Chapter 19
Violet
We made it back to Pollen?a as the sun was beginning to set, its golden light spread like honey across the baked clay roof tiles of the old town. La Casa Naranja seemed to glow as if smouldering, the outside walls still warm to the touch.
There was no sign of Henry, but I knew I had to see him, that what I had to tell him couldn’t wait.
‘Do you mind if I pop out?’ I asked Luke. He and Eliza were halfway up the stairs, his hand in hers as it always seemed to be.
‘Sure,’ he said, the word stretched out by a yawn. ‘We were thinking of having a lie-down before dinner anyway.’
‘I’ll prepare something for you as soon as I get back,’ I promised. ‘Won’t be long.’
‘M’kay.’
I went out of the house and turned left, avoiding the Calvari Steps in favour of a more meandering but less crowded route. The vast hillside that rose up behind the town had been thrown into shadow, its golden-walled monastery poised like a curl of candied fruit at its top. Like many of Pollen?a’s streets, Carrer de la Garriga sloped downward from top to bottom, but it wasn’t as narrow as those on the outskirts, and the dwellings here were taller. I followed the sound of grinding machinery until I reached a tumbledown property bordered by a high metal fence, beyond which I could see a mini excavator, several wheelbarrows piled with rubble, and a stack of rotten planks. Having negotiated my way through a gap where a boundary wall must once have been, I stepped gingerly across the messy front yard and peered into the gloom of the house. A cement mixer stood prone next to a roll of stained carpet, and on the far wall was Henry’s beaten-up old radio, tuned into a local island station.
Having called his name a few times to no avail, I ventured further inside until I came to the stairs, craning my neck to see up to the second floor, from where I could hear the whirring sound of machinery. Having decided the steps looked safe enough, I hurried up, being careful to keep to the wall side.
I found Henry in the room nearest the top of the stairs; his back to the doorway and ear defenders strapped on over a yellow helmet. He was cutting wood to length with a circular saw and didn’t see me until I’d moved right round to stand in front of him.
‘Hey,’ I mouthed, my hand raised.
Henry started in surprise but recovered quickly. Stretching out a booted foot, he flicked off his power tool at the wall.
‘Jesus, Vee,’ he grumbled, staring around the room as if searching for something. ‘Here,’ he said, removing his defenders and passing across the helmet. ‘Put this on.’
I pulled a face. ‘Is that really necessary?’
‘It’s not safe in here,’ he said shortly, glancing up towards the ceiling. ‘The roof still isn’t sound. I’m waiting on materials.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, grimacing as the top of my head came into contact with the sweat-soaked inside of his hard hat. ‘I was shouting, but I guess you couldn’t hear me?’
‘Nope.’
There was a beat of silence, during which we stared at each other, and then Henry motioned to the door.
‘Let’s go downstairs. There are some beers in the cooler, and I must be about due a break.’
Once we were outside, I removed the helmet and propped it on the handle of an old broom. Henry frowned as he squinted up at the purple-tinged sky.
‘It’s getting late,’ he said. ‘Must’ve lost track of time.’
‘I hope the Rodríguezes are paying you well for this,’ I remarked, thanking him for the bottle of beer he’d just used his teeth to open.
‘Just the going rate for mates.’
‘It’s a big place,’ I observed. ‘A lot of work for one person.’
‘Tomas has been here on and off.’
‘Just Tomas?’
‘Juan looks in but doesn’t get his hands dirty.’ Henry grunted in bemusement. ‘Probably worried about chipping his manicure.’ He ruffled his hair, took a tug of beer.
I tried not to look at his scars.
‘That’s your father’s influence,’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember how much he used to tell me off for having dirt under my nails? Every year for Christmas, he bought me gardening gloves, and every year without fail, I’d say thank you, then put them in a drawer with all the others.’
‘Should’ve given them to the second-hand shop,’ said Henry.
‘Surely just one of each pair,’ I joked, and was rewarded with a real smile.
‘Hard to believe he used to be a fisherman,’ he mused.
‘Who, Antonio?’
Henry fixed me with a look. ‘Juan. Perhaps it was his years spent catching things in nets that helped him ensnare my father’s good favour.’
‘Is that what he did?’
‘I assume so.’ Henry shrugged. ‘You know how charming he can be.’
‘I should have asked Antonio today,’ I said, swigging more beer.
‘Ah, yes.’ Henry brushed sawdust off his bare knees.
I’d found a clear patch of earth to sit on while he’d perched himself on the closed lid of his cooler. I could see a glimpse of pale upper thigh where his shorts had ridden up and ached to touch him.
‘How is the old cockerel?’ He’d long referred to Antonio in this way, often using the Spanish ‘gallo viejo’, and I’d always agreed it felt like an apt comparison.
‘That’s actually why I’m here,’ I said haltingly. ‘Why I came to find you. Something happened today on the boat.’
Henry tossed his head back and sighed deeply.
‘Oh god, what now? He didn’t do or say something to upset Luke, did he? I’ve told him so many times not to mention the height thing.’
Antonio’s mocking of both Henry and Luke’s tall stature was a stand-up routine both had grown weary of long ago, but that did little to deter the old man.
‘Not really,’ I replied, ‘although he did pick him up and spin him around.’
‘Christ.’ Henry looked aghast. ‘He’s a braver man than me.’
‘He was OK in the end,’ I said, explaining briefly about Eliza, and how she hadn’t stood for Luke snapping at her.
‘Christ,’ said Henry again.
I wanted to say more, fill him in on our son’s apparent plan to get married and have children one day, the casual way in which Eliza had discussed them living together, as if they had it all worked out – but all that could wait. It had to.
‘That was all fine,’ I said, ‘but later on, after we’d all had lunch and the kids were swimming, Antonio had a funny turn. One minute he was fine, then suddenly he had this coughing fit—’
‘He does smoke like a soldering iron,’ interrupted Henry.
‘I know, but this was... different. He coughed up blood.’
Henry paused with the bottle of beer halfway to his lips. ‘Blood? Really?’
I nodded. ‘Sorry. I thought you’d want to know. I did try to ask him about it afterwards, find out if it was a new thing, or a one-off, but he refused to give me a straight answer, just told me it was nothing.’
‘That isn’t like him.’ Henry was looking thoughtful. ‘He never shies away from the truth usually, no matter how brutal it is, and he relishes people making a fuss of him.’
‘You should talk to him,’ I said.
‘Hmm.’
‘I really don’t think this is a “hmm” situation – what if he’s seriously ill?’
Henry shook his head. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ he said. ‘If he was sick, he’d have found a way to use it to his advantage by now. That’s what he does.’
‘I don’t agree.’
‘Well, he’s not your dad.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t have a dad. Mine died because he got sick and didn’t tell anyone.’
The tears came then. Six years, and it still hurt. Six years, and the guilt continued to choke me. Henry listened to my quiet sobbing for a moment, and then, with a sigh, he stood up and came to sit on the floor beside me.
‘Sorry,’ I said, using the hem of my dress to wipe my nose.
Henry brushed his knuckles against my knee, such a small gesture of kindness but one that made me want to weep all the harder.
‘I’ll talk to him,’ Henry said. ‘To my dad. I promise – OK?’
He had made promises before only to break them, but that had been then.
This was now.
‘I just wish he’d lived long enough to see Luke as he is now,’ I whimpered. ‘I can’t bear that he died in the midst of it all. Those years were...’ I trailed off, suppressing a shudder.
‘Your dad always had faith in Luke,’ Henry reminded me. ‘He said that everything would work itself out in the end. Wasn’t one of his little sayings something about believing in tomorrow?’
‘Your present situation is not your final destination,’ I intoned.
‘That’s the one.’
‘God, I miss him.’
Henry’s hand hovered over mine, but he withdrew it without making contact.
‘And not only him,’ I whispered.
‘Vee...’ There was a warning note in his voice.
‘Don’t you ever think it’s ironic?’ I asked. ‘That we stuck it out through those first two years living with my parents, through the stuff that went on when Luke started school and all the years where it felt like we were crouched in the trenches, waiting for a bomb to go off – all that only to give up when it seemed like he might be OK after all?’
‘Giving up wasn’t what happened,’ he said. ‘You know that.’
He’d raised a hand unconsciously to his face as he spoke, a gesture that muted any further argument I’d been preparing to make. The fact remained that if it hadn’t been for my actions, my selfishness, my stupidity, then Henry would not look the way he did now. I wanted forgiveness and he needed someone to blame – it was a stalemate past which there was seemingly no forward path.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. I had said the words to him so many times, each apology a pebble tossed against a mountainside of resentment. Henry closed his eyes, took a breath, and opened them again.
‘It’s getting late,’ he said, picking up my empty beer bottle. ‘Will you be OK for a minute while I go and lock up the tools?’
I nodded as he stood.
‘Henry,’ I said, addressing his tanned calves. ‘Take this.’
I tipped the broom holding the hard hat out towards him.
‘Thanks.’
I sat in silence, eyes down and cheeks wet, watching as he walked away. My limbs were leaden, immobilised by self-pity, my heart hard as stone. I wanted to burrow through the dirt and hide, take root in the dark and wait for the rain. I could regrow, start again, take all that I had learnt and mould it into something more durable.
But I would have to do it alone. Without him.
‘Henry, wait!’
I scrambled to my feet, kicking up dust, ready to follow him, to talk to him, to beg him if necessary. But I was too late.
On the far side of the yard, the metal gate was lifted to one side, and a man appeared in the gap.
Juan.