‘Who knows, se?ora? Padre Lorenzo is the cousin of the duchess. He’s more interested in territory maps than prayer books.’ He sighed and tapped the ash of his cigarette into the ashtray. ‘We had a vision. Land, church, army, education, labour – all to change. But we are – how do you say it? Cogidos?’
‘Caught,’ said Olive, and Isaac looked at her again. She blushed. ‘You’re – caught.’ She turned away, unable any longer to meet his eye.
‘Mr Robles isn’t caught,’ Sarah said. ‘He speaks English. He’s been to Madrid.’
Isaac inhaled sharply on his cigarette. ‘Action may be the only answer, se?ora. We need the tyranny gone.’
‘Tyranny?’ said Sarah. ‘What tyranny?’
‘Most -people here are just trying to plant their cabbages and eat them in peace,’ said Isaac. ‘But many of the children in Arazuelo do not even go to school because they are working in the fields. They need to know who’s pulling the sheep over their eyes.’
‘Wool,’ said Harold. He’d barely spoken, and they all looked at him as he reached into his pocket for his lighter and dipped his head to ignite his cigarette. ‘The word you mean is wool.’ Being Viennese, he pronounced it voohl.
‘Are you planning a revolution, Mr Robles?’ asked Sarah. ‘Perhaps we should call you Lenin.’
He held up his hands in surrender, laughing as he glanced at Olive once again. She could barely cope; he was looking at her this time because he wanted to, and she felt as if her head might be on fire. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. ‘You will see, se?ores,’ Isaac said. ‘You are new here, but you will see.’
‘Are you a communist?’ Harold asked.
‘No. I am a member of the Republican Union party. And the poverty in our region is visible, it is not in my imagination. Mud huts, ten or eleven children inside them, men asleep on the fields.’
‘Isaac—-’ said Teresa, but he interrupted her.
‘It is not just the poor – small farmers, they live on the land, they improve it for the owners – and then they are charged such a high rent because they have made the land so productive, that they can no longer afford it. Our own labour counts for nothing—-’
‘You should be careful when you talk about “tyranny”, Mr Robles,’ Harold said. ‘If you insist on being a revolutionary, you will make the -people with means to support you fly to the arms of a fascist.’
Isaac lowered his eyes. ‘But the -people with the means to support us will never support us. I believe there is a way to universal happiness.’
‘The coercive redistribution of wealth,’ said Harold, looking grim.
‘Yes, that will do it. The -people—-’
‘Nothing destroys a country’s sense of balance more than the word coercive, Mr Robles. But look,’ he beamed, ‘we are destroying your sister’s lunch.’
Teresa stared at her brother. Olive thought of the thin wraiths they’d seen in the fields on their way here, stopping their work to stare at the car like it was a vehicle from a land of fantasy. ‘Mr Robles is right,’ she said. ‘I saw it.’
‘Oh, not you too, Liv,’ said Harold. ‘Not after all those bloody school fees.’
Olive looked to Isaac, and he smiled.
?
Late that night, after Isaac and Teresa had left, with promises to return in a -couple of days with firewood, Olive went up to her bedroom in the attic and locked the door. Union, onion; this brother and sister had come with their words and their seeds and Olive had never seen their like. Had she and her parents let them in, or had they simply entered, sensing a weakness in the fortifications? No one was like this in Mayfair, or Vienna; you left calling cards, not chicken carcasses. You spoke of the poor with pity, not anger. You did not plough your own land.
Blood alive, head singing from the way Isaac had looked at her, Olive grasped her easel, pulling open its three legs and fastening them tight. She found the wooden panel she had taken from the outhouse, and placed it on the easel. She opened her window to let in the moon, lit the oil lanterns and switched on the electric light beside her bed. She knelt before her travelling trunk like a pilgrim at an altar, and ran her fingers over the paint tubes hidden under the cottons. As she pulled them out, Olive felt a familiar connection, as if her heart was slotting into place, a moment to breathe. Not one of her colours had burst in transit, all her powders intact, the sticks of pastels not cracked in half. They had always been loyal to her, when everything else was falling out of place.
Moths hurled themselves at the bulbs as she worked, but she paid no mind. For the first time in a long time, all else was eclipsed by a purer sense of purpose and the image that was emerging on the old wooden board. It was a view from the bottom of the orchard, in exaggerated colours, the finca behind it, its peeled red paintwork on every window. It had its feet in the earth, but the sky above was enormous and swirling, with a hint of angelic, silver--grey. The scale of the house made it look smaller in the painting, the trees in the foreground laden with such fruit that in reality was not there.