Bay of Secrets (7 page)

So why did Vivien feel that time was running out? He didn’t want a baby as much as she did – that was obvious. How could she show him? A baby wasn’t a threat. A baby would be an extension of herself and Tom; part of their love. They would be, not just a couple, but a family. ‘Tom, I’m only saying let’s both of us do some tests—’ she began.

‘I don’t want to do any bloody tests. Don’t you get it?’ Then he was up and out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

No, she didn’t get it. What was Tom so afraid of?

She began to clear up. No one has it all, she thought as she stacked the plates. Why should they? She had Tom. He was right – that should be enough. It was just that over the years a little gap had opened up inside her and she knew there was only one thing that would fill it. She took the plates and dishes on a tray into the kitchen, put them down by the sink. It seemed like not much to ask. Because that little gap had grown into a well of emptiness. She leaned for a moment on the sink, staring out of the window into the darkness of the side passage. Some days Vivien had an ache so bad she didn’t know what to do with herself.

*

The following afternoon, Vivien called round to visit her
neighbour Pearl Woods.

‘You’re not looking quite yourself,’ Pearl said, as they sat at her kitchen table with their cups of tea and a plate of digestive biscuits between them. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Though she and Tom hadn’t made up – not yet. And this was the longest – and worst – falling out they’d ever had.

‘You’re not … ?’

‘No, I’m not.’ Though Vivien had confided in Pearl that they’d been trying.

Pearl pushed the plate of biscuits towards her. ‘Have another.’

Vivien smiled. She noticed Pearl wasn’t eating any though. And come to think of it, she looked a bit peaky herself. ‘I went to the doctor,’ she said.

‘Oh yes?’

The house always smelt of lavender, Vivien realised. It was calming somehow. ‘He wants to do some tests to find out what the problem is.’

‘It may be just a question of time,’ Pearl said.

‘That’s what Tom says.’ And that wasn’t all Tom had said …

‘Tom doesn’t want to do the tests, I take it?’

‘No.’ And where did that leave her, with this ache inside and nowhere to put it? Where did that leave her?

Again, Pearl pushed the plate of biscuits towards Vivien, who took another one absent-mindedly. ‘How important is it to you, love? Having a baby?’

Vivien looked back at her wordlessly.

‘Ah, I see.’ Pearl nodded. ‘That important.’ She sighed. ‘It was like that for me too – more’s the pity. Then you should do those tests and find out the truth of the matter. Otherwise it’ll always come between you.’

Suddenly, Pearl’s face tightened as if she was in pain.

Vivien got to her feet. ‘Pearl?’ Her neighbour’s face was drained of colour and she had bent almost double in her chair. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘It’s all right, love.’ She held out a hand and Vivien took it. ‘It’ll pass. It always does.’ She took a couple of deep breaths as if to steady herself.

It always does?
‘Let me get you some water.’ Vivien went to the sink and ran the tap. Pearl was clearly far from well. And there was Vivien blathering on about her problems …

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked again. ‘Have you been to the doctor?’

And Pearl told her. About the cancer. About how long she had to live. A year if she was lucky. Maybe less.

Vivien was shocked. It struck her now that she hadn’t seen Pearl working in the garden lately, cleaning windows, dashing to the shops. She had always been so full of energy. She’d lived on her own since her divorce. But, ‘What about Laura?’ she asked. Pearl’s teenage daughter had gone off travelling over a year ago and Vivien knew for a fact that Pearl hardly ever heard from her. In fact she’d given up asking. ‘Does she know?’

‘I don’t want her to know.’ Pearl’s face had regained its colour now and she seemed almost back to normal. ‘There’s
nothing she can do.’

But didn’t she deserve to be told? Surely it wasn’t fair to the girl not to tell her that her own mother was dying? Vivien thought of her own parents in Scotland. She still saw them, but not often, and they had never been close. They were so different from Vivien – so ordinary and conservative, prim and predictable. When they’d upped sticks and moved lock, stock and barrel to an isolated Hebridean island, Vivien could hardly believe it, hardly believe them. Perhaps, she’d admitted to Tom, she hadn’t known them quite as well as she thought.

‘If I tell her, she’ll feel she’s got to come rushing back.’ Pearl sighed. ‘I don’t want that. I don’t want her to come until she’s ready.’ She sighed. ‘You do understand, don’t you, Vivien?’

Did she understand? With no children of her own, it was hard to imagine how she might feel in Pearl’s situation. If she had a daughter, would she have ever let it get to this point? Vivien didn’t think so. She might not have been close to her own mother but Vivien was determined that it would be different for her. Her daughter would confide in her, rely on her, would turn to her in times of trouble. Not go off round the world with hardly a word of goodbye, and not even have the simple courtesy to let her mother know where she was and how she was doing.

‘I understand,’ she said. ‘But I think you’re wrong. Laura needs to know.’

Pearl sipped her water. Her face was so pale. She’d lost
weight too – Vivien could see that now; her upper arms were thin and the skin hung from them in folds. ‘She was angry when she left,’ she said at last in a low voice.

‘I know.’ Vivien bowed her head. Her parents had split up and so of course Laura was angry. But it wasn’t Pearl’s fault. Her husband Derek had always played around but there was inevitably going to come a time when Pearl had had enough. Marriages broke up. It was hard for everyone concerned. But was it right to stay with someone for the sake of the children when you no longer loved one another? Vivien didn’t think so. It was dishonest. And sooner or later those children would find out the lie that their parents had told. She understood, though, that it wasn’t always that simple. It was hard and it was complicated.

‘I was the one who wanted a baby so desperately.’ Pearl smiled sadly, as if remembering that time. ‘It’s different for you, love, with your Tom. He’s a good man.’ She shook her head. ‘But I knew what Derek was like. And I could have just put up with things as they were. Maybe I should have.’

Vivien took her hand. ‘You have to lead your own life,’ she said. ‘You have to do what’s right for you.’

‘And if it wasn’t right for Laura?’ Pearl’s gaze slipped past Vivien. There was a vacancy about it, she thought, as if she was imagining her daughter – wherever she was.

‘Laura will understand,’ Vivien said. ‘In time.’ Children got over it. They had to.

Pearl glanced at her.
What do you know?
she might have said. After all, Vivien didn’t have a child, couldn’t have a child
– maybe. But she didn’t say it. And would there even be enough time for a new understanding between mother and daughter? Vivien didn’t know how long Pearl had or when Laura might be coming home.

But Pearl didn’t look convinced. ‘I don’t want you telling everyone round here either, Vivien. I don’t need anyone’s pity. I can manage on my own.’

Vivien sank bank into her seat. Her heart went out to her. ‘I won’t.’ But she would have to do something.

*

She told Tom about it later, when they were cuddling in bed. Everything seemed to be all right again between them, but she’d caught a glimpse of a different side to the man she’d married, and it had shown her how fragile some things could be – things that you thought were built in stone, immovable, unbreakable.

‘Poor woman.’ He stroked Vivien’s hair. ‘I’ll go round and offer to do her lawn for her. See if there’s anything that needs to be done in the house.’

‘Thanks, love.’ She squeezed his shoulder. ‘But don’t—’

‘I won’t.’ He tipped her chin so that she was looking into his eyes. ‘I’ll be the soul of discretion. I can be sensitive, you know.’

‘I know.’ She held his gaze.

‘And about those tests … ’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She turned her face away. She didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to argue. If they weren’t meant to have children, then that was all there was to it. It wasn’t
worth breaking up a marriage for.

‘Oh, it does though, love.’ He held her face cupped in his palm so that she had to look back at him. ‘It matters to you, doesn’t it, having a baby?’

She shrugged. ‘Yes,’ she murmured, under her breath. Oh, yes.

‘Then we’ll have those tests. I want a baby too, you know.’

‘You do?’ Thank God, she thought.

‘I do.’

She cuddled in closer. ‘I’m scared too,’ she whispered. Scared of what she might find out. But Pearl was right – they needed to know.

He held her more tightly. ‘We won’t be scared, love. We need to know the facts. And if there’s anything they can give us to help … Well, we’ll try everything.’

Everything. Vivien let out a deep sigh of relief. It was what she’d longed to hear. ‘Thanks, Tom,’ she said. She could cope with anything if Tom was with her. And once they knew … Well, then they could decide what to do about it – together.

‘And in the meantime … ’ He rolled over so that he was sideways on to her. ‘We could always keep practising.’

‘Practising?’ Vivien closed her eyes.

To have a child.
She felt the brush of his lips on hers, his hand on the soft flesh of her upper thigh. And she thought of Pearl – poor Pearl who had only tried to fight for what was hers, who had cancer and who was alone, and who didn’t even know where her daughter Laura might be.

Andrés was sitting at a table outside a café on the beach, a café he had begun to frequent more and more. Soon it would be invaded by summer tourists; this was the lull before the storm – particularly at this time of day when most people were packing up to go home to their families. It gave him what he needed – especially out of season. Space to think, a sense of quiet and a view of the ocean.
Si. Bueno
. Even the coffee was good.

But today his coffee had grown cold. Yet again, he’d been staring out to sea. Daydreaming. This sea was very different from the sea he’d grown up with on the island. Vast and a gentle blue-grey, it was another creature entirely. And yet, strangely, there were similarities in the landscape and perhaps that was why he had come here to West Dorset, escaping from the city of London where he had first found himself when he came to England. Another similarity about this landscape was that he loved painting it.

Someone he’d once met on the island, an Englishman, someone who had admired his work when he was painting down at the Old Harbour one afternoon, had mentioned West Dorset; it was as simple as that. ‘You should go there
one day,’ he’d said. ‘Amazing cliffs – the Jurassic coast, millions of years old, a bit like this place y’know.’ And so – finding himself in England, the land, so they said, of opportunity – Andrés had come here to see. He had wanted, he supposed, despite everything that had happened, to find a small piece of home.

He had put a postcard in the local post office advertising his services. He had done painting and decorating in Ricoroque too – just on a casual basis until he’d decided what he wanted to do, until he made his name as an artist perhaps. And he’d worked on some of the building sites springing up all over the island in order to meet the demands of tourism.

Rather to his surprise, the advert had only been in the window for two days when the postmistress employed him to paint the outside of her house. And that was how it had started. When you were painting the outside of a house, people stopped and talked to you. When you were employed by the village postmistress, people found out about you. Word spread. Andrés Marin was of the old school. He was old-fashioned and reliable and his rates were fair; he did a good job and he could be trusted to be left in an empty house. Andrés had got more work. He could make a living here. And so he’d stayed.

He earned more than enough to live on and began to put money by. He bought a pick-up truck, found a better place to live. In the years since he had left the island, he had built up a small business of his own. He had been right to come here. Here he could make enough money to live as he wished
to live and he could paint too – without his father breathing down his neck. He had lived here now for seventeen years. He had studied the English language at his island school and now after so long in England, he was fluent. Andrés watched the waves wash on to the shore, frothing around the tiny pebbles that made up Chesil Beach. Mile upon mile of it, stretching from Weymouth to Lyme Regis. Now, England held fewer surprises. It was a kind of home.

His childhood had been nothing but painting. It was practically all he remembered. Canvases filled not only his father’s studio, but overflowed into the rest of the blue and white stone house on the island. That was all there was. And now … Andrés had finished work early today and he had a purpose in mind. He wanted to do some preliminary sketches for a big seascape he was planning. The art group he belonged to – all linked to the Barn Studios in Pride Bay where Andrés had a small unit to work in – were planning an exhibition for later this summer and he wanted to get as many pieces finished as possible.

Unlike his father, Andrés had to fit his art in with his other work – in the evenings, if he wasn’t too tired, and at weekends. His father … Andrés pulled out his sketch pad and a pencil. He hated to think of him and yet the man was never far from his mind.

When Andrés was a boy, his father used to go out to play dominos in the Bar Acorralado – that was his distraction; what took him away from his work. And when he did … Andrés used to creep up the stone steps to his father’s sanctuary,
inhale the rich, dry scent of turpentine and unused paper, touch the stiff newness of canvas and card standing upright in the open cupboard, peer beneath dusty sheets and cloths draped over wooden easels. And dream.

It was the colours. Andrés took in the colours surrounding him now. Not dissimilar, no. English colours were normally subtle and grey. But here on Hide Beach they were also bright – the high cliffs stacked like bricks of honey; Chesil Beach itself rising up and flowing out along the coastline like the mane of a golden lion. And the fields were bright and green as peas – it must be all that English rain. The colours of the island were bright too – especially the sea. The sea could be sweet turquoise and it could be cruel navy. It could be blue as a sapphire or black as ink. He’d never known colour quite like it since.