Chapter Forty Comm
Following a breakfast of fresh pastries and black coffee, Luis and Danny visited La Catedral de Santa María de la Sede.
Inside Luis took a seat near the front facing the gilded altarpiece in the area designated for private prayer.
Danny lingered in the aisle until Luis gestured for him to join him.
Speaking in a hushed confessional tone Luis spoke about his first communion in Cádiz.
‘My priest was Father Rafael López. He could speak intelligently on almost any subject. He read eighty books a year. He advised me, educated me – adopted me, in a way. When I wanted to hide from my parents, I hid with him. For many years I imagined my future was to become a priest, an ambition he encouraged until I was engaged. When he discovered that I was gay, he never spoke to me again, as if a shop’s shutters had been pulled down.
He would walk past me on the street, I would say his name and he wouldn’t turn around.
At the time many people were reacting this way, so I thought his disgust was the same.
Years later I reconsidered his actions. It occurred to me that he might have been gay as well.
With the scandals in the Catholic Church, he must have been terrified that people would presume he was involved with me sexually.
I made him guilty by association. I wonder if he had always known the truth about me – that I was a man like him, which was why he was guiding me towards priesthood, celibacy being the only path he could offer.
This winter I traced him. Father Lopez left Cádiz not long after I left and transferred to a church in Argentina where he lived out his life. I made exiles of both of us.’
Luis turned towards the altar as if this were now a silent conversation between him and his church.
As they left the nave and walked out into a courtyard of trimmed citrus trees Danny admitted, ‘I’ve always felt ashamed of how little I knew about your past, your family, your faith, but maybe that was part of my appeal?
That I was so far from this world, this place, your people, that I never reminded you of everything you had lost?
In the same way London was an escape, I was an escape. ’
Luis accepted the point.
‘It might have been part of it.’
Danny asked, ‘If that was the attraction of me then, what draws you to me now when there’s nothing to hide?’
Luis looked up at the orange tree and placed his hand on one of the still-green fruits.
‘I don’t want to marry the man who doesn’t know me. I want to marry the man who knows me.’
On Sunday night they attended the Semana Santa procession, a parade of ornate pasos depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ, with pedestals painted in gold leaf and hemmed with velvet.
The floats were carried by costaleros chosen from the community who considered the task to be a great honour.
Luis explained that he had left for England before he could have been chosen.
Many were illuminated by candles, some wax and wick, others electric.
According to Luis a few of the same floats were involved in the parades he attended as a child, maintained and restored over the years he had been away.
As the pasos filed by, Luis recognized them individually, like they were old school friends, and he appeared quite overwhelmed.
The next day they caught a train to the coastal town of Cádiz with the intention of meeting Luis’s mother for dinner.
As they neared the final stop the train passed through salt flats and flocks of flamingos.
An observation occurred to Danny – they were two kids from the coast, lovers of the sea, forced to leave it behind.
Since their luggage was light, they opted to walk from Cádiz station rather than wait for a taxi, arriving at the Parador Hotel.
It was situated on the tip of the peninsula, a modern building with floor-to-ceiling glass windows and sea views from every terrace.
Keen to enjoy the remains of the day, they checked in and left the hotel, walking along the promenade to the adjacent beach, a sheltered cove dotted with old timber fishing boats and flanked on either side by the castillos of Santa Catalina and San Sebastián.
It was the beach where Luis had proposed to Isabella.
In Danny’s imagination the location was flawlessly romantic.
The beach was certainly attractive but no more romantic than the Scottish Highlands, a practical choice for a young man living in town, escaping the bustle of the bars, in search of a secluded place.
Danny crouched down, squeezing a handful of the sand as if searching for some imprint of the memory.
Luis touched his shoulder and pointed to the sea.
They crossed an outcrop of jagged rocks that began at the base of the castle fortifications and extended into the water.
The tide was low, exposing a plateau of barnacled stone.
There were old men in thick knitwear. By their rubber boots were plastic buckets filled with crabs.
Many of the men were teamed with their grandchildren who delighted in each catch.
Walking in a zigzag to avoid the deep crevices, Danny and Luis reached the furthest edge of the plateau.
Luis explained that he’d often stood here as a child.
Danny was reminded of how he would swim out to sea off the coast of Bude, looking back at his hometown as if it were something other to him or as if he were something other to it, and he wondered if Luis had been doing something similar.
In the distance one of the older crab-collecting men waved at them, bellowing words into the wind.
Luis translated, ‘We’re about to be caught by the tide. ’
Incoming waves broke over their shoes.
Walking back to the hotel, with damp shoes and damp socks, Luis asked a passer-by to take their photo as a couple, something they had never asked a stranger to do before.
They stood with the beach behind them, their arms around each other.
When the phone was handed back the woman said they made a handsome couple.
To anyone watching it was the most ordinary of events.
But Danny and Luis studied the photo as though it were a magnificent seashell they had found on the sand.
With only a few hours before dinner they decided to delay exploring the old town until the following day.
Luis wanted to rest beforehand. While he slept, fully clothed atop the duvet, Danny sat on the terrace, practising simple Spanish phrases as the sky darkened.
After sunset he showered and shaved before ironing his black cotton trousers and a white shirt. He noticed his hands were shaking.
Luis’s mother lived on Alameda Hermanas Carvia Bernal, a street on the edge of the old town in a former customs house dating back two hundred years, converted to apartments at the turn of the twentieth century.
The front-facing apartments offered occupants unimpeded sea views over the coastal defences.
These were not modest family homes. Luis had been born into wealth.
He said, ‘My father was always after my mother’s money.
Her parents warned her about him. But she ignored them, believing they were in love.
She saw herself as courageous, breaking the convention of marrying within her social class.
After the marriage her parents provided this apartment where we were allowed to live but never allowed to sell.
On some level my mother saw my being gay as a repeat of her folly in love.
Conventions exist for a reason. You should never follow your heart. ’
After Luis spoke into the intercom, the front door was buzzed open and they entered an elegant hallway lined with patterned ceramic tiles.
In the central stairway there was a birdcage elevator encased in ornate iron.
Rather than use it, they climbed the stone stairs to the second floor, knocking on the double doors.
Only now did it occur to Danny that they hadn’t brought any gifts.
‘I can’t meet your mother empty-handed. I’ll be back. There was a shop nearby.’
Before Luis could disagree, Danny ran down the stairs and out of the main door.
In a nearby minimarket Danny bought the most expensive bottle of red wine he could find and, unable to see any flowers, a selection of marzipan truffles that rattled around in a decorative tin.
He returned to the apartment, steadying himself before ringing the intercom, forced to make use of his limited Spanish.
In the hotel room he had checked over this vocabulary a hundred times.
But to his ear he sounded ridiculous. Luis’s mother buzzed him in.