The Seville Communion (22 page)

Macarena Bruner took another sip of wine, slowly. "I can think of several reasons," she said at last, putting down her glass. "You're extremely courteous, for one. Nothing like some priests with their unctuous manners ... In you, courtesy seems to be a way of keeping people at a distance." She glanced quickly at his face - his mouth perhaps - and then at his hands on the table. "You're also very quiet. You don't chatter people into a daze. In that respect you remind me of Don Priamo ..." As the waiter cleared away the plates, she smiled at Quart. "And then your hair's grey and very short, like a soldier's, like one of my favourite characters: Sir Marhalt, the quiet knight in Steinbeck's
Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights
.
When I read it as a young girl, I fell madly in love with Marhalt. Are those enough reasons? And anyway, as Gris said, for a priest you certainly know how to wear your clothes. You're the most interesting priest I've ever seen, if that's any use to you."

"Not much use, in my line of work."

Macarena nodded, approving of his tranquil answer. "You also remind me of the chaplain at my convent school," she went on. "You could tell for days beforehand that he was coming to say Mass, because all the nuns were in a flutter. In the end he ran off with one of them, the plumpest, who used to teach us chemistry. Did you know that nuns sometimes fall for priests? That's what happened to Gris. She was the head of a college in Santa Barbara, California, and one day she discovered to her horror that she was in love with the bishop of her diocese. He was due to visit the college, and there she was in front of the mirror, plucking her eyebrows and debating about eyeshadow . . . What do you think of that?"

She looked to see Quart's reaction, but he remained impassive. If she was trying to shock him, she hadn't even come close. She would have been surprised to know how many loves of priests and nuns had been distorted by the IEA.

"So what did she do?" he asked.

Macarena made a sweeping gesture in the air and her bracelet glinted as it slid up her arm. At nearby tables, eyes were following her every move. "Well, she broke the mirror and with a piece of glass cut a vein. Then she went to see her mother superior and asked for a period of freedom to reflect. That was a few years ago."

The head waiter was standing by her side, expressionless, as if he hadn't heard a word. He hoped everything was to their satisfaction, and what would madam like for dinner? She ordered only a salad, and Quart didn't have a main course either, and they both declined the dessert that they were offered on the house, as the management was sorry that her ladyship and the reverend father had so little appetite. They decided to go on with the wine while the)' waited for their coffee.

"Have you known Sister Marsala long?" Quart asked.

"That sounds so strange. Sister Marsala . . . I've never thought of her like that."

She had almost finished her wine. Quart took the bottle and poured her another glass. His own was barely touched.

"Gris is older than I am," she said. "We bumped into each other in Seville several times a few years back. She came here quite often with her American students on summer courses in fine art ... I met her when they came to do practice restoration on the summer dining room in my house. I introduced her to Father Ferro and got her accepted on the church restoration project, when relations with the archbishop were still cordial."

"Why are you so interested in that church?"

She looked at him as if he'd asked a strange question. Her family had built it. Her ancestors were buried there.

"Your husband doesn't seem to care much about it."

"Of course he doesn't. Pencho has his mind on other things."

The candlelight made the wine glow red as she lifted her glass to her lips. This time she took a long swallow, and Quart felt obliged to drink a little of his.

"And is it true," he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin, "that you no longer live together although you're still married?"

She blinked. She didn't seem to have expected two questions in a row about her marriage that evening. There was amusement in her eyes. "Yes," she said. "We no longer live together. And yet neither of us has asked for a divorce, or a separation, or anything. Maybe he hopes to get me back. By marrying me, to everyone's applause, he has ensured himself a place in society."

Quart glanced round at the people at the neighbouring tables and then leaned towards her a little. "I'm sorry," he said. "Who do you mean by everyone?"

"Haven't you met my godfather? Don Octavio Machuca was a friend of my father, and he's particularly fond of my mother and me. As he says, I'm the daughter he never had. He wanted my future to be secure, so he encouraged my marriage to the brightest young talent at the Cartujano Bank - who's destined to be his successor now that he's about to retire."

"Is that why you got married? For security?"

Macarena's hair slid forward over her face, and she brushed it back. She was assessing, trying to work out how interested he really was in her.

"Well, Pencho is an attractive man. And he has a very good brain, as they say. And a virtue: he's brave. He's one of the few men I've met who's prepared to risk everything, cither for a dream or an ambition. In the case of my husband - ex-husband, or whatever you want to call him - it's ambition." She smiled slightly. "I suppose I was even in love with him when we got married."

"So what happened?"

"Nothing, really. I kept my side of the bargain, he kept his. But he made a mistake. Or several. He should have left our church alone."

"Your church?"

"Mine. Father Ferro's. The duchess's. The church of the people who attend Mass there every day."

Quart laughed. "Do you always refer to your mother as the duchess?"

"When I'm talking to other people about her, yes." She smiled, with a tenderness now that Quart hadn't seen in her before. "She likes it. She also likes geraniums, Mozart, old-fashioned priests, and Coca-Cola. Rather unusual, don't you think, for a woman of seventy who sleeps in her pearl necklace once a week and still insists on calling her chauffeur a coachman? You haven't met her yet? Come and have coffee with us tomorrow afternoon, if you like. Don Priamo visits us every afternoon to recite the rosary."

"I doubt that Father Ferro will want to see me. He doesn't like me much."

"I'll sort it out. Or my mother will. She and Don Priamo get on very well. Maybe it would be a good opportunity for you and him to have a talk, man to man . . . Does one say 'man to man' when talking about priests?"

Quart was thinking of something else, "As for your husband . . ." "You do ask a lot of questions. I suppose that's the reason you're here."

She seemed sorry that that was the reason. She was looking at his hands again, just as she had when they first met in the hotel lobby. Embarrassed, he'd removed them from the table a couple

of times. At last he decided to keep them on the tablecloth.

"What do you want to know about Pencho?" she asked. "That he was wrong to think he could buy me? That the church was why I declared war on him? That he can sometimes be an absolute bastard?"

She spoke matter- of-factly. The people at a nearby table were leaving and a few of them greeted her. They all stared at Quart, particularly the women. Blonde and tanned, the women had the air of upper-class Andalusians who hadn't known a day's hardship in their lives. Macarena responded with a nod and a smile. Quart watched her closely.

"Why don't you ask for a divorce?" he asked. "Because I'm Catholic."

He couldn't tell if she was serious or not. They said nothing for a moment, and he settled back in his chair, still watching her. In the candlelight, her skin was dark in contrast to her ivory necklace and silk shirt. Her large dark eyes looked back into his. He realised then that his soul was in peril. Had it been a share on the stockmarket, its value would have plunged.

He opened his mouth and spoke, to fill the silence. Something appropriate, no doubt, but five seconds later he forgot what it had been. Now she was saying something, and Quart thought of Spada. Prayer and cold showers, he had said to the Mastiff on the steps of the Piazza di Spagna.

"There are things I'd like to explain to you," she said. "But I don't know how ..." She stared past him. He nodded, not quite sure why. The main thing was to pay attention to her words again. "In life, you pay very dearly for certain luxuries, and now it's Pencho's turn to pay. He's the type who asks for the bill without flinching, rapping on the bar with his knuckles for service. He's so macho," she said sardonically. "But he's having a hard time now. He may not show it, but I know, and he knows that I know. Seville is like a village; we love gossip. Every whisper, every smile behind his back is a blow to his pride." She gestured round the restaurant. "Imagine what they'll say now they know I'm having dinner with you."

"Was that what you wanted?" Quart was in control of himself again. "To show me off like a trophy?"

She looked at him wearily, knowingly. "Perhaps," she said. "Women are so much more complicated. Men are so straightforward in their lies, so childish in their contradictions ... So consistent in their vileness." The head waiter brought the coffee; with milk for her, black for him. Macarena added one lump of sugar and smiled thoughtfully. "You can be sure that Pencho will know all about this tomorrow morning. God, some things have to be paid for very slowly." She sipped her coffee and looked at Quart. "Maybe I shouldn't have said 'God'. It sounded like an oath. Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain after all."

Quart placed his spoon carefully on his saucer. "I sometimes do it too," he said.

"It's strange." She leaned forward on her elbows, and her silk shirt brushed the edge of the table. Quart could sense what was inside: heavy, brown, soft. He needed more than a cold shower. "I've known Don Priamo for ten years, since he first came to the parish, but I can't imagine a priest's life from the inside. I'd never thought about it until now, looking at you." She gazed again at his hands and then up at his dog collar. "How do priests manage with the three vows?"

If ever there had been an untimely question. He stared at his wine glass and summoned all his composure. "Each of us gets by as he can," he replied. "Some think of it as negotiated obedience, shared chastity, and liquid poverty." He raised his glass as if to make a toast, but put it down untouched and sipped his coffee instead. Macarena laughed. Her laugh was so open and contagious that Quart almost laughed too.

"And you?" she asked, still smiling. "Do you observe your vows?"

"I tend to." He put down his cup, wiped his mouth, folded his napkin carefully and placed it on the table. "I make sure I think through the implications, but I always follow the rules. Some things don't function without obedience, and the firm I work for is one of them."

"Do you mean Don Priamo?"

Quart arched his eyebrows with calculated indifference. He hadn't been alluding to anyone in particular, he said. But yes, now that she mentioned it, Father Ferro wasn't exactly an exemplary priest. He did his own thing, to put it charitably. Deadly sin number one.

"You don't know anything about his life, so you can't judge him."

"I'm not judging. I just want to understand."

"No you don't," she insisted. "For most of his life he was the parish priest in a tiny village up in the Pyrenees. It was cut off by snow for weeks at a time, and sometimes he had to trudge eight or ten kilometres to give a dying man extreme unction. His parishioners were all old and died off one by one. He buried them with his own hands, until there was nobody left. The experience gave him a certain view on life and death, and on the role you priests have in the world. To him, this church is terribly important. He believes it's needed, and that every church closed or lost is a piece of heaven that- disappears. Nobody takes any notice, but instead of giving in, he fights. He says he lost enough battles up there, in the mountains."

That was all very well, said Quart. Very moving. He'd even seen a couple of films like that. But Father Ferro was still subject to Church discipline. We priests, he said, can't go through life proclaiming independent republics where we please. Not with things as they are now.

She shook her head. "You don't know him well enough."

"He won't let me get to know him."

"We'll fix that tomorrow. I promise." She pointed. "You obviously meant what you said about liquid poverty. You've barely touched your wine. But you don't look so poor in other respects. You dress well. I know expensive clothes when I see them, even on a priest."

"It's because of my work. I have to deal with people. And have dinner with attractive duchesses in Seville." They looked into each other's eyes, and neither of them smiled this time. "This is my uniform."

There was a brief silence.

"Do you have a cassock?" she asked.

"Of course. But I don't often wear it."

The waiter brought the bill. Macarcna wouldn't let Quart pay. She invited him, she said firmly. So he just watched while she took out a gold American Express card. She always let her husband pay the bills, she said mischievously when the waiter had gone. It worked out cheaper than alimony.

"We haven't discussed the last of your three vows," she said then. "Do you also practise shared celibacy?"

"I'm afraid I'm celibate, period."

She nodded slowly and looked round the restaurant before turning to him again. She stared at him, assessing him. "Don't tell me you've never been with a woman."

There are some questions that can't be answered at eleven at night in a restaurant in Seville, by candlelight. But she didn't seem to expect an answer. She carefully took a pack of cigarettes from her bag, put one in her mouth, and then, with a brazenness both calculated and natural, she took a plastic lighter from beneath her bra strap. Quart watched her light the cigarette, forcing himself to think of nothing. Only later did he allow himself to wonder what the hell he was getting himself into.