Chapter Fifteen
The Plaza del Cabildo, just around the corner from the cathedral, is brilliantly lit.
So, when William finally catches up with Luisa, having navigated his way with less agility but more brute force through the festive night-time throng – all of whom appear to be seeing the entire medieval world and every passing nun through the lenses of their smartphones – he has no trouble recognising what she has been aiming for.
And vaguely regrets what he called out to her on the way.
“See, is not an ‘el McDonald’s’ by now,” she taunts him back, as she probably still doesn’t know the expression ‘oh ye of little faith’.
Across the small square is the establishment to which Luisa has been referring, since long before they arrived, as ‘our café’. The one in all the photographs.
William seems to recall them patronising a load of differing establishments last time round and the sangria being equally disgusting in each.
But he keeps this opinion to himself and simply expresses surprise that Café Amarillo still has a yellow awning.
Luisa doesn’t bother to explain to him that Amarillo is Spanish for yellow.
He should know some bloody Spanish by now.
“See! Just as it was!” she exults.
There you go.
And there’s even a young couple cuddling there, glimpsed through the roiling night-time crowd, sitting quite possibly at ‘our table’.
The crowd momentarily thins, drawn in different culinary rather than spiritual directions, and William realises with a sudden chill that he knows this particular loving couple rather too well.
Oh God!
The wild sensations William felt earlier this afternoon, which have been racking his body in the subsequent hours like major aftershocks, even as he tried not to think about them, rush back in with a new ferocity that almost fells him. It’s not just her now, invading his present; it’s him too.
A matched pair!
William Sutherland knows his own system, the inner workings that busily churn away and keep him just about upright and functioning.
He is pretty damn certain that this is becoming too much for them.
He knows too, without the slightest doubt, that he has to get Luisa out of here, get them both out of here, if they have any chance of maintaining their sanity.
And, however precarious, their ‘status quo’.
Even if this sighting – as he still more than half suspects, despite mounting evidence – is merely his own personal and highly perturbing delusion.
And yet he simply cannot move.
He wonders why it is demanding such a colossal effort on his part to draw himself and his still oblivious wife away.
Like an addiction he can’t quite sate or an attraction too fatal to resist. But, of course, he tells himself, how could it not be so?
How could anyone with any curiosity – no, simply with a heart that beats – turn away from such a scenario?
Yet, somehow, for both their sakes – for all their sakes – he knows that he must.
“Okay. Seen it. Still yellow after all these years.” He turns to go, the demon vanquished. For now. “So let’s—”
“This girl – why does she wave to us?”
What?
He turns back and sure enough the young woman is happily trying to attract their attention.
He knows that Luisa won’t have been able to make out the faces yet; her eyes aren’t what they were.
Nor in truth can he – it’s Lu’s brightly patterned dress that he recognises from earlier. But it’s only a matter of time.
“YOU SEE THEM TOO?” he cries, anticipating the inevitable.
“Excuse me?”
“I thought it might just be me.”
“You thought what might—?”
Luisa doesn’t complete the question, because she doesn’t need to. The young woman is striding briskly towards them, with a huge smile on her face and words of utter nonsense emerging from between her full, smiling lips.
“Sherlock Holm-ess!”
“Ay, Dios mío!” gasps the more mature version, suddenly not so mature, clawing for her husband’s arm with the affection of a rabid pit bull, in painful parody of former companionship.
Lu beams at them both in sheer delight. William could put this down to her undiluted elation at seeing him once more, after their last magical encounter, but recalls with a twinge that this is much more how Lu sees – or saw – the entire world.
“Hello – again!” she enthuses.
“Oh, hello there – Luisa,” responds William, grateful at least that his lips still move. He has grave doubts as to the stability of the almost calcified figure he is now supporting on his arm.
“You have my book of Sevilla?” asks the young woman, not unreasonably. “I think perhaps I am losing it.”
William, who also thinks perhaps he is losing it, tries to smile. “’Tis better to have loved and lost – than to gather no moss.”
Lu laughs sweetly, whilst patently not comprehending, and displays her perfectly white teeth. This playful, almost flirting banter does absolutely nothing to restore Luisa’s equilibrium. Or indeed her sanity. What comes next serves simply to seal the deal.
With a shrugged apology, William digs into his bag and somewhat warily returns the crinkled old guidebook to its rightful owner. At which point, as feared, it instantly becomes brand new again in her welcoming young hands.
If Lu notices this, it mercifully doesn’t register.
But she surely can’t fail, thinks William, to hear the long, high-pitched yelp emanating from the older woman beside him, as if she has just been publicly impaled on a skewer.
Thankfully, Lu is far too courteous to remark on it, sounding as it does like Luisa is in torment over surrendering a volume that wasn’t hers in the first place.
“Gracias,” she tells William, running her long fingers delicately over the glossy cover. “Thank you. You will join us at our table, yes?” She explains to Luisa. “My husband – he is Glasgow also!”
Luisa can only respond with a demented nod.
William’s protests – that the young couple would surely prefer to be on their own – go unheeded. (He almost adds “on your honeymoon” but recalls just in time that Lu hasn’t as yet let slip this important nugget.)
As Lu moves back to her table, expecting her invitees to follow, Luisa finally spots young Will. She can’t as yet make him out too clearly – just enough to confirm that the world is ending and she is going totally insane.
“AYYY!! I cannot breathe. I am going to be sick.” She turns to William. “You knew? How can you not tell me? Most husbands, they tell their wives a thing like this.”
“I did try, Luisa,” protests William, limply.
“You’d only reckon it was the drink talking.
” He realises how unsteady he is and how chilled the evening-warm square has suddenly become.
“I have to say – you were a very lovely young woman.” This observation doesn’t appear to calm her. Nor does his adding, “Are! Still. Are.”
“No. This is nightmare. I dream it, yes? This is not real, William.”
“Well,” sighs William, shaking inside quite as much as Luisa is doing in plain sight. “Only one way to know for sure. But at least they don’t recognise us!”
They turn to each other, then park that thought. For later.