I took her straight to the Residencia Sanitaria, which is just up from the Port Mahon Hotel. This is the emergency hospital, and the night Petra and I spent there is not one either of us is ever likely to forget. Fortunately they did have a bed available in the maternity ward. Two women were in labour at the time and the place was something of a mad house. There were nurses rushing about, a nun in attendance, no sign of a doctor. They got Soo to bed and I left Petra with her and phoned the Guardia Civil.
It was while I was telling them what had happened that Petra came down to say Soo was in labour. ‘They’ve found a doctor. A very young man. I think he’s scared. He’s already lost one baby tonight. That’s what one of the nurses told me.’
The time was 03.17, the words coming in a breathless rush. ‘I’ll go back now … No, don’t come with me. There’s nothing you can do. I’ll let you know as soon as it comes.’
‘It’s not due for more than a month.’ I remember I said that, standing there, helpless.
‘What’s it matter when it’s due? She’s having it now. I just hope to God …’ She turned abruptly, not finishing the sentence, and hurried back up the stairs.
I remember getting rid of Gareth Lloyd Jones and then I was going over it all for the benefit of a young sergeant of the Guardia. Since it had happened in the country, not in Mahon, it was their responsibility. He made some notes, then offered his sympathies and said he would make a report. Perhaps it was a matter for the Aduana. At my insistence he agreed to inform Inspector Molina of the national police. I knew him slightly and I thought it might be something the plain-clothes boys should know about.
After the sergeant was gone I was alone there in that cold little reception area. Sometimes I paced up and down. Nobody came and time passed slowly. Dawn began to break in the street outside. Then suddenly Petra was there, her face very pale under the freckles, her eyes dark-edged with weariness and worry. ‘She’s all right,’ she said slowly. ‘I mean she’s come through it. She’s conscious.’ The words seemed dragged out of her. ‘The doctor thinks it’s just that she’s badly bruised inside. She’ll be okay. That’s what he hopes – when she’s had some rest.’
‘And the child?’ I asked.
‘For God’s sake, Mike, what did you expect? She must have fallen right on top of it. It was a breech, didn’t you know that from the scan? Round the wrong way, the poor little thing’s head was right against the wall of the stomach. It hadn’t a chance.’
‘What was it, a boy or a girl?’
‘A boy.’
I went up to her then, feeling tired and very depressed, wanting a drink and not knowing what the hell I was going to say to her. She was lying on her back, her eyes closed, the olive skin of her face looking sallow, a deathly pallor against the tumbled black of her hair. They had cleaned her up, of course, but her hair and skin were still damp, her features so drained that I thought for a moment she was dead.
I don’t think I said anything, but she must have sensed my presence for her eyes opened. They stared straight up at me, great brown pools in a white face. Her lips moved. ‘I’m-sorry.’ The words came faintly, then she was gone, the eyelids closing down, consciousness slipping away.
I bent and kissed her. Her skin was hot as though she were in a fever, her breathing so shallow it was hardly noticeable. Petra touched my arm, motioning me with her head to leave. The nun was hovering and a sister had arrived and was talking to her. ‘She’ll sleep now. They’ve given her an injection.’ Petra led me out.
I don’t remember driving home. We drank the remains of a bottle of brandy as the sun came up, both of us sitting in the office, and all I could think about was Soo’s eyes staring up at me, huge brown pools of sorrow in the whiteness of her face, her hair still dank where it lay unkempt on the pillow, and her words, those sad words of apology for a miscarriage she couldn’t help.
And after that I fell asleep, my head on Petra’s shoulder.
Chapter Three
When I next saw Soo she had been moved to a smaller room and her face was to the wall. I don’t know whether she was asleep or not, but when it happened on both the visits I made the following day, it was clear she didn’t want to talk to me. Apart from the bruising, she was in a state of shock. Even so, the doctor, as well as the nurses, said she was making quite good progress and should be home in a few days.
By then the Guardia had recovered the stolen hire car. It had been found abandoned in Alayor, in one of the streets winding down from the church. They had also examined the cave, but had not been disposed to take the matter very seriously. Petra had been with them and she said they considered the two men who had been flushed out by our unexpected arrival to be cave squatters, and then, when they bumped into her at the roof fall and Soo outside, they had panicked and taken the car as a handy means of making their escape.
After the police had gone she had walked round to the second cove, past the sea-level caves. There was a small cottage at the far end, its cabbage patch clinging to the side of a steep ravine. The family there knew nothing about the two men. They hadn’t even known the cave had been occupied. Remembering the light Lloyd Jones had seen, she had asked them if they had noticed any vessel entering the cove during the previous two nights. There had been one, they said, and they wouldn’t have seen it but for the moonlight, for the boat was all dark, not a light anywhere, and it had looked like two ships rafted together. There had been an onshore breeze, quite strong at times, so the two vessels couldn’t anchor and had left immediately. The only other boats they had seen during the past few days had been local fishing boats, mostly from Cala en Porter, which was the next cove to the west and one of the better tourist resorts with a big hotel and some plush villas.
This she told me when she came ashore the following day, hauling her inflatable out and parking it in our car park. She was on her way to Cales Coves, hoping to uncover some more of that cave drawing, and we were walking along the waterfront to where the Martires Atlante runs out past the Club Maritimo to the old fort that marks the entrance proper to Mahon harbour.
The sun was shining again, an easterly funnelling up the harbour, rattling the halyards of the yachts moored at the Club pontoon, and Petra, looking wildly attractive with her auburn hair blowing about her face, suddenly said, ‘That Navy man, have you seen any more of him?’ She was wearing faded denims, an orange shirt open almost to the navel, no bra and her feet were bare.
‘No, not since that night,’ I told her.
‘Did you know he’d been seeing Soo? He’s been to the hospital several times.’
I didn’t say anything, sullen in the knowledge of what she was trying to tell me. Her face was in profile, a strong face, the nose fine-boned and straight, the teeth white in a mouth that wore no lipstick. ‘Did Soo tell you that?’
‘No. Gareth told me.’ She stopped then and turned to me. ‘He’s in love with her, you know that?’
I half shook my head, shrugging it off. What do you say to a statement like that? And coming from a girl you’re half in love with yourself. What the hell do you say? ‘How do you know he’s in love with her? How the bloody hell do you know?’
Soo, of course. Soo must have confided in her. Hurt and lonely, it seemed reasonable, two young women together in the carbolic atmosphere of a hospital ward. But no –’He told me himself.’ And she added, ‘You haven’t seen him, have you? He hasn’t tracked you down – to say he’s sorry, offer his condolences, anything like that?’
‘No.’
She nodded. ‘Well, that’s why. You don’t go looking for a man when you’ve fallen head-over-heels in love with his wife. At least, I wouldn’t think that’s how they do it in the Navy. Cuckolding a fellow, if only in thought – well, not quite the thing, eh?’ She gave me that wide grin of hers and began to walk on again. ‘No need to worry about it, he says his leave will soon be over.’
‘What about Soo?’ I asked. ‘How does she feel?’
She gave a little shrug. ‘She likes hi
m. I don’t know how much more she feels.’ She glanced at me quickly, a flash of something in her eyes and smiling now, quietly to herself. ‘I’m not exactly in her confidence.’
I caught hold of her arm. ‘Let’s go for a sail.’
‘No.’ And she added, still with that little smile, ‘That’s your answer to every problem, isn’t it? Let’s go for a sail.’
‘When did you see him?’
‘This morning.’
‘Where?’
‘Bloody Island. At the dig.’ She nodded towards the grey sprawl of the hospital ruins looking quite distant now that the harbour was full of whitecaps. ‘He hired a boat and came over to see me.’
‘To say goodbye?’
She shook her head.
‘Then why?’
‘I think because he wanted you to know. He also said he was sorry.’
‘For leaving Soo on her own that night, or for falling in love with her?’
‘Both, I imagine.’
We had stopped again and I was staring seaward, out beyond the fortress of St Felip to where the horizon lay, a dark line in a blue sea flecked with white. So his leave would soon be up and he’d be off to Gib to take command of his ship. A Navy man, newly promoted and on his way up the service ladder. No wonder she found him attractive, feeling as she did about her father. I thought of the wretched little house, one of a line of Victorian dwellings in a back street in Southsea. It was all her father had to show for almost forty years in the Navy, his pay mostly spent on good living, and what savings he had achieved thrown away on speculative investments that had never produced the fortune they promised him. That lovely little courtyard full of music from the old record player, the mellow limestone house overlooking the sea between Sliema and St George’s Bay, it had all seemed a long way away when we had last visited her parents. That was just after the loss of her first child, which I had thought might be some weakness inherited from her mother. But after that visit I was convinced that if it was an inherited weakness then it had to be from her father.
Still thinking about that, I glanced at Petra, standing Junoesque in the sunshine, the curve of a breast showing in the V of her orange shirt, the skin tawny brown with wind and salt, the patched denims filmed with the dust of the dig she was working on. No weakness there, and if she were to let up on the pill and have a child, she’d probably deliver it herself, no trouble at all, and get right on with the dig next day.
She turned her head and caught my gaze, the flicker of a smile back at the corners of her mouth. Something in her eyes made me wonder if she could read my thoughts. Were we that close already, and nothing said, just an acceptance that there were moments when the satisfaction of our needs …? ‘You go for that sail. It’ll do you good. I’ve got things to do.’ She turned away then, a wave of the hand as she called over her shoulder, ‘And don’t fall in. It’s blowing quite hard out there.’
I watched her as she crossed the road and disappeared up the stone staircase leading to the upper road where she always parked her battered little Citroen. She moved with the grace of an athlete, taking the steps at a run, her hair catching the sun like a burnished helmet of bronze. She must have known I was watching her, but she didn’t look back, and when she reached the top she didn’t look down or wave, though I caught the flash of that helmet of hair for a moment above the ornate balustrade.
She was right about the wind. It would have been fine if she had come with me, but single-handed the Flying Dutchman I had picked up in lieu of an unpaid bill was quite a handful, more like board-sailing than cruising. I reefed, of course, before slipping from our pontoon and sailing out of the shelter of Cala Figuera, but the wind was funnelling down the length of the harbour approaches, and not much shelter to be had in the lee of the islands. It was very wet as I beat past Villa Carlos and out as far as the big island called Lazareto, and when I went about and freed the main for the run back, we were planing on the break of the waves and every now and then that powerful little dinghy took the bit between her teeth and tried to broach-to.
I was wet and tired by the time I got in. Instead of providing me with the opportunity of thinking things through, it had taken all my concentration just to keep the dinghy upright and avoid capsizing. Ramón was waiting for me with a whole string of queries, mostly about matters that Soo would normally have dealt with, and there was the mail. I hadn’t dealt with the day’s mail yet and I loathed typing letters. There is a telephone call.’ He was hovering over me as I stripped and towelled myself down. ‘About the Santa Maria.’
‘You deal with it,’ I said. ‘You know the charter terms.’
‘He don’t want a charter.’
‘You mean he wants to buy her …’ I had been trying to sell the Santa Maria for over a year now.
But Ramón shook his head. ‘He already have a boat.’
I paused in the act of stepping into a dry pair of trousers. Then what the hell does he want? Who is he?’
‘Señor Flórez. He want you to phone him.’
Apparently Flórez was acting for the owner of a catamaran lying at the commercial dock, in the area reserved for larger yachts and those on passage. ‘He want to make some sort of exchange,’ Ramón added.
A big cat had come in that morning. I had seen it running in under jib alone when I was talking to Petra, dark blue hulls with the paint flaking and a bad scrape along the port side. But she had still looked beautiful and very purposeful, a real thoroughbred.
I zipped up my trousers, pulled on a light sweater, Ramón still standing there and my mind in a whirl. The fishing boat wasn’t worth much, not here in Menorca, and running it for charter was a lot of work with very little in it for us. It had never really paid its way. ‘How big is this cat?’
Ramón shrugged. ‘You phone Señor Flórez, then he tell you everything you want to know.’
But when I rang Flórez, all he said was, ‘Come and see it for yourself.’ He and the owner would be on board that evening. ‘Then we talk about it, eh? I have a very good deal for you, Mr Steele.’ And he had put the phone down, leaving me with all my questions unanswered and the deal not specified.
I would like to have driven over to the commercial dock right away. Looking through the yachting magazines, I had often thought what a perfect charter vehicle a big cat would be, and now I was being offered one, right here in Mahon. But the phone began ringing and I couldn’t get away. There were two calls from England, as well as letters. Spring was in the air and people suddenly anxious to be sure their boats or their villas would be ready for the holidays.
I worked right through lunch, sending Ramón out to the restaurant at the corner for the fish-and-rice dish they often put up for us when Soo was too busy to cook anything for herself. It was shellfish this time, arroz de marisco, with calamares tentacles finely chopped to give it body. All the time I was eating, and afterwards, I kept thinking about that catamaran, wondering what it would be like, what condition it would be in, what accommodation it would have, the navigation equipment and the state of the sails, excitement building though I knew bloody well the Mediterranean was a graveyard of shattered dreams.
It was late afternoon before I finally caught up with the office work and then it was time to visit the hospital again. I didn’t mention the catamaran to Soo, even though I found her sitting up in bed reading a Spanish novel she had been lent. She looked much better, the dark patches under her eyes almost gone, some of the old sparkle back and her face more animated. The doctor had said she would be fit to leave the following day. ‘Eleven o’clock. Will that be all right? Can you come for me then?’
I said ‘Of course’, and then she talked for a bit, about the friends who had been to visit her, the gossip they had passed on, and particularly about the Renatos’ Red Cross party in the Quarries. ‘What will you say when you speak at the opening of that Albufera development? You never told me the Alcalde had asked you. Am I invited?’
‘I imagine so.’
‘But he did
n’t ask me, did he?’
‘I’m sure he will. When they send out the official invitations.’
She was silent then and I feared she was going into one of her sulky moods. But after a moment she brightened and began asking questions about the business – how Lennie was getting on with the villa out at Binicalaf, whether the equipment for the extra bathroom in another of the villas in our care had been flown in yet, had I remembered about completing the forms for customs clearance, and the accounts to settle with two of our suppliers. ‘You know, I’m really looking forward to being back. Lying here with nothing to do but read and listen to the radio and think.’ And she added darkly, ‘I’ve had all the time in the world to think these past few days.’ And almost without a pause: ‘Did Gareth come and see you before he left? No, of course – I remember. He said it was bad enough seeing me, feeling it was his fault I’d lost the child, and though I told him I might have lost it anyway, he still said he couldn’t face you. You told him it was his fault. I have a distinct memory of that. Why the hell didn’t you stay with her? you shouted at him, and accusing him like that …’
Her voice trailed away. Then suddenly she said, ‘Did you know, he came up through the lower deck – Ganges, Dartmouth, the Fleet Board. Just like Papa. It makes a difference, doesn’t it? You’re more vulnerable then. Everything that bit harder. No admiral ever came up through the lower deck that I can remember. And it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.’ Tears welled. I went to comfort her, but she pushed me away. ‘I know what you think. And you’re probably right. I’ll never have a child now.’
I didn’t know what to say. Life doesn’t make sense. There was Petra who didn’t want a child, but would almost certainly have no difficulty if she did find herself with a bun in the oven. And Soo’s mother, she had had five, one every two years, regular as clockwork. Then, being a devout Catholic, she must have gone on strike. That was probably why Soo and her father had been so close.
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