‘Exactly.’
‘Well, darling, you’ve been washed up on my shore,’ she said and placed her hand on his. ‘Lucky me.’
Making love to Angela only reminded Ramon of his wife and of Estella. Her English accent made his stomach lurch with the memories of his last few days with Helena and consequently turned his thoughts to his children, yet the scent of her body and the taste of her skin only encouraged him to miss Estella by virtue of the fact that Estella tasted infinitely sweeter. It was a disappointment. He may as well have been a horse for she rode him furiously with the stamina of a professional jockey. When she was satisfied she had flopped onto the bed and fallen asleep like a man. He looked across at her pale blotchy
skin and knotted hair and knew that he couldn’t spend another minute in her bed. He got up, dressed and left without so much as a goodbye note.
He walked out into the sultry night air. The dawn was already seeping gold into the cracks in the sky and the monkeys were skipping on the rooftops, chasing one other across the shadows. He felt melancholic. Bad love always made him morose and he craved the poetic love of Estella. Sitting under the vast desert sky he pulled out of his rucksack the pen and paper he had stolen from Angela’s hotel room and began to write to Federica. He wrote with the intention of it being read by Helena. He missed her, which was strange, as that feeling had been covered in dust for many years due to lack of use. He had never missed her before. But he missed the idea of her. She was no longer there for him. He felt he couldn’t just ‘rock up’ like he used to. He missed Federica’s adoring face. He even missed Hal whom he had never really bonded with. His base camp had gone. Now he had nowhere to go home to. Not even in his dreams.
He wrote a story for Federica about a mysterious girl who followed him about on his travels. ‘She must be an angel,’ he explained, ‘for her hair is long and flowing and the colour of clouds at sunrise. She’s beautiful, not only on the outside but on the inside, which is the most important and the most rare. I first saw her in a dream. My longing for her was so great that when I awoke she was sitting on the end of my bed, watching me with pale, luminous eyes filled with affection. And so she has accompanied me everywhere. Up the Himalayan mountains where yaks roam the snowy peaks down to the huge lakes of Kashmir where large exotic birds feast on flying fish, catching them in the air and carrying them off into the sky. She enjoys all the wonders of the world just like me. She makes me very happy. Now I realize, of course, after many days and nights travelling in her company, that she isn’t real at all, but imaginary. I realized only after I had tried to touch her and my arms went right through her, rather like a ghost. But she isn’t a ghost because I know she really lives in Polperro with her mother and brother Hal. So I don’t try to touch her any more, I just watch her and smile. She smiles back and that to me is the most miraculous part of all.’
Chapter 13
Polperro
‘How’s Federica getting on at school these days? Better?’ asked Ingrid who was bent over her easel painting a portrait of Sam reading on the lawn. ‘Blast!’ she exclaimed hotly. ‘I’m so much better at painting birds.’
‘Fine,’ Molly replied absentmindedly, concentrating on the daisy chain she was making.
‘Oh, I am pleased. It can’t be easy moving to a new country and having to make friends all over again.’
‘She was very quiet at first, but Hester says she’s happier now. She’s more Hester’s friend,’ said Molly, who was a couple of years older and bored by their childish games.
‘The summer term is always much more fun anyway,’ said Ingrid, sitting back on her stool and exchanging her paintbrush for her cigarette that smoked in its elegant lilac holder on the table beside her. ‘Sam darling, don’t move a muscle,’ she instructed, putting the monocle to her eye and studying her painting in detail.
‘Mum, I haven’t moved for the last hour, why would I want to move now?’ said Sam, who was lying on his front reading Maupassant’s Bel Ami, unamused at being disturbed. Ingrid grinned at him from under the wide brim of her sunhat.
‘It’s a precaution, darling. I don’t want you to ruin my picture.’
‘Is it any good?’
‘Quite. But it would be better if you were a seagull or a hawk.’
‘Sorry,’ he replied and the beginning of a smile tickled the corners of his petulant mouth.
‘Federica fancies Sam,’ said Molly, putting down her daisy chain and patting Pushkin who lay panting beside her in the heat.