Chapter Thirty-Three
Will and Lu are both waving now, but this time it isn’t Luisa who has caught their eye.
“Might have known he’d have the bloody posh seats,” says Will, with begrudging respect. Lu has explained to him the way the pricing works here, which is clearly quite different from Firhill Stadium, at which Partick Thistle play and where sunburn is rarely an issue.
They’re looking across into the Sombra, trying to catch the eye of their broken-nosed and bandaged friend, as he enjoys the action in relative comfort, his left arm planted firmly around Paloma.
He’s nodding contentedly as his new love, a native of Seville and clearly no stranger to the corrida, proudly points out the finer details to him.
“Next time,” vows Will, his eyes not leaving Sandy’s damaged but enraptured face, “we’ll be the shady ones.”
Lu strokes his face and dabs some more suncream on it. The novelty has clearly worn off and skin is already competing with hair in the ruddiness stakes.
A sudden movement beside them causes both to look up.
Luisa is standing in the neighbouring aisle, untrammelled head held high, one elegant hand perched perkily on a cocked and available hip.
The other hand lightly taps the young man’s shoulder.
Will immediately gives her a delighted smile, which she just as instantly returns.
But this time Lu is holding back. Perhaps it is the way the older woman’s gaze is aimed directly and rather too narrowly at her husband.
And most certainly not down there at the ring.
“Oh, hi, Fanta!” says Will. “Bloody great to see you.”
Lu tries to catch the eye of the older woman, this still-attractive stranger who is gazing down at her husband almost coquettishly. And what’s with the hair and the pose? she wonders. It seems curious, such wilful abandon on a woman that age. She certainly wouldn’t carry on like this.
“It is good to see you also, Will.” Now the older woman acknowledges Lu, but as a casual afterthought. “And you.”
Luisa has a vague sense that the spectators of her own era, those contemporaries who sit in the same two seats that she is currently addressing, are staring at her and wondering who the hell she is talking to.
They appear to her as no more than indistinct ghosts, eclipsed by the impossible reality of the infinitely more vivid young couple from her past. And, of course, Luisa has absolutely no awareness of the young couple’s immediate neighbours, those innocent denizens of a previous millennium, who are reacting in a similar manner towards Will and Lu as they watch the young couple converse with a patently empty aisle.
“I had to pay some wee scalper a small fortune,” explains Will, “but we struck it lucky last night, didn’t we, Lu?
” Lu shrugs – she has had luckier days. “Thanks to good old Gordon.” He catches Luisa’s confusion but it doesn’t seem to bother him.
“Mind you, I should have bought Senora Sutherland here a seat facing the other way round!”
Luisa laughs, as if her own attitude to the corrida is just so different.
She lifts her head to bask in the sun’s merciless rays, content to shrug off the blight of a long Richmond winter and an unpromising early spring.
“I like it better here in the sunshine, Will,” she tells him.
“I become Spanish again.” It takes her a moment to understand why the attractively bearded young man looks so surprised.
“Argentinian!” she swiftly amends. “So, Will, you have the cojones for the bullfight?”
“I’ve supported Partick Thistle since I was seven, Fanta. I’m used to slaughter.”
“Sí – but when your team lose, I do not think they are this night’s main course in a Glasgow restaurant.”
The two of them fall about at this, and Luisa takes the opportunity to rest a hand on the young man’s pleasantly firm forearm. She can feel his rusty hairs rise, as if in attraction to her welcoming palm.
Neither notices that Lu is looking pure daggers at her future, more worldly self.
*
In the not-so-comforting shade, William tries to summon back his errant wife with fruitless flicks of his wrist, as if he is watching her wander obliviously into quicksand, too far out to be thrown a rope. His bemused neighbour can hardly fail to notice this, but is still unfailingly polite.
“Your wife, she know these people?”
“Er – quite a coincidence actually, Cristobal,” says William, as casually as he can feign. “They’re her cousins.”
“Sí? …But they are Japanese, Senor.”
“Talk about bulls and bloody china shops,” says William, to himself. Because he has nothing else to say.
*
The banderilleros strut their stuff with practised arrogance, deftly swishing their gold and magenta capotes. Their brief – to pass and position the now weakened but still ferocious and understandably enraged bull.
“So, Fanta, these guys are—?” asks Will, with genuine interest. But Luisa, now sitting close to him in the aisle, isn’t exactly certain what manner of spectacle he is looking at.
For all she knows, rain could have stopped play back then and a local girls’ band are ruining gems from the musicals.
She hopes against hope that more information will be forthcoming. “The guys with the fancy kebab sticks?”
Luisa laughs in relief. “Ah, banderilleros! Is funny because we use this word also, Will, for the tapas on the little sticks.”
She catches Lu rolling her eyes at this, as her head turns away from the skewering. Luisa really doesn’t recall herself being so possessive, but the evidence is staring her in the face. She decides to ignore it.
“Well, now that the picadores have wounded the poor bull,” she explains, “these guys they come in to make it so much worse for him. You really like this, Will?”
“Reminds me of Govan on a Saturday night. Or my old man on any night. No bull.”
Luisa smiles at this, as she undoes another button on her blouse. And smiles even more as Lu’s bright eyes almost disappear into the top of her head. Finally, the younger woman speaks.
“Poor fat old thing. To be so close to death. On the last of its legs, I think you say.” With this she looks directly at Luisa, the sharp little banderilleros making their mark.
“LUISA!”
Both women swivel instantly at the impassioned cry of a balding Scotsman, now making his urgent way down the aisle. Unfortunately, both women also respond with a “sí”, which causes the young couple to stare at the older woman in confusion. Luisa just shrugs – easy mistake to make.
“Er… fancy seeing you two,” says William. He smiles pleasantly in greeting, although his heart is racing, along with his mind and every sweat gland in his body, as he envisages all the ways this could go so horribly wrong.
“Again,” adds Will, shaking his head.
There you go.
“Again?” queries Luisa, looking at William, who decides to keep his own counsel.
“Aye. And again,” Will ploughs on happily. “Hey – thanks for ‘numero 17’, Gordon. It paid for these wee seats and more. He’s got the gift, hasn’t he, Fanta?”
William tries to compute how much Luisa might be remembering. She clearly recalls them winning at the casino, which of course only happened this time round, but obviously struggles with how the kids came up with that winning number. It is as if his “interventions” still only belong to him. For now.
If the gods are playing with us, thinks William Sutherland, then they’re clearly making up the bloody rules as they go along.
“Oh! Do you like to meet our friend Sandy?” says Lu, out of left field, or perhaps to divert the brassy older woman’s attention from her new husband. The younger version is pointing up towards the classier seats. “We tell him all about you – the second honeymooning people.”
Sandy?
William and Luisa just look at each other. But before she can put a clamp on her tongue, Luisa nods excitedly as she gazes around. “Ah, sí. Of course. He was here also – is here! In the Sombra.”
“How the crap do you know that?” asks Will, not unreasonably.
Luisa has no answer to this. At least none that won’t set the world reeling.
“She’s psychic too!” exclaims William, in desperation, realising that another ‘new’ memory has settled in his wife. “We belong to a club. Can I borrow my wife for a second?” He grabs her, his mind reeling. “Jaffa! No – Fanta!”
Luisa stands, using Will’s shoulder to support her. “It was so good to meet you again, Will.” She smiles with a sadness that goes right over the young man’s head. “After so long,” she murmurs, letting out one of her especially deep, soulful, Iberian sighs.
As a grim-looking Luisa follows her husband towards the exit, Lu watches the older couple with undisguised fascination. She senses quite an argument brewing. Looking back thoughtfully at her own husband, she sees that he too is preparing himself for the kill.