The Muse

XXIV

They buried her under an olive tree in the orchard. Teresa didn’t remember much about it, but she could always remember the sound of the earth being flung on top of the casket, the same earth they’d once dug together, the rainbow through the falling drops. Padre Lorenzo had left the village, so Doctor Morales led a makeshift service. Harold and Teresa stood by and watched, virtually propping each other up, and Sarah was sedated upstairs.

The doctor would not look Teresa in the eye. Did he truly believe the rumour that she’d been the one to pull the trigger? She knew what was happening in the village. Jorge, probably in a pre-emptive strike against any guilt falling on his own head, had been going around saying that he’d bet a month’s wages it was Teresa who’d shot Isaac and Olive up on the hill. She’d probably wanted to punish her brother. Teresa was sure Jorge was responsible for the shootings, but had no evidence to prove it. And in times like these, the truth was no barrier to men like Jorge. She did not sleep at night, wondering what would happen to her when people started to take Jorge at his word.

And in some ways, Teresa believed that what Jorge was saying was true. She had wanted some punishment for her brother. She had been responsible for sending Olive out, so that Olive might learn the truth about the man she considered the key to her success. Teresa came to believe that Olive had died because of her, and at night, she howled the guilt into her pillow. That Harold might hear of Jorge’s rumour was both Teresa’s greatest worry and her dearest wish. Harold might kill her in his grief — but at least it would end her misery.

In the days after Olive was buried, Harold, Sarah and Teresa moved around as if underwater. Teresa felt she was choking for the lack of air. Marbella and Alhama fell to the rebels, and still the Schlosses did not move. It was not until a 500-kilo bomb killed fifty-two people in one building in Malaga, and at the Regina Hotel a girl lost both her legs on the eve of her wedding day, that the family shook the stupor off their grief.

The naval bombardment was stepping up, as were the aerial attacks. There were five warships in the waters round Fuengirola. In Malaga, they reported, there was no longer anyone in control, nobody in authority. No public services, no organization whatsoever. The militia were half-crazed, there was no electricity, no trams, no police. Madrid looked like a picnic after its air attacks, they said, compared to Malaga.

‘We must leave,’ Teresa told Harold. ‘Please. Isaac is dead, and half of the village already think that I am guilty — how will I ever live?’

‘You’ll survive,’ he said.

‘Please, señor, I have worked hard. I am innocent.’

He looked at her. ‘Are you?’

Teresa held his gaze. ‘Señor. I have always kept your secret.’

She watched the comprehension dawning on Harold’s face, keeping her own expression neutral, although her heart was thumping. She had no choice. ‘Señor,’ she went on, ‘would your wife keep you in money if she knew about the German?’

‘We’re taking Teresa out of Spain,’ Harold said to his wife, the very next day. ‘It is the least we can do. She will go on Olive’s papers.’

‘Fine,’ Sarah said, unwilling to catch Teresa’s eye. Teresa knew full well that Sarah had her own good reasons to wish her far away, but Teresa held Sarah’s secret too, and so the Englishwoman said nothing.

*

It was a cold afternoon when they left. They were a strange reconfiguration, the most fractured trio on that ship — and that was saying something. There was no glamour in departure to echo the way that they’d arrived; the sky a sheet of changing greys, the sea beyond unending. The noise of the rusty chains loosening from the quay at Malaga caused in Teresa a monstrous sort of happiness. For under her sense of relief that she was leaving, she felt already the pulse of guilt. She had paid her escape with Olive’s blood.

Her own expression was mirrored in the faces of the other passengers, as the land began to diminish and thin. It was a bitter miracle. They’d done it; they’d got away, but at the same time they hadn’t, of course they hadn’t. Teresa knew that part of her would never be able to leave.

She had never been on a ship; she’d only ever known the land. Harold said the vessel was called a destroyer. Teresa thought of her ruined notebook, of how blackly apt an English noun could be. She gripped the rail, resisting the desire to jump, to plunge into the churning waters. It was so many colours, the sea; mud and milk, slate and leaf, and bronze when the light caught the crest of a wave — and at times, where it was still settled beyond, where the bows had not carved through it, a purer blue. Teresa realized that over the months, she’d come to understand how many colours there were that she had never noticed. She wanted the wind to whip her face, to sting and numb her, but it wasn’t happening. No force of nature could erase her.

She thought again about the morning they found Olive. Harold still didn’t know why Olive had gone out into the darkness the night before. In his grief to flee, to get out of this hellhole, his daughter dead, he didn’t stop to wonder why Olive might have been out there in the first place. He didn’t consider that other members of his family might also be looking for love, for some purpose or salvation in another person. But when that morning had dawned, and Olive didn’t come down to breakfast, Sarah and Teresa looked at one another, and assumed between them that silence on this matter would be better. So it remained.

The initial, mild discomfort of that morning had turned to horror, as Harold, realizing his daughter was missing, had taken the car out and found her body on the hillside. An hour later the women heard his motor again, the clang of the gate as he clipped it with the car, Olive’s body lolling on the back seat. Harold staggered towards the women, his daughter in his arms. I’m taking her with us, he’d said, his voice oddly dull, as if he were miles away, speaking down the tunnel of his own body. At the sight of her dead child, Sarah had broken down.

Now, trying to recall all this, forcing herself to face it in order to carry on — Teresa could only remember fragments of these moments. It was the physical that stuck with her; the thud of her knees sinking to the ground, the taste of the cheap acorn coffee coming up her throat as she vomited onto the flagstones. The touch of Olive’s body. White-skinned but bluish, stiff and bloodstained, three gunshot wounds visible through her jumper.

‘She called this place home,’ Sarah had said, slurring, hours later, the three of them sitting in the front east room. Harold was drunk, Sarah was on some pill or other. It was a living nightmare. They had placed Olive’s body in the kitchen, the coldest part of the house, at the back. ‘We must bury her here,’ Sarah whispered, haggard with grief.

‘What happened to my brother?’ Teresa asked. Sarah covered her face with her hands.

‘Jorge came for him,’ said Harold. ‘I only carried Olive.’

‘Jorge?’ said Teresa. ‘Where did he take him?’

‘I don’t know.’

When both Sarah and Harold had passed out — Sarah on the sofa and Harold upright in the armchair, his whisky tumbler beginning to slip — Teresa set the glass on the floor and tiptoed down the corridor. She imagined Jorge, slinging her brother’s body somewhere in the woods, a shallow grave perhaps, no means of ever finding him again. She had to lean against the wall, ramming her hand into her mouth to stop herself from screaming.

Olive didn’t look like Olive any more. Mottled, eyes closed, mouth slightly ajar. Her teeth were visible, which made her look even more vulnerable. Teresa reached out to touch Olive’s arm, feeling how solid it was, now the blood no longer flowed. She touched Olive’s head, and felt dead herself — a dead person living, a ghost with flesh on her bones. She saw something sticking from the pocket of Olive’s skirt. It was the photograph from Isaac’s set; Olive and Isaac standing in front of Rufina and the Lion in the attic.

I promise you on my life, she said to Olive in Spanish, putting the photograph in her own pocket, I will not let this go unpunished.

But even as she spoke, a quiet voice within Teresa told her already how hard it would be to avenge their deaths. How can you battle with a shadow in your own village square? This was the worst of it; that in the face of this senseless waste, Teresa was powerless. There was nothing she could do to bring them back. The only thing she could keep alive was memory.

The next day, Sarah had come up to the attic as Teresa was finishing her packing. All Olive’s paints and sketchbooks were stowed away. All that was left was Rufina and the Lion, propped against the wall.

‘Is that it?’ Sarah had asked. ‘The next one?’

‘Yes.’

Sarah stood in front of it, saying nothing, drinking it in. Then she turned to Teresa, fixed her eyes on her, and said, ‘Teresa, what’s Isaac’s painting doing up here?’

‘Olive — was looking after it.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

Sarah turned back to the painting. ‘I see.’ She walked towards it and placed her hand on its edge. ‘Well I’ll be damned if that Guggenheim woman gets it,’ she said, her voice breaking. This is for me.’

‘No, no, señora, it must go to the Guggenheim gallery.’

Sarah whirled on her. ‘Are you telling me what to do? ‘This is the last thing I have—’

‘Señora,’ Teresa pleaded.

Sarah narrowed her eyes. ‘What’s that in your hand?’

‘Nothing,’ said Teresa, putting the photograph behind her back.

‘Show me.’

Sarah grabbed the photograph. On seeing Isaac and her daughter, captured in what looked like a moment of happiness, she put a hand to her mouth and turned away, dragging Rufina and the Lion with her along the floor.

Teresa called down the stairs. ‘I think Isaac’s body is in the wood. Will you help me bury it—’

‘Shut up,’ said Sarah. She stopped, but did not turn round. Her hand came up and touched her straggly curls, and Teresa saw that she was trembling. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t help.’ She stumbled down the stairs.

To see the painting disappear with Sarah felt to Teresa as if her own strength was leaking away. But she could hardly wrench Olive’s painting out of Sarah’s hands. If she wanted to leave for England, for now at least there was nothing she could do.

Teresa tried to push these memories away, placing her chin on the handrail as the ship gained speed through the water. She wondered what Sarah was going to do with the painting and the photograph. The painting was in the hull, right now. Idly, she considered sneaking down and putting it into her own trunk. But it was too risky; she had to keep a low profile. The photograph would be easier to lift with light fingers — it was probably in Sarah’s purse. Was it that Sarah had wanted an image of Isaac, or of Olive? It was hard to tell, but either way, Sarah had clutched that photograph like a talisman. She was vaguely aware of other passengers behind her on deck, taking a walk before night fell.

‘Hello,’ said a man, breaking into her thoughts.

Teresa flinched, her gaze fixed on the horizon as she tugged the woollen hat she was using to cover her short fuzz of hair. She didn’t want to talk.

‘Bloody shame, isn’t it,’ he went on.

He was English; young and upright. Teresa saw his fingers on the rail; black hairs sprouting on each one. ‘Not good at all,’ he said. ‘I should have stayed, but I couldn’t. We had to close the consulate.’

Teresa turned: he had blue eyes and a stern face. He looked like something out of an adventure book. He was frowning, almost talking to himself. She noticed the shadows of sleeplessness on his face, but he was the one to ask her if she was quite well.

‘I am, yes, thank you,’ Teresa replied, in her best English. She looked over her shoulder. Harold and Sarah had not emerged from their berths. She didn’t want them to see her talking to anyone, but she wondered if they would by this point even care. Sarah had been insistent on going back to London, but Harold wanted to pick up the thread with Peggy Guggenheim in Paris. They were going to separate; Teresa could see it, even if they couldn’t. Olive was a shadow between them, a touchstone of guilt, recrimination and pain.

‘Why couldn’t you stay?’ she asked him.

‘The bombs. That, and other parts of Europe requiring our attention. But still.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Don’t think it’s right.’

‘No.’

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

She said nothing, and there was amusement on his tired face. ‘I see,’ he went on. ‘Like that, is it? I detect an accent though. Do you speak Spanish?’

‘Yes.’

Teresa could tell he was intrigued by her. In the satchel she had not let go of since leaving the finca, she had Olive’s admission letter from the Slade, and a telegram from Peggy Guggenheim expressing her impatience for the next Isaac Robles. Given that Harold had kept hold of her identity documents, these flimsy bits of paper were all Teresa had left. She touched the satchel, her guard down with tiredness, her mind hopping too quickly to hold her nerve. Picturing being thrown off the side of the boat for her failed impersonation, she gripped the rail harder.

‘Any other languages I should know about?’ the man asked, passing her his hipflask, which she drank from, hesitantly. She told him she knew a bit of German and at this, he became even more intrigued. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘England.’

‘Nowhere more specific?’

‘London. Curzon Street.’

‘Very nice. Family there?’

‘Parents.’

‘I see,’ he said, but he did not look convinced, and Teresa felt herself collapsing within. ‘And what are you going to do when you get there?’ he pushed.

Teresa suspected that Harold and Sarah, for their separate reasons, would be glad to see the back of her. They’d done enough, bringing her out of Spain to protect their respective secrets, using their daughter’s name to do so. Teresa knew she was already a nuisance they’d rather forget. She wasn’t sure how far she’d be able to push her luck.

‘I don’t know what I am going to do next,’ she said to the man, thinking there was no harm in fusing a true statement in the middle of her evasions.

‘I might be able to help you. If you’re willing to help me.’

‘How?’ she asked. Behind his head, the coast of Spain had by now completely disappeared.

‘Come to this address,’ he said. ‘Whenever you can. A Monday is best.’

Teresa took the small card he was proffering, and read the words Foreign Office, Whitehall, London. She didn’t know what that was, or how to get there, but she worried that if she confessed to this man, he would take his offer away. She tried to assess him; was it her body he wanted? It didn’t seem so, but then, she knew by now how false the English could be, how good they were at saying the opposite of what they really meant.

He picked up on her hesitation. ‘I promise, it’s quite all right.’

Teresa turned back to watch the horizon. She pictured Olive’s Rufina, the girl and her severed head and her lion, buried deep in the ship. A girl has died, she thought, because I tried to save her. She looked down at the water, remembering the promise she had whispered to Olive’s body. ‘Whitehall,’ she repeated to the man. ‘Best on a Monday.’

He smiled again. ‘Excellent. I hope to see you there.’

Teresa heard his footsteps receding. She ran her fingers over the card. It was cream-coloured, and it had weight to it, a touch of authority. She flipped it over. There was nothing on it but a name: Edmund Reede. She repeated the strange words under her breath, before slipping the offering into her satchel. While she could not envisage what this Whitehall was, nor what Mr Edmund Reede might do for her, she knew that there was nothing left behind that would make her turn back.

The other passengers had retired. It was very cold by now. The last of the sun began to disappear, but Teresa stayed on deck. Even when she could no longer feel her limbs, even after the night had claimed the horizon, Teresa waited. She watched the blackness, watched the stars, as the destroyer carved its passage to England’s shores.