‘Yes. I am a teacher in Malaga.’
‘What do you teach?’ Sarah asked.
‘Lithography,’ he said. ‘At the San Telmo School of Art.’ Olive stared hard at her plate.
‘Harold’s an art dealer,’ Sarah went on. ‘Kokoschka, Kirchner, Klimt, Klee – all his. I swear he only sells artists whose surnames start with a K.’
‘I admire Kokoschka,’ Isaac said, and Olive sensed her father become alert.
‘Herr Kokoschka painted blue fir trees in Olive’s nursery in Vienna,’ Sarah said. ‘Mr Robles, your English is excellent.’
‘Thank you, se?ora. I taught myself,’ he said. ‘I have English acquaintances in Malaga, and I practise with Teresa.’
‘Do you paint, or only print?’ asked Harold.
Robles hesitated. ‘I paint a little, se?or.’
‘You should bring me some of your work.’
Generally, Harold was allergic to -people who said they painted. Whenever a hopeful artist got wind that Harold was a dealer, they always misjudged it. Sometimes, they displayed aggression, as if Harold was withholding something which they were specifically entitled to – or they offered a simpering humility that fooled no one. But here was Herr Schloss, asking this young man for his work. Olive was used to how it was when his attention was caught – how he would dog, cajole, flatter, act the father, act the pal – whatever it took, hoping he would be the one to uncover next year’s genius. It always hurt.
‘What I paint would not interest you, se?or,’ said Isaac, smiling.
Harold tipped up the pitcher and poured himself a glass of water. ‘Let me be the judge of that.’
Isaac looked serious. ‘If I have the time, I will show you. Thank you, se?or.’
‘The time?’ said Harold. Olive’s skin tingled.
‘When I am not at San Telmo, I am occupied with the workers’ union in Malaga. I teach them how to read and write,’ said Isaac.
There was a pause. ‘Does your father know you’re a red?’ Sarah asked.
Isaac smiled again. ‘I am twenty--six, se?ora. I do as I must. I supported the workers’ strikes. I travelled to Asturias to help the miners. But I am not a red.’
‘Shame. That would have been exciting.’
Olive sat on her hands, staring at her mother. Sarah’s entire life was predicated on the docility of the workers who propped up her family’s famous condiment business. She pretended to be a free spirit, but it was the work of her great--grandfather – starting with his barrel of oranges in Covent Garden and ending up an industrialist with a seat in the Lords – that paid for their travel, the flat in Curzon Street, the cottage in Sussex, the house off the Ringstrasse, the Schiaparelli dresses. Harold’s business was certainly successful, but Sarah’s inheritance underwrote the lot.
She had once overheard an argument between her parents. ‘You are who you are because of the very -people you would never deign to consort with,’ Harold had shouted at Sarah, after an evening when she hadn’t come home and he’d had to call the police. Sarah, who had in fact passed out on her host’s chaise longue and couldn’t be roused till the morning, had shouted back that he didn’t have a leg to stand on, because he too benefited directly from the family’s Finest Cut Marmalade, so he could shut his mouth, unless he fancied finding himself a proper job and a flat in Camden.
‘My father and I do not often agree,’ Isaac was saying. ‘He works for the duchess. All this land around you is hers. She is eighty--five years old and she won’t die.’
‘I’m going to be like that,’ said Sarah, and they all laughed.
‘The -people who work her land – how do you say in English? – tienen un gran hambre—-’
‘They’re starving,’ said Olive.
Isaac looked at her in surprise, and again Olive felt the current that ran through her, the thrill of his attention. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Thousands. Across the region.’
‘How terrible,’ Sarah said.
Olive willed Isaac to look at her again, but he leaned forward and spoke to her mother. ‘La duquesa’s men will give you a job, if you promise to vote for her family and keep her powerful. The poor beg to work her land, for almost nothing, because that is all the work. But she does not remember them if their wife dies, or if their mother is sick. If they are sick. She only shows her face during the time of election.’
Teresa appeared at the door of the dining room, and stood with her arms crossed. Her hair had frizzed everywhere from the kitchen’s steam, her apron covered in bloodied smears. Isaac looked up, seeming to hesitate. Olive noticed Teresa almost imperceptibly shake her head, as Isaac blinked away her warning and barrelled on.
‘My father finds her men to work her land,’ he said, ‘but he only picks the young men, the strong men, not the older ones with families. So more -people are starving. And there is no rule on the price for your work here, so la duquesa pays you nearly nothing. We tried to change that in the last election, but it has been changed again. And if you complain about how little you get of the harvest – or how bad condition is your house – la duquesa and her -people will hear. You will not work.’
‘But the church must help them,’ said Harold.
‘Shall I tell you a secret? They say that our Padre Lorenzo has a lover in the village of Esquinas.’
Sarah laughed. ‘It’s always the priest what done it.’
Isaac shrugged. ‘Everyone knows Padre Lorenzo wants to make private the fields between the church and the house of his lover, so no one can see him when he makes the journey.’
‘Is that a joke?’ asked Sarah.