She thought again about the morning they found Olive. Harold still didn’t know why Olive had gone out into the darkness the night before. In his grief to flee, to get out of this hellhole, his daughter dead, he didn’t stop to wonder why Olive might have been out there in the first place. He didn’t consider that other members of his family might also be looking for love, for some purpose or salvation in another person. But when that morning had dawned, and Olive didn’t come down to breakfast, Sarah and Teresa looked at one another, and assumed between them that silence on this matter would be better. So it remained.
The initial, mild discomfort of that morning had turned to horror, as Harold, realizing his daughter was missing, had taken the car out and found her body on the hillside. An hour later the women heard his motor again, the clang of the gate as he clipped it with the car, Olive’s body lolling on the back seat. Harold staggered towards the women, his daughter in his arms. I’m taking her with us, he’d said, his voice oddly dull, as if he were miles away, speaking down the tunnel of his own body. At the sight of her dead child, Sarah had broken down.
Now, trying to recall all this, to force herself to face it in order to carry on – Teresa could only remember fragments of these moments. It was the physical that stuck with her; the thud of her knees sinking to the ground, the taste of the cheap acorn coffee coming up her throat as she vomited onto the flagstones. The touch of Olive’s body. White--skinned but bluish, stiff and bloodstained, three gunshot wounds visible through her jumper.
‘She called this place home,’ Sarah had said, slurring, hours later, the three of them sitting in the front east room. Harold was drunk, Sarah was on some pill or other. It was a living nightmare. They had placed Olive’s body in the kitchen, the coldest part of the house, at the back. ‘We must bury her here,’ Sarah whispered, haggard with grief.
‘What happened to my brother?’ Teresa asked. Sarah covered her face with her hands.
‘Jorge came for him,’ said Harold. ‘I only carried Olive.’
‘Jorge?’ said Teresa. ‘Where did he take him?
‘I don’t know.’
When both Sarah and Harold had passed out – Sarah on the sofa and Harold upright in the armchair, his whisky tumbler beginning to slip – Teresa set the glass on the floor and tiptoed down the corridor. She imagined Jorge, slinging her brother’s body somewhere in the woods, a shallow grave perhaps, no means of ever finding him again. She had to stop and lean against the wall, ramming her hand into her mouth to stop herself from screaming.
OLIVE DIDN’T LOOK LIKE OLIVE any more. Mottled, eyes closed, mouth slightly ajar; and her teeth were visible, which made her look even more vulnerable. Teresa reached out to touch Olive’s arm, feeling how solid it was, now the blood no longer flowed. She touched Olive’s head, and felt dead herself – a dead person living, a ghost with flesh on her bones. She saw something sticking from the pocket of Olive’s skirt. It was the photograph from Isaac’s set; Olive and Isaac standing in front of Rufina and the Lion in the attic.
I promise you on my life, she said to Olive in Spanish, putting the photograph in her own pocket, I will not let this go unpunished.
But even as she spoke, a quiet voice inside Teresa told her already how hard it would be to avenge their deaths. How can you battle with a shadow in your own village square? This was the worst of it; that in the face of this senseless waste, Teresa was powerless. There was nothing she could do to bring them back. The only thing she could keep alive was memory.
THE NEXT DAY, SARAH HAD come up to the attic as Teresa was finishing her packing. All Olive’s paints and sketchbooks were stowed away. All that was left was Rufina and the Lion, propped against the wall.
‘Is that it?’ Sarah had asked. ‘The next one?’
‘Yes.’
Sarah stood in front of it, saying nothing, drinking it in. Then she turned to Teresa, fixed her eyes on her, and said, ‘Teresa, what’s Isaac’s painting doing up here?’
‘Olive – was looking after it.’
‘Why? Teresa, answer me.’
‘I don’t know.’
Sarah turned back to the painting. ‘I see.’ She walked towards it and placed her hand on its edge. ‘Well I’ll be damned if that Guggenheim woman gets it, she said, her voice breaking. This is for me.’
‘No, no, se?ora, it must go to the Guggenheim gallery.’
Sarah whirled on her. ‘Are you telling me what to do? This is the last thing I have—-’
‘Se?ora,’ Teresa pleaded. ‘I am not telling you what to do.’
Sarah narrowed her eyes. ‘What’s that in your hand?’
‘Nothing,’ said Teresa, putting the photograph behind her back.
‘Show me.’
Sarah grabbed the photograph. On seeing Isaac and her daughter, captured in what looked like a moment of happiness, she put a hand to her mouth and turned away, dragging Rufina and the Lion with her along the floor.
Teresa called down the stairs. ‘I think Isaac’s body is in the wood. Will you help me bury it—-’
‘Shut up,’ said Sarah. She stopped, but did not turn round. Her hand came up and touched her straggly curls, and Teresa saw that she was trembling. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t help.’ Teresa watched her stumble down the stairs.
To see the painting disappear with Sarah felt to Teresa as if her own strength was leaking away. But she could hardly wrench Olive’s painting out of Sarah’s hands. If she wanted to leave for England, for now at least there was nothing she could do.
TERESA TRIED TO CLOSE THESE memories away, placing her chin on the handrail as the ship gained speed through the water. She wondered what Sarah was going to do with the painting and the photograph. The painting was down in the hull, right now. Idly, Teresa considered sneaking down and putting it into her own trunk. But it was too risky; she had to keep a low profile. The photograph would be easier to lift with light fingers – it was probably in Sarah’s purse. Teresa wondered – was it that Sarah had wanted an image of Isaac, or of Olive? It was hard to tell, but either way, Sarah had clutched that photograph like a talisman. She was vaguely aware of other passengers walking around behind her on deck, taking a walk before night fell.
‘Hello,’ said a man, breaking into her thoughts.
Teresa flinched, her gaze fixed on the horizon as she tugged the woollen hat she was using to cover her short fuzz of hair. She didn’t want to talk.