Chapter Thirty-Four
“I owe YOU an explanation? You were screwing my bloody business partner!”
William and Luisa Sutherland are conducting the ding-dong of their lives in full, if indifferent, earshot of random spectators, as they hastily leave the Maestranza.
Indifferent save perhaps for one young woman down below in the Sol, who would look at anything rather than the artful slaughter that holds everyone else rapt and breathless.
William has no idea where they are going, geographically or emotionally. Yet, like the spectacle they are forsaking, he senses an impending climax he is powerless to control.
“And your best friend,” responds Luisa, her anger equalling his own. “See – even here you are putting the business first!”
“Because he was giving you the business first!” William points back to the Sombra, although by this time they are outside the Plaza de Toros and the lively spectators can be heard but not seen. “And now you’re looking up at the posh seats to check if you can see him again.”
And to think I was going to absolve you, he muses. Well, sod “forgivingness”. Yet, even amidst the madre of all rows, he still can’t help fretting that he has left a great potential client back there, rapidly losing his potential.
They could, of course, remain stationary and continue their argument, perhaps in a quiet corner or a deserted street.
But William and Luisa are not well-versed in the etiquette of all-out, stand-up rows, as they don’t form a major part of their disputational repertoire.
It would seem that William has quite successfully trained himself out of them, scary as they were, since his more volatile youth.
With Luisa’s quietly calming assistance.
Something she now appears to regret, as she would far prefer the sparky firebrand she just left at the corrida, the one with whom she was shamelessly flirting, to the distant automaton Will Sutherland has become.
Whatever the reasons, the sheer momentum of their flare-up propels them away from the historic building and towards the banks of the swiftly flowing Guadalquivir.
They find themselves crossing the familiar bridge into Triana, although a trip down memory lane is probably the last thing they need right now.
Luisa tries to stare into her husband’s face, ensuring that her words bear their intended weight, but shorter legs mean that she has to walk that bit faster just to keep up with him.
William has no intention of slowing down, despite having no obvious destination in mind.
So her words come out in a breathless rush, bouncing off his stiffening back, which isn’t quite as she would wish them delivered.
“Tell me this,” she pants. “Just this. What sort of a husband is it who is so married to his work, he prefers to screw his laptop?”
“At least it responds to my touch,” he fires back, walking even faster, as if in a rush to return to his past.
“Oh no, William. Oh no. It is not me who is dead inside.”
Now he stops. Now he turns.
“Just keeper of the dead,” he says quietly, but not quietly enough. He watches his wife’s face crumble, as if the underpinning, always so precarious, has finally fallen away.
“Bastardo!” she spits. Then does the same in translation. She shakes her head and mutters to herself, in the way one does when pretending a comment is not for other ears. “Sometimes I think you do not remember even his name.”
Before he can answer this, not that an answer springs readily to mind in the face of so monstrous an allegation, she scrabbles into her heavy bag. Out comes the little photo album. As he watches, wanting to protest but still not finding the words, she flicks desperately through it.
He briefly sees again the happy photo of Will and Lu at the Yellow Café, taken just the other evening by the “older” Luisa – the snapshot that certainly wasn’t there less than an hour earlier that same evening, when she thrust the newly-compiled album at him in the restaurant.
Another small amendment to their history.
Finally, she comes across the treasured photo of that beaming little boy, with what she always called his lapis lazuli eyes and the blond hair just tinged with red.
She thrusts the photo directly in front of William’s face, a gesture that makes passers-by wonder unsurely if the man is losing his sight or the woman is losing her mind.
“Jamie Eduardo Sutherland! Ring a bell, sí? JAMES! Like your papa. So that ‘good can come from bad’. This is what you say, yes?” Her voice begins to crack and not just because of the unaccustomed shouting. “But where is the good now, William? Where is it now?”
She walks to the end of the bridge and then stops, unsure of where to take her anger and her misery. This time William hesitates, but only for a moment. He knows that he must follow her, because there seems nowhere else to go. With the discussion and perhaps with the world.
Memories begin to flood in, flowing with the speed of the river just below their feet. But he senses that there are certain places where he cannot go. Not here. Not now. If there was ever a time for silence…
“Just do not say it!” She has turned back to him and is staring him out.
“Easter Sunday.” He had not meant to say it. But he said it.
“He said it!” she tells a bemused passer-by, in disbelief. The elderly woman, dressed entirely in black, just shakes her head, which Luisa takes as a sign that this thoughtful stranger is just as appalled as she is.
“What’ve I got to lose, carino?” retorts William, in self-defence. “How’s this for total recall? Stroke of midnight. Easter Sunday. Year of our Lord, 1995. Very last night of our honeymoon. The bells were damn sure ringing then, for me and my girl. AND IF YOU HADN’T COME ON SO BLOODY STRONG—!”
“ME? You were like La Giralda in your pants!”
If she had hoped that no one nearby would understand English, Luisa is soon disabused.
A couple of young lovers, laden down with plates and tiles from one of the Triana showrooms, suddenly burst into giggles and stagger away, so as not to offend the older, Spanish-looking woman, who is being pretty offensive herself.
They almost daren’t look at the poor old, balding guy, who is becoming quite red in the face.
“Perhaps I should have thrown an ice-cold sangria on it,” hurls Luisa, unfazed.
“Then I can go out and ‘win the bread’. Our deal, yes? Our big bloody deal. While you be the famous writer and make wonderful stories about Nazis and whores.” He tries to interrupt but she is on a roll.
“Instead of having to find a job you say to me so much you hate. Sí. All my fault. I get ‘up the duff’ all on my own!”
“You had dreams too, Luisa! Your art – your photos. Our kids’ books, together.” He laughs wryly. “One ‘el preservativo’! See – that’s a word I remembered. From the farmacia. Bit too bloody late. If only I’d trusted my Spanish, rather than my wife.”
She glares at him, then walks angrily, tearfully away. Without even thinking, she finds herself moving towards the Hostal Esmeralda, the scene of the crime. How did they end up here?
How did they end up – here?
A more recent thought shoots back into William’s feverish mind. The mind of a marketing consultant. Something that has been nagging him since his latest ‘experiment’.
Maybe his earlier forays into altering lives and history were just trial runs!
Those relatively small-scale ‘testing’ exercises one is advised to conduct and ruthlessly evaluate, before going all out for that full, take-no-prisoners, global launch.
Phase 1 is done. Phase 2 will need to be something just a wee bit bigger.
A whole lot bigger.
To her surprise, Luisa feels William’s warm hand circling gently around her wrist. She looks down at it and at his elegant watch that was once so special. As their eyes meet, welling with tears they would rather nobody witnessed, William suddenly knows what he must do.
“You wish it too, don’t you, Luisa?”
He can hardly breathe, but he has to complete the thought, even though he is certain that she does not and will not understand.
“That things could have been, you know – different.” She stares at him now and shakes her head, as if he is simply stating the obvious. Even when he says something that in truth is so totally overwhelming. “That we could change things.”
Now she laughs. A sound bereft of mirth. Or joy. Or hope.
“Things? ‘Things’? Just look at us, William!”
Without being aware of it, they have reached the ornate, tiled gates of the hostel itself. But they don’t look in. They don’t see the stocky handyman turn from his pruning and watch them as they stare at each other, before they move off in separate directions.
Because there is nothing more to say.
Back in the hushed Maestranza, Lu hides her tearful face in Will’s shoulder, as the lifeless carcass is dragged bloodily away.