‘You kiss Miguel feet.’
David stared down at Miguel’s flippers miserably. He couldn’t be made to humiliate himself like this.
‘Get stuffed,’ said David.
‘OK. I go.’ Miguel turned away, his feet scrunching on the fossils again.
‘No.’
‘I swim fast. You lost.’
‘No!’ David’s voice rose piteously. A sudden image of his father filled his mind. Tod was sitting on the patio, looking up at the Holy Mountain.
There was a faint stirring behind them and he caught Miguel’s change of expression. He had a kind of wonderment in his eyes that suddenly made him look innocent. A pebble rolled out of the second cavern and down the smooth, black rock. What could have disturbed it? Were the Rock People coming to monolithic life, or had the pebble been disturbed by a lizard or some other creature?
‘What was that?’
‘No ask.’ The innocence had been replaced by a look of cunning. ‘This is secret place.’
‘Why?’
‘You kiss feet.’
‘No.’
‘I go.’ He turned again.
‘No.’
‘Then kiss.’
‘You bastard.’
David knelt down and brushed his lips against the salty flipper and Miguel crowed in triumph.
‘You lead me out.’
‘I lead you out.’
‘Good.’
‘And you never come back.’
‘I wouldn’t if you paid me.’
Miguel seemed to find that funny. ‘I no pay.’ He swung away over the fossil beach and David had to hurry to keep up with him.
‘Don’t leave me.’
‘You follow.’
‘Don’t go so fast.’
‘You follow.’
Somehow David managed to keep up with him as Miguel plunged back into the dark gloating water.
David followed Miguel down a long dark underwater channel through the rocks which ran straight out of the cavern. It seemed so obvious that David didn’t know how he had come to miss it. A glorious relief filled him as they came out into the longed-for safe grey horizons of the open sea. He saw Henriques immediately. He was swimming about frantically, darting here and there, his face crumpled and desperate. But when he saw them he shook his fist and David could see his whole face contorting with anger. Miguel grinned wickedly; but David kept his face expressionless, trying to indicate how badly he felt about it by shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating.
Henriques was not to be appeased and he pointed upwards at the surface and began to strike out, weaving to and fro. They followed him slowly. David remembered that the first time he had dived, he had come up too fast and his nose and ears had bled. Even now, when he was so angry, he took care to come up gradually until he broke the surface. There he would face Henriques’ wrath. But what did that matter when he was alive? It was the thought that he had been forced to kiss Miguel’s flipper that made him seeth with rage.
As David weaved his way up he thought again about the rock giants, the strange sense of reverence that had overtaken him in the cavern and the inexplicable pebble bouncing down the rock. Then he saw Dad on the patio at the villa and blessed his escape, and Mum serving breakfast at Dunroamin – and blessed his escape again.
Preoccupied with these thoughts, David broke the surface. Immediately he was blinded by a sparkling sun that sent gleaming shafts over the bouncing water. The world was like paradise. It was marvellous to have survived. The sun was a fireball, making everything shine with a white heat. The water was alive with its golden darts, and he could vaguely see the diving boat in a halo of brilliance. Then Miguel was beside him, his mask off and his lips moving. At first David was too dazed to take much in but then he heard the ferocious, tumbling words.
‘You tell. You tell and I’ll kill you.’
‘Get lost.’
‘You tell?’
‘I’ll say it was both our faults.’
‘You not tell about cave.’
‘I not tell,’ said David, imitating him with a sickly grin and sticking his tongue out. It was childish for fifteen but a real pleasure. He swam on towards the ladder where Henriques was standing, silhouetted in the five o’clock heat, a bent but blazing figure of retribution as he urgently beckoned them aboard. He spoke vehemently with a pent-up fury that struck at the boys as they climbed the ladder.
‘Of course I shall tell your father. And I shall never take you again. You are fools. And you, Miguel, are the bigger fool.’
Miguel shot David a warning glance but Henriques was too quick for him.
‘You do not give that look. I saw you leading him on.’
‘He is as old as me.’
Henriques ignored him. ‘I saw you lead him. You with your experience. You are a devil, Miguel.’
Miguel answered him savagely in Spanish and they were at it hammer and tongs. Miguel did look like a devil in the blazing sun and Henriques like an angry Inca god. Miguel’s lips were curled and David could almost see the horns growing out of his head. Eventually they finished yelling at each other and David had the curious feeling that Miguel had somehow won. He had kept yelling at Henriques: ‘El criado. El criado.’ As they drove back in silence David wracked his brain, searching his limited Spanish. What could the word mean? Then he remembered. El criado meant servant.
Technically that was what Henriques was, of course. David stared back at the retreating outcrop of the island. Its red craggy rock was still shimmering in the late afternoon sun and the wake of the boat was a silver spume behind them. Deliberately turning away from the sulking Miguel, David let himself be swamped again by his own thoughts. The sense of deep blissful relief was still with him, but as it receded the spectre of his present situation surfaced again to torment him. He was bound to be in dead trouble with everyone and he had only been here a week. And the danger he had been in would only be another blow to his parents. There had already been so many. The separation, his father’s new life in Spain with Pilar, and now the terrible accident that had killed her and her brother. His father miraculously survived. David knew why Miguel was so rotten to him. His mother was dead and he had so little left – except Tod. And because Tod’s personality was so big it had embraced Miguel even after so short a time living with him. David knew Miguel saw him as a rival. But any sympathy David might have felt for him had vanished. Miguel had nearly killed him, and David had never been so terrified in his life.
Seeking safer thoughts, David’s mind wandered to the old people. Miguel’s grandparents, Andreas and Luisa Ignacio, lived in a paint-faded villa that was almost lost in scrub halfway up the Holy Mountain. They were old and infirm and Pilar and José had been their only children. The loss had been immense.
David felt a touch on his shoulder. It was Henriques. He didn’t look so angry now.
‘I take you again,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
‘You must not follow Miguel. He is reckless.’
David nodded, looking back at his hunched, sulking figure behind the wheel of the boat. He might be reckless, yet Henriques trusted him in the wheelhouse. Maybe he couldn’t do much damage there.
‘He has lost much,’ said Henriques. ‘That is why he is so reckless.’
‘He’s not easy to live with.’
Henriques did not reply and they stared silently at the coastline. The heat was receding. David looked at his watch. Six. He loved the evenings as they led towards the scented cricket-punctuated night.
‘What did happen to that taxi?’ Why had he blurted it out? He had sworn he would wait for his father to tell him. And anyway he knew. Roughly. But quite suddenly, whether out of relief or trust in Henriques, it had come out. He couldn’t bear to wait; he had to know why Miguel was so dependent. Was it just Tod’s personality with all its engaging warmth and vitality, or was it something to do with what had happened?
‘You must wait,’ said Henriques gently. ‘Wait for your father to tell
you.’
‘No. He may never tell me. I mean, I’ve got to try and understand Miguel. Haven’t I?’
Henriques looked at him doubtfully. ‘If I tell you, when, if, your father tells you – you must be surprised. You must not say I said to you.’
David was getting used to confidences; what with Miguel threatening him about the cave and now Henriques pleading with him. He nodded impatiently.
‘No one’s told me anything.’
‘Perhaps that is as well.’
‘Please –’
‘There is very little to say. Your father came to Estartit, as you know, and he met Pilar. Pilar had one child – Miguel. One morning they went for a drive to St Pere in her brother’s taxi. The road they took is along the cliff. For one reason or another the car left the road and –’ He broke off. ‘Pilar and José were trapped in the car. They drowned. Your father – he was flung out. It is a tragedy. There is no more to be said.’
Henriques had only told him a sharper version of the one he had known in England, and David was burning with questions.
‘But why did they crash? How did Dad escape? Why won’t Miguel’s grandparents speak to him? How –’
Henriques raised a weary hand. ‘I am an old man. I loved Pilar and I feel her loss still. As to her parents, they are too old to recover from such a tragedy. And today, you two little fools could have died as well.’ He lit a cigarette and stared at the coastline. ‘What has happened here? For years nothing. Then in one summer – everything.’
A quarter of an hour later, the boat rounded the corner into the busy little harbour and Miguel expertly edged it through a flotilla of fishing boats until they reached the quayside. Just before he jumped out Henriques said:
‘I shall take Miguel to his grandparents now. Tell your father he will be back after dinner.’
‘Yes.’
‘And, David, it was not so much your fault.’
‘I followed him. I shouldn’t have,’ said David. ‘It wasn’t Miguel.’ He was feeling worried now and guilty.
‘It probably was,’ said Henriques drily. ‘But he has been much affected by all that has happened. Do you understand how much?’
Miguel was still in the wheelhouse, looking as if he didn’t want to leave, guessing that he was going to get into more trouble with Henriques.
‘Yes. I do understand.’
‘He was a good boy. He never had a father. And he took care of his mother. He loved her.’
David nodded.
‘Then he has your father who he was beginning to depend on – your father with his generosity. And now you come here –’ The old man passed a gnarled brown hand through David’s hair.
‘Why do his grandparents let him stay with Dad? After all that’s happened?’
Henriques shrugged. ‘They are very old. They could not look after him. Now perhaps you are beginning to understand the trouble Miguel is in.’
David ran out of the harbour and along the road that led to the Holy Mountain. His father called it that because of the shrine-covered ascent that led to the ruined monastery which sat squarely on top. He was halfway there in a few minutes, looking for the little white villa below the rambling, semi-derelict Ignacio house. The mountain was red and barren, with a little scrub but no trees on its slopes. Soon the crickets would start singing, and the sun would go down on the mountain in a crimson blaze. Suddenly David wanted his mother’s touch. He wanted to see her tousled hair tumbling over her forehead. Mum was never smart, but as she once said, ‘Someone had to bring in the money.’
David paused, sweating, some metres up the mountain path. Suddenly he was exhausted and his legs felt like jelly. He wondered if he was suffering from some kind of delayed shock and he sat down hurriedly. For a moment he felt dizzy and tried to clear his head by looking towards the coast. The Medas Islands were black stumps in a dark sea and a glitter of lights were beginning to cluster round the waterfront. The church and narrow streets ran back to the edge of the Holy Mountain and there was a smell of eucalyptus and lavender.
The dying sun silhouetted the masts of the boats and purple clouds raced across a hard blue sky. He glanced at the mountain, watching the path snaking up, zig-zagging round the barren rock. A lizard scuttled under his leg and he ran tiny baked stones through his fingers. David looked up again, his eye catching something on the higher slopes. The foothills of the Pyrenees were not that high so it was relatively easy to see the scree that littered one of the opposite slopes. A jumble of rock, treacherous under the feet. Then a flicker of unease caught at his stomach. He had noticed the pile of stones on the distant ledge before, but what he had not recognised was its shape. Surely it was a rock giant. David continued to stare across at it for some time.
‘That was a damned stupid thing to do.’ Tod Adams and his son were sitting on the patio overlooking the darkening sea. There was a ring of lights on the coast road and the crickets had begun. This was a time of the Spanish evening that David had come to love.
His father was almost painfully thin now and the parts of his beaky face that showed round the beard were deeply burnt by the sun.
‘I know. I’ve already had a massive telling-off from Henriques.’
Tod laughed. ‘All right. Point taken. But you have to be responsible if you’re diving.’
‘Why don’t you come, Dad?’
‘Diabetics aren’t allowed to dive,’ said Tod patiently. ‘What would happen if I blacked out down there? It’s not fair on other people.’
David nodded. His father had always been dependent on insulin. But he had never known it stop him doing anything else. If only he could come it would be wonderful, but he knew he wouldn’t. They had been through this before.
‘Dad –’
Tod poured out some more wine and from somewhere below them came a burst of singing. It stopped as suddenly as it had started.
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve got a bit more to tell you.’
David explained about the cave and the fossil beach and the rock giants. As he talked, he could see a sudden change come over his father. He put down his glass and there was a sudden intentness in his eyes.
‘Good God!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You’ve seen the Rock People.’
‘Who are they?’
But he was not listening. ‘I wonder how the hell they got below the waterline. There must be some kind of access from the island.’ There was a light in his father’s eyes that David had seen before and dreaded seeing again. It was the light of obsession.
‘Who are they, Dad?’ he said, wanting to probe further.
He shrugged, almost impatiently. ‘They’re the reason I came out here. Why the hell didn’t Miguel tell me? The Rock People are a legend – like the Shell Man.’ He paused and then began to speak very quickly. ‘Fishing was the only industry on this coast for hundreds of years. It’s only since the war that tourists have come.’ Tod Adams leant forward in the gathering darkness, totally absorbed. ‘Anyway the story goes that earlier this century there was an old man in the village called Mariolete. But since his death he’s always been known as the Shell Man.’
‘Why?’
‘Hang on, let me go at my own pace. His family owned all the fishing boats and he had most of the men working for him. He was tough and used to being obeyed. No one ever challenged Mariolete’s authority. Then he fell ill. When he recovered he found out that his son-in-law had been short-changing him all the time he was ill. Now the old man had such a strong will that everyone round here thought he must have magical powers, so you can imagine how influential he was. They would do exactly what he said. His revenge on his son-in-law was barbaric. He had him and his wife – his own daughter – and their children abandoned on that island, and then he ordered them to be walled up.’
David stared at him in horror. ‘How could he? Is it true?’
‘Oh yes. It really happened sixty years ago. The family were taken to one of the Medas islands,
shoved into a cave and walled up. A couple of the kids’ bodies were found after a rock fall but no one else was ever discovered.’
‘But that’s murder. Didn’t the police do anything?’
‘They couldn’t pin it on any one person. Apparently most of the village men were involved.’
‘But what about the Rock People. Who are they?’
‘You have to remember how powerful superstition was then and still is even now with some people here. When the children were found it was claimed they were unmarked. Clean, well-fed, but dead.’
The light was still in Tod’s eyes.
‘That’s daft.’
‘Not to the fishermen. And the fact that the parents were never found was another opportunity for a do-it-yourself legend. It was decided that they had become part of the island, part of the rock. And that the sin had been cleansed. So effigies to them were put up all over the place. There’s one on the next mountain and one at Cadaques and one in the fields near Girona.’
‘Dad.’ Suddenly David forgot how much he feared Tod’s single-mindedness, the obsessiveness that had already destroyed his parents’ marriage and had wounded Mum to the quick. He had to tell him. ‘You don’t think we went into the actual cave where they got walled up, do you? It couldn’t be them, could it?’
Tod smiled. ‘It’s more likely that some of the locals supported the legend and built some effigies there. But it’s a fascinating discovery.’
‘One thing –’
‘Yes?’
‘Miguel made me promise not to tell.’
‘He’s like the rest. Dead superstitious. But we’ll keep the secret. No need to tell him I know.’
‘But what about the Shell Man? That’s something else –’ Despite himself, David found he was absorbing some of his father’s enthusiasm.
‘Not really. Just an extension. People need to feed on superstition – need to go on adding to the original substance. Mariolete died just after the Second World War. He was on a fishing boat that hit the Medas in a storm. It’s said he was pounded into fragments against the rock and that those fragments became shells which took on human form. A shell man that roved the ocean floor, taking revenge on the village by sinking its boats, causing terrible storms and sometimes standing on the Medas rocks, hurling abuse at the land.’ Tod laughed. ‘There you are: Rock People, Shell Man. What else do you want? They’ve been part of my life for years. That’s why I knew that one day I had to come and live here. But even without Gran do you think Mum would ever understand? I had to come here. Nothing – not even Mum and you could keep me away. And now I’m amongst them.’ His eyes flashed and then hardened.
Shellshock Page 3