The Muse (8 page)

‘No.'

‘On the outside. Not important. They've got interchangeable names, like Philip and Ernest and David. Just one floating face, of a man with no discernible chin. When I said I wouldn't get married, one of these girls said to me, “You wouldn't
understand
, Olive. You've been to Paris – I haven't made it past Portsmouth.” Imagine being so idiotic! Imagine thinking being a married woman is the same as travel!'

‘Perhaps it is?'

Olive glanced at her. ‘Well, there are plenty of miserable wives in Paris. Some of them are my parents' friends. One of them's my own mother.'

‘Yes?'

‘Marriage is a game of survival,' Olive said, and it sounded as if she had heard this somewhere else, before repeating it herself.

‘How did your parents meet?'

‘A party. Paris. Mother was seventeen. “An English nettle” – her words. Daddy was twenty-­two. It was a bit shocking, her becoming engaged to a Viennese Jew. Her family took a while to accept it, but then they loved him.'

Teresa nodded, thinking this an exaggeration. Harold was not easily loveable, she thought. He reminded her of a beetle, deep within the wood and plaster of the finca's walls. He needed his hard wings to be kept shiny, his antlers polished with a soft cloth, his body buffed and fed so he didn't bite.

‘He was interned during the war,' Olive said. ‘They let him out and he worked for the British government. He never talks about that. He represented everything Mummy's life didn't, I suppose. She gets bored so easily, and likes to cause a stir. Condiment Heiress, Cocaine Flapper, Rebel with Hun Groom. It's all so garish,' she added, and although Teresa did not understand the adjective, she could taste its jealousy.

‘It's astonishing,' Olive continued, ‘how easily she can hoodwink other ­people that she's whole, when inside she's spiralling, as broken as a shattered pot. I sometimes wonder whether we could have had a stable life – Daddy, walking daily to the Foreign Office – bowler hat, club on St James's, mother at home doing embroidery. I doubt it. Don't you doubt it?'

Teresa didn't know what to say to this fizzing girl, with her plaintive, open face. The Schlosses were so short-­handed with each other, that it usually neutralized any depth of reference to their past lives. They were actors in costume, in the moment, performing through the house as if it were a theatre stage and Teresa their sole audience. She desperately wanted to see what happened when they took off their robes and walked into the wings, the darker corners where memories shifted. Olive had now lifted the curtain a little, and shown her the shapes and patterns beyond. Teresa worried that to say something wrong would make that curtain drop again, and break the spell of their solicitude.

‘Do you think you'll marry?' Olive said, in the face of the other girl's silence.

‘No,' Teresa said, and she felt that this was true.

‘If I do, it will be for love, and not just to annoy my parents, like my mother did. Do you think Isaac will marry?'

‘I do not know.'

Olive grinned. ‘If he does, you'll be alone in your cottage. You'll have to come and live with me and my husband. I wouldn't want you to be lonely.'

‘Your husband?'

‘Let's call him . . . Boris. Boris Mon-­Amour.' Olive laughed and kicked her heels. ‘Oh, Boris,' she shouted, opening her arms to the sky. ‘Come to me, take me!' Breathless, she turned to Teresa and beamed. ‘I haven't felt like this in ages.'

‘What do you feel?' said Teresa.

‘Happy.'

Teresa drank in the image of this girl, in her Aran jumper and old brown shoes, who didn't want her to be lonely, who had a foolish imaginary lover called Boris, and who had come to the ends of Spain to discover she was happy. And then she noticed the dried blood, crusted under Olive's fingernails, and she remembered the axe, and Olive out here with her brother, and panic rose. She grabbed Olive's hand.

‘What is it?' Olive looked shocked by the contact, and stopped her rocking.

‘Your fingers.'

Olive stared down at her rust-­coloured nails trapped in Teresa's little paw. ‘I'm fine.'

‘It's blood. Did he—­'

‘Did he what? It's not blood, Teresa.' Olive hesitated. ‘It's paint.'

‘You are in pain?'

‘Not pain,
paint
. I didn't clean up properly.'

‘I do not understand.'

Olive considered. ‘Teresa, if I told you something, would you promise to keep it to yourself?'

It was a risky question, riddled with unknowns, but the alternative was being shut away from Olive, and that was something Teresa could not countenance. ‘Of course,' she said.

Olive held up her little finger. ‘Put your finger round mine. Do you swear?'

Teresa linked her little finger round Olive's, feeling the intensity of Olive's gaze. ‘
Lo juro
,' she whispered. ‘I swear.'

Olive reached out and crossed her fingers over Teresa's heart, and Teresa, as if under a spell, lifted her hand and marked Olive with the same gesture, the heat of the other girl's skin coming through her woollen jumper.

‘Good,' Olive said, standing up and pulling Teresa to her feet. From inside the house, they heard Sarah's laughter. ‘Come on, follow me.'

 

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

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

5

A
s he sat with Sarah in the front east room, Isaac's gaze flicked up to the ceiling. The room above their heads was the place, eleven years ago, where he'd lost his virginity. The finca had been unoccupied; his father had just taken the job of estate manager for the duchess. Isaac had stolen the keys from his father's office and crept up with a ­couple of his schoolfriends. More young ­people from the surrounding villages turned up around midnight, and he'd got drunk properly for the first time in his life, two bottles of his father's Tempranillo all to himself.

In the morning, he'd woken sprawled on one of the covered beds with a woman – Laetitia was her name – fast asleep beside him. When she woke, they started kissing, and in the drugged, dry-­headed haze of his first hangover, Laetitia and he had sex. Laetitia, Isaac recalled now, had been twenty-­seven years old. He had been fifteen. A vase had been smashed downstairs, and when his father appeared at their bedside with the pieces in his hands, he chased Laetitia out of the room and came back to beat his son. Not for the sex – just the vase.
I thought you were a poof
, his father had said.
Thank God.

Isaac wondered where Laetitia was now. She'd be thirty-­eight, about the age of Sarah, who was now pouring out their glasses of lemonade. He looked out of the window, down the slope towards the village path. He had never been able to hold Arazuelo in proportion. It never stayed the same, and yet it always seemed the same. It was a self-­reflecting place, insular and welcoming by turns. He was continually trying to leave it, although he could never exactly say why. Arazuelo was part of his body. Madrid was the moon, Bilbao was outer space, Paris a place of biblical fantasy – but Arazuelo could overtake a man like no place else.

‘Mr Robles?' Sarah Schloss was talking to him, and he smiled. He could hear his sister and Olive making their way up the creaking stairs to the first floor, and then up again to the attic. If Sarah heard them too, she made no comment. Sarah was smoking again, always smoking, and her legs were tucked up underneath her as she sat on the green sofa. ‘So, do you think it's a good idea?' she said.

Well, did he? He knew there was something wrong about it, that he should say no. But he couldn't put his finger on it. ‘You must be terribly busy,' she went on, in the face of his silence. ‘But I haven't had one for years, and it will be such a surprise for my husband.'

‘Does he like surprises, señora?'

‘Well,' she said. ‘He's always surprising me.'

Isaac thought about her offer. That he was a good painter, he knew. He might even be a great painter one day. As he and Tere had grown up in the shadows, as Alfonso's illegitimate children, his father had often bunged them money, on the understanding that Isaac would grow up and leave all this left-­wing, artist stuff behind. Alfonso, on hearing that his son was now ‘consorting' with union leaders, Anarchists and divorced women, had confronted him. Isaac had no intention of leaving his work at the San Telmo school, so Alfonso had stopped his cash flow. He hadn't told Teresa.

He had very little income from the school, as cuts to government initiatives had affected its ability to run classes and pay the staff. In a few months, Isaac knew he was going to be very poor. But he could never ally with his father, who he considered the biggest hypocrite this side of Seville.

‘I pay very well,' Sarah said. ‘Whatever you need.'

Although he bristled at the ease with which she thought she could buy him, he considered what a pleasure it would be to paint a face like Sarah Schloss. ‘Thank you, señora
.
I accept. But allow me to make this a gift.'

Her eyes closed in a brief pause of pleasure, as if she had always known he would assent. As much as Isaac disliked witnessing this, he admired her self-­belief. He felt that he did not want to give her any assurance about her beauty. She clearly knew she had it in abundance.

Sarah smiled. ‘Oh, that won't do. This has to be a transaction. How many sittings will you need me for?'

‘I think six to eight, señora.'

‘And should we do it here, or at your house?'

‘Whatever is easiest for you.'

Sarah leaned over the tray as she lifted a glass of lemonade and handed it to him. ‘This is your sister's recipe,' she said. ‘It's better than any I've had elsewhere. What do you think her secret is?'

‘I leave my sister's secrets to her, señora.'

Sarah smiled. ‘Sensible. I think it should always be like that – everyone's happier that way. I'll come to you. Harold is in and out all the time, and I don't want him getting suspicious.'

‘When is his birthday, señora?'

‘His birthday?'

‘This is not a present for his birthday?'

‘Oh, no,' she said. ‘It's just a surprise.' She lifted her glass. ‘Cheers. Here's to my painting.'

OUTSIDE HER BEDROOM, OLIVE STOPPED
her hand on the old wrought-­iron handle and faced Teresa. ‘Remember,' she said. ‘Keep this to yourself.'

Teresa nodded. She could hear her brother and Sarah talking down below. Olive pushed down the handle and let her in.

They were in an unexpected atrium of thick gold light, a huge space that ran along at least half the span of the house, with exposed beams, splintered with age and cracking plaster. Teresa blinked, adjusting her sight, the dust in the shafts of honeyed daylight swirling in Olive's wake. Isaac had been in this house before, running round it like a mad boy, but Teresa had been too young, and so she hadn't known such a room existed
.

She stood rigid at the door, looking furtively around for whatever it was that Olive had been hiding up here. She could not smell an animal, nor hear any muffled cries; she could see only travelling trunks, a messy bed, clothes on a chair, books piled up in towers. It was the type of room she dreamed of for herself.

‘Shut the door, nincompoop,' Olive said.

‘
Nincompoop
?'

Olive laughed. ‘I didn't mean it. I just – I don't want them to hear us.'

Teresa was uneasy. Olive was supposed to be the fish out of water, walking round in her socks. But now, standing by the window on the other side of the room, Olive looked so different. She had walked into the sunlight straight-­backed, certain of herself, her arm resting gracefully on the sill, lost in thoughts that Teresa didn't have the ability to reach.

‘Teresa,' Olive said. ‘Close the door. Come over here. I want to show you something.'

Teresa obeyed, as Olive knelt down under the bed and pulled out a very large, flat piece of wood. When she lifted it up and turned it round, Teresa's breath caught in her throat. ‘
Madre mía
,' she said, and laughed.

‘Why are you laughing?'

‘You did this?'

Olive hesitated. ‘I did,' she said. ‘It's called
The Orchard.
What – do you think?'

It was one of the most extraordinary things Teresa had ever seen. Some of Isaac's paintings were pretty decent, but this one,
this
one, stood before her like a . . . person. It was not a case of thinking, it was a matter of feeling. The painting in its power overwhelmed her.

Her eyes darted all over it. She felt saturated. Who painted like this, a nineteen-­year-­old in her school pyjamas? Who knew such colours, who could take the land she had only just arrived in, and turn it into something better, and higher, brighter than the sun that flooded the room? For surely, this was the finca and its orchard, reimagined in a riot of colour and dancing shapes, identifiable to Teresa but so essentially changed.

Isaac had talked on occasion about art, about famous painters and what made someone stand out from the rest.
Novelty
, he always said,
makes the difference.
It was the fact that they were unlike the rest.
You can be a brilliant draughtsman
, he said,
but that means nothing if you're not seeing the world differently.
Teresa looked at Olive's painting again, and felt almost a wave of pain run though her. This wasn't just a case of novelty. This was something else, beyond words, an elusive power that was too much for her to comprehend. She didn't know if she believed in God, but she knew this girl was blessed.

‘You don't like it,' said Olive, her mouth thinning to a line. ‘I knew I should have worked more on those fruit trees. And perhaps there should be figures in it—­'

‘I like it,' said Teresa. They stood in silence before it. ‘Is – this what you do, señorita?'

Olive considered the question, laying the painting on the bed as delicately as one might a lover. ‘I got into art school,' she said. ‘I sent my pictures and I got a place.'

Teresa's eyes widened. ‘But you are here?'

‘Yes. I'm here.'

‘But you have
un gran talento
.'

‘I don't know about that.'

‘If I had the money I would buy your painting.'

‘Would you?'

‘I would be proud to have your painting on my wall. Why are you not at the school?'

Olive looked away. ‘I don't know. But it's funny. Just before we left for Spain, I purchased this green, a vivid grasshopper green – and a shade of scarlet, an oil called Night Indigo, a plum and a silvery grey – all colours I'd never used before. I just picked them up and put them on the counter. And it was as if I'd
known
that only here would those paints come into their own, and help me. That they would flesh out my fears and dreams.'

Teresa could not hide her confusion. ‘Look, Teresa, it's not easy to explain. My parents, the girls in London . . . Something's clicked down here. It was if this painting had been stalking my mind and now it's in the light. I've never felt so connected to the
doing
of the thing.'

‘I see.'

‘But now that it's done and . . . and out of me, I can't help wondering that the paints didn't do it on their own. As if my involvement was nothing at all.'

‘No, no. You have done it. If
I
touch the paints, nothing good will happen. But with you, it is different.'

Olive smiled. ‘Thank you for being so nice about it.'

‘Do you have more paintings?'

‘Not here, but I do have these.' Olive went over to one of her trunks and pulled out a large sketchbook, handing it to Teresa.

Teresa opened the pages and saw inside small sketches of hands and feet, eyes and bottles, cats, trees, flowers – completely unlike the painting in their realist, engraved style. Over the next page, she saw a portrait of Sarah, called
Mother, London
, and one of Sarah and Harold together, a still-­life sketch in pastel of the lemons Teresa had brought that first day.

She pointed at the lemons. ‘I asked you were they went. You said you didn't know.'

Olive blushed. ‘Sorry.'

‘You stole them?'

‘If you want to put it like that.'

‘Why is this a secret?'

‘It's not a
secret
. I just – don't tell anyone. Except you.'

Teresa glowed, hiding her pleasure in the pages of the sketchbook. The images were extraordinary, as if they might leap off the page. She kept turning, and was arrested by a double page of her brother;
Isaac Chopping Wood
,
Isaac with Coffee Cup
,
Isaac on a Pillow
.

Teresa felt a surge of pain and Olive yanked the book from her grip. ‘Just sketches,' she said. Downstairs, Sarah's laugh rang out, a little bell.

‘What will you do with this painting?' Teresa asked.

‘So practical,' said Olive. ‘Not everything has to have a purpose, you know, an end point.'

Teresa flushed, because this was exactly how she thought; pragmatically, like a jackal hunting for a rib. Still, she had detected a defensiveness in Olive's responses which mystified her. If she had half of Olive's skill, she'd be in Barcelona by now, far from Arazuelo. ‘You are going to hide it under your bed for ever, where no one will see it?' she said.

‘Of course I'm not.'

‘So why do you not show it now? You could put it on the wall.'

Olive went rigid, sitting down on the bed next to
The Orchard
. The old mattress gave way beneath her, and Teresa thought suddenly how squalid the bed looked, and how stupid Olive was to put up with such a state of being when she could clearly afford something better. They could even go into Calle Larios in Malaga to buy a new one – she could offer to take Olive, letting her try mattress after mattress until they found the perfect one. But Teresa kept silent, the deft pencil edges of her brother's face reworking themselves in her mind's eye.

‘I don't want it on my wall,' said Olive.

Teresa frowned. It seemed a flat protest. She came up to the edge of the bed, her hands on her hips. ‘You could sell this in Malaga, señorita,' she said. ‘You could make money.'

Olive flicked her eyes up. ‘Money? We've got money coming out of our ears.'

Teresa flushed. ‘You could go away.'

‘But I like it here.'

‘Paris. London. New York—­'

‘Tere. I don't
want
­people to know. Do you understand?'

‘If that was mine, I would show the world.'

Olive looked over at the painting. ‘Say you do show the world. But the world might not like it. Think of that. All those hours, all those days and months – years, even—­'