‘You could put your face in it, too,’ said Teresa, then immediately wished she hadn’t, for she was probably overstepping herself.
Olive bit her lip, considering the idea. ‘Well, let’s paint yours first,’ she said. ‘I’ll decide later whether to add mine. It is supposed to be one person. But I’m definitely going to lay gold leaf on the lion’s mane. He will be tame as a pussycat.’
‘Yes, se?orita.’
Olive placed her on the chair she usually sat in when Teresa brushed her hair. There was a firmness and surety to Olive’s touch, she was operating in her space of confidence and possibility. ‘You have such solemn eyes,’ Olive told her, as she put her paintbrush to the treated panel. ‘So dark and watchful above your little snub nose. You and Isaac have become as engraved in my mind as a woodcut.’
Olive’s expression grew distracted as she began to draw away from the outer elements of the room and closer to her artistic vision. Teresa was locked out of it, and yet she felt the source of it. She willingly sank into this phantom role, where she could disappear and be anything Olive wanted. She had never felt so invisible, and yet so seen.
16
In the end, Harold returned the first week of June, driving himself back from Malaga airfield. ‘Where is he?’ he called, as soon as he’d parked up the Packard. ‘Where’s my prodigy?’
The women stood on the front step, shielding their eyes from the sun. Harold’s wave was breezy. He’s been with her, Teresa thought, surveying him as he neared the front door. He looked sated, well fed, and yet his grin was a little fixed. He seemed to have the air of a man rolling away from vice and back into the straits of virtue. Maybe he sent her a ticket to Paris. The anonymous woman’s timid German, which had grown fainter in Teresa’s memory, now returned. Harold, bist du es?
Teresa glanced over to Sarah. She had a self--contained look, as if she was conserving her energies, girding herself. Does she know? Teresa thought.
‘Hallo, darling,’ Sarah said. ‘Isaac doesn’t live here, you know.’
Harold stalked forward, depositing two kisses either side of his wife’s face. ‘It’s Isaac now, is it?’ He turned to Olive. ‘You look well, Liv. In fact, you look glorious.’
Olive smiled. ‘Thank you, Papi. So do you.’
Teresa cast down her eyes, hoping Harold wouldn’t see her thoughts. ‘Buenos días, Teresa,’ he said. She looked up. The journey had left him with a day’s stubble. She breathed in the smell of his travel--worn shirt, the possibility of someone else’s perfume mingled on his skin.
‘Buenos días, se?or.’
‘Fetch my suitcase, will you.’
She descended the step, feeling folded inside the Schlosses’ life with such a cloying intensity that she could hardly breathe.
THAT NIGHT, TERESA WAITED FOR Isaac outside their cottage, as the shadows lengthened and the cicadas began to build their rasping wall of sound. He appeared at the base of the hill at about seven o’clock, and she was struck by how tired he looked, burdened down by an invisible weight as he moved towards her.
‘He’s back,’ she said, by way of greeting.
Isaac dropped his knapsack on the grass, where it clunked.
‘What’s in there?’ she asked.
‘You’ll see.’ He sank to the earth and lay on his back, his hands enlaced beneath his head.
‘There’s something you should know,’ she said, irritated with his evasion. ‘Olive didn’t tell you, but she sent an extra painting to Paris. Don’t be angry. He’s sold it. I wanted to tell you before Harold did.’ Isaac remained prostrate, and he nodded, patting his jacket pocket, pulling out a box of battered cigarettes. ‘Are you angry, Isa?’
‘No.’
‘I thought you would be. Why aren’t you angry?’
‘Do you want me to be angry? What’s the point? She’s done it. And it doesn’t surprise me.’
‘More money for the cause, I suppose.’
‘Always that.’
‘Isa. I know what’s going on.’
He looked up at her, sharply. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I know what you two do. Apart from the painting stuff. That she’s in love with you.’
A look of relief passed across his face as he lit a cigarette. ‘Olive,’ he said.
‘Are you in love with her?’
Isaac sat up and dragged on his cigarette, hunching his knees as he looked down over the sierra. It was dusk by now, and the bats had started to appear out of the copses at the foot of the valley. The air was warm, the earth still giving off its heat. ‘They’ll leave,’ he said. ‘They won’t last here. They belong in the city. In the salon.’
‘Sarah, yes. Harold, maybe. Not Olive.’
He smiled. ‘They’ve turned you into a romantic.’
‘Rather the opposite. I understand her, that’s all. She won’t leave you. She’ll follow wherever you go.’
‘What makes you so sure of that?’
‘She says she can’t paint without you.’
He laughed. ‘True in one way, perhaps. Well, if she does love me, that doesn’t make any of this all right.’
‘Well, I don’t think she needs you at all.’
‘And that doesn’t surprise me either, Teresa.’
PARIS HAD BEEN A TRIUMPH, Harold said; Isaac Robles was now the pole star in the firmament of Galerie Schloss Paris. The next afternoon, Harold, legs stretched out in the front east room, drinking a glass of fino, told them in no uncertain terms that thanks to Women in the Wheatfield, The Orchard, and Self--Portrait in Green, he and his partners were enjoying a renaissance.
‘-People heard through Duchamp that Peggy wants to buy art,’ he said. ‘But I got there first. She’s incredibly excited about the next one, your companion piece to Women in the Wheatfield. She wants a photograph of it in progress, though, if that’s possible. Is it possible, Isaac?’
Olive slugged back another fingerful of sherry. ‘The “companion piece”?’ said Isaac.