Jessie Burton - The Muse

*

Late that afternoon, Harold said he was driving to Malaga. He wanted to visit a bodega, pick up some new supplies of sherry. Sarah announced that she would accompany him. ‘I need a chemist,’ she said. ‘Then I’d like a coffee on Calle Larios and a walk along the sea.’

Teresa saw Harold’s hesitation, but he said, ‘That’s a good idea, get some air into your lungs. Isaac, would you join us? A man with local knowledge might help when it comes to the sherry.’ But Isaac, who Teresa knew would once have craved a drive in such a powerful car, who had to content himself with a bicycle, did not wish to join them at all. He demurred, politely. ‘Of course,’ said Harold. ‘You’ve got work you want to do.’

Outside the finca, Olive and Isaac waved her parents off. ‘We could take the photograph for Peggy Guggenheim now,’ she said, as their car disappeared. ‘Daddy has a camera in his study.’ Isaac was silent, staring at the swinging gate, gaping open on the path towards the village. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I was foolish,’ he said.

‘You’re weren’t.’

‘I thought your confidence, your happiness, was out of love for me.’

‘It was. It is.’

‘I do not think so. I think this has always been inside you, waiting to come out. I just happened to be there, at that particular time, in order for you to use me as your canvas.’

‘I love you, Isaac,’ she said. The words landed short between them.

‘Your love is not with me. It is for the walls of the Guggenheim house. How is this going to end, Olive?’ he said. ‘Because it is going to end.’

Olive turned to him, placing a hand on his arm, but he brushed it off. ‘I’ve made you angry,’ she said. ‘But I do love you—’

‘You say one more painting. But then there is another. A green face, one more, one more, one more.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. This will be the last. I promise, I swear. I swear on my life.’

He turned to face her squarely. ‘Did you and my sister plan all this from the very beginning?’

‘Of course not.’

‘She seems very comfortable with the situation now. She sounds like you. Always, she has a plan.’

‘No, there was never a plan, Isaac. This just happened.’

‘Teresa is a survivor. She was the one who put you on the easel, but don’t think she will always put you first.’

‘What are you talking about?’

He laughed, without humour. ‘I am famous in Paris, a city I have never even seen. I paint portraits of my own face I have never even seen. You are stealing me, Olive. I feel like I am becoming invisible, the more visible I become.’ The breath had got stuck in his throat, and he looked embarrassed, his words breaking up. ‘And after all this, you expect me to believe you love me.’

‘I don’t expect anything, Isaac. I never wanted you to feel like this. I do love you. I never expected you to love me . I’ve got carried away, I know that. But I — we’ve — been so successful, I never thought it could be so easy—’

‘It is not easy, Olive. It has never been easy. I cannot, I will not do this any more. And if you send that Guggenheim woman one more picture, then I cannot promise my actions.’

‘What does that mean? Isaac, you’re frightening me.’

‘The painting you are working on — you must destroy it.’

She looked horrified. ‘But I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Because they’re waiting for it in Paris.’

‘Then you cannot expect me to have anything to do with it.’

‘Isaac, please. Please —’

‘You promised me, Olive. You went behind my back.’

‘And you haven’t touched me for four weeks. Is that the price you’re forcing me to pay, for once in my life doing something brilliant?’

‘And what about the price you are forcing me to pay? No man would put up with a woman who asks so much. A man needs a woman who understands him, who supports him—’

‘Who puts him first?’

‘My absence from you is an exchange you seem more than willing to make, as long as Miss Guggenheim continues to sing your praises.’

‘That’s not true. I miss you.’

‘You do not miss me, Olive. You miss the next chance to send a painting over.’

‘I do miss you. Just come upstairs and see it,’ she pleaded. ‘And then tell me if you still feel the same.’

The painting was the same size as Women in the Wheatfield , and yet it felt bigger. Up in the attic, Isaac stood before it, staggered by its sensuality and power. Even though it was still unfinished, the lion already looked possessed by the sight of the double-headed Rufina. This piece was breathtaking, sinister, revolutionary.

‘Is that you?’ he asked. He pointed at the disembodied head. ‘And is that Tere, holding you?’

‘Yes, and yes,’ said Olive. ‘But it’s supposed to be the same person. It’s called Rufina and the Lion . That’s Rufina, before and after the authorities got hold of her.’

Isaac stared at the painting, the riot of colours and gold leaf, the curiously level gazes of Rufina carrying her head; the lion, waiting to take action.

‘Do you like it?’ she asked.

‘It’s wonderful.’

She smiled. ‘It happens sometimes. My hand guides my head without much pause to worry or think.’

In that moment, all she wanted was for Isaac to see her as talented and confident — and to love her for it. ‘We’ve done a wonderful thing, Isa,’ she said. ‘The paintings are going to be famous.’ But Isaac kept his focus on Rufina and the Lion . ‘Let’s use the camera,’ she said with a bright voice. ‘Peggy wanted snaps.’

‘ Snaps ?’

‘Photographs. Of the painting. Isa,’ she said gently, ‘do you really want me to destroy it?’

He looked at the floor, and Olive knew in that moment that she had won this battle, if not the war. ‘You could fight a lion too, Isaac — if you had to. I know it.’

‘And a lion would run away from you. Do you know how to use the camera?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ she replied, unnerved, unable to pinpoint what was happening between them. ‘But — I was hoping Teresa would take a photograph of the two of us, together.’

Isaac closed his eyes, as if in pain. ‘Let’s get it done,’ he said. ‘Call her.’

‘I’m a lion,’ Teresa roared, putting her free hand up, a pantomime paw as she hovered her finger over the camera button. She’d been taking rather formal pictures for the last half-hour — of the painting, of Isaac next to it, but in this moment, Olive threw back her head in laughter, eyes slightly closed, whilst next to her, Isaac, impervious to his sister’s humour, gazed straight down the lens with a look of such possession on his face that Teresa forgot she was the king of the jungle at all.

Teresa knew then, as she pressed that button and captured them in these poses, that something had broken in this room. And she understood, for the first time, that they could never go back.

When Isaac went to pick up the developed film in Malaga a week later, he discovered that in some of the pictures, Teresa had put Olive in the centre of the image, and the painting itself was half-obscured. He thought he looked funereal in every single one. Olive, because she had been moving so much — jumpy in the face of his acute reluctance that afternoon — was slightly blurred, her mouth ajar, her lips making a silent O of pleasure. The sight of her — her expression of freedom and joy — made his conscience flicker briefly before dying away.

When Harold was shown a photograph of the painting on its own, cropped closely so you couldn’t tell its location, he asked Isaac, ‘Why is the girl carrying a head?’