Authors: Thomas Mogford
Hollow Mountain (11 page)
One thing he doesn’t see is me. I know that, because it’s all I’m really watching out for. Then again, why would he, given how I’m dressed, the way I’m walking, the manner in which my hair and glasses are styled? You wouldn’t. Who knows – perhaps you’ve missed me already.
He is passing business premises now, all of which are closed. The rest of Europe works itself to the bone in recession, while Gibraltar operates a ‘Summer Hours’ policy for July and August, offices open only between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. He stops by a gleaming building that looks like it’s been assembled from a flat-pack marked ‘Crap Modern Architecture’. St Bernard’s Hospital. Who but a Gibbo would name a hospital after a dog?
I’m about to cross the road when I see a bank of CCTV cameras ranged outside the entrance, so I sit down on the carpark wall of a supermarket of whose name I have never heard. I could have left the SEAT there for free.
Another grimy inbred is perching on the wall next to me. I slip a hand into my pocket and feel the comforting weight of the truncheon: retracted, it is no bigger than a flashlight. The man looks like a Romani, perhaps relegated from the scamming scene in Torremolinos. He unzips his bag to show off a handful of wooden bangles. My hand remains in my pocket, but I draw out a five-pound note and say, ‘Two, please,’ to which he shows his stumpy teeth, grabbing my English cash and passing me the bangles along with a tatty card emblazoned with a mountain and some kind of gypsy blessing.
I edge along the wall, taking out my pay-as-you-go phone, which attracts the man for a millisecond until he sees how cheap it is. Thank you, Hernán. His focus shifts to some shoppers coming out of this ‘Morrisons’, and already I can see I am forgotten.
I drop the bangles down a drain. When I look back up, my target is standing inside the hospital’s reception area – a softly spoken line to the woman behind the desk, which produces another warm blush, and he’s off again, walking back the way he came, face downcast. Worrying about someone, perhaps. I can work with that.
I follow him back towards the Old Town. The SEAT will have to wait, I realise, as he’s going into a pub now, one of a hundred establishments that foul this place like pustules, reeking of stale beer and deep-fried food.
The Royal Calpe.
Another word I will have to look up back at the hotel.
I sit down on the pub terrace. ‘Toilets For Customers Only’, the sign on the window counsels. Really? The plastic tables are spattered in gulls’ shit and cluttered with other people’s filthy glasses. Behind the bar, the bottle-blonde waitress doesn’t see me, let alone come out to take my order.
I watch him through the open doors. He’s with a girl now – predictable, you might say, except that I’d been starting to wonder if he was a fag, given his pretty-boy face and naked ring finger. He and the girl touch cheeks, and I can see she’s keen, not just from her flush, which I’m getting used to now, but from the intensity of her gaze, as though she’s afraid to let him out of her sight. She’s a good deal smaller than him, as are most of his compatriots, but with large breasts for such a petite frame. Her trim figure suggests she works out – a fitness instructor, maybe, until I see her slip a paperback into her bag. He buys the drinks, she watches, smiling up at him as he returns. Nice to find a traditional girl on this Rock.
I take out a book of my own, but I can’t seem to read anything of substance in this place, the heat and humidity are too high. I find myself thinking of the hotel room I must return to tonight, an overpriced broom cupboard in a converted barracks. The din of cheap talk shows drifting up from the lobby TV. The
shared
bathroom. The fire-drill on the back of the door, in English and pidgin Spanish, the latter corrected in felt-tip pen by an angry previous guest.
Hunger stirs, but there’s nothing to eat here but fish-n-chips and all-day English breakfasts. Earlier I saw a restaurant named ‘TAPS’. I assumed this was
tapas
, misspelt, but no – an array of warm beers. I ended up buying some ham and chips from a Moroccan speaking in English, his congealed offering wrapped in a Spanish newspaper.
A deep loathing for Hernán starts to fill my gorge. Why can’t I just do the job and leave? Why does he have to make things so . . . complicated?
My target is coming out again – he and the girl walk directly past me, parting outside the Cathedral, her lips lingering a little too long on his cheek. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she calls after him. She’s still standing there, watching, as I fall in behind him, but she doesn’t see me, not even a glance.
Barbers and beauty parlours are doing a brisk trade in the Old Town. He walks past them, a slight spring in his step, as though he actually likes these damp narrow alleyways and high-walled passages. The crowds are thinning, and I realise now that I must take care. I let him get ahead, then consult the web of streets in my mind which yesterday’s wanderings have already imprinted. I rejoin him on Castle Road; he’s hesitant now, as if he can sense something. He glances back, but I am too quick for him, stepping behind one of the red phone boxes that exist even at the top of this ancient anthill. When I find him again he looks more relaxed, perhaps rebuking himself for his earlier paranoia.
He enters a dingy alley and I linger on the corner, beneath a birdcage attached to a first-floor balcony. The budgerigar peers down at my face, then tucks its head behind a wing. He stops again. The ground-floor lights are on; he raises his fists, and for a moment I think he is going to spin round, that he’s seen me, but no . . . he is raging at the night sky, lambasting some unseen deity. I could almost grow to like this man.
As soon as he’s inside the house, I circumvent the alley and re-enter at the other end. Through the kitchen window, I see him lit up, talking to a stick man with white hair and a quarrelsome brow. I reach into my pocket, feeling the smooth form of the truncheon. Patience, I think. Patience.
Spike had assumed that Jessica would want to talk on the bus journey, but in fact she’d slept throughout, head occasionally lolling onto his shoulder. They’d met as planned on Winston Churchill Avenue at 9 a.m., crossing the land border on foot to the Spanish town adjacent to Gib, La Línea de la Concepción, avoiding the vehicle queues already forming. As soon as they’d boarded the bus for Cádiz, Jessica had tipped back the seat and closed her eyes.
As the bus rattled through the coastal towns of Andalucía – Tarifa, Bolonia, San Fernando – Spike found himself thinking back to similar journeys he’d made with Zahra. The time in Malta they’d visited Gozo, travelling the length of the island to reach
C
irkewwa harbour, Zahra’s quiet excitement as she’d shown him the landmarks she had already discovered during her short stay. Their desert trip in Morocco, when they’d first fallen for each other. Why the hell had she called him, he wondered again. If she’d really moved on, and no longer cared, why bother making contact at all?
He glanced down and saw that Jessica had left a drool-mark on the shoulder of his T-shirt. Out of the window, a first bull silhouette appeared on the brow of a hill – four tonnes of black steel advertising a brand of Spanish brandy. The figures had become an unofficial symbol of Spain, ignoring the fact that the company responsible for them had been founded by a Brit, one Thomas Osborne Mann, an eager young trader from Exeter who’d settled in Cádiz in the late eighteenth century.
The rhythm of the engine settled as the bus entered Cádiz’s suburbs, and Jessica opened her eyes. ‘
Manascada
,’ she yawned. ‘How much did we have to drink last night?’
Spike could sense the Spaniard in the seat behind bristle at the sound of her soft
yanito
. He remembered the last time he’d been to Cádiz, on a school trip, when they’d been studying the Singeing of the King of Spain’s Beard in class. The land border between Spain and Gib – closed by General Franco for fourteen years – had just been reopened as a condition of Britain allowing Spain to join the EU. ‘Whatever you do, speak Spanish,’ their History teacher had told them nervously on the coach. ‘It’s
Caddy
, not Cádiz. I don’t want to hear any “z”s . . .’
‘
Por bashe
,’ Spike replied now to Jessica, enjoying a childish thrill at no longer being in the thrall of school authorities.
The bus stopped at Plaza de la Hispanidad, and Spike and Jessica got off. The journey had only lasted an hour and a quarter, quicker than he’d remembered.
‘What time’s your appointment?’ Jessica asked.
‘Not for another hour.’
They took a brief stroll around the square. Spike had forgotten how pretty Cádiz was – built on a peninsula like Gib, but with white eighteenth-century townhouses fashioned from the limestone rather than functional military properties.
‘I don’t think I’ve been here since we were at school,’ Jessica said.
‘Were you on that trip?’
‘We sat next to each other on the way back. Don’t you remember?’ She smoothed her dark hair into a ponytail, averting her eyes.
‘I remember the beach,’ Spike said. ‘We weren’t allowed on it.’
‘We could see it now? It’s never too late for breakfast.’
Leaving the square, they strolled south towards the seafront, passing the ornate facade of the Gran Teatro Falla, taking in the street names honouring heroes of Spanish literature – Calle de Cervantes, de Calderón de La Barca.
‘Wow,’ Jessica murmured as the avenue opened into the Playa de La Caleta, wider and more golden than any beach in Gib. Breakers smashed in the surf; Cádiz lay to the west of Gibraltar so its shoreline was unbroken Atlantic. ‘Not so good for swimming,’ Spike countered as they stepped off the pavement onto the sand. His need to defend Gib was hardwired.
A kiosk was selling freshly grilled sardines; Spike bought a paper plate for them both and carried them down to the waterfront.
‘Next stop the New World,’ Jessica said, sitting down on the sand and fizzing open a can of Diet Coke. Spike took in the sea forts framing the beach. At least Gib had the edge there, he decided as he sat down next to her and stared at the gleaming expanse of ocean.
Time passed; Spike checked his phone as Jessica picked the meat off a sardine with a plastic fork. Spike slipped the entire fish into his mouth and drew out the forked tail. Jessica smiled as he sucked in air over his palate.
‘It’s hot,’ he tried to say.
‘It’s what?’ she laughed.
He shook his head and swallowed, relishing the strong flavour of the red-brown meat. Fresh sardine was good, the tinned variety the poorest of substitutes. Unlike tuna, which Spike secretly preferred in its metal coffin. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Hamish.’
Jessica tightened her ponytail and looked stubbornly out to sea. ‘What about him?’
‘Are you still in touch?’
‘He emails.’ She paused: ‘I don’t.’
Spike busied himself with another fish, unsure whether to press her further. ‘Are you considering . . .’
‘Forgiving him? No, Spike, I’m not.’ She turned aggressively. ‘What kind of shit cheats on his fiancée the night before their wedding?’
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it to you.’
She gave a wry smile. ‘Well, it’s a bit late now, isn’t it? Anyway, what about Zahra? Any news?’
‘I’m following your advice.’
‘That’s a first. Which bit?’
‘Concentrating on the future.’
‘So you’re not planning to keep looking?’
Spike shrugged, placing a hand on the sand and squeezing his fingers through the warm grains.
‘But you must miss her, I mean . . .’
‘OK,’ Spike said. ‘Let’s cut a deal. I won’t mention Hamish if you don’t ask about Zahra. What do you say?’
She nodded, and they shook hands, hers hot and clammy. Hungover or embarrassed. A bit of both, probably.
He ate another sardine, trying to mask the hollow feeling which had returned to his stomach, the questions that wouldn’t go away. What if Jessica was wrong about Zahra? If she was still in trouble? If Peter really had been attacked because of him?
‘Shall we?’ Spike asked, suddenly keen to leave.
‘One moment more,’ Jessica said, lying back. ‘I love the sound of the Atlantic.’
Reluctantly, Spike lay down beside her, pushing his mind back to the summer after A-levels, the glorious empty months before he’d taken up his Gibraltar Government Scholarship and moved to London to read Law at UCL. He’d felt part of a crowd then – Jessica, Sebastian Alvarez . . . Others too, but he couldn’t remember them clearly. Most evenings they’d walked to Eastern Beach, the best stretch of sand Gib had to offer. Built bonfires, played volleyball, drunk spirits from the bottle as the sun set over the Straits. It was after one of those nights that Spike had come home to find his father sitting in the kitchen. No sign of his mother. ‘She’s gone, son,’ Rufus had whispered, and Spike had assumed she’d left – he wouldn’t have blamed her. But no, he hadn’t meant that at all.
‘You OK?’ Jessica said, sitting up.
‘
Grevi
.’ He sprang athletically to his feet, then felt dizzy, so dropped to his knees, ostensibly to pick up the remains of their lunch.
‘I love the way you never leave any trace of yourself. Like a cat.’
‘Really?’ Spike said. ‘What an odd thing to admire.’
