I wash my hair, shave and put on a decent set of clothes, but orchestrating the meeting is even easier than anticipated. I wait in the foyer of the Alphaville cinema until Carmen shows up at around 11.30 p.m. wearing a dark jacket and narrow trousers in Thatcher blue. She’s taller than I expected, thinner and more ungainly. She looks like the sort of girl I used to avoid in London: plain, shy and unimaginative. Once inside she finds María and the two of them sit down at a table at the back of the bar, each nursing a bottle of Sol and a cigarette. I follow two minutes later, pick a table with an eye-line to Carmen’s chair and retrieve a crumpled copy of Homage to Catalonia from my back pocket. The flirting happens almost instantaneously; indeed, she initiates it, sliding the odd glance and smile in my direction, tentatively at first, as if she’s not quite sure that it’s really happening, and then gradually gaining in confidence as the minutes tick by. I steal looks only a couple of times early on, careful not to overplay my hand, but at one point she actually blushes when she looks up to find me staring directly at her. For half an hour we sit there, Carmen doing her best to concentrate on what María is telling her, but finding it increasingly difficult not to be drawn away into a secret glance, a shy, blinking eye contact with her mystery admirer. María eventually cottons on and even turns round in her seat – much to Carmen’s embarrassment – ostensibly to attract the waiter’s attention but clearly to get a better fix on the stranger who has had such a remarkable effect on her friend. Then, at midnight, Macduff makes the call to my mobile and I pick up my book and leave.
She takes the bait. On the back of my chair I have left a scarf – a present from Sofía – and, sure enough, when I’m just a few metres down the street I hear footsteps behind me and turn to see Carmen looking anxious and out of breath.
‘Perdone,’ she says. ‘Dejó la bufanda en el asiento. Aquí está.’
She holds out the scarf and I pretend that I don’t speak Spanish.
‘Oh Christ. That’s so kind of you. Gracias. I totally forgot. Thank you.’
‘You are American?’
By phoning Carmen at work and pretending to be a journalist, Macduff was able to establish that she speaks English. Her accent is half-decent, but it’s too early to tell if she’s a linguist.
‘Not American. Scottish.’
‘Ah, escocés.’
If we can communicate solely in English, that will play to my advantage. In the course of our relationship Carmen might say something to a friend or colleague in apparent confidence which I will be able to translate and understand.
‘Yes. I’m just here in Madrid for a few months. You?’
‘Soy madrileña,’ she says, with evident pride. ‘Me llamo Carmen.’
‘Alex. Nice to meet you.’
We kiss in the traditional fashion and her cheeks feel dry and warm. It’s already clear that the first part of the strategy is working welclass="underline" Carmen has been bold enough to follow me outside and to strike up a conversation, and she clearly doesn’t want me to leave. In time we’ll exchange phone numbers, just as Kitson hoped, and the relationship will be up and running. Then all I need to do is work out a way of finding her attractive.
‘You are enjoying yourself here?’
‘Oh I love it. It’s such a great city. I’d never been here before and everybody has just been so friendly.’
‘Like me?’
‘Like you, Carmen.’
A first tension-shifting laugh. It is a strange sensation, this falsified union, this charade, but as we exchange further pleasantries I find myself warming to her, if only out of a sense of guilt that my sole purpose here this evening is to take advantage of her decency and palpable loneliness. If I can bring a little happiness into her life, then where’s the harm?
‘So you’re here on holiday?’
‘No, not really. I’m supposed to be researching a PhD.’
‘You are student?’
‘Sort of. I used to work on a newspaper in Glasgow but I’m taking two years out, with a view to becoming an academic.’
The structure of this sentence is too complicated for her and she frowns. I rephrase it and tell her the title of my thesis – ‘The British Battalion of the International Brigades 1936-1939’ – and she looks impressed.
‘This sounds interesting.’ Then there is an awkward delay.
‘It’s cold and you’re not wearing a coat,’ I tell her, just to fill the silence.
‘Yes. Maybe I should get back inside.’
Don’t let her go just yet.
‘But when am I going to see you again?’
Carmen’s face twists with pleasure. This sort of thing rarely happens to her. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, can I telephone you? Can I have your number? I’d love to see you again.’
‘Claro.’
And it’s that simple. I scribble the number down on a blank page in the Orwell book and wonder if I should warn her, right here and now, that her life is about to be turned inside-out by a bunch of scheming British spooks. Instead I say, ‘You should go inside. It’s cold.’
‘Si,’ she replies. ‘My friend is waiting. Who are you meeting?’
Kitson anticipated that Carmen would want to know if I have a girlfriend or wife, so I have a preprepared response to the question.
‘Just somebody from my language class.’
‘Vale.’ Something like disappointment, even a shiver of panic, runs through her eyes, although I may be reading too much into this. At the risk of exaggeration it seems that she has already fallen for me.
‘Thank you for this,’ I tell her.
‘Qué?’
I hold up the scarf.
‘Ah. La bufanda. This was nothing, Alex. It was nothing.’
And we say goodbye. Two minutes later, when I have walked away from the bar and phoned Macduff to give him an update on the evening, a bus passes through the north end of Plaza de España. A banner is posted along one side advertising a new British film starring Rowan Atkinson. It looks like a Bond spoof – Johnny English. When I see the tagline beneath the predictably idiotic image of Atkinson wearing black tie, I have to smile:
‘Prepárate para la inteligencia británica.’
Prepare yourself for British intelligence.
36. Blind Date
Carmen’s conversation with María the following evening makes flattering listening. Macduff has isolated the relevant sections of dialogue, revealing the target’s excitement at the prospect of meeting me again, married to an anxiety that I will fail to call. María counsels caution – it’s in her nature to do so – but she shares Carmen’s basic view that I am ‘guapo’. Their only reservation, predictably, concerns my marital status, or the possible existence of a girlfriend back in Glasgow.
‘You always have to be careful with men from the UK,’ María warns. ‘They’re emotionally repressed. My cousin had a boyfriend from London once. He was very odd. Didn’t wash properly, never spoke to his family, wore terrible clothes. They dress very scruffily, the English. And they drink. Joder. This boy was always in the pub, watching football, buying alcohol. Then he would eat kebabs on the way home. It was very strange.’
I translate most of this for Kitson and Macduff, and it’s no use pretending that I don’t derive a significant amount of pleasure from Carmen’s crush. It lifts my spirits after the farm, and I think Kitson understands this. He seems satisfied that our plan is on course and we discuss the next step.