Blood in the Valencian Soil (Secrets of Spain) (18 page)

“I’m sure. I don’t care if María is seen as suitable for me. I don’t love her. Just because her family is rich and has some royal title for doing the King a favour years ago…”

“They are Spanish nobility…”

“Are you kidding me? Sergio Medina was only given
a royal title because he married one of the King’s mistresses, and he only married her because she was pregnant to the King and someone needed to take over the baby to appease the Queen!”

“One could say he was very noble for doing that.”

“Marrying a friend’s mistress and getting paid to care for the baby is not a career choice. Just because the Medina family have been wealthy since then doesn’t make them noble. Certainly not their great-granddaughter, María, anyway.”

“Sometimes life is complicated, Cayetano. Your father tells me that this Luna girl is married, that isn’t a simple affair.”

“She is widowed. Nearly three years ago her husband was hit by a car.”

Inés frowned an expression of genuine sympathy. “That is sad. So young to be a widow.”

“And she has children. Gorgeous five-year-old twin boys. They are amazing, so polite, and smart and calm. She is wonderful with them, even with all the upheaval the three of them have faced.”

“So you met them?”

“I did, they came along to Cuenca as well, and we spent a few days together. It’s the kind of life I could see for myself…”

“Poco a poco,
little by little, my boy. You must be gentle with this girl if she has lost her husband.”

“I know, I know. It’s not a simple situation, but it works. Luna is fiery, Mamá. When I step out of line, she tells me so!”

“That could happen often then!” Inés watched her son throw a fake look of indignation. “Who is the husband?”

“An Italian professional cyclist. He was run over in Valencia,
where Luna lives. The boys are Spanish, they were born here. But they stand out; they have deep red hair like you’ve never seen.”

“They are not like their mother then,” Inés said, and then frowned. “A New Zealander with red hair… reminds me of something your father once said. He told me that his mother had a best friend when she was young, and she was from New Zealand, and had flaming-red hair.”

Cayetano’s eyes widened dramatically. The wicked woman that Paco had spoken of that afternoon they had argued… “Really? Luna’s grandmother, Scarlett, had red hair. Could it be that my abuela and Luna’s abuela were friends? It’s fate!”

“Or a coincidence.”

“No, there are too many coincidences now. If only Papá would talk about his family…”

“He has his memories locked away in the chest in his office. Perhaps a photo of his Mamá, or her old letters… there could be a hint of something in there. You shouldn’t ask him about that. Now is not a good time. Wait for him to calm down a little.”

“Will you tell Papá that you told me about how he doesn’t know his real father?”

“Of course I will. We didn’t make it this far by not talking.”

“I don’t want to make him mad. Knowing this makes no difference to how I see him.”

“Cayetano, you are stirring things that upset him. Why or how is not for us to judge. He loved his mother very much, and Luna died when he was still young. He grew up in the 1940’s and came of age in the 1950’s. Spain then and Spain now are vastly different. Even in 1969 when we met was different to the world he grew up in. Spain moves at a breakneck speed, and we will never understand what he has been through. His mother did the best that she could on her own. She married well, and it allowed her son to have a lot of opportunities. We have a lot to be grateful for because of Luna Beltrán. It was her that encouraged your father to be a
torero.”

“He told me that his father was a fan of bullfighting.”

“That is what he told me.”

“Did he say his uncle Cayetano loved bullfighting?”

“Yes.”

“Only his uncle’s name is Alejandro…”

“I’m sure there is an explanation for that. Your father is not a liar. If your father is one thing, it’s very frank and honest.”

Cayetano snorted. “Tell me about it. I’m just interested, that’s all. It’s intriguing.”

“Because your girlfriend’s family lived across the street?”

“Well, yes. I wouldn’t have asked if I hadn’t met Luna. She
is looking for a man who has disappeared… and more than that. Luna is a lost soul. Both of her parents are dead. She has no siblings, no uncles, no aunts. I think she wants to find a family. Something to hold her here.”

“That is sad.”

“It is. Especially when we have everything.”

“You know what happened to this Cayetano Ortega already, don’t you?” Inés said matter-of-factly.

“He was murdered and tossed into a mass grave somewhere?”

“Yes, but people can’t go
and dig them up. The moment you move the soil over those shallow graves, the agony of Spain will pour out, like fresh blood from a wound. All that pain and hatred is covered with a thin layer, Caya. Don’t stir up something you can’t understand.”

“We would never be able to find him. We don’t know anyone who was in his life, so no one could point us in the direction of any graves, let alone the right one. The man could be lying by the side of the road and we’ll never know.”

“I take it that you and Luna have discussed that?”

“No. I think she has hopes for a good outcome.”

“Like the family that belongs to this man?”

“Exactly.”

“If Luna looks for peace in a time of atrocious war, she will inevitably be hurt, just like your grandmother was.”

“What happened to Papá’s uncle?”

“I don’t know. Your father never talks about him. He died before Luna married Ignacio.”

“Maybe he was murdered.”

“Shh…” Inés warned him. “Don’t say that.”

“Who’s going to hear?”

“Nobody wants to hear.”

“Do you think I will awaken all the fascists
who secretly hide out here in the suburbs?”

“Cayetano,
you would be surprised if you knew how close the fascists are. I know you were born during the dictatorship, but you were young when Franco died and…”

“I remember. I remember
hearing it on the radio. I remember Papá crying about it. Was he a supporter, or was he relieved that the man was dead?”

“We don’t talk about this. Not then and not now.”

“It’s that silence that hinders Luna.”

“Don’t let the fact that you have a new lover blind you to what you need to do for our family.”

“Lover? At least she was labeled my girlfriend a moment ago.”

“Cayetano, I know my son. I can assume she is your lover.”

“Now you want to bring up subjects you and I shouldn’t discuss.”

“I got pregnant at 15. I’m no innocent. You, every mistake you make ends up in the paper. Let’s not be coy.”

The conversation was halted by the sound of the phone. Cayetano sat back in the sun while Inés went to take the call in the kitchen. His mind drifted back to the wicked redhead that his abuela Luna would have known. Surely that was Scarlett. The odds were stacked in that favour. He needed to have a look in the chest that his father had. 

Cayetano glanced through the doorway, to see hi
s mother in the kitchen. She fiddled with a plant on the windowsill while she spoke. Perfect. He hobbled down the hallway past the bedrooms to his father’s office. Sure enough, tucked away in the corner of the wardrobe, like a heavy burden, was the wooden chest. Cayetano dragged it out into the light of the office and wiped a layer of dust from the top of the old box. The name Beltrán was engraved in it, and it was locked. The lock was old; a little persuasion would solve that. His father wouldn’t let him look in it, so it was time to do something that he knew would cause him grief later.

It was only a short walk from the end of the hallway to the front door. Cayetano could carry the heavy box past the kitchen without his mother noticing. He put it on the back seat of his Mercedes where it would be safe. His father wouldn’t notice it missing for a few days. He went back inside just in time; Inés had just finished her phone call. “That was your aunt,” she said. “She is at the country club with your grandmother, and wants me to meet them for lunch.”

“I will leave you alone then.”

Cayetano wandered back into the conservatory to pick up his phone that he had left on the coffee table, and picked up the copy of
the magazine. “I’ll take this home. Papá doesn’t need to see it.”

“He already has.”

Cayetano cringed. Oh for a little privacy. He wasn’t 16 anymore, and he certainly didn’t need their permission for anything. “Oh well, I will keep it for myself then.”

“She is a beautiful woman.”

“She is. She’s everything I could possibly want, Mamá.”

Inés smiled. “Well, maybe you could bring her by one day. But as I said, go slow, Caya.”

“She’s the one. I’m absolutely sure of it.”

“I believe you. Your enthusiasm is obvious. It also explains your mood since your accident. You should have been miserable, and you seem buoyant instead.”

“I see a future for myself. Until now, I have been drifting.”

“Maybe you are as lost as the lovely Luna. But, Caya, just because this poor girl’s family has suffered a tragedy doesn’t mean you can stir up our family’s past. I don’t want to hear you ever speak about this to my parents. They were children during the civil war, haunted by the bombing of Madrid in 1936. Their own parents were killed, so they don’t need to be reminded of the horror they faced. They wear the pain enough already.”

“Weren’t Republican children shipped off to Russia and other places to hide them from the war?” Cayetano asked his mother, and he saw her face grow hard. “We weren’t Republicans, were we? We were on the side of the Nationalists. What were we? Monarchists? Religious Carlists? Conservatives? Fascist Falange supporters? Anti-separatist?”

“You don’t seem to understand that you can’t say these things out loud!” Inés cried.

“So how the hell did that work? Papá was the bastard child of a Republican woman. She and her son would be rojos, but they were all murdered during the dictatorship.”

“Luna’s husband, Ignacio, was a Nationalist, a Falange member.
She switched sides to be with him.”

“This is Spain – nobody switches sides of anything. Ever.”

“Cayetano, these things no longer exist. The country is peaceful, and we can live any way we want.”

“It’s not peaceful, Mamá. Not as long as people like Cayetano Ortega are lost, like hundreds of thousands of others. Madrid is
hiding its secrets, the whole country is. I didn’t agree to any kind of pact of forgetting.”

“Maybe not, but life is hard enough.”

“Not for the rich like us.”

“Everything we have could come apart in a second. Don’t take your lot in life for granted.”

“Let me leave you to your lunch at the country club,” Cayetano muttered. “Let’s pretend things are fine again. Just like the country that we love has been doing for years.”

Inés stood at her front door an
d watched her only son drive away. Inés Morales may have been a remarkable woman, but she knew she wasn’t going to be able to stem the tide of change that was going to hurt her family. The day was coming.

16

Valencia, España ~ septiembre de 2009

Luna’s hands had gone red after
as she struggled with her overfull plastic shopping bags from the Mercadona supermarket. She always managed to buy more than she could carry home. When she got through her heavy front door, one of Darren’s racing bikes sat in the entrance way as an out-of-place welcome home, and she frowned.

“
Darren, are you here?” She stood in silence for a moment, no reply to her call. She turned and headed into the kitchen and dumped her shopping bags on the floor. She shivered; the feeling of a presence behind her gave her goosebumps, and when she turned around there he was, with a face as angry as a summer thunderstorm. “Hey,” she said, a sudden caution in her voice. “You’re home early.”

“I felt the need to come home instead of on to Toledo.”

Luna wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. Darren’s tall frame stood over her. It was menacing. It was cold. Darren was never any of those things. “Are we okay?”

Darren
thrust the magazine that he held into her hands. “You tell me, Miss. Page 8.”

Luna took the magazine from him and flipped through the glossy pages. The magazine had been wrung out, as if life needed to be drained from it in a slow and calculating manner. “Oh shit.”

“That wasn’t what I said,” Darren replied. His voice was sharp.

There it was. A
private moment between her and Cayetano in the courtyard in Cuenca. They hadn’t even been kissing, just close together, whispering and flirting while the kids played. People had taken second glances at Cayetano, and obviously one person had taken more interest than normal. It was a poor quality shot, most likely taken with someone’s phone and sent to this trashy weekly magazine who paraded the lives of celebrities for entertainment. “I can’t believe it, someone took photos while I took the kids to the playground?” she said, more asking the page before her than Darren. She shut it and looked at the cover. Who the hell were these people?

“That’s the least of my concerns,”
Darren bit back. He snatched the magazine from her little hands and threw it on the floor. “One of the guys saw it while in the hotel lobby in Cordoba. Everyone on the team has seen it now – you whoring yourself to some guy while I’m away for the Vuelta.”

“Hang on…”

“No, you hang on.” Darren pointed at her, the gesture as accusatory as his voice. “You said you were going to Cuenca for your grandfather. You took the children with you, and it was to meet some guy. You lied to me to hook up with a stranger!”

“I did not!” Luna shot back. She stood
as tall as she could, though no match to a man of six-foot-five. “You just wait a minute.”

Darren
grabbed her arm with a fist that promised wrath for what she had done. His injuries didn’t diminish his strength. He shook her just a little, enough to scare her quiet. “I asked you to marry me. I went away on the trip to give you a little bit of space as we adjusted to our new relationship, and you cheated on me.”

“I never agreed to marry you.” Luna was afraid, but she
wouldn’t admit it. Her voice wasn’t going to give her away, it never did. “If you love someone, you don’t need time to figure out what you want. It’s all or nothing from the start.”

“Then what’s wrong with you? Did you run off to have a night with a bullfighter? We watched him on television. Did you sit there and lie about not knowing him? Or did you seek him out after that?”

“It’s not your business.”

“You have strung me along for years, and got me to play Daddy, and not once have you rewarded me.”

“Rewarded you?” Her voice had never sounded so indignant. “Let go of my arm, you inconsiderate prick.”

Darren
shook her when he let her go, but Luna didn’t back away from him. “So, what, all this time, have you been biding your time and not really ever been just a friend?”

“For fucks sake, you know what I want. You tease me and string me along, promising that maybe I can have what I want.”

“What do you want? Sex in return for helping me out? Like I’m some kind of prostitute?”

“I want to be with you as a partner. An equal partner, not someone you just use! Why is
it okay to treat me like this? You wouldn’t cheat on Fabrizio. What would he think of you now?”

That was it. Comparing himself to Fabrizio was something she couldn’t tolerate. “I never cheated on him because I love
d him, completely, without the need to explain it, worry about it, or be afraid of it. I don’t feel like that about you. I never will. You were the second choice rider of the team, and you are still second best with me.” That was cruel, but she was so angry.

Darren
didn’t even flinch before he lifted his hand and slapped her across the cheek. He wanted her to feel the physical pain of how infuriated he felt towards her. The moment he did it, he knew that the whole life he had was gone.

The two of them stood in silence for a moment, not able to look one another in the eye. “I think it’
s time you moved out of my apartment,” she said towards the floor.

“Luna…”

“I’m going away for the weekend, as soon as I collect the boys from school. When I get back on Sunday night, you need to be gone.”

Darren
stood in the kitchen on his own as Luna powered from the room and out of sight. He heard her bedroom door slam shut a moment later. Love wasn’t supposed to feel like this, and they both knew it.