Bay of Secrets (30 page)

‘But what would I say to her?’ Ruby muttered. ‘“Hey, I’m the baby you abandoned thirty-five years ago. Will you be my friend?”’

Mel laughed. ‘Or you could hire a private investigator – they have access to all sorts of public records that the general public can’t get to see.’ She checked her watch. ‘You know, sensitive data and all that.’

‘I could do.’ She’d thought of that too. But she just had the feeling … Laura wasn’t in the UK. She was outside of ‘public records’. She’d placed herself outside – of all the bureaucracy, all the authorities, all the paperwork. She was a free spirit, wasn’t she?
People shouldn’t be labelle
d – that’s what she’d believed when she was twenty. And Ruby sensed that’s what she’d still believe now.

Mel got to her feet. ‘I’ve got to get back to work, Ruby,’ she said. ‘But let me know how you get on.’

‘Oh, I will.’ Maybe she’d never find her. But she had to at least try.

They hugged and when they drew apart, Mel didn’t quite let go. ‘And about that Spanish guy from the dinner party … ’

‘
Majoreros
,’ said Ruby. ‘What about him?’

‘Sometimes you have to just close your eyes and jump,’ Mel said. ‘Otherwise you’re not really living at all.’

After Mel had gone back to the shop, Ruby finished her coffee and cake and watched the rock and roll jivers. They were closing their eyes and jumping – really letting go. Mel’s eyes had been a bit sad when she’d said that. Was there something she was keeping to herself because she thought Ruby was too fragile right now to be of any help? She’d call her later to find out, she decided.

She thought of her walk with Andrés on the cliff top, the way he had sketched her portrait, a half frown on his face as he focused on getting the drawing right. It had been a good resemblance. But more than that: it had reminded her of something, of someone. The photograph of Laura. In that moment, as Ruby looked at his drawing, she had recognised not only something of herself in it, but something of Laura too.

Was that why she hadn’t opened Vivien’s letter? Was she forging some silent allegiance with her birth mother, saying not yah boo sucks, but this is where I came from; and this is where I’m going now.

She pulled the photos out of her bag, found the one of Laura holding her when she was a baby. Was that why she had kept looking at this – even before she’d known the truth?
Looking at Laura was like looking at a complete stranger. And yet it was also like looking at someone she had known all her life.

Ruby was playing at the Jazz Café.

Andrés sat at his usual stool at the bar drinking beer. Everything was as before. Tina hustled and bustled behind the bar fetching beer and ice and bottles of wine, chatting to him when she wasn’t serving. Couples and singles and groups of friends milled in through the doors and mingled by the bar, sitting down, sometimes getting up to dance. The light dimmed as the evening progressed; the atmosphere was laid-back, the mood was blue.

And yet everything had changed.

Because Tina hadn’t asked ‘How are you two getting along?’ She knew how they were getting along. It was obvious.

They had arrived here together tonight, eyes bright, not touching but nearly touching. Tina had looked at them just once.

Andrés knew that at the end of her set, Ruby would come and sit on the stool next to him at the bar. She would drink beer, laugh, chat a little. She would be tired, but still on a performance high; still buzzing. And when they left, Andrés would take her home.

He had helped her move her things into the cottage in Pride Bay yesterday. Before that he had dropped the work he’d intended to do that week and put forward the work on the cottage, wanting to get it ready for her. His client wouldn’t object to the few added extras; Andrés was, after all, increasing the rentable value of the place.

‘You really don’t have to do all this, Andrés,’ she had told him more than once during the past week. ‘I don’t even know how long I’ll be there for.’

He was aware of that. She’d negotiated a rental contract of only three months. It wasn’t long, but …

‘By then I’ll know,’ she’d said.

And he’d seen the restlessness in her eyes. What would she know? Where she wanted to be? In three months’ time her parents’ house could be sold. Would she look for something to buy around here – in the landscape of her childhood? Or would she be leaving?

‘It does not matter,’ he’d said. He understood that she needed to move out of her parents’ house and that she had to get on with her life without them. And he wanted her to be able to do that. He wanted to help her. It was a strange and unfamiliar feeling. He barely knew her and yet he felt protective of her. Andrés quite liked that.

He watched her play. She was wearing a red dress, close-fitting and silky, with a slashed neckline and high heels. She had on a black choker and a bracelet of jet that fell from elbow to wrist as her right arm moved up and down over the keys. Her blonde hair was slicked back from her
face. She wore the usual red lipstick. She looked amazing.

It wasn’t just that though, was it? There was something bright about her, even as she poured her sad soul into the mouthpiece of the saxophone and out in the music whose plaintive beauty wove itself around him until Andrés almost wanted to cry. That something bright just shone from her, like a jewel. He loved her sadness, he loved the shining. Like a star in the sky, he thought. Un-gettable.

When she played, when she took the instrument and bent and swayed to the rhythm of its tune, Ruby travelled somewhere, far from the Jazz Café, far from Andrés, far from everything else in the world he could see. Where did she go? Who did she become? God only knew. He understood it though. When he was absorbed in a painting, he often felt that sense of transportation too. Life almost ceased to exist, time stood still, the world might come to an end and he would barely notice.

Last night he had taken her out to dinner to celebrate the move. Their first proper date, he supposed you could call it. It had been a great evening, even though he had been nervous – ridiculously so – and she had seemed distracted. She was in the middle of something, she told him. She had a lot to think about right now. It was something to do with her parents. And she had paused and frowned for a moment in that way she had as though she wanted to tell him about it.

‘It’s OK,’ he had said. ‘You do not have to say any more.’ He hadn’t wanted to pressurise her. It would come in time,
he told himself. Ruby would confide in him in time. And that would be the right time.

*

Andrés took a pull of his beer and held his breath as the final lingering notes filled the café, drifting like dust motes in the space between them. He wasn’t quite sure what he felt for her yet but he thought that he kind of got what she was about. He knew they had things in common. And he understood her loss.

In his case, of course, the deaths had been symbolic ones.
Do not darken this door
 … His father’s harsh voice seemed to grate into his ears as it had done so many times before.

There had always been tensions in his home – for as long as he could remember. His father bullying and demanding. Izabella dancing to his tune. His mother scurrying around trying to please everyone. Andrés getting into trouble.

‘Why do you have to answer him back?’ his mother would say, clicking her tongue in frustration. ‘Why can’t you be silent, son, and simply leave him be?’

Leave him be. Leave him be.
As if Enrique Marin were not after all a mere mortal, a mere man, but some sort of god on high that they all had to worship and adore. While he … Andrés shook his head in disgust.

The tensions had grown more tightly strung than ever as he became a teenager, though he hadn’t known why. What had changed? His father worked in his studio muttering or yelling, or stomped down to the Old Harbour – bandanna round his head, cheroot hanging from his lips – to scowl at
the waves, or to play dominoes in the Bar Acorralado.

Leave him be
 … Mama worked in the house and created her
calados
, her embroidered linen cloths, as she sat outside – sometimes silent, sometimes gossiping with neighbours. Izabella was a dutiful daughter and trotted around after his mother like a puppy. And Andrés continued to paint.

What had changed? The village was slowly becoming richer – there was more planting, more crops. And tourism. Once, the villagers had survived by bartering for fish in exchange for milk and cheese from their goats, cereal from their plots of land, figs and prickly pears – either fresh or sun-dried. But now the tourists had changed all that. And his father was selling paintings. The times of poverty were gone, or so people said. So why was Mama’s smile so rare and why was his father’s frown so deeply etched on his brow? Why were they both so unhappy?

Andrés had not known. Now, though, he could guess. Perhaps Mama had been aware of what was happening even then and had turned a blind eye to it.
Leave him be
 … When had it started? For how long had it gone on? These were questions for which Andrés would probably never have an answer.

*

And then the song was over and Ruby was bowing and smiling and slipping the saxophone strap from her shoulders. The audience were clapping. Andrés got to his feet and clapped too. Tina smiled across at him.

Ruby disappeared backstage.

Andrés fetched another stool and ordered her a beer. That protective sensation again … He wasn’t sure yet how he felt about it.

Tina put the beer on the counter in front of him. ‘She’s really good,’ she said. ‘You can feel her pain.’

‘I know.’ He could see Ruby making her way over. The woman with whom he went walking in her red fleece and blue jeans and who had sat hugging her knees like a child on Chesil Beach now looked as glamorous and elegant as a film star working the red carpet. She smiled straight at him.

Andrés got to his feet. Whichever way he looked at it, this was important. He wasn’t going to fuck it up.

Barcelona, 1973

The streets were busier these days as Sister Julia walked from Santa Ana to the Raval quarter – more people visited the city; people of different nationalities and from different cultures. Tourism had come to Spain. There was much to visit in the city of Barcelona. The cathedral and the Gaudi houses, the parks and the fountains. And so many different voices … At first, Sister Julia found this unsettling – perhaps change was always unsettling? – but then she realised. There was less fear on the streets and more of a sense of liberty. This had to be a good thing.

At the clinic there were fewer single mothers and Sister Julia no longer worked such long hours. It was a relief – now, she had more time to read and study the English language; there were many worthy writings in English and she was glad that she could understand them. It was one of her great pleasures. But there were still deaths and there were still adoptions and Sister Julia still kept her book of names – a book which was almost full.

One day, a day of autumn mist and fallen leaves when the city smelt of damp and wood smoke, Sister Julia lingered
outside the bookshop in Las Ramblas. It was not just English she wanted to read. Books were once more being published in Catalan. She smiled to herself and offered a prayer of thanks. This was a move towards the recovery of her culture. If only her parents were still alive to see it. Her mother had passed away from this earth only a year after her father – as if she simply found it too hard to cope without him. And since then she had not seen either of her sisters. Matilde and her husband had moved away; Sister Julia only hoped that her sister would find the strength to accept the life that she had been given. As for Paloma … As far as Sister Julia was aware, she still lived in Barcelona with Mario Vamos, the man she had married for love. But – much to her regret – she no longer saw her.

It was hard, Sister Julia thought, to even recall the closeness of the family unit they had once had. They had survived when many others had not. But it had never been easy. And hadn’t they too been broken – just like all the rest?

She arrived at the clinic to find things much as normal. There were two women in the medical room, both in the early stages of labour, and the doctor was prowling around his consulting room as he often seemed to do these days; never still, always on edge, always ready to brandish his crucifix and demand repentance from the women who still came to them for help. But these days there was an air of fanaticism about him. For how long, she wondered, could this possibly go on?

Sister Julia took the morning prayers as usual and then
helped the nurses with their bedmaking and other duties. A man came to see the doctor about an adoption; she did not see his face, but she heard the confidence in his low, grating voice from inside Dr Lopez’s office and she could not help but click her tongue in disapproval.

After Dr Lopez had carried out his morning round, he drew her to one side. ‘I am entrusting you with a vital and confidential task, Sister,’ he said.

‘Very well, doctor.’ Sister Julia bowed her head. What could it be?

‘There is a payment due from … ’ noisily, he cleared his throat, ‘one of our kind benefactors. You must meet this man and bring the payment back to me immediately.’

A payment?

She must have looked confused, because the doctor waved away her doubts. ‘Do not worry, Sister,’ he said. ‘You will be perfectly safe. It is not far. I will give you the directions.’

But she had not been worrying about her safety. Was she not used to wandering around the city alone? Had she not been doing this for years? No. What had confused her was why she had to go anywhere to collect a payment from a benefactor. Why could the benefactor not bring his payment here to the clinic? It was odd, to say the least.

‘I cannot go myself,’ Dr Lopez said. ‘I have to be careful. I must protect my clinic and my name.’ He looked at her. ‘You must go, Sister Julia. No one will look twice at you.’

Sister Julia began to grasp his meaning. This was not then simply a payment from a benefactor. There was something
more sinister afoot if the doctor was talking about protecting his reputation. She was a nun. No one would suspect her of any clandestine or illegal activity.
Illegal activity
 … Swiftly, she crossed herself, closed her eyes to find God.
God in heaven, hear my voice. Help me to do what I must do. Amen.