Jessie Burton - The Muse

‘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.

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.’