A Prison in the Sun

by Isobel Blackthorn

  I preferred to visit my friends' houses, rather than have them enter mine, for fear they would encounter my mother or Aunty Iris or my sister in a state, or they would turn my bedroom into one through boisterous play. Aunty Iris was fond of telling me I was too much of a loner and should invite boys over. To appease her, I would invite my best friend, Vince, round from time to time, but mostly I went to his.

  A wily and perspicacious child, Vince lived in the next street, and I had known him since my first day at school. Vince was my confidant, and he summed up my domestic circumstances beautifully one time when we were about thirteen, by saying that I was the scapegoat. I think we were learning about the world wars in History, and he applied the term to me. I considered his remark at some length, carrying it home with me and cogitating as I observed the attitudes of the women in the house, how they chose to ignore me, or jibe me, or pick holes in me, and by the end of that day, I had decided that Vince was correct in his assessment. I was indeed the scapegoat.

  From that point on, his home became my home. I found his parents warm and inviting. I would spend as much of my waking life in Vince's bedroom as my own.

  When boyhood gave way to hormones and our hair grew in our armpits and our groins, that other part of my anatomy grew of its own volition at the slightest spark and demanded release of its own unique kind. Once, while we were shut in Vince's bedroom, he unfurled a sexy magazine, and we lay on our bellies on his bed and leafed through the pages. After some time ogling, Vince pushed me over onto my back and when he looked down at me, his gaze fixed on the growth in my trousers. Without another word, he unzipped my fly and, before I could stop him, he reached in and tugged. I was delirious in an instant, and in the very next, my newly realised manhood exploded in a sudden gush.

  After that Vince's explorations grew bolder. He would unfurl his member – his was much larger than mine – and encourage me to unfurl mine and we would have wanking contests, shooting our loads into the waste paper bin.

  It was all just boyish fun. Neither of us questioned what we did. On the contrary, we sniggered and joked and drew lewd pictures and shared our fantasies.

  A year later, our voices broke, and Vince fell in love with a girl called Amy, and our wanking days were over. I completed school with high grades in English and History and went on to study at the University of Sussex in Brighton. I lived at home throughout the three years of my degree, but I was never there. Vince had by then married Amy, and I was dating her best friend, who would become my wife, Jackie.

  The Gym

  I closed the email tab and forced my attention on my surroundings, taking note of the patio with its arrangement of potted plants and wrought-iron furniture and wall décor. Charming surroundings, and there was nothing to be gained from reliving the past. The same memories, along with the same feelings, resurfaced like unwanted and long-buried garbage dug up by a spirited garden fork aroused into action by a wandering mind.

  After a short while, I returned to the matter in hand: my fitness, or lack thereof. Locating the nearest gym was the easy part. I found a suitable establishment in Puerto del Rosario, situated near the port, down a side street not far from the main drag. Even navigating my way into the heart of the island capital was not as onerous as I thought it might have been, but the moment I stepped down to basement level, walked inside the premises, and took in the machines and the weights and the men decked in shorts and singlets – all of them tanned and toned – I felt like hightailing it back to Tefía.

  Determination won out. Garbed in board shorts and the baggiest t-shirt I had packed, I headed to the counter, paid the session rate and set to, thinking I would try out a few machines after a long hard pedal on the exercise bike.

  I mounted the bike nearest the entrance door and furthest from every other male on the premises, adjusted the seat and fiddled with the settings until my feet could manage to pedal with relative ease. Despite the mirrors which doubled if not trebled the gazes flitting my way, I managed to ignore the others in the room as I panted and sweated and strained for a whole ten kilometres. I dismounted, took a sweep of the room and headed to the machines nearby, which looked devoted to the lower half of the anatomy.

  My decision to remain anonymous and private was tested when I struggled to change the weight setting on the leg press. I thought I heard laughter above the sound system and kept my head down in case I discovered my suspicions confirmed, and that laughter really was directed at me.

  A staff member saw my battle and came over, introducing himself in English as Luis, the gym's personal trainer. He had a friendly face, an ebullient manner and a confronting way of standing that little bit too close. 'No te preocupes,' he said, slipping back into Spanish as he pulled out the pin and thrust it into a lower weight load. Then he looked me up and down and added with a broad grin, 'Pero, tú necesitas el sol.' He said his words slowly and separately and pointed at my skin to make sure I understood. Yes, yes, I know, I am as white as bleached linen, don't remind me.

  He switched to English to suggest he devise me a fitness program. He must have been watching me the whole time.

  'It is the best way to get fit fast. No injuries,' he said, still all smiles.

  With him standing so close as I waited to mount the machine, I felt somewhat coerced into agreeing. 'Although, I am not sure there is any point. I am only here on holiday.'

  'For how long you stay?'

  'Three months.'

  'You will be strong in that time. And lose that,' he added with a short laugh, pointing at my belly.

  Humiliation rose. I harboured doubts as to whether I would lose my paunch in three short months, but Luis was right. It was obvious to me and no doubt to everyone else in the gym that I hadn't a clue what I was doing.

  I pulled away from the machine and said, 'Okay. That would be great.'

  First, he showed me around, introducing me to the machines like they were his old friends. He went on to devise a fitness program based on my embarrassingly weak efforts, taking me to first one machine, then another, and making me do a few reps at various weight loads while issuing me with instructions as to how best to position my body and what postures to avoid. I struggled to take it all in and hoped he would be including his advice in the plan.

  Luis' tour proved a workout in itself, and I was done in by the end of it. A remarkably chatty fellow – I did wonder if he had taken some drug. As we stood at the counter where I paid his fee, Luis asked me what I was doing on the island and where I was staying.

  Ever honest, I told him I was renting a farmhouse in Tefía. It was the village name that caused a shadow to pass across his face. Why that look?

  'Tefía?' he said doubtfully.

  'I wanted a place far away from the tourist strip,' I said, instantly defensive. Then I sighed. 'But it is desolate up there. Do you know it?'

  'I know Tefía,' he said with dark irony. 'Everyone knows Tefía.'

  'That sounds like a warning,' I said with a laugh, inwardly brushing off his remark.

  'Not a warning,' he said. 'The village has a terrible history.'

  I began to take an interest in what he had to say and was keen to know more. Terrible histories make for terrific stories.

  'How so?' I asked.

  'Have you been to the windmill?'

  The windmill!

  'As a matter of fact, I was there only this morning,' I said, a grin spreading across my face.

  Luis remained dark and grim.

  'Then you must know,' he said, looking down at the counter between us.

  'Know what?' I said, puzzled. 'It is just a windmill. There is nothing dark about it.'

  'Not the windmill, the hostel next to it.'

  Hostel? What hostel? Surely, he didn't mean whatever building was up that well-maintained drive?

  'You can't miss it,' he said. 'The entrance is right next to the windmill.'

  His words seeped into me. I had evidently failed to realise the drive led to a public building. What sort of ho
stel was it and what had gone on there? Luis looked poised to give me the full history when someone walked in from outside. Luis' gaze darted to the clock on the wall and, with a quick apology, he went to attend to his appointment.

  I drove back to Tefía, my muscles tight and aching. I was in need of a refreshing beer and a snack of some sort, but I headed straight to the windmill and on up the short drive to the hostel, pulling up at the end before a pair of high iron gates which were closed.

  The compound was walled, but I was able to peer through a crack in the gates to some low, ochre-coloured buildings and an observatory dome. Then I walked back past my car, and when I turned, I saw that the wall was only high at the entrance. I mounted the low stone wall that enclosed the drive and walked a short distance along the compound's perimeter. I felt strangely self-conscious and hoped I wasn't being watched.

  Inside the compound, beyond a planting of giant cacti in a raised gravel bed, on the other side of a small parking area, the arrangement of buildings around a quadrangle had a definite military feel. I assumed the structure served as some sort of army or air base. The atmosphere was not exactly pleasant, although there was nothing about the complex to invoke fear, no snarling dogs, no smashed windows or signs of dilapidation. No one appeared either, and there was no sound or any sign of human life. I noticed two sculpted rocks of black stone. They looked a little like headstones or a memorial of some sort. Whatever was inscribed faced the other way.

  I carried on until I found a gap in the wall, entering a swathe of black gravel and passing a recreational field used for sports. Beyond the field, to the northwest, there was a farmhouse inside a stone wall and surrounded by trees. Appeared to be a separate dwelling. I kept well away from it, crunching my way across the gravel to the rear of the compound. The land fell away to the northeast, ending in a row of three small, cuboid buildings, each little bigger than a single room. The buildings were in disrepair. Looked like no one had been down to attend to them in a long while. A cold chill wafted through me despite the heat. I didn't fancy walking down to take a closer look.

  I headed back the way I had come, thinking the compound had clearly undergone a change of purpose. What sort of hostel was it, and why locate it all the way out here? More's the point, what was so bad about the place to cause that reaction in Luis? I wasn't about to find out by snooping around. I emptied my shoes of grit, got in my car and drove home.

  After quenching a raging thirst and staving off a voracious hunger, I returned to my laptop out to the patio and sat in the sun to brown my legs. A few keywords and I had a bunch of tabs open on images, videos, blogs and newspaper articles on the hostel. Not one of them in English.

  My Spanish was rubbish and even with an online translator, I struggled to comprehend what I was reading. Yet I could find nothing, not one article in my native tongue, so I persevered.

  I soon realised Luis was referring to a prison, not the youth hostel that El Albergue has now become, the government having taken over the building for educational purposes.

  Originally a military airbase, the compound was turned into a prison to house political prisoners and criminals some time after General Franco came to power. From 1954, as the result of a law making homosexuality illegal under a vagrancy act, gay men were incarcerated at the hostel, then a prison farm, for up to three years. From what I could glean, conditions were abominable. Young men of eighty-seven kilos were reduced to almost half that in five months. The label “concentration camp” seemed hardly an understatement.

  Little wonder I hadn't liked the feel of the place. Those men must have been imprisoned in that row of small huts behind the main compound. From what I could gather, about twelve men would have been crammed in each. An image of Vince hovering over me with wild intent flashed into my mind, and I shuddered.

  One of the newspaper articles was the obituary of a former inmate. A gay activist campaigning for some sort of restitution; he had died only last month. It all sounded harrowing and sad and ugly and not at all what I had come to Fuerteventura to engage with.

  It wasn't that I lacked empathy. I just didn't want to be burdened with the tribulations of others some seventy years past, when I had barely begun to recover from my own.

  Then again, that prison might be a source of inspiration for a novel, and I would do well to stop and consider it. What sort of story would I tell? Had something similar already been done? What would I be able to make of harrowing events locked away in the past? Me, who could not stand to dwell on heavy emotions and hardship. I wanted to compose something interesting and topical, true, but not dark and gloomy. Besides, the topic of same-sex preference remained a sore point after Jackie and the divorce.

  An uncomfortable fire brought me back to the here and now. I had lost track of time, and my thighs felt as though they were frying in the sun. I got up and took the laptop indoors.

  Sure enough, I paid dearly for that hour or two of research, the burning deepening as the afternoon wore on, and by dinnertime, I was tempted to use the pack of frozen peas I had bought in Antigua as a cold pack. Had I packed the Savlon?

  Fortunately, I had, and I rubbed a liberal amount into each thigh. The cream eased the pain but not the heat that radiated from my baked skin.

  That night, I had to sleep with the covers off.

  A Skype Call

  I had only just finished patting Savlon onto my red and sore thighs after a cool morning shower, when my laptop signalled a Skype call. Garbed in boxer shorts and an old t-shirt, I rushed out of the en suite bathroom, through my bedroom and straight into the smallest living room, where I had left my laptop.

  It was Angela.

  Seeing her grinning face peering past mine, felt like an intrusion in the extreme. I knew she was just curious to see glimpses of where I was staying, but I almost cut the call. An overreaction on my part – after all, she had found this farmhouse for me – but my muscles were stiff and aching from the gym, and my skin smarted from the sunburn, and altogether I was not in the best of moods.

  'Hey there, you. Aren't you going to show me around?'

  She wouldn't stop peering past me. I forced myself to soften.

  'Okay, you win.'

  I unplugged the laptop and took her on a circuit through the house, going from room to room, each interconnecting to the next around the central patio, except the living room facing the street, which was accessed via the square hall; the kitchen, which led off from the same little hall; the main bathroom, accessed via a second square hall on the south side; and my bedroom, which was reached via the larger of the three living rooms. As I went, I pointed the webcam at features of interest – the wrought iron wall décor in the patio, the granite benchtop in the kitchen, the thickness of the walls, the claw-footed bath in the main bathroom, and the four-poster bed, neatly made, naturally – and at last she told me to stop.

  'You're making me dizzy,' she laughed.

  I felt dizzy, too.

  'How are things in gloomy Norwich?' I asked.

  'Same as ever. I've just signed a new author.'

  'Anyone I know?'

  'Doubt it. He's got quite a backlist. A crime novelist. Richard H. Parry.'

  'Never heard of him.'

  'Didn't expect you would. Crime writers are a dime a dozen and he is no Ruth Rendell, but still. I have you to thank for me taking him on, oddly.'

  'Oh?'

  'He has a house on Lanzarote where he writes, and he has taken to writing novels set there. One of them flopped and he's been struggling to regain his former standing, which is why I've picked him up.'

  'A bit risky, if he's on the decline.'

  'Maybe. But I have a feeling he still has a few corkers in him. Which brings me to you.'

  'It does?' I was hoping she wasn't about to suggest I meet the guy.

  'You two should meet. Shared interest and all that.'

  I groaned inwardly as I maintained a bland expression, which she could no doubt see straight through.

  'Any luc
k coming up with a story?' she said, changing tack.

  'I've only been here five days.'

  'Okay, then what have you been doing?'

  I recounted my trip to the windmill, told her she would be pleased to know I had started at the gym and that I was sporting a bad case of sunburn.

  'Where?' she asked, not seeing sunburn on my face.

  'My thighs,' I said grimly. 'I got caught up in some research out on the patio, and I forgot the time. I was wearing shorts.'

  She needn't have laughed quite so heartily.

  'I have found something of interest,' I said, keen to distract her. 'Right by the windmill, there's a youth hostel. Seems schools use it for camps. It's a former air base once used as a prison.'

  'Sounds intriguing.'

  Her vague tone, in fact the phrase altogether, was her way of saying, how dull.

  'Angela, listen up. That prison used to house gay men incarcerated during Franco's regime. I've been reading up about it. Or trying to. They are calling it a concentration camp.'

  Now I had her. She leaned forward, lips parted, eyes wide. There was a brief pause.

  'Well?'

  'Well?'

  'Don't stop there!'

  'That is all I know. I only found out yesterday. It was how I got sunburnt. I was engrossed trying to translate all the details.'

  'There's nothing in English?'

  'Not that I can find.'

  'Pity. I was going to ask you for a link.'

  She stared at me and I stared right back, daring her to say it.

  'Pretty obvious, don't you think?'

  'Forget it.'

  'Aw, come on. You were looking for a book idea and now you have one.'