CHAPTER 26 #2
His unease grew as he walked down the road past the white houses with flowering cacti in gardens of water-preserving black picon.
‘Jesus,’ he muttered. The view down the road was so different from the one he remembered – of winding alleyways, squat blue and white Canarian houses with thick electric cables strung between them.
Now, there were more soulless apartment buildings and, worse still, a Corinthian-style hotel that made him recoil in horror. Who had whipped the soul from Cotillo?
Was that why he had come back here? Because Rachel was still in his head, and he had to do something about that in order to move on?
Nicholas had to face it. He wasn’t stuck in time; he was a moving, living being – a man with a future as well as a past. What he needed were new places, new memories.
Would the spirit of El Cotillo survive? Or would it be buried under the weight of a mock Moorish tower block of apartments?
He had no idea. But he wasn’t about to be buried, he knew that much. His spirit wouldn’t be broken.
Nicholas walked past the seat beside the Blue Cow restaurant, once tiled in blue, where the old men used to sit, talk and play cards.
Once again, he thought of Venice. He knew it so well and yet on that bridge walk of Joanna Shepherd’s, he’d seen things in a different way, just as she’d promised.
He had heard her voice in the words he read and somehow felt compelled by it.
He leant on the iron railings and looked down over the Old Harbour.
A grizzled old fisherman was filleting fish on the beach, the waves were still crashing onto the black volcanic rocks, the blue cow on top of the restaurant was still smiling.
Things had changed, yes. But for the first time, Nicholas was glad that he had come back here.
*
That afternoon, Nicholas returned to the high sandy cliff above the wild surfing beach.
He shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun.
The volcanic hills sat like huge velvet dinosaurs that had simply folded their limbs and their great creases of skin and sunk down to create the contours of the desert landscape.
On the other side, the sea – at once navy, then turquoise, then clear lizard-green – rose in massive rolling waves, before curling, then sparking into spray.
It was perfect for the surfers out there, turning and twisting, boogie boarding, tubing the waves.
Nicholas began to unload the car. His body was itching with anticipation.
He undid the straps on the roof rack. The sea was in his blood.
That’s why he’d never wanted to leave the wild rocky landscape of Cornwall.
And he felt it here too – because something vital in the landscape hadn’t changed.
There was still the sense that it was before man, before time.
He climbed down to the beach, the red surfboard under one arm.
On the slope, an installation of mirrors had been planted in formation in the sand.
Nicholas wondered what the artist was trying to say about self-image.
He moved around the installation, catching glimpses of himself in the mirrors: an arm, a flash of black shorts, a leather sandalled foot, the red surfboard.
And in the background – in his background – the sea, the waves, the rocks, the sky.
It put him in perspective, he decided. The right perspective.
He moved further down towards the sea, checking out the best break of the waves.
He supposed that for some, he had the perfect lifestyle.
A cottage in Cornwall – his haven, his roots; a crash pad in London; a life spent travelling around some of the classiest cities in the world.
Seeing Celie obviously. And plenty of time to himself.
Nicholas spread out his towel. None of that, however, had stopped him feeling lost.
When the waves rose and stretched, they became so thin you could see right through them, like glass; their light underbellies dappled with sand.
And as they broke, the spray rose in the wind, streaming in a rainbow behind.
Nicholas started to ease his body into his wetsuit, wriggling his arms into the sleeves.
He walked towards the water’s edge. The wetsuit and the late afternoon sun were warming his skin.
He had changed his mind about the place, he realised, in the short time he’d been back.
El Cotillo had altered, but its spirit, miraculously, had stayed the same.
He’d just had to search a little deeper to find it.
Why should it anyway still be identical to the sleepy fishing village that he remembered?
How could it? Why shouldn’t it evolve? Didn’t everything?
The hazy yellow of the sun spun out over the sea, casting its faintly eerie light over the campo.
He half turned. The mountains now had a pinkish glow, the brown earth looked other-worldly and the hair of a blonde woman sitting with her family some twenty metres away had acquired highlights of green.
The sea came to meet him, washing over his feet, pulling him in.
It was cool and exhilarating. And now he was ready.
He had acknowledged change and he was ready to accept it – for himself too.
He stepped forwards with his board, into the waves.
There were all sorts of ways, he decided, of moving on.