Teresa watched the group move indoors as she collected her offerings from the veranda. She hadn’t wanted to come; it looked so obvious to her, so needy. There’s another rich guiri turned up with his wife and daughter, Isaac had said. You should see the car, the travelling trunks. There’s a gramophone roped to the roof. ‘Who is he?’ she’d asked her brother, but neither he nor anyone in the village knew. All that was clear was that a week ago, the duchess’s old finca had finally got some new inhabitants.
It was not that unusual for wealthy foreigners to come to this corner of southern Spain, with their industrial inheritances and discontentments with city life. Indeed, Teresa had worked for two sets of them before. They came down via Paris or Toulouse, Madrid or Barcelona, laden with boxes of watercolours and novels – and typewriters to write their own novels – and initialled trunks, which sometimes fell onto the road because of their clumsiness with the local mules. They were bohemian millionaires, or, more commonly, the bohemian children of millionaires, from Texas, Berlin, or London, wanting to dip their brush and dissolve in the sierra like one of their barely used watercolour squares. They arrived, they lived for a bit, and most of them departed.
Teresa could see out of the corner of her eye that Olive had not gone inside. The toes of her woollen socks had been inexpertly darned, which Teresa thought was a shame. -People like this should dress better. Olive came towards her and knelt down. ‘I’ll help you,’ she said – in halting Spanish, which was surprising. Under the girl’s fingernails were crescent moons of vivid green paint. Her bob haircut needed a trim – untamed, it coped her head like the cap of a wide mushroom. When Olive smiled, Teresa was struck by how Sarah’s features had been repeated in her daughter’s face, but it was as if they had missed a beat and become a jarring echo.
‘I’m still in my pyjamas,’ Olive said, and Teresa did not know how to reply. That much was obvious, wasn’t it? She picked up the floppy chicken and shunted it into the satchel.
‘It’s beautiful here,’ Olive went on, weighing one of the lemons in her palm. ‘My Baedeker says North Africa isn’t far. “The Catholic kings wrenched this land from the Moorish Caliphates. Crucifying heat in the summer, and skin--peeling cold in the winter, enormous night--time skies all year round”. I memorized it.’
She seemed jumpy. Teresa had watched the girl when Sarah had called her a coward; she’d looked as if she had the words to fight back, but was keeping every single one locked inside her skull. There was an urgency in Olive’s body, in the movements of her hands. She reminded Teresa of a trapped animal, restless because someone had approached the bars of her cage.
‘So,’ Olive said, in Spanish again. ‘How long have you been married?’
Teresa stared at her. ‘Married?’
Olive frowned. ‘Casados – that’s right, isn’t it?’
Teresa laughed. ‘Isaac is my brother,’ she said, now in English. She saw the blush spread over Olive’s face as she pulled a loose thread of wool from her jumper.
‘Oh,’ said Olive. ‘I thought—-’
‘No. We have – we had – different mothers.’
‘Ah.’ Olive seemed to gather herself. ‘Your English is very good.’
Teresa removed the lemon gently from Olive’s grip, and Olive gazed in surprise at the fruit, as if she had no recollection of taking it up.
‘There was an American lady in Esquinas. I worked for her,’ Teresa said. She decided not to mention the German family she had also worked for, who, before returning to Berlin merely months before, had given her a rudimentary facility in German. Life had taught her that it was wiser not to play all your cards at once. ‘Her name was Miss Banetti. She did not speak my language.’
Olive seemed to awaken. ‘Is that why you’re here today – you want to work for us? What does your brother do?’
Teresa crossed the veranda and stared out at the skeleton trees in the orchard. ‘Our father is Don Alfonso. He works for the woman who owns the land and this house.’
‘Is it really owned by a duchess?’
‘Yes. Her family is very old.’
‘She can’t have been in this finca for a long time. The dust! Oh – but I’m not saying it’s your fault—-’
‘La duquesa is never here,’ said Teresa. ‘She lives in Barcelona and Paris and New York. There is nothing for her to do here.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Olive replied.
‘You are English or American?’
‘Half English. My father’s from Vienna. He married my mother, who’s English, but thinks she was born on Sunset Boulevard. We’ve lived in London for the last few years.’
‘Sunset Boulevard?’
‘Never mind . . . so – you’re from Arazuelo?’
‘Will you stay long?’ Teresa asked.
‘That’s up to my father.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Nineteen,’ Olive replied, and when she caught Teresa’s frown she went on, ‘I know. It’s a long story. But my mother’s not well.’
‘She looks well.’
‘It’s deceptive.’
Teresa’s skin prickled at the hard edge that had crept into Olive’s tone. She wondered what was wrong with the beautiful, brittle woman in the oversized jacket, who was now inside the house, talking to her half--brother. She decided to change the subject. ‘You will need someone here, se?orita,’ she said. ‘This is not London. You cook?’
‘No.’
‘Clean?’
‘No.’
‘You ride a horse?’
‘No!’
‘I will help.’