Canary Islands Mysteries Collection

Chapter 8

We wait another hour before helping Gloria open her presents.

"Let"s start with the smallest," Bill says, lifting his granddaughter onto his lap.

Angela passes the gaily-wrapped packages one by one. I stand back and watch. Amid squeals of delight and lots of frantic ripping, out pops the rag doll I bought at the local arts and crafts market, the play dough I found in a shop in Arrecife, replete with a small wooden rolling pin and some pastry cutters, and a selection of picture books that were on special in the supermarket. As the gift size increases so does the value, my parents indulging Gloria with an arts and crafts kit in its own special carry case, a memory game, a toy toolset with workbench, and finally, leaning against the wall beside the table, a heavy duty, plastic cubby house.

"Thank you," I breathe, moved by their generosity, if at once diminished by it. In such moments, when my nose is pressed up hard against my pecuniary circumstances, I face afresh the knowledge that if I returned to England, endured the travails of single parenthood in an existence without Celestino, I would be sure to provide my daughter with something more than a hand-to-mouth lifestyle. Not that material circumstances could outweigh having a father in day-to-day life. Besides, my parents are here. I smile and make all the right noises thinking Celestino should be here too, to watch his little girl delight in the unboxing, his mother-in-law gather up all the wrapping paper, his father-in-law set up the toy workbench.

As the evening wears on and the storm shows no sign of abating, the waiting becomes intolerable, unease vying with irritation inside. Several times I catch my parents exchanging worried looks. Looks that suggest all manner of suspicions and speculations.

Together, the three of us keep Gloria busy until her bedtime. The moment Gloria"s eyes close and her breathing steadies, I hurry to the telephone. The line is still dead. My home-phone answerphone normally kicks in on seven rings. I picture it there on the kitchen bench making a shrill noise that no one can hear. In a wild moment, I think of dashing out to the call box in the village. Angela hovers. Taking in that strained face, I put down the handset and say in as convincing a voice as I can muster that he must be stuck in Haría. "The storm will have worn itself out by morning," Bill says by way of offering comfort. It isn"t long before they retire to bed.

Later, when the others are sleeping soundly, I open the front door and fix my gaze on the driveway barely visible in the rain. Lightning illumes the night in sharp bursts of grey, thunder roiling in the wake. The cool wet air chills me and too soon I"m forced to close the door, well aware that through the thick wall of all that dark grey Celestino won"t appear.

It"s childish to blame, I know that, but standing in the dark of my parents" living room it feels as though Celestino"s absence on Gloria"s birthday is symbolic of all that frustrates me, precipitating a release of the pent-up emotion I"ve been feeling for years.

It isn"t Gloria"s fault. How can it be? I have no desire to wish away my own child, but there"s no escaping Gloria, more than Celestino, has trapped me on the island. Moving overseas to be with the man of your dreams is one thing, falling pregnant to him another.

My thoughts take me down familiar tracks. If only I hadn"t booked those two weeks on Lanzarote; if only I hadn"t taken the coach trip north to Haría; if only I hadn"t been lured by the novelty of an art exhibition held in a former underground water tank; if only I hadn"t been enchanted by the artist himself; if I hadn"t accepted his offer of dinner and then, finding myself with no way of getting back to my hotel, stayed the night. If I"d done none of those things I would never have fallen for Celestino.

It"s no use. Gloria is a fixture in my life and takes up all the space in it.

I spy in the dim a toy cat on the floor beside the sofa and pick it up for a cuddle. Gloria consumes me in a way I couldn"t have anticipated. I"m still a little stunned. The best that can be said is that she"s the product of a brief period in my life when I rent myself open and let in a wild wand of change.

No one would ever call me reckless, which made the move all the more unusual. Although, despite my specialism in tourism, back in Ipswich I was little more than a glorified receptionist and I"d begun to find my work uninspiring, the eager visitors pushing through the information centre doors even more so. I booked another holiday to Lanzarote to spend more time with my new love. When Celestino expressed a wish for me to be by his side, I resigned from my job and moved to Lanzarote, with hesitation, yes, but also with resolve.

Then, just as I"m trying to adjust to things, I fall pregnant.

I head through to the kitchen, recalling with anguish and a measure of embarrassment the desperate solitude I endured in the aftermath of the birth, absolute whenever Celestino was at work in his studio, which was more often than not. Those early months were dreadful. There were days I wondered what I was doing on the island. In my depressed state, I was slow to make friends. Kathy and Pilar, both close to Celestino and young mothers themselves, offered support, but it took me a great deal of courage to accept it. Looking back, I feel vindicated with Pilar in the light of the language barrier. She spoke little English and my Spanish was rudimentary. With Kathy, it was the opposite. I didn"t want to mix with other expats. Besides, Kathy and Pilar were both still in their twenties, with all the attitudes and interests typical of that age, and motherhood came to them with astonishing ease. In my mid-thirties at the time, I couldn"t help feeling an outsider in their company.

The rain pelts down, the storm determined to unleash its tyranny. Untroubled, Tibbles rubs himself against my bare calf. I draw up a chair at the kitchen table, setting the toy cat on a place mat to stroke the real one on the floor. Finding him in an affectionate mood, I pick him up and nuzzle his fur.

I mustn"t judge myself too harshly. I made a valiant effort to learn Spanish. With language acquisition my confidence grew and it was very early on in Gloria"s second year when I felt compelled to earn some kind of living. That was when I realised my job prospects on the island were little short of laughable. There was no chance of me resuming a career in tourist information. My language skills were far from adequate.

They still are.

Besides, to work in the tourism industry is to work for the enemy as far as Celestino is concerned, and that will be grounds for divorce. It"s a hypocritical view since he sells his artworks to the very tourists he doesn"t want on his island. Not that I ever broach the topic. I wouldn"t threaten my marriage in that way, and I don"t dispute Celestino"s point of view; I share it. If I didn"t, I wouldn"t have married him, would I? But the sacrifices I find I have to make are enormous.

I"ll never forget the day I managed to gain work as a shop assistant for an Englishwoman trading in tourist bric-a-brac in Costa Teguise. Celestino"s mouth fell open when I told him, then it clamped shut when he discovered to his annoyance that I wouldn"t be dissuaded. Not long after, the woman fell ill and retired. I had a short spell filling in as hotel receptionist at a resort in the same town, a job I secured by chance when I went to collect my last pay. I can"t believe the trouble I had convincing Celestino he had no right to tell me where I could and couldn"t work. He was much happier when I took the job of cleaner of a holiday let in Punta Mujeres. The job was closer to home but not at all to my liking. He doesn"t seem to mind my current position either, waitressing at a restaurant in Haría on Friday nights. It"s a job from which I take little satisfaction. The clientele, mostly Northern Europeans, are gauche, and I struggle to smile at their banter.

Last night was especially bad; a drunken Frenchman"s audacious pinch of my arm caused me to drop the plate of grilled fish I was carrying, the fish landing in the Frenchman"s wife"s lap. Unluckily for me, the proprietor of the restaurant, Eileen, whose warm heart usually calms her fiery temper, hadn"t witnessed the scene, and berated me in the office out the back. It was as much as I could do not to walk out.

The rain eases. I lift Tibbles off my lap and go to the fridge, hoping a glass of milk might make me sleepy. The lit interior is a little emporium of leftovers and small treats. I can"t help comparing it to my own, a stark representation of the lifestyle of the wife of an artist.

It occurs to me as I reach for a glass that I didn"t know much about Celestino when I made the decision to be with him. I thought the mainstay of his creative life was the little paintings he sold at the local markets and the occasional exhibition. I found out much later that he was having a dry spell after losing his studio space to a property developer from Alicante, who bought the semi-derelict building to convert into holiday lets and turfed Celestino out. About that time, the local mayor offered up an artist-in-residence position for an indigenous painter. Celestino accepted: with qualms, with reticence, yet also with relief.

Gloria was toddling by the time Celestino found another studio. A British civil servant went broke when barely into the renovations of a former gofio mill and was finding the building impossible to sell. Celestino got wind of the place, and after some negotiations, the estate agent persuaded the owner to let one of the downstairs rooms. At the time, it seemed a heaven-sent gift.

My single example of the togetherness we"ve shared in the last two years, is one I contrived. The mill is a short walk from our home in Calle César Manrique. At lunchtimes, with Gloria in one hand and a basket of bread, cheese and fruit in the other, I amble down past the little covered market and town hall, and then take a detour through the plaza for the shade. At the end of the plaza I stop and wait for traffic to pass before making a dash to the mill on the next corner. Calle San Juan is one of the main routes through the village and never that pleasant to navigate by foot due to its narrowness and near total absence of pavements. There I stand, an English woman in her late-thirties with a small child, known to the village as Celestino"s wife, neither a stranger nor accepted as one of the island"s own, occupying a curious in-between place in the social fabric of the north, with my sandy hair, lightened by the sun and pinned back, limbs tanned, a large portion of my face obscured by my sunglasses.

I never go anywhere without my sunglasses. In the sunshine at any time of year I find the whitewash that coats just about every building on the island far too glary. I"ve become oversensitive. I never used to find the ubiquitous white so dazzling. Bearing a child seems to have changed me in unexpected ways.

I knock and push open the old mill house door—never locked when he is at work—and battle my way inside with our child and our lunch, always to find my husband absorbed before his easel, paintbrush poised, the accoutrements of his craft scattered all around him on benches and chairs. And when he sees me he stops, swings round and kisses first me, then Gloria. "¿Qué tal?" he asks, and I describe the little events of the past few hours: the laughter, the tears, the tantrums.

This morning, I drove to the studio instead and, leaving Gloria in the car, I dashed inside to make sure Celestino remembered when the party was due to start. He reassured me he wouldn"t be late. His utterance seems far away from me, a lifetime ago, but I can still hear the hint of reproach in the tone. I picture him at the studio behind his easel, but it makes no sense that he"d still be there. More likely he"s at home in bed, sound asleep after a good day"s painting, not all turbulent inside like me. It"s ungracious of me to think it, yet I can"t understand why he didn"t move heaven and earth to get to Máguez.

I take a long slow draught of my milk, feel the cool creaminess coat my mouth. Setting down my empty glass on the draining board, instead of somnolence it"s annoyance I feel, almost exasperation over the way Celestino insists on living his life. I see in his passion a sort of wilful recalcitrance typical of the teenage boy, while berating myself for holding that view. After all, I chose him. I knew, even back in Ipswich as I prepared to leave my job and sell my house, what sort of life I faced in a village like Haría with an artist like Celestino.

On Lanzarote, the lot of the artist is made all the harder by a tourist market oriented to the light, the novel, the bargain, the memento of a short stay. Celestino"s art is heavy, primal, and often confronting. He produces works to please himself, to honour his ancestors, not to cater to the tastes of holidaymakers. Fine art; I can accommodate that, or so I once thought. Besides, wasn"t it my passion for the island, for the complete transformation of a life, and my yearning for something different that propelled me forwards, saw me relocating to make a go of things? Yet I knew nothing about Lanzarote beyond its tourist enclaves and its numerous museums and its stunning landscapes. I could have had no idea the impact Celestino"s vehemently upheld indigenous identity and his resultant attitude to the status quo would have on our lives.

I rinse the glass and return to my seat. Listening to the relentless howl of the wind, I stare into the dark of the patio. Celestino"s absence makes those early memories more present to me, one in particular, the first time I encountered in him not just the qualities of the politically motivated outsider, but the dark passion that comes with it.

It was a Saturday in February and we were at the Haría markets in the plaza. He"d scored a good pitch at the church end, in the dappled shade of one of the laurel trees. Me, an ungainly eight months pregnant with a baby neither of us was prepared for, was seated in a fold up chair, a loose cardigan wrapped around my belly, my face hidden behind newly acquired sunglasses. The plaza was filled with tourists ferried up by coach from the island"s southern resorts. The trips were popular, the itinerary including a tour of César Manrique"s last residence. The morning was sunny and warm, and most were out in their shirtsleeves. A musical duo were entertaining traders and browsers alike. Celestino"s artworks were selling well. He"d knocked out a series of framed landscapes, for once broadly appealing and the price suited the average budget. His finer works, those larger paintings he created with enormous love and care, served more as stall decoration, a lure. Celestino was in a buoyant mood, engaging in pleasant banter in English and Spanish as he unzipped his belt pouch to add the euros. I sat back and smiled, fielding inquiries from the women who noticed my belly. Celestino joked I was good for trade.

By lunchtime, long queues had formed at the food stalls. The front of Celestino"s stall was crowded as a result. He"d just begun to pull two of his paintings from the front edge of his display, when a boisterous teenager rammed into an old woman clutching a large bag. The woman toppled sideways and almost collided with a small child. In an effort to regain her balance, she reached out for Celestino"s table. A watercolour landscape, one of Celestino"s prized creations, toppled and crashed to the ground, the glass in the frame shattering, a shard tearing the paper.

There were the apologies and the woman offered to pay for the damage, but of course it was an accident and Celestino refused to accept recompense. These things happen, he said. But after that he was on guard and his mood darkened. A short while later, before he had a chance to recover from the loss, an enthusiastic couple came over and marvelled at his works, handling first one painting, then another. They quizzed Celestino on his methods, his background, his entire creative life story, then without making a purchase the woman handed Celestino a leaflet advertising an art exhibition, telling him he should get himself down to Arrecife to check it out.

The moment they were gone, Celestino crunched the leaflet in his hand and tossed it on the ground behind him. I was curious but it was too far for me to reach. Seeing my outstretched arm, he said, "Leave it." I was stunned. My distress must have shown on my face behind my sunglasses. Celestino qualified his remark, but not with the comforting platitude I"d anticipated. Instead he said, "Bah! My work is as good as his."

"Whose?"

"Diego Abarca. He isn"t even a native."

"Does it matter?"

"Of course, it matters. It matters a lot. Especially when he"s made himself one of the DRAT brotherhood."

"The DRAT brotherhood?" He made it sound like a conspiracy.

"El Departamento de Recreación, Arte y Tourismo. The Cabildo"s champion," he said with a dismissive flick of his hand. The Cabildo is Lanzarote"s island government. "DRAT was established to promote the island"s culture. So how come Diego Abarco gets the funding? He"s from Andalucia!"

He went on to explain from his acerbic perspective that DRAT had transmogrified over the decades into an arm of the power elite, concerned more with pomp and ceremony than supporting hard-working artists, especially those of the alternative scene in the island"s north.

"Does Diego live in the south?" I asked.

"He lives in the pockets of the rich, Paula."

I was left none the wiser. All I knew was, much to Celestino"s transparent vexation and my private displeasure, the privileges, the patronage and the funding were largely denied him and he was left to labour on unsupported.

Although as the weeks slipped by, there were times I couldn"t help suspecting the situation had more to do with his own bellicose attitude. Times when my evening would be taken up listening to him vent. "The politicos have no interest in the arts. But they do like to decorate their jobs. You see, Paula, the international arts scene provides much better opportunities for them than anything local and grass roots." I did see. I"d heard him say it many times before. His eyes would narrow, his lips curl around his words. Manrique had been a people"s man too, champion of the island"s unsung artists and architects. He would have been as incensed as Celestino to see how far from his own ideals some had taken things. I often have to remind myself of that.

I knew from the moment I moved into his house that he had an interest in fighting corruption, but in those early months while I was pregnant he devoted a great deal of his time to me and my needs. We were, after all, in love, but the birth of Gloria seemed to flick a switch in him and he reverted back to his old habits. Perhaps until then he hadn"t quite trusted me. Maybe he felt excluded from my affections once I had a baby in arms. Whatever the reason, Celestino began to spend hours of every evening on his computer. And when he readied for bed, I was treated to a diatribe on the latest scandal in what I was quick to realise was a corruption culture second to none.

What"s the point of perpetual indignation? I don"t like to see him chewed up by it. Not when he has a wife and a daughter by his side. I wonder sometimes what matters to him most. If the sacrifice he"s making, all three of us are making, is worth it. But he sees hope on the horizon, through the younger generations, those who, unlike their parents and grandparents, have travelled overseas and gained a university education. Their forebears might be submissive and averse to change, he would say, but the young are not. They even have their own political party: Somos. It is for the young that, when he isn"t in his studio creating art, Celestino campaigns to expose the island"s corruption. Name and shame is his motto. "Corruption always makes the poor poorer and enriches the rich." Seated there in my mother"s kitchen, I can almost hear him say it.

The rain stops. I go and open the patio door. Out in the cool night air, raising my face to the wind, observing through a break in the cloud the stars in the night sky muted by the streetlights of the village, my frustrations give way to a sweeter memory, one long forgotten.

I was about seven months pregnant, all flushed and contented and filled with anticipation. It was a time when Celestino had delighted in my presence. At night, while we lay together in bed, he would stroke my hair and in a voice smooth and soft he"d tell me of the places he wanted to show me, special places hidden away. Most of all he spoke of a string of beaches on the coast of the island"s south, the beaches of the ancient mountains of Los Ajaches, accessed via the little village of La Quemada. He would describe the first beach, how it lay at the foot of a secret valley carved out of the mountainside by an ancient barranco. An unspoilt and inaccessible place, part of one of the island"s most protected areas. He said the beach was among the last remaining on the island where the waters were calm enough and safe for swimming. Where the tourism juggernaut had yet to reach. Lying beside him, feeling the soothing touch of his hand, his breath warm against my cheek, the little beach sounded like paradise. Once I even drifted to sleep and dreamed I was there.

He promised to show me, but I was too heavily pregnant to make my way along the steep and rocky path, and then the baby came and we never went.

Suddenly chilled, I close the door, vowing to myself we"ll visit the little beach at the first opportunity, the moment Celestino comes back.