The Muse (21 page)

‘My brother can speak for himself,' she said obliquely, and Olive, not wishing to go any deeper into the sourer elements of this plot of theirs, turned away to look at the gigantic liners moving out to sea.

THEY RETURNED TO THE FINCA
at dusk, tired and happy. ‘Teresa,' Olive said, as they reached the front door.

‘Yes?'

‘I won't let anything happen to you. You can trust me, I promise.'

Teresa smiled, amazed to hear her own words being spoken back to her, the second half of the same spell. When they went inside, Sarah was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where is she?' said Olive, and the panic in her voice sounded childlike, so easily accessed.

‘She has probably gone out for a walk,' Teresa said.

‘My mother doesn't go for walks.' Olive ran out into the orchard, and on the pretext of searching for Sarah in the upper rooms, Teresa took the opportunity to slip into the attic and confirm her suspicions. It was as she thought. The green-­faced portrait of Isaac was nowhere to be seen. By now, it was deep in the bowels of a liner, on its way to Peggy Guggenheim.

 

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

15

S
arah began frequent walks out of the finca estate, an unprecedented gesture for someone usually more inclined to smoke on a sofa. She began to pull the ready vegetation from the rented land, piling it up in a wide wicker basket, the earth-­encrusted roots still attached. She would announce her trip to the village to buy artichokes, and soon there was a molehill of them in the kitchen. The vases of wildflowers had multiplied so considerably that Teresa was running out of receptacles.

Ten days after the trip to Malaga, a telegram from Harold arrived. Teresa went down to pick it up, and ran all the way back to the finca, handing it to Olive, who was shelling peas with her mother at the kitchen table.

‘GREEN FACE GENIUS GOES TO GUG STOP ALSO BOUGHT MAGNIFICENT ORCHARD STOP BACK END OF WEEK STOP,' Olive read aloud. ‘Peggy Guggenheim bought them both,' she breathed. ‘Isaac will be pleased.'

Teresa put her hands on her hips. ‘
Both
?' she said, but Olive refused to look at her. Teresa remembered the bulkiness of the parcel they'd taken to Malaga. This family always made her face what she knew, yet did not want to know.

‘I wasn't aware there were two,' said Sarah, one fingernail flashing down an open seed-­pod. The lacquer, Teresa noted, had chipped, and her mistress had done nothing to remedy it.

‘There was
The Orchard
, and then Isaac did another painting. A self-­portrait. Lots of yellow flames in the hair and a green face.'

‘You saw it?' asked Sarah.

‘Briefly. It looks like Daddy's coming back.'

‘Just when that telephone finally stopped ringing,' Sarah sighed.

Teresa went to the sink to busy herself with the washing up. Sarah laid down her empty pea pod. ‘Darling,' she said to Olive. ‘Do you like it here?'

‘I've got used to it. I like it very much now. Don't you?'

Sarah looked through the kitchen window. The garden and the orchard beyond it were now abundant with fruit and flowers, honeysuckle,
dama-­de-­noche
and all the oranges and olives Harold had promised his wife and daughter back in January, when, cold, bedraggled and shaking off the after-­effects of one of Sarah's storm clouds, they had arrived here, knowing no one.

‘I don't know if
like
is the word I'd use. I feel I've lived here about ten years. It sort of . . . saturates you, a place like this. As if it's the living embodiment of Isaac's painted orchard.' She turned to her daughter. ‘It's extraordinary – how he captured it, isn't it?'

‘Yes.'

‘How do you think he does it?'

‘How would I know?'

‘He's a genius.'

Olive sighed. ‘Nobody's a genius, Mother. That's lazy thinking. It's practice.'

‘Ah, practice. I could practise for ever and not produce anything as good as that.'

‘You seem better, Mummy,' said Olive, steering the conversation elsewhere.

‘I do feel a lot stronger. Daddy got me that last round of pills from Malaga and I haven't touched them.'

‘Really? Is that a good idea? You gave me and Tere a real fright when we got back from Malaga and you weren't here. I was worried you'd—­'

‘I wouldn't do that, Livvi. It's not like it was.'

They continued shelling peas in silence. Her mother had caught the sun, and she seemed peaceful; self-­contained. It was once again painful to Olive how attractive her mother was, and how Sarah barely registered this fact – her hair a bit of a mess, her sundress crumpled as if she'd just pulled it out of a trunk. Her roots had now grown out considerably, and she didn't seem to care. Her natural dark blonde was a stark, yet oddly pleasurable visual contrast to the peroxide ends. Olive had the itch to paint her, to capture this ease, in the hope that she too could have some of it for herself.

‘Summer's nearly here,' Sarah said, breaking Olive's thoughts. ‘It's going to be so hot.'

‘You were complaining when it was cold.'

Sarah laughed at herself. This too, was rare. ‘It wasn't a terrible idea of your father's to come here. Not a terrible idea at all.' She reached over and squeezed her daughter's hand. ‘I do love you, you know, Liv. Very much.'

‘Goodness. What's wrong with you?'

‘Nothing. Nothing. I just think you should know.'

SARAH WENT OUT ONTO THE
veranda with her packet of cigarettes and the latest Christie shipped over from a friend in London, and Teresa began to mop the flagstones in the hall. Olive followed her, standing on the dry patch Teresa hadn't yet reached.

‘Teresa, will you sit for my next painting?' she asked, her voice quiet. ‘I'd love to use you as a model.'

Teresa's spine stiffened, her fists tightening round the mop handle. ‘You didn't tell me about the second painting we took to Malaga,' she said.

Olive laughed. ‘I didn't want to get you into any more trouble.'

‘Trouble?'

‘Look, I know you think this whole undertaking demeans me as an artist.'

‘
Demeans
– what does it mean?'

‘Makes less of me. You think Isaac gets more importance round here than he deserves. But it's what I want, Tere. I want the freedom. You're my friend, Tere. Let me do this for you.'

Teresa straightened, meditatively plunging the head of the mop into her bucket of filthy water. She knew, in a way, that she had wanted this moment ever since she saw Isaac in the sketchbook. And the decision to help Olive in her deceptions – taking the paintings into Malaga, making sure Sarah still believed they were by Isaac, keeping the attic clean – had all been leading to this less than noble truth; that Teresa wanted to be painted. She rested the mop on the bucket, and it lay at a haphazard angle.

As Teresa walked behind Olive upwards to the attic, she knew had departed from her place in the script. She turned back once to view the floor, only half-­gleaming, the mop accusatory. She was no longer the servant who rid the house of stains; she was going to make a mark now, a stain so permanent no one would ever forget it.

IT WAS TO BE A
painting of Rufina, Olive told her, locking the attic door. ‘I've done Justa in the Well, and you will be my Rufina. It was you who told me the story, after all. I've been wondering what part of it to tell.'

Teresa nodded, not daring to speak. What would Isaac say, when he found out Olive had painted his face green and sent it as a self-­portrait to Peggy Guggenheim? When would he realize that painting after painting would come out of this girl? Olive believed Isaac was the source of her inspiration, but Teresa thought that nothing he could do now – no tantrum, no withholding of affection – would stop the flow.

‘Rufina with her pots, Rufina with the lion, or Rufina, beheaded, with her sister?' said Olive, mainly to herself. ‘The last one's grim, but it is the apogee, even though she's down a well.'

Teresa heard the unusual word, and thought Olive had said
apology.
‘There is nothing to be sorry for,' she said.

Olive gave her a confused look. ‘I'm glad you think so, Tere.'

She had decided to abandon the diptych format that she'd used for
Women in the Wheatfield
, and paint just one scene. In the end, she wanted all the stages of the story involved. So Rufina would be there in her full body, but she would also be carrying her own head.

‘You could put your face in it, too,' said Teresa, then immediately wished she hadn't, for she was probably overstepping herself.

Olive bit her lip, considering the idea. ‘Well, let's paint yours first,' she said. ‘I'll decide later whether to add mine. It is supposed to be one person. But I'm definitely going to lay gold leaf on the lion's mane. He will be tame as a pussycat.'

‘Yes, señorita.'

Olive placed her on the chair she usually sat in when Teresa brushed her hair. There was a firmness and surety to Olive's touch, she was operating in her space of confidence and possibility. ‘You have such solemn eyes,' Olive told her, as she put her paintbrush to the treated panel. ‘So dark and watchful above your little snub nose. You and Isaac have become as engraved in my mind as a woodcut.'

Olive's expression grew distracted as she began to draw away from the outer elements of the room and closer to her artistic vision. Teresa was locked out of it, and yet she felt the source of it. She willingly sank into this phantom role, where she could disappear and be anything Olive wanted. She had never felt so invisible, and yet so seen.

 

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

16

I
n the end, Harold returned the first week of June, driving himself back from Malaga airfield. ‘Where is he?' he called, as soon as he'd parked up the Packard. ‘Where's my prodigy?'

The women stood on the front step, shielding their eyes from the sun. Harold's wave was breezy.
He's been with her
, Teresa thought, surveying him as he neared the front door. He looked sated, well fed, and yet his grin was a little fixed. He seemed to have the air of a man rolling away from vice and back into the straits of virtue
. Maybe he sent her a ticket to Paris
. The anonymous woman's timid German, which had grown fainter in Teresa's memory, now returned.
Harold, bist du es?

Teresa glanced over to Sarah. She had a self-­contained look, as if she was conserving her energies, girding herself.
Does she know?
Teresa thought.

‘Hallo, darling,' Sarah said. ‘Isaac doesn't live here, you know.'

Harold stalked forward, depositing two kisses either side of his wife's face. ‘It's Isaac now, is it?' He turned to Olive. ‘You look well, Liv. In fact, you look glorious.'

Olive smiled. ‘Thank you, Papi. So do you.'

Teresa cast down her eyes, hoping Harold wouldn't see her thoughts. ‘
Buenos días
, Teresa,' he said. She looked up. The journey had left him with a day's stubble. She breathed in the smell of his travel-­worn shirt, the possibility of someone else's perfume mingled on his skin.

‘
Buenos días, señor.
'

‘Fetch my suitcase, will you.'

She descended the step, feeling folded inside the Schlosses' life with such a cloying intensity that she could hardly breathe.

THAT NIGHT, TERESA WAITED FOR
Isaac outside their cottage, as the shadows lengthened and the cicadas began to build their rasping wall of sound. He appeared at the base of the hill at about seven o'clock, and she was struck by how tired he looked, burdened down by an invisible weight as he moved towards her.

‘He's back,' she said, by way of greeting.

Isaac dropped his knapsack on the grass, where it clunked.

‘What's in there?' she asked.

‘You'll see.' He sank to the earth and lay on his back, his hands enlaced beneath his head.

‘There's something you should know,' she said, irritated with his evasion. ‘Olive didn't tell you, but she sent an extra painting to Paris. Don't be angry. He's sold it. I wanted to tell you before Harold did.' Isaac remained prostrate, and he nodded, patting his jacket pocket, pulling out a box of battered cigarettes. ‘Are you angry, Isa?'

‘No.'

‘I thought you would be. Why aren't you angry?'

‘Do you want me to be angry? What's the point? She's done it. And it doesn't surprise me.'

‘More money for the cause, I suppose.'

‘Always that.'

‘Isa. I know what's going on.'

He looked up at her, sharply. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I know what you two do. Apart from the painting stuff. That she's in love with you.'

A look of relief passed across his face as he lit a cigarette. ‘Olive,' he said.

‘Are you in love with her?'

Isaac sat up and dragged on his cigarette, hunching his knees as he looked down over the sierra. It was dusk by now, and the bats had started to appear out of the copses at the foot of the valley. The air was warm, the earth still giving off its heat. ‘They'll leave,' he said. ‘They won't last here. They belong in the city. In the salon.'

‘Sarah, yes. Harold, maybe. Not Olive.'

He smiled. ‘They've turned you into a romantic.'

‘Rather the opposite. I understand her, that's all. She won't leave you. She'll follow wherever you go.'

‘What makes you so sure of that?'

‘She says she can't paint without you.'

He laughed. ‘True in one way, perhaps. Well, if she does love me, that doesn't make any of this all right.'

‘Well, I don't think she needs you at all.'

‘And that doesn't surprise me either, Teresa.'

PARIS HAD BEEN A TRIUMPH,
Harold said; Isaac Robles was now the pole star in the firmament of Galerie Schloss Paris. The next afternoon, Harold, legs stretched out in the front east room, drinking a glass of fino, told them in no uncertain terms that thanks to
Women in the Wheatfield
,
The Orchard
, and
Self-­Portrait in Green
, he and his partners were enjoying a renaissance.

‘­People heard through Duchamp that Peggy wants to buy art,' he said. ‘But I got there first. She's incredibly excited about the next one, your companion piece to
Women in the Wheatfield.
She wants a photograph of it in progress, though, if that's possible. Is it possible, Isaac?'

Olive slugged back another fingerful of sherry. ‘The “companion piece”?' said Isaac.

‘Am I rushing you?' said Harold. ‘Tell me if so. We don't have to send her a photograph if you don't want that. It's what's best for you.' Isaac nodded. ‘You have a great gift, Isa. Truly. I cannot wait to see your future.'

‘It will not be what any of us expects,' Isaac replied, staring at Olive. ‘Mr Schloss, I have brought something for you.'

Olive put the sherry glass down and began to rise from her chair, but Isaac reached into his knapsack and withdrew a pistol, the barrel made of shining steel. No one spoke as he weighed it in the flat of his hand.

‘Is that real?' Sarah asked.

‘Real, señora.'

‘Why on earth have you brought us a gun?' said Harold, laughing. ‘Bring me a painting, for Christ's sake.'

Olive sat back, the relief visible on her face. ‘Do you shoot, señor?' Isaac said.

‘I can. I have.'

‘Can the women shoot?'

‘Of course we can't,' said Sarah. ‘Why do you ask? This is terribly dramatic.'

ISAAC HUNG AN OLD FLOUR
sack, packed with earth, upon a protruding branch of a cork oak at the end of the garden. One word covered the rough sacking, F A R I N A, and they agreed that the makeshift bullseye was the space between the ‘R' and the ‘I'. They all trooped past the empty stone fountain and lined up to have a go, and there was almost a carnival atmosphere to their endeavour; the silly swinging sack, the birds scattering out of the oak at the crack of Isaac's pistol.

Harold hit the last
A
. Sarah shot into the bark and handed the pistol back to Isaac, saying she would never touch it again. She went to lie on her back in the grass, staring at the sky, her hands resting on her stomach. Isaac shot the middle of the
N
, and looked sheepish. He handed the pistol to Olive and Teresa watched the intertwining of their hands.

Olive lumbered over to the shooting spot and raised the pistol. She squinted, and pulled on the trigger, releasing the bullet with a gasped shock as the pistol recoiled in her hand.

‘Liv,' cried her father.

‘I'm fine.'

‘No, you nearly shot the centre.'

Olive looked in surprise towards the sack. ‘Did I?'

Teresa thought it natural that Olive should have such a good eye, a steady hand. ‘Do that again,' Harold said.

‘No. It was a fluke.'

Sarah lifted her head up to look at the bullet-­riddled sack. ‘Liv, you've got a hidden talent. Maybe we should enter you in competitions.'

Teresa hurried over to take the pistol from Olive, and Isaac came to check she was reloading it correctly. Teresa brushed him off, setting the pistol perfectly on her own. ‘You bought this with her money, didn't you?' she whispered to him.

‘It won't be the last. It's a Soviet T33,' he replied, with a note of admiration.

‘Are you giving this gun to them?'

‘They might need it.'

‘Why? Are you trying to protect them, or put them in danger?'

‘Keep your eye on the target, Tere. And your voice down.'

Teresa wondered where Isaac was finding the means to source Soviet weapons, but part of her didn't want to know. She concentrated on raising the pistol, her legs apart, her other hand supporting her wrist. Her body was taut, every muscle tensed on her spare frame, the set of her jaw fixed as hard as the stone satyr in the fountain. She inhaled deeply and pulled the trigger.
You're not the only one who shoots rabbits
, she thought. The pistol went off and the bullet sailed through the air, hitting precisely through the knot attaching the sack to the branch. To Isaac's cry of frustration, the entire thing tumbled to the grass. The packed earth spilled everywhere, and the game was ruined.

•

Late that afternoon, Harold said he was driving to Malaga. He wanted to visit a bodega, pick up some new supplies of sherry. Sarah announced that she would accompany him. ‘I need a chemist,' she said. ‘Then I'd like a coffee on Calle Larios and a walk along the sea.'

Teresa saw Harold's hesitation, but he said, ‘That's a good idea, get some air into your lungs. Isaac, would you join us? A man with local knowledge might help when it comes to the sherry.' But Isaac, who Teresa knew would once have craved a drive in such a powerful car, who had to content himself with a bicycle, did not wish to join them at all. He demurred, politely. ‘Of course,' said Harold. ‘You've got work you want to do.'

Outside the finca, Olive and Isaac waved her parents off. ‘We could take the photograph for Peggy Guggenheim now,' she said, as their car disappeared. ‘Daddy has a camera in his study.' Isaac was silent, staring at the swinging gate, gaping open on the path towards the village. ‘What is it?' she asked.

‘I was foolish,' he said.

‘You're weren't.'

‘I thought your confidence, your happiness, was out of love for me.'

‘It was. It is.'

‘I do not think so. I think this has always been inside you, waiting to come out. I just happened to be there, at that particular time, in order for you to use me as your canvas.'

‘I love you, Isaac,' she said. The words landed between them.

‘Your true pleasure is not with me. It is hanging on the walls of the Guggenheim house. How is this going to end, Olive?' he said. ‘Because it is going to end.'

Olive turned to him, placing a hand on his arm, but he brushed it off. ‘I've made you angry,' she said. ‘But I love you—­'

‘You say one more painting. And then there is one more. A green face, one more, one more, one more.'

‘I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. This will be the last. I promise, I swear. I swear on my life.'

He turned to face her squarely. ‘Did you and my sister plan all this from the very beginning?' he said.

‘Of course not.'

‘She seems very comfortable with the situation now. She sounds like you. Always, she has a plan.'

‘No, there was never a plan, Isaac. This just happened.'

‘Teresa is a survivor. She was the one who put you on the easel, but don't think she will always put you first.'

‘What are you talking about?'

He laughed, without humour. ‘I am famous in Paris, a city I have never even seen. I paint portraits of my own face I have never even seen. You are stealing me, Olive. I feel like I am becoming invisible, the more visible I become.' The breath had got stuck in his throat, and he looked embarrassed, his words breaking up. ‘And after all this, you expect me to believe you love me.'

‘I don't expect anything, Isaac. I never wanted you to feel like this,' she said. ‘I do love you. I never expected you to love
me
. I've got carried away, I know that. But – I – we've – been so successful, I never thought it could be so easy—­'

‘It is not easy, Olive. It has never been easy. I cannot, I will not do this any more. And if you send that Guggenheim woman one more picture, then I cannot promise my actions.'

‘What does that mean? Isaac, you're frightening me.'

‘The painting you are working on – you must destroy it.'

She looked horrified. ‘But I can't.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because it's the best thing I've ever done. Because they're waiting for it in Paris.'

‘Then you cannot expect me to have anything to do with it.'

‘Isaac, please.
Please
—­'

‘You promised me, Olive. You went behind my back.'

‘And you haven't touched me for four weeks. Is that the price you're forcing me to pay, for once in my life doing something brilliant?'

‘And what about the price you are forcing me to pay? No man would put up with a woman who asks so much. A man needs a woman who understands him, who supports him—­'

‘Who puts him first?'

‘My absence from you is an exchange you seem more than willing to make, as long as Miss Guggenheim continues to sing your praises.'

‘That's not true. I miss you.'

‘You do not miss me, Olive. You miss the next chance to send a painting over.'

‘I do miss you. Just come upstairs and see it,' she pleaded. ‘And then tell me if you still feel the same.'

THE PAINTING WAS THE SAME
size as
Women in the Wheatfield
, and yet it felt bigger. Up in the attic, Isaac stood before it, staggered by its sensuality and power. Even though it was still unfinished, the lion already looked possessed by the sight of the double-­headed Rufina. This piece was breathtaking, sinister, revolutionary.

‘Is that you?' he asked, pointing at the disembodied head. ‘And is that Tere, holding you?'