The first thing Ringo did was to take a look at the pool from the balcony, where a group of local boys were playing noisily among the wooden benches. A game of water polo between two youth teams had just finished, and some of the players were still fooling around with the ball in front of one of the goals. Their cheerful splashes and shouts echoed round the enclosed space of the club. On the edge of the pool, just about to dive in with their hands together and knees bent, a gaggle of girls were trying to attract someone’s attention. Three boys were competing to dive for something at the bottom of the pooclass="underline" a coin perhaps. On the far side, a suntanned man in a brief pair of trunks was instructing a group of small children swimming in single file, all of them wearing rubber rings. From the balcony, a few married couples in their Sunday best were admiring their offsprings’ prowess while they guzzled drinks and packets of crisps. Behind them, an old man in a white overalls and a cyclist’s cap was pushing his broom beneath the seats to sweep up what they had thrown away.
Ringo sat on the bench, draped his arms over the railing, and stared down at the bottom of the pool three or four metres below him. It reminded him of the muddy water and leaping frogs in the irrigation ponds that marked the childhood summers he spent in El Panadés, and for an instant the recollection made him feel as if he had somehow been caught out, as though somebody had read his thoughts and was reproaching him for his secret love of frogs and dirty water. It was then that he noticed the old man: he had stopped sweeping and was staring at him, raising the peak of his cap with one finger to see more clearly. Ringo did not recognise him until he saw him suddenly lurch towards him as if unscrewing his foot from the floor, and come over smiling, hand outstretched.
“My, my, look who’s here.”
Ringo stood up feeling uneasy, pretending not to see the hand.
“How are you?”
The yellowish, still abundant head of hair that the cap could barely cover, the greying stubble, the voice weakened by asthma, his profile more angular, but the same weary grey of the eyes, the same handsome symmetry of the deep wrinkles on his face. He also still retained something of his former energy in the high shoulders and neck, and a friendly air that suggested a constant readiness to help.
“So-so, my lad. No more than so-so. Sit down, don’t stand on ceremony.” He sat down beside him slowly, leaning on the broom. Before speaking he took a deep breath and cleared his throat nervously. “What a surprise seeing you here at the club.”
“I might join. To swim a bit.”
“Good idea. Are you interested in water polo?”
“I was just looking … I didn’t know you worked here.”
“I’ll soon have been here two years.” Ringo did not know what to say, so Señor Alonso added: “Would you like a drink? A beer? I could bring it you in a jiffy, there’s a bar downstairs …”
“Thanks, I don’t want anything.”
It was hot, so Ringo took his coat off and hung it over the railing. Abel Alonso sat very still, his mouth wide open as he drew breath before he spoke again.
“Life became hard, you know? The club lent me a hand. Maintenance and things like that. Just think, my best goalie, from way back, a kid who lived in the shacks at Can Tunis and was always looking for trouble, is now the hundred metres butterfly champion here.” He smiled, giving slow, feeble nods of the head. “He’s the one who got me the job. As you see, there’s always some grateful kid.”
Ringo felt confused. He looked around.
“It’s very noisy, isn’t it?”
“Everything echoes in here.”
“It seems like a nice atmosphere.”
“A family atmosphere, especially on Sundays. And they scream like little devils. It’s a sign of the kids’ good mental health. I’ve always believed that. Would you like one?”
He had taken a sweet out of his pocket and began carefully unwrapping it. Ringo said no. Then he said, just to break the silence that troubled him more than the conversation:
“Well anyway, it wasn’t that long ago.”
“Ten years. Too long for me.” He rolled the sweet around in his mouth noisily but without any fuss, covering it with saliva and the bitterness of his words. Yes, now he really was an old man, inside and out, thought Ringo. “You must have done your national service.”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. Well, what’s new? How are things down there, what are people saying?” He cleared his throat again, then said more darkly: “What news of Violeta, that girl you didn’t like …?”
“I haven’t seen her since she left the neighbourhood with her mother.”
“Oh, so they went in the end, did they? She wanted to be an operating theatre nurse, didn’t she?” He nodded his head slowly and thoughtfully again, as if confirming something to himself. “Yes, that was what she was studying. So you haven’t seen her again. Well, well. Nor her mother either?”
Ringo paused for a few moments before replying.
“Señora Mir died some time ago.”
“She did? Victoria died? When was that?”
“It must have been about five years back. I heard Agustín say so in the tavern. It seems she was very ill.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. Poor Victoria was an alcoholic.”
“It wasn’t just the drink,” Ringo snorted. “She never recovered from a night when she went out looking for you and got lost. She caught pneumonia and had a very hard time of it.”
“I didn’t know any of that. Where did she get lost …?”
“You’d already washed your hands of the situation.”
The note of reproach took the old man aback. Nodding resignedly once more, he smiled wryly:
“If I remember rightly, my lad, the last time we met you were quite merry.”
“I was drunk. There was no way you should have trusted me that night.”
Señor Alonso took his time replying.
“Oh, well, I suppose you’re right. I was irresponsible, see, and at my age that kind of stupidity is unforgiveable … Besides, it was cowardly of me, I should have sorted things out myself … By the way, I never had a chance to thank you. It’s true, we faced that difficult situation shoulder to shoulder.” The frantic chorus of childish cries from down in the pool caught his attention. A string of corks floating on the surface marked off the area where the youngest children were swimming, closely watched by their instructor. Ringo looked down as well. Little frogs doing the breaststroke in their rings. “Anyway, you weren’t so drunk that night, no sir. But you were very excited at exploring the seamy side of the city, you felt like a real man. So serious, wanting so much to fall in love …” His face crumpled as he smiled at the pleasant memory. “Do you remember, in that dive on Calle San Ramón? You do remember, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Ringo admitted reluctantly, preferring to concentrate on what was going on in the pool, the scuffles between the water polo players and the little splashing frogs.
“It’s true you were a bit tipsy, but you knew what you were doing, otherwise I wouldn’t have entrusted you with that errand. I always appreciated you, you know, and always trusted you — don’t ask me why. Such an observant, polite and responsible lad … I suppose you got home safely, and the next day took the letter to the Rosales bar. I suppose you must have, although the fact is I never heard anything more …”