The Moon Sister

by Lucinda Riley

  ‘Do you always have to win?’ he whispered in her ear.

  ‘Always.’ Lucía flashed her eyes at him.

  ‘Meet me for lunch tomorrow? At the Cafè de l’Òpera, without your chaperone.’ Meñique nodded at José, who was holding court further along the bar.

  ‘He never wakes up until three.’

  ‘Good. Now, I must leave. I promised to play at the Villa Rosa.’ Meñique took her hand and kissed it. ‘Buenas noches, Lucía.’

  *

  He was already waiting for her at an outdoor table when she arrived at the café the next day.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Lucía said as she sat down opposite him and lit a cigarette. ‘I overslept,’ she added with a casual shrug.

  In truth, she had spent the past hour trying on every dress, blouse and skirt she owned, all of which were old and out of date by about ten years. In the end, she’d settled for a pair of black practice trousers and a red blouse, with a jaunty red scarf tied around her neck.

  ‘You look captivating,’ said Meñique, standing to kiss her on both cheeks.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Meñique. I was born with the body of a boy and the face of an ugly grandmother, and there is nothing you or I can do about it. But at least I can dance.’

  ‘I assure you that you do not have the body of a boy, Lucía,’ Meñique said, his eyes resting briefly on the veiled outline of her small, upright breasts. ‘Now, shall we take some sangria as the day is warm? It is very refreshing.’

  ‘It is a payo drink,’ she said with a frown, ‘but if it tastes good, why not?’

  Meñique ordered a jug of sangria then poured some into her glass. Lucía took a sip, swirled it around her mouth, then spat it out on the pavement.

  ‘It is so sweet!’ Lucía snapped her fingers at a waiter. ‘Bring me some black coffee to take the taste away.’

  ‘I am learning that you have a fiery temperament to match the passion of your dancing.’

  ‘Sí, it is my spirit that gives me duende.’

  ‘You Andalusians – you’re all the same. Completely uncontrollable,’ Meñique said with a grin.

  ‘And you are a pale Pamplona señor. I hear your mamá is a payo?’

  ‘She is, and thanks to her, I went to school and I can read and write.’

  ‘So now that the payos pay their pesetas for your gitano music, you become one of them?’

  ‘No, Lucía, but I see nothing wrong in sharing our flamenco culture with an audience outside our own community. And you are correct, the payos are the ones with the money. The world, and our world of dance, is changing. These –’ Meñique gestured to the many café cantantes lining the street – ‘are becoming outdated. People want a show! Lights, costumes . . . an orchestra on a big stage in a theatre.’

  ‘Do you not think I know this?! I was in Paris four years ago in Raquel Meller’s show at the Palais du Paris.’

  ‘I hear it was a big success. So what happened?’

  ‘La Meller did not like the fact that the Los Albaycín Trio – me, La Faraona, and my father – became more of a hit than she was. Can you believe she punched La Faraona on the nose?’ Lucía giggled. ‘Accused her of deliberately trying to upstage her.’

  ‘That sounds like La Meller. She has an ego bigger than her talent.’

  ‘Sí, so we left and worked instead in the cafés of Montmartre, which was far more fun. The lifestyle suited me, but we were earning next to nothing, so we ended up back here. It seems to be the story of my life, Meñique. I get a big chance, and think, yes! This will be it! Then it all falls through my fingers and I am back to where I began.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate, Lucía. You are famous – one could say infamous – in the flamenco world.’

  ‘But not out there . . .’ Lucía waved her hand to indicate the vast country laid out behind them. ‘Not like you, or La Argentinita.’

  ‘Who is, may I remind you, some years older than you,’ Meñique said with a gentle smile.

  ‘She’s practically a grandmother, yet she has just been in a new film!’

  ‘One day, pequeña, you will be a star of the screen too, I promise.’

  ‘Oh, so I suppose now you can see the future like my friend Chilly?’ she snapped.

  ‘No, but I can see your ambition. It burns like a flame inside you. Now, shall we order?’

  ‘My usual,’ Lucía announced grandly to the hovering waiter. ‘You know, I have been dancing almost as long as La Argentinita, and where has it got me? While she travels around Europe in her furs and her carriages, I sit here and eat sardines with you.’

  ‘Gracias for that compliment.’ Meñique raised an eyebrow. ‘So, what next?’

  ‘Carcellés has arranged for us to tour the provinces.’

  ‘Carcellés? Who is he?’

  ‘Another fat impresario, making money off our hard work,’ shrugged Lucía. ‘So I will be performing in country bars with farm animals as my audience while La Argentinita lights up stages in front of thousands.’

  ‘Lucía, you are too young to be so bitter,’ Meñique chided her. ‘Will you go on the tour?’

  ‘I have no choice. If I stay here in the Barrio Chino for much longer, I will die,’ she pronounced dramatically, lighting another cigarette. ‘You know what else frustrates me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you remember Vicente Escudero, the dancer? He recommended me to La Argentinita’s famous manager, Sol Hurok. He wanted to take me to New York! Imagine that!’

  ‘So why didn’t you go?’

  ‘Papá said that gitanos couldn’t cross the water. Can you believe he refused the offer?’ Lucía banged the table hard with her fist, rattling the ice in the water glasses. ‘I did not speak to him for a month afterwards.’

  Beginning to get the measure of Lucía’s temperament, Meñique surmised she wasn’t exaggerating.

  ‘Well, you told me you are already twenty-one, so you are technically in charge of your own destiny. Although I think your father was right about New York.’

  ‘Right to be scared of crossing water because of some gitano superstition?’

  ‘No, right to let you continue to mature here. The Barrio Chino produces some of the best flamenco dancers in the world. Keep watching and learning, my Lucía. You will blossom with the right teaching and guidance.’

  ‘I don’t need a teacher! I improvise every night! Stop treating me like Papá does, when you’re little older than I am!’

  Their food arrived and Meñique watched Lucía wolf down the sardines in order to light another cigarette as soon as possible. He knew she was sulking about his comments, and it was obvious she was potentially a diva of extraordinary proportions . . . Yet, there was something about her that fascinated him, like no other woman had before. He wanted her.

  ‘You should come to Madrid if you can. There is a wider audience and I live there too . . .’ He smiled, moving his hand across the table in her direction. She looked at it in surprise and with a little fear.

  His fingers reached her hand and closed over it, and he felt her shudder slightly, then compose herself.

  ‘I . . . where would I dance in Madrid?’ she asked, trying to concentrate on the conversation.

  ‘There are many large theatres that have productions with a cast and a full orchestra. I will mention your name to those I know, but in the meantime, my Lucía, try to remember that the goal is not fortune and fame, but the art itself.’

  ‘I will, I already do . . .’ Lucía sighed, the touch of his hand on hers feeling like a balm to her soul. She offered him a weak smile. ‘I am bad company, sí? All I do is sit here and complain.’

  ‘I understand, Lucía. Like me when I play guitar, you give your innermost self every time you perform. I agree that your career has stagnated and that you and your talent deserve to be seen and recognised by the world. I swear I will do what I can to help you. For now, you must be patient and trust me, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ she agreed, as Meñique brought her hand to his lips and
kissed it.

  *

  For the next month, Lucía and her troupe trudged by wagon through the provinces of Spain; along the coast to the small villages surrounding the great city of Valencia, to Murcia where the Gothic cathedral spanned the skyline. Then further south, where she could see the mountains of the Sierra Nevada glimmering in the distance, a tantalising glimpse of her true home.

  She danced night after night for ecstatic but small audiences, then returning with the other musicians and dancers to sit round a fire and drink brandy or wine as they listened to Chilly’s mystical stories of the other worlds. Some nights, as she lay in the wagon, Meñique’s words of encouragement were all that kept her going.

  I must keep learning, she thought, so, rather than leaving a bar after her own dance had finished and sitting outside smoking, Lucía remained there and studied Juana la Faraona’s flawless technique and grace.

  ‘I am a bundle of fire and spirit, but I must learn to be feminine,’ Lucía muttered to herself as she watched La Faraona’s elegant arms, the graceful way she picked up her train and the sensual curve of her lips. ‘Then maybe Meñique will love me . . .’

  *

  ‘Papá, Juana said we will be performing in Granada next week,’ Lucía said as they walked back to their campsite in Almería after the night’s show. ‘We must go and visit Mamá and Carlos and Eduardo, sí?’

  José didn’t answer, so Lucía gave him a sharp jab with her finger. ‘Papá?’

  ‘I think it is best if you go alone,’ he said eventually. ‘I am no longer welcome in Sacromonte.’

  ‘What do you mean? Of course you are!’ Lucía chided him. ‘Your wife and your children and many of our relatives are there. They will be so happy to see us.’

  ‘Lucía, I . . .’

  She saw José had stopped where he was in the middle of an orange grove.

  ‘What, Papá?’

  ‘Your mother and I are married in name only. Do you understand?’

  Lucía put her hands on her hips. ‘How could I not understand, Papá? I have had so many “aunties” over the years, I’d be an idiota if I didn’t. I thought that you and Mamá had an arrangement.’

  ‘The truth is, your mother did not wish for an “arrangement”, Lucía. She hates me, and maybe Carlos and Eduardo do too. They might think I deserted them to take you to Barcelona and give you your chance.’

  Lucía looked at her father in horror. ‘You are saying this is my fault?’

  ‘Of course not. You were a child, and I had to make a decision.’

  Lucía cast her mind back to the last time she had seen her mother in Barcelona, eleven years ago now. She remembered how she had sat, gently combing her hair. Then, after María had seen her dance at the Villa Rosa, they had said goodbye outside. Lucía remembered that her mother had been weeping.

  ‘Whatever happened between the two of you, I must go and see her, Papá.’

  ‘Yes.’ José turned from Lucía, and made his way towards the wagon, his shoulders stooped.

  *

  A week later, Lucía entered Sacromonte through the city gate. The sky was a perfect blue, the white wisps of smoke coming from the caves that fell down the hillside trailed up in plumes towards it, and the valley was as green and verdant in late summer as she remembered it.

  She looked upwards to the Alhambra, remembering the night she’d sneaked like a thief onto the stage at the great Cante Jondo competition, and danced in front of an audience of thousands.

  ‘Papá made that happen for me,’ she reassured herself as she walked up the dusty, winding paths towards her childhood home. She smiled at an old man smoking a cheroot on his doorstep. He looked disdainfully at her as though she was a common payo. As Lucía walked, she thought about her father’s newly confessed abandonment of his wife and sons. Despite part of her hating him for lying to her for years, Lucía could not deny what he’d done for her that night at the Alhambra, nor his dedication to her career in the last eleven years.

  ‘Their marital business is none of mine,’ she told herself firmly as she glanced upwards to see the smoke emanating from her mother’s chimney. When she reached the cave, she let out a small breath of wonder because there was a shiny blue-painted door in the roughly carved entrance, and the cave now boasted two glass windows, with bright red flowers planted in boxes beneath them.

  She hesitated nervously at the threshold; presented with its unfamiliar formality, she wondered whether she should knock.

  ‘This is your home,’ she told herself and reached for the doorknob to swing the door open.

  And there in the kitchen, sitting at the old wooden table, now covered in a pretty lace cloth, was her mother. Apart from the odd streak of grey in her hair, María looked exactly the same. There was a little boy of about ten sitting next to her, all black curls and smiles as her mother tickled him.

  María looked up at her uninvited guest, taking a moment to gather her senses before she took a deep breath and stood up, hand over her mouth.

  ‘Lucía? I . . . Is it you?’

  ‘Yes, Mamá, it is me.’ Lucía nodded uncertainly. ‘And who is that?’

  ‘He is Pepe. Go play with your guitar outside, querido,’ she told the little boy, who then departed with a smile at Lucía.

  ‘Dios mío, what a shock this is!’ María said as she opened her arms and went to embrace her daughter. ‘My Lucía is returned! Would you like some orange juice? I have just squeezed a fresh batch.’

  María moved to what Lucía recognised as a new set of wooden cupboards that ran along one side of the wall. In the centre of them was a cast-iron sink, and a pitcher of water stood next to it.

  ‘Gracias,’ she said, not only sensing her mother’s discomfort but also thinking that her mother seemed to have come up in the world since she’d last been here. The wonderful bright light in the valley shone through the windows into the interior of the cave, which had clearly been recently whitewashed.

  ‘Now, tell me how you are? Why you are here . . . tell me everything!’ María laughed in delight as she offered a beautifully carved rocking chair to Lucía to sit down in.

  ‘Our troupe is on tour nearby. Last night we were in Granada, performing at a café in the Plaza de las Pasiegas. There were big crowds.’

  ‘Why did I not hear of this?’ María frowned. ‘I would have given anything to see you dance, querida mía.’

  Lucía could perhaps guess why friends and neighbours had not told her that her husband and daughter were visiting the area, but she let it pass.

  ‘I don’t know, Mamá, but oh, I am so glad to be here!’

  ‘And I am so glad to see you.’

  ‘Are Eduardo and Carlos home as well?’

  ‘Today is a fiesta and they are out celebrating with the rest of Sacromonte, but if you are staying tonight, you will see them in the morning.’

  ‘I cannot stay so long, Mamá. Tonight we must move on.’

  María looked momentarily crestfallen. ‘Well, no matter, you are here now.’ María drew a stool close to her daughter and sat down. ‘You have grown, Lucía—’

  ‘Not much, Mamá, but what can I do?’ she shrugged.

  ‘I meant that you have grown into a woman. A beautiful woman.’

  ‘Mamá, I know any mother must say that her daughter is beautiful, but I know I am not. It is life. So –’ Lucía looked around the room – ‘you are well? The cave seems much more comfortable than I remember it.’

  ‘I am well, yes. Although I must tell you that both your grandparents were taken by an outbreak of typhoid in the summer.’

  ‘That is indeed sad news.’ In truth, Lucía could hardly remember them.

  ‘But at least before they passed away, your grandfather’s business had thrived thanks to your brothers’ help. Both of them have been so kind to their mamá. It is Carlos who is responsible for all the new furniture and the kitchen, mind you. Do you remember how as a child he was always whittling pieces of wood?’

  Lucía did not, b
ut she nodded.

  ‘Between you and me,’ María continued, ‘I know that your grandfather had been in despair over Carlos’s clumsy metalwork at the forge, but had noticed his passion for woodwork. He gave Carlos some pieces of pine and suggested he try to make a table. So it turns out that your brother is a talented carpenter, and now both gitanos and payos flock to buy his furniture. Would you believe, he is just about to open a shop in the city as a showroom for his wares? His wife, Susana, will run it for him.’

  ‘I see.’ Lucía could hardly keep up with what her mother was telling her. ‘And where do they live?’

  ‘They built a home in a cave next door to your grandparents, at the same time as Eduardo and Elena did. They have Cristina and her older brother, Mateo, and I am soon to have a third grandchild—’

  ‘Slow down, Mamá! My head is spinning with all these names!’

  ‘Forgive me, Lucía, it is the shock of seeing you, my tongue is running away with me and—’

  ‘I understand. We are both nervous, Mamá. It has been a long time.’ Lucía put her hand out towards her mother’s, her face softening. ‘It is wonderful to see you, and I am happy that all has gone well with you and my brothers since we left.’

  ‘Not at the beginning. The first few years were very hard indeed. But enough of that.’ María smiled brightly. ‘Tell me more about you, Lucía.’

  ‘Mamá, first I must tell you that I finally know what happened between you and Papá.’ Her earlier resolve that her parents’ marriage was none of her business melted away in the moment. ‘He admitted he had left you here and taken me against your will.’

  ‘Lucía, we were both at fault.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mamá, and I cannot help but have a deep anger for all the years when I thought you did not care about me, why you did not come to see me. Now I understand.’

  ‘Lucía,’ María whispered, her voice breaking. ‘I have missed you and prayed for you every day since I left you, believe me. Every year, in the month of your birth, I sent a small parcel to your father to give to you. I hope that you received them?’

  ‘I did not,’ Lucía stated flatly. ‘Papá never gave me anything like that.’