Chapter 45
Henry
Four Summers Ago
Henry was drunk.
Not in the gentle, slightly fuzzy, everything-is-wonderful way, but morosely. His attempt to drown his sorrows had merely increased their buoyancy, bringing each one to the surface of his subconscious, where they bobbed around, impossible to ignore.
Your son is in crisis.
Your wife is miserable.
You are failing.
You are lonely.
You are sad.
Picking up an empty beer can, he crushed it between his hands before tossing it on to the pile. He’d brought a pack of six down into the clearing among the olive trees and there was only one remaining. Henry cracked it open and brought it up to his lips, spilling a large portion of it down his chin and on to his T-shirt. Even through his inebriated haze, he was aware how pathetic this tableau would look to anyone who happened to pass by. Not that they would, not here, not in his secret place. The only other person who knew he came here was Violet, and she would not risk abandoning Luke for a second. Not even, he thought bitterly, for him – especially not that.
He brushed an angry tear off his cheek.
Where had she gone, his girl? He’d watched her diminish from his position on the sidelines of their marriage, always trying but never quite managing to reach her, the distance between them stretched almost to breaking point, a rope frayed down to a single thread.
He squinted as the sun crept through the branches above him, the blue sky beyond a mocking display of untroubled beauty. The sight of it should have pacified him, the swell of the mountains reminding him how small and insignificant their problems were, when you held them up against the tapestry of the world. But everything had been skewed, his and Violet’s life with Luke a cubist painting, all parts recognisable but wrong somehow, a nightmare from which there was seemingly no waking.
He lifted the beer can. Empty. Henry roared, fists pummelling the ground, boots kicking great clumps of earth and twigs into the air. Several birds hurtled skywards, their disgruntled squawks making him laugh – a hard, brittle sound that bore no relation to warmth or humour. Who, Henry thought sadly, was he becoming?
Clambering up, he shook out his carrier bag and stuffed the empty tins inside, telling himself that he must be fine, that if he were dangerously drunk, he would have left them here, traps for unsuspecting rodents and insects, unforgivable. But he hadn’t, and so he deemed that he was safe to return to the house, his beloved La Casa Naranja, which glowed red gold on its hillside perch. How he adored her.
Pushing aside low-slung branches that sprang back and lashed across his face, Henry made his unsteady way towards the crumbling wall that encircled El Calvari. The hilltop pilgrimage site was teeming with tourists, some of whom cast a disdainful gaze in his direction as he stumbled past. Two blond-haired females who looked to be in their mid-twenties clutched each other and giggled as he lurched towards them. Henry winked lasciviously. He was used to this, to women eyeing him hungrily, as if he were a morsel they might like to eat. It happened frequently at work, most often with the housewives of rich Cambridge academics, who hired him to put in a new potting shed or build a summer house in the garden of their riverside abodes.
Henry accepted the work, but never the offers to ‘pop upstairs and check a problem in the bedroom’. He had learned this lesson the hard way, within the first few months of trading, when he’d turned from examining the supposedly rattling door of a built-in wardrobe to find his client lounging naked across her mattress, a coy finger hooked. On that occasion, Henry had been so flabbergasted that he’d fled and never gone back, but in order to make any money at all, he’d had to become savvier. Taking on an apprentice had helped no end, because having Barney by his side meant he was never alone, no longer vulnerable, less of an easy target for would-be adulterers. And of course, it was even better during the brief time Violet was a part of House-a-Home, but that had all fallen apart when it became clear that Luke needed her with him full-time. Their son would not go to school, and they couldn’t force him, but he was far too young to be left unsupervised. This meant one of them had to stay at home. Violet became what was essentially a carer; unable to work through no fault of her own, and yet the system saw fit to turn its back on her. It made Henry simmer with rage.
‘Why don’t we move to Mallorca?’ he’d suggested, as the two of them trudged home from yet another summit meeting at Luke’s school. ‘Now that they’ve agreed to home learning, we’re free to base ourselves anywhere with an internet connection.’
Life would be better in Pollen?a, he’d wanted to add. We’ve always been happier there.
But Violet had shaken her head.
‘Why not?’ he persisted. ‘What are we staying for?’
‘Your business,’ she said. It had been a long time since she’d referred to it as ‘our’.
‘I can do the same thing in Spain. I might not generate quite as much income, granted, but we’ll be saving a small fortune in rent.’
‘We can’t. My mum... It’s too soon after Dad.’
And Henry had felt he’d no choice but to relent. He knew Violet was still grieving the loss of her father; she described it as ‘a blockage inside me’, one behind which all her joy had become trapped. He didn’t say as much, but Henry suspected it wasn’t purely the lack of her favourite parent that had hollowed out his wife so completely, but more the ongoing problems surrounding their son. Every time Luke blew up, slammed a door, smashed an item of crockery, headbutted a wall, or made threats of self-harm, another part of Violet seemed to calcify.
Still brooding, Henry took the Calvari Steps at a jog, almost tumbling over as his feet failed to land where he placed them. Perhaps, he considered blearily, that last can of beer had been a mistake after all. Veering off the main thoroughfare, he put out a hand to steady himself only to encounter the hard, sharp spines of a vast cactus.
‘You prick!’ he swore, laughing at his unintentional joke as he continued to lumber down the lane. There was a song stuck in his head, he thought perhaps by one of those boys who’d been on TheX Factor, the one with the curly hair who Violet thought was ‘adorable’. Henry couldn’t remember his name, but he liked the lyrics, how they talked about getting away but not giving up, and he hummed it as he walked, fingers trailing against walls and fences, the sun’s hot breath on the back of his neck. La Casa Naranja was not far away; he could see the turret and pictured Luke beyond its walls, a tightly tangled ball of fear, anger, and mistrust. Henry longed to free the boy from himself, if only for a few hours, so he could show him how much more there was to life than skulking alone in a room.
Tears fell then, and he let them, still humming his sorrowful song, head spinning and skin hot. He was about to cross to the shadier side of the street for a lie-down when a gate opened ahead of him, and a familiar man emerged. Juan’s smile of greeting fell away as quickly as he’d plastered it on.
‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ he hissed angrily, towing Henry off the road and down the few steps into his modest garden.
Henry tried to reply but found that his tongue had swelled up to three times its normal size – or so it felt. Instead, he laughed helplessly and flopped into a deckchair. Juan stood staring down at him, arms folded and features stern.
‘It is eleven o’clock in the morning,’ he said, addressing Henry in slow, measured English, as if he was incapable of understanding anything else.
‘So?’
‘So, you are drunk. Ebrio. Where is your wife?’
‘Where’s yours?’ Henry threw back, and for a moment, the two men glowered at each other. Juan was dressed smartly, in proper suit trousers and a pale gold shirt with the cuffs rolled up. An expensive-looking watch glinted on his wrist, paid for no doubt by the wages he got from Henry’s father. The thought churned unpleasantly, and Henry sat up in his chair, a hand raised to his mouth.
‘If you are going to be sick, use the bathroom,’ Juan snapped, leaping backwards as Henry made a gagging sound. He only just made it to the downstairs loo in time, and stayed there for what felt like an age, arms wrapped around the bowl, the enamel cool against his cheek. By the time he returned to the garden, Juan had fetched some water and a half-finished loaf of bread.
‘Drink,’ he said, as Henry lowered himself gingerly into a sitting position. ‘And eat.’
‘Thanks,’ he muttered begrudgingly. ‘And don’t worry, I’ve cleaned up after myself.’
Juan nodded in acknowledgement. ‘A bad morning?’
Where to begin?
‘Try a bad decade.’ Henry yawned, exhausted not from physical but mental exertion.
‘I am sure it has not all been bad.’
Juan was regarding him seriously. And Henry had to allow that he was right. There had been wonderful times, intimate times, occasions when he and Violet had laughed until their sides ached, kissed until their hearts raced, and held each other close when things got tough. If only those times weren’t becoming so much harder to remember.
‘He will find his way. You have to learn to trust him.’
‘Him?’ Henry raised his eyes to Juan’s, not following.
‘Luke,’ he said. ‘I know that things are a little bit difficult, but he will grow out of it, this aggression, this –’ he waved a hand in the air – ‘behaviour of his, it will stop.’
There was a trellis in the far corner turned pink by bougainvillea petals. Violet had planted it there having propagated cuttings from their own garden, using one of her special hormone rooting powders to ensure the fragile stems made it through the first spring, and tending to it during every summer that followed. Her years of careful nurturing had paid off, the flowers now thriving and in full, stunning bloom. Would it one day be the same for Luke? Would he, too, blossom if they kept watering him with love? Violet, he knew, had the patience to wait and find out. It was one of many reasons why she was the better parent. Their argument that morning had been over something petty, the details now so scant that Henry could barely recall what they were, and yet he had walked out and left her, left both of them, because he could. He’d gone, and he’d got drunk, and now he was here when what he should have done was stay, and talk, and be there for her no matter what.
He put his head in hands.
‘Are you sick?’ Juan sounded slightly nervous.
‘No.’ Henry rubbed his eyes, blinking as the man’s face came back into focus. ‘I have to go,’ he said, but made no move to stand up.
‘Why don’t you wait for a while? Until you are sober?’
Henry felt as if a portion of his sobriety had returned during the half-hour he spent in the bathroom, but he didn’t argue the point. Much as he wanted to make things right with Violet, going home meant all those sorrows bobbing back to the surface again. He needed a plan first, a way back to being the husband and father he wanted to be.
‘How did you know?’ he asked Juan. ‘With Ana? What was it that made you realise there was no point in trying any more?’
Juan took a sip of water before answering; his tanned hand stroking his stubbly jaw. ‘Ana... We still loved each other. But we were no longer friends. I did not like her, and she definitely did not like me.’ He smiled helplessly and Henry nodded.
‘Sometimes, I wonder if Violet feels that way about me.’
He hadn’t meant to say it, and the regret he felt was swiftly exacerbated by the flicker of interest in Juan’s eyes. He didn’t seem remotely troubled by Henry’s admission.
‘You really believe this?’ he asked, to which Henry shrugged. ‘If that is true, then I think you should ask her. There is no point in both of you being unhappy. Trust me, I know this,’ he added, tapping a finger against his temple.
The piece of bread he’d picked up had turned stale in his fingers. Henry let the crumbs fall to the floor. ‘Maybe you should’ve married Violet instead of me,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d have stood a better chance of making her and Luke happy.’
He expected his friend to disagree, to laugh, to tell him off for suggesting something so farcical, but Juan merely arched a thick, dark brow.
‘Sí,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should.’