Secrets of Spain Trilogy

by Caroline Angus Baker

  Paco climbed the stairs in a swanky grey suit, followed by Inés and Consuela, dressed in matching red gowns. Without a word, Paco stood with Luna, and mother and grandmother joined Cayetano. Pedro and Jovana, Jaime and Alysa, and Luis and Isadora joined their children for the official portrait. It was the biggest family photo the photographer had needed to manage in some time. No fewer than seven magazines were there to photograph the day alongside the photographer, all keen for a photo after the private ceremony. Also there stood Gilberto, filming the final scenes for the Beltrán documentary, which would beam into Spanish homes in time for Christmas. The group posed for a few perfect photos, but then Cayetano grabbed Luna and she squealed. The photo would show Luna in his arms, getting a whopping passionate kiss while everyone else in the group burst out laughing.

  ~~~

  Luna looked at the silly grin on her husband’s face while they danced. “What’s the smile all about, Caya?”

  Cayetano shrugged and didn’t say anything. He had a glaze in his eye which may have been thanks to the champagne over the course of the wedding. The silly smile didn’t move an inch. Luna felt his arms tighten their grip around her waist just a little as they danced. She moved her arms up around his neck and gave him another kiss.

  “That’s why I’m smiling. I have you.”

  “How much cava did you drink?”

  “Not that much. I have the woman of my dreams. I can call you my media naranja now.”

  “I love that you consider me your better half, your soul-mate. But do you know the literal English translation of media naranja?”

  “No.”

  “It means ‘half of an orange’.”

  “That’s why Spanish is the superior language to English. You’re my media naranja, my soul-mate.”

  “If you say so,” Luna giggled.

  “Yes, I do. I have ways to tempting you into agreeing to whatever I want from you.”

  “Do tell.”

  Cayetano took her lips with his, for another enduring, tenacious kiss, one of hundreds over the course of the night. When he kissed her, Luna forgot all about where we she was, in the centre of Plaza Mayor outside the cathedral. The whole plaza was closed, with tables set out for over 1000 people, family, friends and locals, all there to celebrate the impromptu fiesta of the Beltrán wedding. The four and five level buildings around the square, of white, gold, pink, blue, grey, yellow, were all decorated with fairy lights. Hundreds of hours of work had been put in for the big occasion. Plenty of cash-in-hand Euros and the promise of a celebrity wedding got anything Cayetano he wanted. For the grandchildren of a local man killed in the war and a foreign nurse who came to help the town, anything could be done. After all, Luna now owned two homes in the Barrio San Martín, which meant the popular bullfighter, who had just won a glorious fight in the town a week earlier, would be around more often.

  “Okay,” Luna said breathlessly, “I’m so dizzy I need my walking cane. I will agree to anything.”

  “Told you so,” Cayetano replied as she rubbed her nose against his.

  “That’s the trouble with having you in a suit. You look so handsome, but it means I want to rip the suit off you, with my teeth. But then I lose looking at you in your suited-up glory.”

  “Enjoy me in unsuited-up glory instead.”

  “Deal! Can we leave right now?”

  Cayetano looked around his enormous wedding; it was after midnight and no one had gone home. He watched Paco talk with Inés and Consuela, and Sofía and Darren sat nearby with Giacomo and Enzo, who looked tired. “Maybe we should say we need to take the boys back to the hotel, and then we can escape.”

  “Wow, what a romantic night we’ll have. We get to farewell our wedding and take the children home.”

  “Sofía said she would have them for the night.”

  “No, no, we can’t do that. This is a momentous day for them, too.”

  “We will have to get onto the adoption paperwork when we get home to Madrid. After all, we did enrol them in school under my surname.”

  “In good time, Caya. Let’s not get too practical on our wedding day.”

  Cayetano kissed her again. “Good point.”

  “We want to look back in ten years and remember when we were in love.”

  “I would like to think we’re still in love in ten years.”

  “I don’t want just romantic love; I want a love with forty years of loyalty behind it. But we’ve both been married before; we can be realistic.”

  “We can be realistic. But that doesn’t mean we know what will happen in the future.”

  “Even if there aren’t more children in our future, will you still be happy?”

  “La chispa, I have everything I need already. Two little boys let me be their father, and you are alive, and now my wife.”

  “It’s amazing what people can go through, and carry on with life. I still feel empty after the miscarriage, like there’s a hole in my stomach that won’t ever be filled.”

  “We have to carry on; we don’t have any choice.”

  “But for the very first time, Caya, I feel happy, and I don’t feel guilty for being happy.”

  “Then you have recovered, not just from your accident, but from the past few years.”

  “I thought that at the Cuenca bullring the other night. The locals loved your performance so much, they carried you on their shoulders out of the ring onto the street, so everyone could meet you. That was mind-blowing. Seeing you, shaking hands with those old men who couldn’t stand up to greet you… how could I not love you?”

  Cayetano grinned, a smile full of pure appreciation, but said nothing.

  “And you look hotter than ever in your traje de luces. I’m so glad you’re fighting again.”

  “You have a one-track mind.”

  “I haven’t had sex in four months. Can you blame me?”

  “Trust me; I feel the pain.”

  “Then perhaps we should ask Sofía to take the boys for another hour before she brings them to the hotel.”

  “What makes you think we’ll be done in an hour?”

  “I’m kidding. If we take the boys to the hotel now, they will be asleep in five minutes. After all, we’re not a couple, we’re a family. However, there will be room for hot sex tonight.”

  “Who is this dirty woman I’ve married?” Cayetano joked. He loved it; he couldn’t dance hard against her much longer in public anyway.

  “Ever since we moved to Madrid, all I have done is care for my boys and ‘rest’. That gave my mind plenty of time to wander. Plus a romantic wedding and all the combination of cava, vermouth and sherry all night long makes me more daring.”

  “We-should-go-right-now,” Cayetano said so fast the words merged.

  Luna laughed and rested her head on Cayetano’s shoulder as they continued to slow dance. She watched her children playing with the other Morales children, their suits all rumpled after a long evening. Sofía sat nearby and watched them; she had caught the bouquet, much to Cayetano’s disdain. Giacomo and Enzo both had wedding cake spilled on their shirts, after ‘helping’ to cut the eight tier behemoth. Cayetano informed Luna it was a tradition to cut the cake with a sword, and being a bullfighter, a sword was on hand. The photos of the bride and groom and their two sons using an estoque de verdad, Cayetano’s steel sword designed for killing, was going to look hilarious.

  Cayetano glanced over at his aunt Alysa, dancing with her husband Jaime. Every time he saw one of his uncles, he wondered about telling them the truth about the Escondrijo bodies, but never said a word. The right moment hadn’t arrived yet.

  “I know that smile,” Jaime said to his nephew.

  “Your uncle had a stupid smile on his face on our wedding day, too,” Alysa said.

  Luna turned to the mid-fifties couple next to them. “The smile must be a Morales thing.”

  “I don’t know; Papá was never much of a dancer and no romantic,” Jaime replied.

  “Well, sometimes people jus
t pick up things on their own.”

  “Caya,” Jaime said. “Paco told me you were interested in José’s journals from the Guardia Civil. I think I know where they are if you want them. You’re welcome to them if you want to read.”

  Cayetano and Luna shared a look. “Thanks, tío, I would like to have a look.”

  “José loved you very much,” Alysa added. “I hope you’re not too sad he isn’t here today.”

  Cayetano shrugged. “It’s not ideal. I know Mamí was upset this morning. But she insisted we have the wedding anyway, even if Papí only died two months ago.”

  “Alysa,” Luna said. “Paco told me you visited Valencia in the seventies.”

  “Yes, but I lived in Segovia as a child. My father was a Valencian man who had an indiscretion with my mother. She went home to Segovia when she found she was pregnant. I met Jaime in Valencia, on a visit there to find my father.”

  “You’ll have to tell us all about it some time.”

  “I would love to tell you. It doesn’t have a happy ending, though.”

  “Skip the bit where I was in prison,” Jaime said with a wry smile.

  “Now I really want to know,” Cayetano said.

  “Wait until after the honeymoon. Where are you going?”

  “We’re going down to Granada for a few days.”

  “Just the two of you will go to Granada?” Alysa asked.

  “Yes, I have let Mamá have the boys, and she has been so happy since I asked her to have Giacomo and Enzo.”

  “They are gorgeous boys, Luna, and so well behaved!”

  “Now stop bothering the happy couple,” Jaime said to his wife.

  “Okay, okay, but don’t lose that silly grin, Caya. You want to stay that happy forever, like us.”

  “I do, tía, I do,” Cayetano replied.

  Cayetano turned his attention Luna again, and the smile had gone from her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “I wish my father was here today. I wish he knew you, Caya, and I wish he met his grandsons. I wish he came to this little town and saw where his parents Scarlett and Cayetano met. But he’s not here. Alex will never know any of this. He couldn’t share this with me.”

  “But Giacomo and Enzo could walk you down the aisle in Alex’s place.”

  “And I loved that. But I still miss my father, even after eleven years.”

  “It’s like you told the boys, when baby Gorka died. When someone dies, we need to live a little more, to remember them, to live for them.”

  “Gorka. What a baby name.”

  “Gorka Beltrán Montgomery, the baby that won’t get forgotten.”

  “The story of Jaime, Alysa, and a missing father sounds like an interesting distraction.”

  “That can be a new chapter for us, in the future. We still have to show Paco the houses where his family lived during the civil war.”

  “We need to get back to Madrid so you can receive your Fine Arts medal. I can’t wait for that.”

  “Even if María, the ex-wife from hell, with be there to cover the event for her show?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m looking forward to seeing María. I’m your wife, and she can’t do a damn thing about it!”

  Cayetano laughed at Luna’s smug grin. “Let’s just worry about right now.”

  “I don’t want to worry about anything right now except getting you out of that suit.”

  “For you, Señora Beltrán, anything.”

  DEATH

  IN THE

  VALENCIAN

  DUST

  Hope and heartache trapped beneath Spain’s fiery

  surface of calm and chaos

  “Luckily for you, my son, we stopped being afraid

  a long time ago in Spain”

  ~ Pedro Almodovar

  1

  Valencia, España ~ Septiembre de 1975

  “… Movimiento… you know, the regime’s families, the Catholics, monarchists, soldiers, police, clergymen, Falangists, the technocrats… they all want to keep us repressed. They suffer blind flexibility and they silence us with censorship, torture and fear. If those executions go ahead…”

  Jaime Morales Pena sighed as he tapped his cigar on the ashtray before him. The dingy bar, just off Plaza del Angel in the Barrio del Carmen, was most sternly not to his liking. Stale summer air hung around him along with stench of unwashed Valencians. The woman wailing about government repression didn’t lift spirits. She spoke so loud, at the table against the opposite wall about 10 metres away, that Jaime could hear every word. Jaime had come inside in search of peace and a cold drink, and, instead, got the ravings of a woman on a mission.

  “Now, we are subjected to house searches and unabated detention in jail cells! They censor our mail; our cars searched or seized. Terror squads are attacking everyone. The draconian anti-terror laws passed last month are an attempt to drag us back to the relentless oppression of the 1940’s. They will not hold down the people anymore! Even the church is turning against the government, the Pope himself does not approve of Franco’s behaviour. After the execution sentences got handed down in June, the people have started to fight once again, with strikes all over the country. Mexico wants Spain expelled from the United Nations. There could be suspensions of trade handed down from the Euro Commission. Even in Madrid they are striking, not just Bilbao, Burgos or Seville. The people can overturn the Movimiento. No one wants Franco anymore, except for those deluded Movimiento Nacional members, who will fight tooth and nail to hold onto power. Even Franco’s son-in-law, who was in Manila to attend the Miss World competition, rather than flying home when Franco had phlebitis last year, I doubt he cares what happens. Remember what happened in Portugal last year, when their dictatorship collapsed. Overnight, the oppression disappeared. The people gained control of their destinies.”

  Jesus, the woman could talk. Jaime swallowed the last of his lacklustre beer and placed the empty glass down hard on the wooden table, banging the now-empty bowl of tasteless olives. The noise was loud enough for the young woman to stop addressing her six companions and glance over at Jaime, sitting alone against the wall. He picked up his cigar again and gazed at the woman, who stood over her friends. The woman stared right back at him, her hands on her hips. Only now did Jaime get much of a look at the person behind the mouthpiece.

  “You got a problem?” she challenged Jaime.

  Jaime’s eyes skimmed the place. The bar, which looked ready to collapse and bring down the four storeys of apartments above, was empty. Even the old woman behind the bar had disappeared out the back somewhere. Darkness filled the street outside, just wide enough for people to walk two-abreast. The bullfighting poster on the wall caught his eye again; it was the item that drew him into the place to begin with, when in search of solitude in the foreign city. But the mouthpiece and her accomplices had also come in a moment later.

  “No, it sounds as if you have a problem,” Jaime replied and took a puff of his cigar, the scent comforting in an unfamiliar locale.

  “Leave him, Alazne,” one of the guys at the table added.

  Alazne. A Basque name. Perhaps that explained the call to arms by the woman, no older than Jaime himself, just 19 years old. ETA, the Basque nationalist group, or terrorists as Jaime preferred to call them, had been active for years, and showed no signs of abating. Since forming in 1958, and after shooting a fleeing Guardia Civil member in 1968, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna had become brazen, with bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. Killing dictator Francisco Franco’s successor, Luis Carrero Blanco, by blowing his car five storeys into the air with a bomb in 1973 had been their biggest act yet. Jaime had no interest in what ETA were doing, but their actions had long taken ETA away from their Basque homeland, and flooded south through Spain, including Madrid. That’s when the grudge became personal.

  The woman gestured for her friends to leave the bar with just a nod of her head. Five poorly-dressed men got up and left, all givin
g Jaime a suspicious glance as they trailed out into the night. The woman remained on the spot, still staring right at Jaime.

  “Come on, Alazne,” the sole remaining man said as he stood up from the table. He wore the same clothes as the woman; heavy dark green pants, almost military style, and a red shirt with white collar. Her accomplice was young like her, about 20. His short hair looked as if it he hadn’t washed it all decade.

  “No,” Alazne dismissed her friend and crossed the room. She pulled out a wooden chair across from Jaime and spun it around, to sit on it backwards. Alazne rested her arms on the back of the chair and stared at Jaime. “Do you have a problem with people like me?”

  “I don’t even know you,” Jaime scoffed. Her aggressive behaviour rattled him, but the much bigger guy hovering nearby seemed more dangerous.

  “Then why do you keep giving me dirty looks while I attempt to educate others about the state of our country?”

  “I just want peace.”

  “We need to go,” the man said as he approached the woman.

  “You go, Apolinar,” she replied without looking away from Jaime. “I’ll meet you at the place.”

  “Thanks for giving a stranger my name,” the angry man muttered as he left the bar.

  “Your boyfriend isn’t happy,” Jaime said and brought his cigar to his lips again.

  “That’s a fancy cigar. Would you like me to shove it up your ass?”

  “Don’t think you and your ETA propaganda can wander over here and threaten me. People like you don’t hurt people like me.”

  “I was right,” she said with a grin. Jaime noticed a few back teeth missing. “You are one of them.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, but even if you are correct, what do you care? I’m just a guy looking for a drink.” And a guy avoiding the phone at the hotel, which would ring every half an hour, with his angry father ready to complain about yet another issue.

  “Is this your type of place, rich boy?”