The Muse (27 page)

‘Will he hurt you, Isa?'

‘He will not get his hands dirty. Those days are over. But someone else might.'

‘Isaac, no.'

‘They're bombing Malaga again. You should leave, Olive. You all should go.'

‘But we
live
here.'

‘Imagine if you stayed. You might never paint again, all because you wanted to be brave.'

‘If I was dead, I don't suppose I'd much care. Besides, I haven't painted a thing since finishing
Rufina.
'

He turned to her in surprise. ‘Is that true?'

‘Yes, that's why I keep asking. I know it's selfish, Isa, I know.' She could feel a cry coming, but she swallowed it down. ‘Without you I'm stuck.' He did not respond, and she turned away to the blackness of the orchard.

‘You don't need me, Olive,' he said, eventually. ‘You just need to pick up your brush. Why do you insist so much on involving us? Is it so that you can blame us if it goes wrong?'

‘No.'

‘If I had half your skill, I wouldn't care who loved me.'

She gave a dry laugh. ‘That's what I thought too. But I'd rather be happy.'

‘Being allowed to paint is what makes you happy. I know that about you at least.' She smiled. ‘I like you, Olive,' Isaac went on. ‘You are a very special girl. But you are so young to be thinking of for ever.'

Olive swallowed again, tears pricking at her eyes. ‘I'm not young. You and me – why can't this be for ever?'

He waved his arm towards the darkness. ‘War or no war, you were never going to stay here.'

‘You don't
see
, do you?'

‘What don't I see?'

‘That I love you.'

‘You love an idea of me.'

‘It's the same thing.'

They were silent. ‘I have been useful to you,' he said. ‘That is all.'

‘What is it, Isa? What's changed?'

He closed his eyes and shivered. ‘Nothing's changed. It's always been the same.'

She pounded the veranda sill with her fist. ‘You should
want
to be with me. You should—­'

A muffled explosion from beyond the valley silenced them both. ‘What the hell was that?' said Isaac, looking at the horizon.

‘Teresa said they've started to bomb bridges again. Is it true your father is helping them?'

Isaac eyes were so dark with anger, she moved back. ‘I need to go to Malaga,' he said.

‘At midnight? What use will you be now?'

‘More useful than standing here.'

‘So that's it, is it? Us?'

‘Our ideas of what this is have always been different. You know that.'

‘What am I supposed to do with that painting?'

‘Give it to your father. I must deal with my own.'

‘What do you mean? I won't give up on this—­'

‘You're mixing things up, Olive. You're frustrated you cannot paint—­'

She grabbed his arms. ‘I need you. I can't paint without you.'

‘You painted before me.'

‘Isaac, don't leave me – please.'

‘Goodbye, Olive.'

‘No!'

Isaac stepped down the veranda and walked towards the orchard. He turned back to the house, his face half-­illuminated by the moon. Behind her, Olive could sense her mother had appeared at the kitchen door.

‘Where's he going?' Sarah said.

‘
Suerte
,' Isaac called over his shoulder, before slipping between the trees.

‘What does that mean?' asked Sarah.

Olive could feel her tears coming, but she refused to let her mother see her cry. ‘It doesn't matter.'

‘Olive, tell me what he said.'

Olive turned to Sarah, struck by the expression of worry on her face. ‘All it means, Mother,' she said, ‘is good luck
.
'

 

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

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

19

A
few hours after Isaac slipped away from the Schloss women and into the darkness, Don Alfonso's finca was attacked with fire and a second salvo was launched upon the church of Santa Rufina in the centre of Arazuelo. Later, ­people whispered that yes, they'd seen a disrobed Padre Lorenzo, running away from the flames into the village square, with a naked woman fast on his heels. Some said there hadn't been a woman at all, just the priest in a white smock, the bump of his private part visible under the cotton. Others swore on the Holy Bible there'd been a woman – a vision of Rufina herself, running from the godlessness behind her before she took flight into the air.

The only truth Arazuelo could attest to was that by dawn, the church was a shell and Don Alfonso's estate a blackened skeleton. Wood smoke hung over the air, smarting the eyes of those trying to go about their business, until the whole village fell into an uneasy stupor, knowing full well that retaliation for something like this would eventually come.

When Teresa came running through the grey dawn light, bashing on the front of the finca door, Olive knew something was very wrong.

‘Isaac has done something stupid—­'

‘What's he done? Where is he?'

Teresa looked stricken. ‘I don't know. The church is gone.'

‘Gone – what do you mean gone?'

‘Fire. And my father's house also.'

‘Dear God, Teresa. Come inside.'

AROUND TWO HOURS LATER, DON
Alfonso appeared, his once-­pristine suit now smeared with charcoal. He too banged on the finca door, and upstairs with Olive, Teresa cowered. ‘It's going to be all right,' Olive whispered.

Teresa gripped her wrist. ‘No, señorita
.
You do not understand.'

Harold let Don Alfonso in, and the man moved angrily through the hallway into the front east room. Olive crept down the stairs to peer through the crack in the door.

‘You have heard what has happened?' Don Alfonso said.

‘I have.'

‘News travels fast. It is an outrage. I could have been dead. My wife, my children – it is only because my daughter Clara is an insomniac that any of us are still here. Three of my stable grooms, an under-­butler and a pot-­washing boy had a part in it. I've found these men, Señor Schloss, and they are all in the jail, waiting their punishment. And do you know what they tell me? They tell me that Isaac Robles paid them for their help. Where did Isaac get the money to pay those men? It was certainly not from me. I cannot get the answers, because I cannot find my bastard son. Do you know where he is, señor?'

‘No.'

‘And yet you know my finca was set on fire.'

‘Is he not at his cottage?'

‘I sent Jorge and Gregorio there. All they found was
this
.' Don Alfonso held aloft an old copy of
Vogue.
‘Your wife's, I assume?'

A look of surprise passed over Harold's face, but he adjusted quickly back to an impression of calm. ‘She gives them to Teresa.'

‘My son set loose thirty of my thoroughbred horses, señor. He torched my stables. He burned down Lorenzo's church.'

‘Sit down, Don Alfonso, please. These are severe accusations.'

‘His own friends have turned him in. He is a devil, señor.'

‘I beg to differ,' said Harold, clearly irritated now. ‘Don Alfonso, your son does not have time for these games. Your son is a gifted man.'

It was Don Alfonso's turn to look surprised. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘Have you never seen his work?'

‘What?'

But before Harold could explain further, Olive pushed into the room. Both men jumped and turned to her. ‘Go upstairs,' said Harold in a tight voice.

‘No.'

Behind Olive, Sarah appeared. ‘What's going on here?' she said. Her eye rested on the figure of Don Alfonso, and the colour drained from her face. ‘Is he dead?' she whispered. ‘Is Mr Robles dead?'

‘Don't be ridiculous, Sarah,' said Harold, not able to mask the stress in his voice.

Don Alfonso inclined his head towards Sarah in a curt bow. ‘Is Teresa here?' he asked her.

‘She's upstairs,' replied Sarah.

‘
Mother
,' said Olive. ‘No.'

‘Please bring her to me,' said Alfonso.

‘
No
,' said Olive. ‘You can't have her.'

‘Liv, don't be ridiculous,' said Harold. ‘Be civilized.'

‘
Civilized
?'

‘Go and fetch Teresa.'

OLIVE WENT UPSTAIRS, BUT TERESA
was nowhere to be seen. Olive waited, buying time, pretending to look for her, praying that Teresa had got herself somewhere safe. She moved back down with determined steps and returned into the front east room. Don Alfonso narrowed his eyes when he saw she was alone. ‘Are you hiding her, señorita?' he said. ‘I know you are think you are her friend.'

‘I'm not hiding anyone,' she said.

He turned to Olive's parents. ‘It won't be good for you if you are hiding them. Isaac is wanted for theft, arson, criminal damage, attempted murder—­'

‘For God's sake,' Harold interjected. ‘We are not hiding your children.'

‘They are no longer my children. You should leave here,' said Don Alfonso. ‘You should go.'

‘On the contrary,' replied Harold. ‘I think we should protect those who do not enjoy your protection. I am beginning to understand you much better.'

Alfonso laughed. ‘You foreigners, you're all the same. You think you are protecting Teresa and Isaac? They will be the ones who will have to protect you. And do you think they will? That you are under some magic shroud, that your maid and gardener love you?'

‘Teresa is our maid, yes, and a bloody good one – but Isaac is not our gardener. You have no idea about what your son—­'

‘I know my son better than you do. What will he use to defend you, señor – a saucepan? Those degenerates he consorts with are more likely to put a hoe through your heart and join up with the Reds.'

•

When Don Alfonso had disappeared in his motor car shortly after this, Olive ran through the finca's rusty gates, down the path, into the village – by this time breathless and leg-­sore – and out and up the hill again, to Isaac and Teresa's cottage. They were not there, but Jorge and Gregorio had turned the place over. God, this cottage was a spare place, sparer than Olive had remembered it to be. In her mind's eye, it had become a rustic haven, a place to think and breathe and paint. In truth, it was a place one might wish to escape.

Isaac's room contained nothing but his unmade bed and a jar of dying roses on the windowsill. Teresa's meagre belongings were scattered on her bedroom floor. Olive was surprised to see one of her old paint tubes – the grasshopper-­green shade she'd used for
The Orchard
. There was a Veuve Clicquot champagne cork, and stranger things; a cut-­out square of material that matched her father's pyjamas. There was a crushed packet of Harold's cigarettes, and when Olive went to shake it, several stubs had been saved inside, their ends covered in the unmistakeable rouge of her mother's lips. Lying around the floorboards were loose pages ripped from a notebook, with words and phrases written in English in a diligent, neat hand:
palaver
–
snaffled – crass – gosh
–
I'm starving
– ghastly
–
selfish
. Alongside them were their Spanish meanings.

Olive's heart began to thump. Looking at all this flotsam from her parents' lives, this notebook of all the things they had probably said in careless passing – she had the chilly sensation that she didn't really know Teresa all.

The front door banged and her skin turned to gooseflesh. No footsteps followed – and she told herself it was the wind. The noise still unnerved her – and she imagined a wolf, sneaking in from the mountains. She was about to move out of Teresa's room, when she saw a photograph on the floor. It was a picture of herself and Isaac in front of
Rufina and the Lion
. Olive was smiling and Isaac, his eyebrows slightly raised, looked ready for his painter's pose. Olive had never seen this picture before, and without thinking, she rammed it deep into her pocket.

As she passed back down the corridor, she saw Isaac's original painting, propped against the wall. Teresa must have moved it back here, out of sight. The idealized faces of herself and her mother seemed to loom towards Olive, and she was struck again by their mannequin look, their monstrous blankness.

SHE WENT OUTSIDE TO LOOK
up at the hills. There was a wreathing pallor of smoke still in the air, the taste of the fire's aftermath. Isaac knew these hills well, better than Don Alfonso. He knew where to hide – but Teresa had not had as much time to escape. Something terrible was coming, Olive could feel it; and there was nothing she could do.

‘Teresa?' she called to the land, and her own voice rebounded back. ‘Teresa?' she shouted again, her panic rising. But all that Olive heard was the echo of Teresa's name, followed by the hush of the wind as it came rolling down the hills.

 

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

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

20

I
t was Jorge who spotted her, disappearing into the forest on the outskirts of the village. He and Gregorio were on the hunt, but it was only by chance that Jorge had his head turned in that direction; the glimpse of a slim brown leg, the flash of a dark plait. What happened next changed Arazuelo for ever, the place that was always supposed to stay the same. The trauma of it rang out as a long and ineradicable memory down the years to come, however hard those who witnessed it attempted to bury it.

Had he been any further away, Jorge would have lost her; for Teresa was swift-­footed and he was much heavier. But together, he and Gregorio stalked her through the trees. When Jorge shot his pistol into the air, she spun to face the direction of the sound, and Gregorio took the opportunity to grab her from behind.

She kicked and screamed, but Gregorio did not let go. ‘Where is he?' Jorge shouted at her, lumbering through the bracken.

‘What do you mean? Put me down.' Teresa felt as if her heart was inching its way up her body, thumping in her mouth, weighing down her tongue.

‘Where's your brother?'

‘I don't
know
.' Jorge moved forward, pushing his face close to hers. She could smell the sour catch of old alcohol on his breath. ‘Come on, Teresa, you know everything, little bird-­eye. Little spy. Where's your fucking brother?'

‘I don't know,' she repeated.

‘Tie her to the tree,' Jorge said, but Gregorio hesitated. ‘You heard me. Do it.' Gregorio didn't move.

‘I don't know where he is, Jorge, I swear,' Teresa said, sensing a chance. ‘You think he'd tell me? No one tells me anything—­'

‘Your brother set half the village on fire last night. When we catch him, he's a dead man. And you're going to help.'

He began to drag Teresa by her plait towards the tree. ‘Isa's known you since you were schoolkids,' she said, gasping at the pain arcing across her skull. ‘Twenty years your friend. How does your mother look you in the face?' she hissed.

‘At least I've got a mother who does,' said Jorge.

‘You're shaking, Gregorio,' Teresa went on at the softer man, out of her wits with fear, but scenting his discomfort.

‘Jorge,' said Gregorio. ‘We should take her to the station.'

‘Shut it,' Jorge said.

‘I mean it. I'm not tying her to this tree. Don Alfonso never said – let's put her in the truck.'

JORGE EVENTUALLY RELENTED, AND THAT
night they put Teresa in a cell at the civil guard headquarters, and all night Teresa was silent. ‘Check she hasn't done herself in,' Jorge spat. ‘Like her mother before her.'

‘What?' said Gregorio.

Jorge looked at his colleague. ‘Don't tell me you never knew. Her mother drowned herself. Probably didn't want to hang around to bring up that piece of shit,' he added, directing his voice down the dank corridor, loud enough for Teresa to hear.

The next morning, Teresa had barely slept. She had not been wearing many clothes in the first place, and no one had offered her a blanket – but what hurt more, what made her skin palpably shiver, was that no one had come to the station to speak for her, to rescue her. In the deep of the night, staring up through the bars, thinking of the cruel words Jorge had uttered, Teresa had convinced herself that any minute Olive would come, Olive would call her name, demanding that these brutish boys let her out. Teresa had to believe it, because if she didn't believe it, then the firing squad would come instead.

But Olive never came – and neither did Harold, even though he would have had more authority than his daughter. And as dawn broke, Teresa started to think,
Of course, of course – why would they come? –
and she was glad that no one could witness the pitiful embarrassment of hope.

Jorge and Gregorio came into her cell at eight o'clock in the morning, where she was sitting upright on the bed, every one of her vertebrae pressed up against the cold stone of the wall. ‘Up,' said Jorge.

She stood, and he approached. ‘For the last time, Teresa. Where is your brother?'

‘I don't kn—­'

He whacked her round the mouth and her head flew back, cracking against the wall.

‘I said, where is he?'

Teresa began to scream, until Jorge punched her again and she heard Gregorio cry out before she fell unconscious. The next thing she knew, she was blindfolded, bumping up and down in the back of their truck again, the iron tang of blood and a loose tooth in her mouth.

She tried to turn her head to the open air to see if she could sense where they were taking her, but she was still disorientated; her neck hurt, her skull throbbed. The blindfold had been tied so tight, and it cut across her eye sockets. It smelled like sweat and someone else's blood. Was this it? Deep in her heart, she had feared this moment would come. She was going to be shot in the head, round the back of some hut, fifty kilometres away from her home. And who would miss her? Who would mourn her passing?

The truck stopped. Teresa heard the men jump out of the wagon and swing down the back flap of the truck.

‘Don't shoot me. Don't shoot me,' she pleaded, hearing the crack of her own voice, surprised at this overwhelming passion to live, and how prepared she was to abase herself in order to do it. Anything, to live. ‘Gregorio,' she said. ‘Please.
Please.
Save me.'

But Gregorio did not speak. A hand took her arm and walked her a few steps, pushing her down onto a chair. Teresa heard footsteps moving away, crunching against what sounded like gravel. She had been placed in the direction of the sun, and she could feel it warming her face, orange and gold through the blindfold and the tender skin of her eyelids.
This is it
, she thought.

‘Olive,' she whispered, ‘Olive.' She kept saying the name, and then, to her surprise, the blindfold was lifted. There was silence, save the sounds of a few birds twittering as they flapped across the sky. Teresa squinted, blinking to adjust her vision to the blinding light. To her surprise, she saw Olive standing to her right, her head haloed in gold, the buildings behind her squares of white light.

‘Am I dead?' Teresa said.

‘No,' replied a man's voice.

Teresa could see that she was in the main square, on a chair placed directly in front of the charred frame of the church. The villagers had started to gather – shrinking away like a shoal of fish, as Teresa turned her head. She tried to rise from the chair towards Olive. Olive took a step towards her, her arm outstretched, but Gregorio pushed Teresa back down.

Jorge waved his pistol at the gathered villagers. ‘Keep back!' he shouted, but Olive stayed forward.

‘What are you going to do to her?' she shouted in Spanish. ‘What are you going to do?'

‘Shut up!' Jorge said before going over to the truck and pulling something out from the passenger seat. He walked back to Teresa, hands on his hips, assessing her, pacing round her slowly before taking her plait in his hand, weighing it like he was an old widow at market, turning his nose up at the produce. With his other hand, he lifted up a large pair of shears, the kind gardeners used to prune their plants and flowers.

‘I'll be fair,' he said, his fist wrapped round the plait. ‘Let's unravel it, bit by bit. I'm going to ask you one more time about your brother, and if you cooperate, you can keep your hair.'

IT LOOKED AS IF TERESA
had turned to stone, the only living thing her plait, coiled and twitching in Jorge's fist. Her gaze was distant; her body was there, but she was not. As Jorge undid her hair with an air of industry, she didn't flinch, she didn't cry out – she just sat, staring into nothingness. So still, so meditative, she looked almost complicit in the spectacle, until you noticed her bunched fists, the knuckles whitening through the skin.

‘Don't do this,' Olive said to the men. ‘She doesn't know where he is.'

Jorge swung round to face the other girl. ‘That's what she says.'

Snip
went the shears, a long tendril of black hair falling to the ground, where it lay in the dust like a snake. No one whispered, no one even seemed to breathe. ‘Señorita,' Gregorio said to Olive. ‘This is not your affair. Best to keep out.'

‘Don't hurt her,' said Olive. ‘You'll regret it. Does her father know you're doing this—­'

‘If you don't shut up, you'll be next,' Jorge shouted, lifting the shears again. ‘Where's your brother?' he asked Teresa, and still Teresa did not speak. Jorge began to hack the second handful of hair.

Just say something, Tere
, Olive thought.
Anything, a lie.
But Teresa was mute, keeping her eyes on the burned-­out church, and Olive could almost feel the whisker-­touch of dark hair falling against her own neck. Teresa still did not flinch, but Olive thought she could see fear glimmering in her eye, buried deep within that blank look.

‘Where is he?' came the question, again and again. And still, Teresa was mute, so Jorge cut more of her hair, close to the line of the skull, emerging as a clumpy, patchy thing. ‘You're a furry mushroom,' Jorge said, laughing. No one in the village joined him, but neither did they move to stop this spectacle.

‘Teresa,' Olive called. ‘I'm here.'

‘For all the good you've done her,' said Gregorio.

Once the bulk of Teresa's hair was gone, Jorge produced a barbering razor from his pocket. ‘What are you doing?' hissed Gregorio. ‘We've done what we needed to do. She got the message.'

‘I don't think she has,' said Jorge, placing the blade on the top of Teresa's head. He began to shave the remaining patchy tufts until she was completely bald, the ancient humiliation, back to the Bible days, the days of blood.

‘This is what happens,' said Jorge, holding the razor aloft, ‘when you conceal information about a wanted criminal and fail to cooperate with the law.'

‘The law?' said Olive.

The villagers remained immobile. Teresa's skull was covered with weeping nicks where he'd cut into her skin. Jorge pulled Teresa up out of the chair, and she moved with him like a puppet, her eyes dead.

‘Now take off your skirt and blouse,' he said.

‘Stop!' shouted another woman next to Olive, and Jorge stalked towards her.

‘You next, Rosita?' he said. ‘You want to look like a mushroom too? Because I promise you can be next.' Rosita shrank away, shaking her head, fear distorting her face.

Slowly, Teresa peeled off her skirt and blouse, revealing her skinny legs, her underwear. Olive wanted to seize her, but she worried that darting forward and grabbing Teresa might now make things worse for her. Jorge seemed so pumped up, and even though Gregorio was less sure of himself, he could be equally dangerous.

From the truck, Gregorio fetched a smock-­like dress that looked like it had been sewn in the sixteenth century, and a bottle, the contents of which Olive couldn't work out. He put the smock over Teresa's head, and helped her elbows and hands through the heavy sleeves. ‘Take off your shoes, Teresa,' he said, like a parent to a child, and when Teresa obeyed him, it made this grotesque theatre absurdly painful.

When Teresa's fingers fumbled over the knot in her shoelaces, Gregorio grew impatient and sliced them in two with his flick-­knife. And it seemed to be this – more than the shaving, more than the stripping – that finally unleashed Teresa's rage. Her one pair of shoes, so neatly polished despite their age, were now unbound flaps of leather lying in the dust. She cried out and fell down.

‘Get up!' Jorge screamed, but she didn't move. Jorge thrust the bottle at her. ‘This is what we do to traitors,' he said.

‘Who's the traitor?' Teresa replied, her voice a croak.

‘Do you want me to pour it down your throat myself?'

Teresa stared up at him, still refusing. ‘Gregorio,' Jorge said. ‘You do it.'

Gregorio was upon her before Teresa could ready herself. He pinned back her arms and drove his knee into her lower back. Pallid and sweating, he grabbed her jaw and hinged it open. ‘Drink it!' he screamed. The shock of Gregorio turning on her seemed to make Teresa numb with terror, and Jorge worked the neck of the bottle into her mouth with relative ease.

‘Drink it,' Gregorio hissed. ‘Drink the lot.'

Opening her eyes wide, Teresa turned her head so that Gregorio was forced to meet her gaze, and she kept them open as the contents was emptied down her throat. Some of the villagers ran away at this point, the spell of violence finally broken by this horror.

When the bottle was empty, the men let Teresa go. She gagged, strands of oil falling from the corners of her mouth, pooling into the dust.

‘Who knew we lived next door to the Devil?' one man near Olive whispered.

‘Go home now, Teresa,' Jorge said. ‘And try not to shit yourself. If we haven't found him in the next few days, expect another visit.'

Teresa rose to her feet and stumbled, and Olive pushed past the men to take her by the arm. This time, they didn't stop her. Teresa sagged against Olive's side, and the two girls staggered out of the square, the remaining villagers parting to let through this gagging, bald creature, whose bowels might go at any minute, thanks to the dosage of an entire bottle of castor oil.

No one jeered her progress – not even half-­heartedly, in the presence of Jorge and Gregorio. No one said a thing, slack-­mouthed in horror. They watched the girls carry on up the dusty path, out of the village towards the finca. They kept watching, right until the point they couldn't see them any more.

Jorge and Gregorio stepped into the truck and revved away in the opposite direction. Gradually, the square fell empty except for the dark clumps of Teresa's hair, abandoned in the gravel.