‘Bloody shame, isn’t it,’ he went on.
He was English; young and upright. Teresa saw his fingers on the rail; black hairs sprouting on each one. ‘Not good at all,’ he said. ‘I should have stayed, but I couldn’t. We had to close the consulate.’
Teresa turned; he had blue eyes and a stern face. He looked like something out of an adventure book. He was frowning, almost talking to himself. She noticed the shadows of sleeplessness on his face, but he was the one to ask her if she was quite well.
‘I am, yes, thank you,’ Teresa replied, in her best English. She looked over her shoulder. Harold and Sarah had not emerged from their berths. She didn’t want them to see her talking to anyone, but she wondered if they would by this point even care. Sarah had been insistent on going back to London, but Harold wanted to pick up the thread with Peggy Guggenheim in Paris. They were going to separate; Teresa could see it, even if they couldn’t. Olive was a shadow between them, a touchstone of guilt, recrimination and pain.
‘Why couldn’t you stay?’ she asked him.
‘The bombs. That, and other parts of Europe requiring our attention. But still.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Don’t think it’s right.’
‘No.’
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
She said nothing, and there was amusement on his tired face. ‘I see,’ he went on. ‘Like that, is it? I detect an accent though. Do you speak Spanish?’
‘Yes.’
Teresa could tell he was intrigued by her. In the satchel she had not let go of since leaving the finca, she had Olive’s admission letter from the Slade, and a telegram from Peggy Guggenheim expressing her impatience for the next Isaac Robles. Given that Harold had kept hold of her identity documents, these flimsy bits of paper were all Teresa had left. She touched the satchel, her guard down with tiredness, her mind hopping too quickly to hold her nerve. Picturing being thrown off the side of the boat for her failed impersonation, she gripped the rail harder.
‘Any other languages I should know about?’ the man asked, passing her his hip--flask, which she drank from, hesitantly. She told him she knew a bit of German and at this, he became even more intrigued. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘England.’
‘Nowhere more specific?’
‘London. Curzon Street.’
‘Very nice. Family there?’
‘Parents.’
‘I see,’ he said, but he did not look convinced, and Teresa felt herself collapsing within. ‘And what are you going to do when you get there?’ he pushed.
Teresa suspected that Harold and Sarah, for their separate reasons, would be glad to see the back of her. They’d done enough, bringing her out of Spain to protect their respective secrets, using their daughter’s name to do so. Teresa knew she was already a nuisance they’d rather forget. She wasn’t sure how far she’d be able to push her luck.
‘I don’t know what I am going to do next,’ she said to the man, thinking there was no harm in fusing a true statement in the middle of her evasions.
‘I might be able to help you. If you’re willing to help me.’
‘How?’ she asked. Behind his head, the coast of Spain had by now completely disappeared.
‘Come to this address,’ he said. ‘Whenever you can. A Monday is best.’
Teresa took the small card he was proffering, and read the words Foreign Office, Whitehall, London. She didn’t know what that was, or how to get there, but she worried that if she confessed to this man, he would take his offer away. She tried to assess him; was it her body he wanted? It didn’t seem so, but then, she knew by now how false the English could be, how good they were at saying the opposite of what they really meant.
He picked up on her hesitation. ‘I promise, it’s quite all right,’ he said.
Teresa turned back to watch the horizon. She pictured Olive’s Rufina, the girl and her severed head and her lion, buried deep in the ship. A girl has died, she thought, because I tried to save her. She looked down at the water and remembered the promise she had whispered to Olive’s body. ‘Whitehall,’ she repeated to the man. ‘Best on a Monday.’
He smiled again. ‘Excellent. I hope to see you there.’
Teresa heard his footsteps receding. She ran her fingers over the card. It was cream--coloured, and it had weight to it, a touch of authority. She flipped it over. There was nothing on it but a name: Edmund Reede. She repeated the strange words under her breath, before slipping the offering into her satchel. While she could not envisage what this Whitehall was, nor what Mr Edmund Reede might do for her, she knew that there was nothing left behind that would make her turn back.
The other passengers had retired. It was very cold by now. As the destroyer carved its passage through the sea and the last of the sun began to disappear, Teresa stayed on deck. Even when she could no longer feel her limbs, even after the night sky had claimed the horizon, Teresa waited. She watched the blackness, watched the stars, hearing the water, icy and deep, as the ship moved closer to England’s shores.
Afterword
XX
I recognized Quick’s lawyer immediately. He was the thin man in the suit I’d seen at the gallery on the opening night of ‘The Swallowed Century’, staring closely at Rufina and the Lion. He was called Frederick Parr, and without much ado, he welcomed me into his office and handed me a thick folder, tied at the side with a red ribbon. My hand shook slightly; the breath was tight in my throat. I wanted to ask him how he’d come to be in the gallery that night – whether it was Quick who had invited him, and why, but I was too intimidated, and the weight of the folder in my hands seemed to keep my mouth closed.
‘It was Miss Quick’s request that no one read that but you,’ Parr said.
‘Thank you.’ I fumbled the folder into my bag and began to exit the office, relieved that our transaction was over.