Bay of Secrets (27 page)

‘Yes. I work in one of the units in the studio near the Arts Centre.’

What would his work be like? Ruby tried to imagine. She’d like to see it. They were standing so close together now, she was beginning to wonder if he would kiss her. And if he did … If he did, what would she do?

But he moved away and they walked past the dark stone cottages and through the car park. They had slipped into silence once more. He wasn’t the most forthcoming of men, Ruby thought. He’d be hard to get to know. But on the other hand, after the last few weeks, she was no stranger to secrets herself.

‘This is me,’ she said when they reached her house. She wouldn’t ask him in. It was late and she was tired. And she hadn’t quite made up her mind about Andrés Marin. What had happened with the other women Tina set him up with? Had he walked them home too? Did he tell them about his painting, about his father?

‘I know of a cottage coming up for rent in Pride Bay,’ he
said. ‘If you like I will take you there. It belongs to a client of mine, but I do not think he has advertised it yet.’

‘Oh.’ That must have been what he was referring to earlier. ‘When were you thinking of?’

He frowned. Put his hands on her shoulders.

And if he should kiss me
, Ruby wondered again. She looked up at him.

He kissed her on both cheeks; once, twice. Nothing more. What she felt was the scent of him – amber like tree resin, his warm breath on her cheek.

‘Would you come for a walk with me? Next weekend perhaps? We could go and see the cottage too.’

‘All right.’ She agreed quickly, before she had time to find reasons why not. He was a complication, he had to be, and she had no need of a complication in her life. Her coping mechanisms were vulnerable enough already. She didn’t want to get involved with anyone. It seemed like the wrong time. But …

‘Shall we say Saturday morning? Eleven o’clock?’

She nodded. ‘OK.’

‘I will look forward to it.’ At last, he smiled.

Ruby stared at his mouth, at the slightly lopsided eye-tooth that somehow made him even more attractive. Was she mad? Was she totally mad?

‘Goodnight, Ruby.’

‘Goodnight, Andrés.’

And he lifted his hand in a wave and strode off into the darkness.

On Saturday Andrés drove the pick-up truck to Ruby’s house. He’d never seen the need for buying another vehicle other than the one he used for work, but now he was a bit embarrassed about the cement dust and the bags of tools – though he had given it a bit of a clear-out at home. He was nervous too.

Ruby opened her front door before he even got out of the truck. Either she couldn’t wait to see him – which seemed unlikely – or she didn’t want to risk inviting him into the house. Andrés sighed. What was he getting so het up about anyway? He was the one who wasn’t supposed to be interested in a relationship – at least not this kind of relationship, he thought; a relationship which could definitely get tricky. Was Ruby part of the spider’s web? Would she be his new project now that the cottage he’d wanted to buy at auction had been bought by someone else? Hah – chance would be a fine thing.

Tina had phoned him the morning after her dinner party when he was up a ladder investigating a damp patch the size of a football in old Martha Hutton’s ceiling. He was tapping around it carefully – there could be pipes or electricity cables
running behind – but he might as well make a hole straight off; he’d have to replace this part of the ceiling in any case. Martha didn’t have much money to spare, so for now he’d just make an opening big enough for him to take a look, see if he could spot where the water was coming from.

And then his mobile rang.

He groped for his phone in his back pocket.

‘Andrés?’

‘Hi, Tina.’ He sat down on the step and put down his hammer. He’d been expecting this call, but he wasn’t going to make it easy for her.

‘You’re not mad at me, are you?’

Andrés smiled. ‘You did promise – no more matchmaking. Didn’t we agree?’ He looked up at the black hole in the Artexed ceiling. Martha would have a fit.

‘But this was different, wasn’t it?’

Yes, he thought, this was different. ‘You think so?’

‘I know so.’ She laughed. ‘I remember how interested you were – when Ruby was playing at the Jazz Café. Though I didn’t know you’d actually met and spoken to her, you dark horse.’

Dark horse? The English language was forever surprising Andrés. ‘So you thought you would give me a nice surprise?’ he suggested.

‘Exactly.’

‘And Ruby?’

‘Ruby?’

He’d seen her face when she walked in. Even before she’d
realised that her blind date was none other than the man bidding against her at the auction. She’d been horrified. And when on top of that, she’d seen Andrés … Well. She’d looked as if she’d been thrown into her worst nightmare.

‘I haven’t spoken to Ruby yet,’ Tina admitted. ‘But I was only trying to cheer her up. She’s been through such a hard time.’

‘And I am the right person to do that?’ Andrés enquired.

‘You can be funny,’ Tina said. ‘When you try.’

‘You are so generous.’ But Andrés knew Tina had their best interests at heart – him and Ruby. She was kind, even if she did think that no one could be happy without the other half of a couple by their side.

‘And you clearly got on like a house on fire,’ she said.

‘Like a house on fire?’ This sounded more negative than positive to Andrés, but it was simply the strange behaviour of the English language – again.

‘I’ve never seen Ruby so animated,’ Tina added. ‘And as for you … ’

‘As for me what?’

‘Well you were clearly smitten. Gez and I could both see that. You were completely and utterly gaga.’

‘Gaga?’ Andrés frowned. Another new one.

‘So … ?’

‘So what?’ But he knew what she was after. Information. And he wasn’t going to oblige – not yet at least. ‘Thank you for the dinner, Tina,’ he said. ‘And thank you for introducing me to Ruby. I am grateful.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘And what happens now, Andrés?’

‘What happens now, Tina,’ he said, ‘is that I pick up my hammer and once again try to make a hole in the ceiling.’

‘Oh.’ She sounded disappointed. ‘And what about Ruby?’

‘What about her?’ Andrés was enjoying the tease. He was usually on the other end of it.

‘Well, I just wondered.’

‘Wondered what?’

‘How the walk home went? Did you kiss her goodnight? Are you going to see her again? That’s all.’

‘That’s all?’ He chuckled.

‘And anything else you might want to tell me,’ she added.

‘I will bear it in mind,’ Andrés said. ‘But for now … ’

‘Yes?’

‘I must get back to work.’

He said goodbye, grinning to himself as he tucked his mobile back in his pocket. Ruby, yes, she was an enigma. It was odd, he thought, that he kept running into her everywhere. Hide Beach, the Jazz Café, the auction. And finally at Gez and Tina’s. Was it perhaps a sign? He had never believed in signs the way his mother and his sister did. On the island the old stories and legends seemed to be embedded in the female psyche and he knew for a fact that the native Guanches had been a very spiritual people. It was true that Andrés had sometimes felt the pull of something he couldn’t quite understand – and it had been a bit like that with Ruby.
His intuition perhaps? Something instinctive that coursed through his veins in his very life-blood? Who could tell? He preferred to let things happen, to run with the wind.

He picked up his hammer and tapped gently at the ceiling. Easy was the way.

It might be the way with Ruby too. He visualised her as she had been the day of the auction. Fierce and angry and trying desperately not to cry as she wobbled off precariously on that silly over-sized bicycle of hers.

He hadn’t wanted her to disappear up the lane and out of his life. He’d wanted, even then, to take her in his arms and make it better – though this impulse had surprised him. He’d wanted to put his arm around her as they walked home after Gez and Tina’s dinner party too. And when they arrived at her house and she’d lifted her face to say goodnight … It was all he could do to simply kiss her on the cheek and walk away.

And now? He wasn’t quite sure what to do. He wasn’t looking for someone, was he? He thought of his father in his studio throwing wild splashes of colour on to the canvas, painting portraits subtle and soft with an underlying passion that rested just below the surface, barely visible to the naked eye. No, he was not.

The hole in the ceiling was now big enough for Andrés to get his hand in and wiggle it about. There didn’t seem to be any cables around, so he knocked out the edges to make the hole a bit larger. This time the hammer hit something solid. Hmm. He worked at it a bit more.

What was under Ruby’s surface? He couldn’t help wondering. He hadn’t wanted to frighten her. She reminded him of a wild animal. Strong but vulnerable. More vulnerable than a man might think. Stronger than a man might think. Easily scared. He had to be calm and go slowly and let her come to him. Tina was right; she had been through so much. He must be patient and let her learn to trust him. That was the way.

But did he want Ruby to come to him? Did he really want to embark on a relationship with a woman – a woman who would mean something to him? Since leaving the island, since coming here to England, he had only ever had short relationships – meaningless flings, as Tina called them. With women who were nice enough but who would never make him love them. Safe women, shallow women, women who could never touch him or hurt him. This was best. Tina called him a commitment-phobe, and perhaps she was right. Perhaps Andrés was too accustomed to the bachelor life.

And yet … He thought of the way Ruby looked when she was playing her saxophone, saw again the sadness in her eyes. Did he want her to come to him? Yes, he thought. Yes, he did.

He saw now what had caused the stain on the ceiling. There was a copper pipe above, with what looked like a leaky compression joint. That made sense. It had probably been put in back in the sixties – maybe it was the cold water supply feeding the upstairs bathroom; it was a system now known to be prone to problems.

And then Andrés saw something else. He saw what had felt solid just now. He saw what looked like part of a wooden beam. And as he stuck his head into the hole and felt with his fingers, he could feel the beam. It was about eight inches wide. The whole original ceiling must be beamed and someone had covered them up with a different ceiling that looked like an Arctic Wonderland – in the name of modernisation.

He’d have to talk to Martha Hutton before he went any further. He could take the whole ceiling down and have the beams sandblasted to take them back to the natural wood, or he could just fix the leak and cover them up again. It would, he suspected, be a question of money. But he would explain to Martha that a beamed ceiling would increase both the character of the cottage and its value. Wooden beams were special. England was of course a land whose woods had not been destroyed by man and Nature as had the woodland of the island of Andrés’s birth. You would never know now what it had once been; a land of trees, of rivers and streams. Now, the land was dry as a desert. Ah. So many things had changed.

*

Andrés watched Ruby come round to the passenger side. It just showed though, didn’t it, what could be under the surface?

Ruby was wearing a red fleece, blue jeans and the same laced walking boots he’d seen her in before. Simple and uncomplicated. His kind of girl, he found himself thinking. Though of course she wasn’t – simple or uncomplicated. Nor was she his girl.

‘Hi.’ She got in the car and smiled – definitely a good sign. Andrés had been concerned that she might cancel; she was bound to have had second thoughts – he was prone to them himself, so he quite understood. And decisions made after several glasses of wine at a dinner party were not always the wisest ones. But cancelling hadn’t been an option for him today – he’d been really looking forward to seeing this girl again. Once more, she was wearing her signature red lipstick and she still had that slightly hunted look he’d noticed at Gez and Tina’s. But at least she was here.

‘Hello, Ruby.’ Andrés was going to apologise for the truck, but decided against it. He was what he was. He checked the mirror, indicated and drove off. He was going to take her to Langdon Woods and Golden Cap. It was the perfect day for it.

*

In the woods the ground was spongy but not too wet and the bluebells of course were long gone. You could see their leaves thick on the high banks of the Hollow, clothing the ground of the woods beyond with an eiderdown of lush green. The air seemed thick with the fragrance of shady woods and sappy sweetness and the sun filtered through the leaves of the trees, creating jagged patterns on the path ahead of them.

‘Tell me about your island,’ Ruby said.

And so, as they trudged along the wide path of the Hollow, he told her about his childhood home. About the blue and white stone house in which he’d grown up, his father’s studio and the land out back where they had grown
vegetables and kept the two goats – at least when he was a child. He told her about the surfing beach backed with the gentle, purple
morros
 – hills – and he told her about the Old Harbour and the bay. He described the barrenness of the island, the
calima
 – sand-blasting winds – the quiet cultivated valleys and the isolated farmsteads; the palm trees and tamarisks; the valleys called
barrancos
, and the Barbary squirrels. Andrés was surprised. There was, suddenly, so much to say. And as he talked, he could picture the pale sand and the turquoise lagoons, the deep navy and white curls of Playa del Castillo, the gentle mushroom lunar-landscape of the mountains, the black volcanic rock, the bitter-yellow late afternoon light. The palette of the island seemed to shimmer in his mind, until he longed once again to paint it.

‘How could you bring yourself to leave?’ Ruby asked. ‘It sounds wonderful.’ She shivered. It was a bright day but the woods were cool and shady.