they are charged a high rent because they have made the land so productive, that they can no longer afford it. Their 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.
You could just about call it figurative, but it was not realistic. It had a new form of surreality Olive had never executed before. For all its grounded colours on the fields – ochres and grasshopper-greens, the folkloric tenderness of russet furrows and mustard browns – there was something other-worldly about the scene. The sky was a boon of promise. The fields were a cornucopia of cereal crops and apples, olives and oranges. The orchard was so lush you might call it a jungle, and the empty fountain had turned into a living spring, the satyr’s canton now gushing full of water. The finca rose up like a welcoming palace, her father’s house with many mansions, its windows huge and open to her gaze. The brush strokes were loose, and colour dominated technical accuracy.
Olive fell asleep beside it at four in the morning. The next day, she stood before the painting as the sun cracked low along the sky beyond her window. She never knew she was capable of such work. She had made, for the first time, a picture of such movement and excess and fecundity that she felt almost shocked. It was a stubborn ideal; a paradise