The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society (3 page)

The Hotel Alfonso XIII, I portentously explained to my car windscreen, is a somewhat overblown nineteenth-century building in the neo-Mauresque style – as evidenced by the blue tilework  juxtaposed with the fancy bricks. It is also one of the most expensive hotels in Spain, and as I pulled into the forecourt, and stated my purpose, I began to feel sweaty, sticky and distinctly out of place. All the more so
as I walked around to the imposing front entrance, where a group of hoods in shades and dark suits milled around a fleet of black Mercedes with smoked windows, waiting for a meeting of Andalucían captains of industry to end.

There seemed an edginess to this gathering – a visible hint of the murky underworld that supports the super-rich. Shuffling through them I was nearly at the steps when something small and white caught my eye. There on the ground, between two gleaming black Mercedes, lay a tiny white pigeon. Some of the hoods were peering down at the bird, not at all sure what to make of it. One of them fidgeted beneath his sharp suit jacket, perhaps itching to whip out his revolver and take a pot shot.

Somehow the plight of the creature resonated with my own predicament, so I muscled my way nonchalantly in amongst the heavies and demanded to know what was going on.

‘It’s a baby. Fallen off a roof. Can’t fly.’

‘Well… what are you going to do about it?’ I asked, fixing the nearest hood with a stern eye.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘The cats can get it, or Tonio can run it over for us when he pulls out.’ He sniggered nastily.

‘Oh, come on now!’ I expostulated. ‘Have you no hearts? Look at the poor little thing shivering with fear.’

The hood looked nervously at his colleagues and shrugged, nonplussed perhaps as much by hearing a foreigner speak with a strong country accent as by my championing of the bird. I stooped to gather up the terrified creature in my cupped hands.

‘You really don’t want to do that,’ suggested one of the suits, who had crowded around, eager to see what was going on.

‘And why not?’ I proferred pugnaciously, holding up the bird so everyone could see. I felt pretty good – sort of heroic – amid this assembly of gangsters.

‘They got diseases – and fleas. Aerial rats they are, pigeons. And the little babies are just as bad.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said, but looked cautiously down at the tiny creature in my hands, all the same. Sure enough, on each wrist was an army of the most infinitesimal insects imaginable, swarming in their thousands up my wrists, heading for my shirt cuffs and the warmer parts of my body. I suppose they had figured that their previous host’s number was up and now would be a good time to jump ship. I yelped and ran over to the garden, where I dumped the pigeon in a flowerbed. Sure as hell the cats would get it there, but it was, after all, only an aerial rat, and I needed to get something done about these lice, and quick.

I barged through the throng of sniggering hoods and raced up the marble stairs three at a time. The lice were moving faster now. I shot past the top-hatted flunky, spun through the revolving door, and hurtled across the
vestibule
. There, arrayed before me like a wedding line,
exquisitely
groomed and composed and shining with expensive unguents, were my Bostonians. I stopped in mid-flight, raised my seething hands and opened my mouth, but the right words eluded me. With a strangled croak, I continued my headlong dash to the cloakroom.

Once inside I tried to calm myself down by focusing on the task at hand. The first thing was to try and scrub myself down, then make some attempt to dry shirtsleeves that were actually dripping. And finally, I needed to psych myself into the infinitely knowledgeable, professorial persona of Michael Jacobs.

I managed the scrubbing part, at least, and emerged from the cloakroom more or less devoid of insect life. I smiled at the assembled Bostonians, who had turned towards me with a look of surprised but good-natured enquiry. I decided not to offer an explanation of my unorthodox entrance and sopping cuffs. ‘And you must be…?’ – the tall lady at the front of the group asked with a slight tilt of her well-coiffured head.

‘Erm, I’m, erm…’ I had rehearsed this part of the proceedings hundreds of times but instead of answering I just stood there mouthing silently like a dying cod. It was the sight of a tall, curly-haired, bespectacled man striding towards me across the lobby that had provoked this
apparent
identity crisis. He bore an uncanny resemblance to Michael Jacobs.

‘Ah – Chris,’ Michael shouted across the remaining expanse of carpet. ‘This is Chris Stewart, everyone!’ he announced. ‘That’s w-wonderful, you’ve come early. Chris is leading the group this afternoon and I’m going to join you all at dinner at the Torre del Oro – sumptuous fare.’ There were pleasant smiles of approbation all round. ‘Just one word, Chris.’ And he neatly spun me to one side just out of view.

I felt my body sag with relief. ‘You haven’t introduced yourself to anyone yet, have you?’ Michael whispered. ‘Thank God for that! Jeremy threw an absolute f-fit when I told him our plan, but he’s squared it with everyone now, and the great news is that you can guide them around as yourself. They’ve all been most w-wonderfully sympathetic,
and curious – I’ve been handing out that book of your’s to them.’

‘You mean I do the tour of the Giralda and Museo de Bellas Artes as me?’ I asked, amazed that they’d actually want such a dilettante at the helm.

‘Er… no. Jeremy managed a change of schedule. You’re taking them to the carriage museum. You can do carts and horses, can’t you?’ he asked, suddenly anxious again. I could – but perverse as this might sound, I was rather deflated by the idea.

We rejoined the reception. It seemed as if there were Bostonians everywhere: a murmur of cultured American tones filled the room along with the rustle of expensive clothes and the clink of ice in glasses. Throughout that day, the Bostonians were continuing to gather; private jets touched down at Seville’s airport; long limousines sped into the city. 

A luxury bus, the size of a smallish aeroplane, pulled up at twelve to herd us all to the carriage museum. I don’t think I’d ever been in such a plush, well-upholstered
vehicle
before, or one with such ferocious air-conditioning. Cardigans, if not fleeces, were essential rig for travelling round Seville on that summer’s day.

Jeremy joined the group just before we set off. He waited a respectful step or two to one side before springing up, checking surreptitiously that no one had been kidnapped on the walk from the kerb, and sat beside me. A suntanned man with impeccable white hair, he wore a dark blazer, quiet silk tie and smiled with great ease. But you could tell he was nervous.

 ‘Things have to be got right,’ he muttered to me as the bus moved gently into the flow of traffic. ‘Just one call to a lawyer and we’d be done for. Can you imagine if they heard about that stunt Michael was planning to pull!’ And he leaned forward with eyes closed and rubbed his temples. Apparently it helps with the frown lines.

At the museum the idea was to drink fizzy wine, eat tapas, get addressed by local dignitaries and, time
permitting
, look at some of the exhibits before departing again for lunch. ‘All you have to do, Chris,’ explained Jeremy, ‘is keep things pleasant, and if they want to know anything about Spain and the Spanish, you tell them. Okay? And, oh-dear-lord, can you do anything about those shirt cuffs?’

Apart from the cuffs it was an easy enough task. These were people groomed in the well-bred, polished manners of Boston’s patrician class and keeping them pleasant was a bit like asking a group of teenagers to be moody. They even smiled graciously while I paraphrased and embellished captions they had already just translated perfectly
competently
for themselves. To be honest, I couldn’t work up too much enthusiasm for the horse-drawn coaches; it was nice that somebody was keeping them polished, but the truth is that Americans do that sort of thing much better than anybody else.  

Later that evening the luxury bus was again purring outside the hotel, waiting to drive us a half-dozen blocks to our destination for dinner. I suggested we left it where it was and made use of the beautiful night to work up an appetite. Everybody enthusiastically agreed and we set off, in one of the most improbable crocodiles I’ve ever been part of, along the palm-lined river bank of the
Guadalquivir, marvelling at the luminous glow of leaves in the light of the streetlamps. ‘Now this is a worry,’ whispered Jeremy, through the corner of his mouth. ‘If someone so much as loses a heel or steps in donkey shit, we could be in serious trouble, you know!’ But I could tell that even
he
was starting to relax a bit, swinging his blazer over his shoulder.

Michael managed to join us for the tail-end of our dinner in the courtyard of a fabulously furnished sixteenth-century
palacete
or mansion. Just as the waiters were circulating with plates of
petits fours
, he burst in and, hovering around the tables with the trajectory of a bee in a lavender bush, plonked himself on a chair beside me.

‘Ah, Chris,’ he intoned, craning his neck to study the beautifully carved marble fountains and scan the aftermath of the feast, ‘what a sybarite you’ve become!’

It turned out that he had hot-footed it from dinner with the university students. In fact, he had been on a binge of double booking all day: two large meals and as many pre-and post-prandial drinks as could
mathematically
be accommodated. A lesser man would have gone under, but Michael was in his element. Indeed, as the Bostonians were seen safely back to the Alfonso XIII, he clearly felt the night was young. ‘W-what we need, Chris, is to w-wind d-down a bit. An extra glass or two would do us good.’

Michael knew Seville well: he’d lived for years in the city and had many friends. We drank with most of them that night, in the sort of bars you’d never normally find – let alone go into. Returning to the Alfonso XIII at five in the morning, I stood in the bathroom, swaying slightly and trying to focus on the haggard face staring back at me
through rheumy eyes. It looked sorely in need of some plain country living.