The Healing of Broken Souls

Chapter 4

"What are you doing to the poor girl if she needs oxygen to recover?" Helen at the dive school asked with an impish smile.

I'd only told her I had a visitor over from the UK to stay. She automatically assumed it was a woman. I had no idea I had a reputation for that kind of thing.

"It's not a girl. He's an elderly relative and he gets a bit short of breath."

"Well, I'm glad to hear that!" she said. "If you feel like burning off your excess energy, just give me a call!"

Helen wasn't backwards in coming forward. I think it was her Australian upbringing. She and I had been in an on-off relationship for years. Some would have called us 'friends with benefits' and I'd often considered taking our friendship to the next level. But Helen was a free spirit. She was drop-dead gorgeous, sexy as hell, and had dozens of potential suitors sniffing around. All of them could offer her more than I could.  Some of them owned multi-million dollar gin palaces moored in the yachting marina near her dive shop in Valencia Port.

"Here you go," she said, handing me an oxygen bottle similar to the one I'd seen in my father's sitting room. "I only keep these for medical purposes, in case anyone surfaces too quickly and has a touch of the bends. The connectors are universal so your visitor's mask will be fine."

"Thanks," I said. "I owe you one."

"Only one?" she joked, fluttering her eyelashes comically. "You can take me out for a nice expensive dinner. Oxygen doesn't come cheap you know!"

"I'd love to, Helen, but I've got some mega bills to pay this month."

"Never mind, sweetie," she said, kissing me on the cheek. "You only have to take me to dinner. I didn't say you had to pay for it. I'll demand my compensation afterwards. Why! Michael Lewis! I do believe you're blushing under that delicious suntan!"

#

When I got home I found my father sitting on one of the lawn chairs next to my front door with a pair of binoculars he must have brought with him. His cup of tea was cold and untouched on a small metal table next to him.

"Don't you like my tea?" I asked as I carried my shopping inside.

"What? Oh ... no, I forgot all about it. This place is incredible, Michael. I've been watching red squirrels chasing each other through the trees, and I've seen a woodpecker. I heard a cuckoo, but can't spot it. But, Michael, something even more amazing. Do you know there are a pair of eagles nesting on that crag over there?"

He waved towards the rocky escarpment that dominated the skyline to the north of my secret glade.

"I think they're Bonnelli's!" he continued breathlessly. 

"They are. We're on the edge of the El Tello nature reserve here. It's a protected area. I've been watching that pair for months but I haven't shared it with the online community. I don't want hordes of twitchers turning up and disturbing them."

"I'd love to get a closer look!"

He sounded as excited as a small boy on Christmas morning.

"It's quite a climb. Maybe we can go and watch them from the base of the crag sometime. But we should concentrate on the Andalusian Hemipode first."

"Fair enough, Michael. You're the boss."

"I'll warm your tea up in the microwave, then I'll tell you the plan while we eat. Oh, I got your oxygen. Do you need it now?"

No, I'm fine as long as I stay calm. Can you put it by my bed? I often wake in the night. That's when I need it most."

#

I wasn't the greatest cook on the planet and I was on a limited budget, but my father seemed to enjoy the simple meal I threw together. We ate at a picnic bench on a small flagged terrace I'd laid facing west. It looked out over an area of my land planted with orange trees and was positioned to make the most of the evening sunshine. 

As we watched the sun go down I explained that we were surrounded by nature reserves that were all good for birdwatching. It was one of the reasons I'd chosen to live there. The largest by far, the Albufera de Valencia, was mainly marshland and lagoons. Perfect for waterfowl but not the natural habitat of hemipodes. However, there were areas of  El Tello that could be suitable and also a strip of dunes and meadowland stretching for miles along the coast where I'd seen a hemipode many years ago. And that's where I planned to go, as early as possible the next morning.

"That sounds like a good enough plan," he agreed, "but don't you have to go to work? You're too young to be retired."

"You know I was in the Navy?"

"Of course. You were under 18 when you decided to join, so you made me sign a parental consent form. You threatened to forge my signature if I didn't."

"Yes, well ... I stayed in for the full 22 years. I made it to Chief Petty Officer, then got discharged with a small pension. It's just enough to survive on, but nothing left for luxuries."

"I don't like to pry, Michael, but why don't you get a job?"

"And leave all this? I'd rather be hungry and happy than fat and miserable." 

So I told him about my ambition to be a writer and how I'd failed miserably so far. Sure, I sometimes sold a short story for peanuts, but I was still waiting for inspiration to strike in the form of something that would capture the interest of a major publisher. 

"It'll happen one day, I'm sure," my father said. "And I admire you for following your dream. Too many people only think about money instead of doing what they love."

"Don't get the impression I enjoy living hand to mouth," I said. "I want the dream and the money too. But I'm starting to think the only way to get a publisher interested is if you're already a household name. I might have to change mine to David Beckham to get noticed."

I only meant it as a throwaway comment to lighten the conversation, but it had the opposite effect on my father. His face fell and he gazed off into space without a word. I wondered if he'd taken offence that I might contemplate ditching the Lewis family name. But it wasn't until some days later that I found out why his mood had changed so abruptly.