Page 136 of The Moon Sister
‘Oh! Señor!’ Lucía turned back and gave him a dazzling smile, then reached up to plant a kiss on his cheek. ‘You are too kind. We thank you, Portugal thanks you, and you must come to the stage door to collect tickets for the show this week.’
‘Can I bring my mother?’ the guard asked. ‘She loved your film.’
‘¡Sí!Bring your whole family.’
The young man left the bus, blushing profusely, and Bernardo closed the doors.
‘Drive, Bernardo!’ mumbled Meñique as he saw another border guard wearing a crested cap approaching their new friend as he waved them through. Five or six kilometres beyond the border, Bernardo drove the bus into a field before turning a sharp left and pulling to a halt in front of a small farmhouse. He slumped over the wheel as Fernanda stood up to minister to him.
‘Bernardo says he has had enough and can drive no further. We will rest here for the night.’
‘Is he sick?’ Meñique asked in concern.
‘No, he tells me he is too old for all this excitement,’ replied Fernanda.
‘Where is this?’ Lucía sat up and looked around her, slightly dazed.
‘The home of our cousin,’ confirmed Fernanda.
Everyone climbed off the bus as a sleepy middle-aged man and his wife and children appeared at the front door and stared in surprise at the women, still in their flamenco dresses. Bernardo explained the situation to his cousin, and even though it was now almost one in the morning, soon the entire company was sitting down at the back of the farm to a meal of fresh bread, cheese, and olives recently harvested from the trees.
‘It feels like a party, but I know it isn’t,’ Lucía mumbled to no one in particular. She lit a cigarette as the rest of the company finished eating. José too was quiet, no doubt still struggling to come to terms with the loss of his precious pesetas.
Eventually, thecuadrosettled onto blankets in an open field around a small fire, Lucía lying in Meñique’s arms and gazing up at the bright stars in the black sky above her.
‘Out here you can believe that what happened in Madrid last night was just a bad dream,’ Lucía sighed. ‘Everything is exactly the same.’
‘Well, let us pray that we will one day be able to return.’
‘If not, we shall simply live on the farm with Fernanda’s cousins and I will dance while I harvest the olives. Somehow, we made it here.’
‘We did.’ Meñique nodded.
‘All except Chilly, of course.’ Lucía bit her lip. ‘Will we see him again?’
‘That I cannot say. All we can do is keep him and Rosalba in our prayers.’
‘And what do you think will happen to Spain, Meñique?’
‘God only knows,pequeña.’
‘Will it spread through the country? If it does, I must find a way to get Mamá and my brothers out. I cannot leave them behind.’
‘Let’s just take one day at a time, shall we?’ He stroked her hair and kissed the top of it. ‘Buenas noches, Lucía.’
*
They arrived in Lisbon the following afternoon, bedraggled and exhausted from the long drive.
‘We must find somewhere to stay. I cannot go and see Señor Geraldo looking and stinking like a pig,’ Lucía pronounced. ‘What is the best hotel in Lisbon?’ she asked Bernardo, who was a fount of knowledge about everything here, due to his mother being Portuguese.
‘The Avenida Palace.’
‘Then we shall stay there,’ she said.
‘Lucía, we have no money,’ José reminded her.
‘Which is why I must get clean, then go and see the man who has hired us. He must make us a loan against our wages.’
