Duende

‘YOU’RE MAD.’

It was the first time I had seen Eduardo worried.

‘And you tell me she’s married?’

I looked down. He laughed and raised his hands to the sky.

‘I told you, she’s trying to get a divorce, but it’s not so easy with the kids and the business.’

‘The business?’

I sighed. ‘Vicente. He’s my boss. At the language school.’

Eduardo grimaced, took a drag on his cigarette, then slowly and deliberately leaned towards me.

‘You may think you’re becoming a flamenco. But be careful, son. Be very careful.’

It was getting hotter, and my clothes began to stick to my skin in the salty, humid air.

‘You’ll know when it gets over thirty-seven degrees.’ The pied noir running the photographic shop beneath my flat was fanning himself by the door with an old copy of National Geographic. ‘When you blow on the tip of your nose it feels cool. That’s when your body temperature is less than it is outside.’

I felt suffocated, both by the weather and the situation with Lola. It was impossible to be lovers when she feared all the eyes of the coast were trained on us. Our argument at her country bolthole had been forgotten, but we would never be able to go back there again. It felt jinxed. And so I spent most of my time thinking of opportunities and excuses, or places where we could be together and alone, with no fear of discovery. The school and the bar, the places we would normally see each other, were dangerous, but we improvised by passing notes to each other whenever we could – in between lessons, or if I nipped out to the office in the middle of a class, when she was most likely to be on her own. Once she came to my flat, but it didn’t work – too many fears about being seen – and we ended up in another shouting match. ‘Never again!’ she cried up the stairwell as she raced away. The tension was part of what fuelled our passion, but at times it seemed to strangle us.

I left the newspaper one exceptionally humid day after the air conditioning had failed. Heading through the orange and white tower blocks of Benidorm for the main road back down to Alicante, I could see the coastal mountains half-hidden above the haze. They looked so far away. I had grown accustomed to driving up and down the coast road and it was easy to forget this green and luscious world was, in fact, close at hand. You only had to lift your eyes.

I turned off and sped up the hill. It would be cooler up there, I thought. And less humid, with any luck. After only a few minutes, the change was dramatic. The light became sharper, and as the road wound round, I looked down with a sense of relief at the sea-front and the cloud of dense humid air hanging over it. Pushing on, I drove along olive-lined roads, through La Nucia, where the English had introduced car-boot sales to the Spanish, and through Polop, famous for its spring water. Then narrower roads as I went higher and higher. Guadalest, an ancient Arab castle, appeared ahead, a white turret sitting above a bright blue lake, set like a lapis lazuli in the hillside. There were some tourist buses that made it this far – the castle was a popular day-trip destination for anyone tired of beach life – but I was interested in what lay beyond Guadalest, the unchartered territory further up the valley. That was where I wanted to be: beyond the reach of the coastline.

I started to plan. I would find a village somewhere off the road, walk into the bar, have a brandy, ask the barman if there was anywhere to rent in the area, he would say yes, I would then see it and take it on the spot. A silent country retreat, far away from the city and the coast. Inland, where nobody would recognise us.

I skirted round the elephantine coaches lined up in rows on the outskirts of Guadalest and passed higher up into the valley. Pro-Catalán graffiti was daubed on the low walls at the side of the road: ‘Long live Cataluña’, ‘Death to Spanish imperialism’. The air blowing through the window was cool, lighter and cleaner. My spirits lifted. It was just a question of where to stop, which village to go to. I drove on, and the further and higher I went, the freer I felt.

A sign at the side of the road, near the top of the valley, caught my eye: ‘Vistacastell 2 km’. Inwardly, I knew this was it. The road turned off, down the slope, passing meadows and tall arching trees, over a narrow bridge across a ravine, and through more olive groves and lemon orchards, down into the village. Rows of tightly packed white houses, some half-built; a mangy dog. It looked deserted.

The main square was a small space with coloured flagstones, an old cast-iron water pump, and more dogs lying panting in the shade. Beyond lay small farmhouses, streams and copses, and in the distance the white Arab castle, framed by the deep, verdant valley. A bar stood on one side of the square. I parked, crossed over, and went in. It was large and empty, with a billiard table, plastic tablecloths and tacky maritime souvenirs hanging on the walls. I ordered a brandy from a blond, middle-aged barman. As he handed it over, I leaned across and asked were there any places to rent in the village? He looked doubtful.

‘Espera,’ he said. ‘I think . . . María!’ he shouted to the kitchen. ‘Doesn’t my mother have some rooms she wants to let?’

She did. I was taken down the road to meet Amparo, an elderly woman with a grey moustache, a grumpy war-wounded husband, and a large house – the top floor of which was now empty. She showed me around.

‘It’s much too big for the two of us.’ She had a thick Valencian accent. ‘Don’t open that cupboard. That’s where my husband keeps his fishing rods. Of course, he hasn’t gone fishing for years.’

The flat was dusty, and the walls were papered with dull grey and orange stripes like the brothels in cowboy films. But it was light and cheap and, most importantly of all, from the sitting-room there was a magnificent vista of the valley, the castle and the shining blue lake.

‘I’ll take it,’ I said.

Vicente’s second passion in life, after the English, was hunting.

‘Fox-hunting. Now there’s a noble sport.’

I was watching a group of twelve-year-olds file out of my class after another evening spent trying to make them concentrate on the lesson rather than playing on pocket computer games. It was time to go home. ‘You must have done that sort of thing all the time at Oxford?’

I looked at him in amazement. It was a difficult one, this: whether to burst a romantic notion or let it stand. Like being asked by your seven-year-old niece if Father Christmas really does exist. The shatterer of dreams is not an easy role to play.

‘Mine was a very academic college,’ I told him. ‘No opportunities for much outside books.’

‘Have you read Sassoon? Splendid, splendid book. Those were gentlemen, real gentlemen. Not like today. So few left.’

The reference to Sassoon was bizarre, but it felt like a cue. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘In Spain we are somewhat under-represented in certain, er, areas. Gentlemen, for example.’

‘What about the Spanish caballero?’

Vicente suppressed a sneer. ‘It is true, there are similarities between the English gentleman and the Spanish caballero, but there is a fundamental difference.’ He paused, as though to give weight to what he was about to say.

‘Remember that for eight hundred years there were Moors here.’ He drew out the word ‘Moors’ in disgust. ‘Africa, you will recall the saying, begins at the Pyrenees. A caballero can be a great man, but he can never, never, be pure.’ He looked around the corridor to see if anyone was listening, then lowered his voice.

‘We are tainted.’

Pedro had once told me that the concept of the ‘gentleman’ originated with the Arabs. It seemed unwise to bring this up now, though. There was a worrying, fanatical glare in Vicente’s eyes. His feelings on the subject were obviously strong.

The lights went out around us as the other teachers shut up for the night. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Come for a drink some time. I would like you to meet some of my hunting colleagues. They’re a fine bunch of fellows.’

The man was a snob and a bigot and I was having an affair with his wife, but I nodded reluctantly. To have refused Vicente’s invitation would have been unwise, I thought. It was the best way to dissimulate.

For all his Anglophilia, however, Vicente was very Spanish. The ritual of meeting in the evening and chatting easily with friends over glasses of fino and morsels of ham and olives, standing at the bar in fine, bright clothes – this was all typical of a man of his class and age. Yet ‘Englishness’ was a label with which he had decided to clothe himself, and the accoutrements went everywhere with him like well-worn props: a pipe, a tweed jacket if it was chilly, and, as ever, the polished brogues.

If the effect was to make him stand out amongst his friends, it worked. They were, on the whole, an unremarkable lot: three overweight, middle-aged men, all character lost in their comfortable, sunny lives, where the most intense experience came from hangovers after a heavy night.

We stood around for what seemed like hours, drinking, eating and chatting – mostly about hunting. We were out of the main season now, so there was plenty of reminiscing to do, and talk of next autumn. Then a question about weaponry set Vicente off on what appeared to be one of his favourite subjects.

‘The best guns are English, of course: Holland & Holland for example, or a Purdey – bespoke. Some prefer American models, like Remingtons, but personally I don’t rate them,’ he said.

‘Are you brainwashing him already, Vicente?’ A short, tubby man with handlebar whiskers interrupted with a smile. He turned to me. ‘Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know anything about guns. Only one thing interests him. Eh?!’ He turned to Vicente. ‘El Killer?’ The last word was uttered in a strong Spanish accent: ‘keelerr’.

‘El Killer?’ I asked. More laughter.

‘Only one thing interests El Killer. Killing. Doesn’t care what he’s using. Just blow the fucker away. Blam! Blam!’ The fat man mimicked the action of shooting a stationary target. ‘He’s got a lust for blood, this one.’

Vicente looked uncomfortable.

‘But surely that’s what you all do when you go hunting. It’s all about killing,’ I said in an attempt to defuse the tension.

The fat man grunted. ‘For me, it’s a sport. But this one – you put a gun in his hand and he turns into a madman.’ He tapped his forefinger against his temple. ‘Blood. That’s all he wants: blood.’ He leaned over to Vicente and lightly slapped his cheek, grinning. ‘Eh! El Killer! Wake up! You’re pissed.’ The hardened look fell and Vicente broke into a smile. Everyone laughed, but I realised I had seen a side of the man I would rather not have known. My hands were sweating, my pulse racing.

‘You must come out with us again,’ Vicente said, fully clad in pseudo-English sophistication and still drunk. I shuddered. The last thing I wanted was a repeat of this evening.

‘Next Friday?’ I said.

‘See you then, dear chap.’

I took Lola to Vistacastell for the first time. She walked around on a tour of inspection in her proud, haughty way – nostrils flared, head poised – as I prepared some lunch.

‘What do you think?’ I asked.

‘The decoration is horrendous. But it will do – for a guiri.’

She walked over to a chair by the window looking down onto the valley, and sat quietly with her back to me. It was a form of approval.

When I returned a few moments later with some food, I found her sitting in the same spot, gazing out, her clothes in a pile on the floor beside her. I kissed her freshly exposed shoulder as I put the plates on the table.

‘This view leaves me naked,’ she said dramatically. ‘It touches me here.’ She clasped a fist to her breast and stared beyond me at the valley. ‘How can I cover myself in the face of such beauty?’

I shrugged.

‘Besides,’ she said, turning to me, humour now lighting up her face, ‘it’s more fun eating like this.’

We laughed our way through the afternoon as the colours outside slowly shifted from the sharp, white definition of midday to the gentler, calmer yellow of afternoon, and then the final rich orange of sunset.

It was time to leave. We crept down the stairs, but I already knew Amparo, the landlady, would be there. Another woman in her house! She had to find out what was going on.

She was at the door, pretending to sweep. This time Lola had taken off her ring.

‘Was that flamenco I heard you playing?’

‘Yes.’ Doubtless she had heard a lot more besides. Lola turned away.

‘Do you play?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And she dances,’ pointing behind me.

‘Good. Then you will perform at our fiesta in a fortnight’s time. We need some more music, different music.’

Her little Chinese dog was sniffing inquisitively at my ankles, as if looking for a new territory marker. I shuffled nervously.

‘Every year the same folksong from Pere.’ She waved her broom at me menacingly. ‘No! This year I want flamenco,’ she said harshly. Then softening, ‘It will be nice to have some foreign stuff.’

‘Yes of course we will play.’ I could hardly refuse. The broom was now across the doorway and we were trapped.

‘Good,’ she said, letting us pass. We stepped out into the light and said goodbye. ‘A fortnight, eh!’ she called to us as we headed up the square. I squeezed Lola’s stiff, reluctant hand. I expected a head-on assault as soon as we got in the car, but instead there was silence and resignation.

‘We’ll be seen. I know we’ll be seen,’ was all she said.

‘Don’t worry. We’re miles from anywhere. The only people here are peasants and donkeys.’

‘You don’t understand.’

Juan was delighted when I told him about the fiesta.

‘Hombre, your first concert. Wonderful!’

He didn’t ask for any details, assumed I would be accompanying a dancer, and began teaching me the essentials.

‘This is not like playing on your own, boy. Completely different. Compás is everything. Forget the fancy falsetas and just stick to the rhythm.’

We went over an Alegría and a Tango. ‘These are always popular. Everyone always asks for them.’ He seemed to know exactly what I was up to. ‘But don’t do Soleá. People around here don’t like it, can’t understand it. Besides, it’s not a party kind of thing.’

I nodded. He was more worked up about it than I was. I watched him now as he explained it all to me, sweat soaking through the armpits of his red shirt. One day, I thought, he’ll wear red trousers and shoes as well, and then I’ll know he’s really lost it.

‘Accompanying is all about following the dancer: giving her the rhythm, but also covering up for her mistakes,’ he said. ‘Remember, if she messes up, it’s your fault. Now listen, there’s a whole other world you’ve got to learn about here. We’ll start with the llamada and go on from there.’

I was nervous. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. How on earth had I persuaded myself that I was good enough to play on stage? The whole thing was ludicrous. Jasón ‘El Inglés’ – the greatest flamenco disaster in history. I felt like a man with a note ordering his own execution.

‘You have to love the dancer, to feel her, intuit her. One flamenco on their own can rarely produce duende. But when there are others, if it clicks . . . Jo!’

But I was too busy worrying.

‘Hey, concentrate!’ Juan snapped me out of my daydream. ‘Listen, you’ll have to practise a lot between now and then. But don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Just stick to the simple things.’

My hands were shaking when I left.

I was with Vicente and the hunters, back in the barrio; the throbbing waves of dance music spilling out onto the narrow paved alleyways, the stale smells, and the little posters stuck up on crumbling walls pleading for the noise to be kept down.

The local government was trying to clean up the area – grants were being offered to restore the old buildings and paint them in bright, sensual colours, but it wouldn’t take long for all the life to be beaten out of them if Alicantinos merely treated the area as their weekend playground.

We went to another new bar. More of the same: ultraviolet lights, very loud music, mirrors on the walls. Only this one was narrower and smaller. Most of the people around us were teenagers or people in their twenties, but there were plenty of small groups of middle-aged men and women – like Vicente’s – intent on getting their weekend fix of fun. For the post-Franco generation, the need to party knew no age limits.

Some sort of conversation was taking place, but I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying. The fat one with the moustache was lifting his hands into the air and waving, pretending to shoot a flying bird. When people sharing a common obsession get together, you can hardly expect them to talk about anything else, I thought.

I took the chance to watch Vicente closely, trying to work out what it was that Lola had seen in him. There was something heavy and brutish about him behind the elegant English façade he tried to cultivate. And what if he knew about us? I pushed the thought aside, as the adrenaline kicked in.

The heavy thud of the loud, incessant music was beginning to have an effect. I stood drinking, rocking rhythmically with the beat. There was nothing else to do.

Many large gin and tonics later, we tripped our way into the square outside, now filled with people of all ages enjoying the regular street party that was the weekend here. Joking, laughing, back-slapping, we edged through the throng to an outdoor bar where the air was clearer. In the semi-drunken haze, Vicente’s pipe had seemed to fill the room.

We settled down in our newly claimed piece of territory and began drinking again under a ceiling of matted reeds. The other three were engrossed in another hunting tale, while Vicente and I stood to one side.

‘You’re friendly with my wife,’ he said.

I had never felt so cold, as if with those simple words he had drained my blood away.

‘Yes,’ I said, just managing to force the word out without stammering. ‘We both like flamenco.’ There, that was it. Just a friendship based on a common interest. Like this lot and hunting.

Vicente had an incredulous look on his face, thick eyebrows meeting above his deep-set eyes. I began looking for a way to change the subject. He leaned forward. I tried to step back, but there was no room. His face was now almost touching mine.

‘But you’re English,’ he blurted out. ‘How can you like flamenco? Flamenco is for Gypsies and criminals. It’s shit.’

He was angry, spittle forming at the side of his mouth, but all at once I realised that he still knew nothing.

‘Flamenco is about passion,’ I said, parroting my guitar teacher.

‘Passion?’ he said. ‘Drugs, you mean. They’re injecting themselves all the time. Drug addicts. Look at that Camarón fellow. Why do you think he died so young?’

I looked away.

‘For heaven’s sake, Jason. You’re from Oxford, why on earth do you like that . . . rubbish?’

I said nothing. It was clear his anger was not directed at me. And it seemed there was more to come.

‘I don’t know why Lola insists on seeing these people. I don’t like her going. I’ve told her a hundred times. It’s affecting her work.’

I screwed up my eyes. I knew this to be untrue. Lola was just as hard, humourless and efficient as ever.

‘We have nothing in common,’ Vicente continued. ‘She has no interest in hunting. Or the English. I only gave her that job because she wanted the money.’ He choked for a moment, then recovered. ‘Her mother was half-Moor.’

He surprised me. There was little contact between ordinary Spaniards and the Arab world even now, let alone at the time her mother was born. The absurdity of Lola and Vicente’s marriage was even clearer now: Vicente, the racist Anglophile, married to a truly ‘tainted’ flamenca.

‘I tell you, if it weren’t for the kids . . .’ he snorted. ‘I only married her because she got pregnant.’ Then quietly under his breath, ‘The whore.’

He looked up. ‘Still, it saved her from becoming a complete Gypsy, I suppose.’ He took another mouthful of his whisky and Coke – there were some things he just didn’t get right.

‘She begged me, absolutely begged me to marry her. And of course once the babies came, the dancing stopped. For good, I thought.’ He leaned forward and placed his mouth close to my ear. ‘You know, I think it’s only the physical side that keeps us together.’

The other hunters called us over. Vicente turned away sharply as though suddenly aware of what he had just told me.

Pushing through the crowds, we headed up the hill to the back of the barrio, where the ordinary party-goers still wouldn’t go. The streets narrowed even more here; the graffiti thicker on the walls. I lagged behind a little. The man revolted me and I wanted nothing more than to slip away and head home. But I was trapped by a desire not to draw attention to myself.

Vicente took me by the elbow. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘We’re going to see some friends.’ The others laughed.

‘Friends?’ I was doubtful.

‘Yes. Some very dear . . . and close friends.’ The others laughed again.

‘No, come on, seriously.’

‘I am serious. Very serious. We’re going to introduce you to some of the loveliest ladies in the province. You’ll see.’

I stopped. ‘Putas?’

‘We prefer not to use that word. Come on!’ He grabbed my arm again, but I pulled it free.

‘Listen, Vicente. I can’t.’

‘What? Why not? Relax, my dear fellow. They’re really quite lovely.’

I had to do something. It wasn’t the idea of going with the prostitutes so much as who I was with.

‘No, Vicente.’ He looked at me with complete incomprehension.

‘It’s just not English, you know,’ I said. His face fell. ‘An Englishman thinks he should never have to pay for it.’

For a moment, I almost felt sorry for him as he stood there deflated. But it had worked.

‘I see,’ he said. The others were calling for us to catch up. ‘I have to go. Perhaps . . . lunch next weekend? I have some things at home I would like to show you.’

Reluctantly I agreed, and he turned and walked away into the blackness.

I met Eduardo at a café for breakfast. We sat outside under striped umbrellas, sipping glasses of peach juice dripping with humidity, the harsh taste of black tobacco still on my tongue.

‘Well, how’s it going with the fire-woman?’

‘I spent last night in the barrio with her husband and his hunting mates.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ He glared at me through his sunglasses.

‘And I learned a couple of things too. She’s a quarter Moor, he goes with prostitutes, and despite the problems they’re having, they still enjoy the “physical side”, as her husband put it.’ I was surprised at my own jealousy.

‘Sounds like a pretty ordinary marriage to me – apart from the Moorish bit,’ he said. ‘But watch it, son. You’re playing with fire. He might not know anything now, but one slip and you won’t have any fingers left to play the guitar with. Once he knows where they’ve been. You understand me?’

‘Lola and I are playing at a fiesta in Vistacastell next weekend.’

‘I don’t know why I bother.’

‘Look, it’ll be fine. It’s miles away from anywhere. Nobody will see us.’

‘I hope not, son. I hope for your sake it fucking snows and no-one shows up.’

‘I’m going to accompany her.’

‘Ah, well! If it’s accompanying you’re interested in, you must listen to Tomatito – the Little Tomato.’

I knew the only way to get him off my back was to start talking shop.

‘He’s the man to listen to. The king of the Gypsy guitarists. Now, the way he played with Camarón was the last word in accompanying. I know it’s not dancing, but the principle is the same: drawing out the best performance from the other person with the minimum effort. The guitar is a vital component, but must never distract attention from . . .’

On and on he went. But I’d stopped listening. I was thinking about Lola – and Vicente.

Back at the Costa Gazette, Barry was in a good mood. He’d recently become fascinated with a young girl whose father wrote a column in the Sunday Telegraph – which reached us on Mondays.

‘She’s gorgeous. Look at the tits on that!’

He showed me a picture of a pouting Londoner with luxuriant dark hair. He’d written to her asking her to do a regular piece for the paper. Curious, she had written back, asking him to send some details of the paper’s rates.

‘Well, we can offer her the top amount – twenty pesetas a line. What do you reckon?’

‘I think she’ll laugh in your face.’

‘What the hell do you know anyway. Look,’ he said, turning to the impassive, grinning Jonathan, ‘tell you what. We’ll put all the money in an account for her here, so when she comes on holiday, she’ll have a tidy lump sum waiting for her. Spending money, like.’

He vanished into his grotto, triumphant.

‘Dickhead,’ Jonathan mouthed to me as the door slammed.

‘Oh, listen, Jason.’ Barry’s face was back again. ‘There’s some fiesta going on somewhere in the mountains this weekend. Some English geezer’s going to be playing flamenco, apparently. I want you to cover it. Jonathan will tell you where.’

Jonathan gave me the details. I kept a stunned silence.

I found Lola and Vicente’s flat in the suburbs of the city – a large soulless area full of tower blocks and condominiums with swimming pools and tennis courts for the residents; the fruits of the new, prosperous, post-Fascist Spain. I parked and passed through the metal gate at the entrance into what seemed like a fortified camp. The concrete communal area was deserted in the all-embracing midday heat. Even the pool was empty.

I reached the door, found the right bell and placed my finger over it. For a moment my hand refused to obey. As the days passed, I had grown reluctant to keep this particular appointment. Lola had frozen on me when she found out about the invitation and had threatened to disappear for the weekend and abandon the concert. I had pleaded and she agreed to stay. Besides, Vicente would be leaving that evening for a conference in Valencia. We would be able to meet for the fiesta, and perhaps another day beyond that. But a nagging feeling remained.

I rang the bell and a voice came over the intercom. It was Vicente.

‘Come on up, dear fellow. You’ll find us on the fifth floor.’

He was at the door to greet me, all smiles and a firm handshake. I went inside.

The flat was dark – heavy furniture, browns, greens, mahogany chairs like thrones. The walls were lined with smart, untouched, leather-bound books bought from a book club, or by the yard from a decorator.

‘Can I offer you a beer, old chap?’

I watched Lola coming and going from the kitchen, head erect, hair tied back with a clip, tight on her scalp. Yet as she passed backwards and forwards, never looking me in the eye, I realised there was something different about her. I was used to two personalities – the school administrator and the flamenca – yet here was a third, one I had no idea existed before this moment. I saw that here, in this house, with Vicente, she was a wife, playing an essential role in the fantasy life they had created. The hauteur was gone, the fire extinguished. The sulking pride I had expected her to display failed to show. Everything about the way she ate, sat listening to Vicente, removed the dishes, brought out more food, bore witness to her acquiescence and self-negation. A ghost. There was no love here. Wife, yes – even physically, as my jealousy reminded me – but not lover.

‘I’ve made some paella. Would you like some?’ I had never known her to be so polite.

‘Mmm. Payela,’ Vicente said, mimicking the English pronunciation. She tittered.

I scanned the room for signs of her presence, of the woman I thought I knew. Only books and old maps of English counties. This was Vicente’s world. Then something caught my attention. At the bottom of the bookcase stood a plastic doll in a bright red and black dress with turquoise sequins, black hair held tightly back on the head with a clip. It was a flamenco dancer – the tacky kind sold in souvenir shops. I turned away.

‘My daughter is just like me,’ Vicente said. ‘Loves English. She’s reading English Lit. at Barcelona University. Top of her class.’

I congratulated him, his pride quite filling the room.

‘While my son, ah, he’s more like his mother. Wants to join the army next year.’ He leaned towards me. ‘All that aggression,’ he said softly. Lola was in the kitchen.

‘I have a contact – an enchufe – in the Ministry of Defence in Madrid. We’ll make sure he gets a good posting.’

In the only country where, it was said, power was more important than sex, having enchufes was the only way to get things done in this so-called democratic age. The system of favours and local strongmen was the real face of Spanish political life.

Vicente continued to extol his children’s virtues, but he spoke of them like ornaments. Again I noticed their absence from our surroundings, not merely physically – the daughter, at least, was away from home, and doubtless the son had better things to do on a Saturday afternoon – but also as visible members of the household.

Lola returned with more plates, a fixed smile on her mouth, an apron tied comfortably around her waist. I barely recognised her. This was not the lithe, leopard-like woman I had fallen in love with. I thought of stretching my foot out under the table to touch her, but didn’t dare risk it. Besides, Vicente made great demands on his audience, and I was forced to listen to him like an unwilling passenger on a long-distance train journey.

The meal came to an end and Lola began clearing away. I wanted to get up and help her, maybe enjoy a second or two in the kitchen alone, to see if she was really there. But Vicente kept me nailed to the chair with his barrage of words. As a compromise, I started stacking the plates on the table, but was gestured to leave well alone. I obeyed and Lola carried on.

‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I want to show you something.’ I lifted my leaden body – swollen with heat and rice – out of the chair and followed him down the dark, unlit corridor. At the far end he opened a door and beckoned me inside.

It was dark and smelt of cologne and mothballs: the scent of elderly Spanish people. He turned on a small lamp on a chest of drawers by the door. A dull, grimy light was cast about the room, barely enough to show what was inside. My eyes blurred in the gloom and I had to strain to bring everything into focus. More dark, old furniture, an old Persian rug on the floor, a brown armchair – the covering almost worn off. But more impressively, hanging from every wall, in glass cupboards, on stands, in corners, filling the entire room, were stuffed, dead animals, staring back at me through black, lifeless eyes. Rabbits, falcons, stoats, a boar’s head, sparrows, a deer, all arranged around this morgue-like temple, silently paying homage to the violence of the man who had killed them. Their stillness was strangely disconcerting. I half-expected them to reanimate themselves at any moment, draw breath and launch themselves onto their slayer.

‘I have a man in Valencia who does them for me. Of course, you can’t stuff them all. Some of them are just in too bad a condition after they’ve been shot.’

In my mind’s eye, I could see him in a camouflage jacket, blasting these creatures out of the sky, from the trees, his rifle spitting death wherever he pointed it.

‘I’m running out of space. There’s only room for special ones now. Like this one.’ He pointed at a falcon with its talons outstretched, beak open wide as in the final seconds of homing in for a kill. How had it been when Vicente shot it, I wondered. Sitting quietly in a tree carrying out its morning ablutions, perhaps? Soaring peacefully on the coastal winds? The taxidermist was obviously good at flattering his clients.

‘Of course, you can’t lose much time once you’ve brought them down. Sometimes I drive straight up to Valencia with my animals in the back of the car. Don’t even stop to go home and change. He likes to get them as fresh as possible. It’s the heat, you see.’

We stood in the cool, dark room, his animals staring back at us. The icy layer of fear that had lined my stomach since the first night with the hunters in the barrio began to rise into my throat.

‘I have worked hard all my life to build what I have, Jason,’ he said. ‘It means everything to me. I would kill anyone who tried to take it away from me.’

* * *

I stopped at the flat to pick up my guitar before heading back to Vistacastell. Outside the front door, I bumped into Pedro hopping from shady patch to shady patch along Alfonso El Sabio. The road was deserted. No-one came outside in heat like this.

Seeing him brought back a sudden memory of my arrival in Alicante: the deep serenity of his jasmine-perfumed garden, the joy of the new, the hope, and calm. He seemed to carry it around with him.

I went over to say hello. He smiled – his wide, childlike grin – and embraced me. We hadn’t seen each other since Christmas, as if I’d almost forgotten he was there.

‘My dear Watson, you must take care in this heat. You’ll burn up.’

And he walked on, smiling, waving and blowing kisses into the air.

‘And . . . Don’t worry. Be khappy.’

My hands were trembling when I reached Vistacastell. The square had been decorated with lights, and a pavilion had been set up in a corner full of long, empty tables covered with white paper cloths. There was a bar further inside, and then the stage with a chair and a microphone. I looked at it with dread. Two men were setting up the PA system, tinny popular music echoing around the village to an absent audience. So great was the Spanish lust for noise that even this late siesta hour wasn’t sacrosanct. I walked down to Amparo’s house wondering if I could do some last-minute practice.

The Chinese dog was sitting by the door like a fluff-ball. He knew me now, and would be on his feet, wagging his tail unassumingly, as soon as he recognised my steps coming down the narrow street. He sniffed my ankles, I patted his head, and together we went inside.

I crept upstairs, anxious not to wake the sleepers below. I opened the case and picked up the guitar, gazing at the fading valley, and waited.

Lola was late. She said Vicente had caught a different train to the one she had expected. The fiesta was already under way.

‘Here, I brought you a present. Take it.’ Then to the side, ‘Not that you deserve it.’

I smiled. She was back to normal.

I opened the box and inside was a bright red fountain-pen. ‘One day you’ll write about all this. And when you do, I want you to use this pen.’ She kissed my eyes.

I had so many questions. Why had she been so different? How did she manage to do that? And what about her Moorish grandmother? The mystery of it excited me. I wanted her to tell me about it. Surely she knew about Vicente’s racism? But there was no time, we were due to perform. No time, even, for a last-minute run-through.

It was gone midnight when we arrived. Mosquitos and moths flew chaotically around the harsh lights hooked up at the sides of the pavilion. It was very hot, despite the mountain breeze, and there was a strong smell of sweat, tobacco and cheap red wine. Mounting the stage, I kept telling myself it was only a small audience of half-drunk farmers who probably knew as much about flamenco as my grandmother did. No need to worry, none at all. But my legs still shook, and I was relieved when I was able to sit down in the chair placed out for me.

Lola, meanwhile, rubbed her hands together and took centre-stage, her eyes fixed just above the audience. For her, it was about defiance.

‘Mierda. Shit,’ she said without turning round. It was the Spanish equivalent of ‘break a leg’.

A fat man with a shiny face introduced us as ‘Los Novios Flamencos’ – the Flamenco Fiancés. I cursed Amparo under my breath. Doubtless everyone knew about us. Lola rolled her eyes, and dipped her head.

‘For the love of God!’

I saw her mouth the words and her shoulders seized with tension. Not a good way to begin. She was quite capable of storming off and leaving me there to play on my own.

‘Ole,’ came a cry from the audience. They were waiting for us to start. But I could read Lola’s mind and could feel the anger and pride rising inside her. This was too much. Why should she, a real flamenco dancer, perform in front of this lot? Ole? They had no understanding of the word. How could they shout Ole?

The crowd was still waiting, and becoming edgy. Why hadn’t we started? Was something wrong?

‘Lola!’ I hissed. But she stood still, head down, jaw clenched. ‘Venga! Mora! Come on, you Moor!’

She whipped round and looked me straight in the eye, shocked for a second, then turned back to the audience and crashed her feet on the floor. The dance had begun.

The villagers went wild, thought it was all part of the show, and loved us for it. We began with Verdiales de Málaga. Good, popular, passionate stuff. Loud and rhythmic and a favourite amongst non-aficionados. Everyone was clapping, mostly out of time, but the pavilion was filled with noise and dance, men shouting, children chasing each other round the tables, glasses being filled, conversations continuing between mothers despite all that was going on around them. I breathed a silent sigh of relief. What better way to cover up my mistakes? No-one could even hear me with all this going on.

My eye briefly caught sight of Amparo at the front of the stage, clapping furiously with her neighbours. She saw me looking at her and waved. I smiled. I could hardly blame her for our billing as ‘Los Novios Flamencos’. It was just how things worked.

The piece came to an end and there was a roar of applause. But we hardly stopped before moving straight into another popular style: Alegrías. Lola pulled out some castanets from her bag. ‘I need them for the compás,’ she shouted above the din. ‘I can’t hear you.’

More shouts from the crowd. ‘Vivan Los Novios Flamencos!’ I groaned, but there was no reaction from Lola this time. Perhaps she hadn’t heard. The cold was rising in my throat once more, and my fingers began to catch on the strings. Vile, twanging, discordant sounds. ‘That’s it,’ I thought, ‘I’ve lost it.’ But the dance and the crowd demanded I continue, and I was forced to press on regardless, hands sweating with nerves. Once back in the rhythm, I realised no-one had noticed. And if they had, it really didn’t matter. This was a Spanish fiesta crowd. Nobody was going to pass judgement. Especially not on a foreigner. But just in case, I decided to hold the compás and do nothing else.

The Alegría came to an end. More cheers. ‘One more, and that’s it,’ Lola called. The sweat was beginning to stream down her forehead.

We started on a Tango, the first palo we had done together. Lola went at a fast pace; I could see her brought alive by the crowd again, the flowing rhythm rising through her body.

‘Venga, Morita!’ I cried again. This time she smiled and danced even harder, sweat flying from her face as she twisted and pounded the earth, her hair sticking in wet strands to her cheeks. I remembered Juan’s words about duende. Duende, he said, was love. My fingers flicked smoothly over the strings with perfect timing, in perfect unison.

She kissed me when she finished. The villagers cheered. ‘Vivan Los Novios!’ We didn’t care any more.

‘This feels like a wedding,’ I said.

We climbed down through the smoke and sweat, through congratulatory crowds of people. The next act was already beginning, but no-one seemed to have noticed: they all wanted to meet us. They had probably heard the man now on stage about a hundred times before. It seemed to take an age to get through. ‘Wonderful, wonderful!’ Amparo came over screaming her thanks, and kissed us both. ‘I’m sure you’ll be so happy together.’

Finally we got outside the pavilion. Plenty of people here too, but at least there was room to breathe.

‘Well, guiri?’ She draped her arms around my neck and stared up at my face, eyes dancing above her broad smile. ‘What do you think of your first concert?’

I breathed, more relieved that it was over than anything else, and let my head fall back to look at the starry sky.

‘Not bad for a first try. Quite beautiful towards the end. But he should have listened more to what I told him about playing with dancers.’

I turned round, shading my eyes against the lights. With a surge, the bile that had been lining my stomach pitched up into my throat. It was Juan.

‘You play so well together.’ Lola’s arms dropped to her side. ‘Why didn’t you let us all know, then we could have enjoyed it too.’ He stepped closer, a thin smile forming on his mouth. Lola began to back away. I stood still, hovering between attack and flight.

‘Such a beautiful performance, my friends. Such encanto, so enchanting, such duende. I was quite moved. It was almost like old times, eh, Lola? Have you brought Vicente along? Or perhaps you’ve managed to spirit him away like you used to.’ Lola was half-hiding behind me.

‘Los Novios Flamencos. Ha! Nobody ever gave us such a pretty name, did they? Only ever Juan and Lola. Never did sound right. Maybe that’s why we . . .’

‘What the hell do you want, you son of a whore!’ Lola screamed.

‘Ah, yes, the famous temper. It’s the red hair, you know. But I suppose you’ve already worked that one out, haven’t you, Jason.’

‘Look, Juan . . .’

‘Shut up, cunt.’ His mouth was beginning to tremble. ‘You know absolutely nothing. Have no idea . . . That whore . . .’ He lifted his finger and pointed it at Lola. A great torrent of words and abuse sat in his throat waiting to explode. I braced myself against the coming attack, sheltering Lola behind me in case he turned violent, staring straight into those light blue eyes.

But it never came. Whatever it was in him – the fear, shame, belief in himself as a peaceful man, or simply too many years of nurturing the pain so that now it could find no expression – whatever it was suddenly gripped him, took back control, and smothered the anger, dampening it down to the steady smoulder of his normal self. The finger dropped, the trembling left his lips, and the calm, quiet face of Juan returned.

We stood facing one another, and for a second we were teacher and pupil once again. I could almost have imagined it was all engineered as part of my training, part of the process of learning to see the essence of flamenco, the beauty that Juan always talked about, but that I never felt I could quite grasp. But it was a short-lived moment. The reality was that we had been moments away from coming to blows. And now the secret was out.

All of a sudden he smiled, like a father.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s safe with me.’ And he turned and walked away through the crowds, disappearing into the village.

Lola let out a stifled cry and pulled me away, twisting my arm as she ran from the square and down into the dark, deserted street. Sickness and violence churned in my stomach. I wanted to go back, but she pushed me to the door. I fumbled with the keys, we got inside, and upstairs.

I heard her collecting her belongings chaotically as I went and stood silently at the window, looking out at the now-invisible valley. The gap between us was immediate, inescapable, and filled the entire house. She was leaving, and we had become strangers.

My mind wandered to calm, gentle images of deserts, oases, long journeys over distant plains: a fantasy cocoon against the emotions that were battering my brain.

She came into the main room and stood behind me. I could feel her breath on my neck, but it was cold and hard. I didn’t move, but kept looking away through the window, searching for something, anything of my valley that might have escaped the veil of the night air.

‘I’m going.’

‘Yes, I know.’

We stood motionless, frozen like two of Vicente’s animals.

‘You never told me about your Moorish grandmother,’ I said.

I didn’t hear her leave.

‘You can’t stay here now, son. Believe me, you really can’t.’

‘Why the hell should I run away?’

Eduardo looked at me incredulously.

‘OK, fine, I know he’s got a shotgun. Several. But . . . I’m in love with her.’

‘Which is why you have to leave. Now.’

‘I’m not a coward. Anyway, Juan might never mention it. He said he wouldn’t.’

‘Look, son, from what you’ve told me this Juan bloke doesn’t sound like the most stable person in the world. We’re dealing with jealousy here.’

‘But why would Vicente believe him?’

‘You just don’t seem to understand, do you.’ I looked at him quizzically. ‘It’s not just your neck on the line here. What do you think he’s going to do to Lola if he finds out?’

I sank down into the chair. Of course, he was right.

‘Listen, it’s a question of damage limitation. If you leave now, there’s a much better chance nothing’s going to happen to her. Juan’s only going to be interested in breaking you two up. If he’s in love with Lola as well, chances are as soon as he’s heard you’ve packed off, he’ll leave well alone. At least that’s the best you can hope for. You understand me?’

I nodded silently.

‘And don’t go calling her up every five minutes. This has got to be a clean break. For her sake.’

‘But where can I go. I don’t want to go back . . .’

‘Go to Madrid. Look, you came here to learn about flamenco. You’ve got to go to the capital, that’s where it’s all happening. You were never going to find much here.’

I thought I had.

He wrote down some information on a piece of paper: a cheap hostel, flamenco bars I should visit.

‘You must leave tonight, you realise that. The bus is at nine.’

‘But what about . . .’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure Juan finds out. And don’t worry about those jerks at the Costa Gazette, either. I’ll tell them you’ve just got a job on the Sun.’

Pedro seemed pleased when I told him I was leaving.

‘So, my dear Watson. Another adventure?’

He was annoyingly calm, ignoring the panic that was now controlling me, and wanting to tell me everything about a new posting he had in Morocco. I listened with heaving chest. There was all the business of rent and returning keys to think about.

‘These things have a way of sorting themselves out,’ was all he said.

‘Look, Pedro, I think I’m going mad.’

‘No, it’s all right, Jason,’ he said seriously. ‘You’re not going mad. Everything will be all right.’

I left some money and the keys in a brown envelope with the pied noir downstairs, then went to the bus station. It was almost a year to the day since I had arrived in Alicante. Eduardo came to see me off and handed me a tape by the guitarist Pepe Habichuela.

‘One of the great masters,’ he said. ‘If angels could play flamenco, they’d all sound like Pepe Habichuela. He’s a Gypsy, one of the best.’

I started to climb aboard.

‘They’re the people you’re going to have to start hanging out with, son. Gypsies. No more payos like this lot here. You want the real stuff.’

The doors closed and the bus set off. It was one of the loneliest moments of my life.