Rocks, The (30 page)

I
’m not the best father,
you know,” said Gerald gloomily.

“Of course you are, Gerald,” said Billie.

They were sitting at the kitchen table. It was three in the afternoon. Aegina had not appeared since coming in late the night before, though this time she’d come home on her moped.

“You are the very
best
father I have ever seen. Certainly better than our old pater.”

“He was all right.”

“He wasn’t interested in us, Gerald. You were too young to see it. He was nice enough, but he really wasn’t interested. I’m sorry, but it was sad, seeing the way he ignored you. You were a
boy
, you needed a father. He hardly ever read to you or did anything with you. The only thing that he ever got excited about with you was packing you off to school each term.”

“I thought he was good to me, in his way. He was decent, kind—”

“A librarian can be kind and decent. I’m sorry.”

“He wasn’t taught, you know, to show his feelings.”

“Nor were you. But look how you are with Aegina. And you’re wonderfully affectionate with each other. Look how you both kiss and hug each other. And you laugh together. Who taught you that, then? Not Dorothy!” Dorothy had been their father’s second wife.

“It’s just the way we are. It’s natural.”

“Exactly. You’re a natural father. A wonderful father.”

Billie got up to put on water for tea. When she’d done that she turned toward him. She crossed her arms and stood implacably by the stove. “However,” she said, “have you thought of returning to England?”

Gerald was surprised at this. “No,” he said after a moment. “What would I do there?”

“I don’t know. You could write some more. People liked your book. You could teach.”

“I’m sure it’s not as easy as that. You say that, but I think one would have to have been there, doing that all this time. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Anyway, I’d have no money.”

“You could sell this place.”

Gerald looked bewildered. “Well, not for very much. It’s not exactly a smart villa. But it does provide me with a living. I really don’t see what I’d do in England.”

“Aegina’s English, Gerald.”

“Yes. She’s Spanish too.”

“Right. But what is she
going
to be?”

“Well—”

“To put it bluntly: is she going to grow up and get a job cleaning rooms at a local hotel?”

“She’s going to school.”

“Is it a good school?”

“It’s all right. She likes it.”

Billie turned away and busied herself with the tea.

“I know what you’re saying,” said Gerald. “What are you suggesting?”

Billie didn’t answer. She poured the water into the teapot, brought it to the table with mugs and a pot of milk and the sugar bowl, and sat down. Billie poured milk into the mugs and finally tea. She pushed a mug toward her brother. “You mustn’t waste her, Gerald.”

Gerald took the mug and looked at it.

Billie continued, gently. “If you’re not going to move, she should come back to England with me. There are some very good schools in and around Sevenoaks, and in Kent. They’re not all expensive. She’s too intelligent to stay here, Gerald. Not that there’s anything—”

“No, I know. I’ve been trying to think of what would be best for her now.”

“It’s not the education. I’m sure it’s perfectly good here—well, I don’t know. But it’s a question of what Aegina will see of the world, what she will imagine for herself. She can see the view from Mallorca, or the view from England.”

“Right.” Gerald put sugar in his tea and stirred. “It might be difficult.”

“I don’t know,” said Billie. “Hard on you both, yes.”

“And money.”

“Yes, all right, perhaps it will be difficult. What’s the alternative?”

Gerald sipped his tea, trying to see it.

“We’ll manage, Gerald. You and I, and Aegina.”

“Hard on you, don’t you think?”

“No,” said Billie. She looked up from her tea. “I’d like it.”

•   •   •

I
t was still twilight
as Luc gunned the noisy Rieju up the long drive to C’an Cabrer. As usual, they heard him coming. Gerald was on the terrace when he came to a stop below. He turned off the engine.

“Hello, Gerald.”

“Good evening, Luc. I’m afraid Aegina’s not here. She’s in town having a
hamburguesa
somewhere. With Josefina. Do you know her?”

“Oh, yes.” But not well. Josefina was one of Aegina’s local friends. A school friend. A
mallorquina
. Luc had met her, but Aegina’s island contemporaries didn’t generally mix with his group of seasonal locals, as he and François and Teddy Trelawney and the others thought of themselves, because they certainly knew they weren’t tourists. Josefina didn’t speak English or French, for one thing. She never came to the Rocks; she inhabited another Mallorca. Though he’d spent long periods here all his life, and he knew many of the people who had lived on Mallorca all their lives, Luc wasn’t one of them. But Aegina was, through her mother. It was a part of her he didn’t know at all.

“You’ll know where to find them, then,” said Gerald helpfully.

“Yeah, maybe. Thank you. I’m very sorry to hear about Paloma.”

“Thank you, Luc.”

Luc turned his motorcycle to go, was about to jump on the kick-starter, when Gerald spoke again.

“And how are you doing, Luc?”

“Oh, all right, thank you.”

“You’re in Paris most of the year, is that right? You go to school there?”

“Yes.”

“And you like it, going to school there?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“You’d rather be there for school than here?”

“Oh . . .” as if it had never occurred to him. “Yes. Absolutely.”

“Well, you have a good evening,” said Gerald.

“Thank you. You too.”

Luc rose and stamped on the kick-starter and the bike whined. With a brief, polite look up at Gerald, who was watching him as if he were a strange new set of clothes, Luc leaned to the right and the bike rolled downhill.

Down the long bumpy road to town—across which, years ago, he and François had stretched combined mouthfuls of bubble gum in a long drooping pink trip wire that was run into by the first vehicle to come by, a Guardia Civil on a Vespa, who had screamed at them and chased them into the fields through the twilight, and never found them despite their hysterical and plainly audible giggling.

He cruised slowly through the plaza, past the sidewalk cafés and garish
hamburgueserías
and
loncherías
and
churros
dives where the locals rather than the tourists ate. He turned his bike up the small streets that ran uphill away from the sea, with the little hole-in-the-wall
bodegas
where they would put out a small table and some chairs and serve bowls of
sopa mallorquina
; the indigenous, more mysterious town of which his Cala Marsopa was only a subspecies.
La Majorque profonde
, as his father had once put it, that Luc didn’t really, after all these years, know at all. As much as this place was home to him, he would always be an outsider here, as he was in Paris where he had lived, off and on, since he was five, or six, or seven years old—he was never exactly sure when he had started to spend more time in Paris than in Mallorca.

Aegina could disappear in plain view here and he would never find her.

He tooled down to the port, scoped out the diners at the Marítimo, and tore along the quay, dodging squat old fishermen and their wives, until he reached the end of the breakwater beneath the port’s blinking beacon. No one out here, not of his group anyway. He looked back at the town, bright, and increasingly unfamiliar as years went by and the town grew and more people whom he didn’t know filled the streets in the evenings.

•   •   •

H
ey, Jackson.”

Jackson nodded at him. “Hey.”

Luc was scanning the dance floor, the tables, at the Miravista.

“Jackson, have you seen, um—”

“Your girlfriend who threw you in the pool?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Nope. She ain’t been in.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Someone waving from a table. A crowd from the Rocks, including his mother.

“Lukey, darling!” said Arabella as he reached the table. Arabella and Richard, Milly and Tom, Susie Breedham, Dominick, and his mother. It wasn’t rare to see his mother out on the town with friends, but it wasn’t usual either. It was because of Milly and Tom.

“Here, Luc,” said Susie. She moved her chair, making space between her and Dominick. Luc pulled up a chair.

Jackson began a muted but cheerful instrumental version of “It Happened in Monterey,” and after a moment, Tom began to sing along with the music.

“How very romantic you are, Tom,” said Arabella.

“It’s a song about a philanderer,” said Milly.

Dominick stood up and held a hand out to Lulu. “Come on, then, old flower. Shall we trip the light fantastic once more?”

Lulu laughed immoderately. Luc knew that laugh. His mother had drunk a little—she wasn’t drunk by any means, something Luc had never seen—but she was enjoying herself. “Dominick, you’re such a fool,” she said. But she rose. Dominick led her onto the dance floor and began dipping and weaving like a cobra, waving his arms, fixing Lulu with a grin like Svengali on dope.

His mother only ever appeared to relax—
really
—when Milly and Tom were sitting on either side of her. Milly was like an older sister to her. She had always been there, all Luc’s life, away in England mostly, but missed and waited for, corresponded with weekly by his mother, coming down and staying several times a year. Sometimes Tom and Milly came for Christmas. Ahead of their visits, Tom always shipped boxes of food and drink from Fortnum’s. Luc knew somehow that his mother never charged them. He knew they’d helped her buy the place. She behaved as if the house were theirs. For a long time, Luc had thought they were part of his family.

Tonight, his mother’s mood extended so far as to allow her to enjoy Dominick’s oily attentions. He hadn’t been aware that his mother had even noticed Dominick before now, although he’d been coming down to the Rocks for years. But now he was amusing her, and her humor was encouraging him. Couldn’t be anything there, surely, he thought. Not Dominick. Such a buffoon. Not his mother’s type, though that wasn’t always easy to spot. She did like writers, but intelligent men, thinkers, dryly humorous—like Luc’s father—not bad thriller writers who wore pastel shirts and trousers and white loafers and were so blatantly on the make. She couldn’t be that hard up.

Luc stood up. “Well, I’ll see you all later—”

“Lukey,
would
you be a sweetheart and take me back to the Rocks?” Susie suddenly implored. “I’m really not feeling well.”

“I’ve just got my bike, Susie—”

“That’s fine, darling.” Susie stood up a little uncertainly. “You don’t mind, do you? It’s not far.”

“No, not at all, if you’re really okay on the bike.”

“Fine, really. You’re such a star.” Susie blew kisses around the table. She took Luc’s arm. “Where are we, sweetie?”

•   •   •

A
re you feeling
sick?”
he asked Susie once they were outside.

“No, darling, just a little woozy. You are a
star
.”

“Just hold on to me,” he instructed her as they climbed onto his motorcycle.

It was only a short bumpy ride along the unpaved shore road beside the rocks. Susie’s arms circled him tightly, her hands gripping his stomach and chest. He felt the warm deadweight of her against his back, as if she’d fallen asleep. He remembered driving Aegina home a week or so ago and the way she had touched him.

When he stopped beside the Rocks’ garage, Susie did appear to be asleep.

“We’re here, Susie.”

“Are we, darling?” She didn’t move but still held him tightly.

“Yes. And actually, I’ve got to get going.”

Slowly she released him. Then she fell off the bike into the road. Luc pulled the bike onto its stand and helped her up.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine, sweetie.” She leaned against him, wobbling. “Can you be a star and take me up to my room, Lukey darling?”

Her room was one of four on the second floor, reached by the outside stairs at the back of the villa. They had to go up slowly as Susie negotiated each step. “Perfectly all right, darling. Sweet of you to insist, though.” Susie held on to him tightly until they got into her room. Luc sat her on the bed and she fell sideways and he turned on the bedside light. “Oh, turn it off, sweetie.” He did and her hand seized his arm and pulled him down onto the bed. “Come lie down with me, sweetheart.” Politely, he lay down beside her.

Then he got up. “I have to go find someone, Susie.”

“Oh, do stay, Lukey. Come and have a cuddle.”

“Bye.” He was out the door.

Running down the steps.

•   •   •

A
egina sat with her back
to the pillow and legs stretched out on Luc’s bed in the dark little toolshed. She had Teddy’s bota and had been drinking the wine in it while she waited for Luc. She didn’t want to go home. She didn’t even want to drink any more wine now, but she kept sipping from the bag because he didn’t come. She’d been sliding lower and lower onto the bed. She would stay here and he would eventually come.

She heard people arrive, talking and saying good night, laughing, and soon she no longer heard them. Minutes later she heard steps on the path outside. The door opened slowly. A woman’s silhouette.

“Lukey, darling, you’re not asleep?”

Aegina sat up, suddenly tense. “He’s not here,” she said.

“Oh,” said the woman in the door. “Well, I just wanted to have a word with him about the water-skiing tomorrow. I’ll leave you alone.”

Aegina stood, dropping the bota, and moved toward the door like a cat disturbed in a closed space. The woman stepped back as Aegina sidled past her.

By the pool lights that filled the evergreen branches and palm fronds, they recognized each other. “It’s Aegina, isn’t it? It’s all right, darling, it’s Arabella. You remember, last year I bought an armful of your wonderful little foot thingies to bring back to friends in London. I was hoping to buy some more this year. Have you stopped making them, sweetie?”