by Rosanna Ley
The vast sky was streaked with clouds of white and grey; in between, the sun shone from the blue, shimmering on to the inky ocean. The sea bucked and heaved, the waves rolled into shore; rising, rising and curling until they stood, turquoise and luminescent, threaded with golden sand, still and poised for a second before smashing on to the rocks below. Each wave looped forwards, darkening and dipping, and then drew back, hissing from whence it had come. The island was only sixty miles from Africa; behind her the low, smooth hills were soft and velvet, pink and red-gold.
And despite her efforts to cleanse her mind, what Sister Julia had discovered when she read that newspaper all that time ago churned in her head like the turbulent sea, moving forwards, moving back, rolling around like the waves. Even prayer was not the solace it had once been. Even prayer gave her no answers.
‘You again, Sister.’
Sister Julia jumped. She knew that voice. She had not heard him approach. She had been lost in her reverie and the ocean was raucous enough to drown anyone’s footsteps. Indeed, he must have been compelled to speak loudly in order to be heard above the waves.
She bowed her head in greeting but did not reply. It was the man she had spoken to in the village on the occasion she had read the newspaper and learnt of the breaking scandal of the Niños Robados. It was the man who had spoken to her in the square. She recalled how she had felt that day – emotional, devastated at what she had learnt, almost disbelieving at the scale of it. She had been overcome with thirst too. And this man had at least been kind.
‘You are still troubled, I see.’
Sister Julia hesitated to look at him. Perhaps she should not speak to him either. It was strange that she should see him again like this when she was in this state of mind. Was it a coincidence? But how could a man like this be any kind of sign from God? It was of course impossible. Sister Julia looked around her at the sky and the cliffs and the ocean, which seemed to stretch into infinity. This situation – even simply standing here with this man – would no doubt be deemed improper by anyone who might be watching.
‘There’s no one here,’ he growled in his low and guttural voice. ‘Just you and me and the ocean, Sister.’
Sister Julia tensed. It was as if he had read her mind. Should she be wary? No, indeed. Because God was also here. He was everywhere and He would protect her. Anyhow, the man did not sound threatening. He sounded as if he were simply making an observation. And, of course, he was right.
‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘That is so.’
‘Ah, well.’ He let out a deep sigh and she was moved to glance at him. He looked much older than when she had seen him last. Thinner, too, and more gaunt. The bones in his face and his collarbone jutted out sharply under the skin, he was unshaven, and his brown skin was leathery and dry. He did not look at all well.
And even as she thought this, he put his hand to his mouth and coughed, low and harsh. ‘We all have our troubles,’ he muttered.
Once again Sister Julia bowed her head and murmured her agreement. ‘Si. It is true.’ What could be wrong in that?
He put his hands in his pockets and pulled out a packet of cheroots and a box of matches.
Sister Julia gave him an assessing glance and he shrugged and put them back in his pocket again.
‘I suppose you have no one to talk to at the convent,’ he observed.
Sister Julia did not feel that this comment required an answer. Naturally, what he said was true. At Santa Ana in Barcelona the mother superior had always been available for advice and a listening ear, although in Sister Julia’s experience this had been neither sufficient nor satisfactory. But here at Nuestra Señora del Carmen, they lived as in a retreat. Occasionally one of the younger nuns came to her for guidance and she helped as much as she could, but as the oldest member now living at the convent, Sister Julia was regarded as having attained true spiritual wisdom. It would not occur to anyone that she would need guidance for herself.
‘Me, I have too many people clustering around me like mosquitoes.’ He batted his arms around as if he were swatting them away. ‘But can I confide in my family?’
Sister Julia was silent.
‘No, I cannot.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘And so it is for you at the convent, I suspect.’ He waved in the general direction of Nuestra Señora del Carmen. ‘You have other nuns, si, but no confidante, do you now?’
Sister Julia watched him. She blinked. Should she walk away?
‘I thought not.’ He laughed – a low and rasping laugh.
Sister Julia turned.
‘You know what they say? A trouble shared … ’ he called after her. ‘You can tell me, Sister. Who knows? I might be able to help you.’ His words were no sooner out of his mouth than Sister Julia felt them being whisked away by the wind. A trouble shared …
She turned back to face him. ‘I cannot do that, my son,’ she said. It would certainly be wrong to tell her troubles to anyone outside the monastic community, let alone a man. And in a situation which—
Before Sister Julia knew what he was about to do, he reached out and grasped her arm.
She flinched. This man was not intimidated then by the cloth of God. It had been a long time since anyone – man or woman – had touched her in this way and Sister Julia felt the strangeness of it seep into her and linger. For a moment she thought of the other life that she might have had if she had been like her sisters at home and not been given to the Church at such a tender age. Would she have been happy? Would a man ever have touched her, have loved her? Or would she – like her sisters Paloma and Matilde – have ended her life suffering perhaps even more?
She looked down at his hand gripping the white cloth of her robes and he withdrew it.
‘Would you help me, Sister?’ he asked.
Sister Julia met his gaze of entreaty. ‘In what way, my son?’ She was conscious of the waves, the wind, the sun beating down on them.
‘I have sins I want to confess,’ he muttered. Once again he coughed.
Sister Julia shuddered inside. She could not help it and yet she did not know why.
‘I am ill. My time is drawing near.’
‘You must come to the chapel,’ she said. She bowed her head.
He muttered an oath. ‘Chungo, chungo. God in heaven. I cannot.’
‘Then I cannot speak to you or hear what you have to say to God,’ Sister Julia said. ‘The chapel is God’s house. You must not be afraid to go there.’
‘Does not everyone deserve to be heard by God?’ he shouted into the wind. His voice had taken on a maniacal note of pure desperation. ‘Does not every man deserve forgiveness for his sins?’
Sister Julia’s heart went out to him. He was a man at the end of his tether. There was nowhere else for him to go. He was as much in need as any person to whom she had ever given spiritual guidance. ‘Be still, my son.’ She reached out and placed her palm on the top of his head.
For a moment, he closed his eyes.
When he opened them again he seemed calmer. ‘Come with me, Sister.’
And Sister Julia felt compelled to follow him to an overhanging rock where they sat side by side, but not touching, on a ledge that was sheltered from the wind.
Sister Julia bowed her head and she listened.
*
When he had finished speaking, she was quiet for a moment. She knew now who the man was. What he was and indeed what he had done. ‘Is there more, my son?’ she said, for now she could indeed see into his heart. She thought of the woman from the village who had come to see her that day, who had given her the delicate tablecloth made of lace. And of the sadness in her dark eyes. Of what remained unsaid. ‘Is there more that you wish to tell me?’ she asked.
CHAPTER 33
Ruby couldn’t wait to tell Andrés. She wouldn’t call him though; this was something she wanted to do face to face. Was it such a coincidence – her birth mother sitting for his father, the artist, Enrique Marin? Not really. Because it all made sense. Why Laura had gone to a
place like Fuerteventura, the sort of life she would have been leading … Ruby could almost feel the pieces of the past slotting together. Her past. And the fact that it was somehow connected with Andrés’s past just made her spine tingle.
When she knew he would have finished work and that he’d be down at his studio – time was running out as far as the summer exhibition was concerned and he was there practically every spare hour he had these days – Ruby went down to see him, her laptop in its case slung over one shoulder.
It was a lovely summer’s evening and the late sun was glinting on the gently rocking water in the harbour and making the golden cliffs glow. But Ruby didn’t linger. She hurried through the back streets to the studios where, sure enough, Andrés was sorting out some framing for one of his pictures. Fortunately no one else was around.
‘Hi, Ruby.’ She saw him look up as she approached. Good. She’d been a bit worried about disturbing him but he seemed pleased to see her.
Ruby lifted her face for his kiss; warm and tender. Felt herself folded against his chest. She loved that. Maybe it wasn’t too soon for them to think about the future. Why shouldn’t they? When something was right, it was right.
‘What brings you down here so early?’ He released her and turned back to his framing.
‘You’ll never guess.’ Ruby couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. Ever since she’d seen her image on the screen … Well, it was a lead, wasn’t it? Almost her first. And the journalist in Ruby couldn’t wait to follow it up. Neither could the daughter.
‘What?’ He laughed. ‘You look like you’ve found your fortune.’
‘No.’ She grinned back at him. ‘But I may have found my birth mother.’ She should probably resent Laura for what she’d done – just abandoning her to someone else’s care. And yet Ruby couldn’t bring herself to. All she could feel for Laura was compassion. Laura had been a young mother. She had given birth to Ruby with no father or family around to help her and then she had lost her own mother just afterwards. How must she have felt? How difficult must it have been? No, she couldn’t resent Laura and she couldn’t blame her either.
‘Really?’ He pulled her close again and held the back of her head scooped in his palm, in that way he had. ‘Where?’
‘I went on to your father’s website. And you won’t believe what I found. Look.’ She pulled away and opened her laptop, putting it on the trestle table where Andrés was working.
Then she realised that Andrés hadn’t responded. ‘Andrés?’
His face was dark with anger. Oh, dear. In the excitement of finding the picture of Laura, she’d forgotten how persona non grata Enrique Marin was as far as his son was concerned.
‘You went on to my father’s website?’ He stared at her, his green eyes suddenly cold. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘I wanted to find out more about him, of course.’ She should have anticipated this. It was only a website, but she recalled that moment of foreboding she’d had before she’d clicked on it. She’d known he wouldn’t like it.
‘Why would you want to find out more about him?’ He’d stopped working and was still just staring at her, confusion mixing with the anger on his face. ‘Why would you be interested?’
‘Because he’s your father.’ For Ruby it was simple. Enrique Marin and his wife had created Andrés. They were his parents, his roots. For God’s sake. She had no family to introduce Andrés too. No one. How did he imagine that felt? Didn’t he realise how important your family were?
Andrés brought a fist down hard on the trestle table. It shuddered. Automatically, Ruby put a hand out to her laptop. What was the matter with him?
‘He is nothing to me,’ he said. ‘Nothing. Why can’t you understand?’
‘But—’
‘And why should he mean anything to you, Ruby? Why do you care?’
Ruby couldn’t answer that. How could she tell him she’d just been curious – when it obviously mattered so much? Andrés hated him. He really hated him and she had hugely underestimated the force of that hatred. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t care about him – of course I don’t. I don’t even know him. But he’s your father and I was just—’
‘Poking around in my affairs.’ He finished for her. ‘That was what you were doing, yes?’
Ruby was stung. She’d said she was sorry … And he was completely missing the point. ‘Don’t you even want to know what I found on his website?’ she asked him in a quiet voice. She really didn’t understand what she had done that was so terrible.
‘What?’ he muttered. ‘What did you find?’ But he wasn’t even looking at her now. He was looking beyond her, out of the open door into the summer evening outside. What was he thinking? She didn’t have a clue. She realised with a start how little she really knew about him.
‘I found my mother, Andrés,’ she whispered. ‘Your father painted a portrait of my birth mother.’
‘What?’ An expression of horror appeared on his face. ‘What did you say?’
‘Laura must have sat for him,’ she said. ‘He painted her.’
He stared at her. There was an awful pause which Ruby really didn’t understand. Then: ‘Show me,’ he said.
Hands shaking, she switched on her laptop, found the folder where she’d copied the image. Double-clicked.
Once again, Laura’s image filled the screen. The girl with the long blonde hair and the sad, sad eyes. Laura …
Andrés was gazing at the image as if hypnotised. ‘This is his work?’ he asked. ‘He painted this?’
‘Yes.’
‘I do not believe it,’ he muttered. His fists were clenched. He swore softly in his native tongue. ‘I cannot believe it.’
‘But why not?’
‘Because … Because … ’ He turned to Ruby with an air of desperation. ‘What makes you so sure it is her?’
Ruby pulled the sketch he’d done of her at Golden Cap out of her bag. ‘Can’t you see the resemblance?’
‘No.’ He almost shouted. ‘No, I cannot.’ He seemed to tear his gaze away from the screen. He paced over to the other side of the unit, to the window that looked out on to the yard. Suddenly he looked like a defeated man and Ruby couldn’t bear that.
She followed him and reached out. Put her hand gently on his arm. ‘Why does it matter so much, Andrés?’ she murmured.
He shrugged off her hand, almost pushed her away. ‘It is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You’re both blonde and blue-eyed. But so are a lot of other people.’
Why was he so cross? Ruby rummaged in her bag once again and pulled out the photo of Laura holding her as a baby. ‘Look again.’ She pushed it in front of him. She was beginning to get annoyed herself.
He took it, frowned once more. ‘It’s too blurred.’
‘But, Andrés’ – she pointed to the background – ‘the first time you saw that photo you said you recognised the landscape.’
‘Did I?’ He blinked.
‘Yes, you did. You said it reminded you of Fuerteventura.’ In fact, hadn’t he said that he thought it was Fuerteventura? ‘You said it was the sort of place someone like Laura would have gone to,’ she reminded him. ‘Hippies and travellers. People who drive VW camper vans. Remember?’
He took a step away from her. And he was avoiding her eyes. In fact his eyes were kind of glazed as if he didn’t want to hear any more; as if he didn’t want any of this to be true.
But why? Ruby had been so excited and he had just got out a pin and pricked the bubble. ‘Don’t you think it’s possible, Andrés,’ she said, trying to sound calm and reasonable, ‘that Laura was living there, that she needed money, that she went to sit for your father? She was beautiful, wasn’t she? Wouldn’t he have wanted to paint her?’
‘Yes.’ Andrés’s voice was bleak. ‘Yes, he would have wanted to paint her. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. This isn’t her, Ruby. You want it to be, but it’s not. Can’t you see what this means … ?’ He strode over to the door, flung it open and stomped o
utside.
Ruby couldn’t believe it. And no, she couldn’t see what it meant – apart from the fact that she had a lead to Laura’s whereabouts at last. She closed down the document and shut the laptop. Slung it back over her shoulder and followed him outside. He was standing in the yard, just staring into the distance. ‘So you don’t think it’s worth following up?’ she asked.
He wouldn’t even look at her.
She tried again. ‘I want to go there, Andrés.’
‘To the island.’ It wasn’t a question. He still wasn’t looking at her and she’d swear he was almost crying.
‘Yes, to the island.’ For some reason, he didn’t want her to acknowledge what was happening here; what she’d found. But it was her history, her truth that she was investigating. So she had to be strong. ‘Would you come with me?’
Andrés swore softly. But it wasn’t a no, Ruby thought.
‘Would you introduce me to your father?’ she asked.
This time he shook his head. ‘Never,’ he said.
‘I can’t speak a word of Spanish,’ Ruby said. ‘You know I can’t. It would be so much harder to do this on my own. And it’s so important to me, Andrés.’ How could she explain about the feeling she’d had when she’d discovered she wasn’t really Vivien and Tom’s daughter? It was a sense of not existing, at least not in the way she always had before. A sense of being lost. Of being insubstantial, not really rooted. Whatever she could find out about Laura would help her deal with those feelings and allow her to move on. She might not actually find her – maybe she didn’t want to be found. But if there was a chance … She had to at least look into it.
‘But you will go on your own if you have to.’ At last he met her gaze.
She nodded. ‘Yes, I will.’
He sighed, a long sigh. ‘I cannot go back there, Ruby,’ he said. ‘I do not want to go back there. And now … ’
What did he mean – ‘and now’? ‘What happened?’ She braced herself.
‘It does not matter what happened,’ he said. ‘Especially not now.’