Us (43 page)

We found ourselves in front of
Guernica
. I found the picture very striking, much larger than I expected and moving in a way that I had not associated with more abstract works (goodness, Connie, listen to me!). I would have liked to take in the picture quietly, but I allowed Albie to talk me through the historical context and significance of the work, insights he had clearly garnered from the same Wikipedia entry that I had read at breakfast. I watched him as he spoke. He talked a great deal, pointing out things that were obvious to anyone with even a passing knowledge of art. Wanting to educate me, I suppose. In fact he was rather boring on the subject, but I kept quiet and took comfort in that old saying about fallen apples and their distance from trees.

In a commuter café opposite the Atocha station we had
churros con chocolate
. The overhead lights blazed off the zinc tabletops, greasy discarded napkins littered the floor. It seemed entirely the wrong time of day and year to be eating deep-fried extruded batter dipped in thick hot chocolate, but it was pleasant to be out of the midday sun's atomic heat. Albie assured me that this was what everyone did here and, despite the café being empty, I chose not to contradict him.

‘Where are you staying?'

‘I'm in this hostel.'

‘What's it like?'

He shrugged. ‘It's a hostel.'

‘I've never stayed in a hostel.'

‘What, a seasoned inter-railer like you?'

‘What's it like?'

He laughed. ‘It's grim. Hostile. It's a hostile hostel.'

‘I have a suite in a hotel on the Gran Vía.'

‘A suite? What are you, some oligarch?'

‘I know. It's all very sumptuous.'

‘I hope you're not drinking from the mini-bar, Dad.'

‘Albie, I'm not
mad
. Anyway, the point is there's a spare room that might be more comfortable. A fold-out sofa-bed. While you decide where you want to go next.'

He paused to concentrate on wiping the sugar from his stubble beard. ‘Are you not eating your
churros
?'

I pushed the plate towards him. ‘How do you eat so much and stay so skinny?'

He rolled his bony shoulders and posted another doughnut into his mouth. ‘Nervous energy, I s'pose.'

‘Yes, I know something about that.'

We fetched his things and returned to the hotel late in the afternoon, and I lay on the bed while Albie showered for an absurdly long time. I had not checked my phone for twenty-four hours, and with some dread I turned it on to find a selection of texts from Connie, the impatience spiralling into irritation.

When are you home? Can't wait to see you.

Information please. Are you alive?

Are you back today, tomorrow, ever?

Frantic here. Douglas, please just call.

There was a voicemail, too, from my sister, and I played it back with the phone some distance from my ear.

‘Why aren't you answering your phone? You always answer your phone. Douglas, it's Karen. What the hell is going on? Connie's frantic. She says you're wandering round Europe looking for Albie. She made me swear I wouldn't tell you this but she thinks you've had some sort of nervous breakdown. Or a mid-life crisis. Or both!' Karen sighed and I smiled. ‘Give it up, Douglas. Albie will come home when he wants to. Anyway, call me. Do it, D. That's an order!'

Albie was standing in the doorway, wrapped in the hotel dressing gown, demonstrating that unique ability he has to shower for twenty minutes and still look dirty.

‘Can I borrow your razor to shave?'

‘Please do.'

‘Who was on the phone?'

‘Your Auntie Karen.'

‘I thought I heard shouting.'

‘I'm going to call your mother, Albie. Will you speak to her?'

‘'Course.'

‘Now?'

He hesitated a moment. ‘Okay.'

I dialled immediately and waited. ‘Hello?' said Connie.

‘Hello, darling.'

‘Douglas, you're meant to be home! I was expecting you this morning. Are you at the airport?'

‘No, no, I didn't catch the plane.'

‘You're still in Italy?'

‘Actually, I'm in Madrid.'

‘What are you doing in …?' She paused, gathered herself and continued in the kind of voice used to persuade people down off ledges. ‘Douglas, we agreed it was time to come home …' I tried not to laugh.

‘Connie? Connie, can you hold on for one moment? I've got someone here who wants to speak to you.'

I held the phone out. Albie hesitated then took it from my hand. ‘
Hola
,' he said, and closed the door.

I picked up a Spanish magazine with that exact same title, and stared at pictures of unfamiliar celebrities. I looked through the magazine once, twice. Connie and Albie spoke for so long that my sense of triumph was tempered by a growing anxiety about the cost of the call, and I thought about interrupting the conversation and asking Connie to call us back. But as I looked through the gap in the door to the other room, I noticed that Albie was somewhat red-eyed, which would mean that Connie was crying too and so not in the mood to discuss international call rates. I also noted that, true to form, Albie had managed to use all eight of the hotel towels, large and small, and to distribute them around the room, including one on a lampshade where it might easily burst into flames. Deep breath. Let it pass. Let the burning towels pass. I looked through the magazine a third time, and then a hand poked through the bedroom door and waggled the phone at me.

‘Pick up the towels, please, Egg,' I said, taking the phone.

‘“You treat this place like a hotel!”' said Albie, and closed the door.

I waited a moment then put the phone to my ear. ‘Hello?'

Silence.

‘Hello, Connie?'

I could hear her breathing.

…

…

‘Connie, are you there?'

‘Clever man,' she said, and hung up the phone.

I do not know what Connie said to Albie in that call, but later, much later, as we ordered more drinks in a
taberna
in Madrid's gay district at some ungodly hour in the morning, I tentatively raised the subject of future plans. The bar was dark, wood-panelled, packed with noisy and attractive madrileños drinking – was it sherry? vermouth? – with Serrano ham and anchovies and oily chorizo.

‘This is delicious!' I shouted, wiping grease off my chin. ‘But I'm worried that they don't eat enough vegetables. As a nation, I mean.'

‘I'm leaving tomorrow!' Albie shouted back. ‘For Barcelona! First thing!'

I tried to hide my disappointment. In truth, I had not entirely abandoned the idea of Connie joining us and us all returning to the Grand Tour, perhaps retracing our steps to Florence. Our hotel reservations were still in place, and those tickets for the Uffizi …

‘Oh. Okay. That's a shame. I thought we'd go back to—'

‘You could come with me!'

The room really was very noisy and I asked him to repeat himself. He put his mouth to my ear:

‘D'you want to come with me?'

‘Where?'

‘To Barcelona. Just for a night or two.'

‘I've never been to Barcelona.'

‘No, that's why I asked.'

‘Barcelona?'

‘It's on the sea.'

‘I know where Barcelona is, Egg.'

‘I thought it would be good to swim in the sea.'

‘I'd like that.'

‘You can even-up your tan. Colour in your left side.'

‘Does that still show?'

‘A little.'

I laughed.

‘Okay. Okay! We'll go. We'll swim in the sea.'

–

‘It's nothing to come to Europe,' she said to Isabel; ‘it doesn't seem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stay at home; this is much more important.'

Henry James,
The Portrait of a Lady

It was with some relief that I discovered Barcelona had almost no art galleries at all.

That wasn't quite true, of course. There was a Picasso Museum and a Miró Museum and perhaps I should dip a toe into the world of abstract, non-representational art after so many Old Masters. But there was no single monolithic institution like the Louvre or Prado and so no pressure. Instead Barcelona offered us an opportunity to ‘hang out'. For a day or so. We'd hang out. Just … hang out.

This was the extent of Albie's itinerary, and he had already showed admirable organisational ability in getting us to Madrid's Atocha station in time for the nine thirty train. Quite a sight, the Atocha station, more like a botanical garden hothouse than a conventional transport hub, with a vast jungle of tropical plants filling the central atrium, and I would have appreciated it more had I not been suffering from the most appalling hangover of my life.

Our night in Chueca had turned into what Albie referred to as a ‘big one'. We had stayed in that particular bar for many hours, sitting on high stools, eating wonderful food from the edge of my comfort zone; fishy pastes, squid, chopped octopus and fried hot green peppers, all of it very salty and dehydrating, which caused us to drink even more vermouth – I'd developed quite a taste for vermouth – which in turn allowed us to chat happily with strangers about Spain, the recession and the euro, Angela Merkel and the legacy of Franco, all the usual bar-room chat. Albie, amicably drunk, kept introducing me to strangers as ‘my dad, the famous scientist' and then drifting off elsewhere, but everyone was very friendly and it was refreshing to have actual conversations with people of another nation, rather than just buying tickets or ordering food. Anyway, the evening went very well – so well, in fact, that we stepped from the bar into a hazy dawn, birds singing in the Plaza de Chueca. I associated dawn with anxiety and insomnia, but the partygoers and clubbers we passed on their way home all seemed in high spirits.
¡Buenos Días! ¡Hola!
It was all very open and friendly, and we decided that we liked Madrid, and Chueca in particular, very much. It was only some months later, when Albie announced to Connie and me that he was gay and in a serious relationship with a fellow student, that I realised this night out had been his first heavy hint. I had missed it at the time. I'd just thought he was being terrifically sociable.

Four hours later we were hurrying across the station concourse, nausea rising, the taste of vermouth and paprika stale in my mouth. Albie's constitution being stronger than mine, he took my elbow and helped me onto the train. Once out of Madrid we passed through the same terrain that I had flown across two days before, but I only glimpsed it through fluttering eyelids, sleeping all the way to the coast, waking to find that Albie had already booked a twin room in a large modern hotel right on the beach. ‘I've put it on your card. Hope you don't mind.' I did not mind.

The hotel was one of those up-to-date establishments that have barely changed since 2003 – modular furniture in beige leather, large-screen TVs and a great deal of bamboo.

‘Well. This is all very smart!' I said, taking the left-hand bed.

‘You're sure you don't want your own room?'

‘In case you cramp my style? I think we'll be okay.' I stepped out onto the balcony: a view of the Mediterranean and, across a four-lane road, a beach that seemed as densely packed as any city shopping street.

‘So would you like to get something to eat, Dad? Or shall we go straight to the beach?' He really was being extremely accommodating, unnaturally so, and I put this down to his telephone conversation with Connie the previous day.
Look after your old dad. Be nice to him for a day or so, then send him home
, that kind of thing. He was acting under strict instructions, and it would not last, but for the moment I decided to enjoy this new companionability. We were neither of us being our usual selves, and perhaps this was for the best. I rolled up my trouser legs, grabbed a towel from the bathroom and, in the hotel lobby's gift shop, I purchased some trunks from the limited range, peach-toned Speedos two sizes too small, and we set out for the beach.

I have always found beaches to be uniquely hostile environments. Greasy and gritty, too bright to read, too hot and uncomfortable to sleep, the lack of shade frankly alarming, the lack of decent public toilets, too – unless of course you count the sea, as all too many swimmers do. On a crowded beach, even the bluest ocean takes on the quality of a stranger's bathwater, and this really was a very crowded beach, the concrete and fumes and cranes overhead giving it the quality of an unusually lax building site. Young Barcelona was handsome, muscular, cocky and deeply tanned, and there were bare breasts, too, though both Albie and I made a very big deal about not making this a big deal. ‘It's nothing like Walberswick, is it?' I observed, all nonchalant as a group of barely-dressed girls settled nearby, and we both agreed that it was nothing like Walberswick.

The mutant trainers had been abandoned in Madrid and I was singularly lacking in beachwear, so I untied the laces of my brogues and performed the contortions required to pull on the offensive trunks beneath a towel, a fiddly procedure that recalled tying up the end of a balloon, then lay somewhat self-consciously on the hot sand. For all his enthusiasm for the sea, Albie seemed reluctant to swim, but the afternoon heat was like a salamander grill. I was becoming aware of my scalp's vulnerability and when I could not bear it any longer, I sat, up sprayed my head with sunblock and said, ‘Egg, can I borrow your goggles?'

The water near the shore was cloudy with suntan lotion, greasy as the sink after a Sunday roast and dense with people standing still, bemused, hands on hips, as if trying to recall where they'd put their keys. Fish darted between our shins, but this close to the shore they were drab and unhealthy looking, scavengers feeding off God knows what. I waded out further, and as the coastal shelf deepened, the water cleared and turned a startling blue and I began to enjoy myself once more. I settled Albie's goggles on my eyes and dived, and immediately the last of the previous night's vermouth was washed away. I am a strong and confident swimmer and before long I was pretty much on my own, looking back towards the city, its radio towers and cranes and cable cars, and the hazy hills beyond. How strange to have stumbled, clambered and barged all over Europe and only now to have reached the ocean. From here Barcelona looked fine, handsome and modern, and I looked forward to exploring it with my son. Somewhere in that mass of bodies on the beach he was safe and well. The journey had reached its natural end and in two or three days' time, I'd return to Connie and make my case, whatever that was. Don't worry about it now. I closed my eyes, rolled onto my back and turned my face to the afternoon sun.