Bay of Secrets (35 page)

The portraits were very sensitively handled. It was a special gift, she supposed, to be able to capture likeness. She had no way of knowing, of course, if Enrique had that talent, but he certainly had the ability to suggest feelings and emotions from facial expressions and movement – through a tilt to the head, a turn of the mouth, a look in the eye. It was as if he found people transparent. As if he could look into someone’s eyes and then right through to the other side of them. As if – through his work – he could lay bare their souls. Ruby shivered. She wasn’t altogether comfortable with it; there was something probing and almost intrusive about some of these pieces. She thought of the look in his eyes. But it fitted. It fitted with the look of the man. She’d answered her own question – the father was a very different artist from the son. And she was glad.

Ruby was just about to click off the website – she had seen enough, she reckoned, to give her some insight into Andrés’s
father, and maybe even why they didn’t get on – when an image caught her eye. She sat up straighter. She clicked on the image to enlarge it. The face filled the screen; larger than life, it seemed.

It was the portrait of a young woman – probably in her mid-twenties. She had long blonde hair which hung loosely around her shoulders. She was wearing a frilly, peasant-style blouse, but it was just head and shoulders so only the neckline and shoulders were visible. Long silver earrings hung from her ears like teardrops. Enrique had painted her almost as if she were a flower. A flower child. And she certainly looked like one – small and waiflike, with an elfin face and a wistful mouth. Her eyes were blue – blue and innocent. And her eyes were unbelievably sad.

It was Laura. Ruby stared at it for a long time. But she knew as well as she knew anything that this was a portrait of Laura. Clearly Enrique Marin did have the talent to capture a resemblance. And he had done that with this painting. It was so like the photograph. It was the same girl. Ruby’s birth mother. She let the truth sink in. Laura then had lived – at some point in her life after she’d left Ruby with Vivien – in Fuerteventura. It was astonishing. And yet …

Ruby remembered what Andrés had said when he looked at the photograph that first night they walked back here together. Hadn’t he said it looked like his island? And that Fuerteventura was the sort of place that someone like Laura might go? At the time she’d taken little notice. It was dark and she’d been distracted. Didn’t one Mediterranean
beach look more or less the same as another? But now …

After several minutes of simply staring, Ruby reached for her bag and pulled out the photograph of Laura holding her, the one where she was wearing the love beads and where she was smiling. She held it up next to the portrait by Enrique Marin. It was the same girl. It was Laura.

She got up and found the sketch that Andrés had done of her on Golden Cap – the one that had first alerted her to the likeness between herself and her birth mother. And compared that as well. The same gene pool. You could see it in the shape of the mouth and the eyes.

Why had Laura had her portrait painted by Andrés’s father? Ruby guessed that she was short of money. As an up-and-coming artist – as Enrique must have been then – he would have been looking for models; from the evidence on this website he used a lot of them in his work. She doubted he would have paid much. But for a girl like Laura it would have been enough to at least buy food for a day or two.

Ruby couldn’t stop staring at the images in front of her. Three faces. But what struck her most of all was that in the photo Ruby had of her birth mother, she looked happy. Whilst in Enrique’s portrait she looked so unbearably sad …

Fuerteventura, September 2012

Sister Julia left the Convent of Nuestra Señora del Carmen and, instead of walking down the sandy track towards the village, walked instead towards the brown velvet mountains over whose gentle peaks the clouds had gathered. Lately, she had taken to doing this, usually in the afternoon, before going back to the chapel to pray. She was old, but she must take her exercise; she could still walk several kilometres, thanks to God’s good grace. And she had begun to walk this way since almost no one else did. This way, she would not come across any of the villagers who might stop and engage her in conversation or want to be blessed or to visit her in the chapel. She knew that this was a selfish act and she was sorry. But for the first time in her life, Sister Julia did not wish to see people; she did not wish to talk. She craved solitude.

In the chapel at the convent and even in her own plain and simple room, Sister Julia could be alone. To be a nun was to be alone with God for much of the time – this was one of the reasons why the sisterhood were encouraged to be silent and not indulge in idle chatter. But Sister Julia was almost ashamed to admit that now she needed a different kind of
solitude. She was old. She had turned her face to her God and she had asked Him to show her the way. But as yet there had been no sign and Sister Julia truly did not know what to do.

So she walked into the desert
campo
. She took the trail towards the mountains and as she walked, her steps moved in rhythm with her beating heart.
Show me the way, show me the way
 … This landscape had always seemed to Sister Julia to be a biblical one. Could the natural world provide her with the answer – or at least a sign – that God would not? Sister Julia did not think this for a moment. The landscape was God’s creation, after all. He was everywhere. Indeed, Sister Julia preferred to believe that the communion with nature would enable her to get closer to God without the distraction of the material world. That here in this desert landscape with only the mountains and the ocean for company, she might at last hear God’s voice.

When the track divided, Sister Julia hesitated for only a moment before taking the pathway to the coast. Sometimes she saw cars ploughing their way across the
campo
on this route; young people driving to the sea with surfboards tied to the roof, heading for the big waves. Rarely did they seem surprised to see a nun walking across the brown and dusty earth, although once or twice a car would stop and a friendly young person would smile and ask: ‘Are you well, Sister?’ Meaning, she supposed,
Do you know where you are and what you are doing, or do you need a lift back to civilisation?

‘I am well,’ she would say, meaning,
Yes, I do and no, I do not
, and she would continue on her journey.

On this afternoon the wind was high and the road was deserted. Sand blasted on to Sister Julia’s white habit, but the material was coarse and she felt almost nothing.

When she arrived at the cliff edge, the waves were wild and crashing violently on to the black rocks below. She watched them for a moment. Sister Julia never walked down to the beach – it would not be a simple matter in these robes and she would probably never make it back up to the top again. She just stood here and admired the elements at their most unfettered and free. Freedom, she had learnt back in Barcelona, had to be fought for. But here on the island it existed naturally. She was sure of that.

So … Sister Julia could barely hear herself think as she stood and surveyed the scene. And she let the clamour of sea and wind and the shrieking of the gulls wash over her. It was like meditation or prayer; the aim was to clean your mind, free your mind. Let the path be uncluttered. Let God come in.

The vast sky was streaked with clouds of white and grey; in between, the sun shone from the blue, shimmering on to the inky ocean. The sea bucked and heaved, the waves rolled into shore; rising, rising and curling until they stood, turquoise and luminescent, threaded with golden sand, still and poised for a second before smashing on to the rocks below. Each wave looped forwards, darkening and dipping, and then drew back, hissing from whence it had come. The island was only sixty miles from Africa; behind her the low, smooth hills were soft and velvet, pink and red-gold.

And despite her efforts to cleanse her mind, what Sister Julia had discovered when she read that newspaper all that time ago churned in her head like the turbulent sea, moving forwards, moving back, rolling around like the waves. Even prayer was not the solace it had once been. Even prayer gave her no answers.

‘You again, Sister.’

Sister Julia jumped. She knew that voice. She had not heard him approach. She had been lost in her reverie and the ocean was raucous enough to drown anyone’s footsteps. Indeed, he must have been compelled to speak loudly in order to be heard above the waves.

She bowed her head in greeting but did not reply. It was the man she had spoken to in the village on the occasion she had read the newspaper and learnt of the breaking scandal of the
Niños Robados.
It was the man who had spoken to her in the square. She recalled how she had felt that day – emotional, devastated at what she had learnt, almost disbelieving at the scale of it. She had been overcome with thirst too. And this man had at least been kind.

‘You are still troubled, I see.’

Sister Julia hesitated to look at him. Perhaps she should not speak to him either. It was strange that she should see him again like this when she was in this state of mind. Was it a coincidence? But how could a man like this be any kind of sign from God? It was of course impossible. Sister Julia looked around her at the sky and the cliffs and the ocean, which seemed to stretch into infinity. This situation – even
simply standing here with this man – would no doubt be deemed improper by anyone who might be watching.

‘There’s no one here,’ he growled in his low and guttural voice. ‘Just you and me and the ocean, Sister.’

Sister Julia tensed. It was as if he had read her mind. Should she be wary? No, indeed. Because God was also here. He was everywhere and He would protect her. Anyhow, the man did not sound threatening. He sounded as if he were simply making an observation. And, of course, he was right.

‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘That is so.’

‘Ah, well.’ He let out a deep sigh and she was moved to glance at him. He looked much older than when she had seen him last. Thinner, too, and more gaunt. The bones in his face and his collarbone jutted out sharply under the skin, he was unshaven, and his brown skin was leathery and dry. He did not look at all well.

And even as she thought this, he put his hand to his mouth and coughed, low and harsh. ‘We all have our troubles,’ he muttered.

Once again Sister Julia bowed her head and murmured her agreement. ‘
Si
. It is true.’ What could be wrong in that?

He put his hands in his pockets and pulled out a packet of cheroots and a box of matches.

Sister Julia gave him an assessing glance and he shrugged and put them back in his pocket again.

‘I suppose you have no one to talk to at the convent,’ he observed.

Sister Julia did not feel that this comment required an
answer. Naturally, what he said was true. At Santa Ana in Barcelona the mother superior had always been available for advice and a listening ear, although in Sister Julia’s experience this had been neither sufficient nor satisfactory. But here at Nuestra Señora del Carmen, they lived as in a retreat. Occasionally one of the younger nuns came to her for guidance and she helped as much as she could, but as the oldest member now living at the convent, Sister Julia was regarded as having attained true spiritual wisdom. It would not occur to anyone that she would need guidance for herself.

‘Me, I have too many people clustering around me like mosquitoes.’ He batted his arms around as if he were swatting them away. ‘But can I confide in my family?’

Sister Julia was silent.

‘No, I cannot.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘And so it is for you at the convent, I suspect.’ He waved in the general direction of Nuestra Señora del Carmen. ‘You have other nuns,
si
, but no confidante, do you now?’

Sister Julia watched him. She blinked. Should she walk away?

‘I thought not.’ He laughed – a low and rasping laugh.

Sister Julia turned.

‘You know what they say? A trouble shared … ’ he called after her. ‘You can tell me, Sister. Who knows? I might be able to help you.’ His words were no sooner out of his mouth than Sister Julia felt them being whisked away by the wind.
A trouble shared
 …

She turned back to face him. ‘I cannot do that, my son,’
she said. It would certainly be wrong to tell her troubles to anyone outside the monastic community, let alone a man. And in a situation which—

Before Sister Julia knew what he was about to do, he reached out and grasped her arm.

She flinched. This man was not intimidated then by the cloth of God. It had been a long time since anyone – man or woman – had touched her in this way and Sister Julia felt the strangeness of it seep into her and linger. For a moment she thought of the other life that she might have had if she had been like her sisters at home and not been given to the Church at such a tender age. Would she have been happy? Would a man ever have touched her, have loved her? Or would she – like her sisters Paloma and Matilde – have ended her life suffering perhaps even more?

She looked down at his hand gripping the white cloth of her robes and he withdrew it.

‘Would you help me, Sister?’ he asked.

Sister Julia met his gaze of entreaty. ‘In what way, my son?’ She was conscious of the waves, the wind, the sun beating down on them.

‘I have sins I want to confess,’ he muttered. Once again he coughed.

Sister Julia shuddered inside. She could not help it and yet she did not know why.

‘I am ill. My time is drawing near.’

‘You must come to the chapel,’ she said. She bowed her head.

He muttered an oath. ‘
Chungo, chungo
. God in heaven. I cannot.’

‘Then I cannot speak to you or hear what you have to say to God,’ Sister Julia said. ‘The chapel is God’s house. You must not be afraid to go there.’

‘Does not everyone deserve to be heard by God?’ he shouted into the wind. His voice had taken on a maniacal note of pure desperation. ‘Does not every man deserve forgiveness for his sins?’