The Muse Page 6

  She found it impossible to express to her parents why she’d applied, the portfolio she’d collated, the essay she’d written on background figures in Bellini. Despite all she’d absorbed about women’s shortcomings in art, she’d gone and done it anyway. This was what she couldn’t understand; where the urge had come from. And yet, even though an independent life was just within her reach, still she was sitting at the foot of her mother’s bed.

  Turning again to Sarah, she considered fetching her pastels. Once upon a time, her mother would let Olive parade in her furs, or her strings of pearls, or take her for eclairs at the Connaught, or to hear this violinist or that clever poet perform his work at the Musikverein – always friends of Sarah, and always, Olive had gradually realized as she grew up, in love with her. These days, no one knew what Sarah Schloss might say, or do. She resisted the doctors, and often the pills seemed pointless. Olive felt like she was nothing but a dreg, jetsam in her mother’s wake. So she drew her, in secret, in ways that Sarah would probably never forgive.

  THE LONG WINDOWS WERE AJAR, and a breeze made the curtains dance. The dawn wind had lifted an impressive cloudscape from the mountains beyond Arazuelo, a duck-­egg sky striated gold and pink. The letter still in her hand, Olive tiptoed towards the balcony and saw blank fields spanning towards rugged foothills in the distance, patched with scrub and wild daisies, where kites circled and grasshoppers sawed in the empty melon fields, oxen dragging ploughs across the earth in preparation for later seeding.

  Oblivious rabbits hopped across the orchard and far off in the hills goats were being herded, the bells on their necks clanking atonally and out of rhythm, a calming sound because it lacked any conscious performance. A hunter’s gun rang out, and birds rose in chaos against the baroque Andalusian morning. Sarah did not stir, but the rabbits scattered, expert hiders, deserting the surface of the waiting earth. Olive closed the windows and the curtains dropped. Her mother probably hoped her long-­sought tranquillity was to be found here – but there was a wildness under the tolling convent bell, the chance of wolves in the mountains. The futile yaps of a dog in a barn would puncture every silence. And yet, since their arrival, Olive personally found the landscape and the house itself energizing, in a way that was unfamiliar and wholly unexpected. She had taken an old wood panel that she’d found in the outhouse at the end of the orchard, carrying it up to the attic as if it was contraband. She had treated it in readiness for paint; but it remained blank.

  Her father strode into the room, his large foot skidding a Vogue under the bed. Olive jammed the letter in her pyjama pocket and spun round to face him. ‘How many?’ he asked, pointing at the sleeping figure of his wife.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Olive. ‘But more than normal, I think.’

  ‘Sheiße.’ Harold only swore in German in moments of great stress or great freedom. He loomed over Sarah and lifted a stray strand of hair delicately off her face. It was a gesture from another time, and it made Olive squeamish.

  ‘Did you get your cigarettes?’ she asked him.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Your cigarettes.’ Last night, he’d mentioned needing to get cigarettes from Malaga and visiting an artist’s studio – hoping to sniff out another Picasso, he’d said, laughing, as if lightning really did strike in the same place twice. Her father always seemed to slip out of the days like this – bored quickly, yet demanding an audience whenever he turned up again. They’d barely been here two days, and already he was off.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes. They’re in the car.’

  Before he left his wife’s room, Harold poured his beloved a glass of water and left it by her bedside, just beyond the orbit of her reach.

  •

  Downstairs, the shutters were still half-­closed and the minimal furniture was in shadow. The air had a tinge of camphor laced with old cigar smoke. The finca could not have been lived in for several years, Olive supposed. A large catacomb above the ground, each of its rooms reticent at her presence, long corridors furnished in colonial habits, dark hardwood cabinets empty of homely objects. It felt like everything was as it had been in the 1890s, and they were characters out of time, surrounded by the discarded props of a drawing-­room play.

  The vague moisture in the air was already evaporating. Olive threw open the shutters and sunlight bleached the room, a day of exposure but no warmth. The view was an uncultivated slope, which led down to the high wrought-­iron fence and onwards, to the beginnings of the village road. She looked out; scraggy bushes and empty flower borders, three fruitless orange trees. Her father had said these mansions were always built outside the villages, near to well-­irrigated and lush earth, where in summer, he declared, they would enjoy olive groves and cherry blossom, flower gardens of dama-­de-­noche and jacaranda, fountains and leisure and happiness, happiness.

  Olive still had on her winter pyjamas and stockings, and an Aran jumper. The flagstones were so cool, it felt as if rain had just fallen on their large smooth squares. Just do it, she thought. Tell him you’ve got a place, and go. If only it was easy to act on thoughts. If only it was easier to know what was the best thing to do.

  In the pantry, she discovered a tin of coffee beans and an old but functioning grinder. It was all there was for breakfast, and she and her father decided to drink it on the veranda at the back of the house. Harold went to the room where the telephone was. He had chosen this finca as it was the only one hooked up to a generator, but it was a surprise they had a telephone, and Harold was very pleased.

  He was murmuring in German, probably to one of his friends in Vienna. He sounded insistent, but he was too quiet for her to make out the words. When they’d been in London, and he’d had news of what was happening in his home city – the street fights, the hijacked prayer meetings – he would plunge into dark silences. As she ground the beans, Olive thought of her childhood Vienna, the old and the new, the Jewish and the Chris­tian, the educated and the curious, the psyche and the heart. When Harold said it was not safe for them to return, Olive could not quite take this in. In the circles they moved, the violence seemed so distant.

  He’d finished his conversation and was sat on the veranda waiting for her, on a tatty green sofa someone had left out in the open air. Over his coat, he was wearing a long spindly scarf that Sarah had knitted, and he was frowning over his correspondence. He always had a knack of making sure that his post would be waiting for him, wherever they landed.

  Olive lowered herself into a discarded rocking chair, hesitating for fear damp had weakened the glue, woodworm seeing to the joints. Her father lit a cigarette and placed his silver box on the flaking veranda floor. He sucked on the tobacco leaf, and Olive heard the satisfying crackle as his breath intensified the heat.

  ‘How long do you think we’ll be here?’ she asked, trying to sound casual.

  He looked up from his letters. A thin line of smoke rose straight from the cigarette tip, no breeze down here to shift its journey. The column of ash accumulated, curving downwards and scattering onto the peeling boards. ‘Don’t tell me you already want to leave.’ He raised his dark brows. ‘Are you –’ here, he sought the particularly English word – ‘pining? Is there someone we left behind in London?’

  Olive stared listlessly at the January-­thin orchard, briefly wishing that there was some chinless Geoffrey, with a white stucco house in South Kensington and a job at the Foreign Office as an under-­secretary. But there was no one, and there never had been. She closed her eyes and could almost see the dull metal wink of imaginary cufflinks. ‘No. It’s just – we’re in the middle of nowhere.’

  He laid the letter down and regarded her. ‘Livvi, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t leave you on your own. Your mother—­’

  ‘I could have been left on my own. Or with a friend.’

  ‘You always tell me you don’t have any friends.’

  ‘There’s – things I want to do.’

/>   ‘Like what?’

  She touched her pyjama pocket. ‘Nothing. Nothing important.’

  ‘You never made much of London anyway.’

  OLIVE DID NOT REPLY, FOR her eye had been caught by two ­people standing in the orchard, waiting at the fountain that lay beyond the immediate ribbon of grass that surrounded the house. It was a man and a woman, and they made no effort to hide themselves. The woman was wearing a satchel against her body, and she seemed at one in this garden, the canes in the parched earth the only remnant of the tomatoes, aubergines and lettuces that must have thrived here once, when someone cared.

  The man had both his hands stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, chin down, but the woman stared up at the muscular satyr in the fountain, poised with his empty canton. She closed her eyes, breathing in the air. Olive breathed too, the faint wafts of charcoal fire and fields of sage, the emptiness of this place, its sense of desolation. She wondered if there was a means to get that water flowing.

  The ­couple began to approach the house, both of them with a pace as sure as the mountain goats, avoiding rabbit holes and minor rocks in their seemingly inexorable desire to approach. It jolted Olive, this confidence. She and her father watched them come near, their progress punctuated by the light snap of bracken beneath their feet.

  The woman was younger than Olive had thought. Her eyes were dark, her satchel bulky and intriguing. She had a small nose and a little mouth and her skin was burnished like a nut. Her dress was plain black, with long sleeves that buttoned at the wrist. Her hair was also dark, thick and braided into a long plait, but as she turned to look at Harold, strands within it glinted redly in the morning sun.

  The man had almost black hair, and was older, probably in his mid-­twenties. Olive wondered if they were married. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. His face was that of a Tuscan noble, his body a sinewy featherweight boxer’s. He was dressed in pressed blue trousers, and an open-­necked shirt like those Olive had seen on the men in the fields, although his was pristine and theirs were threadbare. His face was fine-­boned, his mouth had an agile facility. His eyes were dark brown, and they grazed Olive’s body like a small electrical current. Were these two together? Olive was probably gawping, but she could not look away.

  ‘We bring bread,’ the man said in accented English, as his companion fumbled in her satchel and raised a loaf aloft.

  Harold clapped his hands with delight. ‘Thank God!’ he said. ‘I’m starving. Hand it over here.’

  THE PAIR MOVED TOWARDS THE veranda. Although she was about the same height as the girl, Olive felt much bigger than than both of them, and uneasy for it – her arms too long and her head too large, her limbs out of control, giving her away. Why the hell was she still in her pyjamas like a schoolkid?

  The girl placed a hand on her own chest. ‘Me llamo Teresa Robles,’ she said.

  ‘Me llamo Isaac Robles,’ the man said.

  ‘Me llamo Olive Schloss.’

  She must be his wife, Olive thought, for why else would he be with her at this time of the morning? The ­couple laughed, and she felt a flare of rage. Being called ‘Olive’ in Spain might be funny, but it was hardly the same as being called ‘Anchovy’, or ‘Apricot’. Olive had always been teased for her name: first, as Popeye’s woman; then as an adolescent, a cocktail nibble. Now, on the cusp of freedom, she was being laughed at for being the fruit upon the Spanish tree, and still no one had ever plucked her.

  ‘Harold Schloss.’ Her father shook hands with both of them, and Teresa handed him the bread. He beamed at it, as if it was a bar of gold and Teresa one of the Magi. ‘I’m her father,’ he added, which Olive thought unnecessary. Teresa knelt down, and with the careless precision of a magician, she produced from her satchel a strong-­smelling hard sheep’s cheese laced with sprigs of rosemary, a cured sausage, three small quinces and several enormous lemons. She placed each fruit with a flourish on the scarred wood, where they glowed like planets, a solar system in which she momentarily became the sun.

  ‘Having a picnic without me?’

  Sarah had appeared at the kitchen door, shivering in her silk pyjamas, wearing one of Harold’s flying jackets and a pair of his thickest hunting socks. Even haggard from a bad night’s sleep and the champagne they’d picked up in Paris, she looked like an off-­duty movie star.

  Olive saw the familiar reaction; Teresa blinked, dazzled by the bright blonde hair, the air of glamour that clung to Sarah wherever she went. Isaac knelt and plunged his fingers into the satchel. Something living appeared to be at the bottom, and it stirred, and the satchel began to move of its own accord.

  ‘Jesus!’ Olive cried.

  ‘Don’t be a coward,’ said Sarah.

  Teresa caught Olive’s eye, and smiled, and Olive felt furious to be so publicly humiliated. Isaac pulled out a live chicken, its loose feathers floating to the floor, scaly feet dangling comically in his grip. The bird’s reptilian eye swivelled; fear twitched in its toes, tensing into claws. With his left hand, Isaac kept it still on the floorboards. It was making a muffled cluck, straining for the cool of its mistress’s bag. Slowly, Isaac placed his right hand on the back of the bird’s head, and cooing quietly, he tightened his grip. With a determined twist, he broke the chicken’s neck.

  The bird slumped onto Isaac’s palm like a stuffed sock, and as he took his hand away and rested the creature on the veranda, Olive made sure he saw her look down at the drying bead of its eye.

  ‘You will eat today,’ Teresa said, directly to Olive. Olive couldn’t tell if this was an offering or an order.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it so up close,’ said Sarah. She gave the newcomers a radiant smile. ‘I’m Sarah Schloss. So who are you two, then?’

  ‘It’s just a bloody chicken,’ Olive snapped, her heart contracting as Isaac Robles laughed again.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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

  2

  Teresa watched the group move indoors as she collected her offerings from the veranda. She hadn’t wanted to come; it looked so obvious to her, so needy. There’s another rich guiri turned up with his wife and daughter, Isaac had said. You should see the car, the travelling trunks. There’s a gramophone roped to the roof. ‘Who is he?’ she’d asked her brother, but neither he nor anyone in the village knew. All that was clear was that a week ago, the duchess’s old finca had finally got some new inhabitants.

  It was not that unusual for wealthy foreigners to come to this corner of southern Spain, with their industrial inheritances and discontentments with city life. Indeed, Teresa had worked for two sets of them before. They came down via Paris or Toulouse, Madrid or Barcelona, laden with boxes of watercolours and novels – and typewriters to write their own novels – and initialled trunks, which sometimes fell onto the road because of their clumsiness with the local mules. They were bohemian millionaires, or, more commonly, the bohemian children of millionaires, from Texas, Berlin, or London, wanting to dip their brush and dissolve in the sierra like one of their barely used watercolour squares. They arrived, they lived for a bit, and most of them departed.

  Teresa could see out of the corner of her eye that Olive had not gone inside. The toes of her woollen socks had been inexpertly darned, which Teresa thought was a shame. ­People like this should dress better. Olive came towards her and knelt down. ‘I’ll help you,’ she said – in halting Spanish, which was surprising. Under the girl’s fingernails were crescent moons of vivid green paint. Her bob haircut needed a trim – untamed, it coped her head like the cap of a wide mushroom. When Olive smiled, Teresa was struck by how Sarah’s features had been repeated in her daughter’s face, but it was as if they had missed a beat and become a jarring echo.

  ‘I’m still in my pyjamas,’ Olive said, and Teresa did not know how to reply. That much was obvious, wasn’t it?
She picked up the floppy chicken and shunted it into the satchel.

  ‘It’s beautiful here,’ Olive went on, weighing one of the lemons in her palm. ‘My Baedeker says North Africa isn’t far. “The Catholic kings wrenched this land from the Moorish Caliphates. Crucifying heat in the summer, and skin-­peeling cold in the winter, enormous night-­time skies all year round”. I memorized it.’

  She seemed jumpy. Teresa had watched the girl when Sarah had called her a coward; she’d looked as if she had the words to fight back, but was keeping every single one locked inside her skull. There was an urgency in Olive’s body, in the movements of her hands. She reminded Teresa of a trapped animal, restless because someone had approached the bars of her cage.

  ‘So,’ Olive said, in Spanish again. ‘How long have you been married?’

  Teresa stared at her. ‘Married?’

  Olive frowned. ‘Casados – that’s right, isn’t it?’

  Teresa laughed. ‘Isaac is my brother,’ she said, now in English. She saw the blush spread over Olive’s face as she pulled a loose thread of wool from her jumper.

  ‘Oh,’ said Olive. ‘I thought—­’

  ‘No. We have – we had – different mothers.’

  ‘Ah.’ Olive seemed to gather herself. ‘Your English is very good.’

  Teresa removed the lemon gently from Olive’s grip, and Olive gazed in surprise at the fruit, as if she had no recollection of taking it up.

  ‘There was an American lady in Esquinas. I worked for her,’ Teresa said. She decided not to mention the German family she had also worked for, who, before returning to Berlin merely months before, had given her a rudimentary facility in German. Life had taught her that it was wiser not to play all your cards at once. ‘Her name was Miss Banetti. She did not speak my language.’