Bay of Secrets

by Rosanna Ley

  ‘But we will see you tonight?’ Izabella’s face was eager.

  Andrés leant over to kiss her cheek. ‘Of course,’ he said lightly. Though he was half dreading it. A family dinner with them all. How could they all sit down together and pretend that nothing had changed?

  ‘And what will you do now?’ Izabella asked. She put her head on one side and regarded him appraisingly. It was a woman’s look. ‘Will you try to see her?’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Ruby.’ Izabella squeezed his hand. ‘I like her,’ she said. ‘I like her a lot.’

  Andrés smiled at her. ‘Yes, I’ll try and see her,’ he said. If she would agree. ‘But first I have to go and see someone else.’

  ‘Someone else?’

  ‘There is someone who might be able to tell you more,’ his father had said. ‘She worked at the same clinic in Barcelona before they shipped her here to the back of beyond to get her out of the way. I have run into her a few times.’

  Andrés frowned. ‘Who’s that?’

  *

  ‘A nun at the convent,’ Andrés said now to his sister.

  ‘She kept some records,’ Enrique had said. ‘Her name is Sister Julia.’

  CHAPTER 47

  After a simple lunch of a meat and vegetable stew eaten with chunks of bread, Ruby went for a short stroll with Sister Julia across the desert campo. Sister Julia talked. She told Ruby about how she had come to take her vows: about the way her family had survived during the aftermath of Spain’s civil war, and about her parents and her sisters. And Ruby listened. ‘You must have missed them all very much,’ she said.

  Sister Julia nodded. ‘I did,’ she said. ‘I still do.’

  ‘I understand.’ Ruby thought of the family she had known, her parents, Vivien and Tom, who had been snatched away from her so abruptly. It wasn’t easy to be so suddenly alone. And perhaps that was why she had responded as she had to Andrés Marin. Here was a man unlike any man she had met before, a man who she wanted to spend time with, who she connected with on so many different levels, who seemed to understand what she was going through. She sighed. Or so she had thought.

  ‘Of course you do, my child.’ Sister Julia patted her hand. ‘It is why you have been brought to me.’

  Ruby smiled. But it was true – there was a synchronicity to it, just as she had believed there to be a synchronicity with Andrés, a bond. Two people drawn together, pulled together. That was what it had seemed like. And now it was never going to happen. She’d have to get used to that too. But for now – she simply ached for him.

  As they walked back to the convent, Sister Julia talked more of her work at the hospital, gave Ruby more information about the doctor and his methods, opened up more too about her feelings for the mothers and their children. And as she did so Ruby felt her pain and her guilt – and thought of Laura. Would she ever find her? Perhaps not. Perhaps it was more important to find understanding.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Ruby told Sister Julia. She knew already how she would write this feature. There was more than one point of view, more than one story to be told.

  Sister Julia bowed her head. ‘I could have done more, my child,’ she said.

  Yes, well … ‘You’re only human. We could all do more.’

  They returned to the convent and Sister Julia made tea while Ruby scribbled down some more notes.

  ‘Do you think the doctor is still alive?’ she asked Sister Julia. He was the one who should have been punished. He had used the others – Sister Julia’s innocence, her mother superior’s blind belief in his respectability, the mothers’ lack of confidence that they could give their baby a good and satisfactory life. Mothers who were like Laura, she thought. Just like Laura. And Dr Lopez had even used the adoptive parents – who were so desperate for a child to love that they would do almost anything and pay almost any price to get it.

  ‘I doubt that he would be,’ Sister Julia said. ‘Look at me – I am so old and he was several years older than me, although it seemed like so much more at the time.’

  Ruby nodded. ‘Even so … ’

  ‘Even so.’ Sister Julia sat up straight as she poured the tea. She put the teapot down and looked Ruby straight in the eye. ‘I should like to go with you to Barcelona.’

  Ruby blinked at her. ‘Really?’ She hadn’t considered that as an option. ‘There’s no need—’

  ‘But there is.’ Sister Julia’s gaze was steady. ‘You said earlier on that we could all do more, my child. But there is one more thing that I must do. I must return to the old places.’

  ‘The old places?’ Though Ruby knew.

  ‘My city of Barcelona. The Convent Santa Ana.’ Sister Julia’s eyes were glazed now and faraway. Perhaps she was thinking back to that time all those years ago when she first went to Santa Ana as a young girl of seventeen. ‘And the Canales Clinic.’ She seemed to come to. She picked up her teacup. ‘I must go there again, my child. Even I have my ghost to lay to rest. And I must do it before my time on earth is done.’

  ‘Of course.’ There was a kind of inevitability about it. Ruby usually liked to work alone and Sister Julia was very old to be jetting about anywhere – let alone back to places that must hold dark memories for her. But she could show Ruby first-hand all the places, tell her again – in situ – exactly how it had been. There was no denying that it would make the story so much more powerful. And it clearly meant a lot to her. It would give her the sense of closure she needed. So how could Ruby say no?

  She finished her tea and got to her feet. ‘I’ll be in touch very soon,’ she said.

  Sister Julia saw her to the gates of the convent. ‘Thank you so much, my child,’ she said.

  ‘Goodbye, Sister.’ Ruby looked down the red-earth dusty track that led to the village. There was a figure approaching. It was quite a way off but she could see he was tall and male. And there was something else. Something familiar about that long, loping stride. Something about the way he was dressed, the way he … She stared. He was getting closer. ‘Andrés?’ she breathed.

  He was waving now, starting to run towards them.

  ‘And who is this, my child?’ Sister Julia murmured.

  ‘Andrés,’ she said again.

  And then before she could even think about it he was there and he was holding her tight. It was a bear hug from heaven. And he was whispering her name into her hair. ‘Ruby, Ruby …’

  Sister Julia cleared her throat.

  Andrés put her down.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Ruby grabbed his arm. ‘You said—’

  ‘I know what I said.’ He put his arm around her shoulders. But he looked at Sister Julia. ‘I’m Enrique Marin’s son,’ he said.

  ‘Ah.’ She nodded. ‘He sent you to me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Andrés squeezed Ruby’s shoulders. ‘He sent me to you.’

  What was going on? Ruby looked from one to the other of them in confusion. ‘What for? Why would he send you here?’ And then she saw something in Andrés’s expression. Something that reminded her of what she too had felt. And she remembered what Sister Julia had said. That she had talked to a man from the village. That the adoption practice had gone on even here in the Canary Islands of Spain.

  Andrés cupped the back of her head with his palm in that way he had and looked into her eyes. ‘I need to look in Sister Julia’s book of names,’ he said.

  CHAPTER 48

  After dinner with his family, Andrés and Ruby took a stroll down to the Old Harbour. Andrés had his arm around her and he wasn’t about to let her go. The Old Harbour, he thought. Where it had all begun … Who would have thought he’d be back here on a night like this – a warm, late-summer’s evening, the scent of prawns and tapas still sweet and spicy in the air, the stars bright in the canopy of night, the crescent moon hanging like a cradle in the sky above the sleek, inky sea. And with this girl …

  It had been an emotional few days.

  When Andrés had arrived at the convent late that afterno
on, he almost hadn’t been surprised to see Ruby there. Like it was meant to be. Ruby Rae, the island, Sister Julia and the story of his birth. It was pretty much mind-boggling, but after what his father had told him, nothing was going to shock him any more.

  ‘You had better come inside, my son,’ the old nun had said. So with her on one side of him, Ruby on the other, they had retreated into the pale stone cloisters of the convent building and Sister Julia had gone to fetch this famous book of names.

  Ruby hadn’t said much and Andrés was thankful she didn’t seem to need to have it spelt out for her. He had been right about her – he had always been right about her. ‘Are you sure you want to see?’ was all she’d whispered.

  He nodded. Yes, he wanted to see. There was a chance his name might not be there; he knew this wasn’t a complete record, by any means. But he had been adopted in Barcelona. And he had to know.

  Sister Julia brought the book down to them and handed it over to Andrés. ‘You are the first, my son,’ she said.

  And Andrés had taken a deep breath. And opened it …

  *

  They leaned against the wooden railings and looked down towards the rocks in the harbour.

  ‘I like your parents,’ Ruby said.

  He laughed. ‘Both of them?’

  ‘Both of them.’

  He could see why. His mother hadn’t been able to do enough tonight. She had scurried around fetching this and carrying that until at last Andrés and Enrique had forcibly dragged her to the table and made her sit down and eat. ‘I am just so happy,’ she said. ‘My son is home and I am so happy.’

  My son …

  As for his father – the old man might be ill but he had lost none of his charm. And as Andrés listened to Enrique letting loose the charisma on the girl Andrés adored … Well, the difference was that he didn’t mind any more. He even quite liked it.

  ‘And Izabella too,’ said Ruby. ‘And Carlos.’

  Andrés squeezed her hand. Yes, the man his sister had chosen was a good man. It was true that as yet they had no children. But there was still time. Look at her own parents. Izabella’s conception had come pretty much out of the blue to a couple who had been forced to adopt their first child because they thought it was impossible for them to have a baby the natural way.

  ‘But how do you feel about your parents now?’ Ruby asked. She looked up at him. She of all people would understand the mixed emotions that were running through his head.

  And hadn’t he been asking himself that same question all day? Andrés looked at the statue of the fisherman’s wife standing on the hill of Calle Muelle de Pescadores. Always waiting … ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘It will take time to absorb.’ Ruby’s hand was on his arm. ‘You can’t take it all in at once, nobody could.’

  True enough. But what was also true was that he did still have a family. He had seen his parents’ names in the book. Marin. He had seen the entry – chico, a boy – and the actual date of his birth. And he had seen a woman’s name. Florentina Chavez. He had stared at that name for some minutes. Florentina Chavez. His birth mother. And then he had shut the book and handed it back to Sister Julia. ‘Thank you,’ he had said. What would he do with the information? He didn’t yet know.

  But what he did know was the truth. And the fact that he had more of a family now than he’d had for seventeen years. Because the strange thing was that at the dinner tonight there had indeed been a sense of family between them all. Had it ever been there before? Perhaps. But now … His father was not so angry, his mother was not so anxious. It was as if now that the truth was out, they could all relax and be who they really were.

  ‘I know I can’t make it up to you,’ his father had said as he went up to bed, his face drawn and gaunt. He gripped Andrés’s shoulder. ‘But in the short time I have left, I am determined to try, my boy.’

  So.

  Andrés took Ruby’s hand and led her down the hill and on to the stony beach. In the distance some Spanish flamenco music played in a bar somewhere. And the waves rolled in, with a hypnotic rhythm all of their own.

  On the way back from the convent, Ruby had told Andrés about her search for her mother and what she had found. And she told him the whole story of the Niños Robados and what she was planning to do about it. He could sense the excitement in her. Knew that despite her disappointment over Laura, this was something that mattered, something that she could connect with. And now he was part of that story too. He could be one of those voices – if he wanted to be.

  ‘What about the end of summer art exhibition?’ Ruby asked him. ‘Isn’t it the first weekend coming up?’ She bent to pick up a piece of green sea glass, glittering amongst the dark stones in the lamplight from the hill, ancient and pitted with the sand it had collected on its journey.

  ‘It is, yes.’ He thought of the pictures he’d done, the exhibition space at the Salt House. It all felt like a million miles away, another lifetime. And he thought of the centrepiece – his picture of the cliffs of Chesil Beach. Ruby’s childhood path; her dream. He was glad he had decided it was not for sale. Dreams shouldn’t be for sale. And the picture would have a home with Ruby – wherever she was.

  ‘You’ll miss it.’ She turned to him. She was wearing a simple cream linen dress and in the moonlight with her blonde hair she looked almost ethereal.

  ‘It’s worth it.’ He touched her hand. ‘I am so glad that I found you, Ruby,’ he said.

  ‘And now?’ she asked. ‘What will you do now? Will you come to Barcelona? Will you try to find her?’

  He took her in his arms and held her like he’d never let her go. God, she smelt good. Of orange blossom and the day’s sunshine. He knew who she meant. His birth mother. Florentina Chavez. What was her story? Did he want to know? Did he need to know? How had she felt about giving him up and how did she feel now? Did she ever wonder … ?

  There was almost too much to think, to say. Andrés closed his eyes and felt it wash over him. The stillness. The quiet. Peace. ‘Not yet,’ he whispered.

  He wasn’t ready yet, not ready to take the next step. And he wanted to get to know his own family again first. At least for his father, there wasn’t much time. He bent his head close to Ruby’s and put his hand around her hand that was still holding the piece of green sea glass. ‘What can you see?’ he whispered.

  She tucked her head in close to him. He felt her hand on the small of his back. And suddenly Andrés didn’t feel alone any more.

  CHAPTER 49

  Sister Julia put her rosary beads to one side. She was not worried about the task that lay ahead of her. She knew exactly what she should do and she had complete confidence that the young woman who had listened so carefully and so kindly to her story would help her – on a practical level. On a spiritual level, of course, she had her God. When she took those first simple vows all those years ago Sister Julia might not have believed in Him; she only experienced the first stirrings of comfort that believing in Him could bring. But her faith today was unshakeable. He had helped her so much over the years and now He had finally given her His sign. The chance for atonement. The opportunity for peace.

  It was simple enough to pack for the journey. What did she need in the way of material things? Very little. She had learnt to make do; indeed, to value the simplicity of having little. Having little enabled you to become rich in other ways, ways that Sister Julia was thankful for.

  She opened the battered brown suitcase that she had brought here to the island at the time of her banishment, many years ago. She would not take the personal effects she kept in her desk drawer, though it was not easy to leave behind the family mementoes she held dear. Apart from her Bible and psalm book – which she now placed reverentially in the case – the only thing she really needed was this. She picked it up, felt the weight of it in her heart now beginning to lift, beginning to soar. Her book of names.

  It had already helped someone – had it not? Not just Andrés, but his fath
er and his mother too could now be at peace. Enrique Marin … Sister Julia had always thought she remembered that voice, though in truth that day in the square when she first read of the scandal, she had not quite made the connection.

  Ruby had told her that once they arrived in Barcelona they would be handing the evidence – her book – over to an official who would be meeting them at the airport. She had arranged it. She was a clever girl – Sister Julia had the utmost admiration for her. It was vital, Ruby had said, that the book was placed in safe hands as soon as possible so that they would not have to worry about it, so that they would be free to concentrate on their job – which was the telling of the story.

  And how Sister Julia longed to feel free.

  How would she react when she went back to the Canales Clinic? Sister Julia placed her wash things in the case and the changes of underclothing she would need, and snapped the lid closed. It did not matter, she told herself sternly, how she felt. What mattered was what they were to achieve – for others, for the children who had been mistreated. The Niños Robados.

  And what would the consequences be? Ruby had warned her that there would be repercussions – for her, Sister Julia. That she might be facing a criminal sentence, that she might not be free to go, free to return here to the island after it was done.

  But that hardly mattered either. She was old. Her time was drawing near. Indeed, she was weary and more than ready to meet her maker once this was done, once her conscience was as clear as it would ever be. She was more than ready to unburden, more than ready to atone for the wrongs she had been part of, to find the peace she so longed for at last.

  ‘Remember, Sister Julia,’ Ruby had told her, ‘there is no going back.’

  And Sister Julia did not want to. Indeed, she did not.

  CHAPTER 50

  The day that Ruby and Sister Julia were due to leave for Barcelona dawned grey and still. At midday Ruby and Andrés had arranged to collect Sister Julia from the convent so that he could take them to the airport. Ruby wasn’t looking forward to that. It felt like no sooner had she found him – properly found him – than she was leaving. But before that …