‘She suffered more than anyone, because of course we later found out that Julio had married Angelica, the daughter of the woman who had informed on Paloma’s husband. It didn’t matter to us, but for her, it was the last straw. Paloma felt so humiliated, so ashamed at what she’d done, that she refused to speak, she refused to eat, she could go for days without saying a single word. I tried to talk to her, because I’d always been fond of her, I still am ...’
‘You used to work together, didn’t you?’ Raquel remembered a photo of the two of them in white aprons, standing behind the counter of a bakery.
‘That’s right, when we first met in Toulouse ... She was the only person who helped me with my mother, and she was the one who supported me when Ignacio had to leave for fear of being turned in. I used to visit her whenever I could, and if we were alone, I’d say: “You were a widow when it happened, Paloma, a free woman, what difference does it make that you slept with him? You couldn’t know what that bastard was going to do, none of us knew,” and she’d say, “Don’t, Anita, I don’t want to talk about it.” But I’d insist for her sake. “The man you slept with isn’t the Julio Carrion living in Madrid, you fell for a man we all liked.” You know she tried to commit suicide?’
Raquel shook her head sadly. ‘No, I didn’t know. Nobody ever told me anything.’
‘She slashed her wrists with the razor that night we found out that Julio ... Poor Paloma ...’ Every word seemed to pain Anita. ‘Your grandfather had me, he had his children, but Paloma ... She was completely alone ... And she was so pretty, she was a real beauty, a lot of Spanish men in Paris were in love with her, and French men too. That’s how we met your Uncle Francisco, you know, back in Toulouse. Every night, he’d stand outside the bakery, waiting for her to come out, and then he’d follow her home. Never said a word. We used to make fun of him, especially María, she always was a minx, but that’s how they got together. One day, poor Francisco realised that he preferred María’s teasing to her older sister’s airs and graces, and she said yes and they’re still together to this day. But I don’t think Paloma was ever interested in another man, and that’s why ... When she realised that of all the men she could have had, she chose the worst ...’
‘Well, well.’ Raquel, hanging on her grandmother’s every word, had not heard the door open, but she recognised the voice immediately. ‘What’s this little gathering in aid of?’
Her mother, carrying various bags and with a broad grin that indicated the shopping trip had been a success, entered the room before her sister-in-law Olga.
‘Grandma’s selling me the apartment.’ Raquel got up to greet them both. ‘We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant to celebrate.’
Olga kissed her niece and then her mother. ‘Good for you, Mamá, it was about time you made up your mind.’
‘Now maybe we can talk about something else at mealtimes ...’ Raquel’s mother chimed in. She asked whether they’d made coffee. Raquel said they hadn’t, Olga said she would make some, then the phone rang, and as Raquel Perea Millán began emptying her shopping bags to show them what she had bought at the sales, the afternoon suddenly slipped into being an ordinary day.
‘I nearly bought a dress for you, hija, it was a little denim dress with sequins, but I can never be sure with you, I thought you’d probably think it was kitsch, so ...’ She began to pack everything back into the bags, then looked at the clock. ‘Oh my God, it’s twenty to eight! Did you bring the car?’ Her daughter nodded. ‘Could you give me a lift home, then you could come up and say hello to your father.’
‘I’ll give you a lift, but I can’t come in. I’ll see Papá tomorrow, I was thinking of coming over to yours for lunch ... Grandma, could you give me the keys to Plaza de los Guardias de Corps?’ Anita raised an eyebrow. ‘Now that I know it’s really going to be mine, I’d like to look at it again ... Actually, now that I think of it, what’s going to happen to the furniture? Can I keep it?’
‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up,’ her mother said, ‘there’s not much furniture left.’
‘No, but what’s left is the things nobody wanted, isn’t that right, Mamá?’ Olga said. ‘Those little beds, that big sofa in the living room that wouldn’t fit here, a couple of lamps and Papá’s old desk. You said you wanted that, didn’t you, Raquel?’
‘I did, but there was no space for it in Tetuán.’ She didn’t look at her grandmother. ‘That’s why I’d like to go over now and have a look round.’
‘Now?’ Anita sounded surprised. ‘But it’s getting late.’
‘There is electricity, isn’t there?’ Raquel said, ignoring the note of suspicion in her grandmother’s voice. ‘Or did you have it cut off?’
‘No, we didn’t ... Jacques said his family would be coming for Christmas and there wouldn’t be room for them all here.’ Her grandmother stared evenly at Raquel, who held her gaze. ‘Your grandfather’s keys are in the drawer of the bedside table.’ When Raquel got to her feet, her grandmother added: ‘Just a minute. Remember what you promised me.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes what?’
‘Yes, I remember.’
Eight months later, when Raquel came and told her the last story she’d ever have wanted to hear in what little remained of her life, then asked whether she could stay for a while, Anita had simply nodded. Then she took her granddaughter in her arms and told her she could stay as long as she wanted and that when she had seen her walk out with the keys that afternoon in January, she had known that Raquel would not keep her promise. Raquel had known it too; perhaps it was the fact that her grandmother’s tale weighed too heavily on her, the terrible despair of a man who was now dead.
Raquel Fernández Perea would never be able forget these words, but perhaps they might have remained just that, words she could not forget, had her grandmother not given her the keys to her apartment, had she not immediately recognised the key that opened the drawer in her grandfather’s desk, something she had seen him do only once in her life, had she not found an old pistol and a box of ammunition in that drawer, and with it, a battered brown leather briefcase that contained more than papers.
‘You would have found it anyway,’ Anita told her eight months later. ‘It’s my fault, I should have thrown all that stuff out. I didn’t want to give it to your father, or to Olga, it would only have upset them, you know how much they hate that sort of thing, I should have thrown it away ... I thought about it, but it was too painful, because all those things had belonged to Ignacio, they were Ignacio’s, so I just decided to leave things as they were ... and now look what’s happened.’
Raquel did not disagree, but she could not help thinking that if she had kept the promise she had made to her grandmother she would never have met Alvaro Carrion Otero.
Alvaro did not yet exist for her when Raquel took the leather briefcase from the drawer, careful not to touch the gun. Her hands were shaking so much that she decided to take the contents into the living room to read. There were title deeds in the name of Mateo Fernández Gómez de la Riva and deeds in the name of María Muñoz Palacios. There were certified copies of their wills, a copy of the power of attorney signed in Paris on 27 March 1947 by Mateo Fernández Gómez de la Riva in favour of Julio Carrión González, and a copy of a second power of attorney issued in Paris on the same date by María Muñoz Palacios in favour of Julio Carrion González. Raquel read half a dozen letters, date-stamped and posted in Madrid, in which Julio - no surname — sent his love to the whole family, telling them he had begun the process and explaining the various bureaucratic difficulties he was encountering. She also found a receipt for a bank transfer of five thousand pesetas issued in February 1948 at a branch of the Banco Español de Crédito, to a current account in the name of Mateo Fernández Gómez de la Riva, along with half a dozen other letters written in the autumn of 1948 bearing the letterhead of a legal practice in Madrid in which a certain Manuel Rubio Martínez informed his clients that, as of that date, their name did not appear on the deeds
or titles of any of the properties about which they had enquired. The lands and properties in question had been the subject of a series of extraordinary seizures in accordance with the expropriation laws, and thereafter had been sold on to third parties by their owner, Don Julio Carrion González.
‘Sebastián?’ It was eight o‘clock in the morning but she decided there was no point in waiting. ‘It’s Raquel Fernández Perea, the chairperson of the ...’
‘Yeah, yeah ...’ He was awake, she could hear a smile in his voice. ‘I know who you are. How are things?’
‘Fine. I was just calling to tell you I won’t be at the meeting with the notary this afternoon.’ She said this in as neutral a tone as possible.
‘OK ... If there’s a problem we can meet later in the week, morning or afternoon, whatever suits. The others will still be there, won’t they?’
‘Yes, everyone else will be there, but my case is a little different. I didn’t realise that Promociones del Noreste was owned by Julio Carrion. My family has a complicated history with Señor Carrion, and I need to speak to him before I decide whether or not to sell.’
Sebastián López Parra began to lose his patience: ‘Raquel, for Christ’s sake, we’ve been working on this deal for over a year, I thought we were past the stage of petty tricks.’
‘It’s not a trick, Sebastían, I assure you.’ From her voice, he realised this was true. ‘And it has nothing to do with you. I need to meet with Julio Carrion, I need to talk to him, and until I do, I’m not signing anything.’
‘OK, if you’re determined, I can try to set something up. I’ve just seen him — he’s a lawyer too, so I don’t think there’ll be any problem.’
‘I’m not sure we’re talking about the same person, Sebastián. I don’t mean Julio Carrion Otero, it’s his father I want to talk to, Julio Carrion González.
‘That’s impossible!’ Sebastian was beginning to sound nervous. ‘Don Julio is an old man, he’s over eighty, he can’t be disturbed ... Listen, Raquel, I think I’ve been very fair to you throughout this whole process, so don’t go making trouble for me. Don Julio is the president of the company, but he only comes in for a couple of hours a day, and that’s only because he’s bored, he doesn’t have anything to do with the running of the place any more. His sons are my bosses, and they’d never forgive me. I could lose my job over this, I’m telling you ...’
‘I suspect Don Julio won’t want his sons to know.’ Raquel Fernandez Perea was astonished by the composure in her own voice. ‘In fact, I’m sure of it, so let me make a suggestion. Have a quiet word with him, or leave a note with his secretary. Just tell him Ignacio Fernández’s granddaughter would like to see him. Nothing else. And tell him if he doesn’t want to see me, I’ll have to talk to his sons.’
When she hung up, the panic and the fear she had suppressed during the conversation overwhelmed her, and she felt an excruciating cramping in her stomach. She had banked on the fact that the Carrion family were not so different from the Fernández family, and if the victims had kept their ruin a secret for all these years, their executioner would have had all the more reason to keep quiet himself. A second ago she had been sure of this, but now not only did she realise that she had no basis for her assumptions, she also found herself hoping that Julio Carrion would not take her threat seriously, and that he wouldn’t agree to see her so that she would never have to look the man in the eye.
‘What have I got myself into?’ The question plagued her all morning. ‘How the hell did I come up with such an insane idea?’ What had seemed clear to her on Saturday night, what on Sunday had dazzled her as she studied the framed photographs in her parents’ house, now seemed like foolishness, an act of madness. Carlos and Paloma’s wedding photograph, Mateo wrapping his coat around Casilda as they looked into the lens, Ignacio in his French Army uniform with Anita holding their son, the two of them in a park in Toulouse, five smiling men showing off the German tank they had captured, Ignacio Fernández Salgado and his sister Olga in costume, Ignacio dressed as an Aragonese peasant and Olga as a flamenco dancer, her mother in Córdoba in a miniskirt posing in front of the Cristo de los Faroles, and the photographs of her great-grandparents, of her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, her cousins, her parents, photos that spoke to her, photos that made her smile, photos that made her eyes well with tears. As she was looking at them, talking with the people in the photographs, everything had seemed so clear. Now she also began to pity Sebastián, who had been so good to her, and who had not missed an opportunity to hint that he could be better still if only she would let him.
Raquel Fernández Perea, who had talked about so many things with her Grandfather Ignacio, did not know that, in the heat of battle, brave men and women fear nothing and no one. The fear comes later, when they begin to wonder how they could have been so foolish, so insane. That evening, when she stepped out of the shower and noticed there was a messaage on her mobile phone, she immediately recognised the number and dialled her voicemail. ‘Hi, Raquel, it’s Sebastián. I talked to Don Julio’s secretary and she got back to me. Don Julio can meet you at his office the day after tomorrow at half eleven. Let me know as soon as possible if that’s OK with you.’ She was grateful for the unruffled tone of his voice, and replied by text message: Good. I’ll be there. When she tried to put the phone down, her hands were shaking so much that she dropped it on the floor.
The rest was easier. There was no way of backing out now and necessity is the mother of courage. On Wednesday morning, Raquel Fernández Perea showered, ate breakfast, put on her business suit and left for work with ice in her veins. At 11 a.m., with the same icy determination, she hailed a taxi, gave the driver the address of an office on the Paseo de la Castellana and tried to clear her mind. She couldn’t stop her knees from trembling as she stepped up to the reception desk, but managed not to sound flustered as she gave her name. Julio Carrion González’s secretary was waiting for her as she stepped out of the lift on the third floor. Having greeted her tersely, she led her in silence down the long carpeted hallway.
‘If you would like to wait here,’ the secretary said, gesturing to an armchair, ‘Don Julio will see you right away.’
Raquel realised that these offices were utterly unlike the rest of the building, with its modern glass-and-steel façade, but she did not have much time to ponder the difference.
‘If you’d like to go in ...’ A moment later Raquel found herself in a room so vast that she had to walk a certain distance to make sure that the man behind the desk was really him. She felt no different to how she did when faced with a new client, and her host did nothing to change that impression. Julio Carrion González did not get up from his seat to greet her, and she responded to this discourtesy by remaining standing, looking down at him. She remembered her grandmother’s description, something that had been borne out by the photo on the website; Julio Carrion was old, but he was an attractive man. He still had the same shock of hair he had had as a young man, though it was white now, the same fierce intensity in his expression, the same sparkling eyes.
‘You look at lot like your Aunt Paloma.’ He was the first to speak and his remark caught her off guard. ‘I’m sure people are always telling you that. Her hair was a little darker than yours and her eyes were a brilliant blue, but the shape of your face, the chin, the neck, that elegant jawline ... You’re very like her ...’
Raquel said nothing; she went on staring down at him, a sharp metallic taste in her mouth.
‘Please take a seat, Raquel.’ Julio Carrion yielded to politeness. ‘Tell me, what can I do for you?’
‘You can start by not calling me Raquel, I have no desire to be on first-name terms with you.’ She listened to this voice as though it were not her own, and drew strength from her words.
The old man laughed and his face looked like a child’s drawing of the sun, a big yellow ball with sunbeams streaming out from it. Raquel did not know that Julio Carrion had always been attracted to brave women, she didn�
�t yet know that she would be the last, and that she would be the exception.
‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ he said, ‘but you are considerably younger than I am. So, Señora Perea, would you like to tell me why you’re here?’ Though he had just turned eighty-three, he was still a charming man and seemed to revel in that fact. ‘I’m guessing you wish to tell me that the price of your apartment has just gone up considerably, am I right?’
‘No.’ His face was suddenly serious. ‘Not exactly. I don’t know if you remember me, I’m the little girl who came to your house with Ignacio Fernández Muñoz one Saturday afternoon in May 1977.’ She paused to study the effect of her words and saw him nod. ‘He had this briefcase with him.’ She picked up the briefcase and showed it to him. ‘I’m sure you recognise it. It’s the same briefcase and it contains the same documents. I want you to tell me what you and my grandfather talked about that afternoon. That’s why I’m here.’
‘And why should I tell you?’ Raquel noticed the tone of this question was markedly different from his previous remarks. She saw him stiffen, he was bolt upright in his chair now, and there was a hardness in his expression, but far from inhibiting her, his manner spurred her on.
‘For a start, because if you don’t tell me, I won’t sell you my apartment.’
‘Now listen to me, señorita.’ His lips curled into a sarcastic smile underscoring the contempt in his voice. ‘Don’t you threaten me. I don’t give a shit about your apartment. I can buy a hundred buildings like yours ...’
‘Fine.’ Raquel Fernández Perea felt much better now, and the blood in her veins began to thaw. ‘In that case I’ll contact Señor López Parra and let him know that my apartment is no longer for sale. He’ll be terribly upset, because he’s put a lot of work into negotiating this deal, but you’re the boss. Don’t worry, I won’t tell him why, I’ll leave that to you. I think that would be best, don’t you?’
The Frozen Heart Page 84