Bay of Secrets (37 page)

He put his stuff away into some sort of order and locked up the studio. It was pointless to try to work when his mind was seething like this.

He strode outside, heading for the harbour and the beach. It was still light and the sky was streaked with the red and yellow of sunset, casting a light on to the old factory premises and cottages that was eerily like the light of the island, the light he loved to paint by. Normally he loved these long summer evenings. But tonight he wasn’t in the mood. How could he be?

Andrés thought again of the photographs Ruby had shown him. He thought of the red and white striped lighthouse there in the background of the photo, and he thought of the red and white striped lighthouse of his childhood. Jesus … Who would have thought it would come to this?

They used to walk to the lighthouse – he and Izabella – on summer weekends or school holidays when Andrés was twelve or thirteen and his sister eight or nine. He had always looked after her. He enjoyed her company, and he was glad to be away from the atmosphere of home where his father would rant and rail and his mother would race around after him, unable to do anything right. His father never wanted them around anyway; he encouraged them to go out for as long as they wanted to. Yes. And then Andrés had found out why …

Before you reached the lagoons at the lighthouse, there was a bay – a perfect horseshoe of a bay surrounded by black rocks where the water was shallow and turquoise, and where the golden sand banked above it so that you could run down there barefoot and paddle in water that was always clear as glass. It was their favourite destination. That day, Andrés carried his rod and fishing bag because he might do some fishing or some sketching, and a blue rucksack containing a bottle of water, his sketchbook, charcoal and some pencils. Izabella held a rose-printed bag containing a book, a loaf of bread, a goat’s cheese and some tomatoes. They had their towels slung over their shoulders. They planned to have a picnic among the rock pools, after which Andrés would do some sketches of the red and white wand of the lighthouse pointing to the sky. As the afternoon light changed and the sun was about to set, he would fish.

‘Where do you want to go to most in the world, Andrés?’ Izabella had asked him, her voice almost disappearing in the wind and in the distant crash of the water on the rocks.

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He thought of his painting, of Picasso and other artists he admired. ‘Paris, maybe, or Seville.’ But in truth he didn’t want to go anywhere. He had not tired of painting the island; he didn’t think he would ever tire of that.

‘Hmm.’ Izabella wrinkled her nose as she considered this. Andrés knew that she had no time for dry, musty museums or exhibitions. Izabella liked to live and she loved to dance.
She was happiest in the fresh air of the world outside. She needed freedom.

‘Where would you go, little one?’ he teased her. ‘Puerta del Rosario? The Goat Port?’
Puerto Cabras
 – as it had once been known. He couldn’t see her leaving the island.

She slapped him on the upper arm. ‘That shows how much you know! No.’ Her voice grew dreamy. ‘I shall go to London.’

‘Oh you will, will you?’ He caught hold of her fingers. ‘And what will you do there, my sister?’

She swung their hands back and forth and skipped a couple of steps. ‘I shall have fun,’ she declared. ‘I shall dance and I shall go to parties. I shall live!’

Andrés laughed. He knew that there was a teacher at Izabella’s school who had spent some years in England and he guessed that she had been talking to her students, to fire up in Izabella such passion.

They continued to the lighthouse. They had their picnic in the sun, they paddled in the lagoons and he did his sketches – not just of the lighthouse and the sea, but of Izabella as she lay on her stomach fast asleep in the sand, sheltered from the wind by the volcanic rocks of the
corralito
. He drew her as she sat against the lava rocks reading her book. And later as she danced in the bay, slow and rhythmic down by the water’s edge, her sarong rippling in the breeze, her long hair cascading around her brown shoulders.

When the wind had died down, when the sun was shimmering gold and silver on the ocean, Andrés and Izabella
swam in the shallow turquoise water of the bay. They swam out like fish until Andrés glimpsed the crumbling old jetty by Los Lagos, the village in the distance – squat, white houses with flat roofs jumbled with Moorish styles and sharp flashes of blue, the velvet slopes of the mountains behind, wrinkled in the haze like an old man’s skin.

They dipped underwater, holding hands and exploring the sea-life among the rocks and sand – there were always brightly coloured wrasse to be seen, also groupers, snails, crabs and anemones. The sea often had dangerous currents, a strong undertow, but the natives understood the ocean and the waves; they always had.

At last they swam back to the shore, climbed exhausted on to the pale sand and crept back to their
corralito
where they towelled each other dry and laid down in the warmth of the yellow sun.

Later, Andrés fished off the rocks for sea bream and
vieja
 – parrot fish – using sardines as bait, and caught a few for their supper. He had barbecued them over a fire of driftwood. The
Majoreros
were accustomed to using the flotsam and jetsam they found in the sea – the
jallos:
gifts from the ocean. The scent of smoking wood and fresh fish and sea had filled their nostrils, filled the air. It was a perfect day.

But unlike Andrés, Izabella had never gone to England. Like her mother before her she had been ground down by expectations and tradition and what was the done thing. Andrés sighed. He had been driven out and yet his sister still lived in Ricoroque. But she had not been blessed with
children. Neither of them had achieved any of those old dreams. He wondered if she still went down to the water’s edge to dance. He doubted it.

He doubted it very much.

*

As Andrés reached the harbour, he sat on one of the benches by a pile of crab pots that had been left out to dry and pulled out his mobile. He almost phoned Ruby. He wanted to apologise, he almost wanted to say,
Yes, I will come with you.
But he could not. In the end he could not.

So he phoned his mother in Ricoroque.

‘What has happened, Mama?’ he asked her gently.

‘Now we know for sure.’ Her voice broke. ‘Now we know for sure, my son.’

‘So?’

‘He has lung cancer. He has been diagnosed. NSCLC. A carcinoma. He is in stage three.’

‘Is that bad?’ he asked her. What did it mean exactly?

‘Non-small cell lung cancer.’ She spoke as if she was reading it out from a reference book. Perhaps she was. ‘The most common kind. It is bad,’ she said. ‘He has a mass, a tumour in the left lung. It is advanced. But not yet spread to other organs – they think.’

But how bad was bad?

‘Fucking cheroots,’ Andrés muttered. He was angry. Bloody angry. But whether he was more angry about his father or with his father, he couldn’t quite say. Enrique Marin was not yet seventy. He was – whatever else – a brilliant
artist; a creative man. And he was a bastard of a man who had dealt Andrés a raw deal. Life wasn’t fair. And yet … He thought of his father’s face the last time he’d seen him.
Do not darken this door again
 … Enrique Marin had always hated Andrés. Andrés had always been a disappointment to him. And now this latest revelation.

‘How long does he have?’ he asked his mother. The boats bobbed gently on the smooth water in the harbour; the brightly painted fishing craft, the cabin cruisers and inflatables. Every now and again masts clinked with that distinctive metallic sound, even though there was now barely any wind.

‘A year. Maybe less.’ She sounded calm. Perhaps she had done with the initial hysteria she must have felt when she first heard the news. Perhaps she had been expecting it. Perhaps they all had.

Andrés took a deep breath.
Perhaps not even a year
 …

‘And how did he take it?’

‘He said, “What the hell do they know?” and stormed out of the room.’

Andrés almost laughed at this. It was so typical of the old bugger. ‘He’ll have to accept it though. He’ll have to have treatment.’

His mother snorted. ‘We will try,’ she said. ‘All he keeps talking about is how things used to be on the island. The old medicine. He has no time for anything new.’

Andrés knew what she was referring to. He’d heard the stories often enough – about the doctors who cured all
diseases with herbal remedies and suchlike. Some of the older
Majoreros
were like his father and had no faith in Western medicine – pills, antibiotics, penicillin. His father had often spoken of the Lamb Doctor – so called because he first arrived on the island from Tenerife with some lambs to sell. He used to move around from village to village, Enrique had told them, staying in people’s homes until they were cured, using cupping glasses and candles for prognosis and bleedings; making up medicine with herbs and goats’ milk. But for God’s sake … That was years ago. Medical knowledge had moved on just a bit since then, hadn’t it?

‘Was he a witch doctor?’ Izabella had once asked, eyes round.

‘Whatever he was,’ Enrique had retorted, ‘we need more doctors like him on the island. People used to say – if the Lamb cannot cure you then you are lost.’ He thumped his chest. ‘But for him your father would not be here now.’

‘Why, Papa?’ Izabella had run to him and Enrique had put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her.

Enrique Marin had always had time for his daughter, never for his son, Andrés thought now. Never for his son.

‘My mother was experiencing a difficult birth,’ his father had said. ‘They thought she would lose her life – and perhaps the life of her child.’

Izabella had gasped: ‘Papa, no!’ and Enrique had held her more tightly. ‘My father heard that the Lamb was in Lajares curing a case of pneumonia. My father called for him and he came on his white donkey. He saved us both.’

‘Mama?’ Izabella asked.

‘I never saw him,’ she said. ‘He died the same year I was born. But my parents talked of him too. Everyone did. He was famous on the island. He was a big man, they said. A kind man.’

‘And he liked a drink.’ Papa roared with laughter.

‘Doctors didn’t trust him,’ said Mama.

Papa had rolled his eyes. ‘But the people did.’

*

‘What is the treatment?’ Andrés asked his mother now. It wouldn’t be herbs and goat’s milk, that was for sure.

She sighed. ‘Radiotherapy. Maybe chemotherapy. They will not be operating, they say.’

Andrés wondered if this was a bad sign. Probably. But cancer was cancer. The invader.

‘He must have a good diet, take lots of rest. But he has so much still to do, he says.’ She made a small choked sound of grief.

As if he hadn’t done enough, Andrés thought. ‘And he must give up smoking.’

The sound changed into a harsh laugh. ‘We will see, my son. We will see.’

He supposed it was too late for that; it would make no difference now.

She did not ask him this time if he would come back. This meant what it had always meant, he knew.
Nothing has changed
 … But how did she feel? How was she coping with the certain knowledge that she would lose her husband?

Andrés said goodbye to her and looked over towards Chesil Beach. He saw a couple walking along the ginger pebbles, hand in hand. Should he have warned his mother about Ruby’s visit? Best not, he decided. What will be, will be …

But what would be? Andrés repressed a shudder. He got to his feet and in the dimming light made his way back to his house. He wanted to see Ruby. He wanted to be with her, but he knew that he could not. How could he when he did not know? Had he lost her? If not now, then soon perhaps. Depending on what she found out in Ricoroque. He could not now picture his life without Ruby and he could not picture it without his father either. The man had always been such a force. How could such a force ever diminish? Although there had been many times – just like now – when he had desperately wished it would.

There’s always a blind spot.

Where was she?

Ruby woke up sweating. She was lying on her back, arms flung out to the sides, legs spread at an awkward angle. Her mother had been lying that way in her nightmare. On the road in a pool of blood. Her mother – Vivien.

Ruby licked her dry lips. She’d gone to sleep thinking about her journey to find her birth mother and had woken with this. With the mother who had brought her up. And the crash. For God’s sake. The one thing she couldn’t bear to think about and she couldn’t get it out of her head.

She sat up, reached out for some water, hiked herself on to her elbow to drink it. It was still almost dark, although the light beginning to filter through the thin curtains of her bedroom in the rented cottage seemed to suggest that it was the early hours of the morning rather than the dead of night. And she was alone.

Andrés. She’d been so excited when she went round to see him. Couldn’t wait to show him that image of Laura on the laptop. But she’d ended up at home on her own, booking her flight for one to Fuerteventura via the Internet. She had to
go. She knew that Enrique’s painting had been of Laura. And so what if Laura wasn’t there now? So what if she was there but she didn’t want to know her? At least Ruby would have tried.

On the net she’d located a small hotel in the village of Ricoroque and booked a room. No, she wasn’t sure how long she would need it for – a week at least. She was leaving the day after tomorrow. She’d get a taxi to Bournemouth Airport. She wouldn’t ask Andrés Marin for a thing. She didn’t know what had got into him to make him behave that way. But it was better to find out now, she supposed, than later. Andrés. She had really believed that this might be it, that he might be it; the one. But it looked as if she’d got it wrong – again.

Ruby sank back on to the pillows and closed her eyes. She sighed. It had been a while since she’d had that dream. A while since she had wondered … At which point had Vivien known she was going to die? Was it when she saw the car veer out to overtake, not knowing the bike was there, not seeing? (Maybe Vivien couldn’t see either, maybe Vivien’s face was huddled into Ruby’s father’s back, maybe all she could see was him?)