The Muse Read online

  Teresa flicked through the Renaissance book, colour plates of men and women in their finery, their skin taut as boiled eggs, bulging eyes, delicate ringed fingers and swathes of damask on their shoulders. Strangely elongated Virgin Marys, darted with a yellow beam of the Annunciation; nightmarish scenes of mythical beasts; men with five legs; women turning into pomegranates. She read the names silently: Bellini, Bosch, Cranach. It was another language to learn and assimilate, to wield like a weapon.

  The Vogue was well out of date, but Teresa didn’t care. It was hers. She was glad it was already a year old. Sarah barely glanced at her magazines before dumping them on the floor of her bedroom, their colours and allure a siren that Teresa was astonished her mistress couldn’t hear. But she didn’t want Olive getting into trouble.

  ‘Are you certain your mother will not mind?’ she said.

  ‘She won’t even notice. Isaac is still here I think,’ Olive said, putting away the sketchbooks and The Orchard under the bed. ‘We should go and see what my mother wants with him.’

  Teresa pushed down the cloud that rose in her chest at the mention of Isaac, closed the Renaissance book and followed Olive out.

  •

  Isaac picked up the second glass of lemonade and clinked it against Sarah’s. He was used to women being like this around him; feline, flirtatious, giddy. He never encouraged, but this only seemed to make their behaviour more pronounced. It was almost clownish – and yet he had learned not to assume immediately what women wanted from him. It might look like one thing, but it was quite often another.

  He thought of how essentially different Olive was from her mother, so innocent, reaching out to him like a drowning girl, more obviously than she probably imagined. And yet she intrigued him in a way that Señora Schloss did not. Sarah dazzled immediately, but there was something supple and interesting about Olive, beneath her awkwardness. She was a survivor of her parents’ marriage. He wondered whether if Olive stayed with them indefinitely it might work out badly for her.

  He heard footsteps, and Olive appeared at the door, switching her attention between him and her mother, as if she was trying work out a difficult sum. Teresa was peering behind Olive, with a strange look of triumph on her face that made Isaac wary.

  ‘Liv,’ said Sarah. ‘Guess what?’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘Mr Robles is going to paint my picture.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘As a surprise for Daddy,’ Sarah went on. ‘I’ve given Mr Robles a commission.’

  ‘But he hates surprises.’

  ‘Well, so do I, Olive. But Daddy is getting this painting, whether he likes it or not.’

  Olive came forward, seating herself on the moth-­eaten armchair, left at a careless angle to the sofa. ‘Have you got time to paint this, Mr Robles?’ she asked. ‘With all the work you have?’

  ‘It will be an honour,’ he said. Olive bit her lip and looked towards the unlit fireplace, filled with logs that Isaac had piled up for their convenience. Teresa remained in the doorway. She was sneering slightly at him, and he felt irritated with her. She lived in a bubble, she had no idea how many times over the years he’d protected her.

  ‘I should be in the painting,’ Olive announced.

  ‘Livvi,’ said her mother after a pause, realigning the crease of her trouser leg. ‘It’s my surprise.’

  ‘I think Daddy would like us both to be in the painting. We sat for one years ago. We should do it again.’

  ‘We did?’

  ‘You’ve forgotten. Yes, we did. Mr Robles, don’t you think that would be a good idea?’

  Isaac felt the pressure of the women’s attention like a physical weight. ‘You must decide,’ he said. ‘He is your father, your husband.’

  Sarah picked at a bobble on her trouser. ‘Mr Robles, if I agreed to sit with my daughter, would you need to paint us together?’

  ‘Not always, señora.’

  ‘Well then,’ she sighed. ‘We shall work it out between us, won’t we, Olive?’

  Olive tipped her chin in Sarah’s direction. ‘Yes, Mother,’ she said. ‘We will.’

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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

  6

  Olive and Sarah were to have three initial joint sessions, arranged when Isaac was not teaching in Malaga. Teresa was to guard the secret. ‘Tell Harold that we’re at the market in Esquinas,’ Sarah had instructed her. ‘Or seeing the local doctor. You can think of something, Teresa. You’re so clever.’

  By the second session, as Isaac painted Olive and her mother in the dimming light of his cottage kitchen, Olive knew something was wrong. Sarah, in a semi-­sheer lavender blouse and a brown silk skirt, kept her spine continuously at a slight arch, one arm draped behind Isaac’s kitchen chair. She was concentrating on being her best self for the artist, but Olive could see how bleak and drawn Isaac looked.

  She thought he should be happy; his party had just won the national election. It had been on the wireless, on the front pages of the newspapers her father brought back from Malaga. A left-­wing coalition was in power, something that surely must make him feel triumphant.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, when Sarah excused herself for a moment.

  He looked up from where he was painting, with a surprised expression. ‘A boy was killed,’ he said. ‘I knew him a little.’

  ‘Killed?’

  ‘Last night. A local boy called Adrián, a member of the Anarchist party. Worked in a factory in Malaga. Started by tying red ribbons on donkeys and bicycles, and ended up burning his boss’s property records. He had a loud mouth, but he was only a kid. Some bastards shot him and tied him to the back of a truck.’

  ‘Oh, Isaac. That’s awful.’

  ‘They’re calling it a crime of passion, which is a joke. He didn’t have time for love.’

  ‘Have they arrested anyone?’

  Isaac’s expression darkened. ‘No witnesses. He tied himself to the truck, of course. He didn’t have any feet left by the time they’d finished.’

  ‘Good God. Who would do such a thing?’

  ‘Everyone, no one. The Civil Guard are saying it was a Communist gang, mistaking him for some rich kid. Others are blaming it on the gypsies. Anarchist, Communist, Falangist or Socialist, oligarco, gitano or what? Maybe his father did it?’ Isaac spat.

  Olive wanted to comfort him, but she knew her mother would be back any moment. She tried to be steady. This was a one-­off, she told herself, a hideous thing, but still unique. The boy was a symbol of nothing, just an unlucky human put out too soon. But she remembered what Isaac had told her – the polar bear, the priest swinging from a tree, the soil of the land coursing through the ­people’s veins. She thought of The Orchard, waiting in her attic, her perfect, multi-­coloured paradise; and she felt ashamed of her ignorance, her foreign and insistent make-­belief.

  •

  The next evening, Teresa sat at the kitchen table in the cottage, whilst Isaac skinned rabbits he’d shot for a stew. She had before her the Vogue which Olive had given her, and she handled it as delicately as if it was a first edition of a precious book. The woman on the cover stared delicately back. She was blonde, wearing a long cream cape, one black-­and-­white-­striped beach shoe peeping out. She was leaning on the side of an open-­top car, shading her eyes against the sun but looking upwards nevertheless, at some invisible point. The sky behind her was deep blue. HOLIDAY – TRAVEL – RESORT FASHIONS ran along the bottom of the picture in a clean, attractive font.

  ‘You’ve been quiet,’ Isaac said. ‘Are you worried about what I’ll do?’ When she remained silent he said, ‘Jesus, Teresa. You should be worried for me.’

  ‘Just be calm about all this, Isaac. Nothing you do will bring back that boy Adrián. Stealing honey from the duchess’s b
eehives is one thing, but putting yourself in danger is another—­’

  ‘I could say the same to you, Tere.’ He pointed at the magazine with his knife. ‘You should behave, too.’

  ‘But I’m not in danger.’

  ‘Are you sure? Remember last time, Tere. I won’t bail you out twice.’

  ‘I haven’t taken a thing. Olive gave me this.’

  Teresa remembered how it had been with Miss Banetti. The loneliness, the drudgery. The woman had had so many belongings that she didn’t even notice when they began to disappear. It had been so tempting, so easy. Small things first, a ring, a silver matchbox. Then on to empty scent bottles, and finally a necklace of emeralds. Teresa had seen these items, always overlooked by the rich foreigners in her care, as fair payment for a grey life. She buried the trinkets in a tin out by the well, and she would visit them sometimes, never actually putting them on her own body, only holding the emeralds to the sun, watching them wink in complicity. She loved them so much that she felt no guilt.

  It was the German family who had caught and dismissed her. Isaac had gone to talk to them, explaining that she had mental problems – which was a lie, but was better than letting the Frau report her to the Civil Guard. He’d returned everything to them, but she kept quiet about the Banetti box, the emerald necklace hidden in their garden. It was her little private escape.

  ‘Tere,’ Isaac said more softly, bringing her back into the room, the sound of the rabbit innards slick on the blade. ‘Olive can’t be your friend, you know.’

  ‘You should take your own advice.’

  ‘I know it must be lonely for you when I’m in Malaga. But she’s some rich kid drifting around after her parents and before you know it, she’ll be gone again. I don’t want you to—­’

  ‘I’m not lonely. And I’m not a child. You don’t need to be so patronizing. I don’t want to be her friend.’

  ‘Good.’ He began to dismantle the rabbit’s leg. ‘Come and help.’ She slunk from the table and stood next to him. ‘You can’t tell me what to do, either, Tere,’ he said.

  ‘I can try.’

  He laughed, and she did too. ‘Haven’t I always looked after you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Isa. But I never needed you to.’

  •

  Harold had not seemed to notice his wife and daughter’s absence particularly. He seemed distracted, sitting at his desk in the middle of his study, marooned on the Moroccan tapestries he’d bought from a rug trader in Malaga, elbows digging into the fraying leather top, barely acknowledging Teresa as she dusted round him, or left him a glass of fino at his side. He looked like the captain of a drowning vessel who had found a piece of driftwood and was clinging on for dear life.

  On the day the women were having their last painting session, and Teresa was in the finca preparing a stew, the telephone rang. She waited, but Harold was nowhere to be seen. ‘Señor?’ she called. The house was silent, except for the telephone ringing and ringing. She tiptoed along the corridor towards the study, listening through the door before she went in, making her way across the rugs. As she hefted the Bakelite handle to her ear, she knew she’d made a mistake.

  ‘Harold, bist du es?’ It was a woman’s voice. Teresa remained silent, listening to the caught pocket of air as the woman inhaled sharply and the line went dead. She looked up; Harold was standing at the door, in his coat, holding his hunting rifle.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘Teresa, what the hell are you doing?’

  Teresa looked dumbly at the receiver, wishing in that moment that she’d never come to this finca, that she’d found work elsewhere. It had not been enough for her to move only between the tissue layers of the Schlosses’ lives – she had wanted to be closer, to the scars and the spots and the hot red mass of their hearts. But now she remembered the danger of knowing other ­people’s secrets.

  Harold came towards her as she slammed the receiver down. He put his hand on top of hers, and she was surprised by how warm it was. ‘Teresa,’ he said, smiling, his hand exerting the minimum of pressure. ‘Who could you possibly be wanting to call?’

  She looked at him in confusion, and then she understood, rearranging her face into humility, still hearing the echo of the woman’s hopeful voice, her panicked breath when she realized Harold wasn’t on the other end.

  ‘I am sorry, señor,’ she said. ‘I wanted to speak to my aunt in Madrid.’

  They fixed their eyes upon each other and Harold released her hand. He walked round and sat in his chair, opening the breech of the rifle. ‘All you had to do was ask, Teresa.’

  ‘I am sorry, señor,’ she repeated. ‘It will not happen again.’

  ‘Good. All right. Off you go.’

  She was at the door when he spoke again. ‘Where is my wife?’ he asked her, and Teresa turned back to face him, fear bursting in her stomach.

  ‘She is at the market, señor.’

  ‘At six in the evening?’ Harold locked the rifle and pushed back his chair.

  Teresa pinched herself through the pocket of her apron. ‘Yes. But she wanted to visit the church after.’

  ‘The church?’

  ‘Yes. La iglesia de Santa Rufina.’

  He laughed. ‘You know Mrs Schloss is not well, Teresa. If she keeps wandering off like this, you must tell me. Keep an eye out for her.’

  ‘An eye out?’

  ‘Keep watch for her. Wait here until she comes back. And when she does, tell her I’ve got work in Malaga. She’ll understand.’

  ‘Sí, señor.’

  ‘Is Olive with her, at the church?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad they’re spending time together.’ He laid the rifle on his desk. ‘Teresa, I want your opinion.’

  ‘Yes, señor?’

  ‘Do you think the villagers would like us to hold a party?’

  Teresa imagined that a party held by the Schlosses would be the most glamorous thing any of the villagers had ever seen – and she would be in the centre, organizing it. They wouldn’t mock her after that – no more gypsy slurs or bastard comments. The power of Harold and Sarah Schloss would reflect in glorious technicolour – on her. ‘I think it would be wonderful, señor,’ she said.

  She hurried back to the kitchen to see to the stew, and heard Harold pacing in his bedroom, the stop-­start of his feet as he moved back and forth from his closet to try on several outfits. He reappeared in a beautiful wheat-­coloured suit, with a blue shirt underneath, which set against his dark hair and made him look incredibly refined.

  His motor car revved and when he was gone, Teresa felt heavy again, burdened by Harold, bist du es?, by the secret they both knew he had entrusted her to keep. He had left a trail of cologne. A sharp, umbery echo of dark leather chairs and darker corners.

  •

  When she returned to the cottage, Isaac was packing away his paint materials in his bedroom. In the kitchen, a sheet was over the painting, as he would not allow anyone to see it before it was completed. Sarah had left, but Olive lingered at the table. She looked tired, and Teresa watched out of the corner of her eye how her hands moved constantly, her eyes darting from corner to corner. Teresa could not marry this urchinous twitcher with the stately, confident artist up in her attic. She wondered if Olive had painted anything new, and whether she’d be permitted to see it.

  ‘Your father asked where you were,’ Teresa said. ‘I told him you had gone to the church of Santa Rufina with your mother.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘In the village square.’

  ‘My mother doesn’t know about this.’ Olive rose to her feet. ‘I’ll have to get to her before Daddy does.’

  ‘He’s gone out,’ Teresa said.

  Olive’s face fell. ‘Of course he has.’ She sat back down.

  ‘Are you enjoying being painted?’ Teresa asked.


  ‘I don’t think I make a very good subject. My mother loves it, of course.’

  ‘Your father will be very happy to see it.’

  ‘Maybe. If it’s any good. Isaac won’t let me look.’

  ‘Your father – he tells me he is going to have a party.’

  Olive groaned. ‘Is that what he said?’

  ‘Don’t you want a party, señorita?’

  ‘You haven’t been to one of my parents’ parties. I think I’d rather visit the church.’

  She was in an irritable mood, and Teresa wondered quite how badly the portrait session had gone between Olive and her mother. All Teresa could conclude was that whilst Sarah was born to be watched, Olive was more of a watcher.

  She walked to the counter, fetched an onion and a knife, and began to chop. ‘Do you know the story of Santa Rufina?’ she asked, hoping to distract Olive from her gloom.

  Olive gazed towards the darkness of the corridor, where they could hear Isaac moving around in his room. ‘No.’

  ‘It is a story about two sisters,’ said Teresa. ‘They were Chris­tians. They lived in Seville, in . . . la época romana?’

  ‘Roman times,’ said Olive.

  ‘Yes. They made pots and bowls. The Romans wanted them to make pots for a party. A pagan party. But the sisters said, “No, no we won’t. Our pots are our own.” And they broke the mask of the goddess Venus.’

  ‘Goodness me.’

  ‘They were arrested. They threw Justa down a well. And Rufina – they made her fight a lion.’

  Teresa noted with pleasure how Olive had stilled, listening to her story, as the shadows threw black dancers up the walls and the onion sweated in the pan.

  ‘A big lion,’ she went on. ‘A hungry lion. En el anfiteatro. All the ­people watching. But the lion did not want to fight. He sat, he did not move. He would not touch her.’

  ‘What then?’ whispered Olive.

  ‘They cut off her head.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And they threw it down the well to meet her sister.’