions.
Luisa hasn’t caught her husband watching her, which only adds to the moment.
William is quietly able to observe his delighted wife strutting her stuff with flair and vivacity, almost blurring under the string of festive lights, utterly lost in the music.
As if he has simply happened across an accomplished native lady of a certain age and decided that she merits a brief interruption to his journey.
He spots others watching in the crowded night-time street and wonders if they find this person attractive.
He wonders also, despite those piercing memories unwittingly summoned back, whether he himself still finds her so.
Or whether he merely feels, given all the evidence available, that he surely should.
Yet he recalls now, as the events of today sink in, how very attracted he once was. They talk of falling out of love, he thinks, as if it’s an accident that happens in a moment, whilst in truth it’s love that slowly falls out of you.
Finally she spots her familiar watcher and beckons him, somewhat unkindly, to join her in the dance, knowing that he would far rather jump off a bell tower.
As he stands his ground, she shrugs and proudly flamencos towards him, smart holiday skirt swirling, sensible shoes stamping, pointing her camera even as she moves.
“It’s like they’ve taken everything anyone’s ever known about Spain,” observes William, “and delivered it here in a truck.”
Luisa is about to take his photograph – even though she knows it is something he has never fully enjoyed and dislikes even more these days – when a young Spanish woman approaches them.
She takes the camera gently from Luisa’s hand and helpfully pushes her towards her unenthusiastic husband, for the perfect, romantic shot.
The couple try to pose politely for this kindness, so that they can all swiftly get on with their lives.
But life, as so often happens, gets in the way.
Another woman, misreading the scene, assumes the photographer is a friend or daughter of the couple, who would surely prefer to be a part of the picture rather than simply its facilitator.
So she virtually shoves this innocent third party right between William and Luisa, snatching away the precious camera with a single swipe.
The bemused Sutherlands have no idea whether to protest or endure, nor how many more innocents will be recruited to this farce, whilst the good-natured stranger in their midst tries not to giggle.
Happily, the photograph is swiftly taken and the helpful locals soon depart, each delighted in her own kind way with a job well done.
Luisa looks at William. He seems torn, as if waiting for some sort of permission to react.
But he can’t help it. He has to laugh. And Luisa finds that she has to join him, wants to join him, the mirth erupting like a flamenco troupe bursting in full flamboyant glory onto a stage.
For a brief moment they roar and chortle together.
But inevitably the laughter ebbs. And dies. Leaving them somehow even more bereft than before.
“Maybe we should be getting back to the room,” says William.
“What for, William?” says his bride of thirty years, on this their second honeymoon, and walks slowly away into the crowd.