by Rosanna Ley
‘Working? On a sunny day like this?’ Tom filled their doorway. He pulled off his sweater as if to demonstrate how warm it was and chucked it on to the back of the armchair. And it was true that it was warm for March.
Sometimes Tom didn’t seem much older than when they’d first met more than thirty years ago. Though his hair was greying and he was more world-weary. ‘People don’t want hand-crafted furniture any more,’ he sometimes said wistfully. ‘They want cheap and factory-made. Who can blame them?’ And Vivien would hug his sad-looking back and she would blame them – fiercely. She would never stop loving what he did even though these days he spent more time fixing kitchen cupboards and skirting boards for people than he did making tables and chests of drawers. Despite this, Tom still had the brown twinkly eyes and sense of fun she’d first fallen in love with.
Vivien had never wanted to be with anyone but Tom.
She remembered the first time she’d seen him, the tinny fairground music and whoosh of the rides, the laughter of the boys and screaming of the girls. The sweet sticky scent of candyfloss and toffee apples heavy in the air, the neon bulbs of light dazzling in the dusk of the summer evening. Charmouth Fair.
Vivien was sixteen. She and her friend Lucy were camping in a field behind a pub in the village – on holiday in Dorset on their own for the first time. They’d told their parents they were hiking and staying at youth hostels; in fact they were hitch-hiking and staying wherever the fancy took them.
The fancy had taken them on this occasion to Charmouth. They had heard the fair was in town. They sat on their sleeping bags with their mirrors and mascara and got themselves ready for a night out that wouldn’t include any curfew from their parents. Because they were here on their own. And they were free …
The adrenalin hit Vivien as they walked to the green and heard the music. It was past eight o’clock but still light; most of the families had left to go home and the fairground was just beginning to buzz. There were groups of girls and groups of boys, young couples hand in hand, and boys operating the rides, strutting along the walkways, giving the girls the eye.
Vivien and Lucy made for the waltzer. They jumped into the silver car. The ride gathered speed and as the boy spun the car around, they gripped on to the metal handrail with white knuckles, threw back their heads and shrieked with laughter and fear. It was over all too soon, a whirlwind ride.
‘Another?’ said Vivien.
‘You bet,’ said Lucy. They giggled.
Vivien saw the two boys making a beeline for them. She nudged Lucy. ‘Don’t look now … ’ But she did.
‘Room for two more?’ the taller one enquired with the raise of a dark eyebrow.
Vivien felt reckless. ‘Why not?’ She shifted to make room. He sat down next to her.
‘My name’s Tom,’ he said. ‘Tom Rae.’ He smiled.
Vivien just had time to register that his eyes were light brown with a streak of amber. And then the car spun, the girls shrieked, and the ride began.
‘What’s yours?’ he shouted over the screaming and the music – Amen Corner: ‘If Paradise is Half as Nice … ’
She couldn’t agree more. ‘Vivien!’ she shouted back.
*
After the waltzer they paired off. Tom’s mate Brian already had his arm round Lucy. What would she do, Vivien wondered, when Tom put his arm round her? Would he try to kiss her?
Next up was the dodgems. The two boys took the wheel, the cars sparked on the metal grille above, bumping and grinding and even dodging occasionally. Tom’s proximity was making Vivien feel hot. She could smell the hint of sandalwood and sweat on his skin. She closed her eyes.
After that came the big dipper where they hung motionless in the darkening sky for what seemed like minutes and Tom looked into her face as if he were taking note of every feature. Vivien looked back, unblinking, and wondered what he had seen. By the time they got to the rifle range she felt like she was in a trance. The others were chatting and laughing; Tom concentrated and focused, took aim, shot; three minutes later he proudly presented her with a yellow teddy bear. And then they munched toffee apples which got stuck in Vivien’s teeth, and drank Fanta from the can.
By the time Tom walked Vivien back to their tent (Lucy was lagging behind with Brian) he had put his arm around her and they had exchanged life stories. Vivien knew that Tom lived in Sherborne in Dorset – a long way from West Sussex – that his favourite subject was woodwork and that he wanted to be a carpenter. A furniture maker. A master craftsman, if you like. She liked the way he talked – low and quiet with a gentle Dorset burr. And she sensed from the start that Tom Rae would do what he said he would. She knew that he was an only child like her, that he had lost his parents when he was young and was living with his aunt and uncle, and that he was saving up to buy a motorbike.
When they got back to the tent he suddenly fell silent.
Vivien wasn’t sure what to say either. She’d had casual boyfriends before but no one that really meant much to her. Was it just because she was on holiday that she’d taken such a shine to this dark-haired, lanky boy with the brown eyes and warm smile? Was it his accent and the unfamiliar male scent of him in the night-time? Or was it the heady excitement of the fairground rides that had churned up her insides?
‘I’d better be saying goodnight then,’ Tom said at last. He took a step closer.
And then she was in his arms and it felt a better place than anywhere she’d been before. He was a good kisser and he tasted of apple. She only hoped she no longer had any bits of toffee stuck in her teeth.
*
After they’d gone, she and Lucy analysed the evening to death.
‘I really like him, Luce,’ Vivien breathed. ‘What do you think about staying here for the rest of our holiday?’
‘Suits me.’ Lucy was lying on her back, arms folded under her head. ‘I’d like to get to know Brian a bit better too.’ They giggled.
*
After they returned to West Sussex, everyone told Vivien it was just a holiday romance. She was only sixteen, they said. She had her whole life in front of her. Which was true. The difference was that now Vivien wanted it to include Tom.
*
‘Viv? It’s lovely out. Too nice to be stuck in here,’ Tom said now.
In reply, Vivien arched an eyebrow and drew her brush wetly across the top of the paper.
Tom pulled a disappointed face.
She felt it. ‘If you’ve finished work, go and play,’ she said, smiling to soften the words.
He studied her. ‘How long will you be?’
Vivien gave a little sigh and a small smile. She’d had it all planned. Do the background wash. Prepare supper. Sort out some mounting. Do some more to the painting – the first real colours, the exciting bit. Cook supper. Phone Ruby. Have a relaxing evening with Tom and the telly.
She lifted the paper, to allow the wash to curtain down, creating the desired effect with a rhythmic sweep of her brush. She paused, frowning at it. ‘What were you thinking of?’
‘A trip on the bike to Pride Bay? I need to take her out for a test run. I’ve been tinkering around with the carburettor.’
‘Oh, yes?’ He really knew how to tempt a woman …
‘A 99 ice cream?’ he added. ‘A walk round the harbour. Maybe a beer?’
‘In that order?’ Vivien jiggled the paper around a bit.
‘We could swap around the ninety-nine and the walk. “Born to be wild”, my lovely. What do you reckon?’
She chuckled. ‘All right then. I suppose I could do with a break. Give me ten minutes or so?’ Vivien mentally readjusted her evening. Spontaneity was, after all, one of the qualities she loved about her husband.
‘Good girl. Nice colour.’ He nodded approvingly. ‘I’ll make us a quick cup of tea.’ And he was gone.
Head to one side, Vivien surveyed the wash. The hint of colour was about right – only just there.
The worst thing that could happen, she thought, putting her b
rush in the clean water, was not being forgiven. That was why she hadn’t told. There had been many valid reasons for not telling at first. There still were. But now … To be not forgiven was too awful to contemplate. The secret and the keeping of it had become a wall between them; the kind of wall that was hard to climb.
And the best thing that could happen? Vivien wasn’t sure that there was one. She selected a few tubes of paint from the pile in front of her and clattered the rest back into the large cake tin they lived in. Was honesty its own reward? She squirted a few experimental blobs of colour and shifted them around a bit with her mixing brush. No. The best thing – for her – would be not to have to worry about this any longer. To be open about it all. To explain the whys and the wherefores and how it had all come to be.
Ah. She breathed out. Screwed the caps back on the paints. Later.
That was what she needed to do – explain how it had all come to be.
CHAPTER 3
Fuerteventura, June 2012
Slowly, painfully, Sister Julia got to her feet. It was growing dusk. She brushed the fine dust from the white habit she wore – the visible sign of her departure from the world outside; the symbol of her inclusion in the monastic community of her spiritual family. Dust. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes … A reminder – as if she needed another reminder – of all the deaths she had witnessed. Of the decision that she must make.
She fingered the rosary beads she carried. Here there was always dust, even in the chapel, which was decorated with scrolled stonework in pinks and blues, and faded frescos above the altar depicting the Crucifixion. She had been praying for two hours, but these days she hardly noticed time. It simply passed by. There was still so much to ask Him. What should she do? Could He give her some sort of sign?
She must now get on, however. There were only a dozen of them living here at Nuestra Señora del Carmen – the patron saint of fishermen – and this week Sister Julia’s duties included picking vegetables and herbs from the garden plot outside. They grew wormwood, aloe and echinacea as well as the more common mint, camomile, and rosemary. Every plant had its uses. Si. That was the way God had planned it. And He had given them the strength of mankind to make use of His gifts. But mankind was weak. Hadn’t she seen that? Mankind could fall into temptation. Mankind had free will but so often made the wrong decisions. And those decisions could have consequences so far reaching that it was almost unimaginable. Sister Julia did not want to make the wrong decision – not after all that had gone on. There had been so much sorrow, a sorrow that seemed still buried in her very soul.
Sister Julia walked through the cloistered arches of pale crumbling stone and stepped outside the back door. This place was not so different from the Santa Ana convent in Barcelona where she had lived when she was little more than a girl. It was not a closed order – the sisters were free to come and go and they could sell their sweetmeats in the foyer just as the sisters had done in Santa Ana. She smiled, remembering their suspiros de monja – nun’s sighs – made with a thick batter and candied fruit; golden and crispy on the outside, rich and creamy on the inside. Ah. But at Santa Ana things had changed. Something else had been asked of her … Sister Julia looked up at their small bell tower which was attached to the chapel on a buttress of stone. Steadied herself.
*
Outside, the light had changed from gold to a pinkish hue. Towards the south the mountains rested as if in slumber; as if wounded, with their deep scars and furrowed wrinkles; above them the darkening sky held daggers of red, orange, white. Another day gone. Another day nearer death …
Sister Julia had experienced a long life, a life that had held challenges very different from the ones she had been expecting when she was a girl; different too from what she had foreseen when she had been forced to take her first simple vows. It had not been easy – perhaps God’s work was never easy – and many times she had questioned what had occurred. She still did. She had lived through such uneasy and turbulent times. But now. Please God … All she wished for now, was for the burden she held to be eased from her shoulders. For the gentle blanket of peace to put her mind and her heart at rest.
She fetched the roughly woven basket and sharp knife from the outside storeroom and began to collect the salad leaves for tonight’s meal from the allotment surrounded by low dry-stone walls. They had fig and almond trees; hens for eggs; three goats for milk and cheese. They ate simply but well. As at Santa Ana, they grew most of their own vegetables and fruit, including potatoes, onions and the small Canarian bananas, although the land here on the Island of Fuerteventura was arid and dry. They still ate gofio too – once eaten by workers in the fields, mixed with water and sugar into a dough in a goatskin bag. These days they added it to milk to make their breakfast cereal or used it to thicken their soups and stews. Like many things, it had lived on, adapted to new times. And yet it symbolised, for Sister Julia, the simplicity of the life here.
Sister Julia did not fear death. She never had. Over the years, she had seen many die – sisters in the convent, people in the hospital where she worked as a young novice, her own family too. They were all gone now. And then there was the Civil War. No one could live through the Civil War and its aftermath and not see death, not stare it in the face, not smell it – bloody and rancid in your nostrils – around every street corner. Politics. War. Sister Julia shivered. There had been so much destruction.
And she feared that she was not blameless. They were difficult times, painful times for many. How could you know – unless you had lived through it? She had tried to beg God’s forgiveness for the things that she had done. Things no person should be asked to do. Things that could not be right. That could not have been God’s will. Not if He was the kind and just and loving God she had always believed Him to be. But did He hear her? Did He understand that she had felt she had no choice?
She paused for a moment to look out over the campo, the brown desert earth, so restful to the eye. To Sister Julia it seemed a biblical landscape; a land where you might expect to see camels and donkeys, three wise men travelling by the light of a star … But she was old and she was rambling. She must take these vegetables into the kitchen. They would be waiting. She picked up her basket.
It was very quiet here. These days only a few people came to the convent to seek guidance or to pray in their chapel. The road outside was little more than a sandy track leading only to the mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. And the sisters were quiet – although not a silent order. Quiet was regarded as the natural condition for religious women; careless talk had been avoided at Santa Ana and it was also avoided here. Mostly, the only sounds Sister Julia could hear were the faint howl of the wind echoing around their white pockmarked stone buildings, the hiss of the sand being lifted and blown, the distant heave and rush of the ocean waves and the occasional sharp cry of a gull. In the mornings the cockerel crowed and the hens scratched at the dusty earth. The simple sounds of Nature. And that was how Sister Julia wished it to be. After all she had lived through, she craved tranquillity and calm for her soul.
Sister Julia took the leaves through to where they were preparing the food, washed them carefully under the tap in the white enamel sink – the water here was salty but clean. There used to be a well and there was still a lime kiln outside the gate where the barilla plant had been burnt for sodium carbonate to make glass and soap, but some years ago the villagers had joined together to connect the convent to the water supply and to electricity and this had radically changed their lives.
She laid the produce on the kitchen counter beside the stove. They were making a hot soup – caldo caliente – with potato and eggs in a thin broth with sweet red pepper. Sister Josefina was stirring it with a wooden spoon. She smiled and nodded her thanks.
Sister Julia retreated to her own room on the first floor. She would have a short time of rest and quiet reflection before dinner. She needed to think. She did not want to get anyone into trouble – not if they had truly acted from the best of motiv
es. But had they? When money was involved, there was temptation and there was corruption. And this had made her doubt everything that she had once believed to be true. It was a long time ago. But she still had the evidence, did she not? Sister Julia’s eyes filled with tears as she remembered. Yes, it was a long time ago, but there were still many people who might desperately need to know the truth. Was it not their human right? And she – Sister Julia, humble as she was – could help them.
Her room was small and whitewashed. It had a wooden cupboard for her few clothes and a narrow bed; she needed only one thin blanket, for it did not get cold here on the island. There was no mirror. Why would she need a mirror? God could see inside her to her deepest thoughts – that was all that mattered. She had a writing table, though, on which she kept her Bible and psalm book, and the arched window behind it looked out on to the courtyard. In the writing desk was a drawer, which she always kept locked. In this, Sister Julia had secreted a few precious artefacts, mostly from her previous life before she had taken vows, but also from her time here on the island. There was her mother’s wedding ring, some photographs of her family, an embroidered sampler she had made as a girl and a few items given to her by those she had helped over the years.
Here – as at Santa Ana – the sisters sometimes gave advice to those who came seeking guidance. Sister Julia had never sought the role of spiritual counsellor; it had come to her. She listened as people talked of family quarrels, of love that was lost, of sons and daughters who had disappeared. There were men who gambled or drank (always there were men who gambled or drank) and women who had lost sight of their virtue. And other things. Darker things.
She fingered the delicate white tablecloth of lace – like gossamer to the touch – given to her by a woman in the village. Sister Julia could still remember the look in the woman’s dark eyes as she had told her story, could still feel her despair. Sister Julia had often prayed for her. She was another one who had been hurt, who did not know where to turn. It had been a story of disillusion and disappointment. But Sister Julia sensed there was more that the woman was not saying. She felt it. It rested there behind the sad eyes. And Sister Julia wondered. Was there another reason why her husband had behaved as he had? Was there more to the woman’s story that she could not tell?
