Roger Bloodworth

Roger Bloodworth is an elderly English retired chemical engineer who offers Driss shelter and paid work at the Spanish home he shares with Angela Bloodworth. His welcome is both practical and conditional: he gives Driss a room, wages, and time to consider a move to Paris, while keeping him out of sight because of the risk posed by police searches for undocumented workers. Through Roger, the novel makes hospitality a real provision of safety and livelihood, but also a relationship shaped by dependence and unequal freedom.

Identity and Setting

Roger and Angela run a bed and breakfast on a hill outside a village in Spain. Their home is a walled farmhouse at the summit, with high windows overlooking a valley of commercial greenhouses, sunflower beds, walnut and lemon trees, and sloping fields of white grapes. The house’s interior combines Spanish furniture and whitewashed walls with a pool and garden; it is at once their home and a business catering to visitors.

The couple had moved to Spain eleven years earlier and developed gardens inspired by English gardening, adapted to the local climate. Roger is about seventy, thin, and described as piercing in manner. When Driss first meets him, Roger is asleep; the following day he greets Driss cheerfully, shakes his hand, and invites him to eat. That welcome establishes Roger’s habitual manner as hospitable and open, though Driss initially interprets the food with suspicion and doubts the intentions of his hosts.

Shelter and Employment for Driss

After Angela explains that Driss is avoiding the Spanish police, Roger proposes hiring him as a gardener for board, lodging, and three hundred euros a month. He presents the arrangement as a way for Driss to settle in, learn Spanish, and move on more safely when he chooses. Driss accepts, despite misgivings. The offer gives him regular work and a place to stay, but it also places his immediate security in the hands of the people employing him.

Roger’s garden becomes the center of Driss’s daily life. He shows him the shrubs and flowers, and Driss learns to plant, seed, and trim the grounds with care. Roger also asks Driss to teach him Arabic, treating the exchange as a modest benefit of having hired him. Their work is not simply a matter of wages: it creates a routine of shared mornings and instruction, while keeping Driss’s skills and labor within the private property.

That privacy is deliberate. During the busy season, Roger makes coffee for Driss in an outbuilding and keeps its door closed while guests are present. Driss is not to be seen until he is dressed in a straw hat and gardening clothes, then goes out to work as an unremarkable member of the grounds. The guests include French couples and families from London and Dublin, some of whom spend summers at Sotogrande. Roger’s management of the household protects Driss from attention, but also makes concealment part of his employment.

Rules, Dependence, and the Paris Plan

Roger and Angela tell Driss not to walk to the gate, take the road, or go into the nearby village. They explain that local police look for undocumented people working on farms and in greenhouses, and ask him to remain on the property. He may telephone his family from the house, though the idea of calling home makes Driss think of his father’s unfamiliarity with a telephone. For weeks he works among the fruit trees and hedges, lives from the Bloodworths’ table, and declines the wine they offer.

The limits on Driss’s movement show the mixed character of Roger’s protection. The household gives him shelter from the immediate dangers of being discovered, yet that shelter depends on his staying hidden and following the couple’s rules. Roger’s suggestion that Driss could eventually move on more safely offers a possible future beyond the property, but no definite plan or outcome is established. When Driss thinks about becoming a janitor in Paris, he sees an advantage Roger does not address: access to the keys to apartments. Their different views of work and opportunity underline that the employment Roger considers a good alternative does not match Driss’s own calculations.

Roger recognizes how much Driss has contributed. After four months of faithful gardening, Roger tells him that he cannot imagine finding a replacement and that Driss has saved the business. He also says that the two of them can discuss Driss’s Paris plan and perhaps find ways to help. The recognition moves Driss deeply: he feels that his patience has finally been noticed. Roger’s offer does not yet amount to practical assistance with the move, but it acknowledges Driss as indispensable rather than merely as a hidden worker.

Departure and Narrative Significance

Roger’s absence becomes important when he returns to England to attend to business and raise more money from his family. He tells Driss at breakfast that he will have to look after Angela until Roger returns, and again postpones their discussion of the Paris plan until then. The departure is prompted by the couple’s financial difficulties: the bed-and-breakfast business is not doing as well as hoped, and fewer tourists are coming to the marina at Sotogrande.

With Roger away, Driss and Angela work together planting a new bed of sunflowers, then share tea and scones. Their conversation turns to the business and the money Roger has gone to seek. The change in household circumstances gives Driss a more direct opening to discuss the money he needs; when he does, Angela points out that there are only two thousand euros. Roger is not present for this exchange, so the evidence does not show his response or what happens to the Paris plan. His departure instead marks the point at which the security he has organized around work and concealment becomes less certain.

Roger is therefore neither simply a rescuer nor merely an employer. His wages, room, food, and careful concealment provide Driss with genuine support; his restrictions also reveal how precarious that support is for someone unable to move freely without risk. His recognition of Driss’s labor and promise to discuss Paris coexist with a business whose finances are failing. The contrast gives the Bloodworth home its particular significance in Driss’s story: it offers a temporary place of safety, but not an uncomplicated escape or a settled future.