“I guess my grandmother had long hair.” Cayetano reached inside the box and pulled out a whole pile of envelopes, bound by a single red ribbon. They were clearly addressed to Luna Beltrán Caño. “They have New Zealand stamps on them.”
Luna leaned over and took a look. Sure enough, New Zealand was emblazoned the stamp along the phrase “Keep the Home Fires Burning.” World War II stamps, complete with a woman hard at work. “How many strong-minded women would Luna know that lived in New Zealand?” she asked.
“I think we have just hit the jackpot. I think you should have a look, they have come from your grandmother.”
Luna took the letters from Cayetano, almost afraid of what she would find. Anything could be found within these pieces of paper, maybe good news, maybe not. One thing was for certain; it seemed Scarlett and Luna kept in contact for quite some time. There were easily 50 letters in the collection. Not only did they know each other, they were friends.
Cayetano pulled out a small wooden box and opened it, to find a whole stack of photographs. “Oh, Luna,” he exclaimed. “Look at these!”
Many were photos of a woman and a child; Luna and her baby, Paco. Cayetano recognised his father in an instant. Other than the grainy wedding photo in the library, it was the first time he had seen his grandmother, and he was mesmerised by her. She didn’t look anything like his father. No resemblance at all. She was a small woman, petite in height and physique and gave the appearance of a very reserved woman. Her expression was sombre, a smile saved only for when she looked at her young son.
“She’s beautiful,” Luna remarked. She leaned against Cayetano as he very slowly looked through the photos. They were all mixed up in date order. In some Paco was just an infant, in others a boy of various ages. Some were taken on a simple, narrow street which was probably in Madrid, others taken indoors in what seemed to be a comfortable yet not extravagant home. It was only ever the two of them in the photos, so who knows who had taken the ones of Luna and her son.
“Hang on,” he said and stopped at a photo. It was a wedding, and there was the dress. “This isn’t Luna’s wedding day.” There stood a photo of a man and woman, the bride in the white dress, and a man in a simple suit. Luna was there, stood next to the bride. Next to the groom were two men and a woman, but the photo was damaged. Cayetano flipped it – Alejandro and Sofía’s revolutionary wedding, 3 September, 1938. Juan Pablo, Ulrich, Scarlett, Cayetano, Alejandro, Sofía, Luna, Isabel.
“This is it!” Cayetano cried and flipped it back. “This is Scarlett and Cayetano in the photo. They were at the wedding with my whole family!”
They studied the photo but the damage done made it so that the whole wedding party practically looked like ghosts in the shot. They were ghosts – Cayetano simply didn’t know these people. “Who’s Ulrich?” Luna wondered.
“No idea. What’s a revolutionary wedding?”
“I’ve heard of that. It’s when the marriage isn’t ordained by the church or recognised by the State. They were approved by the various unions. It was popular with anarchists during the civil war.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m a nerd.”
Cayetano smiled. “There must be more photos in here. There is another box, see if there are photos in there.”
Cayetano continued to sort through the photos. There were many, Luna, Alejandro, Sofía, most with Juan Pablo and Isabel alongside them at the wedding. He only glanced up when he saw Luna looking back at him, very pale all of a sudden. “What?”
Luna turned the small box she was holding and Cayetano eyes lit up like hers. There lay an enormous diamond ring, attached to a simple silver chain. “Is this your grandmother’s wedding ring?”
“I suppose it could be,” Cayetano replied and took it in his hands. The piece of jewellery was exquisite. He knew that Ignacio Reyes had been a wealthy man, but this… this defied all belief. Surely it couldn’t be real. “The photo of my grandparents’ wedding is in the library, let’s go and take a look and see if this is the ring she has on her hand.”
The pair moved down the hallways to the dark room. Cayetano flicked the light on, which lit up a private room filled with framed photos. A whole lifetime hung in silence on the walls. “Over here.” Cayetano pointed to a set of black and white photos behind the desk that sat to one side of the room. “This is it.”
Luna peered at the photo. “How is it that this has hung here and yet you don’t know your grandmother? Haven’t the answers about your family been here all along?”
“I was told even as a child that I was never to ask. My Mamá always insisted. After a while, you pass by and simply don’t ask any more questions. Look, this isn’t the dress from the box. She isn’t wearing the ring either.”
Cayetano and Luna both leaned close to the wall to study the aging shot. That was Luna they recognised from the pictures, dressed in a very plain dress that looked too dark in the photo to be white. On her diminutive hand was a plain band. “I think your grandmother has secrets we have just uncovered,” Luna commented.
“I know what it is. Mamá told me the truth about my grandfather. Ignacio isn’t Paco’s natural father. Luna was already pregnant when she married him.”
“Then who is Paco’s father?”
“Excellent question,” Cayetano replied and turned his face just a fraction, only inches from Luna’s. He saw her ice-blue eyes flick to him. “You don’t get it yet, do you?”
“What?” she frowned.
“My abuela Luna, and your abuela Scarlett, were long-time friends. It doesn’t take a genius to work out who you were named after.”
Luna’s eyes drifted away from Cayetano to the photo of her namesake while she thought about it. “It guess that could be true, but Scarlett died before I came along.”
“Maybe your father knew about Luna from his mother. If Scarlett wrote to Luna, then Luna must have written back. Alexander could have had the letters.”
“I have everything that belonged to my mother and father. It’s not much. I can assure you that I have gone through all of it for hints about Cayetano Ortega. But… you are Cayetano, like my grandfather. If I’m named after your abuela, could you be named after my abuelo?”
“This is getting weird!”
Luna nodded with wide eyes, and turned to look at some of the other photos. Many were of the man she assumed to be Paco, as he was the spitting image of Cayetano. With Paco dressed as atorero, the photos may as well have been Cayetano himself. Her eyes stopped at a photograph, and her eyes widened so much they started hurt. “¡Mierda! Shit, Cayetano… is that your father with Francisco Franco?”
Cayetano nodded and folded his arms over his chest, a subconscious defence of what was about to be said. “Papá was the greatest fighter of his generation. In the late sixties, things were going well for Paco’s career.”
“Well enough for the Caudillo de España to want to be photographed with him?”
“Sí, Franco watched Papá perform several times.”
Luna shook her head. “I’m sorry, that is… just… surreal. Your father is smiling with a dictator. If my grandfather is lying in a mass grave somewhere with a bullet in his skull, it’s because this man created a nation where doing that to people was allowed.”
“Not everyone saw it that simply…”
“Okay, I’m sorry, did you just defend the Generalissimo?”
“No! No, no, no. I’m just saying that in the time period that this photo was taken, Spain was becoming wealthy, an industrialised nation. People’s lives were improving.”
“They were improving on the basis things couldn’t get a lot worse! It’s fine if you have a job that this bastard found entertaining. Women were persecuted, the concentration camps were full, all ideals or beliefs were banned, forget speaking in your own local dialect, and let’s not even start on all those babies stolen by the Catholic church… and that is after the brutal war was over!”
“I might have known you would be the type t
o protest, la chispa.”
“Inaction does real harm to the world.”
“I know that, and all this,” he gestured at the photo, “is not a case of condoning or sympathising with any regime or dictator. This is my family working with the cards they were dealt. Like you say, anyone who stepped out of line got a bullet. Sometimes you have to work with what you have.”
“But why hang it on the wall?”
“My father was born to a woman who married someone she didn’t love for the sake of her baby. That man was a Franco sympathiser. You and I cannot fathom what went on in her lifetime. My father was instilled with a desire to be the best, the strongest, the most successful, all by his mother. However, what we do know now is that Scarlett was obviously someone that Luna could talk to.”
“Scarlett was a Republican nurse and yet friends with the wife of a Falange prick?”
“Exactly. This story has a lot left to give us. We need to read those letters.”
They headed back into the living room and returned to their spots next to the chest. The ring sat in its box, and shone in the light from the chandelier above them. “I didn’t know you thought that your abuelo ended up in a shallow grave somewhere,” Cayetano commented.
Luna shrugged. “It’s a big possibility. He disappeared just as the war ended. He was on the losing side. For all I know, he was rounded up, killed and dumped somewhere. Some guy will walk his dog one day and my grandfather will get dug up by the animal, and just ignored. No sweetheart or family member keeps him safe in his resting place.”
“It… it’s just something we don’t talk about,” Cayetano said. “Half the world doesn’t even know the war went on here.”
“I hate to think of how many people are lost out there somewhere, buried with haste, and their families still keep their whereabouts a secret. How can that be okay? How can we live in a society that hides from its own truths?”
“People are divided. They were divided before the war, and look what happened. Franco’s reign heralded Spain’s first ever period of peace.”
“Peace? Hundreds of thousands of people were not at peace. Just because there is no war, doesn’t mean there is peace. If my grandfather is lying in a ditch somewhere and I can’t find him, will I ever find peace?”
“Will you find it if you do know where he is?’ Cayetano asked. “Really? What will that solve? Curiosity? It wouldn’t make this whole ugly situation any better.”
“Do you want to help me find my grandfather, or not?”
“Of course I do. Let’s not jump to conclusions is all I’m saying. We need to read these letters from Scarlett. You want your answers, preciosa, then we might just have them.” Cayetano picked up the box with the ring in it again and studied the diamond. “This is the biggest mystery. Why would Papá have it and keep it locked away?”
“You would think he would give it to your mother,” Luna said.
“Not hide it.”
“Unless it’s stolen? Where the hell does a person get something that size? King Juan Carlos probably has stuff like that buried away, but few others in this country would.”
Cayetano took it from the box and held it out. “Does it fit you?”
Luna took the ring from his outstretched hand with reluctance. “I don’t want to know the answer. You can’t wear a ring that a man has given to another woman. A ring is a circle – which makes it a promise of love that goes around forever.”
“It seems that my abuela had it on a chain anyway, so she wasn’t wearing it.”
Luna held the huge ring with her fingertips and watched the light dance through its facets. “Ignacio wasn’t your real grandfather?”
“No, seems not. Luna went to him already a mother.”
“Then you will probably find that the father of the baby and the owner of this ring are the same man.”
Cayetano looked at the ring box; the soft cushion that the ring sat in was damaged. This obviously wasn’t the box that belonged to the ring. “I guess I need to decide if I want to find out who my grandfather is.”
“If the answer is in here, I’m sure your father already knows. He wouldn’t have all this without reading through it.”
“If Paco is good at one thing, it’s denial,” Cayetano mused. He pulled the soft padding the bottom of the ring box out, to find a small piece of paper folded up underneath. “This might give us a clue.”
“What is it?” Luna asked. She leaned over to get a glimpse of the old piece of paper that Cayetano had delicately unfolded.
“It’s a handwritten note… from Cayetano Ortega.”
21
Valencia, España ~ Marzo de 1939
Luna almost wished she was dead like Sofía. She sat huddled up in the back of the truck, and let the rhythm of the vehicle on the rough road to Valencia toss her body back and forward. It was freezing. They had left Cuenca under cover of darkness, and taken almost nothing with them. Only what she could carry, Luna was told. All she had was her white dress, her diary, a handful of photographs and the silver hairbrush that her mother had given her. All she had was in a wooden chest of things she and Alejandro had jammed their lives into.
In the darkness, she glanced up to see the outline of her brother next to her, asleep. He lay next to the makeshift coffin Cayetano had gone in search of before they left Cuenca. She was grateful that Alejandro had found sleep at last. He had spent all day drunk, and Luna herself had drunk quite a bit. She wasn’t sure how many nightmares could all come true at once; Sofía was dead, Cayetano had got Scarlett pregnant, and her baby nephew was about to set sail for Nueva Zelanda. She faced a very unknown future in an unknown city. Her father was still in Madrid and would almost certainly be murdered any day. Nowhere was safe anymore.
The truck was driven by Cayetano, with Scarlett by his side. The baby was there with them where it was a little warmer for him. Luna had told Cayetano she wouldn’t marry him, but here she was, in his truck, with him and his mistress. She had no choice; Cayetano and Scarlett had helped Alejandro and the body of his wife into the truck under the cover of darkness, and if Luna didn’t join them, she would be left all alone in Cuenca. She had nothing and no one. She had no choice but to clamber into the dirty old truck, and try to keep herself warm through the nights. She had no idea how long the trip would take, and didn’t dare peek out into the night. The trip took two nights on the back roads through the mountains and out towards the city. Two nights freezing and dirty, no food or water. Two days without speaking to her companions who had betrayed her, or even to her grief-stricken brother, whose soul was as dead as Sofía’s. The world had gone to hell. The sun may as well not come up tomorrow.
Sleep came to Luna in the cold, and when she woke, light shone through the dirty window on the back door. They had stopped. She watched her brother pull himself up and he looked at her with a frown. Luna could see the confused grief that consumed him with every breath he took.
The back of the truck opened, and there stood Cayetano. His glum expression was not welcome, but the waft of fresh air was a relief, as cold as it was. It was very early, and a fog hung in the air. “We’re here,” he said.
He put out his hand for Luna to come to him, and she got up from her spot. There was no way she would take his hand. She had come for Alejandro and the baby, not him. She got out next to him and ignored his gesture. She stood tall in her simple brown dress and felt the chill of the… mountain air? Valencia city was on the flat plains against the sea. “Where are we?” she asked.
“We’re in the mountains outside Valencia,” Scarlett said. She had appeared from around the side of the truck, with the baby in her arms. “We have been up here once before. When we brought the Medina family to Valencia, there was a surprise bombing by the German’s. The family own this land up here, and they hid out for a few days before their ship came into the port. Now with them in Francia, there is nothing and no one out here.”
“I didn’t think we would be back here,” Alejandro muttered. He jumped
from the truck onto the flaky limestone rock beneath their feet.
“It’s a safe place to lay Sofía to rest,” Scarlett said. “This is one of the few places that peace still reigns.”
“Not for long,” Alejandro said as he looked out over the almond trees dotted around them. Their pink flowers had come out for the start of spring. The cloudless blue sky and bright pink flowers did nothing to his dark demeanour.
Luna looked around them. They parked next to a masía, a large now-derelict farmhouse, its stone walls worn and weary. The area around the house had been cleared, but gorse bushes had crept in. Beyond the truck the almond and fig trees looked ready to flourish with the promise of a new season. The air was so sweet with the smell. Blue bellflowers were scattered about, and the war felt far beyond the safety of the tall white pines that surrounded them.
“I’m sorry, we don’t have long here,” Cayetano said. “We should choose a place for Sofía. It’s a difficult drive down the narrow road back towards the city. We have a ship to arrange.”
“I can’t do it,” Alejandro said. “I can’t bury my wife.”
“I’ll do it,” Scarlett said. She turned and handed the sleeping infant to Luna. “I buried my own husband at Ebro, all but next to his own murderers. I can do this.”
Alejandro and Luna stood together as Cayetano and Scarlett headed off with their shovels that had been tucked away on the truck. They watched them wander between the almond trees not far from the house, deep in conversation. “I can’t believe this is happening,” Luna uttered to her brother.
“For all our pain… for all our suffering… for all our fears and our loves and our ideals… we have nothing.”
“We have the baby,” Luna said. “Ale, he is your son.”
Alejandro looked at the sleeping child in his sister’s arms and put his arms around her. He held the three of them together. “The baby must go with Scarlett. Far away from this place. Evil lives here. Blood has poisoned the soil of our country. He must be sent away.”
Secrets of Spain Trilogy Page 23