Chapter 16
Violet
We reached Port de Sóller as church bells began to chime eleven, each of us hot, dusty, and in dire need of a cold beverage.
While Luke and Eliza went in search of soft drinks, I wrangled with the ticket machine in the car park before we all set off along the seafront promenade towards the harbour, side-stepping the multitude of visitors that had lined the street to wave at passing trams. The orange carriages that ferried folk up and down the hillside were as synonymous with Sóller as their yellow cousins were with Lisbon in Portugal. A good number of passengers packed into the seats waved through the open windows as they trundled past, and I was touched to see even Luke raising a tentative hand of greeting in return. Eliza was in chipper mood; smile wide beneath the ‘Mallorca’ bucket hat she’d put on and chin tilted up towards the sun. The blistering heat of the day was being tempered somewhat by the breeze rolling in across the water, but my skin still prickled with it. Luke had dressed sensibly in an oversized T-shirt and loose boarder shorts, while Eliza, whose skin was olive and less susceptible to burning, was defiantly exposed in a bandeau top and minuscule shorts.
It took the three of us longer than I’d hoped to find the boat, Eliza and I falling behind as Luke led the way through the maze of vessels moored in the harbour, swearing under his breath. It was a relief when the diminutive form of Henry’s father eventually came into view in the distance, his arm a blur as he urged us to hurry.
‘It’s my fault,’ I called, by way of a greeting, ready to take on any blame that might be dished out by our host. ‘I insisted we take the scenic route.’
Luke muttered something unintelligible as he bent to remove his trainers.
‘Come, come,’ said Antonio, stepping back as we made our way across the narrow gangplank and dismissing my apology with a flick of his wrist. ‘There is sangria.’
‘Ooh,’ enthused Eliza, who’d hooked her flip-flops over one finger. ‘Liquid brunches are my favourite.’ She proceeded to go into ecstasies about the modest-sized yacht, admiring the polished deck floors, chrome fixtures and gleaming white surfaces. ‘I feel like I’m on an episode of Below Deck!’
Antonio absorbed the praise as greedily as a sponge would a bowl of water, chest puffed out and grin swarthy. There was a roguishness in his manner that was so at odds with his son’s straightforward and strait-laced nature that I often wondered at how closely they were related. Henry regretted the fact that he hadn’t been able to forge any kind of relationship with his father until he was in his teens, but in my mind, it was a bullet dodged. Antonio’s dominant personality could easily have seeped through into his second-born son’s, and I doubted I’d have fallen so in love with Henry had he been anything like his bulldog of a dad.
‘Lucas!’ he bellowed now, grabbing his grandson around the waist and hoisting him into the air. Given the fact that Luke was six foot, four inches to Antonio’s five foot nothing, the pair of them looked utterly ridiculous, and my heart went out to my son as I saw colour flood into his cheeks.
‘Put the poor boy down, Toni,’ I chided, which did little but encourage the older man. Antonio tightened his grip until Luke turned almost puce, his flailing arms becoming increasingly urgent as he wriggled to free himself.
‘Toni,’ I said again, this time with less humour. ‘You’re hurting him.’
Antonio laughingly let go, dropping Luke abruptly so he staggered and almost fell. Eliza’s nervous giggle tapered off and hurrying forwards, she tried to steady him.
Luke, however, brushed her hands irritably away. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘Don’t fuss.’
Expecting her to meekly retreat, I was shocked when Eliza tutted. ‘If that’s what you want,’ she said, with all the calmness and poise I lacked. ‘But you know I was only acting on an instinct to help you – it wasn’t fussing.’
I waited for him to snap back at her, wrench his arm free and storm off the boat. But Luke merely smiled sheepishly. ‘You’re right, I’m sorry.’ He pulled her against him, murmured a ‘thank you’. I gaped at him – at both of them. Luke had never apologised for his outbursts; as far as Henry and I were concerned, he was allergic to culpability.
Blissfully unaware that his actions had very nearly caused a storm of yacht-sinking proportions, Antonio strode across the deck and patted Eliza happily on the head, in the manner one might to a dog that had just mastered a new trick.
‘She has you on the tight leash, sí?’ he said, and to my utter astonishment, Luke actually laughed. Laughed.
‘Best way to keep her close to me,’ he said, to which Antonio slapped him gleefully on the back. I groaned inwardly as I looked on. Luke was doing what he always did when confronted with the forceful disposition of his Spanish grandfather and turning into a more manic version of himself. The shift wouldn’t be noticeable to many, his tells subtle enough for even Eliza to miss, but they were obvious to me. I steeled myself for the physical reaction I knew was imminent, and sure enough, felt a stabbing in my stomach that I only managed to mask because Antonio had begun leading the other two away. Giving myself a moment to breathe through the pain, I went after them, around the narrow edge of the boat towards the main deck.
Having shooed us all on to a wraparound leather banquette and pushed a jug of sangria and several glasses in our direction, Antonio went up to the bridge and, moments later, we felt a rumble as the engines started. The yacht’s bosun, Diego, who was seventy if a day and had the wrinkled, tarnished skin of a walnut, showed remarkable agility as he hurried from stern to bow, fastening ropes and yelling instructions through a radio to the other members of crew, two Spanish twenty-somethings who looked too alike not to be brother and sister. I watched them go about their tasks as my own anxiety whirled, wishing I had a physical job to occupy my restless limbs.
Eliza took her hat off and shook out her pink hair. She had made short work of her sangria and was already in the process of helping herself to a second glass. I was finding it was difficult not to keep checking on Luke, and although he seemed content enough, his expression serene and shoulders relaxed, I could hear the faint tapping of his sock-clad foot against the deck.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked, leaning in so Eliza wouldn’t hear me. ‘We can go back if—’
He shook his head once, mouthing a barely perceptible ‘no’, and I shrank back against the seat. Port de Sóller was spread out behind us, a scatter of Battenburg-hued buildings against a backdrop of mountains and sky. Boat masts bobbed and keened on their moorings, the vanishing harbour a giant pincushion cut through with swathes of lights. As the yacht chugged gently out past the swell, the horseshoe curve of the bay rose up to see us off, the lighthouse at its tip eliciting an ‘ooh’ from Eliza. Where she recognised a beacon of hope, however, I saw only a symbol of my own loneliness, and immediately felt ashamed. This spiralling pattern of perpetual doom had to stop. Feeling sorry for myself was not going to change anything.
I stood up and made my way to the edge of the deck, wrapping my fingers around the railings as I peered down at the churning froth of water below. The wind whipped up my hair and tossed droplets of spray across my bare legs, the roar of the engines loud enough that if I screamed, there was a chance nobody would hear me.
‘Mum!’
It was Luke, and sensing from his tone that it wasn’t his first attempt at getting my attention, I hurried back to the table just as Antonio reappeared.
‘Diego has taken over the controls,’ he explained. ‘I thought that we could go to the beach at Escorca, perhaps with some stops for swimming along the way?’
That, we all agreed, sounded nice. Many of the coves along the section of coastline he’d suggested were only accessible by boat, and likely to be less crowded than those connected by road. As we sailed on, Antonio fired questions at Luke and Eliza in his trademark scattergun way, cajoling and teasing until he got the answers he wanted. Within half an hour, I’d learned a lot more about their relationship than I could ever have hoped to glean through my own conversations with Luke. He was not receptive to my questions, no matter how anodyne, and having found myself at the receiving end of caustic knockbacks too many times to recount, I’d concluded that it was better to wait, and hope, and be satisfied with the few morsels of information I was tossed. Being afraid of your own child was unthinkably dreadful, but it was where I’d ended up, nonetheless.
It didn’t come as a surprise that Eliza was more open than Luke, but I was shocked when she admitted to Antonio that yes, she and Luke did plan to move in together officially once the new term started, and that of course they’d discussed the possibility of marriage and children.
‘We’re very much on the same page,’ she said earnestly.
‘Becoming a parent is an extremely big responsibility,’ Antonio replied, extracting a segment of orange from the sangria jug and sucking it thoughtfully. ‘It is better to wait until you are older, past the age of twenty-five.’
‘Oh, for sure,’ Eliza said and glanced at Luke. ‘Neither of us want to be old parents either, though.’
I cleared my throat. ‘Define old.’
‘My mum was forty-two when she had me, and she ended up going through the menopause while I was going through puberty. That wasn’t ideal.’
‘At least she had wisdom and experience on her side,’ put in Luke. ‘Better to be well prepared than unprepared.’
The leather squeaked beneath me as I shifted in my seat.
‘Sí.’ Antonio nodded sagely. ‘You cannot be a parent if you are still a child yourself.’
‘You can if you have no choice,’ I said, only to immediately regret it. The three of them stared over at me expectantly, waiting for me to elaborate. ‘I’m not saying I was forced into having you.’ I turned to Luke. ‘Just that you weren’t planned, as such. You were a surprise – a very nice surprise. My happiest accident.’
‘How old were you?’ asked Eliza.
‘Seventeen when I fell pregnant, eighteen when Luke was born. Henry was nineteen.’
‘No way!’ she exclaimed. ‘That means my mum is old enough to be your mum.’
‘Probably best not to point that out to her,’ I joked weakly, and Eliza laughingly agreed.
‘Why did you?’ interrupted Luke, head down and attention focused on the ice he was swirling around in his glass.
‘Why did I what?’
‘Keep me?’
Although I’d had an inkling what he was going to say, hearing him ask the question made my heart contract as if squeezed.
‘I was healthy,’ I said. ‘I loved your father; my parents were willing to help us – there was no reason not to keep you.’
‘You must have wanted to, as well?’ This came from Eliza, and I got the impression she’d prompted me not out of curiosity, but because I should have said it myself. She was right – it was the first thing I should have said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Of course I did, more than anything. I was scared, as you’d expect given my age, but once I came around to the idea, I was happy. We were so desperate to meet you, your dad and me,’ I told Luke. ‘I can’t even tell you how much.’
It was not the whole truth, but close enough to be convincing.
Or so I hoped.