Chapter Twenty-Seven
This special night’s candlelit procession has no drums, no trumpets, no songs of worshipful joy. Save for the slap of Spanish sandals on the dark and ancient streets, it is for once solemn and silent.
Which doesn’t mean that all its spectators are.
At least three are standing huddled together on a tiny and most probably historic wall, whispering away happily as they angle for a better view and the intrepid photographer amongst them for a better angle.
Below and around them a bobbing, bouncing, shushing crowd of the devout and the merely enthralled – kids, cameras and churros in hand – shuffle in quiet-ish respect, zealously elbowing away those who block their eyeline, in the hope they won’t dare protest too loudly.
Despite the fruity Rioja working its own magic around his system, Will is still not too far gone to appreciate that what he is witnessing goes way beyond anything he might have imagined.
He could hardly call himself religious and he’s far from spiritual.
Yet, to watch ordinary, decent people, imbued with an unquestioning faith, recreate a spectacle unchanged throughout the centuries – in a city whose history and grandeur overwhelm – well, it does something to his soul.
Will isn’t sure exactly what, as he has no idea what a soul actually is or whether he really has one. He finds it all quite confusing.
Made all the more confusing, this cloudless, indigo evening, by the encounter he has just had in a café toilet. With an amiable but clearly troubled man he has only recently met. Yet whose wisdom he is coming slowly and surprisingly to respect.
“Beats the auld kirk for razzmatazz, eh, oor Wullie?” says Sandy, the drink causing him to whisper just that bit too loudly. “And for silly hats.”
To his own surprise, Will feels himself bristle.
He reckons that it has to be at the casual lack of respect his friend is showing towards a ritual for which his new wife, beyond the obvious photographic possibilities, has a genuine reverence.
Lu’s Catholicism has never been much of an issue for him, because she has sweetly made a point of it not ever being so.
Even if this meant standing up to her parents, who clearly regard him as the red-headed anticristo from the North.
He feels that the least he can do is to show some deference to the faith she still observes and to the iconic festival she has brought him lovingly almost two thousand miles to see.
But unfortunately this feeling only lasts a few seconds, because he is a bit drunk and can never resist a comeback.
“Do you think they use the pointy bits to jab open their cans of Irn-Bru?”
“Sshh,” says Lu, while the guys giggle, but it comes out a tad spittily, as she has enjoyed quite a bit of that cheap wine herself.
Lu Sutherland knows that she probably shouldn’t be standing on such a narrow wall, or leaning over quite so far, but how can she resist?
This way you can capture not just the flickering candles, reflected in the centuries-old, zealously polished silver, but also the rapt faces of local children, up beyond their bedtimes.
Some of the little girls amongst them, she notes with a melting joy, are actually wearing seriously starched communion dresses and tiny white mantillas.
“Course, we’ve seen it all before, haven’t we, carino?” says Sandy, smiling at her.
He accompanies this with a companionable, short-sleeved arm draping itself casually across her shoulder, easing her towards him and disturbing the heavy red shoulder-bag, along with her delicate balance. If he feels the glare coming from the other young man on the wall, he doesn’t let on.
“Er, Sandy,” mentions this young man. “My wife now? Pal.”
“Point taken, pal,” says Sandy, very slowly sliding his arm back across the downy nape of her neck. But he can’t resist a parting shot. “If you’d stuck with me, Lulu, you’d be sitting down there, with the alta burguesia.”
He points to a carpeted section, cordoned off with a golden rope, where older members of the community and the better-heeled tourists sit on red velvet chairs and enjoy a more expensive silence.
The wondrous paso, with its beloved and infinitely precious Virgen Maria on board, crucified son in her arms, seems suddenly so sublime, floating on high across a shimmering backdrop of night and stars. It is too much for a young art-lover, with any sense of beauty, to resist.
Camera practically welded to her face, Lu leans over just that bit too far, in search of the ultimate shot.
Her weighty, leather bag, already sliding off her shoulder, now swings round in front of her and she begins to topple.
Sandy’s arms shoot out to support her, as do Will’s, but the taller man gets there first. And stays perhaps just that bit too long, his hands remaining on top of her pounding chest for a few brief seconds after normal gravity has been resumed.
A guy might expect a jokey reprimand for this or even a semi-stern look of disapproval.
What Sandy doesn’t expect is to see his old university friend, his wiry carrot-top pal from Govan, lurch towards him at some speed, blue eyes ablaze.
Nor does he anticipate Will concluding his swift trajectory with a solid push to the shoulder that causes the taller man not simply to desist but to lose his footing, stumble and then collide face-first with the wall.
Lu is too horrified to scream, although others around her, including the poor bleeding victim himself, manage to express their surprise. She just stares in alarm at her husband, who, to his credit, appears equally as shocked as she does.
Yet something inside him, some strutting bravado picked up on the mean school playgrounds and dark tenement closes of Govan, causes him to stare at her defiantly, as if the ‘handy’ guy got just what he deserved. He mouths ‘what?’ to his stunned wife, although he knows what only too well.
The silence isn’t going too smoothly.
Yet, some distance away, one interested spectator is as quiet as the grave. William Sutherland can’t say that he isn’t shocked by the sudden attack. But neither can he say that he isn’t quietly satisfied.
He is far too absorbed in the drama even to notice that one of the large crosses passing noiselessly by is being borne by the stocky handyman from the Hostal Esmeralda.