The Songs of Manolo Escobar (19 page)

He ignored me and tried to force himself up, but I pulled him back and placed my hand at the back of his head.

‘Papa, stay down for a moment!' I shouted. ‘You've hit your
head, it's bleeding. If you try to stand up too quickly you'll fall over again.'

He looked at me, dazed and angry, and tried to speak, but he was too disorientated. Tears trickled down his rough cheeks and mixed with his blood. He turned away from me and buried his head in his hands. Then his resistance weakened, and his body went limp.

I carried him into the house and placed him on the sofa, where he sat hunched and small. The cut was not as deep as I'd feared. The bleeding had stemmed itself, but his scalp was grazed and his face was already starting to swell around his eyes. I was afraid he might have damaged his skull, and I gently tried to suggest taking him to hospital.

‘I nae see doctor. I okay,' he said huffily, like a child refusing to eat.

I found some disinfectant and cotton wool in the bathroom and tried to dab his head, but he brushed me aside. Part of me couldn't help thinking he wanted to leave the wound open and bloody, in full view, as a
coup de théâtre
for Mama's arrival. Instead, he demanded that I hand him the telephone so he could call my brother.

‘If you don't think you're injured badly enough to see a doctor, why do you need to bother Pablito?' I asked.

His eyes flitted evasively. ‘You give me phone,' he demanded.

He grabbed the receiver and held it in his shaking hand, then he dialled uncertainly. After a couple of rings Pablito answered, and they proceeded to hold an animated conversation in Spanish, Papa breathlessly recounting what had happened. I knew it would be no objective depiction; rather he was building a case, putting forward his partisan interpretation of developments, with blame being unambiguously assigned.

‘Let me speak to him,' I demanded, but Papa ignored me. After a few minutes' more talking to Pablito, he hung up.

I looked at my watch. My flight was due to leave in thirty minutes. It would have to go without me. There was another
flight at midday which would still get me into City Airport at lunchtime. I rang Kevin and told him I'd be in the office by the early afternoon.

I made Papa a cup of sweet tea and he began to calm down a little. His hands stopped shaking quite so violently, and his voice lost its tremor. I put my hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. He looked up at me and managed a brief, flickering smile.

When he heard the sound of Mama's key in the door he appeared to suffer a sudden relapse. He placed his cup on the floor, to allow himself to tremble without the inconvenience of drenching himself with tea, and began to wail with melodramatic élan. Mama stood before him and threw her hand over her mouth.

‘
¿Díos mío, que pasa?'
she demanded. ‘Oh my God, what's happened?'

I tried to explain, but before I could utter a syllable Papa had leapt in to offer his take on events. It was the same diatribe he had proffered to Pablito, I suspected, but its tone was more intense, its delivery more compelling. Mama remained silent and attentive, save for the occasional glance of rebuke in my direction.

‘He's fine,' I said several times, to no response.

Eventually, after another few rounds of Papa's breathless testimony, she broke in. ‘Could you not at least have done something about his injury?' she asked.

‘I tried, he wouldn't let me near him.'

Mama spun on her heel and marched from the room, removing her coat and throwing it on to the sofa.
‘iMadre mía, yo no puedo salir la casa por diez minutos!'
she exclaimed angrily. ‘Mother of God, I can't leave the house for ten minutes!'

I heard her march up the stairs and rummage about in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. ‘
¿Dónde está el desinfectante
?' she asked herself loudly.

I stood at the foot of the stairway, holding the items I knew she was looking for.

‘The disinfectant is down here, Mama, along with the cotton wool.'

She came marching back down the stairs and grabbed them from me.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing?' she asked in an angry stage whisper.

‘That's what I was trying to tell you. I was trying to clean his head, but he wouldn't let me.'

‘I don't mean after the fall – I mean before. You know how ill he is. What are you doing letting him change a car battery in this weather?'

‘I didn't have a choice,' I protested. ‘He insisted on doing it himself.'

‘Why didn't you stop him? Why didn't you take hold of the battery and do it yourself?'

I stood facing her, my mind a blank. It was a reasonable question to which I didn't have an answer, or at least an answer that didn't make me sound as though I was an errant five-year-old.

‘Or better still, why didn't you get a taxi?'

‘He wouldn't let me.'

Her shoulders dropped and she looked at me in disbelief.

‘He's eighty-three years old, Antonio.'

‘I know, but he's my father.'

I
t was five years since Franco had died, and Papa was sufficiently confident of the flourishing of democracy in Spain – or at least of its failure to revert to dictatorship – that he and Mama were talking openly about the possibility of returning there. Every public utterance by King Juan Carlos, every magazine article charting the modernity of the new Spain, every tribute from returning holidaymakers contributed to his growing belief that things had changed, genuinely and irrevocably, for the better.

Mama saw this as an opportunity to complete the circle of their lives. Circumstance had forced them to move from Spain to Morocco to Scotland, and now they had the chance to return, to live out the remainder of their days close to her family and in familiar surroundings.

Things came to a head shortly into my second term at university, when we received news from Tia Teresa, Mama's sister in Malaga, that Abuela's health was failing. Now in her late eighties, she had suffered a stroke, and the prognosis was poor. Mama wanted to be with her mother for the last months of her life. She discussed the matter with Papa, and it was decided. One evening they told us that they were leaving to start a new life in the old country.

Papa asked me if I wanted to go with them, though there was little conviction in his request, and he agreed it was sensible for me to stay in Scotland to complete my degree. I had no inclination to follow them, and there was the dividend of being able to move out of the family home and into university halls of residence, where I felt I'd have the freedom to grow
and to become myself. It was Papa who'd insisted I continue to live at home after I left school because that's how they did it in Spain, but I was in the minority among my friends, most of whom lived in the halls of residence or in digs.

Pablito had just started a new job, and he was planning to get married to Linda, his fiancée, whom he'd met at a late-night bus stop and whom he'd subsequently got pregnant – on the top deck of the bus, he'd confided to me. So he too would be staying in Scotland, though he went through the motions of suggesting he might join Mama and Papa in Spain at a later date.

Although Mama and Papa had talked in abstract terms about the possibility of returning to Spain for so long, now that it was actually happening it seemed unreal. Although I didn't want to move with them, I certainly didn't want them to go – not yet, at least. I was afraid I'd miss them, that I'd feel insecure without the anchor of my family. But there was something more elemental: I didn't speak Spanish, I knew little about the country, its culture or its history – all I really had was my Spanish parents and my name. And now, surprisingly and against all my expectations, I found that I wanted to feel Spanish. For the first time in my life my Spanishness had become an asset, a source of fascination to an attractive and desirable woman. Mama and Papa's intended departure could not have been less timely.

I had yet to raise with Papa Cheryl's request to meet him so that she could question him about the war. Introducing him to a friend, particularly a female friend, was fraught with danger. There was of course the very real prospect of him mortally embarrassing me with his imperfect English, his eccentricities, his chauvinism or his short temper. But there was something more potent, which, I'd come to suspect, was among the issues at the centre of my troubled relationship with my father: a conviction that, with his uncompromising maleness, his confident masculine deportment, any girl I brought home would find him more attractive than me. I'd seen it often enough with Pablito's
girlfriends, who would enter the house smiling coyly, gripping Pablito's hand tightly, seeking reassurance. Yet within the flutter of an eyelash after meeting Papa, they'd move further from Pablito and edge ever closer to Papa, seduced by his charm.

I'd have to put my reservations aside, though. Now, with their intention to return to Spain confirmed, time was against me. Because of Abuela's illness there could be no delay, no long-term planning, and they planned to leave within a few weeks. I had been prepared to be patient in winning Cheryl over. I had known it would take time, planning, discretion, changing perceptions and orthodoxies and not a little deviousness, but it was a campaign I was willing to embark upon and to see through to the end. However, my plan hinged on Cheryl meeting Papa. I had to act quickly. And though I was still unsure of the wisdom of exposing one of my friends to Papa, especially one whom I held in such high regard, I felt as though I had little choice. My love life depended on it.

I planned in meticulous detail when to make the breezy, impromptu suggestion to Cheryl that she come round for dinner. I'd decided that it would be best to catch her before the start of our lecture on Monday morning, yet when the moment came I began jabbering.

‘You know how we were talking about the Spanish Civil War and all that and how you were dead interested in it and all that?' I began.

‘What?' asked Cheryl distractedly as she leaned against a wall, engrossed in a copy of
Marxism Today.

‘I was just saying that you know how you're into the Civil War and all that and how my old man fought in it . . . well I'm pretty sure he fought in it, although he's never said as much . . . but you know how you were talking about it and you were saying that . . .'

She looked up from her magazine and stared at me.

‘Well, you know how you were saying you'd be interested in talking to my old man? Christ, why anyone would want to
talk to him I don't know, but anyway, you know how you were saying . . .'

She sighed deeply and failed to stop her eyes rolling backwards.

‘Anyway, just say if you think it's a non-starter, 'cause Christ, sitting in a room for any length of time with my old man is enough to make anyone lose the will to live, but I'll say one thing about my ma, she's a good cook, if you like that sort of thing that is, and it's not everyone's cup of tea but . . .'

‘Antonio.'

‘But she makes lots of typical Spanish dishes, and to be honest I'm not a huge fan of Spanish food, but I'll say one thing . . .'

‘Antonio,'
she said, loud enough to turn the heads of several of the students standing around us. ‘I'd love to come.'

That night I told Mama and Papa about the visit. I'd thought carefully about whether I should tell them that Cheryl was fascinated by the Civil War and that she wanted to interrogate Papa about his anarchist past, but I decided against it, reasoning that if he were to object now, he might veto the whole enterprise. If it were sprung on him as a surprise, he'd be forced to co-operate. It was a risky strategy, but better than having to cancel on Cheryl.

He beamed with delight at the news that I was bringing a girl back to the house for the first time. ‘This is good,' he said slapping me heartily on the back. ‘You should dae this more. You ashame a your family or something?'

‘No, of course not.'

Mama was excited too, and she promised to cook a special Spanish meal to impress her, oxtail with prunes – a speciality from her native Andalusia. She also agreed to banish Pablito from the house for the evening. Things were coming together nicely, and I was confident I might actually be able to carry this off without any disasters.

During the bus journey to my parents' house I tried to warn Cheryl about Papa, but I found it difficult to put what I felt into
words – that was the problem with him: meeting him a hundred times would still fail to provide a full picture of what he was really like. You had to live with him to learn that.

‘Don't be so anxious. I'm sure he'll be enchanting,' she said, squeezing my hand.

As I opened the front door to the house, there was an unnerving quietness and none of the warm, inviting cooking smells I'd expected. We took off our coats in the darkened hallway, and I led Cheryl into the living-room. Papa was in his usual seat, still dressed in his airport overalls, rocking gently on his seat, sucking determinedly on a cigarette. He didn't look up. Mama and Pablito were on the sofa, both white, and Mama appeared close to tears.

‘What's wrong?' I asked.

No one answered.

‘What's happened? Has Abuela died?'

Papa looked at his wrist, but his watch, which he never wore to work in case it was damaged by a suitcase, was missing. ‘
¿Qué hora?'
he demanded anxiously. ‘What is the time?'

No one responded.

‘
¿A qué hora son las noticias en la televisión?
' ‘When is the news on television?'

‘En otros quince minutos,'
Mama said quietly. ‘In another fifteen minutes.'

We continued to stand uncertainly in the doorway.

‘What's happened?' I repeated.