The lows were unbearable. His insecurities would invade the armour the drink had built around him and gnaw at his self-esteem more venomously than before. When the money dried up Helena gave him more, without questioning why he needed it. She didn’t ask Arthur, she just gave him what Arthur gave her. When that was no longer enough he seduced Claire Shawton, a mousy girl with a thin, pallid face and long, skinny legs because her father was Shawton Steel and there was no shortage of money in her bank account. Keen to hold on to the dark, impenetrable Hal, Claire gave him money for his drink and his cigarettes, his gambling and his extravagance.
‘I’m not an alcoholic,’ Hal explained to her when she protested. ‘It relaxes me. I’ll pay you back, I promise. I’m having trouble getting around the trustees,
that’s all.’ But there were no trustees because there wasn’t a trust. Only Helena’s blind generosity.
Claire Shawton’s uses extended only as far as her bank balance; sexually she couldn’t begin to satisfy Hal. He went about his sexual adventures with the same destructiveness with which he confronted everything else in his life. He slept with dozens of girls, promised them devotion and commitment, then dropped them as soon as they wanted a relationship outside the bedroom. Claire knew of his transgressions but instead of closing her cheque book and walking away she gave him more money and received the kisses that followed with pitiful gratitude.
When Hal returned to Cornwall for the holidays Arthur noticed immediately that he was gaunt and pale, unable to sit still or concentrate for very long. He slept most of the day and stayed up watching videos until the early hours of the morning. When Arthur approached Helena on the subject she excused him by saying that he was overtired, studying too hard and needed the holidays to rest.
‘Don’t hassle him, Arthur, he’s very sensitive about it,’ she said
proprietorially. ‘He’s got no confidence as it is. Let me deal with this.’
Once again Arthur rolled his eyes and backed off. Helena had been cold and distant in the last few months. She was prone to moods, adoring one moment, aloof the next, but he was used to that. He wasn’t used to the consistent ill humour that now seemed to dominate her personality. Like a diminishing candle, her affection for him seemed to be getting noticeably less and less as each day passed. If he didn’t do something the flame would go out altogether. But he didn’t know what to do. In despair he wondered whether she was seeing someone else.
Helena was seeing someone else. She was seeing Ramon. When she closed her eyes at night and when her mind drifted off by day and finally when she lay in the rough arms of Diego Miranda, she saw the awesome face of Ramon Campione. The only man she believed she had ever loved. She had cried enough bitter tears of remorse to sink one of Diego’s ships. She had looked back on her life and recognized her mistakes. Mariana had been right, you often don’t know what you have until it is gone.
She knew where Ramon was. But she hadn’t heard from him in years. She
hadn’t even bothered to find him to tell him about his own daughter’s wedding. She now wished she had. It would have been a good excuse. Now there was no reason to call him.
Helena hadn’t gone out of her way to have an affair. She hadn’t even considered it, or desired it. Her heart was somewhere in the past, barely concentrating on the present at all. She had been in the pub in Polperro with Arthur, one cold summer Sunday, when a strange young man with long black hair and deep black eyes had accidentally knocked into her, pouring her glass of red wine all over her pale cashmere sweater. She had lost the little patience she had, not so much with him, but with life and the misery of it all, flinging her arms in the air and swearing furiously.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he exclaimed, turning to the barman in desperation. The barman handed him a dishcloth and he proceeded to dab at her chest in his confusion. ‘I cannot apologize enough,’ he said when Helena stared at him in horror.
‘Your accent,’ she stammered. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Spain.’ She felt her stomach turn over and her head spin with a strange sense of deja vu. He sounded just like Ramon. When she gazed into his eyes
she believed they too resembled Ramon’s, until in her state of yearning she believed he was Ramon’s shadow, split from him by magic, all the way from Chile.
‘Diego Miranda,’ he declared, extending his hand.
‘Helena Cooke,’ she replied. ‘I used to live in Chile,’ she added, forgetting the wet stain on her sweater.
‘Really?’ he responded politely. ‘You must speak Spanish.’