A Prison in the Sun Read online

  The bedroom, with its four-poster bed centred against the eastern wall, was the defining feature of the farmhouse. The décor was pleasing, blocks of strong colour, no frills, no lace. In those early days of my stay, I enjoyed being in that room. I had never slept in a four-poster before, and I went to sleep each night feeling like a king.

  The next day, I awoke at sunrise. I sat up in bed and then went and gazed out the window. I found the view nothing to speak of save for a lonely windmill perched on a rise in the mid-distance. A stout affair, probably not in use, its blades appearing still in the wind. It being the only feature of interest beyond the farmhouse walls, my gaze remained drawn, and I pressed my face against the glass as though to get closer.

  My curiosity grew stronger, and I felt compelled to unearth the windmill's secrets. What was its story? It must have one. A story tied to the ancient history of the island and local farming practices. Not exactly fuel for any sort of story I might compose, but then again, I shouldn't prejudge. Besides, there was no telling what I might find there that might stimulate inspiration – a fallen handkerchief, a dropped wallet, the chip of some artefact, anything at all that would provoke that inner spark.

  Having reasoned things through, I determined to venture forth across the dusty plain and investigate.

  The Windmill

  I was a man on a mission. My first real exploration of what the island had to offer and despite the short distance, the walk to the windmill felt like an expedition. I needed to be prepared. Above all, I need sustenance.

  After diving into a tub of strawberry yoghurt, I scoffed a bowl of cold pasta bake, leftovers from the night before. Then I washed up the spoons and the bowl and left them to drain, took a cool shower and donned joggers, shorts and a t-shirt. Tourist attire. I couldn't help but be aware of how white my skin looked. I gazed in horror in the bedroom mirror at two spindly legs and a pair of flaccid arms poking out the limb holes of my apparel. I was carrying much too much flesh around my middle. Flesh that was covered by my t-shirt but not obscured.

  I sucked in my paunch with self-disgust. I had let myself go. Middle-age spread had arrived far too early. I was a heart attack in the making, gurney material, destined for an early grave. Too many nights watching Netflix while downing red wine. Wake up to yourself, Trevor Moore!

  Worse, I hadn't got laid in how long? A year? More like two, and little wonder. I was a porker.

  After making the bed, which I was unable to leave in disarray, I shoved my feet into a pair of plimsolls and headed off armed with only a water bottle, determined to make the most of the vast, empty outdoors.

  The pavement was narrow, but at least there was one. The wind came up behind me, cool on my skin, nudging me along. The sun, still low to the east, had as yet no sting. It was pleasant going, the trajectory a touch downhill, and as I went along, I admired the rugged terrain and the mountains to the south, indistinct in the dust haze.

  The pavement ran out at the intersection, where remnants of another windmill had been restored and decorated the landscape, serving as a sort of monument. After standing on the corner, noting how the main road disappeared as it neared the mountains on the southern horizon, I took the road west, which was sealed for a stretch before turning to grit.

  Some of that grit found its way into my plimsolls, which made for unpleasant going. In an effort to distract myself from the discomfort, I shifted my focus back onto the surroundings, telling myself that somewhere amid the scree and the scrub might be a source of inspiration for a novel, if only my imagination would find it.

  I focused hard on the details. The fields to either side of the track were strewn with small rocks, and the soil had a pinkish tinge to it. I wasn't sure if that was a trick of the light because, in the heat of the day, taken as a whole, the soil had a creamy look. In all, there were too few trees.

  The walk took about fifteen minutes. I passed a farmhouse in ruins and paused to take it in, but the crumbling abode failed to provoke even a spark of enthusiasm from my parsimonious muse. Just past the ruin, the track took a sharp turn to the left and, up ahead, set in a swathe of gravel in this most desolate of landscapes, was my destination.

  The windmill, a stout affair constructed from large brown stones and pointed with thick, pale-cream mortar, stood proud on its gritty concourse. The six sails, comprising dark-wood shutters, were motionless. The domed roof of the windmill, made of the same dark wood, formed an austere cap. At the rear, the tail pole was anchored to the ground minus the capstan wheel. A simple arrangement of rocks along with a dry-stone wall surrounded the windmill's base and completed the restoration.

  Looking around, I supposed the landscaping was one way of clearing the ground of unwanted rock. Even so, without any foliage to speak of – at all – the place felt as though the workmen had packed up and left after hammering in the last nail, and the local government had signed off on the project as a good-enough job done. Perhaps the authorities thought no one passing through Tefía would bother coming out here, I thought, not even to see the windmill, the island no doubt having bigger and better windmills elsewhere.

  I walked around the base then climbed the steps that led up to a locked door. There was nothing to see other than a glimpse of ocean to the west. I paused and soaked in the small portion of blue, enjoying the sense it gave of being on an island. Inland, amid all the dry, it was easy to forget the ocean was there.

  Before I left, I sat on the stone steps of the windmill and emptied my plimsolls. Not that there was much point. Three steps were enough to shuffle in some more. I took a slug from my water bottle and had one last look around.

  In the distance to the south was a farmhouse, and immediately to the north, leading off from the swathe of gravel surrounding the windmill, a drive led to some sort of compound. The owners had made an effort at beautification; flanking the drive were rows of infant palm trees set in garden beds of deep black gravel and edged with large stones. Those beds were a mark of significance, as though an indication of a place of eminence, one incongruous with everything else around. At the end of one of the rows of palms was a sign.

  I went over and found an explanation of the ins and outs of the windmill. Turned out in bygone years, this dry-as-dust land produced enough grain to warrant a mill. Incredible. Then again, of course, there would have been enough grain, ample grain, or the windmill would not have been built. It was self-evident.

  The sun began to heat the skin on my face and head and neck, and I decided I better return to the farmhouse. Until that moment when I started making my way back, I hadn't realised the entire walk to the windmill had been downhill. The return, I found to my chagrin, was, therefore, uphill, and now I faced into the blustery wind as well and the going was much harder.

  My stride soon became a trudge, and the wind seemed to delight in my struggle and strengthened and blew in my face, pushing up hard against me in intermittent bursts. My pleasant morning stroll took on the proportions of a marathon. By the time I arrived back at the farmhouse, I was sweating and panting, and my legs ached.

  I went and stood in the internal patio where I pulled off my plimsolls, depositing the grit at the base of a potted plant. I was ashamed of myself. Two years of divorce litigation misery and I hadn't so much as walked to the local shops not a hundred yards from my tired little London flat. I was a man broken, and my body was a shambles. I had always taken for granted my fitness, my muscle tone, my relative youth. To find myself gasping for air like an old man was abhorrent in the extreme.

  After downing two glasses of water in quick succession, I took a long cool shower, returning to the patio with my laptop, determined to find the nearest gym.

  I was distracted by my inbox. Scanning the messages, I wished I hadn't bothered when I saw the email.

  I am not the sort of man others may imagine when they think of a downtrodden wretch, but just then, that was how I felt. I have always considered myself even in temperament, not quick to anger, observant and detached, unlike th
e more involved and emotional types that seem to gravitate towards me like iron filings in need of a magnet to cling to. Life, in the form of a wife, can destabilise a man's composure on the inside where others cannot see, rendering a smoothly functioning machine a decrepit mess of contorted metal. She had turned me into a heap of junk.

  She, being my ex-wife Jackie. Jackie pushed me, pushed us, pushed all of our little nuclear family off a cliff, and we landed on a rocky beach facing a thrashing ocean, gazing up at the halcyon days of our former domestic life. She couldn't help it, and I do not blame her, these things happen after all, but the fallout as we clambered back up that cliff to safety, was more than any of us had anticipated. As if that were not bad enough, she had me scaling a different cliff.

  What could she possibly want from me now? Money? Surely not.

  I didn't want to look. I put the email in the folder labelled, “pending”.

  Jackie and I had been married for more than twenty years. It was twenty years, two months and five days in fact when she called time out. What ensued was a further two years of torment, more or less, for I had trained myself to be imprecise when it came to the duration of the divorce, not caring to quantify the arguments, the hurt, the anguish and the loss as we fought over the house and the kids. Two years and at last we reached a settlement, and I naturally found myself with a lot less than I had anticipated.

  After perusing my options, involving relocating to some far-flung county where the roads were too narrow, the weather worse than anywhere, and a visit to the supermarket an expedition, I put in an offer on a tiny cottage in the Norfolk Broads.

  The cottage was a long way from London, where Jackie and the kids were determined to remain, but at least the new abode was close to my publisher friend, Angela, who had been my closest ally since primary school.

  Close we undoubtedly were, but for a long time, too long maybe, Angela and I had maintained our friendship via Skype and the occasional real-life catchup.

  After the separation, Angela became my mainstay. I generally Skyped her once a week. It was the only time I took in the man I'd become, my once pleasingly aquiline face gaunt, eyes sunken, lips turned down. A small and depressing square of me and a large image of her, all round-faced and cheery-eyed.

  During the entire divorce episode, Angela insisted I was having a mid-life crisis. The term had me feeling like a cliché. In those last weeks before I flew to Fuerteventura, she made a point of telling me my shortcomings, too. I've been putting on weight – I knew that – I need a haircut – I was cultivating the bedraggled look – and, if she saw me wearing that worn-thin Jimi Hendrix t-shirt one more time, she'd make the three-hour drive from Norfolk and rip it off my back. She bought it for my eighteenth.

  Angela was the sort of woman who strode through life. Always smart in her black trousers and figure-hugging tops, she brimmed self-assurance. She was who she was, and she was unapologetic about it. Her hair was never kempt. She wore no makeup. Her wife, Juliette, wore the skirts.

  I was at their wedding, one of quite a few straight men in attendance who felt strangely threatened, a reaction summed up by an acquaintance, Simon, a commissioning editor at Hedgehog Pie Press who whispered to me in a drunken slur, 'If this same-sex marriage catches on, we'll be redundant.' I laughed to be polite, but in that instant, I saw that my own unease had the same source. I left Simon to quaff champagne and dish his inappropriate banter elsewhere, and found a quiet corner of the village hall in which to regain my equanimity.

  Jackie had announced she wanted a divorce over breakfast that same morning, as she was salting her boiled egg. The harsh words dropped like stones in my cereal bowl.

  'We don't have anything in common anymore.'

  'What makes you say that?'

  She paused, eggy spoon mid-air. 'I've been thinking for a long time that our relationship is past its use-by. Don't you think we're in a rut?'

  'No, I don't, as it happens.'

  She wasn't listening. 'The kids are almost grown up so now is a good time.'

  'It is?'

  She went all reflective at that point. I began to think she was reading from a script she had written and rehearsed. 'I think we married too young. We've grown apart.'

  'We have tons in common.'

  'Look, Trevor, I need to rediscover myself.'

  It became clear she was not going to brook my defensive remarks. Our marriage, as far as she was concerned, was over. She had all the platitudes. But the truth was she had found Megan, desire had sparked, and she wanted to explore that side of her sexuality. Feeling the need to confess the cold, hard facts, if only to make certain there would be no salvaging what we had, she said, 'I've always been bi, you know that. But this is different. Megan is the one. With her, I can truly be me.'

  Jackie could be ruthless with her honesty. It was why she was good at her job. She was a human resources manager. Thanks to her substantial income, I had been able to pursue my own career, although I wasn't sure I'd give ghostwriting such high status.

  Not long after Angela and Juliette's wedding, we split up, or rather, Jackie asked me to move out so Megan could move in. She announced that plan along with a sack full of rationalisations when she was suitably fortified by a large glass of Rioja.

  I obliged, ever the peacemaker. It wasn't until the solicitors waded in with advice that the wrangling started and the acrimony flared.

  Holed-up in a crummy London flat, my frustrations with my ghostly writing existence grew. They soon became the main topic of conversation when I talked with Angela. I want my name on the cover, for once. Then write the damn contents, she would say matter-of-factly. But what would I write?

  It was Angela's suggestion that I should book a getaway. By then the lease on my flat was up, and I wasn't due to take possession of my new home for another three months. Jackie and Megan were deep in wedding plans, and the children, Ian and Felicity, were too busy with their own late-teen lives to take much notice.

  Where would I go? Shetland? Don't be ridiculous. Nowhere tropical, I told her, I don't do humidity. Have you tried the Canaries? I don't want crowds. Then try Fuerteventura. What's there? Beaches mainly. I don't do beaches. What do you do? Isolation. Then I've found just the place. And she sent me the link to the farmhouse in Tefía on Skype.

  Angela was of the opinion I had unresolved issues buried deep in my psyche. Angela would say that. She was one of those women a little bit older and a whole lot wiser than the men she knew. Ran a small press from her home in Norwich. She had forty authors on her books and acted as a kind of benevolent matriarch, smoothing out their concerns with advice and suggestions and oodles of sympathy. When they started to get uppity, she insisted the best way to progress as an author was to write another book, which they then dutifully did, and the anxiety over the lack of sales of the last one waned. Angela then breathed a sigh of relief, and everyone was happy, for a while. Worked every time, she said. Angela thought I should do the same and write a book. She told me she would consider publishing what I came up with. She would even help me knock the manuscript into shape, should I manage to produce one. She said that writing a novel would help me come to terms with my inner demons and move on.

  What inner demons?

  Which I suppose was partly why I had no intention of reaching within myself to come up with ideas for a plot. That, and I already knew she was wrong; there was nothing in me that I had not already resolved. I had long before dealt with what in essence defined me as a human being: my difference.

  Childhood

  It was Aunty Iris who said I was different. I grew up with that sense of otherness superimposed on my psyche by my overbearing relative, singled out from the rest of the household in our detached house in Heene Way – a leafy street in the well-to-do end of West Worthing, Sussex – after my father ran off with the woman next door. The family seemed to want someone to blame. I couldn't understand why I was chosen, other than that I was the only male remaining in the house. All I knew was I went from
being a happy and innocent little boy to an unhappy child saddled with observing the tortured emotions of others.

  My mother was beside herself. She was a god-abiding Catholic who refused her husband a divorce. Consumed by shame, she took no solace in mass or confession or the sympathies of her priest. Instead, she took to drinking heavily, and when she wasn't drinking, she would sit in a chair and stare blankly at a wall. All the family photographs had been removed. My sister, Marnie, who was thirteen when the terrible betrayal took place, started scouring her forearms with blades of various kinds and decided she no longer needed to eat, habits that alarmed Aunty Iris, who had moved in to help.

  I couldn't see that Iris helped at all save for attending to the household chores. Along with the sickly-sweet air freshener she sprayed everywhere, she infused the already turbulent atmosphere with her own hysteria, for she was a touch histrionic, was Iris.

  I did what any sensible boy my age would do. I retreated to my room. It was the only course of action available to me since I was not the type to run away. Ensconced in the smallest bedroom in the house, I buried my mind in books and comics and, on days when it wasn't raining and I felt a need for fresh air, I would skulk around in the back garden or ride my bike up and down the streets of my neighbourhood.

  I was a regular boy, neither shy nor extrovert, and the only difference I could see between me and the family I had the misfortune to live among, was that I did not thrash about or bleed or shrink or wail or sulk or stagger.

  I've always disliked extremes: extreme heat, extreme cold, and especially wild displays of emotion. My preference for evenness extends to my environment. I like my land undulating, my ocean calm, my surroundings neat and smooth. Even at nine years old, I made my bed every morning and kept my room tidy. I arranged my books in order of size on a single bookshelf. On the shelf above, arranged in neat clusters, my vintage cars were displayed. My father had gifted them to me, but I never played with them. My chess set, dominoes, draughts and Monopoly were stacked neatly on the bottom shelf next to my piggy bank.