Chapter Fifty-One
William Sutherland has absolutely no idea what he intends to do.
No change there, he thinks. But he does know that whatever needs doing has to be done before his old memory fades completely and Easter Sunday finally dies like the snuff of a candle. He hasn’t a clue as to which may come first.
“Someone left this here last night,” he tells her. “The poor nino will be missing it.”
The woman takes the ball with a knowing nod. He notices the surly young waiter in the doorway roll his eyes.
William wonders if this tiny yet somehow vital mission has really been the best use of his strictly limited time.
*
Where to start?
He traces his steps back to the cathedral.
Naturally, the old place is even more a hub of fervent activity this resonant day – Easter Sunday – when its particular crowd-pleasing pasos process solemnly through the jam-packed streets and onwards through this grandest and most spiritual of passing places.
Final performance this season, no encores, no eleven o’clock number.
Resurrection same time next year, weather permitting.
But no Will or Lu.
He checks his Rolex, which tells him with merciless accuracy just how little time he has left before this holy week ends and his entire world along with it.
They could be anywhere in this infuriating city, crammed as it is to riotous bursting point with myriad excitable strangers, none of whose histories he imagines have been quite as reversed and rewritten as his own.
Needles. Haystacks!
He decides to try the Real Alcazar, the celebrated royal palace that he still can recall as Moorish and breathtaking – and which he knows for certain he and his new bride visited at some late point in that perfect week.
Or at least he thinks he knows for certain.
Whilst the oldest working palace in Europe fails to summon up memories that are anything close to sharp and crystal-clear, he recognises with far greater clarity, as he walks around the shaded cloisters and courtyards at three times the speed of any fellow visitor, that his genuine appreciation of the Real Alcazar and its magnificent gardens, even now, owes so much to Luisa.
But, of course, Will and Lu aren’t bloody here either.
At least not so far as he can tell.
Yet how can he possibly know that the moment he turns a corner, as in the worst kind of farce, they aren’t just slipping away around another corner and into a sunken garden only a few feet ahead.
Or perhaps they’ve discovered a secluded Moorish alcove, notorious for trysts amongst couples long dead, and are having a surreptitious knee-trembler (a delightful expression and indeed experience he still vaguely recalls sharing with his new bride).
Nor are the young couple, nooks and nookie excluded, at the Casa Pilatos. This grand Andalusian palace, with its precious azulejos, permanent residence of the Dukes of Medinacelli, is infuriatingly not even an extremely temporary home for Will and Lu Sutherland.
“Bloody waste of time!” he says aloud, as he rushes out of the stunning grounds. A middle-aged couple at the gate, overhearing this, immediately swivel on their brand-new FitFlops to find the next item on their unmissable ten list. (TripAdvisor: There can be queues. Be prepared to stand.)
*
William tells himself that he can’t believe where the time is going, but of course the disbelief is minimal. There are clocks everywhere to remind him and he could never resist a clock. He has something the size of a clock on his wrist, taunting him with its sadistic, solid gold accuracy.
Inevitably, he finds himself back at the Yellow Café, hours later but none the wiser. His triple espresso grows cold as he pores over a tourist map and tries to remember what the hell he – they – might have been up to on their final day. A day that by now has precious little day left in it.
Looking up from his map, he sees the attractive woman of around his own age, whom he had noticed the day before as she coquettishly flaunted her newly bought fan.
This time it is her turn to laugh, as her playful husband juggles with a couple of oranges he has clearly just plucked from a tree.
William can’t decide whether he finds them utterly delightful or a potent incentive to lose his breakfast.
Until an outlandish thought suddenly strikes him.
With the immediacy of a spike through his chair, he launches himself upright, spilling cold coffee all over his plastic-coated map and onto his stupidly expensive trousers.
There is something so madly delusional in the notion that has just occurred to him that, of course, it feels totally appropriate in the context of this week.