The Songs of Manolo Escobar (3 page)

There was pathos in her concern that made me feel slightly sad – that I was in my mid-forties, with a family of my own, that I earned in a month what she and Papa lived on for a year, and yet she still felt responsible for my welfare.

I stepped into the hallway and was met by the smell of lambs' kidneys braising in sherry. I made my way upstairs to my old bedroom, which hadn't changed since I'd shared it with Pablito thirty years before.

I'd kept urging Mama to redecorate it, even offering her the money, but she said she didn't have the heart. It retained the imprint of teenage boyhood, with fading posters of rock bands hanging limply from the walls, along with occasional cut-outs of footballers from Spanish magazines, with their 1970s mullets and sideburns. Neither Pablito nor I ever saw them play, but we pretended we idolised them to humour Papa.

Other than twin single beds, the only item of furniture was a cheap mock-pine chest of drawers purchased from an industrial estate in Renfrew. On top of it sat a couple of well-thumbed Alistair MacLean novels and a clutch of dusty, scratched cassette cases.

I dumped my holdall on the floor and collapsed on to the bed, lurching precariously to one side as the loosely-sprung mattress sagged beneath my weight. I felt a sudden urge to speak to Cheryl. I pulled out my mobile phone and dialled our home number, but the moment I heard it click on to voicemail, I wished I hadn't.

‘Hi, I'm just checking in, to see if you're all right,' I said, trying to sound casual and breezy. ‘Just thought I'd touch base.'

Touch base
? What the hell did that mean? I hated making these phone calls, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. Even if she'd answered, we'd have had a few moments of unsatisfying, directionless conversation, then I'd probably have spent the rest of the night worrying, rehearsing in my head every syllable she'd spoken, every pause, searching for clues as to what she was really thinking.

I felt trapped inside my aching body. I changed into a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. I trudged into the bathroom and threw some cold water over my face, rubbing my eyes to dislodge the crumbs of sleep that had built up on the train journey.

At the bottom of the staircase was a large bag of dirty laundry. Mama had told me on the phone that Pablito might be eating with us, although she wasn't certain he'd definitely make it because of his work schedule. He'd promised to ‘pull some strings', she said. He'd recently switched jobs – again – his latest designation being in what he referred to as ‘petroleum retail'.

I entered the living room and found him and Papa kneeling in front of the television set, crouched over some sort of electrical item.

‘Hey
hermano
, how's it going?' I asked nonchalantly.

Pablito looked up and managed a less than convincing smile, then continued his conversation with Papa.

‘. . . so I said, “Don't be an arsehole, Brian. You may be senior retail executive but I've got a lifetime of experience in sales, and I know the consumer mindset.”'

Papa watched him transfixed.

‘Brian said, “Don't talk to me like that, Pablito, I am your boss, remember.” So I looked at him, and I said, “Well, behave like a boss and don't talk such fucking shite.”'

They both laughed.

‘How
is
the petrol station, Pablito?' I asked.

He eyed me uncertainly.

‘It's fine.'

There was a short silence before Papa intervened.

‘This is just temporary job for Pablito. He go work for big firm to sell, how you say, conservations?'

‘Conservatories,' Pablito said.

‘Oh right, conservatories“ I said more cynically than I'd intended. ‘What, you mean like for a double-glazing firm?'

‘They do double-glazing as well, but I'll be focusing more on the conservatory side of the business,' he replied defensively. ‘It's a growth industry.'

‘This is good job. He earn two thousand pound every week,' Papa said enthusiastically. ‘
Two thousand pound
,' he repeated, to emphasise the vastness of the figure.

Pablito looked embarrassed.

‘Two grand, wow. Is that basic?' I asked him.

‘Eh, no, that's with commission, but that would mean only having to sell a couple of conservatories a week.'

They continued with their technical collusion, holding up the ends of wires, speculating where they might go. I took a proper look at the item. It was a crude metal box with a series of red and green lights on the fascia, with wires protruding from the back. There appeared to be no writing on it to indicate who had produced it or what it was for.

‘What is that?' I asked.

Neither of them answered.

‘Okay, ignore me, I don't want to know.'

‘Is satellite TV,' Papa said without looking up.

‘Satellite TV?'

‘
Si
.'

‘And where's the satellite dish?' I asked.

‘Is in garden.'

I went into the kitchen, where Mama was cooking, and looked out of the window. The dish occupied my entire field of vision – a large, battleship-grey installation, supported on either side by two rusting metal poles.

‘Where the fuck did you get that thing?' I shouted.

Papa looked up.

‘Eh, you nae swear in front of your Mama. You show some respect.'

‘Sorry, I didn't mean to. It's just that . . . Christ, where did you get that thing? It looks like it fell off a Soviet space station in 1972 and landed in the garden. You could use it as a paddling pool.'

‘Pablito. He get it from one of his clients,' Papa explained.

‘
One of his clients
?' I said, trying not to laugh. ‘What, you mean one of the dodgy customers at the petrol station?'

‘It's not stolen, if that's what you're getting at,' Pablito said. ‘It's perfectly legitimate.'

‘I'm not worried about it being stolen, I'm worried about it bringing down a 747 while you're trying to get
Blackadder
on UK Gold.'

I left them to it and remained in the kitchen with Mama to help her prepare the meal. I wanted to get her on her own so that I could quiz her on the supposed emergency that had hastened my journey north. I closed the door so that Papa couldn't hear what we were saying.

I remembered the kitchen from my youth as a pristine beacon of technology, but it hadn't aged well. Paint was flaking from the walls, and the cupboard doors were scratched and fading. Its surfaces were cluttered with freakishly large electric juicers, peelers, dicers and mixers like props from an old episode of
Dr Who
. A tarnished chrome microwave dominated, with its giant clockwork dials and luminous green LEDs. All of these things that Papa had bought Mama as Christmas presents through advertisements on the back page of the
Daily Express
had simply gathered dust. She only ever seemed to use three kitchen items – her pressure cooker, her ageing, blackened griddle pan and a large terracotta
cazuela
.

She handed me a large Cos lettuce to wash and separate while she got on with other things.

‘So what's the crisis?' I asked.

She stopped chopping a large onion and looked at me.

‘It's your Papa.'

‘Who else would it be?'

‘He's decided he wants to go back to Spain.'

I stopped what I was doing and laughed. Papa hadn't been to Spain for almost seventy years.

‘You mean for a holiday?'

She nodded.

‘Well, that's good news, isn't it? It's what we've been pressing him to do for years, to visit the places where he grew up, see old friends.'

‘It's not as simple as that. He's been writing to the Ajuntamente in Lerida.'

‘To the what?'

‘The local council.'

Lerida was the town in Catalonia where his family came from. That much I knew about his background. That was pretty much all I knew. None of his family had survived the Civil War, and he'd always insisted Spain was a part of his life that was behind him. The last time he'd even come close to returning was more than twenty-five years before, when he and Mama had thought about going there to live, but there was an attempted
coup d'état
and everything changed. It was then that Mama resolved they would end their days in Britain. She was, she said, tired of feeling rootless and uncertain, and Glasgow was to be their home.

‘What does he want with the local council?' I asked.

‘Oh, he has a bee in his bonnet about something or other and he's got into an argument with them over it.'

‘Why is he arguing with officials in a country he hasn't visited for so long?'

‘He won't tell me. His writing is very poor, which is making him frustrated, but he won't let me help.'

Papa and Pablito came in, and we took our places at the table. Papa began with a starter of lettuce leaves sprinkled with a little salt, eating with a knife and fork as we watched. This was the ritual with which we'd started every family meal since I could remember. I never understood why it existed. I had once asked Mama about it as a child, and she simply said ‘Papa likes his lettuce.'

When I asked why I couldn't have any, she laughed. ‘You think I can afford lettuce every day for a whole family?' she asked.

I'd bought a bottle of Rioja at the train station but I knew I'd have to wait until later to open it. Papa wouldn't allow anyone to drink alcohol in his presence, and he became infuriated if he caught the smell of it. Even now, middle-aged, I didn't want to risk his disapproval.

‘So, how's Carlitos?' I asked Pablito breezily as Papa munched through his lettuce.

I was the only member of the family who still asked my brother about his son, principally because I knew it annoyed him so much. If I'd really wanted to know about my nephew's welfare, the last person I'd have asked was his father. He eyed me guardedly and his bottom lip quivered, as though he wanted desperately to reply with something caustic but his brain couldn't keep up. He couldn't be certain I was inquiring out of anything but genuine concern, and that's what riled him so much.

‘He's good,' he snapped.

‘He must have left university by now,' I said. ‘What's he going to do?'

‘Eh, I don't know, I think he's looking for a job. His mother never answers her phone.'

Mama served up plates of plump kidney pieces in a rich brown sauce, served on a bed of fluffy rice flavoured with saffron. There was a tension in the air, an implicit sense that everyone knew why we were there and that we had things to discuss, but that no one was willing to break the silence. I decided it would have to be me.

‘So, Mama tells me you want to go to Spain.'

Papa looked up from his plate.

‘
Si
, I go Spain,' he said quietly.

Silence resumed. I was waiting for him to elaborate but he continued eating.

‘Do you want to explain why?' I asked.

‘I nae explain. I go, this is all.'

‘And you don't think that suddenly deciding to return, at the age of eighty-three, to a country you've spent the past seventy-odd years avoiding deserves a bit more explanation than that?'

‘I think it's a good idea for him to go,' Pablito chipped in.

‘Oh, Christ, that's all we need,' I said.

Pablito threw his fork down on his plate.

‘Well, why not, if that's what he wants to do. I've said for a long time he should go back.'

‘We've all said for a long time he should go back, and he's always refused, so what's changed?'

‘Well, he's decided he wants to go, and I think he needs our support, not your negativity.'

‘He's eighty-fucking-three years old.'

‘Hey, you watcha yer mouth,' Papa growled.

‘He's eighty-three. Mama's seventy-nine, and he suddenly wants to jet off to sip sangria on the Costas. Don't you think that's a bit strange?'

I turned to Papa.

‘What about the dangers?'

He ignored me and carried on eating.

‘What about the army generals waiting to seize power, the old scores waiting to be settled, the murderers still walking the streets, the Falangist agents in the Guardia Civil – all the things that have stopped you going back for most of your life?'

Still he ignored me.

‘Have you asked Mama what she thinks of the idea?'

‘She is okay,' he whispered defiantly.

‘Have you asked her if she's okay?'

Mama had been sitting silently, her reddened face following the conversation back and forth as though she was watching a tennis match.

‘That's just so like you, Papa, to assume that Mama will do whatever you say.'

I put my cutlery down but Papa continued to eat.

‘She is my wife, she dae wha I say,' he said blithely, chewing on a piece of kidney.

Mama shifted uncomfortably.

‘Let's just drop it,' she implored. ‘We can discuss it another time.'

We finished eating in silence. After the meal, Papa and Pablito returned to the living room where, I was astonished to see, they
had managed to tune in their satellite contraption to a Spanish football match. Mama prepared a pot of tea for them and laid out a plate of toasted, sugar-glazed almonds before returning to me in the kitchen.

I couldn't help noticing how tired she looked. She'd always appeared older than her years, but she'd lost weight recently, and her hair had turned silvery white. A network of lines had appeared, pinched around her mouth, making her face look like it was drawing in on itself.

We washed and dried the dishes and then sat down at the table, chatting about a number of peripheral issues, all except the important matter at hand.

When the football match ended, Pablito said his goodbyes and left to return to the studio flat in Docklands where he'd lived since his divorce eight years before. Papa walked slowly upstairs and retired to bed.