The Songs of Manolo Escobar (6 page)

As we pulled away from the traffic lights, Papa laughed dismissively. A few blocks further on, the satellite navigation system instructed me to turn left, further into the town, and his head swung instantly to face me.

‘We stay here?' he asked, his voice infused with mild panic.

‘So it would seem,' I said calmly.

We parked, and I helped Papa out of the car. Pablito bustled forward and took responsibility for ushering him inside, despatching me to retrieve the suitcases from the boot. Our hotel looked cheap and seedy, located in what appeared to be the centre of a bar and nightclub complex, at least a mile from the beach, I guessed.

We were checked in by a kindly old lady who directed us to the seventh floor. We emerged on to a landing and Mama put her hand to her mouth, too late to stifle an intake of breath. Vast and echoing, it was like a prison hall, with walls and floor of bare stone, coated with dirty salmon-coloured paint. The roof was made of transparent corrugated plastic and was comprehensively spattered with seagull droppings. We inched along the landing, which was punctuated with large plant-pots full of discarded cigarette butts.

If Papa and Pablito held any immediate opinions about their surroundings, they didn't make them known. We arrived at our rooms and entered the double that had been booked for Mama and Papa. It was small and serviceable, equipped with a bed, a sofa, a small dining table, a cooker hob and a fridge. Pablito and I were in an adjoining twin room.

After we'd unpacked, we decided to go for a drive to explore some of the small fishing villages and resorts crammed into the craggy turns of the coastline. We stopped at a beach bar and Papa ordered a
horchata de chufa
, a sweet milky drink made from tiger nuts, which he hadn't drunk since his childhood. With his first sip, a warm smile of recognition washed over his face.

The wind was low and the sun's malevolence was waning, agreeably temperate conditions in which to watch the crisp, azure waves lap against the rugged shoreline. The combined scents of spicy acorns and black, toasted tobacco appeared to have a calming effect on Papa, who smiled indulgently, apparently reassured that there were some things about his country that never changed.

When we returned to the resort, Pablito suggested we change and meet in the restaurant for dinner.

‘There is no restaurant,' I pointed out.

‘Of course there's a restaurant, it's a hotel, isn't it?'

‘No, it's an apartment hotel, which means it's self-catering. The clue's in the title.'

His expression hardened and his eyes shifted unsteadily. It was obvious he hadn't properly understood what he had signed up for. ‘Well, they didn't make that clear to me. They gave me the impression meals would be included.'

‘Look, don't worry, there are plenty of restaurants here in the resort. My treat,' I said smiling.

Immediately Papa intervened.

‘We nae eat in restaurant, we have kitchen here. Your Mama she cook.'

Her face fell.

‘We're on holiday, Papa. Mama's not cooking, she's here to enjoy herself.'

Papa waved a hand in my direction and began to unzip his suitcase.

‘That's what people do when they come to places like this,' I continued. ‘They eat out in restaurants. The kitchenettes
are there to make breakfast. No one ever uses them to cook dinner.'

‘Wha you know wha people dae? We eat here.'

My chest tightened. As a child I'd felt belittled and powerless at his ready discard of reason, but at least then I had the consolation of knowing I'd grow up and he'd grow old. Now I was an adult, stronger and smarter than him, more affluent, more successful and more articulate, and yet still his will prevailed.

Mama and I went to the local supermarket, which, as I'd anticipated, turned out to be little more than a convenience store for tourists to purchase breakfast staples and other essentials they'd forgotten to bring with them from home. We came back with some bread and a few tins of sardines and olives. Mama turned them out on to the cheap white crockery that was stashed in the cupboards under the hob.

It was barely eight o'clock when we'd finished eating, but Mama insisted Papa should have an early night because he was tired from the journey. He didn't complain. She'd brought a book with her, and she offered to sit with him, suggesting Pablito and I should go out for a drink. He seemed keen to get out of the hotel, so I agreed, though I felt sure it must have been twenty years since Pablito and I had done anything together. He was ten years older than me, and there had been no stage when we were growing up at which our interests had converged. The gap in our ages seemed to justify our lack of closeness.

We ambled along some empty side streets until we came to a boulevard with a few bars and restaurants. It had just turned dark, but the air was still warm enough to sit outside, and there was a pleasing mix of cooking smells in the sea air. A handful of tourists had started early at some of the gaudier bars, but we managed to find a small pavement café that was empty apart from a couple of young local women sitting on bar stools, drinking coffee and smoking. I ordered two beers and we sat at a table.

I feared we'd have nothing to talk about, but the events of the day provided enough material to allow the conversation to
meander along without us settling on anything in particular, far less any issues that might provoke contention. Pablito sat slumped in his seat and took a long draught of beer.

‘The old man's in great nick for his age, isn't he? He'll go on forever,' he said cheerily.

‘You think so?'

‘Yeah, I mean, he's got a very positive attitude, and coming back here will be a tremendous boost for him. That's why I insisted he should come. If I'd left it to him he'd have put if off for months, so I just thought, hell, book it, and he'll have no choice but to come.'

‘You don't think it might stir up bad memories he'd sooner forget?'

‘What do you mean?' he asked, genuinely perplexed.

I didn't really know what I meant. Papa's rare recollections of Spain always seemed so doom-laden, but he spoke in such generalised terms I was never entirely clear why he should feel personally threatened.

‘Well, you know the way he used to go on about Franco and the Civil War and all of that stuff,' I said, unintentionally belittling my argument.

‘Yeah, but that was years ago, and I've always told him he can't live in the past. These times are dead and long gone.'

Pablito offered to buy us both another drink, and as I watched his hunched frame draped over the front of the bar, I felt a sudden, sad pain. He'd inherited more of Papa's magnetism than I had, but he'd been a reckless guardian of his looks and now he was stooped and beaten. His youthful gameness was gone, and his face looked shrunken and deep-lined.

It was after eleven o'clock when we returned to the hotel, by which time an orgy of merriment was in full swing in the adjoining bars and nightclubs. Flashing strobe lights and the spine-jolting boom of dance music followed us through the complex. Several touts tried to coax us into their establishments with the promise of deals on lethal-sounding drinks.

I pressed ahead, flushed and harassed, but Pablito allowed himself to be detained by a couple of tall, blonde girls no older than Ben, dressed in teetering high heels and skimpy lingerie. I was too far away to hear their conversation, but the forced laughter of the girls was clearly enough to manipulate Pablito's gossamer-thin ego, and he decided to go off with them.

When he finally arrived back in our hotel room, it was almost four a.m. I'd long since abandoned any hope of sleeping. The metronomic beat of the music was loud and constant, interrupted sporadically by soprano howls of giddiness and aggressive alpha-male exchanges. When the music finally stopped it was light outside, and I felt like a punch-drunk boxer.

I came to with a start mid-morning. Pablito was still asleep, so I made my way through to Mama and Papa's room. Mama was sitting outside on the verandah. Papa had gone out to look for a British newspaper, she said, so I made myself a cup of coffee.

‘He never reads newspapers,' I pointed out.

‘I think he's missing home already,' she said smiling. ‘He wants to know what's going on.'

I sat down with my coffee and closed my eyes. For a few moments I basked silently in the rejuvenating morning sun. It was the first time Mama and I had been alone since we had arrived, so I decided it was a good time to quiz her again about Papa's letters to the Ajuntamente in Lerida. But her anxieties appeared to have dissipated, because she no longer felt willing to discuss or explain it.

‘It's not important,' she said dismissively.

I felt angry. It was clearly something that had troubled her to the extent that she'd taken me into her confidence, forcing me to drop everything and leave my work at a critical time, because she'd felt so concerned about it. Now she'd decided it wasn't even worth mentioning.

‘You can't do that to me, Mama. I have a right to know.'

She shuffled irritably. ‘You don't need to know.'

‘I know I don't need to but I want to know.'

She looked pained. ‘I'm sorry, I can't tell you.'

By the time Pablito wandered through, looking hungover and dishevelled, it was almost one o'clock. Papa hadn't yet returned from his mission to buy a newspaper. We'd made plans to drive into Girona and wander around the shops in the afternoon, so Pablito agreed to go to look for him while Mama and I cleared away the breakfast dishes. He returned half an hour later, having failed to find Papa.

‘He'll be fine, Mama, you know what he's like. He'll have gone for a walk and discovered something that has grabbed his interest,' Pablito said, trying to calm her down.

Judging by Mama's reaction, I wasn't so sure. Pablito and I agreed to search a bigger area together. As he'd gone out to buy a paper, we planned to take one side of the town each and visit all the tourist shops. We were about to set off when I noticed the car was missing from its parking space. I told Mama and she sat down slowly.

‘We should call the police,' she said.

‘The police? What are you talking about?' Pablito demanded.

‘We need to call the police. We need to stop him. He's going to Lerida.'

‘What's he going to do in Lerida?' I asked calmly.

She didn't answer.

‘Talk to me. Why is he going to Lerida?'

She dropped her head and gazed at the floor.

‘We can't call the police if you're not willing to be open, Mama. What are we going to tell them – that we're concerned for the safety of an 83-year-old man driving an uninsured car, hell-bent on a mission to settle a score that you'd rather not talk about?'

She blushed. I suggested we had two options – we could sit and wait for him to return, or we could follow him to Lerida and hope we arrived in time to stop him doing whatever it was he'd gone there for.

‘Let's go,' she said with a sudden burst of determination.

By the time we were on the road it was late afternoon. I'd had to track down a different car-hire firm from the one we'd used previously, to avoid questions about why I needed a second vehicle, and then I had to persuade the clerk to serve me before the office closed for the siesta.

Navigating an unknown route and driving on the right in an attempt to find my lost father would have been stressful enough without the presence of Mama, sitting in the back and continually asking if I was sure we were going the right way. We took the motorway to the north of Barcelona and from there we drove through the mountains, where the temperature dropped and the terrain changed from brown to a lush green. The hills were cloaked in mature fir trees, and for a while my mind was lost in their stillness.

By late afternoon we were approaching Lerida on the main trunk road, and Mama said we should look for an area called Alguaire. I reprogrammed the satnav and followed the instructions to a hamlet about fifteen kilometres north of the centre of Lerida.

The roads leading into it were flanked by peach and fig groves, vineyards and olive fields, and the centre was a bustle of activity, with narrow cobbled streets, lofty stucco apartments and sloping terracotta roofs. Small Juliet balconies were framed with bushes of purple bougainvillea and potted orange carnations. This was where Papa was born, Mama told us – this was our home village.

The main square was lined by rows of horse-chestnut trees whose thick foliage provided a canopy against the late-afternoon sun. There were a few small shops and a bar with a couple of pavement tables. A small group of black men, I guessed migrant workers servicing the local farms, gathered around the door of a telegraph office that offered cheap international calls.

I parked the car and we found the Ajuntamente, a small modern building at the corner of the square. Inside its reception area was low-ceilinged, sparsely furnished with a pair of
desks and some filing cabinets. We arrived just as it was about to close and an elderly cleaner, wearing a sky-blue housecoat and carrying a damp cloth, looked at us, wide-eyed and edgy, as we entered. Mama took a photograph of Papa out of her handbag and mentioned him by name. The woman immediately became animated, speaking loudly and pointing at the picture repeatedly before throwing her head back and her hands in the air. I couldn't make out most of what she said, but two words I did understand were ‘Guardia Civil'.

We left and walked quickly along the narrow streets towards the other side of town, where the cleaner had told Mama the village police station was located. It was a single-storey building with nothing to distinguish it as a hub of law enforcement other than a small silver plaque on the door, and we would have walked past it had Pablito not spotted our first hire car parked around the side.

Inside, two uniformed officers sat languidly in a stale, smoky fug, their feet resting on adjacent desks. A couple of yellowing computer terminals were located amid a jungle of paperwork, overflowing ashtrays and dirty cups. The scene resembled Ben's bedroom, though with the addition of a pair of utility belts to which handcuffs and pistols were attached.