Jessie Burton - The Muse

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

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

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

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

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

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

The girl placed a hand on her own chest. ‘ Me llamo Teresa Robles ,’ she said, pronouncing it the Spanish way, Row-blez .

‘ Me llamo Isaac Robles ,’ the man said.

‘ Me llamo Olive Schloss .’

She must be his wife, Olive thought, for why else would he be with her at this time of the morning? The couple laughed, and she felt a flare of rage. Being called ‘Olive’ in Spain might be funny, but it was hardly the same as being called ‘Anchovy’, or ‘Apricot’. Olive had always been teased for her name: first, as Popeye’s woman; then as an adolescent, a cocktail nibble. Now, on the cusp of freedom, she was being laughed at for being the fruit upon the Spanish tree.

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

‘Having a picnic without me?’

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

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

‘Jesus!’ Olive cried.

‘Don’t be a coward,’ said Sarah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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