Chapter Fifty-Three
“Mission bloody impossible!”
Night has fallen and William can hardly move in the tiny, clogged-up streets.
In fact, he can hardly breathe. When he doesn’t have someone’s hair in his mouth or a meaty shoulder in his eye, his nose is stuffed with the heady scent of industrial-strength incense, garnished with sweat, rancid orange blossom and a thousand semi-digested tapas.
The frenzy of the masses to catch the last of the pasos, as they make their way towards and through the great cathedral, is palpable.
The life-giving transfusions of wine and sangria provide the turbaned ones beneath the wobbly floats with new energy and a different sense of rhythm.
William is certain that he can detect the hitherto stately drums and brass attempting to sprinkle a last-minute flavouring of New Orleans into the mix, but of course his sanity has been in question for some while.
And the Spanish are shouting.
To their partners, to their children, to Jesus Christ and to whoever is at the other end of their mobile phones shouting back.
Lights beam up at the cathedral, with a far from medieval brilliance, and down also on those many passing solemnly or curiously or aimlessly through its massive and ornate Door of Assumption.
Rich, fulsome Spanish hair, some of it under starched white or black mantillas, shimmers and glints, reflecting the rainbow glow.
As does the incendiary garb adorning this particular band of torch-bearing Nazarenos, making William think that perhaps these are the only flame-red items that he has been frenziedly dredging up in his scattergun and very far from total recall.
He is all too aware that his life-changing, sanity-restoring quest may very shortly come to a messy and fruitless end.
One of the fiery Nazarenos suddenly steps out of rank and stoops down.
William strains to follow the hooded man’s descent, managing to peek through a gap in the crowd, which now appears to be pulsating like some multi-headed, short-sleeved organism.
His eyes finally find a small boy with unexpectedly blond hair.
William recognises him as the wee lad whom he rescued from an unstoppable and totally non-existent nineties bus and whom he later followed dumbly towards the cathedral.
Is the little chap an unwitting part of this torturous Passion play, William wonders, a boy with that painful resemblance to someone never out of his head? Although even this, the most searing memory of all, is slowly losing its sharpness.
Shouldn’t this be a blessing and not the curse that it feels?
The kindly Nazareno is allowing red-hot wax to drip slowly from the massive candle he holds, gently easing it towards the boy’s tiny, trembling hand.
For a moment William wonders if this could be the same knobbly ball he returned earlier today, already amplified.
Stranger things, of course, have happened.
The boy suddenly turns towards William and their eyes meet, through a tiny chink in the crowd.
There is no look of surprise here, in the excruciatingly innocent, blue-eyed stare, and thankfully no fear.
William thinks he might just have detected a rapid blink of – recognition? Gratitude? He feels his stomach quiver.
The crowd moves forward to the beat of the drums, as if in one throbbing, congealing lump, and the child is gone.
William strains urgently to catch just one more glimpse, to retain the image, as if this is suddenly the most important thing in his life.
But he can no longer see the boy, or the kindly Nazareno, although of course the latter all look the same under there.
Yet he does catch the blessedly non-judgemental eye of Christ, on this, his special day, looking indulgently down on one confirmed non-believer’s helpless, hopeless despair.
For a moment William thinks he sees him shrug.
A flash of a large – and, by now, classic – camera changes everything.
William looks up swiftly in the direction of the flash, although naturally it is far from the only one going off right now.
Yet, somehow, perhaps because it is of a different vintage or simply the way it travels over decades right into his reeling head – like that flash he now recalls outside the pricey restaurant – it is indeed a one-off.
People are clambering onto ancient walls, railings and each other to snatch a better view, however obscured and fleeting. Some are being pulled away in a manner quite un-Christian.
William decides to weave through the crowd and, where weaving has its limits, to push and shove and gouge.
Picking up speed, as he simultaneously summons up reserves of barely used muscle, cursing the ridiculous tightness of his trousers, he keeps his eyeline tilted skyward.
At least he knows now what he is looking for, just as he knows the unlikeliness of his ever finding it.
Or them.
He catches the briefest glint of red.
It could be anything.
Yet this time it resonates inside his pulpy brain in a manner that has recently become so familiar, with its surreal sense of superimposition, like a dodgy palimpsest over the present. So that he knows it could not be anything else.
And finally he sees her.
Lu Sutherland, his wee, lithe, graceful Lu, perched precariously on an ornate railing, short skirt rising over impossibly slim, brown legs, as she strains and stretches. He spots her bright-red and finally permitted ‘Easter-bonnet’, firmly fixed on that dark, shimmering mane.
As she tries, as ever, for the one perfect shot.
Her equally bright-red bag must, he reckons, be rattling with rolls of used film. He recalls the albums that the old Luisa curated and preserved; expertly taken pictures, to be just as studiously ignored over the years by his unsentimental self.
William finds himself longing to pore over those glossy, bulging, repetitive, non-existent albums just one more time.
Now young Will is there, in his eyeline, standing directly below his intrepid wife. He holds onto an elegant, wiry ankle, supporting with infinite care this slender frame. As entranced as ever by her spirit and her form.
William moves towards them, along the packed street.
As he turns, he catches his reflection in a compact but well-stocked shop window.
Through the serried ranks of tiny, take-home clay Nazarenos (the purpose of which is still lost on him, unless local kids battle with them in holy wars) he finds that slightly smarmy stranger staring back.
Instinctively, he runs a Rolexed hand through his still alien hair and wonders what the hell to do now.
A powerful whiff of rosemary, nicotine and undigested beer, some six inches from his face, causes him to turn.
The wild little Romany lady seizes on his attention, as if her breath has been a genuinely persuasive calling card, and thrusts newly plucked sprigs of rosemary almost up his nose.
Without a moment for doubt, William wrenches the Rolex from his wrist and hands it to her.
He watches her stunned, rheumy eyes as they flash between him and the passing Christ, as though these miraculous men are simply two sides of the same, divinely provident coin.
“Ayyyy! Muchas gracias, Senor!”
She pushes her entire stock of rosemary down the front of his shirt, then snatches a few sprigs back. No mileage in being over-grateful.
William has forgotten her already. He is too busy attempting to yank out his hair weave.
Anything to drag him back, in Lu and Will’s eyes, to the already-strange person they seem to like and into whom they appear inevitably to bump.
He has a feeling that the new Willo Sutherland will only freak them out and that this would hardly further his cause. Whatever the hell that cause is.
But the hair-yanking only makes him yelp.
William reckons that whoever did it must have been amongst the best in their field. He wonders how much it cost him and whether he was able to put it down to the business. Then, terrified that the young couple will disappear forever from his gaze, he looks around for a less painful option.
He spots a man his own age a few ragged rows behind him, wearing a battered Panama hat.
Struggling back to reach him, amidst shoves and curses, he offers up a big wad of euros, notes he discovers, without excess surprise, filling a silver money-clip in his trouser pocket.
“Senor? Er… hat? Panama? Sombrero? Quanta—?”
The man immediately grabs the euros and joyously pops his hat onto his new friend’s new hairdo. “On your head be it, boyo,” he laughs, in an accent closer to Rhondda than Ronda.
Resembling a tad more the prototype William Sutherland, albeit more bronzed, he turns back towards Will and Lu’s wobbly perch, in anticipation of a heroic plough through the decades.
They’re no longer there.
Perhaps they are flowing with the crowds now, or at least their own contemporaneous, pre selfie-stick crowd, following the massive, candlelit procession in anything but silence towards the cathedral.
Or maybe they are walking in an entirely different direction, seeking the proud band of brothers from another hermandad.
Or even snatching a swift break, a drink, some low-budget tapas…
Shopping… strolling… lingering…
They could be bloody anywhere!
William knows all too well that they won’t have returned to their little room just yet. Not on this pivotal Easter Sunday night. Not until…
He has no idea in which direction to jostle and shove.
Towards the cathedral or away from it, in the direction of Triana, or along the riverbank?
Families with wizened grandmothers in black and little girls in starched white communion dresses, are laughing and celebrating and falling asleep, because the night is balmy, the day is holy and they happen to be Spanish.
Tourists watch the locals in delighted wonder and tourists from Britain wonder how people can be so full of joy and free from inhibitions whilst remaining relatively sober.
Come on, William! One last time – for pity’s sake, remember!
He pushes through the crowds, choosing a direction at random – or perhaps just going where the obstacles to progress appear smaller and less likely to offer sharp-elbowed resistance.
Easter Sunday, 1995!
He finds himself slowly raising his hands to his temples, like a medium attempting to make contact with the other world. Where did the two of you go that last bloody night!
The two of us – where did we go?
Maybe I have got Alzheimer’s, he thinks, although he’d challenge anyone to recall in every detail a holiday they took thirty years earlier, even if it was their honeymoon. Especially if it was their—
“William?”
William spins round to find a tall, good-looking man of a similar age, only slightly greying, immaculately turned out in a lightweight and miraculously uncreased linen suit.
He seems quite similar to the charmingly confident and urbane man he had left in their mutual office, just a few days and another life ago.
Similar of course, save for the broken nose he didn’t have last week.
But of course, in this reality, the guy also didn’t have time or opportunity to have a furtive liaison with his partner’s wife, while the latter was on a new-business trip, so William swiftly realises that any hostility would be somewhat misplaced.
Therefore he had better swiftly tamp down the righteous anger he is somewhat irrationally feeling.
All these thoughts are flashing through William’s brain like lightning as he greets his old friend with surprise.
“Sandy!”
The other man reacts with an astonishment consistent with his not having seen his once best friend for possibly decades. William realises that they are not only on different pages, they’re in totally different books.
“Dear Lord!” continues William, disingenuously. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the very same thing,” laughs his old friend. “Luisa’s here too, you know. Our mutual ‘ex’. “
“No?!” says William in a cod surprise that has become second nature these past few days. “What are the chances? Er, I hate to be antisocial, Sandy, but—”
But what?
The infinitely more relaxed man shakes his head of real hair in nostalgic amusement.
“Same old Will. Always in a hurry. Hey, we must have a little bebida – the three of us. Like old times. Remember when I gatecrashed your luna de miel here?”
As William is about to simply nod and move on to Lord knows where, a vague but hopefully not unproductive thought emerges.
“How could I forget, old pal?” he says, with a casual yet searching smile. “The silent processions, that lovely casino win…”
“The broken nose…”
“Aye, sorry about that, Sandy. And, of course, on Easter Sunday we…” He stares hopefully into his old friend’s far too unlined face. “We – er…”
Sandy smacks his tanned forehead and points gleefully upwards, to the nearby La Giralda tower. William swivels and follows his gaze.
“We hit the heights! Well remembered. Poor Paloma got dizzy from too much vino de naranja and all those steps, so we had to leave you two lovebirds—”
To Sandy Matheson’s surprise, his old college mate suddenly beams, clasps the other man’s well-manicured hands in what feels like an inexplicable show of gratitude then ploughs off through the crowds at almost dangerous speed.
“Bless you, Sandy!” the bolter calls back, as he goes. “Let’s meet up again soon. In – in another life.”
William doesn’t even have time to consider that in this other, much hoped for life, this same man is someone he would very much like to smash into a wall all over again.
“‘Sooner you than me’, oor Wullie!” shouts the man in the slick linen suit.