The Moon Sister

by Lucinda Riley

  María swallowed down the tears of relief at the sight of her. She tiptoed across to the mattress and sank to her knees. ‘Lucía, Mamá is here,’ she whispered, not wanting to startle the child, but knowing that Lucía slept the sleep of the dead. She stroked her daughter’s tangled hair, then laid her arms around her body. Lucía smelt unwashed, the mattress smelt worse, but she didn’t care. Somehow in this huge city, amongst the kind of people who made Sacromonte’s residents seem as if they had taken holy orders, she had found her daughter.

  ‘Lucía.’ María gave her a little shake to encourage her into wakefulness. ‘It’s Mamá, I am here.’

  Finally, Lucía stirred and opened her eyes.

  ‘Mamá?’ She studied her then shook her head and closed her eyes once more. ‘Am I dreaming?’

  ‘No! It really is me. I have come to find you and Papá.’

  Lucía sat bolt upright. ‘You are real?’

  ‘Sí.’ María reached for her daughter’s fingers and pressed them against her cheek. ‘See?’

  ‘Mamá!’ Lucía threw herself into her mother’s arms. ‘I have missed you so much.’

  ‘And I have missed you, querida mía. Which is why I came to find you. You are well?’

  ‘Oh yes, very well,’ Lucía nodded. ‘We work at the best bar in the whole of Barcelona. Everyone calls it the cathedral of flamenco! Imagine that!’

  ‘And your father? How is he? Where is he?’ María looked around the tiny room, which had space to hold little more than Lucía and her mattress.

  ‘Maybe he is still out at the Villa Rosa. He brings me home to bed and then goes back to play again. It is not far.’

  ‘You are left here alone?’ María was horrified. ‘Anyone could walk in and steal you during the night.’

  ‘No, Mamá, Papá’s friend minds me when he is not here. She sleeps next door. She is very nice. And pretty,’ Lucía added.

  ‘And where does Papá sleep?’

  ‘Oh,’ Lucía hesitated. ‘Out there.’ She waved at the door uncertainly.

  ‘Well,’ María said, trying to swallow the lump in her throat, ‘as I have come all this way, I had better go and see if he is back.’

  ‘Oh no, I do not think he will be, Mamá. Please, stay with me here. It is late and you can curl up on my mattress and we can hug.’

  María was already on her feet.

  ‘Shh,’ she said, ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  Outside the door, María let out a gasp of devastation. Of course Lucía may have got it wrong, but somehow she doubted it. Inwardly preparing herself, she tiptoed to the next door along, and as quietly as she could, turned the handle to push it open. The same streetlight illuminated a brass bed on which her husband and a woman – who looked no older than perhaps eighteen – lay naked on the mattress. José’s arm was flung across the woman’s taut belly, just above the down of black fur that protected her womanhood.

  ‘José, it’s María, your wife. I have come to visit you here in Barcelona.’

  She spoke in a normal voice, not caring if every resident in the street shouted at her to be quiet.

  It was the girl who opened her eyes first. She sat upright and stared at María, blinking to try and make out her shape in the darkness.

  ‘Hola,’ María said, striding across to the bed. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Dolores,’ the woman squeaked, at the same time pulling the thin bed sheet over her naked form.

  María almost laughed. It was like a comedy.

  ‘José!’ Dolores shook him. ‘Wake up! Your wife is here!’

  As José stirred, Dolores jumped out of bed and grabbed her night shift. As she reached up to throw it over her head, María glimpsed the full breasts, slim hips and smooth backside before the muslin covered them.

  ‘I will leave you two to talk,’ Dolores said, as she tiptoed towards the door and María like a timid fawn.

  María let her pass. The girl was little more than a child after all.

  ‘He told me he was a widower,’ Dolores said, shrugging before she pulled the door closed behind her.

  ‘So.’ María strode over to the bed and stood at the bottom of it, arms folded. ‘You are a widower now, eh? Then I must be a spirit come back to haunt you.’

  José was wide awake now, staring at María in abject horror.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I could ask you the same thing.’ María indicated the space next to him on the mattress.

  ‘It is not as it seems, Mia, I swear. The room Lucía and I have is too small for both of us, so Dolores kindly let me share . . .’

  ‘Do not lie to me any longer, you coward! Do you take me for an idiot as well as a betrayed wife? I have known about your other women for years, but like every good gitana wife who has children, I chose to ignore it. I . . .’ María caught her breath as the volcano of anger that she’d kept below the surface for years finally erupted. ‘And while you lay with that child, your daughter slept only next door. How you disrespect me, you pig!’ María spat on him. ‘You are filth, and my parents were right from the start. You were never any good!’

  José had the sense to stay silent while she continued to rage at him. Eventually he spoke.

  ‘Forgive me, María. I know I am a weak man, easily led. But I love you, and I always will.’

  ‘Shut up!’ María shook with fury. ‘You do not know what love is. All you care about is yourself. You used Lucía to get you back here and now my daughter lies alone in a filthy room in a filthy city because of your ambition!’

  ‘You are wrong, María, Lucía loves it here! She is gathering a group of fans that grows every day and learning flamenco from the very best at the Villa Rosa. No’ – José wagged a finger – ‘you cannot blame me for her ambition. You ask her, she’ll tell you.’ A sneer of a smile crossed his face. ‘So, I am here, you have hunted me down. Now what do you want?’

  A divorce . . . was the first thought that came into María’s head. She ignored it because no gitano couple could end their marriage legally, and took a deep breath to calm herself.

  ‘I came to tell you that Felipe died of a disease of his lungs on the seventeenth of July, only a day after he was released from prison.’

  María searched José’s face to gauge his reaction. And in an instant, as guilt leapt into his bloodshot eyes, she knew he had already heard the news.

  ‘I sent word with as many travellers heading for Barcelona as I could find, asking them to tell you that you and Lucía must return home immediately. But you didn’t. And in the end’ – María let out a guttural sob – ‘our boy’s body was stinking and I had to go ahead with the funeral without his Papá and sister present.’

  Imparting the news of Felipe’s death to the man who had given the seed to create his life immediately dissipated any anger she felt. Instead her sorrow fell out in wrenching sobs, tears of despair streaming down her cheeks. She sank to the floor, her hands over her face, mourning all over again for the loss of her precious boy.

  Rough hands came around her shoulders and for a few minutes she clung to them because they were finally there to hold on to.

  ‘Mia, I am so very sorry. Our little Felipe . . . gone . . .’

  Through the mist of her emotion, María remembered the look of guilt in José’s eyes. She pulled away and faced him.

  ‘You already knew, didn’t you?’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘¡Dios mío! No more lies, José. Our son lies in his grave! Did you know?’

  ‘Yes, I did, but not until five days after his death. By then, I knew you would already have buried him.’

  María swallowed and took a breath. ‘Yet, even if you had missed the funeral, you did not think that perhaps you should make the journey back to Sacromonte to comfort your grieving wife and children?’

  ‘María, I heard of Felipe’s death on the very day we were due to begin our new contract at the Villa Rosa. You cannot understand what an honour it is for Lucía and I. If we had left then, let th
em down when they were placing so much faith in us, it would have been the end of the future.’

  ‘Even if you had told them that you had to return home because your young son had died?’ María could hardly voice her disbelief.

  ‘Yes. You know very well how gitanos have a reputation for being unreliable. They would have thought I was lying.’

  ‘José, they are gitanos too, they would have understood.’ María shook her head. ‘It was you that didn’t.’

  ‘Forgive me, I made a mistake. I was too scared to leave; after all these years we’d finally won a place in the cathedral of flamenco. The money it could earn for our family, the fame it could give Lucía . . .’

  ‘There is no excuse on God’s earth, José, and you know it.’ She rose from the floor and looked down at him. ‘Maybe I could have forgiven you your latest infidelity, but I can never forgive you this. I only hope that your dead son can.’

  José shuddered and crossed himself at his wife’s words.

  ‘Have you told Lucía?’ she asked him.

  ‘No. As I told you, it was our first day at the Villa Rosa, and I did not wish to unsettle her with such terrible news.’

  ‘So, I will go and sleep with my daughter next door. And tomorrow morning, I will tell her that her brother is dead.’ María walked towards the door. ‘Your friend is welcome to come back to your bed if she wishes.’ María nodded at him and left the room.

  *

  ‘Felipe is gone?’ Lucía’s eyes were round with disbelief. ‘Where?’

  ‘He has become an angel, Lucía, and grown wings and flown up to be with the Blessed Virgin.’

  ‘Like the ones in the Abbey of Sacromonte?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But they are made of stone, Mamá. Felipe isn’t.’

  ‘No, but I am sure that now he is flying around the skies, and perhaps he has already been to watch you dancing at the Villa Rosa.’

  ‘Maybe he is a pigeon, Mamá. We have lots in the plaza outside the Villa Rosa. Or a tree,’ she mused. ‘Micaela, the bruja, says we can be anything on the earth when we return. I wouldn’t like to be a tree though, because that would mean I could only wave my arms and not tap my feet.’

  María gently combed Lucía’s damp hair as the child spoke. She had washed it earlier in a basin of water she’d taken from a fountain in the plaza, before patiently picking out the lice. She sighed, reflecting that it was no wonder that Lucía’s image of the afterlife was confused, given the fact that Spanish gitanos had been forced hundreds of years ago to convert to the national religion of Catholicism, yet alongside that ran their own instilled gitano beliefs and superstitions.

  ‘Whatever he is, Mamá, I hope he’s happy,’ Lucía added.

  ‘So do I, querida.’

  ‘I won’t see him again for many years, will I?’

  ‘No, we will all miss him and it’s very sad he is no longer with us.’

  ‘Mamá.’ Lucía had obviously decided it was time to change the subject. ‘Will you come and see me dance tonight at the Villa Rosa?’

  ‘Of course I will, querida. But I was talking to Papá last night. I think that perhaps you are a little too young to be here in Barcelona without your mamá.’

  ‘But I have Papá! And you could stay here with us.’

  ‘You do not miss Sacromonte? And Eduardo and Carlos?’ María continued to rhythmically comb her daughter’s hair.

  ‘Sometimes, yes, but especially you. Papá doesn’t cook, you see, and his friend Dolores doesn’t either, but they feed me at the café, as many sardines as I want. I love sardines.’ Lucía smiled happily. ‘And I am learning so much, Mamá. There is a payo who dances there, La Tanguerra, and you should see her tango and bulerías! And there is another gitana, La Chícharra, who strips down to her petticoat when she tries to catch a flea! And Señor Miguel has a daughter who uses castanets! She has been helping me learn how to use them. Click click they go.’ Lucía mimicked the movement with her small fingers. ‘They tap out the beat like your feet. Do you remember Chilly? He lives here too! We are friends now, even though he is strange, and we perform together at the bar sometimes.’ Lucía’s words tumbled out in a torrent of excitement until she had to pause for breath.

  María contemplated what she had just heard. ‘So you do not wish to come home to Sacromonte with me?’

  ‘No, Mamá, I want you and Eduardo and Carlos to come here with me and Papá.’

  ‘Eduardo and Carlos both work for your grandfather, Lucía. And besides, Sacromonte is our home.’

  Later that afternoon, when José knocked on the door and said it was time for him and Lucía to leave for the Villa Rosa, María waved them off, saying she’d follow on later. She sat down on the stinking mattress in her daughter’s room. She had been so certain that morning that she would gather up her child and take her back to Sacromonte. But now, listening to Lucía’s passion and determination, she knew she could not do that. The child had been born to dance, and if María dragged her home, not only would Lucía be inconsolable that her future had been thwarted, but she as a mother would feel guilty for denying her the chance.

  Lucía and José returned at five from the café to take an hour’s rest before the evening’s performance. María was waiting for them at the entrance to the apartment building.

  ‘We should talk,’ she said to José as he lingered outside to finish smoking his cheroot, while Lucía skipped up the stairs in front of them.

  ‘What do you wish to say to me?’

  María watched as José ground the cheroot out beneath his boot, his normal swagger back in place after the high emotion of last night.

  ‘You have broken your sacred oath to me. From now on, we can no longer live as husband and wife.’

  ‘Please, María, let’s not rush into this. It has been a difficult time—’

  ‘That will not get better whilst we are still pretending to be together.’

  ‘You cannot seem to understand that everything I do is for our family, and to further Lucía’s great talent.’

  ‘I will not argue any further with you, José,’ María sighed. ‘I just wish for an end and a new beginning. However, even though every part of me wishes to take Lucía home with me to grow up with her family around her like a normal child, I know that I cannot. She must have her chance. Therefore, I entreat you to take better care of our daughter in future, to protect her as best you can. I must trust you to do this, if nothing else.’

  ‘You can trust me, María, I swear.’

  ‘You are free now, José. But never let Lucía know the truth about us. To her, we will always be husband and wife, and her mother and father.’

  ‘As you wish,’ José agreed.

  ‘Now, I will go and spend some time with Lucía before you go to the Villa Rosa. I will come to see her dance, and then I will leave for Sacromonte.’ María took a deep breath and stood up on tiptoe to give José a final kiss. ‘Thank you for the precious gift of my children.’

  Then she turned from him and walked inside to speak to her daughter.

  Tiggy

  Kinnaird Estate, The Highlands, Scotland

  January 2008

  Scottish wildcat

  (Felis silvestris grampia)

  Also known as the Highland Tiger.

  15

  My head jerked upwards as I came to. I shifted my weight and felt my back muscles complaining from holding myself upright for so long on the three-legged stool. It was dark now and the air in the room was stale; the fire in the woodburner must have petered out some time ago. Taking my mobile from my jeans pocket, I used the light of the screen to navigate my way to the oil lamp and relight it. I saw Chilly was asleep in his chair, his head lolling to one side. I had no idea at what point both of us had fallen asleep, but I knew that before I’d done so, I’d entered another world; a world full of poverty, desperation and death. Yet the pictures Chilly had conjured up in my mind’s eye were full of colour and passion too.

  ‘A world that is part
of me . . . of my past,’ I whispered. I shook myself slightly, feeling I needed to be grounded, to leave this dreamlike world that I seemed to enter every time I walked through the door of Chilly’s cabin. Even if Chilly could afford to exist in it permanently, I couldn’t, and just now, I felt I was in danger of being drowned by it. After rekindling the woodburner and collecting more logs for Chilly to use overnight, I made a pot of strong coffee for him and left it next to his chair.

  Glancing down at his lined face, I tried to picture him as the young boy he’d been, playing the guitar for Lucía, his cousin . . .

  ‘That means,’ I breathed out loud, ‘that you are distantly related to me too . . .’ I faltered. How could it be that out here in the middle of the Scottish Highlands, I had found a relative? And was his story even true?

  ‘Goodbye, Chilly,’ I murmured and bent down to kiss his forehead, but he didn’t stir.

  Leaving the cabin, I stepped out into the brutal cold and, feeling light-headed from the smoke of the woodburner and Chilly’s pipe, I headed back to the cottage.

  ‘And where ha’ you been all day?’ Cal looked at me accusingly as I walked in and hung my jacket on the hook. ‘No’ been carousing with our special guest, I hope?’

  I’d never been as glad to see his solid, reassuring bulk filling the low-ceilinged room.

  ‘I was with Chilly in his cabin. He, umm, wasn’t feeling well today.’

  ‘You and he are tight, tha’s for sure. You’re a willing victim for his stories,’ he chuckled. ‘Been filling your head with faerie tales and stories of his past, no doubt?’

  ‘He’s an interesting man, I like listening to him,’ I said defensively.

  ‘Aye, that he is, but don’t start falling for any o’ his tales, lassie. He once told me I was a grizzly bear in another life, stalking my prey across the Highlands.’ Cal gave a hoot of laughter, yet as he stood there towering over me, it didn’t take much of a leap of imagination to believe he had once been a bear. And to this day, Cal, the man, was still stalking his vulnerable prey . . .

  ‘Come on, Tig, you’ve got that dreamy look in your eyes. You need to snap out o’ it, and I’ve got just the news to bring you back to reality.’