The Muse (26 page)

 

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Publishers

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

XVII

Q
uick telephoned in sick on the Monday, and was still not back by Wednesday, and I was too tied up working with Pamela to get everything ready for the opening night of the exhibition to go and see her. Reede was amassing an impressively eclectic list of attendees for ‘The Swallowed Century', and had placed Pamela and me in charge of organizing the invitations. Reede wanted coverage, relevance, attention – for the Skelton Institute to be cool and viable, a place where money flowed – and
Rufina and the Lion
was going to help him. Mixing high culture with pop, there was even a rumour that a Cabinet minister might turn up. And it had to be said,
Rufina and the Lion
, as both an intellectual challenge and an aesthetic offering, more than stood up to it. Reede had commissioned a frame for the painting, the first it had probably ever had. He had good taste; it was a dark mahogany, and it pinged Rufina's colours out even more.

Julie Christie had confirmed she was coming, as had Robert Fraser, the art dealer. Quentin Crisp, Roald Dahl and Mick Jagger had all been invited. I thought the Jagger invitation an unusual choice, but Pamela pointed out that earlier in the year, when the Rolling Stone had been put in custody on a drug charge, the papers reported that he'd taken with him forty cigarettes, a bar of chocolate, a jigsaw puzzle, and two books. Pamela knew everything about the Stones. Mick's first book was about Tibet, she told me. The second was on art.

The newspapers picked up the story of the exhibition, as Reede had hoped they would. The
Daily Telegraph
ran a headline on page 5:
The Spanish Saint and the English Lion: How One Art Expert Rescued an Iberian Gem.
According to the journalist,
An extraordinary, long-­lost painting by the disappeared Spanish artist Isaac Robles has been discovered in an English house, and will be brought to public recognition by Edmund Reede, art historian and Director of the Skelton Institute.
I wondered what Lawrie might make of this last sentence – or indeed, Quick – for both of them, in very different ways, were helping Reede achieve his aims. It annoyed me, but it did not surprise me.

In
The
Times
, the art correspondent, Gregory Herbert, wrote a long essay focusing on rediscovered artists like Isaac Robles – and how paintings such as
Rufina
and the Lion
both reflected and extended our understanding of the turbulence of the first half of the twentieth century. Herbert was invited for a private view, and he told us, as he stood before the painting, that he'd fought in the International Brigades in 1937, before the Spanish government had sent the volunteers home.

In Auschwitz and at Hiroshima,
Herbert wrote,
the toll has been written in ledgers and carved on sepulchres. In Spain, the Republican dead can be tallied only in the heart. There are few marked graves for those who lost the Civil War. In the name of survival, damage was internalized, becoming a psychic scar on toxic land. Murderers still live near their victims' families, and between neighbour and neighbour twenty ghosts trudge the village road. Sorrow has seeped into the soil, and the trauma of survivors is revealed only by their acts of concealment.

Even today, Pablo Picasso still stays away from the Andalusian city of Malaga, despite being its most famous son. When Spain broke apart, many artists escaped the cracks, fleeing to France or America rather than endure isolation, imprisonment and possible death. Life in its variety was cauterized, and so was art. For the poet Federico García Lorca it was too late to escape. One can only surmise that Lorca's fellow Andalusian, the painter Isaac Robles, may have met a similar fate.

Spain's past is a cut of meat turning green on the butcher's slab. When the war ended, ­people were forbidden to look back and see the circling flies, and soon they found themselves unable to turn their heads, discovering that there was no language allowed for their pain. But the paintings, at least, remain.
Guernica
, the works of Dalí and Miró – and now
Rufina and the Lion
, an allegory of Spain, a testament to a beautiful, wild country at war with itself, carrying its own head in its arms, doomed for ever to be hunted by lions.

By the end of Herbert's essay, you would imagine that Isaac Robles was well on his way to becoming highly collectible, enjoying a second renaissance of prices the likes of which the humble painter himself would never have dreamed. Herbert sounded so sure that he knew what the painting was about, that Isaac Robles had intended a political commentary on the state of his country. But I thought the painting, combined with the images of Justa in
Women in the Wheatfield
, seemed more personal – sexual even.

By the Thursday, when Barozzi and the other Guggenheim ­people from Venice arrived with their paintings – an ambassadorial art entourage, with better presents and suits – Quick was still not back, and Reede was furious.

‘She's not well,' I said. Quick wasn't answering her telephone. The nearer the exhibition had drawn to opening night, the further she had shrunk away from it. Even though I feared the pressure of the impending opening was crushing her, I almost hoped it would crack her open whatever the consequence, so the secret she was hiding from me would be forced into the light.

‘I don't care if she's on her death-­bed,' Reede raged, and I shuddered his the macabre accuracy. ‘This is the most important visit to happen to the Skelton in all my twenty years and she can't even be bothered to show up?'

He was in an extremely bad temper, for he had failed in his bid to get the Prado museum in Madrid to loan him the Goya. ‘Then who's the person I can speak to in the convent with the Murillo?' I had heard him saying through his open door one afternoon.

In Quick's absence, Reede had directed the hanging of the paintings himself, ordering Pamela and me to oversee the tea-­making and the clearing up of boxes, packing crates and twine. The Venetians were very friendly, I recall, and slightly disturbed by the freezing London winter. ‘Have you ever been to Venice?' one of them asked me.

‘No,' I said.

‘Go. It is like the theatre has been turned onto the street.'

The photograph of Isaac Robles and the unnamed woman had been blown up to cover four enormous boards. Two archivists were trying to affix it to the end of the gallery wall. No one dared point out that the camera was clearly centred on the slightly blurred face of the smiling young woman, holding the brush. ‘It's the only photograph we have of him,' Reede said, ‘so it's going in.'

The Venetians pulled their own Isaac Robles out of a crate and a great gasp went up from Pamela.

‘Oh, Dell,' she said. ‘
Look.
'

The Orchard
was indeed worth gasping at. It was stunning, far larger than I was expecting, at least five foot long and four high. The colours had lasted well over the past thirty years – it was so vibrant and modern in its sensibility, it could have been painted yesterday. There were echoes in the patchwork fields of
Rufina and the Lion
, but the detailing was almost hyper-­real, diligent on the ground, giving way to a symphony of brushstrokes in the sky.

‘It is my favourite,' admitted one of the Venetians.

‘It's beautiful.'

‘Where does Signor Reede want it?'

I looked at the plan. Reede wanted
Rufina and the Lion
to share a wall only with
Women in the Wheatfield
, which was still in its crate.
The Orchard
, because of its size, was unlikely to share wall space. ‘Put it here for now,' I said, indicating that the Venetians could park it safely in a corner of the gallery.

Although it was very exciting to be in that space that day – opening the wooden crates feeling like Christmas on a grand scale; sawdust and nails everywhere, and a magical sense of occasion – I had a deep sense of unease. Yes, there was the momentousness of this being Isaac Robles' first ever London exhibition – but the one snag was that Quick didn't think Isaac Robles painted these paintings at all.

I wandered down the gallery to take another look at the photograph, and stood, looking up at the woman I was so sure was Olive Schloss,
Rufina and the Lion
half-­finished behind her. It felt imperative that I understand this photograph more, that it was the key to unlocking the truth about that painting, and what was happening to Quick. I sought in that girl's slightly blurred face a younger Quick, full of hope and passion. And although Quick had become gaunt over the past months, I felt I could see in this bounteous, full visage, the girl she once had been. But I could not be sure of it. Over the last months, Quick had given me so much, in a way – and yet at the same time, far too little. My desire for answers had supplied me with my own, and although they were attractive to me, they were not necessarily true. Looking again at this life-­size photograph, and with no time left, I knew what I had to do.

In my lunch break, I sneaked up to Quick's office and took some Skelton headed paper from her supplies, hurriedly practising Reede's signature several times on a notepad. I typed up a brief letter of introduction and explanation, with regards to enhancing the contents of
The
Swallowed Century
, before taking a deep breath and faking Reede's squiggle at the bottom. With the letter in my handbag, I walked over to the main office of the Slade School of Art on Gower Street, and asked to check their alumni records. They barely glanced at the letter, and I spent the whole hour looking through 1935 to 1945.

No Olive Schloss had ever been registered. It felt like one of the last remaining threads had snapped, but I refused to believe that Olive had truly disappeared. She was there – in the Skelton, on those walls, surrounded by her work – she was in Wimbledon right now, a person I was determined to pin down. I found a phone box and dialled Quick's number, praying that she would answer.

‘Hello?'

‘You never made it, did you?' I said.

‘Odelle, is that you?' The words came out slightly disorientated, her voice slurring. She sounded frail, and my relief at finally hearing her voice soon gave way to fear.

‘Quick, I've been to the Slade.'

There was silence on the other end. I went on, frustrated and desperate, my face getting hot, my heart beginning to thump hard. ‘No Olive Schloss ever registered at the Slade. But you knew that, didn't you? Just tell me the truth.'

‘The Slade?' she repeated. ‘The Slade . . . why were you at the Slade?'

‘Quick, the exhibition opens tomorrow. Isaac Robles is going to get your glory. I don't think you should be alone.'

‘I'm not alone.' She stopped, wheezing for breath. ‘I'm never alone.'

I peered through the phone box's grimy squares of glass. Londoners were rushing back and forth in front of me. I felt as if were underwater, and their bodies were not really bodies, just smudges of colour, moving across my sight.

‘I'm coming to see you,' I said, surprised at how adamant I sounded with her – more than I'd ever dared to sound before.

I could hear Quick hesitate, thinking, the catch of breath as she stopped resisting. ‘What about your work?' she said. ‘They need you for the exhibition.'

Her protest was weak, and her words were everything I needed to hear. Quick needed me; she knew she did. ‘
You
are my work, Quick,' I said. ‘Can't you see?'

‘I'm not in a good way.'

‘I know.'

‘No – you don't understand. I'm scared. They're coming. I never meant to hurt her.'

Suddenly I felt very claustrophobic in this phone box; I wanted to get out. ‘Who's coming? Who didn't you want to hurt?'

‘I can hear them—­'

‘No one's coming,' I soothed, but she was unnerving me. I needed air, and her voice was so odd and desperate. ‘Don't be scared,' I said. ‘Quick, are you still there? You can trust me, I promise.'

‘What did you say?'

‘Listen, Quick. I'll be there soon. Quick?'

The line had gone dead. Feeling sick, I pushed my way out of the phone box, and hurried to the nearest Tube.

 

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
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September 1936

 

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
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....................................

18

I
t was still warm by late September, the air in Arazuelo still heavy with honeysuckle, the earth reddened and cracked. Lying beneath this beauteous landscape was sour matter, but it still didn't feel like war; not how the Schlosses thought war was supposed to be. It was something worse, a localized, persistent terror. Italian and German bombers would fly overhead, shooting at stationary planes on airfields, at Malaga port, at petrol tanks. But there was a strange sense of limbo, an intermittent hope that all this would be tied up soon, that the Republican government would sort a resistance against these nationalist rebels and their foreign allies, who were stretching their reach across the country.

The nationalists had gained control of Old Castile, Leon, Oviedo, Alava, Navarre, Galicia, Zaragoza, the Canaries and all the Balearics, except Menorca. In the south, they had seized Cadiz, Seville, Cordoba, Granada and Huelva. Malaga was still in the Republican zone – as was Arazuelo – but nevertheless, the rebels felt very near.

Harold would drive into Malaga in order to bring back supplies. He said some shops and bars would be open, whilst others were closed, and the trains and buses would mysteriously cease their timetables with no warning. Nothing was stable, no one was even wearing neckties any more, for such flourishes were taken as a sign of bourgeois tendency and might make you a target for the reds. Harold hoped the worst the Anarchists might do was steal his car, vehicles requisitioned ‘for the cause', petrol siphoned off for trucks, elegant motors left to rust.

The days were bearable; the worst was the nights. The family lay awake in the finca as gunshots peppered the fields, ever nearer. Each side of the growing battle saw the other as a faceless, viral mass contaminating the body politic, requiring excision from society. Right-­wing and left-­wing gangs were taking the law into their own hands, removing opponents from their homes, leaving them in unmarked graves amongst the hills and groves.

In many instances, politics was the cover for personal vendetta and family feud. Most of the right-­wing terror was directed against those who had influenced the violence against the priests and the factory owners back in 1934 – union leaders, prominent anti-­clericals, several Republican mayors. And yet – mechanics, butchers, doctors, builders, labourers, barbers, they too were ‘taken for a walk', as the phrase came to be known. And it wasn't just men. Certain women who had become teachers under the Republic were removed, as were known anarchist's wives. None of it was legal, of course, and there seemed no means of stopping it, when hate and power were in play.

As for the rogue elements on the left – despite the posters Harold had seen plastered around Malaga, imploring them to stop shaming their political and trade organizations and to cease their brutalities – they went for retired civil guards, Catholic sympathizers, ­people they knew to be rich, ­people they
believed
to be rich. Their houses were looted, their property damaged – and it was this that often struck first into the fearful imagination of the middle classes, rather than the chance they would be shot.

The Schlosses did not fear for themselves. They thought no one would touch them, as foreigners. They were nothing do with all this. Death was taking place beyond their villages, outside municipal authority and the sight of the ­people. The violence in the country – against both the body of a village and a villager's bullet-­riddled corpse – was concealed, although everyone knew it was there. But because you couldn't see it, you carried on. It was odd, Olive thought – how you could live alongside this; how you could know all this was happening, and still not want to leave.

She had long ago abandoned trying to listen to the BBC to seek the facts, for it offered little more than an improbable-­sounding hybrid of information from Madrid and Seville, adding it together and dividing it by London. Yet the Republican government stations were one long barrage of victory speeches and claims of triumph, which were rather undermined by actual events. Granada's frequency always crackled, not a word could be heard – and the same applied to the northern cities, whose radio waves could not penetrate the southern mountains.

The city of Malaga, however, was constantly broadcasting denials, rumours and myths; Republican calls to arms, meeting times and orders to build a new Spain, free of fascists. And on the other side, the alarming nationalist invective was a frequency in Seville. In the daytime, it would play music and personal announcements, as if there was no conflict going on at all. But by night, the insurgents would broadcast, and although there was still much bombast and warmongering in it, Olive used it to deduce the changing state of her adopted country's fortunes. She listened as Queipo de Llano, the general who had first broadcast from Seville, maintained his unrelenting bloodthirstiness, crying out that there was a cancer in Spain, a body of infidels that only death would remove.

IT WAS UNNERVING, ALL OF
it; and yet there were heartening stories of ­people refusing to do exactly what the generals wanted. Teresa reported how a priest in the neighbouring village prevented a Falangist gang from shooting the atheists in his parish. She had also heard rumours of leftists reprimanding Anarchists for trying to burn down the local church, even hiding right-­wing neighbours in their bread ovens, protecting them from certain death when the radicals turned up.

Olive, listening to these tales, could see how most ­people were massed in the middle. They wanted no disturbance, desperate just to live their lives away from these demonstrations of power, talks of purge, of brutality sprayed in blood against a whitewashed wall. But their desire couldn't change the truth of Arazuelo's atmosphere. She would walk into the village and see ­people's pinched faces, worrying who was going to defend whom when Arazuelo's day of reckoning finally came.

ISAAC PURCHASED A RIFLE IN
Malaga from a trade-­union contact, who was fond of poaching his boss's boar. He reinforced the bolt across the cottage door, but he knew this would mean nothing to someone determined to get him. More ‘­people of interest' to the nationalist rebels had left their villages to hide out in the countryside, or join the militias run by the Communist party in Malaga. But this wasn't far enough for Teresa. She wanted him to leave.

‘I think you should go north,' she said. ‘You've made too many enemies here. You don't fit. The left won't trust you because of our father, and the right don't trust you for not being his legitimate son.'

Isaac regarded his sister. The new severity in her face was an unwelcome development. ‘You don't fit here either, Tere,' he said.

‘But you're the one who put a bullet through the Madonna.
You're
the one who's spent his life teaching peasants their rights. You're the one—­'

‘All right, all right. But you think they're only going for men? You'd have to come with me.'

‘I won't leave.'

‘Jesus, you're as stubborn as the Schlosses.'

‘Well, we all know why they won't leave. Because of you. If you think about it, Isa, you're endangering them too.'

•

The British Consulate in Malaga had sent letters out to any of His Majesty's registered subjects it knew of in the region. Wide-­eyed, Teresa handed over the consul's letter, which was addressed to Sarah. After a thin breakfast, bread being scarcer and the goat milk drying up, the Schlosses discussed whether they should stay or go.

The letter informed them that warships were waiting to take them off Spanish soil into Gibraltar – and on, if they wished, to England. The threat, it said, was not from these nationalist insurgents and their foreign troops, but from those on the Spanish far left, the reds – who might soon loot these British-­rented fincas, and confiscate any private property.

Olive was determined that they should stay. ‘We can't just leave when it doesn't suit us. What sort of example is that?'

‘
Liebling
,' said Harold. ‘It's dangerous.'

‘You're the one still driving into Malaga like a man possessed. We're foreigners. They won't come for us.'

‘That's exactly why they
will
come for us,' said Harold, pointing at the letter. ‘That's what the consul said.'

‘Liv's right,' said Sarah. ‘I don't think we should leave.'

Harold looked at his two womenfolk in bemusement. ‘You
both
want to stay?'

Sarah got up and walked to the window. ‘London is over for us.'

‘I'm confused,' said Harold. ‘Only two months ago, you were clamouring to leave.' Sarah ignored him. ‘
I
think,' he said, ‘that we should leave if it gets any worse, but invite Isaac to come with us.'

The women turned to look at him. ‘It's my duty,' said Harold. ‘He's too valuable.'

‘Isaac won't leave,' said Sarah. ‘He'll fight.'

‘What would you know about it?'

‘It's obvious. He feels great loyalty to this place.'

‘As do I,' said Olive, still on the sofa, reaching over to light one of their dwindling supply of cigarettes. Her parents did not stop her. ‘Mr Robles isn't a coward,' she said, exhaling deeply, surveying them both. ‘But if you're planning to take him, then quite frankly, you should take Teresa too.'

Teresa was skulking in the corner. ‘Well, Teresa?' said Harold. ‘If we left, would you want to come too?'

‘Thank you, señor. I do not know.'

‘Has he nearly finished this
Rufina
painting?' asked Harold. ‘I keep dangling the bait for Peggy, but have not been given any news.'

‘I do not know, señor,' said Teresa.

‘You normally know everything, Teresa,' Sarah said, and the girl blushed.

‘He has nearly finished,' said Olive. ‘It won't be long, I'm sure.'

‘When you next go to Malaga, darling,' Sarah said to her husband, ‘buy a Union Jack.'

‘What?'

‘I want to hoist the Union Jack. So whatever bastard comes along to shoot us up, they know that we are neutral.'

‘We're hardly
neutral
, Mother,' said Olive. ‘Have you even looked at the newspapers?'

‘You know I don't like the newspapers, Olive.'

‘Unless you're in them.'

‘
Liv
,' said her father, a warning in his voice.

‘Well, what? She lives in a bubble. Our government has refused to get involved. So have the French. They're saying that defending the Spanish Republic is tantamount to a defence of Bolshevism.'

‘They're worried,
liebling
,' said Harold. ‘They fear revolution, that the situation here will spread to France, up and up across the Channel, into Regent Street, along the Strand and the Pennine Way.'

‘Baldwin's so scared of Hitler, he won't do anything.'

‘I don't think he is,' said Harold. ‘The Prime Minister is buying
time
rather than German favour.'

‘Either way – where does that leave you, Mr Vienna?' said Sarah. ‘Better for you – for all of us – if we stay in Spain.'

•

Rufina and the Lion
was in fact completed, but Olive hadn't painted anything since. She'd never experienced this lack of willingness to approach a canvas, and she didn't like it at all – feeling useless, and frightened by her lack of confidence. She didn't want to connect it directly to Isaac's lack of interest in her – she wanted to work independently of him, of any factor outside her own creative impulse – but it was proving impossible. She had begged Isaac to present
Rufina and the Lion
to Harold, but he wouldn't do it. ‘I've got more important things to worry about,' he'd said.

‘But you could just hand it over. My father's waiting. Peggy Guggenheim's waiting.'

‘I do not care if the Pope is waiting,' he snapped.

Olive started to feel that
Rufina
was clogging up her mind. Its power over her had become a reflection, not just of her relationships with Isaac and Teresa, but of the political situation that was swirling around them. Fear was stoppering her. She had painted it as a purge; now she needed it gone. When Isaac wouldn't take it, Olive suggested that Teresa take the panel down to the pantry, out of her sight.

Teresa refused. ‘It is too cold in there, señorita,' she said. ‘It might be damaged.'

‘But I can't paint anything now.'

‘
Tranquila, señorita
,' said Teresa. ‘It will come and go.'

‘Well, it's never gone anywhere before. What if that's
it
? What if it's just been these paintings, and that's it?'

ONE EVENING IN EARLY OCTOBER,
the Schlosses invited Isaac for dinner. He was quiet throughout, and afterwards Olive caught him alone, staring into the darkness of the orchard. She slipped her hand in his, but he did not take hers, his own resting there like a dead man's. She tried to cajole him again, saying that surely he could do with more money for the Republican side, and that giving Harold
Rufina and the Lion
would be the ideal way.

‘The Soviets have promised us arms,' he said. ‘We may lose Malaga. We may lose Madrid and half of Catalonia, but we will win the war.'

She leaned over to plant a kiss on his cheek. ‘You're so brave,' she said.

He seemed not to notice her kiss at all, as he ground the cigarette under his heel, ash smearing black on the veranda. ‘Teresa thinks I should go north. Our father is becoming more and more . . . loud, about those on the left. I represent something that holds him back. He's ambitious. Ambitious men do well in times like these.'