The Moon Sister

by Lucinda Riley

  ‘But I don’t understand; you love him, he loves you. He told me himself he wanted children . . .’

  ‘If he had, he would have stayed with me! I curse him, Mamá. I never want to see him again for as long as I live.’

  ‘That is anger and hurt pride talking. If he knew about this –’ María indicated Lucía’s stomach – ‘I am sure he would come back.’

  ‘I do not want him back! And I swear,’ Lucía stood up, ‘if you tell him, I will run away and never return. Do you hear me?’

  ‘I hear you,’ María sighed. ‘Although I entreat you to think about it. I cannot understand why, when there is a happy solution for everyone, you would ignore it.’

  ‘You may be able to spend your whole life with a man who has disrespected you, but I cannot. I hate him, Mamá, don’t you understand that?’

  María knew it was fruitless to continue the argument. Just like José, her daughter had a stubborn streak and was too prideful, even in these circumstances, to ask Meñique to return to her.

  ‘So, what is it you want to do? I mean,’ María changed the way she phrased the question, ‘where do you wish to go to have the baby?’

  ‘I don’t know. I must think. Maybe I’ll just stay here and hide away in the apartment?’

  ‘If you wish it to be a secret, for now anyway, I think it would be sensible to leave New York.’

  ‘Because the New York Times might see my belly as I am out walking and criticise my morals as well as my dancing?’ Lucía replied bitterly.

  ‘If it did get into the papers, I am sure it would not take long for Meñique to hear of it. If you are determined not to tell him, then . . .’

  Lucía began to pace slowly. ‘Let me think . . . I must think. Where should I go? Where would you go?’

  ‘Back to Spain . . .’ The words were out of María’s mouth before she could stop them.

  ‘It is a long way away, Mamá,’ Lucía smiled, ‘but at least they can speak our language.’ She walked to the window, placed her small hands on the sill and pressed her nose against the pane.

  ‘Perhaps you should sleep on it and we will talk tomorrow.’ María stood, not wishing to sway her daughter with her own selfish wants and needs. ‘At least the war is now over and we are free to travel anywhere you choose. Goodnight, querida.’

  *

  ‘I have decided, Mamá, and I hope you will agree it is the right thing to do.’

  María looked at her daughter, hovering above her as she lay on the floor beside her bed. Lucía was still dressed in the same clothes she’d been wearing last night, her eyes shadowed by deep purple patches.

  ‘I will go wherever you suggest, querida.’

  ‘Well, I think it is best if we go home.’

  ‘Home?’ María looked at her daughter, trying to gauge where Lucía thought ‘home’ was. After all, the child had been travelling since she was ten years old.

  ‘Why, Granada of course! You are right, Mamá. We must go back to Spain. It is also where my heart belongs and always will.’ Lucía gazed skywards. ‘I want to wake up in the morning and see the Alhambra above me, smell the scent of the olive groves and the flowers and eat your magdalenas for breakfast, lunch and supper and grow very, very fat . . .’ Lucía chuckled as she gazed down at her tiny bump. ‘Is that not what all mamás do?’

  As much as her heart leapt in joy, María knew she had to make sure that Lucía was not romanticising her childhood memories.

  ‘Querida, you must remember that nothing is the same in Spain. Both the Civil War and Franco’s rule after have destroyed much of what it was. I do not know if there are even any of us left up in Sacromonte, or whether your brothers and their families survived. I . . .’

  María’s voice cracked with emotion.

  ‘Ay, Mamá,’ Lucía went to her. ‘Now the war is ended, surely we must go and find out? I will be there with you. And of course we do not have to live in Sacromonte, but I am sure that we could find a pretty finca to rent that is hidden away. No one will be looking for me in Andalusia, will they? Besides, I wish my baby to be born in its homeland.’

  ‘You are sure you do not wish to tell Meñique, Lucía?’

  ‘No, Mamá! Do you not understand?! I wish to travel as far away from him as I can! And he will never think to look in Granada. Maybe I do not wish to dance any more either,’ Lucía sighed. ‘Maybe that time in my life has left with Meñique. So, I must start afresh. Perhaps being a mother will change me, still my restless feet forever. It changed you, didn’t it, Mamá? You hardly danced again after you had my brothers and me.’

  ‘That was for a very different set of reasons, Lucía,’ María said, realising now that Lucía’s decision was based on nothing more than wanting to run as far as possible from Meñique and what she saw as his betrayal and desertion. ‘I was not you, a world-famous dancer who thousands worshipped, just a simple gitana who loved to dance for pleasure.’

  ‘I dance for pleasure too, Mamá, and maybe I can teach my baby like you taught me. Maybe I can learn to cook, make magdalenas and your sausage stew the way you do. So? We must leave as soon as possible. I do not want to give birth on the water,’ Lucía said with a shudder. ‘You will tell Papá?’

  ‘Ay, Lucía.’ María disliked herself for feeling a shiver of pleasure at the thought of her errant husband’s distraught face when he heard the news.

  ‘Do not tell him where we are headed – say we will go to Buenos Aires, Colombia . . . anywhere. I do not trust Papá to keep it a secret from Meñique.’

  ‘Well, with your permission, I will tell Pepe. One of the family must know in case they need to contact us.’

  ‘I trust Pepe with my life,’ agreed Lucía, then she smiled suddenly. ‘Spain, Mamá. Can you believe we are going back?’

  ‘No, Lucía, I cannot.’

  Lucía reached out her hand to her mother. ‘Whatever we face, we will face together. Sí?’

  ‘Sí.’ María grasped it and squeezed it tightly.

  *

  Before leaving New York, Lucía and María went to Bloomingdale’s on 59th and Lexington, where they bought a trunkful of toys, material to fashion some clothes for the baby, a Silver Cross perambulator and everything María had never had for her own children. Lucía then insisted they go to the women’s department, where they had both been fitted for elegant suits and two tea-dresses. Lucía also bought a wide-brimmed cartwheel hat with a long ribbon tied around the crown. ‘Perfect for the heat of the Andalusian sun!’

  She took out wads of dollars from her oversized purse and arranged with the startled cashier to have the purchases packed into trunks and stowed in their cabin aboard their steamer.

  ‘We don’t want Papá getting any clues, do we? Now, Mamá, just one last stop on our transformation and we will be ready!’

  Still, María had been horrified as Lucía had dragged her into a hair salon and had ordered for them both to have their hair cut and styled into the fashionable victory rolls. As her long raven locks were cut to rest on her shoulders, María crossed herself. Lucía’s hair – which fell to beyond her waist – had even more centimetres chopped off.

  ‘I do not want anyone to recognise me on the voyage or in Granada. So we will pretend for a time that we’re not gitanas, but sophisticated payos. Sí, Mamá?’

  ‘Sí, Lucía, whatever you say,’ María sighed.

  31

  María and Lucía arrived in Granada on a gloriously sunny May day, after a week on the ocean. They checked into the Hotel Alhambra Palace under María’s maiden name, Lucía hiding her true identity under a pair of oversized sunglasses and her new straw hat. As they walked through the lofty lobby, decorated with colourful Moorish tiles and filled with plush sofas and potted palm trees, María felt as if she had stepped into a different era – one untouched by war and devastation, cushioned in wealth and far removed from reality.

  Stepping off the boat into the port of Barcelona had been a shock for her, as she felt the palpable poverty in the air. She and
Lucía had taken the train to Granada, and the journey had been rife with delays, as they had had to change carriages several times due to damaged tracks.

  María had been relieved to see that Granada’s beautiful buildings appeared untouched – from the newsreels she had seen in New York, of Europe devoured in flame and fire, she had expected it to be a smouldering pile of ash. But the opposite was the case – new buildings were being erected, men carrying bricks in the hot sun, their ribs apparent under their tattered shirts. When she had mentioned this to their taxi driver, he had raised a patronising eyebrow.

  ‘They are prisoners, señora, repaying their debts to Franco and their country,’ he told her.

  Ensconced in the hotel – for once Lucía did not insist on a suite – she was eager not to draw any attention to herself or spend any extra cash out of the amount she had had to beg from José before they left. The first sum José had offered them had been enough for Lucía to threaten that she would never have her father control the finances again. José had relented and quadrupled it, but still, Lucía had had to resort to stealing the same amount again on the day they left to board the ship. She also sold two of her precious fur coats, plus some diamond jewellery she’d been given by a rich Argentinian admirer.

  ‘The fact I’ve had to steal back what is mine and sell my possessions so that Papá’s wife, daughter and grandchild can survive makes me want to vomit,’ Lucía had spat as they had settled themselves in their cabin on board the ship.

  María wondered whether the rift between father and daughter would ever be mended, but as they’d sailed east towards her beloved homeland, neither had she much cared. The freedom and relief she felt as the ship edged ever closer to Spain was overwhelming.

  ‘Whatever Lucía decides, I am never going back to him, never,’ she told the dolphins that had swum alongside the ship as they crossed the Atlantic.

  Despite what she knew she must face there, ironically, María had actually enjoyed the voyage itself. With almost every passenger a returning native, there was a festive atmosphere on board.

  And in her new clothes, with her hair styled just like the other women on board, María had basked in the anonymity of being ordinary. She had even spoken to other guests at the dinners around the beautifully laid large round tables. Yet whilst María began to step out of her normal shell, Lucía retreated into hers. She spent most of her time in her cabin, sleeping or smoking, refusing to join the rest of the guests for dinner, citing seasickness and fear of being recognised. Gradually, her usual high spirits were lost beneath a palpable veil of despondency and despair.

  The arrival on Spanish soil had not provided the spur María had hoped it would. Lucía lay on the bed, listlessly smoking one of her endless cigarettes, as María unpacked their trunks in the twin hotel room.

  ‘Now, I am hungry,’ María announced. ‘Will you come downstairs and have your first taste of a Spanish sardine after all these years?’

  ‘I am not hungry, Mamá,’ Lucía said, but María ordered them up to their room anyway. Getting Lucía to eat anything was becoming an impossible task and María worried constantly for both the health of her daughter and the child inside her.

  The next morning, María took herself downstairs into the lobby and sought out the concierge.

  ‘Señor, myself and my daughter are newly arrived from New York and wish to rent a finca in the countryside. Perhaps you could tell me of a company that deals with such things?’

  ‘I am not sure I know of any, señora. For almost ten years, people have been desperate to leave Granada rather than to find somewhere to rent here.’

  ‘Surely there must be a number of properties that are lying empty?’ María – lifted to euphoria by the fact she could for the first time in years converse fluently with a stranger – refused to be brought down.

  ‘Sí, I am sure there are many, although what state of repair such places might be in, I do not know.’ The concierge studied her more closely, as if mulling something over. ‘How many people?’

  ‘Only myself and my daughter. We are both widows, just arrived from New York,’ María lied. ‘And we have dollars to pay.’

  ‘My condolences, señora. There are many who find themselves in such a position just now. Let me see what I can do.’

  ‘Gracias, señor,’ she said.

  The following day, Alejandro – as he insisted María call him – had news for her.

  ‘I have a possible suggestion for you to look at. I will take you there myself,’ he added.

  ‘Will you come and see the finca with me?’ she asked Lucía, who had hardly moved from her bed since they’d arrived in Granada.

  ‘No, Mamá, you go, I am sure you will choose us something nice.’

  So María went with Alejandro and they drove through Granada. The streets were almost empty of other vehicles, as everyone else was on foot, or encouraging emaciated mules to pull their carts. As they went further from the grand hotel, the buildings turned to slums, and where María had once remembered restaurants and flamenco bars, the windows were boarded up and beggars sat in doorways of abandoned buildings, their eyes following Alejandro’s car. Three or four kilometres outside town, the road began to cut through the wide verdant plain, burgeoning with olive trees.

  ‘This may not suit you, señora, because it is so isolated and you would need transport to get you into town,’ he commented as he turned off onto a dusty track that wound through an orange grove. A few seconds later, they arrived in front of a basic one-storey building, fashioned out of brick, its windows boarded up against intruders.

  ‘This is the Villa Elsa, home of my grandparents, who both perished in the Civil War. My sister and I have tried to sell it, but of course there are no buyers,’ Alejandro explained as he led her up the shallow wooden steps onto an overgrown vine-covered terrace that shrouded the front of the house from the glare of the evening sunset.

  Inside, the house smelt musty and María saw there was mould growing up the walls. With the windows boarded up, the concierge used a candle to show her into the sitting room, filled with heavy wooden furniture, a kitchen that was small but serviceable, and the three bedrooms placed in the cooling shadow of the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

  ‘It is probably not suitable for someone who has lived in such a sophisticated place as New York, but—’

  ‘Señor, I believe it is perfect, even if it will take some scrubbing, and I must learn to drive!’ she laughed. ‘Both are possible.’ She nodded as she stepped out onto the terrace, then out of the corner of her eye, caught a familiar shape high above her. She craned her neck far to the left, looked up, and saw the Alhambra sitting far away into the distance. This made the decision for her. ‘We’ll take it. How much?’

  *

  ‘The finca is perfect, Lucía! And because it is in a bad state of repair, and Alejandro is obviously desperate, I have taken it for next to nothing! You must come up and see it tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Lucía sighed. She was lying huddled in her bed, her face turned towards the wall.

  ‘You can even just see the Alhambra if you look to your left, Lucía,’ María confirmed, buoyed by the fact she had managed to find them a home so fast and negotiate a deal all by herself. ‘Alejandro treated me with such respect, I don’t think he even suspected I was a gitana,’ she said, glancing proudly at her reflection in the mirror. ‘How the tables have turned! A payo wanting our money!’

  ‘I am happy for you, Mamá.’

  ‘Well, I hope you will also be happy for yourself when you see it. And it cannot be that difficult to learn to drive, can it? There is hardly anyone else driving these days, what with the fuel shortage. Alejandro says he can find me a cheap car through a friend who runs a garage.’

  ‘It sounds as if you have a new admirer.’ Lucía swept her eyes over her mother: her dark eyes were sparkling and the summer dress she wore showed off her voluptuous body, the curves sitting in all the right places. There was a new confidence to her
that Lucía could only guess came from finally walking away from José. Lucía only wished she could feel the same about parting from Meñique – but then, he had left her . . .

  ‘Alejandro is a married man with five children, Lucía. He is only grateful to receive some extra income for himself and his sister. He says we may take as many oranges as we can eat before they are harvested. Can you imagine? Our own orange grove?! Now,’ María finished counting out the pile of dollars, stacked them together and placed them in her handbag, ‘I must take the deposit downstairs to Alejandro before he changes his mind. He says that his friend the cashier will give him a good rate of exchange. Dollars here are like gold dust apparently!’ María flashed her daughter a smile and left the room.

  Lucía was glad she had gone. Even though she felt mean and selfish, María’s high spirits only served to highlight her own non-existent ones.

  ‘What is happening to me?’ she whispered as she stared up at a large cobweb in the corner of the ceiling. ‘Where have I gone? I have disappeared, like the spider who once made that web . . . there is only a husk left.’

  Lucía closed her eyes, tears of self-pity dribbling out of them.

  Where are you, Meñique? Do you think of me as I think of you? Do you miss me . . . ?

  Forget your pride and tell him what has happened . . . tell him that you didn’t realise before that he was more important than anything . . . that you are nothing without him . . .

  Lucía sat up, just as she’d done a thousand times since he’d left. Her hand reached out for the telephone beside her bed, and hovered over the receiver.

  You know where he is, the telephone number of the bar he is playing in . . . Call him and tell him that you need him, that his baby needs him, that you love him . . . ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

  Lucía’s hand grasped the receiver. All she needed to do was give the number to the switchboard telephonist and within a few minutes, she’d hear his voice and this nightmare would be over.

  He left you! The devil voice began to stir the hatred she felt towards him like sand in a stormy sea. He didn’t love you enough . . . didn’t like you much either . . . he was always criticising your stupidity . . .