Bay of Secrets (8 page)

In his father’s studio, paint would always be splattered everywhere – on paper and card and canvas; big dollops on the once-white tiles of the studio floor; rainbow freckles smattering pale walls. Tears of colour streaming and running and mixing – out of control, and yet under
his
control, as they all were. Enrique Marin was a man who could never be crossed.

Almost subconsciously, Andrés began to focus on the shapes he wanted to include in the picture. At this preliminary stage he was just doodling really – unsure as to what would go in. He started on the cliffs though; they were his framework. He loved the way the path wound to the top, the grassy cap which was covered in wild flowers, and he loved
the scrolled shape of the sandy cliff edge – which over the years had eroded and crumbled on to the beach and into the sea.

His family had more than most on the island. His father and his father’s family before him had reared sheep and goats in the smallholding that surrounded the blue and white stone
casa
with its
postigos
, its little wooden shutters, and they grew the prickly pear cactus for the cochineal beetles, but his father’s heart was never in growing crops or keeping animals. He always had other things on his mind.

As soon as Enrique Marin started selling his work, he sold off the land to his neighbour, keeping only two goats and an area for growing vegetables, which Andrés’s mother tended. Sometimes – when his father’s work did not sell – it was all that kept them going.

The Canary Islands were known to the Romans as the Fortunate Isles; Andrés had learned that at school. But they were not perhaps so fortunate for everyone. They were not so fortunate for those who chose to speak up, for those who would not keep a secret, for those who refused to pretend.

*

On the paper, Andrés made a rough marker for where the sea would come, and the line of the horizon. And saw himself – four years old or five, ducking his head round his father’s studio door.

‘Andrés! Out!
Hacia fuera!
’ His father, wearing his loose pale blue cotton shirt and paint-spat shorts, would yell at him. Stabbing in the air with his brush. In his other hand was the
usual thin cheroot; he couldn’t paint without smoking; couldn’t walk or think. He drew on it, coughed, flicked ash vaguely towards the ashtray and missed, as usual. He stooped slightly forwards, his shoulders hunched, his unruly dark hair held back from his face with a magenta fabric band that made him look like a Red Indian. He was livid. ‘I cannot work if I am to be constantly disturbed!’ Flick, point, ash. ‘Reyna!’

Andrés could hear him still.

Then his mother Reyna would come running and Andrés would scuttle away like a long-limbed cockroach, head down.

‘Never mind, my son,’ his mother would say, smoothing back her raven-dark hair and retying her apron. ‘You can work here in the kitchen with me.’

One day, back up to the studio she went, wiping her hands on a tea towel.

Andrés heard their voices rising and falling, rising and falling into silence. Those were the days when she was still allowed to enter the studio. His mother came back, shaking her head and clicking her tongue. She was carrying an old paint palette, some discarded sugar paper and a frayed brush. Andrés brightened. Work, she’d said. Work. Andrés liked that. It seemed to elevate him to the position of his father, to give him purpose. And he was to paint.

So, while his baby sister slept in her basket near the open door, where the breeze from the sea softly stirred the bamboo tassels hanging from the doorframe, and his mother did the household chores, Andrés worked.

He painted. He painted the fruit his mother placed in the roughly hewn pottery bowl; pockmarked oranges and Canarian bananas – small, sweet and yellow. He painted his mother, dark and industrious, sleeves rolled, apron wrapped around her waist, brisk and efficient as she prepared
ropa vieja
, meat and potato stew, parrotfish or squid. ‘Never mind your father. He is what he is. You get on.’

On another sheet, now, Andrés drew the red fishing boat coming in to shore at Hide Beach. He drew the fishermen too and their tents, which would be a good spot of colour in his painting. Red, he decided, to match the fishing boat and contrast with the blues of the sea, and the yellow/gold of the pebbles. Red was a good balance, a good draw.

His father was still painting too, of course, still living in the village of his childhood which Andrés had not been back to for years. They loved Enrique Marin on the island of Fuerteventura, for his creativity and his flair. He had transformed the place, they said, with his sculptures, his art work, his vision. Because of him, other artists came and created more objects of beauty. Because of him, more tourists came too, spending money and making the island richer. Because of him, there were galleries, exhibitions and grants. He was adored, deified almost.

His father was well off now. His first most notable successes had been at the beginning of the new millennium – Andrés had read about them, thought,
Now will you be satisfied?
Since then Enrique Marin had even become known internationally – an artist and sculptor famous in his own
right, able to command small crowds at exhibitions and galleries; sought after, in the enviable position of choosing only select commissions. His parents now owned other houses – one in the south of the island and one in the capital city of Puerto del Rosario – but they had kept the house in Ricoroque, and Andrés suspected that they still spent most of their time there. It was their community, Enrique’s landscape – the landscape that he loved and which had given him the success he craved.

He is what he is
. Andrés never questioned his mother’s words. Not then. But did she know what her husband was?
Chofalmeja.
Did she really?

When Andrés ran out of images in the kitchen of his childhood, he turned to his mind’s eye and he painted the sea for the very first time; turbulent waves crashing on the grey-seal rocks by the Old Harbour, great rollers spinning out the surf on Playa del Castillo, turquoise luminescent water looping gently round the sandy lagoon of the bay. Every tide was a contradiction. Every tide brought something new. He painted the sea green, blue, white and every shade in between. He painted it still and he painted it moving. He painted it quiet and he painted it on fire. With people and boats, and alone. And gradually, over weeks, over months, over years, he learnt how to capture its colours and its moods and its energies. He could catch the movement of the surf and the waves, the lilts and the lifts, the curls and the glitter.

Until even his father noticed.

He began to watch what Andrés was working on when he
ran home from school to paint. Enrique Marin pointed with the cheroot he held between nicotine-stained fingers, uttered terse comments: ‘More white there.’ Or, ‘Out of perspective. Use your eye. That’s why God gave you two.’ Sometimes his father only nodded. Other times he walked over to the window and looked out, and Andrés’s mother went to him then and put a hand on his shoulder, murmuring, ‘Enrique … ’

One Saturday, Andrés was working on a particularly challenging subject. His friends were out playing football but he was far too absorbed to join them.
Mañana
. Time meant little to him in those days; there was always enough. There was a fishing boat in the New Harbour painted red, green and blue, emblazoned with a black emblem and the name
Halcon
. The emblem was a depiction of a hawk swooping on its prey; single-focused – from its outstretched talons to its curved cruel beak and flinty eye. Beside the boat, Andrés drew a netful of glittering silver fish and standing by this a leathery-skinned old fisherman who might or might not be Guillermo, wearing his blue fishing overalls and canvas boat shoes. In the distance the sea was boisterous. The waves were shattering on to El Toston, the spray a thousand droplets in the wind.

His father trudged past, collecting the cup of coffee Mama had prepared for him. He lit another cheroot, muttered something that Andrés could not hear.

Andrés hesitated, his hand holding the brush poised above the fish. He waited for the criticism.
Too many fish, the sea is too still, error in the skin tone.

But his father was quiet.

Andrés looked up. His father was stroking the stubble of his chin. His dark eyes had glazed over. He looked angry. ‘What?’ Andrés whispered. What was so bad?

His father turned to his mother. ‘The boy can paint,’ he said. And then he stomped back to his studio.

Just that.
The boy can paint
. But Andrés was dazzled by it. The words crept into his soul and exploded like a firework into sparks of delight. He felt as if he had been acknowledged. Recognised. For the first time, Andrés knew what he was, who he was. The son of his father. An artist. Painting would be his life.

But he had been wrong. He had been a fool. An idiot.
Zurriago.

Annoyed with himself now, Andrés bundled his things back into the canvas bag at his feet. That was enough for now. He was too unfocused. He had let Enrique Marin get to him, the way he had always let him get to him. And when Andrés couldn’t get them out of his mind – his mother, his sister, his father, for whom he would never be good enough – he couldn’t work. He had to shake himself out of it before he could go on.

Because Enrique Marin had not taken his son into his studio and encouraged him to paint. He had not passed down any words of wisdom or tips from the great master. Oh, no. On the contrary. Enrique Marin had become more and more enraged with Andrés for following in his footsteps – for daring to think that he could compete with him, that he
could even live in the same house as the great man. His own son …

‘Have you got nothing better to do, boy?’ he would shout, when he came across him hard at work on a drawing. ‘Who do you think you are? Do you think the world will ever want what you do? Look at it!’ And he would stomp over, stab at Andrés’s work with his finger or with the cheroot, criticising, jeering, pulling his work to pieces – literally sometimes. Until Andrés would run away, tears in his eyes, unable – as they all were – to speak, to stand up to him. Why did his father hate him so much? What had he done? Why would nothing ever be good enough for the man Andrés so admired?

Or used to admire, he thought now. Now, he knew better. He had known for seventeen years that there was nothing to admire in a man like him.

But back then … It didn’t matter that his mother and his sister had encouraged him in his painting. What did they know? It didn’t matter that his art teacher at school said, ‘We can all tell whose son you are, Andrés.’ None of this mattered. Because the one voice that did matter was always raised against him.

*

Andrés first noticed the woman when she was up on the cliff path walking towards Hide Beach. She walked with a sense of purpose, short blonde hair swept back in the wind, shoulders hunched, hands thrust into the pockets of her jacket. He noticed her because she was a solitary figure – which was
unusual; most people at least had a dog. And because he had the feeling he’d seen her somewhere before.

Since he’d left his home on the island, since that day when he did what he’d never thought he’d do, Andrés had kept in touch with his mother and sister, even though he knew they didn’t tell Enrique Marin.

‘Do not darken this door again,’ he had said to his son, black eyes glowering. ‘Do not dare to come back.’ Not much room for negotiation there. And anyway, Andrés had too much pride. Every time he thought of the island and his family, he reminded himself of those words. He would never go back to a place where he was so hated. And yet he’d had to do it, hadn’t he? How could he not?

Andrés spoke to his mother regularly though. When Enrique was out of the way, she would phone him – two rings and then four – and he would call her back. They didn’t want to risk Andrés’s father seeing the phone bills and guessing that they were still in touch. Andrés told her details of his life, snippets about his clients – Mrs Emily Jones (bedroom and living-room ceilings apricot-white) who curled the coat of her black poodle, dressed it up and took it for afternoon walks along the promenade. Old Ian Hangleton (outside of the house in magnolia and a few broken slates) who peered out into the street through net curtains to catch up with the latest gossip and kept his money under the floorboards in his bedroom with a loaded gun by his bedside.
Just in case
 … Anything that he thought might make his mother smile. He imagined them – Mama and Izabella – sitting with a pot of
coffee between them when the old man was out of the way. His mother bringing Izabella up to date on his news, though he called his sister too from time to time and she wrote him occasional long letters in return. She was always careful though, he could always sense her holding back. As if she couldn’t risk their father’s anger. As if she couldn’t allow herself to communicate with Andrés more fully. Until he’d been accepted once more into the family fold.

He also told his mother about the last house he’d done up and how he had transformed it out of all recognition before he sold it on.
It made me feel good
 … At least something did. Andrés had benefited from rising house prices in the late nineties. He had bought a rundown two-up two-down for next to nothing – been given the tip-off by one of his clients, actually. He was far from being a property dealer, but he hadn’t done too badly.

And he’d even told her about this new place he had spotted by the sea at Pride Bay. He touched his jacket pocket to check that the auction brochure was still tucked in there. It had reached out to him, this place, and he’d decided to bid for it. Why not? It had glorious views.

‘It sounds magnificent, my son,’ she had said. Pride in her voice.

He’d smiled, thinking of the rundown cottage. Hardly magnificent. But maybe one day … He had been looking for a new project. And the cottage reminded him somehow of home.

‘How is everything, Mama?’ he had asked her. ‘
Qué tal?
’

He heard her pause and understood it. ‘Ah,’ he said.