The Moon Sister

by Lucinda Riley

  ‘She will not come, Meñique. You know that. She cannot leave everything she knows behind.’

  ‘Well–’ he drained the glass – ‘it is her choice.’

  ‘And yours,’ María countered.

  *

  Back in New York, the company was offered a contract to perform at the 46th Street Theatre, but on arrival at the Waldorf Astoria, were told that it was fully booked.

  ‘Fully booked!’ Lucía cried as they had been ushered back across the marble reception hall by hotel staff. ‘Ay! Half these rooms are empty! You should be so lucky to have us here.’

  As they stood outside waiting for taxis, a paltry umbrella protecting them from the spring showers, Meñique put an arm around her to calm her down.

  ‘Lucía, they might not be so happy about what you did to their expensive wooden cabinets when we were last here.’

  ‘Well, how else was I supposed to grill my sardines? I needed wood for fire!’ she insisted.

  The cuadro moved into a large, comfortable set of apartments on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.

  ‘I am pleased to be back here. It feels like home, doesn’t it?’ she asked Meñique, as she unpacked the contents of her many trunks into heaps on the floor.

  ‘No, it doesn’t. I hate New York. It is not my place.’

  ‘But they love you here!’

  ‘Lucía, I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Sí, of course. Have you composed something new for our show? I saw you scribbling on the train on the way back.’ Lucía posed in front of the mirror in a sumptuous white fur coat she had just unpacked. ‘What do you think of this?’

  ‘I think the cost of it could feed the whole of Andalusia for a month, but it looks very nice, mi amor. Please–’ Meñique knew he was about to burst – ‘come and sit down.’

  Sensing his tension, Lucía took off the coat and went to sit beside him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I have been offered a contract in a famous flamenco bar in Mexico. As a solo artist.’

  ‘How long will you be away for?’

  ‘Maybe a month, maybe a year, maybe forever . . .’

  Meñique stood up and walked to the window, gazing down at the endless traffic shuttling along Fifth Avenue. He could hear the hooting of horns even up here on the thirtieth floor. ‘Lucía, I just . . . I can’t do this any more.’

  ‘What can’t you do?’

  ‘Trail along behind you. I too have talent, and ability. I must use them both before it’s too late.’

  ‘Of course! We will give you more solos in the show. I will speak to Papá and we will change everything, no problem,’ she said, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘No, Lucía. I don’t think that you understand.’

  ‘What don’t I understand? I am telling you that whatever you need I can give you.’

  ‘And I am telling you that what you can give me is no longer what I need. Or want. It isn’t just about my musical future, Lucía. It’s about our future.’

  ‘Sí, and it is the future I always look to. You know how long I have wanted to be your wife, and yet, after all these years, you have still not granted me that pleasure. Why will you not marry me?’

  ‘I have thought about this many times.’ Meñique turned back towards her. ‘And I think I finally have the answer.’

  ‘Which is what? You have another woman?’ Lucía’s eyes blazed.

  ‘No, but in some ways, I wish I did. Lucía’ – he went down on his knees in front of her and grasped her hands – ‘do you not see that I want to marry you? But I do not want to marry your family, your cuadro, or your career.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ she admitted. ‘You don’t like my family? Is that the problem?’

  ‘I think your family are all very good people, but I was and always will be an outsider, even as your husband. Your father runs the finances, he organises the tours . . . he runs your life, but even that wouldn’t matter if other things were right. I am thirty-five years of age, and what I want is for you and me to marry, take a small house together in South America, and perhaps one day, go back to our beloved Spain. I wish for us to be able to close the door and know that no one else will walk through it unless we want them to. I want us to have children, bring them up not on the road, but in the proper way, where they are part of a community, as I – and even you for the first ten years – was brought up. I want us to perform together, find a venue somewhere where we can walk out of our home in the late afternoon and come back again to sleep in our own bed at night. Lucía, I want you to be my wife properly. I want us to grow our own family. I want us to . . . slow down, enjoy the success we have made before we take off again on another journey of uncertainty. Do you see, mi amor?’

  Lucía, whose dark eyes had been boring into him as he spoke, turned away. She stood up, then crossed her arms.

  ‘No, I don’t see. I think that what you are asking me to do is to leave my family behind, and come with you alone to be your wife.’

  ‘That is part of what I’m asking, yes.’

  ‘How can I ever do that? What would the cuadro be without me?’

  ‘There is Martina and Antonio, Juana, Lola, your father, your brother . . .’

  ‘You are telling me that I am not needed?! That they will do well without me?’

  ‘I am not saying that, Lucía, of course I’m not.’ He sighed. ‘I am trying to explain that sometimes in life, people reach a point where they can go no further down one road and need to cross a bridge in order to move on to another. And that is where I am now.’ He walked towards her and put his arms around her. ‘Lucía, come with me. Let’s start a new life together. And I promise you, that if you say yes, I will take you to the nearest church and marry you tomorrow. We will be husband and wife immediately.’

  ‘Are you blackmailing me? You have said that too often before and it’s never happened.’ Lucía pushed his arms away. ‘I am not that desperate! And what about my career? Will you have me stop dancing?’

  ‘Of course I would not. I already said I wished us to perform together, just not on the grand scale we have before.’

  ‘You wish to hide me? To force me into semi-retirement?’

  ‘No, Lucía, and I am perfectly happy if you wish to occasionally re-form the cuadro to perform in big venues. Just not every single day of every single week. As I said, I want a home.’

  ‘This confirms that you are more payo than gitano! What is wrong with you?’

  ‘Probably a lot,’ he said with a shrug. ‘We are both who we are, but I beg you, from the bottom of my heart, to think about what I have said to you. I do not yearn for fame and glory in the same way that you do, but equally, my small ego wishes to be recognised separately from the Albaycín clan. Surely you cannot blame me for that?’

  ‘As always, you are blameless, and I am the trouble. The diva! Do you not see that it was I that got us to where we are now! Me!’ – Lucía pounded her fist upon her chest – ‘Me, who rescued Mamá and Pepe from the Civil War, who never gives up, never gives in.’

  ‘I would like to believe I have done something to help also,’ Meñique murmured.

  ‘So, you’re asking me to choose, sí? Between my career and my family, and you.’

  ‘Yes, Lucía, finally, after all these years, I’m asking you to choose. If you love me, you will come with me and we will marry and make a new life together.’

  Lucía was unusually silent as she thought about what Meñique had said.

  ‘But you do not love me enough to stay?’ she said eventually.

  The agonised expression in his eyes was answer enough for her.

  30

  ‘The war in Europe is over!’

  María burst into her daughter’s apartment, where Lucía lay curled up on the sofa, shrouded in darkness. She pulled open the curtains and bright light spilled into the room.

  ‘Querida, the whole city is celebrating in Times Square. Everyone else in the cuadro has gone there – won’t you come too?’

  There was
no response. The plate of food that María had brought her the night before remained untouched, next to an overflowing ashtray.

  ‘Still no word from him?’ María asked, walking towards her daughter.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am sure he will come back.’

  ‘No, he won’t, Mamá, not this time. He said he did not love me enough to stay. He wanted me to desert my family, give up my career. How could I do that?’ Lucía sat up and downed the cold coffee that had been sitting on the floor for hours, before lighting a cigarette.

  ‘Remember, querida, this is your life. Everyone around you would understand if you followed Meñique. Many of us have to do things we don’t wish to for love.’

  ‘You mean like you with Papá? And that new whore of his!’ Lucía spat. ‘I hate love, I no longer believe in it.’

  María remained silent, reeling from her daughter’s revelation. Even though she had known it was true for many months, her daughter’s bitter confirmation cut her like a knife.

  The two women sat silently, both lost in their own pain.

  ‘I know how much you miss him.’ María was the first to speak. ‘You have hardly eaten anything since he left.’

  ‘I’ve had a stomach upset, which has made me feel sick! That is all.’

  ‘You will disappear if you’re not careful, querida. Don’t let him do this to you.’

  ‘He is doing nothing, Mamá! He has made his choice and he has gone. That is the end of it. He chose himself, not me, like all men do in the end.’

  ‘At least try to take a mouthful of food.’ María spooned up some sardines and offered them to her daughter.

  ‘I cannot. Every time I look at sardines it reminds me of Meñique and that alone makes me want to vomit.’

  ‘Okay, querida, I will leave you for now, but I will be here if you need me, I will not go to Times Square with the others,’ María said, walking to the door.

  She left the room, leaving Lucía alone. Lucía stood up and looked at the lock on the door. She fiddled with the key for a while, then turned it and heard the chunk of steel slip smoothly into the frame.

  She took a few steps back, pointing at it as though it was a venomous snake.

  ‘That is what he wanted for me! To lock me away from my family, to close our front door on them and my career. It is good he has gone,’ she told the sofa and the two chairs. ‘I am better off without him, yes! I am!’ Nobody answered back, and she walked round the vast empty room, thinking how peaceful it was not to have the eternal sound of Meñique strumming on his guitar in the background, his payo newspapers strewn on the floor and the table.

  Unable to settle, she went to the window, peering below to see the jubilant crowds of people streaming down Fifth Avenue to get to Times Square. Traffic was at a standstill. She opened the window and was immediately assaulted by a barrage of horns, shouts and whistles. It seemed that the whole of New York was celebrating beneath her, and she winced as she saw couples embracing and kissing in the street.

  She slammed the window shut and tore the curtains closed. Then she squeezed her eyelids together and hugged her arms round her thin frame. The silence in the room was endless and deafening and she could hardly bear it. She fell onto the sofa and pressed her face into the cushion, feeling tears begin to threaten.

  ‘I will not cry! I must not cry over him!’ She thumped the cushion with one of her fists, wondering if she had ever felt as desolate as she did now.

  Maybe he will come back. He has before . . .

  No, he won’t, he offered you a choice . . .

  He loves you . . .

  He does not love you enough . . .

  I love him . . .

  ‘NO!’

  Lucía sat up and breathed deeply.

  ‘I have spent my life working to make all this! If it is not enough, then . . .’ She shook her head violently.

  ‘I miss him . . .’ she whispered. ‘I need him, I love him . . .’

  Finally giving into her sorrow she buried her face in the sofa cushion and sobbed her heart out.

  *

  ‘What is wrong with her?’ José asked his wife as the cuadro ate in Lucía’s apartment after another sold-out show at the 46th Street Theatre.

  María paused, thinking that her husband had not yet asked her why she had moved out of his bedroom.

  ‘You know what is wrong, José. She misses Meñique.’

  ‘So, how can we bring him back?’

  ‘Life is not as simple as that. He has gone for good this time.’

  ‘Nobody goes for good, as you well know, María,’ he suggested as he swigged some brandy straight from the bottle.

  Before she slapped him hard across his alcohol-ruddy cheeks, or took a knife and stuck it into his treacherous heart, María stood up.

  ‘Sometimes they do, José, and Meñique has been gone for two months. Now,’ she said as she rose, ‘I am tired and will say goodnight.’

  She left the room, knowing it was pointless continuing any kind of conversation with him when he was drunk. He would not even remember what he had said the next morning. María went to her own tiny bedroom and locked the door behind her. Breathing hard in the darkness as she tried to still her beating heart, she walked over to the bed.

  ‘Mamá?’ came a voice from under the covers.

  ‘Lucía? What are you doing here?’ María reached for the light switch and saw her daughter was curled up in a foetal ball, just as she used to sleep when she was a child on the straw pallet beside her in the cave. ‘Are you sick, querida?’

  ‘Yes, no . . . Oh Mamá, what am I to do?’

  ‘About Meñique?’

  ‘No, this is not about Meñique! He has made his decision and left me because he does not love me enough. And I never want to share the same air with him again.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘It is . . .’ Lucía rolled over, her dark eyes haunted in her thin face. She took a deep breath, sighed as if working up the courage to say the words. ‘It is the present he has left me with.’

  ‘What “present”? I do not understand.’

  ‘This!’ Lucía pulled back the covers and pointed to her abdomen. To others, the slight curve of her distended belly would have been unnoticeable, but María knew her daughter did not have an ounce of flesh to spare. When she lay down, her stomach was normally concave between her narrow hips.

  ‘¡Dios mío!’ María crossed herself, then put a hand to her mouth. ‘You are with child?’

  ‘Sí, I am filled with the spawn of the devil!’

  ‘Don’t say that, Lucía. This child is innocent as every baby is, no matter who its parents are and what they have done. How many months?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lucía sighed. ‘Often I don’t bleed. Maybe three or four . . . I can’t remember.’

  ‘Then why did you not say something to him? To us?! My God, Lucía, you should be resting, eating, sleeping . . .’

  ‘I did not know, Mamá.’ Lucía pulled herself upright on the pillows and jabbed a finger at her belly. ‘Until this started to look like a half moon two weeks ago.’

  ‘You did not have any sickness? Feeling faint?’

  ‘Sí, I did, but it stopped a while ago.’

  ‘You have not been eating, and even your father asked me tonight what was wrong with you . . .’ María studied the bump. ‘Can I touch it, Lucía? Feel how big the baby is?’

  ‘It is starting to feel as though I have a balloon growing daily down there. I want to rip it out! Oh Mamá, how could this have happened to me?’ Lucía wailed as María felt her daughter’s stomach.

  ‘There! I just felt it move! It is alive, gracias a Dios.’

  ‘Oh yes, it kicks me in the night sometimes.’

  ‘Then it is at least four months! Stand up, Lucía, relax those strong muscles of yours and let me see you from the side.’

  Lucía did as she was told, and María looked at her in wonder. ‘I am now thinking five months. How you have managed to hide this
is a mystery to me.’

  ‘You might have noticed I no longer wear my trousers. I cannot zip them up round my waist, but at least the corset of the dresses pulls my stomach in.’

  ‘No!’ María shook her head in horror. ‘You must not wear corsets again, Lucía! The little one needs room to grow. And you must stop dancing immediately.’

  ‘Mamá, how can I do that? We have another tour coming up and . . .’

  ‘I will tell your father and he will cancel it tomorrow.’

  ‘No! I keep hoping that if I carry on dancing, the baby will just slip out of me. I’m amazed it has survived so far because I have fed it nothing except cigarettes and coffee—’

  ‘Enough!’ María crossed herself. ‘Do not say these terrible things, Lucía. You will bring a curse upon yourself. A child is the most precious gift we are given!’

  ‘But I don’t want the gift! I want to send it back where it came from, I—’

  María went to her daughter and put a hand over her mouth to physically stop her talking.

  ‘Lucía, for once in your life, you will listen to me. Whether you are happy about this or not, you must put yourself and the baby first. It is not just the baby that can get sick, it is the mother too. Do you understand?’ María released her hand, hoping that putting Lucía in fear for her own life might bring her to her senses.

  ‘You mean I might die giving birth to it?’

  ‘There is a better chance that you won’t if you look after yourself now.’

  Lucía slowly looked up at her mother, then went into her outstretched arms. ‘What will become of us all if I can’t dance?’ she whispered.

  ‘Having a baby is not a life sentence. A few months and you will be back beating your little feet even faster than you do now!’

  ‘What will we say to Papá?’ Lucía sank onto the bed. ‘He will be so shocked. It is a disgrace to have a baby without being married.’

  ‘Lucía.’ María sat down on the bed next to her daughter and put an arm around her. ‘You know as well as I do that doesn’t have to be the case. You must tell Meñique what has happened—’

  ‘Never! I will never tell him! And neither must you!’ Lucía pulled out of her mother’s embrace and rounded on her. ‘You have to promise. Promise me now! Swear on Pepe’s life!’