Jessie Burton - The Muse

Teresa glanced over to Sarah. She had a self-contained look, as if she was conserving her energies, girding herself. Does she know? Teresa thought. She knows.

‘Hallo, darling,’ Sarah said. ‘Isaac doesn’t live here, you know.’

Harold stalked forward, depositing two kisses either side of his wife’s face. ‘It’s Isaac now, is it?’ He turned to Olive. ‘You look well, Liv. In fact, you look glorious.’

Olive smiled. ‘Thank you, Papi. So do you.’

Teresa cast down her eyes, hoping Harold wouldn’t see her thoughts. ‘ Buenos días , Teresa,’ he said. She looked; the journey had left him with a day’s stubble. She discerned the smell of travel, the possibility of someone else’s perfume mingled on his skin.

‘ Buenos días, señor .’

‘Fetch my suitcase, will you.’

She descended the step, feeling folded inside the Schlosses’ life with such cloying intensity that she could hardly breathe.

That night, Teresa waited for Isaac outside their cottage, as the shadows lengthened and the cicadas began to build their rasping wall of sound. He appeared at the base of the hill at about seven o’clock, and she was struck by how tired he looked, burdened down by an invisible weight as he moved towards her.

‘He’s back,’ she said, by way of greeting.

Isaac dropped his knapsack on the grass, where it clunked.

‘What’s in there?’ she asked.

‘You’ll see.’ He sank to the earth and lay on his back, his hands enlaced beneath his head.

‘There’s something you should know,’ she said, irritated by this evasion. ‘Olive didn’t tell you, but she sent an extra painting to Paris. Don’t be angry. He’s sold it. I wanted to tell you before Harold did.’ Isaac remained prostrate, and he nodded, patting his jacket pocket, pulling out a box of battered cigarettes. ‘Are you angry, Isa?’

‘No.’

‘I thought you would be. Why aren’t you?’

‘Do you want me to be angry? What’s the point? She’s done it. And it doesn’t surprise me.’

‘More money for the cause, I suppose.’

‘Always that.’

‘Isa. I know what’s going on.’

He looked up at her, sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I know what you two do. Apart from the painting stuff. That she’s in love with you.’

A look of relief passed across his face as he lit a cigarette. ‘Olive,’ he said.

‘Are you in love with her?’

Isaac sat up and dragged on his cigarette, hunching his knees as he looked down over the sierra. It was dusk by now, and the bats had started to appear out of the copses at the foot of the valley. The air was warm, the earth still giving off its heat. ‘They’ll leave,’ he said. ‘They won’t last here. They belong in the city. In the salon.’

‘Sarah, yes. Harold, maybe. Not Olive.’

‘She’s turned you into a romantic.’

‘The opposite. I understand her, that’s all. She won’t leave you. She’ll follow wherever you go.’

‘What makes you so sure of that?’

‘She says she can’t paint without you.’

He laughed. ‘True in one way, perhaps. Well, if she does love me, that doesn’t make any of this all right.’

‘I don’t think she needs you at all.’

‘And that doesn’t surprise me either, Teresa.’

Paris had been a triumph, Harold said; Isaac Robles was now the pole star in the firmament of Galerie Schloss Paris. The next afternoon, Harold, legs stretched out in the front east room, drinking a glass of fino, told them in no uncertain terms that thanks to Women in the Wheatfield, The Orchard , and Self-Portrait in Green , he and his partners were enjoying a renaissance.

‘People heard through Duchamp that Peggy wants to buy art,’ he said. ‘But I got there first. She’s incredibly excited about the next one, your companion piece to Women in the Wheatfield . She wants a photograph of it in progress, though, if that’s possible. Is it possible, Isaac?’

Olive slugged back another fingerful of sherry. ‘The “companion piece”?’ said Isaac.

‘Am I rushing you?’ said Harold. ‘Tell me if so. We don’t have to send her a photograph if you don’t want that. It’s what’s best for you. You have a great gift, Isa. Truly. I cannot wait to see your future.’

‘It will not be what any of us expects,’ Isaac replied. ‘Mr Schloss, I have brought something for you.’

Olive put the sherry glass down and began to rise from her chair, but Isaac reached into his knapsack and withdrew a pistol, the barrel made of shining steel. No one spoke as he weighed it in the flat of his hand.

‘Is that real?’ Sarah asked.

‘Real, señora.’

‘Why on earth have you brought us a gun?’ said Harold, laughing. ‘Bring me a painting, for Christ’s sake.’

Olive sat back, the relief visible on her face. ‘Do you shoot, señor?’ Isaac said.

‘I can. I have.’

‘Can the women shoot?’

‘Of course we can’t,’ said Sarah. ‘Why do you ask? This is terribly dramatic.’

Isaac hung an old flour sack, packed with earth, upon a protruding branch of a cork oak at the end of the garden. One word covered the rough sacking, HARINA, and they agreed that the makeshift bullseye was the space between the ‘R’ and the ‘I’. They all trooped past the empty stone fountain and lined up to have a go, and there was almost a carnival atmosphere to their endeavour; the silly swinging sack, the birds scattering out of the oak at the crack of Isaac’s pistol.

Harold hit the last A . Sarah shot into the bark and handed the pistol back to Isaac, saying she would never touch it again. She went to lie on her back in the grass, staring at the sky, her hands resting on her stomach. Isaac shot the middle of the N , and looked sheepish. He handed the pistol to Olive, and Teresa watched the intertwining of their hands.

Olive lumbered over to the shooting spot and raised the pistol. She squinted, and pulled on the trigger, releasing the bullet with a gasped shock as the pistol recoiled in her hand.

‘Liv,’ cried her father.

‘I’m fine.’

‘No, you nearly shot the centre.’

Olive looked in surprise towards the sack. ‘Did I?’

Teresa thought it natural that Olive should have such a good eye, a steady hand. ‘Do that again,’ Harold said.

‘No. It was a fluke.’

Sarah lifted her head up to look at the bullet-riddled sack. ‘Liv, you’ve got a hidden talent. Maybe we should enter you in competitions.’

Teresa hurried over to take the pistol from Olive, and Isaac came to check she was reloading it correctly. Teresa brushed him off, setting the pistol perfectly on her own. ‘You bought this with her money, didn’t you?’ she whispered to him.

‘It won’t be the last. It’s a Soviet T33,’ he replied, with a note of admiration.

‘Are you giving this gun to them?’

‘They might need it.’

‘Why? Are you trying to protect them, or put them in danger?’

‘Keep your eye on the target, Tere. And your voice down.’

Teresa wondered where Isaac was finding the means to source Soviet weapons, but part of her didn’t want to know. She concentrated on raising the pistol, her legs apart, her other hand supporting her wrist. Her body was taut, every muscle tensed on her spare frame, the set of her jaw fixed as hard as the stone satyr in the fountain. She inhaled deeply and pulled the trigger. You’re not the only one who shoots rabbits , she thought. The pistol went off and the bullet sailed through the air, hitting precisely through the knot attaching the sack to the branch. To Isaac’s cry of frustration, the entire thing tumbled to the grass. The packed earth spilled everywhere, and the game was ruined.