Chapter Fifty
EASTER SUNDAY
William can hear the church bells pealing all around the city.
He slides open the windows to his balcony and staggers out into the morning sunlight, narrowly avoiding the huge potted cycas plant, which he can’t actually recall having been there before.
But then Luisa has always had to point out anything she’s planted at least four times before it becomes part of his world view. Or at least she used to.
The tiles on the balcony already feel warm to his bare feet, although it is still far too early in the morning.
It was six o’clock before he was able to gain access to his room, now angrily vacated by its other guest. He thinks he feels more wretched than he ever has in his lives, yet he knows that this is, of course, not quite true.
Something bothers him about last night, something which the curious events of the evening have somehow parcelled up quite neatly and stored in the attic of his mind. Ready for him to unwrap when the time is right. Which clearly isn’t yet.
A rustle of newspaper from the adjoining balcony tells him he is not alone. He doesn’t even turn, but simply leans forward and rests his elbows on the wooden rail.
“Knew all the time, didn’t you?” he says.
“‘William Sutherland Productions’. Your name is all over it.”
“I know! How about that! – Er, yeah.”
Luisa sets down yesterday’s copy of El Mundo on her table. “There were no novels, were there?”
William still can’t look at her. He raises an unfamiliar, tanned hand to shield his eyes from the sun. “Didn’t have the talent.”
“You had the talent, William, but not the patience. This is why we part, I think. Where is your little girlfriend?”
“She lost her faith.”
“And on Easter Sunday! … Did you think she looked a little like—?”
“NO!” he protests. “Not a bit! No way.”
Luisa shrugs, unfazed by his vehemence. “Well, tonight it is all over. Semana Santa. Pouff – terminado! As if this has never been.”
He swivels round to gaze at her. The expression of horror on his face shocks her out of her easy complacency.
“As if–? And the magic along with it, Luisa? All the magic just – stops?”
Luisa finds herself rising and moving towards him. He is shaking his head wildly, as he processes her words.
“But you’ll still be here, won’t you, Luisa? For a little while. You’re not – terminado.”
She smiles, a touch sadly. He notices that she is still in her dressing gown and also how good she looks, although she’d probably look even better, he reckons, if she gave up the cigarettes.
When she speaks, he has to strain to hear above the bells. “William, my meeting here tomorrow. Is not for business.” He looks confused. “Sandy.”
It takes him a moment to make sense of this single word, as if it’s simply a random sound and not the most devastating thing she could say.
“He LIVES here?”
She shakes her head. “Barcelona. But we had the good times here. As students. Perhaps we try again.”
He gazes into her eyes, which seem softer now in her clear morning face and so much more vulnerable. “And this would make you happy, Luisa?”
She shrugs, resignedly. “Are we not a bit long-in-the-face for happiness, my old friend?”
He has no firm evidence to counter this – God knows, his own life hasn’t been one of unalloyed bliss – yet, curiously, he doesn’t quite believe it. Which makes him even more desolate.
William shakes his head helplessly and goes back into his room.
*
By the time he registers the gentle but persistent knocking on his door, William Sutherland is almost dressed and trying to make some sort of sense of all the “stuff” from his pockets.
He has no idea into what heady – or, more likely, appalling – worlds this set of keys will afford entry, nor the high-flying ailments so many pills are hopefully holding at bay.
He ignores the knocking. Until he knows for certain that it is not going to stop.
As he opens the door, Luisa – still in her dressing gown, but gripping her huge designer handbag as though her entire life rests inside it – looks up at him for a brief moment, then slips past and into the lonely room.
“I have made you sad, I think,” she says, to silence. “Come – I buy you the big breakfast.” He shakes his head but she is already moving on. “I remember you like it when I make the tortillas. See, William, I do remember some things.”
She looks around the room and her quick, sharp eyes find ample evidence that someone has left in a hurry.
She bends to pick up a single red castanet, stamped for some reason with the head of a bull, from beside the carved leg of the table.
As she does so the little ball of candlewax dislodges itself from behind a crumpled handkerchief and rolls towards the table’s edge.
“Souvenir?” she smiles, catching it before it falls.
William takes it from her hand and stares at it. “Some wee fella must have lost it last night. He’ll be wondering where on earth it’s got to. Probably been collecting it for years, poor lamb. With his dad. Every Semana Santa, just growing right there alongside—”
He begins to cry.
Without any warning or preamble.
Not just tell-tale moisture around the eyes, token indicators of a middle-aged man’s basic humanity. Huge, loud, clumsy sobs, screamingly discordant primal wrenching, as if his body’s reservoir has been breached and there is no way he can calm the surge.
The force is so great, the pummelling the body inflicts on itself so relentless, chest in spasm as it fights for breath, that he can’t stand up any longer.
It seems as if he is trying to gasp into himself all the air in the musty room, all the air in the world, and there just isn’t enough. Can never be enough.
William shuffles backwards until his calves find the end of the bed, then seems to crumple down. Yet he doesn’t flop. He just sits. The cries don’t cease.
Luisa says nothing. She simply sinks down next to him, their bodies gently touching. And she waits.
After some minutes, his breath slows and he is able to speak. He offers her the explanation he feels that he owes.
“His name was Jamie. Jamie Eduardo Sutherland. You see, Luisa!” William doesn’t pick up the confusion on her face.
He isn’t looking at her now. He is somewhere a long time ago, yet as vivid as yesterday.
“Five years old. Just started ‘big’ school.” He smiles, as his breathing becomes more even.
“He was so proud, bless him. In his wee uniform. With his plastic Jurassic Park lunch-bag. He so loved his dinosaurs.” He shakes his head, as he remembers.
“It was meningitis. So quick. So bloody quick. There was no time. Perhaps today—”
“Oh, William.” She takes his nearest hand, the one not gripping the mislaid, waxen treasure.
“I couldn’t stop it, Luisa. I couldn’t. If we’d had more money. If I’d—”
“What does money have to do with this?”
“Everything!” he cries. “Everything! I was determined it would never happen again. To any of us. I had to do something! Make money. Oh Jesus, I don’t want to forget him! But I will, won’t I? Like he never happened. Like he never left us.”
William rises from the bed. He has to walk around. The need to talk to himself, to try to figure things out, overtakes the bafflement he must already be causing the elegant but bemused woman who watches him in silence.
“All this bloody – interfering with the past. It’s like I’m straddling two competing versions of my life! But the old one’s blurring – and the ‘new’ one’s not at all where I want to be!” He turns back to her, as if suddenly remembering that he is not alone. “No offence.”
She shakes her head, although she understands so little of what he is saying. But she beckons him back to sit with her, as if she understands it all.
“I never did, you know, Luisa. Forget. Not for a single moment. Despite what you – well, the last Luisa—” He sounds almost accusatory in his ramblings, as he swivels round on the unmade bed to glare at her.
“Somebody had to keep things going! Somebody had to stay strong and ‘win the bread’.” He sighs an almost Spanish sigh.
“Love may be a team game, Luisa – but grief’s a competitive sport. ”
Luisa can see that William, in his angry desolation, is confusing her with someone else. The mother of his lost son, most probably, whoever she was. Wherever the poor woman is.
“And – Claire?” she asks, nudging him on, away perhaps from the hopelessness.
“We couldn’t have any more kids. Ironic, eh?
Ninos. We found Claire in that godawful children’s home.
But she was smiling. She was the only one smiling, Luisa.
Wee gap-toothed smile. She’s still got that.
” He begins to take deeper breaths, restoring equilibrium.
“Clairey brought the fun back. And we did have fun – the three of us. Really. It wasn’t always like— And then she left to get married.
This was when things began to really fall apart.
Forget the father-of-the bride stuff. I didn’t feel I’d gained a son.
I’d simply lost a—” He gasps as the bites of reality keep coming. “AND NOW MY CLAIREY’S GONE FOR GOOD!”
“They grow up, William. They move away.”
He shakes his head. How can he explain? How can he possibly explain what he can’t himself understand? He doesn’t even try. He moves his hand away from hers and levers himself up.
On his way to the bathroom, he chugs some pills from the small jar on the table, whatever the hell they are.
Luisa remains on the bed but the bathroom door is open and she can see him suddenly shout at himself in the mirror.
“WHAT IF NO ONE EVER CAME TO ADOPT HER? OH GOD! WHAT IF NO ONE EVER CAME!”
He catches her unblinking eye and she takes this as an invitation of sorts to move towards him. “I do not understand all you say, William. I am sorry. But to lose a child. This I can only imagine.” She shakes her head. “No – I cannot imagine this.”
William notices that she is holding the wax ball and realises that he must have left it on the bed.
She is stroking it so gently. This reminds him of something, but he can’t quite – yes, he can.
It’s the same caring, loving, almost maternal way that Lu was stroking the scraggy hostel cat.
And he feels something shift deep inside of him.
“I am so sorry, Luisa.”
She raises her eyes to his face and sees something there that surprises her.
Her ex-husband, from a brief, unhappy marriage so many years ago, a marriage she truly believed would last a lifetime but lasted no time at all, is gazing at her with an expression she can only describe as remorse. No, not simply remorse. Sympathy. Pity.
And she finds that this makes her really angry.
Luisa moves swiftly moves back into the bedroom, shaking her head rather too vehemently.
He can only watch her as she practically disappears inside her vast red bag and grabs her phone.
In practised yet still somehow frantic moves, she searches for something.
What – a number? Surely not another email!
“William. Por favor. Do not be sorry, please,” she mutters, head down, fingers swiping.
“My life is full! It is so full. Sí. I have my books. My tours. My readings. I have two houses.” She thrusts some photos in front of him.
Look. Look! Now he understands. Sort of.
More swiping. More thrusting. “Oh and see – my lovely nieces, my beautiful nephews. My family. And all the ninos who read my books. These are my children! SEE! I am so—”
She ceases as dramatically as she began.
And suddenly this fine, intelligent, beautiful woman seems to William so much more gentle and so crushingly vulnerable.
Yet still quite different from the Luisa he only just left and harder still to believe as a later version of the young Lu, with whom he’s been so sweetly and devastatingly reacquainted.
She begins to pick mercilessly at her fingers. After a moment, he reaches over and gently parts her hands. This time she doesn’t resist.
But now, like a badly cut film, the scene has abruptly changed. William is banging his head with his fists.
“William?”
“Aaaarrghhh!! The old stuff’s going – from my head. It’s disappearing, Luisa! I’m remembering new stuff. My first TV show. It was great! No, it was crap!”
“You surprise me.”
Holding her shoulders in both his trembling arms, he talks directly and excessively loudly into her face. As if giving her the final briefing for a mission, one in which the slightest error could be fatal.
“Easter Sunday!” he cries. “We’ve only got a few hours. Until the music stops. Just a few short hours. Then everything goes back to – normal. New normal. This normal.” She has never witnessed a man in such desperate panic. How did this happen?
“The clock’s ticking, Luisa!”
“For you, it always was.” He is already grabbing his things, throwing on his blouson and making for the door. “Where do you go?”
He stops.
“Er – not a bloody clue. But I have to do something, don’t I?”
Turning back to her, he takes her hands. Tightly, as if some part of him wants never to let them go. When he talks, she is taken both by the intense sincerity in his voice and the fact that his words are total gibberish.
“I have to find them, Luisa! And – and make things right again. Like they were. Exactly like. Lord knows how. Not just for me. For you!”
For her?
He kisses her gently. And says again what he has already said not so very long before. “Goodbye, Luisa.”
For some reason that he can’t explain, William picks up the wax ball. And leaves Luisa Montero of Madrid alone in hotel room 381, awaiting her meeting, stroking the little silver cross that this time round has never left her throat.