Secrets of Spain Trilogy

by Caroline Angus Baker

  “It’s time for the Beltrán and Montgomery women to run the family again,” Sofía said and Giacomo and Enzo both grinned. “Like you said about Luis, sometimes it’s the quiet ones who shine.”

  A sound overpowered the small plaza; the group paused and listened. Drumming. Voices. Luna squinted as the noise grew louder. “Is there a fiesta or protest on today?”

  “I’m not sure,” Sofía said. “But it’s Valencia; you never know what might appear.”

  The group hurried down the tiny Plaça de Santa Caterina and into Plaça de la Reina. Coming towards them along the wide Carrer de la Pau was a protest, the signs calling for changes to the unemployment system. “We missed a protest, I feel like a bad Spaniard,” Sofía commented.

  “Bad Valenciano, don’t you mean,” Luna joked as she watched her younger children wake due to the yelling and banging.

  “Hey, I’m all Madrileño,” Sofía replied. “Just don’t tell Darren.”

  As the protest came toward them to head for the narrow Carrer de Sant Vicent Mártir, toward Plaza del Ayuntamiento where the Town Hall stood, Luna glanced to see a police van parked nearby. Eight officers stood there in navy uniforms; their eyes covered by sunglasses. The officers were close enough that Luna could see they had removed their name badges. “Sofía, I don’t want to have the kids here,” Luna muttered.

  “Why?” Sofía asked, and glanced at Giacomo and Enzo, whose eyes watched a nearby ice cream store. “We’ve taken them to rallies plenty of times.”

  “Yes, but with kids, you need to pick your battles.”

  “This is a daytime march, not like those night ones where the police bash people.”

  The first banner passed the group, about twenty people holding the long sign, blowing whistles. Behind walked a group of people carrying Republican flags of red, yellow and purple. The group of people mostly in their mid-twenties wandered along, singing and banging drums as they marched, keen to use noise to highlight their cause.

  Paquito cried in the pram, and Luna fussed to find his chupete, his pacifier. He loved it as much as Scarlett loved hers. Luna noticed the crowd moving closer and closer to them but ignored it, while Giacomo and Enzo stood behind the huge red pram, watching with interested faces.

  “Corrupt bastards!” a voice cried from the crowd. Luna glanced up saw someone throw an empty glass bottle towards the group of policemen.

  The wide plaza, filled with tourists who frequented the cathedral across the square, had people all pressed against the shop windows, keen to stay out of the way. The moment the bottle got thrown, Luna knew she had to move, but there was nowhere to go. All avenues out of the square plaza now seemed blocked with onlookers.

  The police all pulled out their batons, and a group of young men all lunged for them. “Fuck me!” Luna yelled to Sofía over the noise of the protest, which had gone from peaceful to chaotic in seconds. “We need to move the children.”

  Sofía grabbed Giacomo and Enzo by the hand, scared by the pushing and shoving of the crowd. Luna, with her wide double pram, couldn’t get through the crowd. She felt someone push her from behind and turned to see a group of innocents trying to get away from the violence. An elderly woman lay on the street, her pantyhose torn as two young girls tried to help her. A man, his face covered in a balaclava, tried to get away from an officer who seemed intent on bludgeoning the youth. The man shoved Luna’s shoulder as he pushed through the crowd, several policemen after him. Luna couldn’t move her pram without hitting Giacomo and Enzo with it, still holding their aunt’s hands.

  The pain lasted a few seconds. The blow didn’t even register. Luna held the pram handle tight in one hand as she fell. The metallic taste of blood appeared, but its origin was unknown. Luna felt a heavy foot stand on her hand as she hit the cobbled footpath, but the offender was gone in a second. Over the sound of the surrounding riot, she saw Giacomo’s face by the pram, staring in panic. Luna couldn’t figure out what happened, and the sounds and figures around her were now a blur. Her jaw felt numb as she lay on the footpath, the fracas dissipating around her. That’s what it felt like to be thumped by a police baton.

  20

  Valencia, España ~ Mayo de 2014

  The smell reminded Luna that she was in an unfamiliar place. She was awake, at last, but didn’t open her eyes. As consciousness invaded her thoughts, so did the hot pain in her face. Luna took a few deep breaths and realised she was sleeping one of Darren and Sofía’s spare bedrooms. The children!

  Luna sat upright, and her head pounded with disorientation and tenderness. She opened her eyes, one deeply swollen. Her lips felt so fat, that she needed to open her mouth wide just to breathe; only her jaw refused the movement.

  “Mamá.”

  Luna focused on the end of the bed, where Enzo sat. The room was completely dark, the metal shutters still closed. “Hello, sweetheart,” Luna mumbled as the child climbed close to his mother to give her a hug. “Why are you awake?”

  “It’s not early; we had breakfast an hour ago.”

  “Damn it,” Luna said and went to pull the bedcovers off her. “I need to feed you all.”

  “No, Mamá, it’s okay. Sofía is looking after Paquito and Scarlett in the living room. Alysa is watching Giacomo playing on the iPad.”

  The prior evening was a blur; hours in the emergency room waiting for Luna’s doctor to come and see her. Because of her previous injuries, she needed a neurologist and a head scan after the assault. Luna wasn’t the only soul beaten by the police; after the initial scuffle in Plaça de la Reina, the whole protest had become a turmoil of anger. The incident was the stuff of nightmares, laying on the ground, beaten in the face and lost in a crowd, the sound of all her children crying at the sight of their mother bleeding from her mouth. Luna stumbled for blocks with the kids before she got picked up by an ambulance to take her to Hospital Nisa 9 de Octubre, leaving her children with their aunt. Luna sat alone in the hospital room, wondering about her children, about how they had been frightened and needed their mother. Cayetano was 500 kilometres away, with no idea what had happened. By the time Luna went home, she bore five stitches in her lip and a brain filled with painkillers. Paquito and Scarlett had already gone to bed when she arrived, and Giacomo and Enzo were waiting in Luna’s bedroom, unable to sleep. The whole time Luna comforted them, she felt exhausted and foggy.

  “I need to get out of bed.”

  “Okay,” Enzo replied, cuddled up against his mother. “Do you need a shower?”

  “Enzo, you are a sweet little gentleman,” Luna smiled. “I need to know everyone is okay first.”

  “The babies keep crying.”

  “Goody.”

  Luna shuffled down the hallway, trying to smooth her hair as she went. All notions of looking composed went out the window after her fall at Escondrijo and ever since, Luna didn’t care who saw her in her dressing gown. Her dignity had been lost on Rebalsadors mountain four years ago.

  “Oh my God,” Giacomo said from his seat on the couch. “Poor Mamá.”

  Glare poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows that surrounded the semi-circular living room and burned Luna’s tired eyes. Both Sofía and Alysa tried to hide their concern as Luna knelt down to Paquito and Scarlett on the huge navy rug over the granite floor. The pair climbed all over their mother, pleased to see her back, and oblivious to the pain on her face.

  “Why would a policeman hit a lady?” Giacomo asked as he sat down with his siblings, Enzo close behind him.

  “It was an accident,” Luna mumbled. “All I am suffering from is a case of wrong place, wrong time.”

  “Bullshit,” Alysa spat out. Jaime’s wife, with her short blonde hair cut and sharp features, pursed her lips as she inspected Luna’s bruised face. “Those bullies with weapons should never lash out at anyone, whether provoked or not. These things happen up and down the country. I’m sorry I went to the cemetery and wasn’t there to help.”

  “The protest had been peaceful,” Sofía contin
ued. “If the police hadn’t lashed out at people…”

  “Sofía, you don’t need to stand up for me,” Luna tried to raise her voice, though her swollen lips slurred every word. “This incident was just an accident.” The last thing she needed was the children any more upset.

  “Of course we need to stand up for you!” Sofía admonished. “This isn’t okay. Police can’t just bash people.”

  “The protest wasn’t even any of our business,” Luna mumbled.

  “Every protest is our business,” Alysa replied. “Spain needs every single person to stand up and be counted.”

  “Protests are the voices of the oppressed,” Sofía said. “When I’m in government…”

  “When I’m in government!” Luna interrupted. “You’ve been to a few meetings, worn a few T-shirts. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Sofía.”

  “They want you to feel like this,” Alysa said for her niece. “The police want you to feel broken, to weaken you, Luna.”

  “People who throw bottles at police and act like morons are not representing my interests,” Luna said, her voice harsh. “I don’t stand alongside violent people. But I understand the desperation, and the anger towards the police, government, and the banks. I’m all for strong women and fighting oppression and inequality and poverty, but everything I care about is on this rug right now!”

  “Sorry, Luna,” Alysa conceded. “I see you injured, and think of the things that happened in the past, and of the people who haven’t been punished.”

  “My face doesn’t represent anyone’s personal demons.” Luna’s headache, combined with the sluggishness of painkillers, gave her no desire to argue.

  “I’m afraid your face is a representation,” Sofía said. “Luna, your beating…”

  “My beating? I got struck once with a police baton, by a man trying get to someone else. I didn’t suffer a police beating, I just suffered bad luck.”

  “Anyway you want to word it, you can’t just let it go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because no one else has.” Sofía paused and glanced at her aunt. “The ‘incident’ got recorded. The video has already gone viral. Valencian police bash woman with her children in an unprovoked attack.”

  “That’s not the exact truth. Am I in a video? What person films these things?”

  “People who fear the police,” Alysa said. “Luna…”

  “Wait? People want to watch me, and others I assume, get hit by police? Why would anyone want to see that?”

  “That’s stupid,” Enzo complained.

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Sofía replied.

  “The video went viral? How many people watched the clip? Fifty?”

  “Hundreds of thousands,” Alysa said. “It’s been eighteen hours since your incident. It’s spread far and wide and been on the news.”

  “What? Bullshit. I haven’t even called Caya yet. I’m not sure what to say. He will be livid that I endangered the kids.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Mamá,” Giacomo answered. “We did nothing wrong.”

  “Caya knows, Luna,” Sofía added. “I called Caya after his performance in the ring at Granada. He needed to know.”

  “Wow, this is being blown out of proportion! You told Caya? You couldn’t even wait for me to wake?”

  “Caya needed to know. He’s my brother.”

  Luna growled, enough to hurt her throat. Sofía called Cayetano in retaliation for Luna and Darren talking behind Sofía’s back. Paquito on her lap looked up at his mother in fright. “I appreciate your help, Sofía. I truly do. But this is just a screw-up, of epic proportions.”

  “Caya called your phone last night, after his performance, to speak with you about his event. So I told him that you were sleeping after you got back from the hospital. Caya was concerned. He is flying here today.”

  “What? Why? Caya is meant to fight in Ronda tomorrow!”

  “Why? Because his wife got bashed by a police officer!”

  “I don’t need Caya sweeping in, all in a panic. You’ve made this worse, Sofía!”

  “Sofía didn’t have a choice,” Alysa explained. “Caya needed to hear about this from his sister since you became incapacitated. Luna, you got bashed and it got recorded. It’s in the news today - ‘El Valiente’ Beltrán’s wife bashed by police while alone with children.”

  “You mean the tabloids, not the actual news.”

  “The actual news care, too. By the victim of the attack being you, it highlights the events going on at protests around the country. It took a famous face to make the issue explode.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Luna spat, and then mouthed ‘sorry’ to Giacomo and Enzo, who sat right against her. “I won’t be the poster child for police brutality. There are people out there, who get targeted and hurt, because of race or class. I shouldn’t matter more because I married a guy who got famous modelling underpants on billboards and killing animals once a week.”

  “Luna, we are just trying to be on your side,” Alysa argued.

  “I appreciate that. Am I angry about this incident? Hell, yeah. I don’t want my children seeing something like that.”

  “These things can’t be allowed to happen. People must be free to express their voices on the street.”

  “Or even just stand by and observe,” Sofía gestured to Luna.

  “I agree with that, but I would like to relax and heal. Christ, I have a meeting this afternoon. I’ll look bloody fabulous. I can’t cancel and go home to Madrid early.”

  “There are newspapers wanting an interview with you,” Sofía said. “Your phone has been ringing all morning. Darren called, of course.”

  “Darren doesn’t need distractions; he’s training. Cayetano doesn’t need this; he needs focus. Caya should be revelling in this success in Granada. I assume he performed well.”

  “He did. Jaime called me,” Alysa said. “Cayetano was awarded three ears from two bulls last night.”

  “Caya is flying to Valencia? He always drives with the team. This incident is ruining his season with drama. All I ever do is cause Caya trouble. I want things to go smoothly for him this season.”

  “Do you ever stop thinking about other people?” Sofía sighed.

  “Never.”

  “It’s okay to need help, Luna,” Alysa added, and Sofía nodded. “Cayetano wants to be here with you. You aren’t forcing his hand.”

  “Ouch,” Scarlett said and touched her mother’s face.

  “Yes, ouch,” Luna replied and kissed her daughter’s hand. “A bullfighter’s wife gets bashed by a cop. You know, the anti-taurinos will love that. They will say I deserve it for marrying someone who tortures animals for entertainment.”

  “Fuck them,” Alysa said and Giacomo and Enzo giggled. “This will blow over, Luna. Don’t worry, Cayetano has Hector taking care of everything publicity-wise. That’s what personal assistants are for, right? You’re more than a bullfighter’s wife; people like you.”

  “I’m nobody. I just live my life. Personal assistants to take care of media engagements? That is not my life; it’s not who I want to be.”

  “I thought that, once, when I was younger,” Alysa said. “I thought my life wasn’t important, not special or unique in any way. I was doing what I needed to do. It was only later on, as time passed, that I realised the epic scale of my younger days. You don’t live an ordinary life, Luna; you are not ordinary. If nothing else, you save people, one buried body at a time. Thanks to your recent donation, you’re about to save more families. Luna, you once started a campaign to get drunk drivers jailed. You married extraordinary men. Now, you raise four kids on your own most of the time. You cheated death at Escondrijo. Luna, you’re not ordinary.”

  Luna just sighed and glanced at her older children. “Is my face that bad?”

  The pair nodded, their little faces screwed up with resignation.

  Luna left the children on the rug and wandered to the kitchen in her full-length silk dressing gown. Darre
n’s apartment had a desperately small kitchen, a windowless room, almost added to the place as an after-thought. A perfect bachelor’s house. Luna flicked the light on and looked in the mirror that hung over the sink in place of a window. Jesus Christ. The five stitches on her bottom lip made the bruising worse. The whole left side of her face was purple, with smatterings of red just for added drama. Luna had black eyes, not surprising, the delicate skin around her ice-blue eyes dark and bitter. The cuts on her lips stung with every breath. Her nose burned. Her left hand; the fingers got scraped when she got stood on, and the huge Medina diamond ring on her wedding ring finger had been forced against the others, leaving deep cuts. Not a big deal? This is a very big deal, Luna.

  21

  Valencia, España ~ Mayo de 2014

  Painkillers had numbed the headache before Cayetano rushed into Sofía’s apartment. Luna sat on the long soft couch, covered in sunlight, with a carajillo, espresso laced with brandy. The café at the bottom of the building let Sofía take coffees upstairs for her patient. It would be typical that Cayetano would turn up the one time Luna slipped a shot of alcohol into her day.

  “Dios mío! ¿Qué han hecho los cabrones?” Cayetano said as he flew into the living room, leaving his sister at the front door at the other end of the apartment. He fell to his knees in front of Luna, his dry, cracked hands on her lap.

  “What have those assholes done?” Luna repeated. “This injury a good old-fashioned fuck-up and it looks worse than it is, I promise.”

  “No, it looks as bad as it is,” Sofía said as she came into the room.

  “Go and say hello to the children, they are in the Giacomo and Enzo’s room,” Luna instructed her husband, her voice croaky.

  Cayetano obeyed and did his fatherly duties down the hallway while Luna knocked back the carajillo. “Here take this,” Luna said with a smile and handed the cup to Sofía, who was happy to comply with a wink in reply. “I don’t need Caya complaining about headache pills and alcohol.”