But Ramon hadn’t forgotten about Helena. He had tried to. He had written up his article and sent it off to his editor. Then he had gone to his parents’ house in Cachagua where he had moped around like a lovesick schoolboy, sat on the beach watching the sea with a heavy heart, thinking of Polperro and the mermaid he had left there. He tried everything to forget her. He slept with a few girls he picked up, but that only made his ardour stronger. He wrote poems about her and a short story about the daughter of a Cornish smuggler. His parents were delighted. He had never been in love before and they had almost despaired of his cold heart and lonely wanderings. So Mariana had talked to him, told him to follow his feelings instead of fighting them. They’re not going to go away, Ramon,’ she had said. ‘Enjoy them and indulge them. That’s what love is for. You’re lucky to feel like that, some people go through life and never experience it.’ So Ramon had called his editor and asked to add one small paragraph.
‘What’s that then?’ his editor asked curiously. He liked the article very much, but they wanted to run it immediately. ‘I hope it’s not long, I won’t have space,’ he said.
‘No, it’s not long. I’ll dictate it to you.’
‘All right. Go ahead.’
‘The most beautiful and magical place of all is Helena Beach in Polperro, a small cove of silver white sand with a pale blue sea of such translucence that
she lures you into the depths of her mysteries until your heart is captured and your soul enslaved. I left knowing that I would never be the same again and that I would be hers for ever. It is only a question of time before I go back to give myself to her, body and soul.’
‘Quite a beach, Ramon,’ said the editor dryly. ‘I shouldn’t allow it to go in, but as it’s you.’ Then he added with a smile, ‘I just hope none of our readers try to find it, they might be disappointed!’
When Helena received the copy of National Ceographic she knew it was from Ramon, although there was no note attached. She tore open the paper and leafed through the pages with a trembling hand. Then she sat at the kitchen table and read his article. She wept at the photographs, taken together, and the way he wrote which was uniquely poetical and touched her heart. When her eyes found the paragraph about ‘Helena Beach’ they were so misted she could barely read it. Blinking away her tears she had to read it again in case she had read too much into it. Then she smiled because she knew that he loved her and that he’d come back for her. He had been worth waiting for after all.
Ramon sat on the beach, thinking of Polperro, thinking of his wife and children sitting on the quay in the harbour and his heart lurched for them. He thought of the way he first felt about Helena and the way he now felt about Estella. Love, he sniffed, what’s the use? It always goes sour in the end, he thought bleakly. How could he love Estella when he hadn’t even been capable of loving his wife properly? It was better not to love at all.
Later when he returned to the house he had made up his mind. He would leave immediately and forget about Estella. He should have forgotten about Helena all those years ago, at least he wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.
Opening his maps he cast his eye to India and nodded. India, that's as good a place as any.
Chapter 10
England
Toby Trebeka had stayed the night in London in order to be close to Heathrow airport for his sister’s arrival the following morning. He had volunteered to go. He didn’t like to think of her having to take a train or a bus down to Cornwall, especially not in her fragile state of mind. His parents had told him she had decided to leave Ramon. He was saddened. She had been so happy at the beginning. Wasn’t everyone? He felt sorry for the children, torn between two people like that, feeling themselves to blame for their parents’ failure to love one another. It always affected children more than people realized. Still, he thought, one can’t live one’s life entirely for one’s children. Not that he’d ever have that problem.
Toby had always been different from the other boys growing up in Polperro. In spite of being of an athletic build he hadn’t enjoyed sport, except for fishing, which the other boys thought incredibly dull and antisocial, especially because he always threw back the fish he had caught. He refused to eat meat - ‘anything with a mother or a face’ he explained. But Toby had sailed off in his father’s small boat to look at the fish in spite of their mockery. He used to sit out there in the rough sea for hours on end with only the seagulls for company and the sound of his own voice humming the bad love songs he listened to on the wireless. He was handsome with pale luminous skin and sensitive eyes that cried easily, usually at things other people wouldn’t have even flinched at, like the sight of a shimmering shoal of fish beneath the surface of the sea or a lone crab running for cover beneath a rock. It was only his cheery nature and sharp wit that prevented him from being bullied at school and because he was so much brighter than the other boys. He earned their respect by humour and by his readiness to laugh at himself. He collected insects, which he kept in large glass containers with all the luxuries they could possibly need from foliage to food, and spent hours nurturing and studying them. He read books on trees and animals and subscribed to the National Geographic. He knew he was different. His mother had told him to ‘make a feature’ of his differences. So he hadn’t tried to like football or rugby, he hadn’t tried to like smoking and sitting in pubs discussing girls. For that matter he hadn’t tried to like girls either -well, not in the way the other boys expected him to ‘like’ them.