Chapter 62: Chapter 62
Vyacheslav Babkin was an honored guest at the Real Club de Tenis de San
Sebastian. He was not a player, but his daughter’s boyfriend, Iñaki
Guttierez, a rising star in Spanish tennis, was scheduled to play in the ATP
Challenger Tour Tournament being held the club.
V
Bixintxo Bazurko, a Franco-Spanish real estate developer and a long-standing
member of the club’s committee, was there to welcome Babkin and Maria,
accompanied by Fernando Martínez. The Russians were guests on the rich
Spaniard’s motor yacht anchored in the Bahia de La Concha from where they
would be able to enjoy the firework display that Saturday evening.
The weather was splendid, a clear blue sky with temperatures expected to reach
thirty degrees in the afternoon. Whilst Maria mixed with the players, Bixintxo
invited Babkin and Martínez to lunch in the club’s restaurant where they could
shelter from the blazing sun. Bixintxo was proud of his home town, where in the
19th century the King of Spain had built a summer palace overlooking La Concha,
San Sebastian’s magnificent bay.
At precisely the same moment Bixintxo ordered lunch in the chic tennis club, on
the other side of Spain, almost one thousand kilometres diagonally to the southeast, Liam Clancy was sitting in a Benidorm bar where he about to attack a much
more plebeian lunch: Shepherds Pie and chips, accompanied by a pint of chilled
lager. He was back in Spain for a week, tying up the ends before his move to
London, via Biarritz where he was to meet up with Kennedy. He was making the
best of the sun as London promised to be hard work with few breaks.
Almost all the customers had their eyes fixed on an extra-large TV screen at one
end of the bar. The subject of their somewhat blurry interest was an English
football league match. The airconditioned bar was a refuge from the hot midday
sun, a place where they could idle the afternoon away before preparing themselves
for an evening of more serious drinking. The accents varied from Essex Estuary to
those of Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester. Many of the clients sported
sleeveless T-shirts displaying a variety of tattoos on their shoulders or encircling
their biceps, a good many wore heavy gold chains. They talked loudly,
gesticulating for emphasis. Their closely shaven heads glistening under the lighting
of the bar. There was a scattering of females, bottle blonds, also drinking beer,
their conversation regularly punctuated by shrieks of hysterical laughter. The beer
was cheap, it was home away from home, and better still, the weather beat that of
Romford or Wigan.
It was Clancy’s first trip to Benidorm; he did not like what he saw. He hardly
considered himself a snob, but the forest of concrete was a far cry from his former
Croke Park home in Dublin, and another universe compared to the bucolic village
landscape of Enniscorthy. Doubtlessly there money to be made in Benidorm and
judging from the way the British working class were spending their money on it
beer and cigarettes they seemed little affected by the crisis back home.
The bar was one of a small empire of bars, restaurants and discos, owned by a
Londoner, Bill Halcrow, who had made a pile in Benidorm catering for his fellow
Brits in search of sunshine and cheap beer. Clancy had run into Halcrow’s son,
Vince, by chance at a Marbella disco, who appeared as Liam was trying to help a
couple of Russian girls decipher the cocktail list. Vince insisted on offering them a
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bottle of champagne at his table and Liam didn’t need much persuading given the
price of the champagne, and the company of his newly made Russian friends, Anna
and Svetlana.
Liam was soon handing his visiting cards around, impressing his new friends with
exaggerated stories of the property market and his business as a financial
consultant in Spain. The night was long, and Liam a little worse for wear, was
talked in to accompanying Vince, just as dawn was breaking, to Benidorm…three
hundred kilometres in a taxi.
Vince had painted a glowing picture of the popular resort, to the north of
Marbella, where, according to his story, the opportunities were endless…in spite of
the crisis. Clancy was disappointed by what he saw; the Brits did not resemble
those he had met in and around Marbella. On top of that he was not impressed by
Bill Halcrow, whom he saw as an East End gangster made good.
Hurrying back to Marbella, Liam could not help feeling a little disappointed by
his visit, but the next morning, when he into the two Russian girls taking a midmorning coffee on the terrace of a beach front bar, it cheered him up no end.
Invited to join them, he discovered they were staying with the family of
Vyacheslav Babkin, a Russian oligarch who had made a reputation for himself on
the Costa Blanca, owner of a vast and luxurious villa beachfront villa, as guests of
his daughter Maria.
‘Come to San Sebastian with us,’ Anna said half-jokingly to the good looking
young financier. ‘You can meet Vyacheslav Babkin and Maria.’
A quick check on his iPhone and Google maps informed him San Sebastian was
not more than an hour by road from Biarritz. There was nothing to lose, it was even
an opportunity and being able to tell Kennedy he knew Babkin would certainly
stand him in good stead. Clancy took them up on the offer and the next day found
himself on a flight to San Sebastian in the very pleasant company of the two girls,
ostensibly for a tennis match.
Liam boasted of his job in the City, though he did not let on he was one of the
growing exodus of young Irish men and women following in the footsteps of those
who were forced to quit Ireland, in the search of a new future. Tens of thousands of
young men and women were leaving the Republic at an alarming rate, many under
the age of twenty five. They left for the US, the UK, Australia, Europe and just
about every other destination. Emigration was reaching a record high and Ireland
was facing both a brain drain and a demographic crisis. The spectre of emigration
was a social tragedy for a country that vaunted the skills of its educated youth.
It was a sad turn for the Celtic Tiger, not so long ago famed for its double-digit
growth. Those who thought that Ireland could survive on the remittances of its
overseas citizens as it had done in the bygone years were mistaken. Ireland was
facing a dismal future as government debt soared and unemployment surged. Realestate, once one of the motors of Ireland’s economy, lay trapped in a quagmire, as
hundreds of thousands of new homes lay empty for lack of buyers.
Would Disney’s version of the Emerald Isle, complete with leprechauns, horse-
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drawn caravans and folksy villages, have to be pulled out of dusty ministerial
archives to serve as a model to be relooked for the promotion of tourism? Could
Ireland rely on crisis stricken Europeans and Americans to spend their euros and
dollars? Perhaps they could count on the Chinese? Probably not. It would be a
retrograde means of stimulating growth in a world that had suddenly appeared
more vicious.
London and the world was Liam Clancy’s hope for a better future and he was
determined to seize it with both hands. His gamble on Spain looked like stalling as
its economy plunged in what was building up to be its greatest economic recession
since the Civil War. Dolores and Hugh were just about keeping their heads above
water. It was time for them, with his help from London, to shift gear and start to set
their sights on the über rich.
Spain would certainly follow the same path as that of the Greeks? Unemployment
was climbing at a startling rate to levels not previously seen in the developed world
since pre-war days. In Marbella he had heard disquieting stories of salary
reductions, tightening of budgets and desperate families. The word cortado had
become commonplace.
That did not discourage Clancy, despite the avalanche of bad news, there were
still plenty of rich about, amongst them Russians who were beginning to appear as
buyers on the Costa Blanca.