The Songs of Manolo Escobar Read Free Page A

complexity. I also knew that my role, like that of a priest, would be pastoral and mediatory. There was every reason to believe I’d come and go with the substantial question still unresolved, but that my sober,
anglosajón
rationality would provide a calming influence.
    I dozed intermittently, and, in no time it seemed, the train was crossing the border into Scotland. We pulled through the barren hills of the southern uplands and entered the post-industrial wasteland of South Lanarkshire, passing through the drab continuum of high-rises, chaotic undergrowth and deserted goods yards. Gone were the steelworks and the mines that had peppered the countryside of my childhood; in their place sat a few modern housing estates and the occasional recently built factory, now closed, that had, for a spell, churned out mobile phones and semiconductors. Mostly it was just acres of nothingness, and I felt the first pangs of anxiety that I knew would increase exponentially the closer I got to my father.
    As I stepped on to the platform at Glasgow Central Station he was the first person I saw, standing on the concourse. In themonochrome photographs from my youth, he’d had the flawless, sculpted profile of a matinée idol, but his looks had faded, and he no longer turned heads. He was simply conspicuous rather than striking. As a child I’d thought he was tall, but now I towered over him – and it didn’t help that he was beginning to stoop. His hair was still thick, but it had turned a metallic grey, and it sat on his head like a clump of fraying wire wool.
    We embraced and exchanged a fleeting brush of lips on cheeks. It was an involuntary gesture to him, as instinctive as breathing, but it never felt natural to me, kissing another man – even my father – in public.
    â€˜You like da cheapskin?’ he asked.
    His accent threw me. It always happened when I’d been away for a long time and my ears weren’t tuned properly to his lazy, pidgin diction of short Spanish vowels mugged by a flat Glaswegian drawl. I knew from his reaction to my hesitation that he was irritated. He liked to think he was clearly understood.
    â€˜Da cheapskin? Dae you like da cheapskin?’
    â€˜I know what you said. Yes, I like your coat, it’s very nice.’
    I didn’t tell him I was trying to ignore it – this fur-trimmed, other-era garment, with its cash-up-front showiness.
    â€˜How much cost?’ he demanded.
    I hated it when he did that.
    â€˜You tell me, how much cost?’
    â€˜I don’t know, Papa.’
    He threw up his hands dismissively.
    â€˜I know you nae know, I ask you guess. You guess how much.’
    â€˜I really have no idea. Four hundred,’ I ventured, deliberately high.
    A look of unalloyed triumph washed over his face.
    â€˜Nae four hundred, nae even close. One hundred thirty. Only one hundred thirty quid. I get from this guy in, wha you call it?’
    â€˜Land of Leather,’ I said.
    He’d been buying his coats from the same Bangladeshi supplier for years.
    â€˜
Si
, in Land a Leather, in Barrhead. I get you one. You give me your size, I get you one.’
    â€˜I don’t want one.’
    â€˜Wha you mean, you nae want? Only one hundred thirty quid, you nae get cheaper nowhere.’
    â€˜Really Papa, I don’t want one. I’ve got plenty of coats.’
    â€˜Ach, I nae understand you, this is bargain, this cheapskin,’ he said as he turned on his heel and marched off.
    As winter’s early darkness fell, we chugged along Mosspark Drive to the reassuringly benign putt-putt sound of Papa’s Volkswagon Beetle, past the shops and the achingly familiar sight of the old swingpark, where I learned to ride a bike and smoked my first cigarette.
    I noticed how the passage of time had taken its toll on the neighbourhood, whose council-estate uniformity had been replaced with a surfeit of satellite dishes, stone-cladding and driveways