Free Bay of Secrets by Rosanna Ley

chores, Andrés worked.
    He painted. He painted the fruit his mother placed in the roughly hewn pottery bowl; pockmarked oranges and Canarian bananas – small, sweet and yellow. He painted his mother, dark and industrious, sleeves rolled, apron wrapped around her waist, brisk and efficient as she prepared
ropa vieja
, meat and potato stew, parrotfish or squid. ‘Never mind your father. He is what he is. You get on.’
    On another sheet, now, Andrés drew the red fishing boat coming in to shore at Hide Beach. He drew the fishermen too and their tents, which would be a good spot of colour in his painting. Red, he decided, to match the fishing boat and contrast with the blues of the sea, and the yellow/gold of the pebbles. Red was a good balance, a good draw.
    His father was still painting too, of course, still living in the village of his childhood which Andrés had not been back to for years. They loved Enrique Marin on the island of Fuerteventura, for his creativity and his flair. He had transformed the place, they said, with his sculptures, his art work, his vision. Because of him, other artists came and created more objects of beauty. Because of him, more tourists came too, spending money and making the island richer. Because of him, there were galleries, exhibitions and grants. He was adored, deified almost.
    His father was well off now. His first most notable successes had been at the beginning of the new millennium – Andrés had read about them, thought,
Now will you be satisfied?
Since then Enrique Marin had even become known internationally – an artist and sculptor famous in his ownright, able to command small crowds at exhibitions and galleries; sought after, in the enviable position of choosing only select commissions. His parents now owned other houses – one in the south of the island and one in the capital city of Puerto del Rosario – but they had kept the house in Ricoroque, and Andrés suspected that they still spent most of their time there. It was their community, Enrique’s landscape – the landscape that he loved and which had given him the success he craved.
    He is what he is
. Andrés never questioned his mother’s words. Not then. But did she know what her husband was?
Chofalmeja.
Did she really?
    When Andrés ran out of images in the kitchen of his childhood, he turned to his mind’s eye and he painted the sea for the very first time; turbulent waves crashing on the grey-seal rocks by the Old Harbour, great rollers spinning out the surf on Playa del Castillo, turquoise luminescent water looping gently round the sandy lagoon of the bay. Every tide was a contradiction. Every tide brought something new. He painted the sea green, blue, white and every shade in between. He painted it still and he painted it moving. He painted it quiet and he painted it on fire. With people and boats, and alone. And gradually, over weeks, over months, over years, he learnt how to capture its colours and its moods and its energies. He could catch the movement of the surf and the waves, the lilts and the lifts, the curls and the glitter.
    Until even his father noticed.
    He began to watch what Andrés was working on when heran home from school to paint. Enrique Marin pointed with the cheroot he held between nicotine-stained fingers, uttered terse comments: ‘More white there.’ Or, ‘Out of perspective. Use your eye. That’s why God gave you two.’ Sometimes his father only nodded. Other times he walked over to the window and looked out, and Andrés’s mother went to him then and put a hand on his shoulder, murmuring, ‘Enrique … ’
    One Saturday, Andrés was working on a particularly challenging subject. His friends were out playing football but he was far too absorbed to join them.
Mañana
. Time meant little to him in those days; there was always enough. There was a fishing boat in the New Harbour painted red, green and blue, emblazoned with a black emblem and the name
Halcon
. The emblem was a