Bay of Secrets (34 page)

But he pulled a bottle of water out of the canvas bag slung around his neck. He handed it to her with a shrug.

He had been drinking out of it himself; the bottle was half empty. But Sister Julia did not hesitate. She put it to her lips and as she did so she caught again the intensity of his gaze. Who was he? Why did he seem as if he wanted something from her?

She tried to hand him back the bottle, but he waved it away. ‘Keep it, Sister,’ he said. ‘You may need it on your journey.’

But Sister Julia hurried back to Nuestra Señora del Carmen, heedless of the wind and the sun and her parched throat. She hurried back to the chapel to pray. Only God could help her now. Only God could tell her what to do.

‘And how many artists were there in the group to start with?’ Ruby asked Steph. She was interviewing her for the local
Echo
. Steph Grainger had founded the art group that Andrés belonged to and she had worked hard to gain recognition for her artists – despite being diagnosed with MS five years ago. The end of summer exhibition coming up was timed to coincide with other Dorset art events and had grown hugely in popularity since the first small exhibition held in the back of a local village hall.

Steph smiled. ‘There were three of us. David working in oils, Kathryn in ceramics and me in pastels.’

‘And now?’

‘Over forty.’

‘With a variety of media, I know.’ Ruby had already viewed much of the work about to be exhibited in Pride Bay and beyond. And she was impressed. ‘And who will be the stars of the show – are you allowed to say? Is there anyone who has real talent – someone we should look out for in the future?’

‘There are one or two. A young girl called Patti Tyler who works in earthenware has had some interest. And Andrés Marin’s work is very powerful.’

‘Really?’ Ruby wondered if Steph knew they were a couple. Probably. She would have seen them around and about. In the past month, she and Andrés had spent a lot of time together and they had laid themselves bare – to a degree, she thought. They had shared their history and decided they had enough to build on, that each could trust the other at least. Even so … There was still something – she knew – that he wasn’t telling her.

Steph nodded with enthusiasm. ‘Fabulous watercolours,’ she said. ‘But of course his father Enrique’s a successful artist, isn’t he? The talent’s obviously been passed on to his son.’

‘Mmm.’ Ruby realised that she knew almost nothing about Enrique Marin. When it came to his family, Andrés would talk of his mother and his sister. But he rarely spoke of his father. And when he did, his brow creased and his eyes darkened in a way that made Ruby want to change the subject – fast. What had happened, she wondered now – and not for the first time. What had made him not even want to acknowledge Enrique Marin?

‘We’re grateful for the publicity from the
Echo
,’ Steph said. ‘The more people we can get here to view the exhibition, the better.’

Ruby got to her feet and they shook hands. ‘I’ll see if I can generate some interest at a national level as well,’ she said. ‘Leave it with me.’

*

When she got back to the cottage she put on a jazz CD and made herself a cup of tea. She picked up Vivien’s letter – still
propped on the mantelpiece – albeit on a different mantelpiece from before. A new track started. ‘Why Shouldn’t We Fall in Love?’ The music wafted over her. It was one of her favourites. She stared at the writing on the envelope.
Ruby
 …

She remembered an evening a long time ago when she was a girl, maybe ten years old. It was a few weeks before Christmas. Her father had obtained a lucrative commission – he was to make some dining room furniture for a couple living in Uplyme. He came home excited, a bottle of champagne tucked under his arm.

‘I got it,’ he told Vivien. His eyes were bright as he thrust the bottle at her, unwound his scarf and pulled off his coat.

‘I guessed,’ she laughed back at him. Ruby understood that money had been a worry and that this commission would go some way towards easing that worry, what with Christmas coming up too.

He bought fish and chips – Ruby’s favourite – and they ate it, accompanied by the chilled champagne. The bubbles got up her nose and made her giggle.

After supper she went upstairs to have a bath and that’s when she heard it. Her parents had put on some of their music and it was humming through the house, rich and dark and melodic.

It thrummed through the walls and seemed to vibrate the very bathwater. Ruby heard the saxophone – though it wasn’t till later she found out what it was called – climbing up and down the scale of the song; sometimes in little steps as
if it was almost out of breath, sometimes long, stretched and fluid like the infinity pool Ruby’s friend Jasmine’s parents had installed at their posh house on the hill. So mellow.

And something strange happened to Ruby. She closed her eyes and felt it. She wanted to climb that music too. Jazz …

After her bath, she’d gone downstairs in her dressing gown for the hot chocolate her mother always made for her. And they were dancing – her parents – her mother’s head resting on her father’s shoulder, his hand on her waist, the other touching her neck where her dark hair curled into the nape, where the apron she was still wearing looped over and around. Her mother’s eyes were closed.
Her mother
 …

Ruby watched them, mesmerised, then Vivien opened her eyes, spotted her and drew her wordlessly into their special circle. As they moved and swayed, so Ruby moved and swayed. The music was like magic. Black magic. And the saxophone, sinuous and sensual, had wound itself into her heart and soul.

*

Ruby sighed, ran her fingers over the seal of the envelope. Why? Why had her parents not had the guts to tell her face to face? She propped the letter back on the mantelpiece, turned away.

‘Maybe you should give it up,’ Mel had said the other day when Ruby had called in to the shop to say hello. She seemed a bit brighter and Ruby wondered if Stuart had taken some of the pressure off. If so, she couldn’t help thinking that it was just a matter of time before the subject raised its head again.

‘Give what up?’ Ruby had perched a deerstalker on her head. She loved coming in here and trying on the stock. But she knew.

‘Trying to find Laura,’ Mel said.

Easy for her to say. ‘I can’t.’ Just like she couldn’t bring herself to open that letter. She needed to find her own genes, to make contact with the girl who had carried her, given birth to her …
And given her away
, her heart whispered. Yes, OK. And given her away. And she wanted to find out something about her father too. Who was he? Did he even know of her existence? She knew what Mel was saying.
If it ain’t broke
 … But she needed to find out the reasons, put the pieces all together and create a picture that made sense of her life. Otherwise she’d never find that sense of completion that she was looking for.

Her tea had gone cold. Ruby returned to the tiny kitchen to make some more. She thought of her interview with Steph Grainger. Was Andrés really that good? She liked to think so. Last night, she’d gone down to the studio where he was working on the pieces he was planning to exhibit, and she’d taken a look. She especially loved his Chesil Beach painting, which was to be a massive centrepiece for the exhibition and which featured her favourite golden stacked cliff and the pathway that she’d seen as a promise of her childhood; a memory that she’d never let go of, no matter what else she discovered. A special picture of her own special place. It meant a lot to her that Andrés had painted it – and he’d captured the feel of it so perfectly.

Ruby dropped the teabag in the cup and added boiling water. No one could take away from her those Sunday afternoons at Pride Bay with her parents when she was a girl, walking along the cliff tops with a summer breeze blowing their conversations away, jumping the waves with her father, playing frisbee at low tide. Was it her imagination, or were the days longer and sunnier then? They were certainly more carefree …

What subjects did Enrique Marin paint? Ruby realised she didn’t know. Was there any similarity in their styles? Andrés’s work was mostly landscape – it was easy to see that his passion was for the ginger cliffs, the green fields, the blue ocean with colours so delicious you almost wanted to eat them. But Ruby was curious. She wanted to know everything, she realised, about the man she was involved with. And she was involved. The connection between them was taut as wire, though she had no idea how strong it was, or how fragile.
Why shouldn’t we fall in love?
Sometimes she felt as if she couldn’t get enough of him. When Andrés was near her, she wanted to kiss him fiercely, to have him inside her, to fuck as if the end of the world was on its way and there were only five minutes left. She hoped it was love; didn’t want it to be desperation.

What sort of an artist was her lover’s famous father? And what did he look like? Ruby took her tea into the living room, switched on her laptop and went on to Google. She typed in the name.
Enrique Marin.
It was almost too easy these days. Before search engines, research had been a time-consuming
activity. But now … A few clicks and a whole world would open up for you. Ruby still liked using libraries and interviewing people, especially face to face. Email was useful – but it was no substitute. When you were actually talking to people, things came up that you couldn’t have foreseen. And people gave you more – of their lives, their thoughts, their memories. Like Steph Grainger had. It was more personal.

A list of websites appeared. Ruby scrolled down. No doubt her curiosity had influenced her career choice. As a journalist you got the opportunity to find out about things and then tell everyone else. It gave you the chance to expose what was wrong or corrupt. You could do something, you had a voice. And if your story got taken up in the right places, people would read it; people who could do what needed to be done to make things change. Well, that was the ideal. The reality was often more mundane. Articles on health and beauty, travel and interior design – and even the growth of a local art group – might not be world-changing. But at least they could be informative. And if they were the bread and butter of Ruby’s existence, there was always the chance that one day a more challenging story might raise its head.

Enrique Marin had his own website and Ruby only hesitated for a moment before clicking on to it. She felt a bit guilty – as if she was going behind Andrés’s back. Because he certainly wouldn’t like it. But … she did a mental shrug. He wouldn’t open up about his father, would he? So why
shouldn’t she find out for herself? He was her lover. Why shouldn’t she know more about his life?

It was a professional and expensive website design, she noted. She stared at the picture of the artist when it appeared. She supposed she had been expecting Andrés’s features; the high cheekbones perhaps? Or a certain look in the eyes? But Andrés must take after his mother because this man was very different. He was dark-skinned – much darker than Andrés – and his face was squarer, his eyes dense, black and glowering. Angry eyes, thought Ruby. The man had angry eyes. He glared out at her from the screen – clearly a charismatic figure, the red bandanna wound around his head making him look a bit like a Red Indian. She smiled. Not like Andrés at all. But still his father. She touched the image with her fingertip. His father …

She clicked on to the biography page. It was brief and succinct and there was no family information other than the fact that Enrique lived with his wife in the village of Ricoroque where he had lived as a child. So success had not taken him to a different place, Ruby noted. He was still living in the same village. Ricoroque, the village where Andrés too had grown up.

She clicked on to Events. There were quite a few – with pictures too. There was the artist working with other artists in a studio in the Centro de Arte, a complex that Enrique Marin had apparently helped set up some years ago to encourage new artists and to give them space in which to work. Which sounded, she thought, like the actions of a nice
man, a generous man, a man who wanted to share his good fortune with other up-and-coming artists. Did Andrés know about this initiative? Surely he couldn’t disapprove?

There was Enrique hosting a dinner, and Enrique at an exhibition of his work in the capital city of Fuerteventura, Puerto del Rosario. He still sported the red bandanna in this photo, and Ruby could see now that his dark hair was greying at the temples, but he was wearing a smart suit – which went with the bandanna surprisingly well – and holding a glass of champagne, a thin cheroot in his other hand. He looked arty and interesting. He didn’t look so angry either, Ruby observed. There were no pictures of his wife or his daughter anywhere. None of Andrés either – but that was hardly a surprise.

There was also a picture of the artist at work – wearing blue overalls this time and looking wild and dishevelled, working in his studio at home, according to the tag on the photo. And finally one of Enrique opening a supermarket. He was quite a local celebrity then.

So what had happened between Andrés and his father? Why did Andrés never visit the island of his birth? And if he cared for Ruby as she thought he did – why wouldn’t he tell her?

She clicked on to Work. Just how good was Enrique Marin?

Bloody good, she decided, as she flicked through the images. He clearly specialised in portraits – and there were plenty of them. Some had obviously been done in the studio
and others were more casual – as if they’d been painted on the beach or in a café somewhere. Most of the studio portraits were of young women; some just head and shoulders; others were life drawings of female nudes. But the artist had captured a certain sensuality in even the simplest poses. He seemed to have the ability to suggest eroticism in the curve of a hip or the swell of a breast in the subtlest way imaginable. Ruby was fascinated. And there was fire and brimstone too. Enrique Marin liked to paint dramatic subjects. There were volcanoes and fires and even biblical scenes – very different from his other work, but also brilliant in their own way.