I found a
tapas
bar on a corner of the Plaza Pescadería, with high stools, tables on the pavement and gas heaters that looked like flaming dustbin lids on poles. The waitress looked like she’d been to a few bull fights in her time and immediately took charge. A plate of ham and beans, a bowl of squid and another of fried peppers said I hadn’t been wrong to let her. I even decided to dust off my Spanish. I’d never be able to hold a candle to Trev on the language front, but she didn’t seem to mind.
Out came the map and a fingernail the colour of blood traced my best routes around town, into and out of the Albaicín and up to Boabdil’s fortress.
Halfway through, she pointed the same fingernail at my head and asked me if I’d had an argument with
mi esposa
. I laughed and told her that I’d been climbing at the weekend and had an argument with a rock.
When she’d finished my virtual guided tour I ordered a black coffee and watched the locals wander past. A bunch of teenagers smoked themselves to death on the other side of the promenade and a guitarist tugged on our heartstrings with his version of the theme tune to
The Deer Hunter
.
I walked back to the hotel via a circuit of the cathedral and a stretch of the Cuesta de Gomérez, one of the routes up to the Alhambra, whose floodlit ramparts glowed red and gold against the night sky above the city.
3
Alhambra, Granada
Tuesday, 7 February
The citadel was a twenty-minute tab from my breakfast table. I got to the ticket office shortly after it opened at eight. It was already humming with tourists and school trips and the odd serious-looking academic, but the scary queues that every website threatened in the height of the season were nowhere in sight.
I wandered through the Generalife Gardens, which gave me the chance to check out the fortified heart of the complex from the east, as well as the city beyond. It was no accident that this place was called the Hill of the Sun. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I just knew that Trev hadn’t presented us with the coordinates of the journey by accident, and if I followed his route, either I’d find Ella or she’d find me.
Until I’d hooked up with Anna, I’d never really given stuff like formal gardens a second glance. I’d enjoyed the view from the roof of Gaz’s block in the Tabard, but only with a ketchup-filled condom in hand and as a potential battle space. Later, foliage of any kind was a source of cover, not of decoration or reflection. As with so many things,
mi esposa
had put me right on that.
I reached the Nasrid Palace half an hour later. Anyone who reckoned that Islam was about exploding rucksacks and rabble-rousing ayatollahs should have hung out there for half a day. Allah’s PR department was really missing a trick. The lads who had designed the Alhambra aimed to create an earthly paradise, and that beat the fuck out of blowing up whoever didn’t get your vote.
I followed a family of Canadians into the Palace of the Lions and sat at the edge of a courtyard watching the parents and the kids ooh and aah as they circled the twelve stone beasts that spouted water into the fountain at its centre.
I walked across the white marble paving of the Court of the Myrtles, stopping for a moment to admire the reflection of the Comares Tower in a formal pond my guidebook told me was thirty-four metres long and seven metres wide. Again, there was a stillness to the place which spoke to me in ways that I couldn’t remember being spoken to before.
The guidebook also mentioned that an inscription in the Southern Gallery read:
May our Master, Emir of the Muslims, receive God’s help and protection as well as a glorious victory
. Abu ’Abd Allah was Boabdil, so the magic hadn’t worked for him.
My next stop was the Comares Tower itself, where Boabdil and his council had taken the decision to surrender. Legend had it that when his mum heard the news, she gave him another severe bollocking from one of the tower’s balconies. She waved her arm across the opposite hillside and the city beneath it and yelled, ‘Look at what you surrender, and remember that all your forebears died as kings of Granada, but now the kingdom dies in you …’ Trev hadn’t chosen Father Mart’s postcard by accident. I wanted to take a closer look at that view.
I wasn’t disappointed when I got there. Framed by the arched window ahead of me, the Albaicín rose from the Darro River at the foot of the citadel and spread across the hillside, a tightly knit jumble of whitewashed walls, terracotta roofs and canvas awnings, punctuated by cypress trees and cascades of bougainvillaea. Two churches with angular, box-shaped towers dominated the skyline, one faded red-brick and one crisp white.
I scanned my map, and pictured the pleasure Trev would have taken as he assembled his next set of clues. The red-brick was the Iglesia del Salvador; the white – which the guidebook claimed had the best views of the Alhambra – was San Nicolás.
4
The Mirador de San Nicolás was a cobbled terrace beside the church, with a stone cross at its centre and seven or eight trees. Sunlight filtered through their bare branches, warming the small groups of shirt-sleeved tourists who’d found their way through the maze of alleyways that led up from the river.
Some clustered around a hairy flamenco guitarist and bongo-drummer duo giving its all to everybody’s favourite bits from
Carmen
; some were being hypnotized by a jewellery seller; most just hung out on the retaining wall or the chunky stone benches and soaked up the scenery. A couple of donkeys wandered past, looking severely unimpressed.
I continued to go with the flow. It wasn’t difficult. The Alhambra palaces were every bit as amazing from this side of the valley as the guidebook promised. I ordered a coffee and a sticky bun at a nearby café and kept eyes on the comings and goings in the plaza. The jewellery seller was doing a roaring trade.
Before heading back to the hotel to pick up my hire car, I dipped inside the church. A priest in a cassock was busy straightening prayer books and wiping specks of dust off the kind of pews that were designed to keep you awake during the sermon. He smiled and nodded as I lit a candle. It wasn’t becoming a habit: I needed to look like I had a reason for being there.
On the way through the centre of town I bought a pay-as-you-go mobile and two local network SIM cards, then got some
tapas
down my neck for luck.
5
I cleared the light-industrial wasteland that spread across the southern fringe of the city and pointed the Seat down the Autovía de Sierra Nevada towards the mountains.
I wasn’t about to spend quality time at every one of the endless stream of venues along the route claiming some connection with the Moor’s journey to temporary retirement, but I reckoned the Hotel Restaurante Boabdil and the Suspiro del Moro campsite were well worth a visit. Both were within gobbing distance of the pass, which the sign told me was 865 metres above sea level.
I didn’t go there directly. I drove past a team of cyclists taking their high-tech Lycra kit and crash helmets for a ride, and hung the first available left to Otura. I bimbled around the town for a while, admiring the churches, the rental villas, the brand new terraces, the weird mixture of smart construction sites and tangled scrubland.
I parked up alongside a sports centre where they were holding some kind of martial-arts contest. Then I moved on to the Santa Cristina Golf Club, and watched a group of lads in brightly coloured, diamond-patterned V-necks and shiny trousers bounce their buggies around brilliant green fairways and sparkling water features, against the backdrop of snow-capped mountains.
When I was satisfied that no one cared what I was doing or where I was going, I drove back to the roundabout that crossed the
autovía
. As soon as the Hotel Restaurante Boabdil came into view, I knew it wasn’t the place I was looking for: too close to the main; too overlooked; anybody staying there for more than forty-eight hours would draw attention to themselves too easily.
But the campsite was something else again. I pulled in between a white van and a line of firs in the car park and walked through the front entrance. The two-or three-acre corner plot was surrounded by thickly planted evergreens, and each of the mobile-home spaces had its own treelined shelter.
There was a shower and toilet block, but the bungalows were all self-contained. It was a bit like a caravan park in Southend we used to go to when I was a kid, but with sunshine and great-smelling food. You could lose yourself in there quite happily for a month or two.
The sign under the clock hanging outside the reception area said I was welcome, but the guy behind the desk didn’t seem so sure. He had a Shakin’ Stevens quiff and matching black shirt but had binned the pink jacket and warm smile.
He thawed a little when I told him I was looking for somewhere to stay for a few weeks later in the spring – bring the family, play some golf, go to the beach some days, I’d heard it was only thirty-five minutes away. But the shutters came down again when I asked if I could take a look around.
‘I very much regret, Señor …’ He pointed to a sign on the wall – an icon of a human being in a circle with a red diagonal slash across his bollocks – that gave a clear answer to my question. ‘Our regular guests value their privacy. I could escort you, of course, maybe show you inside one of the vacant bungalows …’
I said that would do nicely, told him my name was Nick Jones, and that his place had been recommended by a good friend of mine in the UK. There was a flicker of interest when I mentioned Trev’s name, but perhaps he was just being polite.
We skirted a small and well-shaded playground where a couple of kids were firing imaginary AK-47s at each other from behind the cover of the seesaw and slides. He guided me towards an avenue about a third filled with camper vans, then right, past a drinking fountain, to a row of reasonably secluded wooden bungalows on stone plinths, each with its own veranda.
A couple of lads in Hawaiian board shorts and US college hoodies wandered across to the table footie as Shaky steered me up the nearest set of steps. I glimpsed a curtain being drawn across a window three bungalows down. I didn’t see a face, but I saw a smiley emoticon on a white T-shirt stretched across the kind of pectorals you only got from regular trips to the weight machine.
Shaky’s show home slept two – or four, if they were feeling intimate – and had its own kitchen, bathroom and sitting room. I told him it was perfect for what I had in mind, and he got very cheerful indeed when I suggested a cash deposit. That bought me the deluxe tour, which allowed me to scan the full layout of the complex, including the swimming pools and restaurant block. I kept half an eye out for the smiley T-shirt as we went, but it was a no-show.
Back at the reception desk Nick Jones filled in a booking form for some imaginary dates in April and May, and wrote down one of his new mobile numbers where it asked for contact details.
As I left, the Lycra lads sped past on their racing bikes, legs pumping like their lives depended on it.
6
Mirador San Nicolás, Granada
Wednesday, 8 February
I was up at first light the following morning, showered, then swapped my dressing for a skin-coloured plaster. The stitches were working their magic and the bruising had retreated. I now looked like I’d had a minor disagreement with a door frame rather than a major one with a slab of Scottish granite.
I had the Spanish version of a full English just up the street from the hotel and stopped by the payphone at the main post office on my way up to the citadel. Bob didn’t answer as quickly as he had the last time I’d called, but he had some news for me. Jack Grant’s name was a last-minute addition to the flight manifest for an incoming C17 Starlifter from Camp Bastion, due into Akrotiri tomorrow afternoon.
I began my second Alhambra circuit as soon as the main gates opened, taking my time at the key locations I reckoned Trev had been pointing me towards. When no one tapped me on the shoulder I retraced my route to the Mirador San Nicolás.
I’d put the Seat back under cover at the Villa Oniria when I’d returned from the campsite and headed out for my second helping of ham and beans and another side order of peppers. I never used to care much what I got down my neck, particularly when I was on an op, but this stuff tasted a whole lot better than a ready meal, and my own personal tour guide was keen to know how my day had been.
I took the same table at the café by the San Nicolás church and tucked into the same coffee and sticky pastry. The flamenco and bongo combo were touring elsewhere, but the jewellery seller was still sending customer after customer away with shiny stuff they’d suddenly realized they couldn’t live without.
My bill arrived on a small metal saucer. The waiter hung around long enough to pick up my handful of euros and to say that my friend would be in the church at eleven thirty. My iPhone told me I didn’t have long to wait.
I went inside and chose a pew at the back, away from the spots and candles that surrounded the altar. The priest gave me his usual smile of welcome. I picked up a service sheet and thought beautiful thoughts, keeping the main entrance in my peripheral vision.
Tourists came and went. Then a figure blocked out the sunlight pouring through the doorway. All I could see to start with was a monster silhouette. This lad had a torso like a wrecking ball. I hoped I was right in thinking he was on our side. As he stepped out of the shadows I got a clearer picture: a younger – mid to late thirties, maybe – blonder version of Trev. I spotted the image on the T-shirt beneath his partly zipped jacket. A smiley emoticon. Either this was the world’s greatest coincidence, or I’d been reading Trev’s signals right.
He wandered around the body of the church, then found himself in need of a moment of reflection alongside me. He asked if I minded. His English had the combination of fluidity and precision that all Scandinavians seem to bring to it. Less musical than the Norwegians, but not as flat as the Danes, I guessed he must be Swedish.