Jessie Burton - The Muse

‘For God’s sake,’ Harold interjected. ‘We are not hiding your children.’

‘They are no longer my children. You should leave here,’ said Don Alfonso. ‘You should go.’

‘On the contrary,’ replied Harold. ‘I think we should protect those who do not enjoy your protection. I am beginning to understand you much better.’

Alfonso laughed. ‘You foreigners, you’re all the same. You think you are protecting Teresa and Isaac? They will be the ones who will have to protect you. And do you think they will? That you are under some magic shroud, that your maid and gardener love you?’

‘Teresa is our maid, yes, and a bloody good one — but Isaac is not our gardener. You have no idea about what your son—’

‘I know him better than you do. What will he use to defend you, señor — a saucepan? Those degenerates he consorts with are more likely to put a hoe through your heart and join up with the Reds.’

*

When Don Alfonso had disappeared in his motor car shortly after, Olive ran through the finca’s rusty gates, down the path, into the village — by this time breathless and leg-sore — and out and up the hill again, to Isaac and Teresa’s cottage. They were not there, but Jorge and Gregorio had turned the place over. God, this cottage was a spare place, sparer than Olive had remembered it to be. In her mind’s eye, it had become a rustic haven, a place to think and breathe and paint. In truth, it was a place one might wish to escape.

Isaac’s room contained nothing but his unmade bed and a jar of dying roses on the windowsill. Teresa’s meagre belongings were scattered on her bedroom floor. Olive was surprised to see one of her old paint tubes — the grasshopper-green shade she’d used for The Orchard . There was a Veuve Clicquot champagne cork, and stranger things; a cut-out square of material that matched her father’s pyjamas. There was a crushed packet of Harold’s cigarettes, and when Olive went to shake it, several stubs had been saved inside, their ends covered in the unmistakeable rouge of her mother’s lips. Lying around the floorboards were loose pages ripped from a notebook, with words and phrases written in English in a diligent, neat hand: palaver — snaffled — crass — gosh — I’m starving — ghastly — selfish . Alongside them were their Spanish meanings.

Olive’s heart began to thump. Looking at this flotsam from her parents’ lives, this notebook of the things they’d probably said in careless passing — she had the chilly sensation that she didn’t really know Teresa at all.

The front door banged, her skin turned to gooseflesh. No footsteps followed and she told herself it was the wind. The noise still unnerved her, and she imagined a wolf, sneaking in from the mountains. She was about to move out of Teresa’s room, when she saw a photograph on the floor. It was a picture of herself and Isaac in front of Rufina and the Lion . Olive was smiling and Isaac, his eyebrows slightly raised, looked ready for his painter’s pose. Olive had never seen this picture before, and without thinking, she rammed it deep into her pocket.

As she passed back down the corridor, she saw Isaac’s original painting, propped against the wall. Teresa must have moved it back here, out of sight. The idealized faces of herself and her mother seemed to loom out, and Olive was struck again by their mannequin look, their monstrous blankness.

She went outside to look at the hills. There was a wreathing pallor of smoke still in the air, the taste of the fire’s aftermath. Isaac knew these hills well, better than Don Alfonso. He knew where to hide — but Teresa had not had as much time to escape. Something terrible was coming, Olive could feel it; and there was nothing she could do.

‘Teresa?’ she called to the land, and her own voice rebounded back. ‘Teresa?’ she shouted again, her panic rising. But all that Olive heard was the echo of Teresa’s name, falling down the hills.

It was Jorge who spotted her, disappearing into the forest on the outskirts of the village. He and Gregorio were on the hunt, but it was only by chance that Jorge had his head turned in that direction; the glimpse of a slim brown leg, the flash of a dark plait. What happened next changed Arazuelo for ever, the place that was always supposed to stay the same. The trauma of it rang out, long and ineradicable down the years to come, however hard those who witnessed it attempted silence.

Had he been any further away, Jorge would have lost her; for Teresa was swift-footed and he was much heavier. But together he and Gregorio stalked her through the trees. When Jorge shot his pistol into the air, she spun to face the direction of the sound, and Gregorio took the opportunity to grab her from behind.

She kicked and screamed, but Gregorio did not let go. ‘Where is he?’ Jorge shouted at her, lumbering through the bracken.

‘What do you mean? Put me down.’ Teresa felt as if her heart was inching its way up her body, weighing down her tongue.

‘Where’s your brother?’

‘I don’t know .’ Jorge moved forward, pushing his face close to hers. She could smell the sour catch of old alcohol on his breath. ‘Come on, Teresa, you know everything, little bird-eye. Little spy. Where’s your fucking brother?’

‘I don’t know,’ she repeated.

‘Tie her to the tree,’ Jorge said, but Gregorio hesitated. ‘You heard me. Do it.’ Gregorio didn’t move.

‘I don’t know where he is, Jorge, I swear,’ Teresa said, sensing a chance. ‘You think he’d tell me? No one tells me anything—’

‘Your brother set half the village on fire last night. When we catch him, he’s a dead man. And you’re going to help.’

He began to drag Teresa by her plait towards the tree. ‘Isa’s known you since you were schoolkids,’ she said, gasping at the pain arcing across her skull. ‘Twenty years your friend. How does your mother look you in the face?’ she hissed.

‘At least I’ve got a mother who does,’ said Jorge.

‘You’re shaking, Gregorio,’ Teresa went on at the softer man, out of her wits with fear, but scenting his discomfort.

‘Jorge,’ said Gregorio. ‘We should take her to the station.’

‘Shut it,’ Jorge said.

‘I mean it. I’m not tying her to this tree. Don Alfonso never said — let’s put her in the truck.’

Jorge eventually relented, and they put Teresa in a cell at the civil guard headquarters, and all night Teresa was silent. ‘Check she hasn’t done herself in,’ Jorge spat. ‘Like her mother before her.’

‘What?’ said Gregorio.

Jorge looked at his colleague. ‘Don’t tell me you never knew. Her mother drowned herself. Probably didn’t want to hang around to bring up that piece of shit,’ he added, directing his voice down the dank corridor, loud enough for Teresa to hear.

The next morning, Teresa had barely slept. She had not been wearing many clothes in the first place, and no one had offered her a blanket — but what hurt more, what made her skin palpably shiver, was that no one had come from the finca to speak for her. In the deep of the night, staring up through the bars, thinking of the cruel words Jorge had uttered, Teresa had convinced herself that any minute Olive would come, Olive would call her name, demanding that these brutish boys let her out. Teresa had to believe it, because if she didn’t believe it, then the firing squad would come instead.

But Olive never came — and neither did Harold, even though he would have had more authority than his daughter. And as dawn broke, Teresa began to think, Of course, of course, why would they come? — and she was glad that no one could witness the pitiful embarrassment of hope.