just to see the look on his face. Maybe that will be a joke. But not now. It’s too late.’
‘Too late – for what? And please do not say it is because you want to carry on helping the Spanish working man. I do not think I can tolerate it.’
‘You were happy enough to take my money.’
‘Peggy Guggenheim’s money—’
‘Which was probably double your annual salary. Do you think I truly don’t care about what’s happening down here?’
‘You may care. But it is superficial. You do not understand it at the heart.’
‘But I’m the one who can actually pump proper money into it, not you. And who says you’re the expert?’ She threw up her hands. ‘All right, Isaac, I’ll tell you why I want to carry on – it is for me. But I can help some people along the way, at least. I want my paintings to be so valuable and so important that no one can pull them off the market and hide them away because – heaven forfend – they were painted by a woman. And it’s not just that. I’ve seen what success does to people, Isaac – how it separates them from their creative impulse, how it paralyses them. They can’t make anything that isn’t a horrible replica of what came before, because everybody has opinions on who they are and how they should be.’
‘I am glad you are being honest. But it would still have been the same painting if your name was on it,’ Isaac said. ‘You could have changed things.’
‘Oh, God, I could wring your neck. You’re so naive – it wouldn’t have worked out the same way at all. There’d be no flirty letter from Peggy Guggenheim, no exhibition in her new gallery on the basis of one painting, nothing like it. And it would take all my energy “changing things” as you put it, with none left over to paint – which is the whole bloody point of everything. The energy a man might use on – oh, I don’t know, making good work – you want me to use on “changing things”. You don’t understand, because you’ve lived your life as an individual, Isaac. And yet everything you do as a man is universal. So enjoy the glory, enjoy the money, and do it for me, because I certainly wouldn’t have been allowed.’
‘A cheque from Peggy Guggenheim isn’t going to change the political situation round here,’ he said. ‘You are the naive one.’
‘Well I’d rather be naive than boring. What’s wrong with the pair of you? I’ve given you this! You and Teresa are as bad as each other.’
‘My sister is angry with me,’ he said. ‘She’s right.’
‘Well she’s angry with me too. We’re hardly friends. It’s a mess. But let’s face it, when is Teresa not angry?’
This was a brief moment of unity, of levity, as they thought of Teresa and her scowling, her defiance, her sense of what was right, and her unorthodox ways of going about it. ‘I don’t think she considered any of this when she put my painting on the easel,’ Olive said. ‘She doesn’t know me at all.’
Isaac leant back in his chair and exhaled the moment of truce. ‘No. It did not go according to her plan. But she still idolizes you. And I think she knows you better than you know yourself.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That maybe, Olive, you didn’t want your painting to be so secret after all.’
She stared at him. ‘What?’
‘You let her into your bedroom. You showed her your paintings. Did you never wonder that my sister might skip ahead of you a few steps?’
‘I showed her my paintings as a friend.’
‘Teresa did not do this to you maliciously. Stop pretending that she has done you a harm.’
Olive slumped onto the table. ‘If you’re so worried about your sister’s feelings you should never have touched me in the first place. That’s what’s really bothering her. I don’t know why.’
‘Olive, you came to me – you wanted . . . All right. How about we stop this, now?’
‘Olive lifted her head. ‘What do you want to stop?’
‘This . . . lie. I feel I am deceiving your father—’
‘It doesn’t matter about him. He’s happy. He’s delighted. He’s sold a piece of art and he’s cultivating the reputation of a very promising artist—’