A Tale of Paco, Paquito and Encarna

As delightful as it is to have friends, sometimes lives become entangled in ways we could all well do without. Such was the case with Manolo’s fellow ‘granadinos’ Paco, Paquito and Encarna…

Paco (short for Francisco) was one of the cooks at La Marina: a cheerful man with that unfortunate body odour issue common to a certain sort of hirsute Spaniard and breath that could probably have felled the population of several Andalucian provinces.

His skinny little wife, Encarna (Encarnación) worked as a chambermaid in one of the larger hotels and was as tiny and shrieky as her husband was rotund and jovial.

Joining them was their six-year old son, Paquito (in Southern Spain it was still common to name sons after their fathers and daughters after their mothers, but to refer to them in the diminutive); an adorably shy little boy with his father’s permanently crossed eyes and resolutely cheerful temperament.

During the months that I worked at La Marina, I began to look forward to their chatty visits: mother and son perched on stools one side of the bar whilst a sweating Paco lumbered around in the kitchen; popping out as often as he could for a ribald exchange of news and views – a content little family unit, or so it appeared.

So nobody was more shocked than I when one day all hell broke loose and a teary Paco appeared on our doorstep, complete with suitcase.

When he was eventually able to talk, it transpired that Encarna – despite her torturous vocals and lack of discernible physical attributes – had somehow managed to start a full-blown affair with her boss. An affair that had been carrying on under Paco’s very nose for more months than she was prepared to own up to.

Once the cat had leapt, squalling, from bag and rather than being apologetic for this most harsh of betrayals, Encarna promptly ordered Paco out of their rented apartment, and proceeded to move her lover in.

Thus we ended up with a shell-shocked and inconsolable cuckold in our micro mini-guest room, and no obvious way of removing him.

Not only were we obliged to keep the windows open at all times to save our olfactory senses from complete burn-out – mosquitoes or no mosquitoes – but I was also obliged to spend my free time immobile in the kitchen, on the sofa, at the dining room table or indeed wherever the pitiful Paco had managed to pin me in order to take me through his ten-year marriage, step by step and for the umpteenth time, in order to try to pinpoint where it had all gone wrong.

Manolo managed to dodge consolation duty thanks to the happy circumstances of his chromosomal make-up –  Paco being of the opinion that all females must surely think alike and that if anyone could provide him with the answers to his many and oft-repeated questions, that person would be me.

(I was far from being of the same opinion, but that didn’t appear to be enough to save me.)

What made the situation even more painful was that Encarna also wanted to bend my ear at every opportunity.

So there I found myself, with Squawky on one side: “He neglected me. He took me for granted. I deserve some passion in my life.”

And Stinky on the other: “I tried to be a good husband. I always provided for my family. What has he got that I haven’t?”

And me in the middle trying desperately to persuade them that they would be better off searching for a meaningful means of communication with each other rather than just bombarding a clueless English teenager with their ages-old tales of woe and expecting her to untangle the subtext of a decade-long association.

The news that Encarna had eventually seen the light (six loooooooog weeks later) and begun to make tentative attempts to rebuild her shattered family was like music to my soul; I have never been so thankful in my life to regain the use of my guest room, my ears (and my sense of smell).

Other peoples’ marriages – who the hell needs them…