The Muse

7

Lawrie and I made it to the cinema for our first date. In the end, we went for You Only Live Twice. There was so much bare flesh and sadism in it, I was embarrassed for making the suggestion. No romance, just gadgets and Sean Connery’s chest that looked borrowed from an ape. I think, on reflection, I would have preferred to watch Catherine Deneuve, but I was happy simply to sit with Lawrie, to catch his lovely scent, the dense warmth of his body, this person who in turn had chosen me.

Over the next two weeks, we saw each other nearly every single day. It was a fabulous sickness. We went to the Wallace Collection and the National Gallery, to see if we could spot any more paintings with the initials I.R. (no success). We went to the theatre, and I still have the ticket stub. It was called Play by Samuel Beckett, and I had never seen anything like it. I remember my delighted shock as the curtain went up, the three actors revealed — one man and two women, playing his mistress and his wife — stoppered to the neck in giant grey funeral urns, unable to move, gabbling incoherently before they began interspersing their stories to the audience, remaining oblivious of one another.

We went to Soho restaurants and bars — All Nighters, the Flamingo — and discovered that we danced together very well. I didn’t like having to shout to be heard over the noise and it got very smoky past eleven. We saw gangsters and their girls there: slick hair, gold rings, a shimmer of malevolence. But the important thing was the live music. It was wonderful — ska, calypso, jazz and blues.

I didn’t know it, but a bond had been sealed, and who’d suggested what, who’d wanted what — that strange dance of allusion and manners that distinguishes the first time for anything — had faded. We were dependent on each other without really knowing each other, in that way the young can be when they have never been burned or hurt or discarded, when they share everything, making the mistake that the other person is the answer to their confusing sum. He was lonely and I was lost — or was it the other way round? We hadn’t slept together; it hadn’t got to that yet. It was very innocent, in its way.

Since our exchange in the rain on Piccadilly Circus, I’d hardly seen Quick. Only Pamela and I — and a couple of the academics, who normally kept to the basement with the archives — seemed to come in dutifully every day. Quick seemed to be absent more than you would consider acceptable, often only coming in for a couple of hours. We were attached to the research part of the building, not the gallery round the front on Jermyn Street, so it was always quiet. I missed Quick’s attention.

In her absence, Pamela invited me to eat my sandwiches with her in the courtyard, leaving the reception desk unattended. I’d hesitated, firstly because I was still finishing my Muriel Spark book, a collection of short stories and radio plays she’d had published six years before. The second reason was that I did not really want to hear more about ‘people like you’ — a phrase that Pamela occasionally slipped into our conversations — but my lack of contact with Cynthia, and the absence of Quick, was making me miss female company. And thirdly: I really thought someone should be manning reception.

Pamela’s lunchtime questions about life in Trinidad were a lesson to me in how little her school days, and all the days after, had taught her of the Empire’s reaches. But she also had a genuine curiosity — the weather and what humidity and heat did to books, to clothes, they how they shaped the food your mother once made you, the music you listened to, the people you knew — Pamela’s questions made me realize how far away from it I really was. It conjured Cynth, our long journey together, and then it reminded me of our stupid stand-off, and I thought I might cry, so instead I pushed Pamela to talk. She told me about her mother the seamstress, and how her father portered meat at Smithfield. She had five brothers — and a sister, she said, who’d died when Pamela was eight.

‘I’ve got to ask, Odelle — you got a feller?’ she said. ‘You been looking sort of dopey these last few weeks.’

I hesitated. I so wanted to talk about Lawrie, about love — what it might feel like, and whether I was in it. ‘No,’ I said, instead. ‘I haven’t.’

Pamela narrowed her eyes. ‘All right. You keep your secrets. I’ve got a boyfriend. Billy. He works behind the scenes at All Nighters, but I wouldn’t expect you’d go there.’

‘Why?’ I said.

She laughed. ‘’Cos you’re too sensible to waste your youth dancing in clubs.’

I laughed back, intuiting true flattery in her comment, that for the first time, she was imbuing me with some sort of sophistication and status. But I could still picture how Lawrie and I had danced in that very club, the sweat running down our backs. It did feel like a different me.

Pamela wore Billy like a medal, but thinking of the men I’d seen there, I wondered if he was more of a bronze than a gold. As the days wore on, and our sandwich lunches continued, my book of Spark stories still unfinished, I found myself surprised to feel sorry for Pamela, whose company I was coming to enjoy. ‘Billy’s got big dreams,’ she’d say, but never elaborated about what exactly, and I had the feeling they didn’t really include her.

Reede had telephoned Lawrie, saying he’d had an ‘inordinate piece of luck’ with the Prado gallery in Madrid, and could Lawrie come as soon as possible. On the morning he was due at the Skelton, he was already waiting for me on a bench in the middle of the square.

‘Hel-lo,’ I said, sitting down next to him. ‘Excited for news of the lion girls?’

He smiled. ‘A bit.’ As he leaned over to kiss me, a man walking past tutted loudly. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I heard the word ‘disgusting’. We ignored him; I was never going to say anything, however much I might have liked to, but I did wonder if Lawrie might speak up.

‘Come on,’ I said, when it was clear that either Lawrie hadn’t noticed, never assuming such a comment might be directed at him — or that he didn’t consider it worthy of attention. ‘You’ll miss your appointment with Mr Big Shot. But you go in first, I’ll follow.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t want Pamela to know about us.’

‘Are you embarrassed about me?’ he said.

I laughed. ‘Of course I’m not. It’s just — well, if she finds out about you, I’ll never hear the end.’

*

Sitting at my desk, having safely outwitted Pamela, I couldn’t stop thinking about what was going on in Reede’s office above me. I was very curious about Lawrie’s painting. And although my mother always said that if you listen at doors you deserve every burned ear you get, I knew Reede wasn’t going to tell me a thing. Quick was away that day, and Lawrie couldn’t be trusted to relay every particular.

I took the back stairs to the next floor and hesitated before putting my eye to the keyhole. I could feel my pulse beating hard, fearful that one of them inside would turn, and hear me. Lawrie’s painting was propped up on the easel by the desk. It was a perfect rectangle, filled with vibrant colours; vermilion, lavender, indigo, terracotta, livid greens. And to my complete surprise, sitting in one of Reede’s low-slung leather armchairs, was Quick. Once upon a time, the Skelton had been a domestic house — most of the panelling was original — and I imagined Georgian ladies sitting where Quick was now, playing with a spree of little dogs and wondering what syllabub to feed their guests.

What was Quick doing here? She was staring into the empty grate, her arms wrapped around her body. She looked nauseous, as if she was waiting for an explosion. She reached down into her handbag and brought out her cigarettes, busying herself with lighting one.

‘So. Isaac Robles,’ Reede was saying, pulling out a photograph from a buff folder on his desk. ‘Ever heard of him?’

‘No,’ said Lawrie.

‘The Prado in Madrid sent me this. They think it’s him, in Malaga, around 1935 or -6. We don’t know who the woman is, but the photo was most likely taken in his studio, and she’s probably a model he used. It matches up to other images of him in Madrid earlier in the thirties. He was just beginning to enjoy a bit of fame when this photograph was taken. But of course, what has excited me most is that the painting in progress on Robles’s easel looks exactly like it could be yours.’

There was a silence. Lawrie had his back to me, so I couldn’t see his expression through the keyhole, but he was very still, as if he’d been stunned.

‘What?’ Lawrie said, quietly. ‘Is that possible?’

Reede smiled. ‘Thought you’d like that. He’s only started on the lion by the looks of it in the photograph, but it’s fairly emblematic, wouldn’t you say?’

Lawrie took the photograph from Reede’s outstretched hand. His shoulders were hunched, head bent in concentration. Quick remained seated, watching him, dragging deeply on her cigarette.

‘Where did the Prado get this?’ Lawrie asked.

‘They don’t know for sure. Their records from the thirties are not complete, for obvious reasons. Robles might have left it with someone to keep it safe when war broke out. They might not have known what to do with it, so gave it to the Prado. Isaac Robles wasn’t very popular with the authorities, and his work wasn’t really to their taste. You didn’t want to be caught with evidence that you were friends or acquaintances with undesirables.’

‘ “Undesirables”?’

‘From what we know, Robles moved in quite left-wing circles. That meant he could have been a political agitator. They probably accepted this photograph and slipped it in their files. Robles didn’t survive to match Miró or Picasso in output and trajectory. But what he did make is superlative. One theory for his small output, other than an early death, is that he destroyed a lot of his work. That sort of practice always makes a painter more special — it’s his rarity. Now, to the point. I believe this painting of yours is what we call a sleeper.’

‘A sleeper?’

‘Yes, it’s been lying in wait for us, overlooked for years. We’re looking at 1936, perhaps,’ Reede continued. ‘The fact there is no frame is unfortunate. You can learn a lot from a frame’s quality. I assume Robles wouldn’t have had access to many, if he was back and working in the south of Spain. But if this is by Robles, and I think it is, then it was painted as he reached the cusp of his powers before war came. Look at the colours, the surreal narrative, the playfulness. It’s highly unusual. I see why he was so prized at the time.’

‘What happened to him?’ Lawrie asked.

‘War happened, Mr Scott. There are several theories. One is that he went north to join forces with other Republicans as Franco’s troops inched up from the south. They never found a grave, but at that time, it wasn’t uncommon. He was from the south, Andalusia, and he lived and worked in Malaga for a time, fairly unsuccessfully. He travelled to Madrid and Barcelona — there are a couple of his lithographs there, fairly minor.’

‘I see.’

‘But at the time this photograph was taken, Robles wouldn’t have been so worried about war. He was working well. He’d abandoned his idealistic, figurative aesthetic once he was back home, and it appears that he started to paint quite differently. A few months before Spain cracked apart, he painted a work that caused a real stir. It’s called Women in the Wheatfield. Have you heard of it?’

‘No.’

Reede turned towards the door, and I swore he looked at the keyhole. I froze.

‘It’s not particularly famous, but it’s a special painting,’ said Quick, and Reede turned back to her. Gradually, I edged my heart back down my throat.

‘Why is it so special?’ asked Lawrie.

‘I’ve done a little investigating,’ Reede went on before Quick could say anything more. ‘We know that Robles sold Women in the Wheatfield in Paris, around the time this photo was taken. A man called Harold Schloss sold it.’

‘I see,’ said Lawrie. Even through the keyhole, I could see that he was uncomfortable.

‘It went to New York for a while, and now hangs in Peggy Guggenheim’s house in Venice. I’ve seen Women in the Wheatfield myself,’ Reede went on, ‘and it has similar qualities to yours. Extraordinary in the flesh.’ He touched the edge of Lawrie’s painting. ‘Sometimes, I think he would have been a genius, had he carried on.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s not always easy to define. But you see, with most artists, you have one thing or the other — the visionary with sub-standard technical skills, or a short time frame of astonishing output that diminishes in quality, for one reason or another. These fellows have no training in composition, and most of them can’t therefore subvert it. Or, you have the excellent trained draftsman with no imagination, who will never paint the world anew. It’s actually quite hard to find someone who has it all. Picasso has it — you should see his early works. It’s subjective, of course, but I think Robles had it too. And I think your painting demonstrates his skills to a higher level than Women in the Wheatfield. Some say his scant works are political; others find them to be escapist tours de force. That is the quality they have — perpetually interpreted, yet always standing up to every iteration. Robles has lasted. You don’t get bored. You see new things. Moreover, on a basic aesthetic level, they wash gorgeously over the eye whilst never being twee.’

‘But you can’t prove this is a Robles,’ Quick said.

Reede narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Right at the moment, I can’t, Marjorie. But there are avenues. He painted other pictures. It’s a case of tracking them down and lining this up with them. Your mother is — recently deceased, I understand, Mr Scott?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I wonder — do you think she kept receipts?’

‘Receipts?’

‘Yes, of things she bought. Paintings, for example.’

‘She wasn’t the sort of woman who kept receipts, Mr Reede.’

‘Pity.’ Reede looked thoughtfully at the painting. ‘Anything you have regarding the purchase would be very useful. I ask about the provenance, not just in the instance of your wishing to sell the picture, or us perhaps to exhibit—’

‘Exhibit?’ Quick said.

Reede blinked at her. ‘That’s right. I ask, Mr Scott, because this painting may be a legal matter.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Lawrie, the panic palpable in his voice.

Quick stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Perhaps there’s no need to get into that now, Mr Reede. It’s not really the Skelton’s approach, an exhibition for a single painting—’

‘You’re probably aware of what happened in the thirties in Europe to valued works of art, Mr Scott,’ Reede interrupted. ‘A lot of them disappeared. The Nazis took them off gallery walls, removed them from private homes—’

‘This painting wasn’t stolen,’ Lawrie said.

‘You sound so sure.’

‘I am. My mother wouldn’t have stolen anything.’

‘I’m not suggesting she did. But she could easily have purchased a stolen item. Robles was Spanish, working solely in Spain, as far as we know, although his paintings sold in Paris. Did your mother have any connection to Spain?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Well. Here’s one theory. Artworks moved around Europe quite freely in those days. Harold Schloss was a well-known Viennese art dealer specializing in early twentieth-century modern art. If he sold Women in the Wheatfield, he might have sold more of Robles’s work. Schloss had a Paris gallery, so it’s possible your painting was there around the same time.’

‘This painting went from Spain to Paris?’

‘Possibly. By this point Robles was back in Malaga, so maybe Harold Schloss visited him down there. Dealers will go anywhere to sniff out talent.’

‘This is all just conjecture, Mr Scott,’ Quick murmured. ‘Just an avenue—’

‘Many of the gallerists in Paris were Jewish,’ Reede went on. ‘I don’t know about Schloss’s history, we’d have to find that out — but in ’42, when the Nazis had occupied Paris for a year, they closed a lot of the businesses down and sent the owners to be interned before they went onwards to — well, to the camps. Many paintings were never recovered. Others were hidden away, only to turn up in the strangest of places. Junk shops, for example. Suitcases. Old train tunnels. Flea markets.’

There was a silence. On the other side of the door, I was barely breathing.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Lawrie.

‘After the war, the Nazis who were captured claimed they’d burned the lot. Poppycock, of course. They stole too many to have destroyed them all. And they knew what they were doing. They knew that what they were taking was valuable, even as they claimed it didn’t fit the new aesthetic of the Reich.’

‘What do you think happened to Harold Schloss?’ Lawrie said.

Reede looked annoyed. ‘I’ll be investigating that, as I said.’

‘This painting wasn’t stolen,’ Lawrie repeated.

‘There’s no way to be certain — at least at the moment. The first half of this century was a mess for the art market, and we’re still picking up the pieces. Art has always been used for purposes other than pleasure, be it for political leverage or a loaf of bread.’

‘All right.’ Lawrie ran his fingers through his hair.

‘I’m speaking to a representative at the Guggenheim foundation, who is being a great help in investigating what — if anything — they have on Isaac Robles, which may shed more light on this painting here.’

Lawrie exhaled slowly. ‘Thank you — I think,’ he said. He went to take the painting off the easel, but Reede stretched out his arm.

‘Don’t you think, Mr Scott — all things considered — that it might continue to be safer here? We have a night watch and an alarm system. I fear that in Surrey—’

‘The crime capital of the world?’

Quick intervened. ‘Your mother’s death — was it announced in the papers?’

‘It was.’

This surprised me — what sort of people had their deaths announced in the papers?

‘That is the kind of thing that attracts art thieves,’ said Reede. ‘People who get death notices in papers usually have things worth nicking,’ he went on. Reede’s use of the word nicking pinged out to me; it was the sort of word Pamela would use. ‘I know it sounds preposterous, Mr Scott, but even so. Allow us to look after it for you. It will be safer.’

Reede was a slick act; polite, pressurizing, authoritative, conciliatory all at once. ‘All right,’ said Lawrie. ‘A little longer.’

‘Thank you. Sincerely. I’ll be in touch as soon as I have news. This is very exciting, Mr Scott. I can only thank you for choosing the Skelton as your base of investigation—’

‘Can I keep this photo?’ Lawrie said, holding up the battered square.

Reede looked puzzled. ‘Keep it?’

‘Until we meet again. Just to have a closer look.’

‘Marjorie will get Rudge or Bastien to make a Xerox copy for you.’

I tingled at the sound of my name, terrified Reede would discover me hiding here, but I was unable to drag myself away. ‘I’m convinced that photo’s an original, Mr Scott,’ Reede said, ‘and I can’t let it go. Marjorie — are you all right?’

Quick jumped. ‘What?’

‘I said, will you get one of the girls to make Mr Scott a Xerox copy of this photograph.’

Quick gathered herself and took the photograph from Lawrie. She carried it by the tips of her fingers, not even looking at it. I backed away from the keyhole and moved as fast as I could down the corridor.

I wasn’t fast enough.

‘Odelle?’ Quick’s voice was low and quiet. I stopped and turned, relieved to see she had closed the door behind her. ‘Come here,’ she said.

I walked towards her, shamefaced. ‘You were listening,’ she said. Given the faint glint of amusement in her eyes, I saw no point in lying; I’d been caught creeping down an otherwise empty corridor.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Please, don’t—’

‘Apparently, we’re not supposed to look through keyholes.’

‘I know.’

She looked down at the photograph in her hands and went still. ‘Think he’s got a talent?’ she said.

‘I do. Do you believe that’s a genuine Isaac Robles in there?’

She pushed the photograph into my hands. ‘If Reede says so. He’s the one that knows. And it looks like it matches the one in this image. But what do you make of it?’

‘I’m not an expert.’

‘I don’t want a bloody expert, Odelle. I just want to know if you like it. It’s not a test.’ She looked exhausted, and I noticed her hands were trembling slightly.

‘It unnerves me.’

She leaned against the wall. ‘Me too.’

‘But it’s very beautiful.’

‘The subject matter is insidious.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s as if there’s an extra layer to the painting we’re not privy to. You can’t get at it, but it’s there.’

I looked closely at the photograph. It was bent, splodged, with a liquid stain in the bottom left corner. It was in black and white, and looked as if it had been through the wars. And yet the image was clear enough — a man and a woman, standing in front of a large, half-finished canvas. They were in a workshop of some sort. The man alleged to be Robles was without a jacket, his sleeves rolled up, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was unsmiling, staring straight at the photographer. He had thick, slightly wavy hair, and dark brows, a slender face, nice cheekbones, compact body — and even in this locked-away moment in time, his eyes were attractive, his glance determined. He was holding a large palette covered in many paints, and his body was turned all the way to the camera. He seemed defiant.

The woman on his right looked happy. She had an open face — she couldn’t have been much more than a teenager really, but in those old photos, girls always look like women before their time. She was really laughing; her eyes were almost invisible, they were so creased. She had that cheery unselfconsciousness that always makes a person beautiful, however unremarkable their face. Her hairstyle was half-crimped, close to her head in the thirties style, but flyaway, as if she didn’t care. She was pointing to the painting, and in her hand she held a brush.

‘Who’s the woman?’ I said.

Quick closed her eyes. ‘His muse, probably. Or just a model.’

‘He’s an Italian Paul Newman,’ I said, and Quick laughed.

The photo jarred something in me. It was so potent, so full of a story. I flipped it over, and amidst the marks of time, at the bottom left, I read the handwritten caption, O and I..

‘Did you see this, Quick — who are O and I?’ I asked. ‘Is it I for Isaac?’

But Quick was no longer in the mood for speculation. ‘Don’t stand there gawping, Miss Bastien,’ she said. ‘We haven’t much time. Go and copy that for Mr Scott, will you? Off you go.’

8

Three days later, Quick invited me to her house. I had mentioned in passing that my birthday was coming up, and I found a small card, left on my desk, asking me to lunch on the Saturday. I was thrilled. It was not normal for employers and employees to mix like this, but my curiosity overrode any reservations I might have had. I told no one I was going.

My shoes clipped the pavement and my sense of adventure rose. It was the very last of summer; London was a motor-car fume, a cigarette stub on the paving, a cirrus sky. By now, I was a fully fledged observer of the uneven spurts and scars of London housing. The postcodes, the brick, the rose bush absent or present, the foot scraper, the height of your front steps or the lack thereof was a language I had learned to speak. You couldn’t live here and not notice the difference where roads reigned in peace or chaos, a mangy dog lolling by the gutter, ragged kids, a neat box hedge, the flicking net curtain. In London, there were many different ways to live, but few to change the life you had.

The bombings of the war had left odd patterns in so many streets, and Quick’s long road was a familiar mongrel, starting with a handful of stately Victorian survivors, a slew of Edwardian terraces, a sudden and squat apartment block that had been erected in the fifties, with wide white balconies, concrete walls and a midget ivy that someone had planted in an attempt at greenery, but which barely reached the first-floor window. Then, further along, was where she lived, on the edge of Wimbledon Common.

I stood before Quick’s house. It was a low-slung, pale-blue-coloured Georgian cottage. You but half closed your eyes, and a woman with a muslin dress and bonnet could so easily just have slipped within. Why the woman working if she have a place like this? I wondered. I thought Cynth would love to see this cottage, and how unlikely it was she ever would. I used the knocker, an old copper handle specked with verdigris, and waited. There was no reply. Honeysuckle spilled everywhere around me, framing the door. From within I could hear the strains of a classical piece, the simple steps of a piano, complicating itself as the stanzas went on.

I wondered if the burn on my back was indeed eyes watching me, or just my worried imagination. I hadn’t been into a white person’s house, not even Lawrie’s. This was, shall we say, a very white street. The bolt slammed back, the door pulled open and in a rectangle of gloom, Quick was before me. That silvery short hair, those liquid pupils shrinking in the sunlight. She looked smaller than at work. ‘You came,’ she said. I had never entertained the thought that I might not. The piano was much louder now, playing through the house like a theatrical opener to our pas de deux.

She gestured for me to step inside. It was a deep house, set back, and the floor stretched down a corridor, on towards a glimpse of garden, where leaves moved in a light breeze and the silhouette of a solitary cat was shaped like a waiting vase. ‘Garden?’ Quick asked, but it was not a question really, for she was already walking towards it. She was taking delicate steps as if she didn’t quite trust her own feet. I swivelled my eyes to the left where the front room opened out, and saw a brief glance of polished floorboards, wide rugs, pot plants and an upright piano. Wherever I looked, the front room, the corridor — the whitewashed walls were bare of pictures.

It looked decidedly un-English, no heavy Victorian tiles underfoot, no raised flock wallpaper, no cornicing, no heavy wood. There were bookshelves though, and I longed to pry. To the right, a flight of stairs began; I doubted I would ever see where they led. Another room opened off to the left as we carried on down the corridor, towards the square of light. It had a desk in it, and a wind-up gramophone from where the dying notes of the classical recording was emanating. I thought it was quite old fashioned of her to have a gramophone.

When we reached the kitchen and the open garden door, Quick stopped. The cat skittered out into the undergrowth, where it settled, a pair of pale-yellow eyes regarding me between the leaves. ‘Lunch,’ Quick announced. A large tray waited on the table. On it were bread rolls in a basket, a brash yellow cheese, some cold chicken legs, a pork pie and small red tomatoes, jewels of condensation running plumply off their sides. It all looked good, and I said as much.

‘It’s very simple,’ Quick said. I offered to carry the tray into the garden. ‘Not at all,’ she said, batting me away, before conceding, ‘but perhaps you can take those.’ She indicated a large earthenware jug of water and two glasses, and I took them outside, following her stiff gait. ‘Something stronger?’ she asked over her shoulder, and this time it was a question. I declined.

Her garden was not large, but it was full of trees and bushes, and pink hollyhocks, more honeysuckle, the drone of accompanying bees, a little wilderness at the end. A church bell rang in the distance, a sombre line of twelve dongs to hold the time before it slipped away once more.

The garden moved in the breeze. Quick put the tray down on a stone table and a car revved in the road. ‘Pull up a pew,’ she said, gesturing to one of the three sun chairs. Two were old and saggy and had clearly seen much use. I obeyed, compelled by her authority. Lowering herself down gingerly into one of the older chairs, she slowly extended one leg after the other upon the grass. Kicking off velvet slippers, she revealed petite bare feet, browned by exposure. Looking at Quick’s ten toes, I felt trussed in my winkle-pickers, my wedged pill-box hat, my plain green dress. She pushed a pair of sunglasses down onto her face and I lost sight of her expression.

‘There are days like this,’ she said, ‘that I wish could go on for ever.’ She poured us each a glass of water, struggling a little with the weight of the unwieldy jug. She glugged her glass and smacked her lips. ‘Please eat,’ she said. In her own habitat, she seemed much more relaxed. Gone was the haunted expression in Reede’s office, even the debonair diffidence she sometimes employed for me and Pamela. I took up a quarter of the pork pie and began to eat it with a piece of bread roll. It was a good pie; the pastry melting away, the cool of the jelly, the rich shock of pig.

‘I hope we’re not giving you too much to do at the office?’ she asked.

‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘It’s all manageable.’

‘Good.’

‘How’s your married friend?’

I looked at Quick, worried she was a mind-reader. ‘Fine, thank you. She and her husband have moved to Queen’s Park.’

‘You’re not lonely?’

‘No.’

‘Writing anything?’

‘A little.’

‘Can I read it?’

‘Read it?’

‘Well, that’s what people usually do with writing, isn’t it?’ She looked amused.

‘I don’t—’

‘I’d be honoured if you showed me.’

‘It’s not very good,’ I said.

She pulled a face. ‘Does it matter whether you think it’s any good?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why?’

‘Well — because — because I have to be critical of it, to make it better.’

‘Well, that’s a given. But isn’t writing something as natural to you as breathing?’

‘In some ways. But I have to work at what I write,’ I said, my voice rising. ‘Every writer does.’

‘But you pick up a pen and write without much preamble.’

‘I suppose.’

‘And are you proud of breathing? Do you revere your ability to breathe?’

‘It’s who I am. So if it’s not any good, then neither am I.’

She stared at me. ‘Do you mean as a person?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, no. Don’t be moral about this, Odelle. You’re not walking around with a golden halo beaming out of you depending on the power of your paragraph. You don’t come into it, once someone else is reading. It stands apart from you. Don’t let your ability drag you down, don’t hang it round your neck like an albatross.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘When something is considered “good”, it draws people in, often resulting with the eventual destruction of the creator. I’ve seen it happen. So whether you think it’s “good” or not should be entirely irrelevant, if you want to carry on. It’s tough, but there it is. And of course, whether I think it’s good should also be neither here nor there. Even more so, in fact. I think you’re worrying too much.’

I was silent. I felt like I’d been shot.

‘Do you want to publish your work, Odelle?’ she went on, as if we were talking about nothing so substantial as a train timetable.

I dug my shoes into the grass and studied the tips intently. ‘Yes.’

Surprisingly, my honesty created a companionable silence, a moment of reprieve. To publish my work was what I wanted; it was the only goal I’d really ever had.

‘And do you hope to marry one day?’ she asked. ‘Have children?’

This was a swerve, but I had grown used to her staccato, jumping thoughts. Often with Quick you got the sense there was a whole other conversation going on underneath her words, one that only she could hear. The idea of being a wife was vaguely odd to me; the thought of being a mother, completely alien. Even so, the mind is elastic, so I thought of Lawrie and leapfrogged prematurely into the future. ‘Maybe one day,’ I said.

‘The only problem is, children grow up. Or maybe that’s a good thing, in your case. They can look after themselves, you can look after the words.’

‘Can’t I look after both?’

‘I couldn’t tell you. I’ve never tried.’ I considered the house behind us; Quick had no sign of a family, children or otherwise. I tried to imagine Quick as a child, and I couldn’t do it. She was too sophisticated and strange to ever have been such a rudimentary being.

Quick placed her cigarette in the ashtray. She readjusted her glasses, and forked a tomato with such expert precision that not a seed escaped. She plunged it into her mouth, and swallowed it. ‘Mr Scott brought his painting to the Skelton because of you,’ she said. ‘Didn’t he?’

My stomach flipped. ‘I — what? — I—’

‘Don’t worry, Odelle. You haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘He didn’t — it wasn’t me, it was the Skelton’s reputation — he—’

‘Odelle,’ she said firmly. ‘I saw you kissing in the reception.’

‘I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have — I don’t want—’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that. Are you happy?’

I thought about this. ‘Yes.’

‘Just be careful of him.’

I sat back in my chair, overwhelmed. ‘Do you — know him?’

Quick lit another cigarette, her fist gripped so tightly round the lighter that her knuckles had turned white. She breathed out the bluish smoke. ‘No, I don’t know him. I’m only looking after you. That’s my job. I recruited you, and I value you, and I want you to be all right. Men are not always — well — just make sure you don’t do anything you don’t want to do.’

I realized then, that Quick was not a person to make herself vulnerable. That in fact, she would do anything to avoid such a predicament. ‘I won’t,’ I said. It felt like Quick was admonishing me; this flash of a harsh demeanour had curdled the garden’s lovely atmosphere, where even the bees seemed to fall silent. ‘He’s not like that.’

She sighed. My bones felt like lead. But I could have got up, I could have thanked her for the pork-pie quarter and the bit of bread which was all I’d managed to eat, and walked through the cool bare corridor, back out to life and Lawrie and Cynth and the future, and never have talked to Quick personally again. Things might have been easier if I had.

‘Has he told you anything about the painting?’ she went on.

‘Only that he’s pleased it might be an Isaac Robles,’ I said, dully.

‘But he’d never heard of Isaac Robles before this?’

‘No.’

She looked thoughtful. ‘Why do you think he wanted a copy of that photograph?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, trying my best to hide my irritation. ‘To look at it more closely, I suppose. To put the pieces together.’

‘Odelle, does Mr Scott understand that Mr Reede would like to make this painting a big splash — not just for the Skelton, but for himself? He spoke of the possibility of an exhibition. Is that what Mr Scott wants?’

‘I don’t know what he wants. But surely an exhibition can only be a good thing.’

‘Men like Edmund Reede are circus masters. They will spin a reputation from thin air. They will wrap it up and increase its wonder, just so what they possess increases in value. What I mean is, Odelle — be careful to remind Mr Scott what he’s actually looking at. Don’t let Reede take what he has away from him.’

‘But I thought you agreed with Mr Reede that the Skelton should keep his painting safe.’

‘Only until Mr Scott has made his decision.’ She took a long drag on her cigarette and stared into the hollyhocks. ‘If I was Mr Scott, I would keep it. I would keep it and enjoy it. His mother clearly did, and so should he.’

‘But if it is an important painting, he could sell it, he could use the money. He’s stuck, you see.’

She turned to me. ‘So he does want to sell it. He’s worried about money.’

‘I don’t know the ins and outs. But the painting could be useful. If there was an exhibition of it — a long-lost painting come to light, that sort of thing — I’m sure that would be popular. Lawrie could be involved. He could help with organizing. He’s very clever. Enthusiastic. People like him.’

‘You’re not his mother.’

‘And you’re not mine.’

The words came out before I could stop them. Quick winced; I was horrified. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m very sorry—’

‘No — you’re right,’ she said. ‘You’re quite right. You must think I’m interfering.’

‘I didn’t mean — I’m only trying to help him.’

‘Mr Scott isn’t stuck,’ Quick said. ‘I’m sure he could do many things. His existence doesn’t hinge on that painting. He should just take it home and enjoy it for what it is. A very good painting — an excellent painting, designed for private pleasure.’

‘But isn’t it better that more than one person can see it?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t that the ethos of a place like the Skelton — shouldn’t it be shared?’

‘That’s fair. But like Reede said, we don’t know enough about the painting yet. We need to go slowly. You don’t just happen upon a painting like that, Odelle. People always have something to hide. Listen to the words Mr Scott isn’t saying.’

‘Lawrie is an honest person,’ I said, my voice rising again.

‘Of course,’ Quick said, her own words tightening with emotion. ‘Of course he is. But you can still be honest at the same time as having something to hide. And if there is something to hide, then the Skelton could look very foolish indeed.’

She levered herself out of the chair and walked slowly into the cottage. I sat, stupefied, unable to think properly. What was going on here? The bees appeared to drone again, looping from flower to flower. Above, the sky was now cloudless. Suddenly everything seemed so very alive, vibrating, the green leaves turning slightly gold, moving in a psychedelic pattern as the sunshine rippled.

For a mad moment I imagined Quick might be fetching a revolver, that she was going to point it at me and demand answers that I couldn’t give. Something had switched rapidly over the brief course of our picnic, a change of energy like the light through the leaves, impossible to catch. But when Quick came back, she was holding a beautiful octavo leather notebook. ‘I bought this for you,’ she said, holding it out.

I could almost laugh, thinking about this scene now — no, it was not a firearm, but Quick knew full well it was still a weapon.

‘For me?’ I said.

‘Just a small present, to say thank you for doing such a wonderful job. I’m very glad we found you, Odelle. Or you found us, more to the point. Happy birthday.’

I took the notebook from her. It was hand-made, thick calfskin leather with a matte green finish. The pages were the colour of cream. It was a Stradivarius of notebooks, compared to the flimsy numbers I bought in Woolworth’s. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘It’s so kind.’

From somewhere over the fences, a lawn mower ground itself up to a mechanical whine, and a child shrieked. ‘Well,’ said Quick peaceably. ‘Don’t they always say? You never know when inspiration is going to strike.’

9

On Sunday, I sat on my bed with my new notebook from Quick, and thought about what she’d said in the garden. Like most artists, everything I produced was connected to who I was — and so I suffered according to how my work was received. The idea that anyone might be able to detach their personal value from their public output was revolutionary. I didn’t know if it was possible, even desirable. Surely it would affect the quality of the work?

Still, I knew I’d gone too far in the opposite direction, and something had to change. Ever since I could pick up a pen, other people’s pleasure was how I’d garnered attention and defined success. When I began receiving public acknowledgement for a private act, something was essentially lost. My writing became the axis upon which all my identity and happiness hinged. It was now outward-looking, a self-conscious performance. I was asked to repeat the pleasure for people, again and again, until the facsimile of my act became the act itself.

Cynth’s wedding poem was to me a perfect example of how I felt my writing to be bound up with obligation. I’d been writing for so long for the particular purpose of being approved that I’d forgotten the genesis of my impulse; unbothered, pure creation, existing outside the parameters of success and failure. And somewhere along the line, this being ‘good’ had come to paralyse my belief that I could write at all.

So admitting to Quick that I wanted to be published was no small step. It communicated, to a certain degree, that I believed I should be taken seriously. And here she was, telling me, Well, maybe you’re not that special, maybe you are — but that doesn’t actually mean anything, and it certainly doesn’t have any bearing on whether you can write. So stop worrying, and do it.

She had told me that the approval of other people should never be my goal; she had released me in a way I hadn’t been able to myself. She trusted me. Quick had encouraged me to lay myself bare, and it had not been that difficult at all.

I ran my fingers over the leather of the notebook and remembered. I first started writing as a little girl because I liked imagining parallel possibilities. That was all it was. That Sunday, I picked up my pen for the first time in a long time, and began to write.

*

At the end of the day on Monday — my actual birthday — I left a short story typed up on Quick’s desk. I wasn’t completely bullish — the top-grade schoolgirl dies hard — I did not creep into her office without a feeling of trepidation. I put no note on the top; she’d know who it was from.

I appreciated the irony that just like at school, at university, I was delivering a story for someone else to approve, but I had been too long inculcated with the act of writing for an audience. This time, however, I wasn’t going to hinge everything on my audience’s response. If Quick didn’t like it, maybe that was a good thing. It was now out of my control.

Pamela stopped me as I was leaving. ‘You can’t hide it any longer, you know,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Oh come on. You’re going round like Cupid smacked you in the chops. You forgot to put stamps on these envelopes. That ain’t like you.’

I winced; Pamela was more observant than perhaps I’d given her credit for. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said.

‘Odelle, I’m only gonna keep askin’. Gonna be your Scotland Yard. It’s you and that feller, isn’t it? There was barely five minutes between you when he turned up.’

I weighed up my options. Don’t tell Pamela, and suffer her interminable hypotheses, which, knowing her, would become more outlandish and indefatigable — or just tell her, and be done. ‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘Lawrie Scott, eh. Bit posh, ain’t he?’

‘How do you know his first name?’

She looked pleased with herself. ‘It’s right here, in the appointment book. Written by your own fair hand. Shall I draw a heart round it for you?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Does Quick know?’

‘Quick knows.’

‘How?’

‘Saw us kissing in the reception.’

‘Hoo-ee!’ Pamela whooped with laughter and I couldn’t help a smile; it was a thrilling admission. ‘Bloody hell, Odelle, I didn’t know you had it in you. She must like you, ’cos most girls woulda been out on their ear.’

‘Pamela, shut up.’

‘Ahh, you like him.’

‘Don’t be an idiot.’

‘All right, all right.’ Pamela put up her hands, and her ringed fingers glinted in the light. ‘I was like that when I first met Billy,’ she said. I suspected no two men were more different than Lawrie and Billy, but I let it pass. ‘It’s like you can’t breathe,’ she said.

‘I can breathe perfectly well.’

She laughed. ‘Miss High and Mighty. Honestly, Odelle, are you sure you ain’t a secret African queen?’

‘I’m from Trinidad.’

‘Keep your knickers on. Or maybe not.’

‘Pamela.’

‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Have you done it yet?’

‘Mind your own business.’

She smirked. ‘That’ll be a no then. Get on with it, Odelle. You don’t know what you’re missing.’ She fished under the reception counter and placed a brown-paper bag before me. ‘Happy birthday,’ she beamed, mischief dancing in her black-kohled eyes.

I eyed it suspiciously. ‘What’s inside?’

‘Take a look, Miss Bastien.’

I lifted the edge of the paper. Inside were two strips of pills. ‘Are these—’

‘Yep. Got some spare. I thought you might want them.’ Pamela looked at the expression on my face, and her confidence faltered. ‘You don’t have to take them—’

‘No, thank you. I’ll take them.’

Pamela grinned. It was funny to me, the different gifts people gave to show their friendship — with Quick it was a notebook, with Pamela, the contraceptive Pill. I’d spent weeks pressing novels onto Pamela, which in many ways says all you need to know about me. Pamela’s offering was a reflection of her utilitarian sensuality; a pragmatic approach to the pursuit of pleasure. It was no small thing for an unmarried girl to get hold of the Pill in those days; no doctor would prescribe it.

‘How did you get these?’ I asked.

She winked. ‘Rubbed a lamp, didn’t I.’

‘Come on, how?’

‘Brook Advisory,’ she relented. ‘Gold dust.’

I shoved them into my handbag. ‘Thank you, Rudge,’ I said, skipping down the Skelton steps before Pamela could ruin the moment with a salacious addendum. Still — she was a woman of the new world, giving me a slice of freedom. I should have been more grateful.

For my birthday, Lawrie was taking me to the house in Surrey. Gerry was away, he said, and he wanted to show me the place. In the near six years I’d been in England, I’d not seen that bucolic heaven peddled to us in Trinidad. I was ready for hedgerows, crumbling Eleanor crosses covered in yellow lichen, the dip of autumn trees overburdened by their fruit, village shops selling eggs in boxes by the step. In fact, when I saw Lawrie’s house, this wasn’t actually far off, which made me think that perhaps the only truth my colonial educators had told me was the one about the English countryside.

Lawrie’s family lived near a place called Baldock’s Ridge, in a detached red-brick Victorian farmhouse. In a childlike simplicity, it was called The Red House. It had a mature orchard of apple trees in the front, and peeling paintwork on its windows. It was enchanting. Inside, however, there wasn’t much evidence of feminine life, despite how recently his mother had died. I wanted ball gowns hanging up in dignified tatters, tobacco-infused dining chairs, chocolate-box paintings on the wall, the smell of dog hair on old picnic rugs. But there was nothing like that. Either she’d lived as a spartan, or Bastard Gerry had cleared his dead wife out.

I sat in the kitchen, and closed my eyes as Lawrie made the tea. Just be careful of him. You don’t just happen upon a painting like that, Odelle. I pushed Quick’s words away with a flash of anger. Did she want to ruin this for me?

‘Here we are,’ said Lawrie, handing me a chipped blue cup. ‘It’s still lovely and warm out. Shall we sit in the garden?’

I followed him, my hands wrapped round the cup, padding along the rugless hallway.

The back garden was a bit of a mess in a Hodgson Burnett way; overgrown bushes and gnarled plum trees, broken terracotta pots sprouting mint, wild pansies faring perfectly. There was a greenhouse at the end of the long lawn, its windows streaked with dried mud and rain so it was impossible to see inside. Who had tended this place? Perhaps Lawrie had, once upon a time, up and down the furrows.

‘How long have you lived here?’ I asked.

‘On and off all my life. We had a flat in London, too, but my mother stopped liking the city. She preferred it here.’

‘I can see why. It’s beautiful.’

He sighed. ‘It has its moments.’

We sat in silence for a while, listening to the blackbirds in the dusk. ‘Are you excited for what Reede might discover next?’ I asked.

He stared out at the orchard. ‘What if it was stolen?’

‘It wouldn’t be your fault — or your mother’s.’

‘Well — no. No, I suppose not. Imagine if it’s worth a fortune. God, the look on Gerry’s face. The only thing she left me and it’s worth a bomb.’

‘If you sold it, you wouldn’t have anything of your mother left.’

He turned to me, a shrewd expression in his eyes. ‘Don’t you go soft. My mother was the least sentimental person I knew.’

‘I think it is quite sentimental, leaving you a single painting in her will.’

‘You didn’t know her,’ he said. ‘It’s more likely a loaded gun.’

‘What do you mean?’

Lawrie cast his eye over the wilderness before us, sipping on his tea. ‘She always attracted trouble. I think she would have liked you very much.’

‘Why? I never attract trouble.’

‘And she could be a pain in the arse as well.’

‘Hey.’

He said he had made a shepherd’s pie; I was impressed that he could cook. I wondered when Lawrie had learned, and had the suspicion he had spent quite a lot of his life looking after himself. He said he’d lay the table, I was the birthday girl — so whilst he was doing all that, heating up the oven and looking for forks, I took the opportunity to go upstairs.

I went into one of the large back rooms, evening sunbeams slanting through its windows, a shade of deep whisky, dust motes swirling in the shafts. Again, no rugs or carpets on the floor, no paintings on the wall, just the bed frame and a wardrobe, empty save for a percussive clutch of wire hangers when I opened its door. Upturned bluebottles were scattered against the skirting. There were piles of documents and boxes of paper everywhere, curled and faded with time.

I tried to imagine Lawrie’s mother in this house; what she looked like, her marriage to Gerry, what she’d done in her life after her husband died in the war. There were no photos of her anywhere, but there was the faintest trace of perfume in the air; sophisticated, woody, alluring. I sat gently on the edge of the metal bed frame, wondering whether another family would fill this place again with life, with second chances, hopes and failures. I felt a pang of anxiety that Cynth would never speak to me again. You must telephone, I thought. It’s gone on too long. Or write, at least.

I rose from the bed and approached the window to view the rolling Surrey hills in this extraordinary light. I rested my elbows on yet another pile of old papers, and Quick’s caution over Lawrie entered my thoughts again. What was it that bothered her so much? It was none of her business, but I couldn’t budge her comments from my mind.

Absently, I sifted through a pile of papers on the windowsill. They were receipts mainly, one for a butcher’s delivery back in 1958, a Guildford shopping centre parking ticket, electricity bills, an order of service for the Baldock’s Ridge Carol Concert, 1949. Here was someone who didn’t throw things away, yet Lawrie had said his mother was not the type who kept receipts.

Underneath the carol service sheet was a tissue-thin pamphlet for an exhibition of young British artists, from 1955. I opened it. It had been held in the London Gallery on Cork Street, and whoever had attended had put a line through the names of the artists and their works one by one with a pencil. No Sign, they had written at the bottom. No sign of what? I wondered. The frustration of whoever had written this was evident in the pressure of lead upon the paper.

I folded the pamphlet in two, slid it in my pocket and went downstairs, telling myself that in that mess of papers up there, no one would miss it.

Lawrie had lit candles, wedging them into empty wine bottles and a burnished, sinuous candelabra that had more than a hint of murder weapon about it. We sat in the kitchen, the day now faded, eating his shepherd’s pie, drinking cider that the neighbour had made from the orchard. ‘Happy birthday, Odelle,’ he said, and raised his glass.

‘Thank you. I feel like we’re hiding from the world out here.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘It doesn’t seem obvious that Gerry lives here. Upstairs is a bit of a mess.’

‘That was my mother, more than him. I expect Gerry will sell the house.’

‘How long were they married?’

Lawrie poured more cider into our glasses. ‘Let’s see. I was fourteen — so that’s sixteen years.’

‘How did she die?’

Lawrie visibly prickled. I saw his closed expression, sensed his self-protection. I regretted the question immediately, feeling like a blunderer.

He placed the bottle down gently. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

‘You don’t have to. I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.’ Now I was interfering, just like Quick.

‘My mother killed herself,’ Lawrie said, and the words weighed down the air between us, the kitchen’s atmosphere thickening to a soup. Looking at Lawrie, I saw how a ghost could suck the air from your throat.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry—’

‘It’s all right. No, really, it’s all right. I would have told you eventually. Don’t apologize. I mean, don’t feel bad about it. In all honesty, it wasn’t that much of a surprise.’

I tried desperately to think of something to fill the silence, but the admission seemed to open something in him: ‘We tried to help. We were always trying. And now I can’t even look at bloody Gerry, because every time we look at each other I know he’s thinking, What if you’d done more?, and I’m thinking exactly the same. But it’s not his fault. It’s just a horrible game of blame.’

‘I can’t imagine it.’

‘Well, neither can I, and I was her son.’

He was very still, his voice very quiet, and I wanted to get up and give him a hug. But in the soupy air I felt unable to move, and I wasn’t sure he wanted one anyway. I thought of the kitchen at Cynth’s wedding, how Lawrie must have been reeling from his past two weeks — and me, mocking my own mother, rude when he tried to be nice about my poem—

‘Anyway, that’s that,’ he said. ‘But she was spirited, and she did a lot of things, and enjoyed herself a great deal, and that’s really why she reminds me of you. And now there’s her painting.’

‘Yes.’

‘So.’ He exhaled brusquely. ‘I’ve told you that. Jesus. I promise you that’s the worst. Now you tell me something.’

‘I don’t have anything.’

‘Everyone has at least one thing, Delly.’

I stayed quiet. He leaned back in his chair, fishing around in the dresser drawer behind him. ‘A-ha. Gerry always leaves a few lying around.’ He brandished a box of slim cigars. ‘Care to join?’

We went to the back room and Lawrie pushed open the French windows. The night was still fragrant with the smell of damp grass and wood smoke, bats dipping in and out of the garden.

‘It’s like paradise,’ I said, even enjoying the smothering scent of Lawrie’s cigar. I sat on the sofa and watched him, propping himself against the window frame.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Lawrie replied. ‘But one thing is — you can’t hear the road. When I was little, my favourite book was Peter Pan. I used to pretend this garden was Neverland.’

‘And was Gerry Captain Hook?’

‘Ha, no, this was before Gerry. It was just me and Mum at that point.’

‘I was just with my mother too.’

He turned to me. ‘What happened to your dad in the war?’

Given what Lawrie had told me about his mother’s suicide, I felt I had to dredge it up, although I really didn’t want to. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘My dad sold his bicycle and trumpet to pay for his passage to England in ’41. He walked to the Air Ministry, passed the medical, and got himself twelve weeks’ basic training. He served as an air gunner in the RAF. Then three years later, my mother found his name chalked on the death board in Port of Spain.’

He came over, and put his hand on my shoulder; it was warm, and I focused on it with particular concentration. ‘I’m sorry, Odelle,’ he said.

‘Thank you. I don’t remember him, but I know what it was like not to have him. My mother took it bad.’

He sat beside me. ‘What was it like, on the island, in the war?’

‘People were terrified what would happen if Hitler won. We’ve got one of the largest oil refineries in Trinidad. U-boats were already torpedoing British ships off our coastline.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘We knew what Hitler wanted; the plan for a master race. We were always going to want to fight. My dad was no exception.’ I sipped on my cider. ‘England wasn’t too keen on the colonies helping out at first, but as things turned bad they wanted the help.’

‘Do you think you’ll go back?’

I hesitated. Most English people I’d met would ask me questions about the island with the expectation that I should fit the complexity of Trinidad into my single body for their benefit. None of them had ever been there, so to them we were specimens of curiosity, realities risen from a tropical Petri dish that until very recently sat under a British flag. Most of the time, as with Pamela, the Englishers’ interest was not malicious (except when it was) — but their questioning always served to make me feel different, when I’d been brought up to feel perfectly understanding of British ways, because I was a child of empire too.

In the time I’d known him, Lawrie hadn’t asked me a thing about Trinidad. I didn’t know whether he was being polite, or whether he was genuinely uninterested — but either way, I was mainly glad of his failure to highlight our differences in life experience. I’d learned Latin and read Dickens, but I’d also seen the lighter-skinned girls get more of the boys’ attention, in a way the boys probably didn’t even understand themselves. Most of our ‘differences’ had been created by the white skin of the English. And yet, by the shores of the Thames, the complexity of our island life was reduced to one phenotype: black.

Practically every Englishman, even the enlightened ones, believed we would have more in common with a Sudanese than with them. But what did I know of the Sahara, of a camel or a Bedouin? My ideal of beauty and glamour for my entire childhood was Princess Margaret. With Lawrie, I’d talked about James Bond films, or my strange boss, or the painting, or Gerry the Bastard, dead parents. Stuff that bound us together as a duo, that didn’t make me a representative of a whole island that I hadn’t seen for five years. When Lawrie didn’t ask me about Trinidad, I felt more of an individual again.

‘Odelle?’

‘Let me tell you about London,’ I said.

‘OK.’

‘When I first got here,’ I went on, ‘I could not believe the cold.’ Lawrie laughed. ‘I’m serious, Lawrie. It was like the Arctic. Cynth and I arrived in January.’

‘Of all the months.’

‘I know. When I was a little girl, I was Autumn in a school play about the seasons. I didn’t even know what autumn was, let alone winter.’

I was quiet for a minute, remembering my smaller self, in her little boater and English pinafore, telling her mother she needed ‘russet leaves’ pinned to a leotard — and my mother, who had no idea either what frost on the tips of grass might look like, what a conker was, how it felt to inhale London’s November air and feel a sliver of ice in your lung — doing her darnedest to make this English costume in the humid Caribbean.

‘I remember,’ I went on, warming to this reminiscence, feeling that I could do this with Lawrie, that I was safe — ‘an early day I was here — a feller saying to me in the shoe shop, “Your English is very good.” My English! I told him, “English is a West Indian language, sir.” ’

‘And what did he say?’ Lawrie asked, laughing. I realized that never in Lawrie’s life would anyone say to him what that man had said to me.

‘He thought I was simple. I nearly lost my job. Cynth was furious. It’s true though — I’d be quite at home with Queen Elizabeth and that tall Greek husband of hers, drinking a cup of tea and petting those funny midget dogs she loves so much. Quite at home. “Your English is not as good as mine,” I should have said. “It does not have the length and the breadth, the meat and the smoke. Come at me with my Creole, with its Congo and its Spanish and its Hindi, French and Ibo, English and Bhojpuri, Yoruba and Manding.”’

Lawrie laughed again. ‘Oh, to see his face,’ I carried on, draining my cider glass. ‘With his Anglesaxon—’

‘Angle what?’

‘Two-up, two-down, a window with a view people never truly look at, because they think they know every shrub and flower, the bark of every tree and the mood of every cloud. But we made room for their patois too—’

‘Odelle,’ Lawrie said. ‘I would be happy with you for the rest of my life.’

‘Eh?’

‘You have this light, and when it switches on I don’t think you even realize what it does.’

‘What light? I was talking about—’

‘I love you, Odelle.’ His face was hopeful. ‘You inspire me.’

We sat in silence. ‘You tell it to all the girls,’ I said desperately, unsure what to say.

‘What?’

‘You’re not serious.’

He stared at me. ‘I am serious. I feel like time’s tricked me, as if I’ve known you from before. Like we passed each other in our prams. Like it’s been a waiting game to meet with you again. I love you.’

I said nothing, unable to respond. He looked down at the carpet.

No one had ever told me they loved me before. Why did he have to ruin our evening with talk of love and. . prams? I felt panicked. Quick’s warnings flashed again through my mind — and I cursed her inside. Why should I be careful — and yet why could I not bear to hear Lawrie’s words?

I got off the sofa and walked to the windows. ‘You probably want me to go,’ I said.

He sat, motionless, looking at me with incredulity. ‘Why would I want you to go, after what I’ve just said?’

‘I don’t know! I — look, I’m not—’

‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s fine. I shouldn’t have—’

‘No — it’s just, I was — and then you—’

‘Forget I said anything. I — please, forget it. If that’s what you want, then I’ll drive you home.’

So Lawrie drove us back in silence up the deserted A3. I clasped my handbag tight to my body, feeling utterly miserable, my fingers clenched around the pamphlet I had stolen, and the pills Pamela had handed me only hours before. How could I explain to Lawrie that this was terrifying for me, and that I couldn’t exactly say why? We’d only just started, he barely knew me. I felt like he’d hoisted me onto a pedestal and left me with my legs dangling, and of course I’d managed to turn it into a trauma for the pair of us. Being alone was always so much easier.

I glanced only once at him, his profile coming in and out of the orange light as the car moved under the street lamps. His eyes were on the road, his jaw set. I didn’t know which of us felt more humiliated.

When we reached my flat, he pulled in. ‘I left your present in Surrey,’ he said, the engine still running.

‘Oh — I—’

‘Anyway. I’d better go.’ I got out, he revved the car and was off. I stood in the road, until the noise of his engine was replaced in my head by the sound of a silent scream.

I lay in bed awake, my bedside light still on past three. In my chest, my stomach, in my aching head, I felt pain for us both. That Lawrie loved me, I could not easily believe. Though he had never made me feel like an outsider, I couldn’t help worrying that he only liked me because I looked different to all the other girls in that gang he’d turned up with at Cynth’s wedding.

Lawrie had rushed in with his declaration of love — but did he really see me? I couldn’t imagine being someone who dived in for another like that; the sense that one’s molecules were being recalibrated; the sheer, multi-layered joy of being seen and adored, and adoring in return, the cycle of shyness to confidence as each new step was taken. To seek your beloved in a crowd, to lock your eyes and feel you have no truer place — it seemed impossible to me. I was — both by circumstance and nature — a migrant in this world, and my lived experience had long become a state of mind.

I didn’t know if I loved him, and that was also frightening — not to know, to be sure. Just be careful of him. You don’t just happen upon a painting like that, Odelle. I had tried so hard to shut Quick’s voice away. I wondered if she was the reason I could not drop my anchor with him as confidently as he’d declared his love. I leaned over, switching off the light, hoping in the dark for sleep. As I lay there, I couldn’t tell which fears were mine, now Quick had slipped her own inside my head.

VII

The painting Olive had finished was propped against the wall. She was more proud of it than even The Orchard, and felt that she was creeping ever closer to that shining citadel. The new piece was a surreal composition, colourful, disjointed to the gaze. It was a diptych; Santa Justa before her arrest and after, set against a dark indigo sky and a shining field. Olive had decided to call it Santa Justa in the Well.

The left half of the painting was lush and glowing. Olive had used ordinary oils, but had also experimented with gold leaf, which glinted in the light as she held the painting up. She’d always thought of gold leaf as an alchemist’s dream, a contained ray of sun. It was the colour of queens, of wise men, of shimmering land in high summer. It reminded her of the Russian Orthodox icons she had always wanted to touch as a little girl, when her father took her to the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

In the middle of the healthy land on this left-hand side stood a woman, her hair the colour of the crop. She was carrying a heavy pot with deer and rabbits painted on it, and in its centre was the face of the goddess Venus. Both the faces of the woman and Venus looked proud, staring out at the viewer.

On the right half of the painting, the crop was deadened and limp. The woman appeared again, except this time she was curled inside a circle, hovering over the crop. This circle was filled with an internal perspective to make it look as if it had depth, as if the woman was lying at the bottom of a well. Her hair was now severed and dull, her pot had smashed around her, a puzzle impossible for anyone to piece together. Around the rim of the well, full-sized deer and rabbits peered down, as if set free from the broken crockery. Venus had vanished.

Olive could hear soft knocking at the attic door, and she sat up. ‘Who is it?’ she asked, her voice half-strangled with hope that it might be him.

‘It is Teresa.’

‘Oh.’

‘The party is in a few hours, señorita. Can I come in?’

Olive leapt up and hid the painting under the bed. ‘Yes,’ she said.

Recently, Teresa had begun to help Olive keep her room in order. It was an unspoken agreement. Olive had not invited it, but she liked it; the attention, the paint brushes laid out for another day’s work. Her clothes were always neatly folded on her chair or hanging in her cupboard, her unfinished canvases were turned to face the wall, the way she liked it when it was time for bed. Olive would turn them back in the morning, and work up there unbothered.

Teresa stood at the doorway, her satchel across her chest. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

Olive lay back on the bed. ‘I want to look like Garbo,’ she said languorously, stretching herself out, running her fingers through her hair. ‘Tere, how good are you at making waves?’

*

The girls set up a chair in front of the oval mirror, which Teresa had found in a spare room and nailed to the wall. The glass was foxed and misty round the edges, but the centre was clear enough. They were using a series of illustrations from one of Sarah’s Vogues in an attempt to recreate Greta Garbo’s look. Teresa lit candles around the room as the light outside faded.

‘I’ve never been able to have finger waves anyway,’ Olive said. ‘My hair’s too thick. But we should be able to do these curls.’

They remained in companionable silence for a good five minutes, Olive enjoying Teresa’s calming administrations through her hair; a repetitive, smoothing motion that made her sleepy. ‘I suppose it’s good news about the election, but I keep thinking about that poor boy Isaac knew,’ she said finally.

Teresa kept her eyes down, working at the nape of Olive’s neck. ‘One day, left, next day, right. The government changes the street names more than I change my bed. And at the end of it, señorita, I never see the difference.’

‘Well, thank goodness there are men like your brother who do care.’

Teresa was silent.

‘Do you like your father, Tere?’ Olive said.

Teresa frowned at the back of Olive’s head. ‘I do not like the stories.’

Olive opened her eyes. ‘What stories?’

Teresa wrapped small portions of Olive’s sizeable mass of hair round and round her finger, before securing it tightly with the pins sequestered out of Sarah’s bedroom. ‘They say that once he cut a man’s thing off and nailed it to a door.’

Olive swivelled her head round, and the hair sprang from its curl, the pin skittering across the floorboards. ‘What? To a door?’

‘He was his enemy.’

They looked at each other, then burst out laughing, high on the night to come and the violence they believed was safely avoided, because it had gone before their time, because neither of them had a thing, and because they were safe up here.

‘Teresa, that’s disgusting! Why would he do that?’

‘It’s just a rumour,’ Teresa said, picking up the pin.

‘But no man would drop his trousers to prove it.’

‘And yet Don Alfonso never denies it.’

‘Jesus, Teresa. And I thought I had problems with my father.’

Teresa looked up. ‘What problems?’

Olive sighed. ‘Oh, nothing really. I just. . I feel a bit invisible, that’s all. He never takes me seriously. I never know how to make him take me seriously. The only things he thinks about are his business and whether my mother has taken her pills. And she’s never really taken the time to understand me either. When I have children, I am never going to be like her. I wish I was free of my parents. I suppose I could be free of them, if I put my mind to it.’

‘If you had gone to the art school, you would be free.’

‘You can’t be sure. And painting here makes me feel freer.’ Olive looked serious. ‘Although I’m learning something else out here.’

‘What is that?’

‘That if you really want to see your work to completion, you have to desire it more than you’d believe. You have to fight it, fight yourself. It’s not easy.’

Teresa smiled, working through the mass of Olive’s hair with a level of attention that Olive wanted to bask in for ever. She had never had a friend like this, in her private room, combing her hair, listening to her, talking about silly nonsense and the uselessness of one’s parents; how the future was perfect, because they hadn’t lived it yet.

‘I always find that the time before a party is happiest,’ Olive said. ‘Nothing’s had the chance to go wrong.’ Teresa lifted her hands away from Olive’s head. ‘Why have you stopped?’ she asked, as Teresa walked over to her satchel.

Teresa removed a small, square package wrapped in tissue paper. She held it out, nervously. ‘For you,’ she said.

Olive took it. ‘For me? My goodness. Shall I open it now?’

Teresa nodded, and Olive gasped when she saw the green flash through the paper, emerald strung on emerald, emerging like a stone snake, a necklace of such beauty and intensity she had never seen before. ‘My God. Where did you get this?’

‘It was my mother’s,’ Teresa said. ‘Now for you.’

Olive sat frozen on the chair, the necklace swinging from her fist. No one had ever in her life given her such a present. This was everything Teresa possibly had of her mother; to take it would be a selfish act. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t—’

‘It’s for you.’

‘Teresa, this is too much—’

In the end, it was Teresa who made the decision for her, scooping the necklace out of Olive’s grasp, laying it round her neck and fixing the clasp. ‘It is for you,’ Teresa said. ‘For my friend.’

Olive turned to the mirror. The emeralds looked like green leaves, shining upon her pale skin, enlarging in size towards her clavicle. Stones from Brazil, green as the ocean, green as the forest her father had promised they would find in the south of Spain. These were not jewels, they were eyes, winking at her in the candlelight, watching the girls who watched themselves.

VIII

By the evening, Harold had returned from Malaga with supplies for the party. He was loping around the house, a cigar clamped between his teeth, calling for more gramophone records. Isaac was helping carry extra chairs and tables loaned by the villagers.

‘Olive,’ he said to her. ‘The painting is finished.’

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘You are not pleased? I did not think you liked being painted.’

She didn’t know what to say; Isaac’s finished painting just meant less opportunity to see him.

Sarah emerged, dressed in a long plum-coloured gown. In London, when they had parties, she would often come in fancy dress — the Little Mermaid, or Snow White — and one memorable year as Rapunzel, when her entire false plait went up in flames and they’d put her out with champagne. But tonight was a Schiaparelli number, truly sophis, as the girls at school might have said — with two women’s faces embroidered on the back in sequins, their red lips glittering from the hundreds of candles Harold had brought back from the city, and which Teresa had been instructed to light. The dress was one of Olive’s favourites; she had always been mesmerized by the Janus-like embroidery.

Sarah’s eyes were drawn to the emeralds around her daughter’s neck. ‘Who gave you those?’ she demanded, as Harold popped a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.

Olive realized that she had heard the sound of glasses clinking over trauma all her life. Annoyed that her mother had not even noticed her new hair, she tipped her chin and stroked the green stones. ‘Isaac,’ she replied.

It was a reckless evening. The guests began to arrive up the finca path at around eight o’clock, and Olive and her parents stood at the door to greet them. One of the first to appear was a man in an expensive-looking cream suit with a large cravat, as if it was cocktail hour on an ocean liner. His large black moustache had been oiled at the tips. Behind him, two younger men followed in neat suits. Olive wondered who they were — his children, perhaps? They seemed more like his hired guards than anything else.

The man proffered his hand. ‘Señor Schloss,’ he said. ‘Don Alfonso Robles Hernández. I have been away on business for the duchess.’

‘Don Alfonso,’ said Harold, putting out his own hand. ‘We meet at last.’

He spoke good English, and Olive saw echoes of Isaac in the man’s face — but there was something inherently theatrical about the Don that his son did not share. Despite his flashiness, there was an intelligence in Alfonso’s small eyes; calculation and black humour. She thought of the story Teresa had told about him, and tried to quell her anxiety.

‘Gregorio, give Señora Schloss our offerings.’ One of the boys hopped forward. ‘Almond cake and a bottle of good port,’ said Alfonso.

Sarah took the presents. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Are you settled in well?’

‘Very well.’

Alfonso peered past Harold into the darkness of the hallway. ‘Díos mio, the kitten has grown into a cat,’ he said, knocking one heel to the other in a cod-military gesture. The clipping heels of his boots and the creak of patent raised the hairs on Olive’s skin. She looked back to see Teresa scowling in the dark.

‘Still so scared of me, Tere?’ Alfonso said, in Spanish. ‘I don’t know why. I’ve heard about your claws.’ The younger men laughed. ‘She’s not giving you trouble, I hope?’

Harold glanced at Teresa, who stared at him with round black eyes. ‘None at all,’ he said.

‘Well, let me know if she is.’ Alfonso looked up at the finca’s many windows, every one illuminated with tiny, flickering flames. ‘Señor Schloss, I hope we are not going to be burned alive. I thought this house was blessed with electricity?’

‘We wanted a little atmosphere tonight, Don Alfonso. Please come in.’

‘I brought Gregorio and Jorge — you don’t mind if they come too?’

‘Not at all. Everyone is welcome.’

The three men moved past Olive and her mother, Jorge’s gaze lingering a little too long on Sarah.

‘Is that brother of yours here?’ Jorge asked Teresa.

‘Maybe. But he won’t be talking to you,’ she said.

In total, sixty-seven residents of Arazuelo came to the party. The presence of this small family from London and Vienna imbued the locals with a carnival, topsy-turvy feeling. There was a permissiveness in the air, as if a taboo had broken apart, and its scent was going to drown them all. Don Alfonso stayed in a corner of one room — a few people came up to him, but generally he was left alone.

The guests wrote their names in a book that Harold produced. Some inscribed their signatures eagerly, happy to be included in this cosmopolitan event, with its dancing lights and jazz music, and the smell of oleanders in every room. They jotted short messages of approval or goodwill — buen vino or Dios bendiga. Others were more cautious, looking worried about being permanently embedded in this foreign book, as if it might be a politically controversial gesture. Olive remembered Adrián, the murdered boy from Malaga, Isaac’s concerns about what was going to happen to the country, and wondered if they had a point. Nevertheless, she wrote down her own name, directly underneath those of Teresa and Isaac.

Having drunk three glasses of champagne, Olive sensed the ghost of the boy moving through the rooms. She sat back in her wicker chair, and saw his bloodied body drag itself between the guests. She imagined there was a determination to their drinking, their dancing, their shouts and claps, as if they were pushing him back to the land of the dead, to reclaim this house for the living.

A woman wore a long satin dress the colour of a dawn mushroom. The candle flames sparked a glint in a brass cufflink, lifted with a crystal glass of moonshine. Teresa scurried hither and thither, always with a tray of drinks, or some meats and cheeses, or slices of cake. She was studiedly avoiding her father. The room was full of voices, the music pulsed from the gramophone in the corner — and there was Sarah, in her double-faced purple dress, flitting between the groups. She laid her hand on Isaac’s arm, and made him laugh. People turned to her as they might to a beacon of light.

Olive watched Isaac wherever he went, feeling her attraction sing up to the wooden beams above her head, down to the slosh of champagne in her glass. Her curls had begun to droop and she tugged them nervously, worried she was walking around with a half-hairstyle. Now he was deep in conversation with the local doctor, looking sombre at something the man had said. He too had not spoken to his father. He was wearing that perfect pair of dark-blue trousers, cut close to the line of his body; a dark linen jacket, a blue shirt. She imagined what colour his skin was underneath. When was he going to turn round and notice her? She touched the emeralds around her neck and downed a fourth champagne. The fumbling child she’d been all her life was soon to be a spectre; one more glass would flush that kid away.

Two of the guests had brought guitars, and from their fingers cascaded a confident duet, note after perfect note, up and down the fretboards. People cheered when they heard it, and someone lifted the needle off the gramophone, scratching the record. There was a moment’s worried hush, but Harold, very drunk by now, roared with approval and shouted, ‘Let them play! I want to hear this magic! ¡Quiero oír el duende!’

At this, the party seemed to surge as one. The father and son who’d brought the guitars knew flamenco songs as well as the popular canciones, and they played a couple, a wide ring of people around them, before a woman in her sixties stepped forward, and began to sing, opening her mouth to let forth a soaring sound of pain and freedom. For a second time that night Olive felt the hairs on her neck rise up. The woman had the room under complete control. She sang, clapping her hands in a fast, percussive rhythm, and there were shouts around the room of ‘¡Vamos!’, people stamping their feet and crying out in admiration.

Gregorio whirled two little girls around the room, and they screamed with delight as the guitars and the singing grew ever more fevered. The woman’s voice was like an ancient sound come to life, and Olive stood up, drinking down a fifth glass of fizz — except no, this wasn’t champagne, this was a spirit of some sort, a firewater that set her insides burning. The woman’s voice was rough and plaintive and perfect, and outside the night deepened, and moths flickered to die amongst the lanterns. In this room of strangers, Olive had never felt more at home.

Her father was calling that it was time for the fireworks. ‘Fuegos artificiales!’ he bellowed in a terrible accent, and Olive’s eyes roved the room for Isaac. She spied him slipping through the door. The crowd began to move into the back of the house, out onto the veranda to watch the fireworks exploding over the orchard. Olive stopped, dazed by the flow of people in the corridor. Then she saw him going in the other direction, crossing the hallway and out of the front door. She was mystified — why was he running away from the centre of the world?

She began to follow him, stumbling onwards, away from the light of the house and into the pitch dark of the February night. Above her, the sky was soaked with stars. The moon was high but she lost sight of him, and her blood was quickly cooling, but on she went, out of the rusted main gates onto the dirt path towards the village, stumbling on stones, cursing that she had been idiotic enough to come out in heels.

A hand clamped on her mouth. An arm locked round her neck and dragged her to the side of the path. She wriggled and kicked, but whoever had her pinned had a strong grip. Olive brought up her hands and began tugging; she opened her mouth to bite hard on the fingers that wouldn’t let her breathe.

‘Mierda!’ said a voice, and Olive was released.

‘Isaac?’

They stood, panting, both bent over in disbelief.

‘Señorita — I thought someone was following me.’

‘Well, they were. Me. Jesus bloody Christ!’

‘Are you hurt?’

‘I’m fine. How about you?’

‘Please, do not tell your father—’

Olive rubbed her neck. ‘Why would I tell him? Do you make a habit of jumping out at people like that?’

‘Go back to the party. Please.’

Olive could tell he was agitated. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘Nowhere.’

‘That’s a lie.’

‘Go back. It’s dangerous for you.’

‘I’m not scared, Isaac. I want to help. Where are you going?’

She couldn’t make out his expression in the dark, but she sensed his hesitation, and her heart began to pound harder.

‘I am going to church,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘To confess your sins?’

‘Something like that.’

She put out her hand and reached in the darkness for his. ‘Lead the way,’ she said.

Later, when Olive was lying awake and going over everything back in her bedroom, she supposed it was the alcohol that did it. When Isaac was painting her, she couldn’t stand it. She didn’t feel enough of a satisfying subject, and she couldn’t match her mother. But here, she and Isaac were equals, not watcher and watched. In the dark she could be her real self, a woman who took men by the hand and forced them onwards, down the path.

‘You must be cold,’ he said, and she could hear that he was quite drunk too. When he took off his jacket and put it round her shoulders, Olive’s skin sang, her whole body almost dipped in pleasure at his solicitousness and concern.

In ten minutes, they reached the church of Santa Rufina, which abutted the main square of Arazuelo. The place was deserted, as most of the village were up on the hillside, revelling in the music and the manzanilla they had rolled up in barrels as a gift to their host. Olive and Isaac turned back to see the fireworks which had begun to explode in the sky; red and green and orange, gigantic sea urchins, falling fountains. Isaac forced the door of the church and slunk in, and Olive followed — frightened now, choked by the smell of stale incense. The moonlight came through the window, touching the beeswaxed pews, the baleful saints, set into the wall. She felt Isaac’s hand slip from hers, and heard his footsteps padding away up the nave.

‘Isaac—’

The gunshot rang out beyond the pews from where she stood, and then another, then another. Olive was too terrified to scream. Beyond the walls of the church, the fireworks continued. She was rooted to the spot, cowering in terror. Suddenly, Isaac was next to her, his hand on her arm.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘We have to go.’

He took her hand and they fled. ‘What have you done?’ she hissed. ‘Was the priest — Isaac, what the hell have you done?’

They ran all the way back to the finca. Olive had to kick off her shoes and go barefooted, the skin on her feet tearing on the occasional stone. At the gates, they stopped, breathless. The fireworks were still exploding, and she could smell the sulphuric tang of gunpowder.

She collapsed against the gate. ‘Am I an accessory to murder?’ she whispered. ‘Jesus, I’m not even joking.’

Isaac put his hand on her face. ‘For Adrián,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

He began to kiss her, cupping her face with his hands, scooping her by the waist. Olive felt the pride he had in her in the way he was clasping her hair, running his lips along the side of her neck, down on to her chest, under the emeralds which had heated with her skin. She’d proved herself to him, at last.

Isaac ran his fingers over the stones. ‘Where did you get these?’

‘A friend.’ She kissed him on the mouth to stop him asking more. She’d never known her body could feel this way, or that she could inspire a man to do such things to her.

He kissed her again, and Olive parted her lips and put her hands through his hair, the rusted railings hard against her back. They pushed into each other, kissing, kissing, kissing, as the old woman in the finca resumed her plaintive music, and a figure watched them, silhouetted at the door.

IX

Olive tried to sit up, but a lightning bolt of agony split her brain. Her mouth was a desert, her neck was lead. Lying in the mussed sheets, guts addled, scalp stinking of a thousand cigarettes, her hands flew to her body. She wasn’t wearing any clothes. Jesus, where were her clothes? She winced to her left. Someone had folded her dress neatly over a chair; her stockings laddered and bloodstained on the soles, her fox stole swinging off the arm. It looked like a hunter’s trophy, skinned and broached overnight, a dead glass eye in the head, those awful glued teeth. She touched her neck. The emerald necklace was still there, a snake upon her collarbone.

She heard the gunshot again — the church, the darkness, the fireworks, a rusting gate — had it been a dream? So much, all in one day. Far off, she could hear the telephone ringing. What if the civil guard were waiting outside, ready to take her away?

Isaac. The kiss — how was it possible she had endured life until now without that kiss — how had she lived? He’d dragged her through the darkness to let a pistol off inside a church, and then he’d kissed her. She wanted another kiss from Isaac more than she wanted to breathe.

She felt augmented, as if a door, long hidden inside her, had been opened, revealing a sinuous corridor, and she herself was running through it. Since the moment she met him, this man had clung to her imagination. He had made her feelings enormous, the depths of her horizons doubling. For once in her life, Olive had been made to feel monumental. The nervousness of what might come next went hand in hand with a desire for him so extreme that she wondered whether even being possessed by Isaac would assuage it.

She hadn’t noticed Teresa, at the end of the bed, scanning the peaks and hollows of the sheets. ‘I have made you a bath,’ Teresa said, looking quickly away in the face of Olive’s nakedness.

‘Who was that on the telephone?’

‘No one.’

‘No one?’

Olive saw Teresa hesitate. ‘I do not know.’

‘Are the police here?’

‘No, señorita.’

‘I’m never drinking again.’

‘There is a glass of milk by your head.’

‘I can’t.’

‘There is a bucket by your side.’

Olive leaned over and looked into the bucket. Bits of soil from the garden were scattered in the bottom. She retched into it, wanting to expel the sick feeling, her eyeballs hard as rocks.

‘Señorita,’ Teresa said, ‘my brother is going to show his painting today.’

‘What?’ Olive groaned, collapsing back onto the bed. ‘Tere — was there — has there — been any news today, from the village?’

‘Someone broke into the church last night. They shot the statue of the Virgin Mary.’

‘What?’

‘Padre Lorenzo is crazy,’ Teresa went on. ‘He has taken her into the centre of the main square and he’s shouting.’

Olive tried to speed up her thoughts. ‘Taken who?’

‘La Virgen,’ Teresa repeated, in Spanish. ‘She was very old wood, very expensive. She was shot three times. They took her to the office of Doctor Morales. As if he could bring her back to life,’ Teresa added, with a slight sneer. ‘Do you know what the men are asking, señorita? They are asking, who is the kind of man who puts a bullet through the tit of the Madonna?’

Olive said nothing, and closed her eyes. ‘My brother looks more sick than you today,’ Teresa said.

‘Well, it was a good party.’

‘I know. I have been cleaning for four hours. Come, get into the bathroom before the water is cold.’ Teresa stood at the side of the bed and opened out a huge bath sheet. Olive obeyed; Teresa wrapped her up and shuffled her from the room.

*

Outside, Teresa’s seeds were growing well; tiny leaves emerging from the fertilized furrows, where back in January she and Olive had marched up and down. The cork oaks and sweet chestnuts had turned a deeper green, and the sun was a few degrees warmer. Although the flowers were not in bloom, and the air was still thin, Teresa could smell the departure of winter, the inexplicable awareness the body has of the change to the most hopeful of seasons.

Sitting on the tatty green sofa in the front east room, she could hear Olive upstairs, draining her bath. She thought of Adrián, how it was inconceivable someone so young should be dead. She thought of the Schlosses’ mad party, of Isaac’s anger, their surly father, the shot Madonna. Everything was so uncertain. And yet, with regards to today’s unveiling, Teresa had never felt so sure. She’d asked her brother whether he would miss painting Sarah and Olive, but he’d ignored her, trudging off down the hill to fetch the table and chairs that Doctor Morales said they could borrow for the party.

This morning in the cottage, Teresa put her head round Isaac’s door and told him that if he wanted she would take the portrait over and prepare it for a grand unveiling. ‘I’ll put it on an easel in the front east room,’ she said.

Isaac, flannel on face, lying in the dark of his bedroom, lifted it once, peered at her and said, ‘Fine. I’m glad it’s done. But wait until I get there before you show them.’

Teresa had chilled one of the remaining bottles of Clicquot, leaving it out on the veranda overnight. All the windows had been thrown open to let fresh air into the corners where cigarette smoke clung. Stubborn patches of spilled sherry attracted columns of ants. Teresa crushed them with her foot, arranged the sofa and the other chairs in a semicircle around the easel, and draped a white sheet over the artwork. She put the champagne in a metal cooler and went to the kitchen. She had never felt so clear-headed, nor had she ever felt a greater sense of purpose than today. The excitement for it almost made her feel sick.

Thirty minutes later, everyone was gathered. Harold, the best recovered of the family, was in an impeccable suit. Sarah looked frail, a tremor in her fingers as she passed a champagne flute to her daughter, who looked green at the sight of it. Isaac was perched on the edge of the sofa, dragging deep on a cigarette, his foot jigging. This was his moment to shine — here, in the presence of the great dealer, Harold Schloss. Teresa saw his eyes meet Olive’s, and the girl’s smile was an open beam of pleasure. Harold was looking in puzzlement at his wife, as to what this was all about.

Teresa wondered whether he had answered the telephone this morning, for she had vowed never to pick it up again.

Sarah rose to her feet. ‘Darling Harold,’ she said. ‘Well done from all of us, for such a wonderful party. It seems, even down here at the end of civilization, you haven’t lost your touch.’

Everyone laughed, and Harold raised his glass. ‘Now, as you know, things have been a little up and down of late,’ Sarah said. ‘But we like it here, don’t we, darling? And we’re doing well. And I — well, we — wanted to give you a little present to say thank you. It’s Liv and me, darling,’ she said, pulling the sheet off the painting. ‘Mr Robles painted us — for you.’

Teresa swallowed the champagne she’d been offered, and a sick, irresistible tide of fear flushed through her, the bubbles filling her mouth, the metallic fizz agitating her blood. Isaac ran his fingers through his hair. As the sheet cascaded to the tiles, Olive’s knuckles turned white on the arms of her chair. There was a small collective gasp.

Olive was in deep dislocation. She couldn’t understand what she was seeing. The painting was two-thirds drenched in indigo blue, there was a glint of golden wheat, and two women, one holding her pot aloft in a shining field, and the other, curled in semi-defeat, surrounded by her broken shards.

It was her painting. It was Santa Justa in the Well. She turned to Isaac; he, too, was staring in confusion. What was it doing down here — why wasn’t it upstairs, hidden in her room? Olive looked at Teresa; the grim triumph on her face.

There was a sound of clapping. Her father was looking at her painting. Her father was applauding. ‘Bravo, Isaac,’ he was saying. ‘Bravo. What you’ve done!’

Sarah frowned, hands on hips. ‘Well, it isn’t quite — what I was expecting. But I like it. Which of us is which, Mr Robles? Do you like it, Harold?’

‘I’ve not seen something like this in a very long time. Liv, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ her father said. ‘You’re not upset that Mr Robles hasn’t done you a society turn?’

Olive couldn’t speak. All she could do was look at her own painting, her father pacing around it. ‘This is wonderful,’ he went on. ‘I knew you had something in you, Robles. Lithography, my eye.’

Harold’s voice was intense and warm; it was like this whenever a new painting was speaking to him. It was a silent conversation; the painting slowly heating him up, running round his mind — and Harold was working on it like a child might a boiled sweet, sampling its flavours, softening its corners, edging inexorably towards its core.

Olive felt as if she too was being honed away, soon to snap and disappear. ‘This is real. Oh, this is good,’ her father was saying, and it felt like she was hearing him from the bottom of a well. ‘Look at the pot — and the deer. Oh, this is good! This is excellent.’

Isaac was staring at the painting. His eyes began to dart around it, as if the colours, the composition, the line might speak to him too. Was he angry? Olive couldn’t tell. Like her, he wasn’t saying a thing. She wondered where Isaac’s painting was, whether he was going to speak up. She turned to see Teresa staring at her, her look of triumph now replaced with one of urgency.

‘Mr Robles, you’re a star,’ said Sarah, placing her hand on his arm. ‘Well done.’

Teresa nodded at Olive, her eyes wide — and in that moment, Olive understood. She knew, then, what Teresa wanted her to say — That’s mine. I did that. There’s been a mistake — although she could not understand Teresa’s desire. She felt her mouth open, the words almost there, but then her father spoke.

‘We should take this to Paris,’ Harold said. ‘I think this might be something a few collectors over there would be interested in. I’d like to act for you, Isaac. I’ll get you a better fee.’

‘Paris?’ said Olive, and then she closed her mouth.

‘What’s it called?’ Harold asked.

‘It has no title,’ said Isaac.

Harold stared at the painting. ‘I think we should avoid any mention of Liv and Sarah in it, given that I might be selling it. How about Girls in the Wheatfield?’

‘Harold,’ said Sarah. ‘This was a present for you. You can’t just sell it.’

But Harold wasn’t listening. ‘Perhaps Women in the Wheatfield is better.’

‘Poor Liv, painted curled in a ball like that,’ said Sarah, draining her glass of champagne, and pouring herself another. ‘Mr Robles, you really are terrible.’

Isaac stared at Olive and Teresa. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am.’

He got to his feet. The painting had caused an almost alchemical transformation in him. The new Isaac was solidifying, like smoke into gold, before their very eyes. He was a real artist, something about him they could all sense but not quite touch — however much they wished to.

‘Teresa,’ Isaac said, and Olive could hear the shake in his voice as he uncharacteristically stumbled over his English. ‘Come and help me in the kitchen. I brought the turnip you wanted for that soup.’

X

‘What the fuck have you done?’ Isaac hissed. He pushed his sister inside the kitchen, jabbing his hand between her shoulder blades.

‘I haven’t done anything,’ Teresa hissed back. ‘I can’t believe you said that thing about a turnip—’

‘Shut up. I had to think of something.’ He closed the door. ‘Whose painting is that?’

Teresa stuck her chin in the air. ‘It’s Olive’s,’ she said. ‘It’s Olive’s, and it’s better than yours.’

‘Olive’s?’

‘She paints every day. She got a place at art school and stayed here instead. You didn’t ask her that, did you, when you had your tongue rammed down her throat.’

Isaac slumped at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands. ‘Oh, Jesus. She put her own painting up there.’

Teresa flushed. ‘No, she didn’t. I did.’

‘You did? Why?’

‘You’re going to break her heart.’

‘Oh, Jesus. This is about me kissing her?’

‘You sneaked in here—’

‘And what else did you do but creep through the orchard with your chicken as an offering, like a bloody Indian to Columbus—’

‘I help them, every day. They’d be lost without me.’

‘You could be anyone, Teresa. You’re just the maid.’

‘And you just cause trouble.’

‘Sarah Schloss asked me to paint her, so I did. And you might as well know. Alfonso has stopped my money.’

‘What?’

‘You heard — he doesn’t like the “taste of my politics”. And so the money from Sarah Schloss was supposed to keep us going. I wanted to keep this professional, Teresa—’

‘And you expect me to believe that?’

‘I’ve got more important things to worry about than some rich guiri with a taste for big parties—’

‘What, like shooting your pistol in the church and lifting Olive’s dress?’

‘You’re just a spy. A stirrer.’ He stood up, his voice low and vicious. ‘You came to these people, Tere, because you knew how your life was going. You’ve been doing it since you were little. With a dad like ours and your gypsy mother — don’t pretend to me you’re some saint. Don’t think I don’t know where Olive’s necklace came from. I know all about your little box in the garden. And now what? What are we supposed to do?’

‘You’re going to admit it isn’t your painting,’ Teresa said, pinch-faced and shaken, ‘and give Olive the credit she’s due.’

‘No, he isn’t,’ said a voice from the doorway. ‘He isn’t going to do that at all.’

Olive had opened the kitchen door quietly, and had been listening at the threshold. Her expression was not easy to read. She looked incandescent — but with rage, or sorrow, or excitement, neither Isaac nor Teresa could easily tell. They froze, waiting for her to speak again. Olive moved inside the kitchen and shut the door.

‘Why did you do it?’ she asked Teresa.

Tears sprang into Teresa’s eyes. ‘I wanted to—’

‘She wanted to punish me. She saw us at the gate last night,’ said Isaac. ‘This little trick is Teresa’s revenge.’

‘It is not revenge, señorita,’ Teresa pleaded. ‘Your father should see how brilliant you are, how—’

‘That’s not your responsibility,’ said Olive. ‘Tere, I trusted you. I thought we were friends.’

‘You can trust me.’

‘How?’

‘I am sorry, I did not—’

‘It’s too late now,’ Olive sighed. ‘We can’t all just stand here like some mothers’ meeting. They’ll be wondering what’s going on.’

‘I will tell them it isn’t mine, señorita,’ said Isaac. ‘It is not fair Teresa should trick your parents. They have been good to her. And my own painting is ready. Teresa brought it over this morning.’

Olive looked thoughtful. ‘Where is Isaac’s painting, Teresa? Fetch it.’

Teresa went into the pantry. They heard her dragging barrels across the tiles, and she came tottering out with the large canvas, propping it up against the wall before she pulled away the protective cloth.

Olive stared in silence. She and her mother were recognizable, but their eyes had been made gauzy, their lips had a generic redness. Behind their heads were strange nimbuses of light, and beyond that, a plain green background. There was no humour, no spirit or power, no exciting use of colour or line, no originality, no intangible magic. No hint of secrets, no play, no story. It wasn’t terrible. It was two women on the front of a Christmas card.

Olive glanced at Isaac. He was looking at his own work, arms folded, a frown of concentration as he assessed his effort. What was he thinking? Was he pleased — did he think this was good? There was nothing wrong with the kind of art that Isaac had replicated — after all, why should everything be an intellectual gauntlet? It was easy on the eye, but it was juvenile. Her father would hate it.

She realized, in that moment, that despite her discomfort of sitting for a portrait, part of her had wanted Isaac to be really good. It would have been easier than him having no gift at all. Perhaps she was more her parents’ daughter than she thought. It was always easier to admire someone with a talent, and pity was the path to indifference. Olive closed her eyes, resisting the potential damage to her heart that this painting, or Isaac’s lack, might cause. She told herself that Isaac didn’t deserve to face her father’s disdain. When she opened her eyes, Isaac was looking at her, and she gave him a bright smile.

‘Isaac, you heard what my father said. He wants to take the painting to Paris. He wants to sell it.’

‘You see, señorita,’ said Teresa. ‘I know you said you did not care for the recognition of the world — but look at what has happened. I am glad I took the risk for you—’

Olive turned to her. ‘I didn’t want you to.’

Teresa set her jaw. ‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Tere, enough,’ said Isaac.

‘But — we must tell him, now,’ said Teresa.

‘My father thinks Isaac painted Santa Justa in the Well, or Women in the Wheatfield. He wants to take Isaac’s painting to Paris, not mine.’

‘But all you need to do is tell him that you painted it.’

‘But would it be the same painting?’ Olive asked her.

Teresa frowned. ‘I do not understand.’

The exclamations and murmurs from the front room could be heard through the kitchen door. ‘I don’t think my father would have quite the same enthusiasm if he knew I’d painted it,’ said Olive.

‘No,’ said Isaac. ‘That is not true.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ she said. ‘I want my father to go to Paris, you see. I want him to take it. It might be fun. I simply want to see.’

‘This is not right,’ Teresa pleaded. ‘Your father, when you tell him — he will be surprised, yes — but then he will see your other paintings—’

‘No.’

Olive held up her hand for silence, but Teresa ignored her. ‘You do not see your father. He will—’

‘Oh, I see my father, thank you very much.’ Olive’s voice was hard. ‘And my mother too. They believe it’s Isaac’s painting, and that’s all that matters, isn’t it? What people believe. It doesn’t matter what’s the truth; what people believe becomes the truth. Isaac could have painted it — why couldn’t he have painted it?’

‘He could never have painted it,’ said Teresa, and she stamped her foot.

Olive made a sound of frustration. ‘You’re to blame for this. So you’d better be quiet.’

‘But I did not want for you to—’

‘This is madness,’ Isaac said. ‘This is una locura. My painting is here.’

‘Isaac, it’s just a bit of fun.’

‘This is not a game,’ said Isaac. ‘I have my painting here—’

‘Please, Isaac. Look, he might not sell Women in the Wheatfield. So it stays in the family after all. This will be forgotten. Then you can give him your one.’

‘But what if he sells yours? What if he sells an Isaac Robles that has not been painted by Isaac Robles?’

‘If it sells — well, I don’t want the money, and you need the money. I heard what you said about your father. If my father sells the painting, you could spend the money any way you wanted. New schoolbooks, trips out, food, equipment for your students, the workers.’ Olive paused. ‘“What do you want in this life?” Isn’t that what you asked me, Isa? Well, I want to be useful.’

‘Art is not useful.’

‘I don’t agree. It can make a difference. It can help your cause.’

‘I cannot do this.’

‘Isaac. Claim the painting in the other room. It means nothing to me.’

‘I don’t believe that, Olive.’

‘Let me do something useful. Let me be needed. I’ve never done anything useful in my life.’

‘But—’

‘I’m not going to admit that the painting in the front room is mine, Isaac. Not to my father, at least — and in this case, he is the only person who matters.’

‘But he has praised it. Teresa is right. I do not understand—’

Olive drew herself up, her face pale. ‘Listen. I cannot tell you how rarely my father has this reaction. Let’s not risk damaging that. Be the Isaac Robles that’s out there now. Just one painting.’

Isaac said nothing for a minute. He had a look of misery, his mouth downcast. Next to him, Teresa was pulling nervously at her cardigan. ‘But it is not his,’ she whispered.

‘It is, if I give it to him,’ said Olive.

‘You will be invisible, señorita. You are giving yourself away—’

‘I’m doing the absolute opposite of giving myself away. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be completely visible. If the painting sells, I’ll be in Paris, hanging on a wall. If anything, I’m being selfish. It’s perfect; all the freedom of creation, with none of the fuss.’

Isaac looked between his own painting and the kitchen door — beyond which, down the corridor, Women in the Wheatfield was waiting on the easel, and Harold’s exclamations could still be heard. The bottle of champagne Teresa had prepared popped, and Sarah laughed. Back and forth Isaac’s eyes went, between two possible selves.

‘Do not do this, Isaac,’ Teresa whispered. ‘Señorita, go in there and tell them that it is yours.’

‘Isaac, this could be our chance to do something extraordinary.’

Isaac pushed through the door and lumbered along the corridor. When he’d disappeared, Olive turned to Teresa, her eyes alight.

‘Take this upstairs for me. And don’t sulk. It’s all going to be fine. Hide it under the bed.’ She studied Isaac’s poorly rendered version of her face. ‘Is that what he thinks of me?’

‘I do not know,’ said Teresa. ‘It is just a painting.’

‘I know you don’t really think that,’ Olive said, with a smile.

If the smile was supposed to be a gesture of forgiveness for what Teresa had done, it did not lift her spirits. She watched as Olive skipped down the corridor, following Isaac’s path. The door of the front room opened again. Alone in the kitchen, Teresa heard laughter, and the repetitive clinking of glass.

XI

Isaac walked back to the cottage in a daze. He was so tired, so hungover. Harold had got some woman on the telephone about the painting; she’d expressed interest, and he was off to Paris in the morning. The Schlosses had implored Isaac to stay for a celebratory dinner, but he couldn’t bear it. He felt like half a man. He almost hoped the thing wouldn’t sell, that Olive’s vendetta against her parents was a delayed adolescent whim soon to be forgotten, something she would look back on in years to come and laugh. The people. She wanted to help the people. She wanted to help herself, and Isaac knew he had made it possible.

He patted his pockets for his cigarettes, lit one, inhaled deeply and breathed out the smoke on a sigh. What was he doing? As he began the ascent to the cottage, the kites circled above him. He pushed open the door and thought again about the party, that kiss against the finca gate. It seemed half a year had passed since then. Olive’s insistence on coming to the church had showed a spontaneity and rebelliousness that he’d admired. He just didn’t realize quite how deep that spirit went.

He should simply have kept away from the finca from the very beginning. He should have said no to the commission, he should have told Teresa to find work elsewhere, he shouldn’t have stopped Olive in the dark, in her evening gown, hair flying everywhere. He should have marched into the front east room, bearing his own painting. He wasn’t up to pretending, and he didn’t want it.

The sound of feet on the gravel made him turn. It was Olive, running up the hill after him. She stopped to catch her breath, and he waited, immediately wary.

‘I just wanted to say, don’t worry. It’s going to be all right, I promise. If he sells it, the money’s yours. That’s it. The end.’

‘It’s done now.’

‘I promise you, Isaac. Just the one painting.’

‘Fine.’ He began to turn away.

‘And was it just the one kiss?’ she asked. He turned back to her, and she came closer, stopping just beyond his reach. They surveyed one another.

Isaac was done with her words, and tired of himself. He took her by the waist and pulled her towards him, kissing her hard on the mouth. Beneath him, Olive sprang to life, and he felt the power of her body responding as she kissed him back. He forced himself to pull away.

‘I’ve wanted this,’ Olive said. ‘Since the day we met.’

He gave a harsh laugh. ‘Wanted what?’

She stepped back. ‘You’ve allowed me this chance, Isaac. And I wondered why — and I thought — well, I thought—’

‘I did not allow you this chance. You took it.’

‘I think both of us can see this pretty clearly.’

‘Are you sure? What we have just done is exactly what a child would do. The three of us, whispering like children in the kitchen. It is make-believe. Only my sister tried to inject a bit of honesty into it.’

‘I wasn’t talking about the painting, Isaac.’ He was silent. A look of fear flickered over her face. ‘You don’t want me, then,’ she said.

Isaac felt something collapse inside himself. He turned towards the cottage and could hear Olive following him. ‘I just — I want it to be you,’ she said. He carried on walking, and could hear her steps.

He closed the door, and they stood facing each other. The light was dim, but he watched as Olive reached up and undid the top button of her blouse. She carried on, methodical as a sergeant major, button after button, letting the blouse fall off her shoulders, no brassiere beneath.

She stood before him, and her torso was perfect, her skirt a fabric stillness over the shape of her thighs. She must have thought Isaac was thinking of her, but he was not. He was thinking of that long-lost woman, Laetitia, twenty-seven years old and him, fifteen — and how grateful he was for her generosity to him that morning, how she’d never laughed, how she’d treated him like the man he’d been so desperate to become.

Isaac stepped forward and wrapped his hands around Olive’s waist. She gasped as he lifted her onto the table, her feet just touching the floor. She sat rigid as he drew a single finger all the way from her neck, between her breasts, down to the top of her skirt. She shivered and arched her back, lifting her hips and Isaac thought then, Why not, why not, and he brought his mouth to her breasts, kissing and kissing her, hearing her sharp inhalation as his finger stroked up the side of her leg and slid inside her knickers. Her legs tensed. ‘More?’ he murmured.

There was a pause. ‘More,’ she said.

He ruched Olive’s skirt up around her waist, dropped to his knees and prised apart her thighs. When he ran his tongue down the fabric of her knickers, Olive gasped again. He stopped.

‘More?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ she said, so he pushed the fabric aside and dipped in his tongue, dipping and lapping, opening his mouth onto her.

‘Is this a real thing?’ Olive whispered, and then her words were lost.

He carried on, and soon Olive was pushing her hips hard into him, her moans turning upwards into a huge sigh. She shuddered onto the table, her arms thrown back on the wide, gnarled wood. Isaac stood up and surveyed her, his hands holding the sides of Olive’s legs, how her arched spine now lay flat, how her face was turned away, closed to everything except her smile, her undeniable triumph and bliss.

‘More?’ Isaac asked.

Olive opened her eyes, widened her legs, and looked at him. ‘More,’ came her reply.