THE SPANISH WAITER: ONE

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

How Ivan Maybe finds himself deciding to work in Spain.

SPRING 2016

“There’s one easy way out of your problem,” Geraldine Bonny said to Ivan Maybe.

Geraldine Bonny was a sympathetic ear provided by the probation office, a caring woman who had managed to scrape Ivan out of the gutter where he found himself living after his release from prison. For a while, in the summer, he hadn’t minded being homeless because sharing a park bench with a tramp was better than sharing a cell with a man who couldn’t stop talking about how great his life was going to be now that he knew how he’d got caught. He wouldn’t get caught again, he knew that much, because he knew the hows and whys of life, and he’d bored Ivan senseless with his endless speculation about a future he’d never realise because he attempted to take his own life days before his sentence was up, and failed completely, he was transferred to an institution that might sort his mind out, and instead of the freedom to repeat the past in the big wide world outside the prison gates he was carted off there.

“What do you mean, one easy way?” he asked.

Geraldine had called on him where he now lived, no longer in the gutter but in a bed-sit that he hated because it was unbelievably squalid and small, so much so that despite his best efforts with polish and dusters and even a scrubbing brush, he was still ashamed of it when she called. But she didn’t seem to notice, which was really good of her.

“You need a job well away from here, where nobody will remember what they read in the papers about the death of Gaddy Carter and what they read about you” she said, “and I’ve got a cunning plan.”

He smiled at her. “I’ll be calling you Baldrick if you mention cunning plans too often,” he said, but the reference was lost on her because she was simply too young to have heard of Blackadder and his side-kick Baldrick and his cunning plans.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Oh, a scruffy character in a sit-com. I guess you’re too young to have seen it,” he sighed. “It aired in the 80s when I wasn’t much more than a kid, before my world fell apart,” he added.

“You’ve served a sentence for murdering the man you refer to as Blockhead,” she said, “so you can tell me now that your punishment is over and done with. Did you kill him? I don’t mean deliberately, but things can happen accidentally and be covered up through, I don’t know, shame or fear of the consequences.”

“I did not!” he responded angrily, “I thought you believed me! As far as I knew he was a numbskull from the next street who went missing after he decided to have a slanging match with me because I told him how much it would cost to repair his old banger of a car.”

“And that was your only input?” she asked incredulously, “did you have a monkey for a solicitor?”

“I had the duty fellow. He seemed decent enough but I always imagined that he believed in my guilt and thought that he would be defending the indefensible, and he was too decent to want to see a guilty man set free. The barrister wasn’t much better either. But its all in the past now and I want to forget it.”

“You’ve had a rough ride, Ivan,” she murmured sympathetically. “Look, I’ve got a friend in the Spanish police force. Equivalent to an Inspector or even Chief Inspector over here, and she’s really nice.”

“Just a minute, Geraldine,” he put in, “but I’ve had my belly full of the police, be they any nationality under the sun.”

“You’d like Valentina. Look, Ivan, I can’t get my had round the Spanish language and it’s just as well she doesn’t mind me calling her Inspector! Though when I want her to know I really respect her, I call her Chief Inspector! That puts Tomas’s nose out a little, but he can take it. They both speak English really well, though.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because I happen to know that Tomas is looking for an English waiter because a lot of British coach parties stop there for the odd overnight rest as the hotel is about half way between Santander where the ferry that disgorges them docks and Portugal where they‘re aiming for. And try as he might he can’t get his head round English in much the same way as I can’t get my head round Spanish!”

“Just a minute, Geraldine… are uouu suggesting I forget my teaching talents and become a waiter in a foreign hotel?”

“If you were to it would solve your problems, if you have any, of neighbours treating you as if you were a pariah or about to attack them with an axe!”

“There’s the odd bit of nonsense, but it’s not that bad here.”

“Just look at you, Ivan. I know you do your best,” she indicated the room they were sitting in with a wave of one hand, “but this bedsit is hardly the kind of place someone with your intelligence is happy to live in, surely. And what Tomas is offering you, if the position hasn’t already been filled, is a decent room in a decent hotel, accommodation free.”

“And they’d be happy to have a man with my history working for them?”

“I’ve discussed it with Valentina, explained your case and I believe she’s actually made subtle enquiries of her own. She has accepted my judgement of you one hundred percent. You see, she and I have history. I didn’t start out in working on behalf of the probation services, I was a copper myself. I never reached beyond sergeant, but at the time that was what Valentina was too, only Spanish, and we found ourselves at a low level part of a co-operative drugs investigation, pan European. I got shot and she helped me, saved my life if you like the dramatic version, and we became firm friends. I left the force due to the injury caused by the incident I’ve explained to you, as well as an honest fear that it might happen again.”

“You must know her quite well, Geraldine.”

“I think that happens when you’re in a dangerously tight situation with someone. Anyway, she returned to Spain when the investigation was over, successfully, and swiftly gained the respect that I know was due to her. Now she’s in an office of her own and married to Tomas, and, you know, and I’ve been there to visit them a few times, they’re the happiest and most lovely couple under the sun!”

“And they’d have me? The Spanish government, I mean? Remember, even though I know I’m innocent it’s obvious that a judge and his jury didn’t think so.”

“You had a raw deal and I might look into overturning the verdict through the courts if you don’t mind. On your behalf, of course. But that sort of thing might never happen and if it does it takes ages.”

“It would be nice if everyone knew just how not guilty I was,” he sighed.

“So what about a bit of Spanish waiting? It wouldn’t necessarily be for any longer than you want it. If you found you couldn’t cope then Tomas would be happy to let you go.”

Ivan then made a quantum leap, the sort of thing he had hardly ever done before. By nature he had always been a cautious man. Maybe was his surname and maybe was his character!

“Okay!” he said decisively, “I’ll do it! I’ll go to Spain!”

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