Us полностью

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.