THE SPANISH WAITER: FOUR

Ivan settling in to his new workplace

SPRING 2016

It was the morning after his arrival at the Hotel Pyramido and Ivan climbed slowly out of his bed. He had just experienced the best night’s sleep since before his arrest for murder almost twenty years earlier. The bed had been comfortable and the room exactly at the right temperature for him.

Sleep in Brumpton Prison had proved to be a dangerous thing because he was obliged to shareaf cell with a miserable individual (Colin Pinkton) who went to great pains to discuss with him two subjects dear to his criminal heart, besides repeating endless plans as to how he was going to avoid jail in the future because he’d learned a few tricks to make sure he stayed away from the law and going on to elaborate exactly how he was going to do it, followed an elaborate plan with an almost poetic eulogy on the subject of mail genitalia, especially Ivan’s.

Colin had even persisted in his imagined enjoyment of his cell mate’s erotic flesh after Ivan had assured him that all of those bits of him that marked him as male had fallen off years earlier and he was almost as uncluttered in that region as most women. He’d still resisted sleep, though, until heavy snoring informed him that Mr Pinkton was finally asleep, all of which left him weary the next day.

Then after his re-entry into the free world there had been a particularly knobbly park bench followed by the bedsit that was the most uncomfortable of the lot. It had a fusty aroma that bordered on that of old urine, and he often found himself wondering how long he might live before resorting to an overdose of something toxic to rescue him from a fate he had never deserved. And then Geraldine had come along and whisked him every so often from his mess for a night in her own delightful home where a good shower helped washed away the worst layer of the filth he imagined might have become part of him.

Now he was in a modern and well appointed Spanish Hotel and his bed was what he remembered beds had been before a stupid policeman had put him behind bars.

He dressed in the uniform (a white shirt and grey trousers) that Tomas had provided him with, looked at his face in a huge mirror and smiled. He’d not shaved since his incarceration, so he had a beard worthy of the name intended as a kind of disguise, and he wasn’t going to shave now, though he did know that a little judicious trimming here and there might make him look less like an escaped convict and more like a sophisticated waiter. So he attended to that little judicious trimming and smiled his approval.

Not so bad for an old lag, he thought

Tomas was in the dining room when he made his way to the ground floor via a lift that smelt of roses or carnations or some kind of aromatic blossom. He inhaled it, approvingly because to his mind it smelt of a hint of Geraldine.

He was getting to be obsessed by his probation officer.

Apparently there were a few guests at the hotel requiring breakfast that morning and Tomas was waiting on them.

“Good to see you, Ivan,” he said with a smile, “breakfast is between seven thirty and ten of the clock. Have you adjusted your own timepiece to Spanish time? It is an hour forward of what your British clocks would make it!”

Ivan nodded. “I have,” he said, “I did it during my flight. Were you expecting me down sooner than this?”

Tomas smiled again. “You need time to settle in,” he said, “only this time yesterday you were at a UK airport hoping to dodge the eyes of those who mistakenly believe they know you! In the summer we have a great many more guests but until then there is only a trickle, as you see. It gives us time to recover from the busy Christmas season and the even busier one during the long summer months. You will see how it varies. Next week we are expecting a coach load of English men and women who are stopping here for one night on their way to Portugal, and the week after they will return for another night.”

It was a lot if information for Ivan to take in.

“How can a bus load from the UK find their way here?” he wondered. “In a bus? Seems impossible!”

Tomas smiled. “Not all tourists fly to their destination,” he replied, “whole coach loads cross the sea from a southern corner of your island on a ferry before returning to their coach once it has disembarked, and finding their way here. They are mostly in their later years and maybe find buses less stressful than aircraft.”

“I’d have thought it would be worse,” he commented.

Tomas shrugged. “Many of them make the journey by road. They have bunks on the ferry and enjoy its restaurant, you know: it takes many hours to cross the bay of Biscay. And when they reach this point they spend a night here before continuing on their merry way.”

“And you said a coach load of them are coming next week?”asked Ivan.

“I did indeed. At this time of the year, Spring and then Autumn, they liven the place up a bit. See there:” he pointed at a young woman carrying an aluminium jug, and she paused at one of the occupied tables and poured some liquid from it into a cup.

“That lady likes tea, so we give her hot water and a tea-bag,” he said with a rueful grin. “We had a tea-pot, but she broke it the other day: the guest and not that waitress, that is. Come, you’ll be working with Andrea. I’ll introduce you.”

When he met her Ivan immediately felt a rapport with the young woman who, he thought, was probably the right age to have been his daughter, not that he had ever fathered one. But she was beautiful, possibly in her twenties if she wasn’t even younger, dusky and with hair that swirled around her head as if it was an ebony cloud.

“Andrea,” said Tomas in Spanish with smile, “let me introduce you to Ivan. He is from England and he is to help us with awkward guests who have failed to learn our tongue.”

“I am pleased,” smiled the young woman with difficulty, “you help me.”

It was a statement rather than a question, thought Ivan, and so were Andrea’s teeth: a statement of purity with their white glimmer.

“I will try,” he said, and found his own mouth curving into a smile. It was, he thought, a long time since he had smiled involuntarily.

“I go,” said Andrea, the introduction clearly being over, and she scurried off to refill a tray on the side-table which served as a buffet with an assortment of croissants and pain au chocolat pastries.

“We have them delivered every morning,” explained Tomas, “there is an excellent bakery in the village. When service is over you can enjoy any that are left! But fear not, there will be some. I keep them back for the staff to enjoy.”

“The buffet looks very tempting,” sighed Ivan, who found himself feeling unaccountably hungry despite the fact that he’d been given a meal in the dining room before retiring to bed the previous night. “Do you know anything about the English people coming next week?” he asked.

“Not so much,” Tomas replied, “they are from a, how would you say, disparate area, collected by a bus, or coach, and taken to Plymouth in England and brought by ferry to the Spanish port of Santander from where they resume their bus journey to spend a night here.”

Ivan looked troubled. What, he thought, if he had travelled so far to be recognised by one of the coachload of his countrymen? If not this time, in the future. Was that likely, the hotel apparently being much busier when the spring was over and in the hands of an early summer rush?

Had he run far enough away from neighbours who might recognise him and so cause grief for him?

He wasn’t sure, but only time would tell.

“You may enjoy a breakfast yourself,” said Tomas, aware that a troubled expression had crossed Ivan’s face. “Come: sit here with me, and I will explain more to you over coffee and a croissant.”

© Peter Rogerson 24.10.22

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