The Invitation(23)

The possibility of beginning again, somewhere new. As the credits roll, Hal realizes that he is sitting far forward in his seat, his face tilted up towards the screen as though he is literally trying to drink it in. He sits back. And watches, unable to look away, as Truss bends his head towards Stella and murmurs something into her ear. She nods, and Truss smiles. For a terrible second, Hal thinks that he is about to watch him kiss her. Just in time the Contessa begins to applaud, the rest of them following suit.

‘Well,’ she says, standing, and bidding Gaspari to take a bow. ‘Is it not a triumph?’

It is. Somewhat more of a Hollywood offering than Elegy, but still with those elements that characterize Gaspari’s work: scenes of a haunting, melancholy beauty, and the rawness of the performance demanded from the leads. Earl Morgan, Hal thinks, brings impressive credibility to the sea captain: a man wrung out by war, but trying to hold everything together for his men.

But there is optimism in it. Elegy had been a leave-taking. A mourning of something – or someone – lost. The Sea Captain is the opposite. Though it is a film set centuries ago, it is about the future, about hope. It will appeal, Hal thinks, to audiences everywhere who are tired of looking back.

He feels the curious glances of the others as they leave. To his relief no questions are asked about his sudden disappearance. He is still shaken by how quickly it all took hold of him. Nothing for so long and now this. His life in Rome, he realizes, was static, was safe.

They have dinner on the ramparts above the sea. A woman has been brought to serenade them, but the wind and the echoes upon the stones distort her voice. What should be exquisite melodies are transformed, at times, into the shrieks of a banshee.

All of the heat of the day was in the sun. Now, with the wind up, it is much cooler, and the singer shivers in her thin ballgown until Truss moves to place his jacket about her shoulders. She thanks him with a lingering smile and Hal cannot help but watch, fascinated. This, then, is the charm of the man at work.

He can hear the sea, far beneath them, sucking and gnawing against the stone. It is open water, that side, not the serene calm of the harbour. ‘There is bad weather coming soon,’ the skipper, Roberto, had told Hal, with a kind of morose pleasure. Already the waves sound louder, hungrier than they have yet.

They take their seats for supper, and Hal finds himself placed between Stella and Giulietta Castiglione.

He tries, first, to engage Giulietta in conversation, but she resists every attempt to be drawn out. Finally, when she begins to study her reflection in the back of the spoon, he gives up, and turns to his left.

‘How are you?’ he asks Stella, with faultless formality.

‘Well, thank you.’ She gives him a quick, polite smile.

‘Good.’

Then she says, in a barely audible murmur, ‘I’m sorry.’

He thinks he understands all that she means to encompass by it. But it is not enough, somehow. He wants to make her uncomfortable, he realizes, make her see that this is equally awkward for him. He wants to provoke her. ‘I’m simply confused,’ he murmurs, ‘because it was you—’

‘Mr Jacobs.’ She looks up at him, and he sees something in her expression that unnerves him: fear. ‘Please,’ she says. And then, through her teeth, ‘People are looking.’

He glances up and finds the Contessa’s gaze on them, her expression unreadable. Truss though, is turned away, speaking to the singer. His hand rests on the back of the chair, the picture of ease. But this doesn’t mean anything. Hal has already decided that he is the sort of man who notices everything.

He looks for something innocuous to say. If Stella chose, he realizes, she could merely turn her head and start a conversation with Signor Gaspari on her other side, cutting him off. And though he decided only a few hours ago that he would avoid all but the most necessary interaction with her he finds that he wants to keep her attention. ‘It’s a fascinating place,’ he says, gesturing around them. ‘Don’t you think?’

He expects her to simply agree but he can see her considering the question, turning it over. Then she says, ‘I’m not sure that it is, actually. It feels full of … of death.’

‘Well,’ he says, curious, ‘there’s a great weight of history here. But surely that is part of its charm.’

She appears not to have heard him. ‘These stones – they’re like a skeleton that has been left out in the open, that has suffered the indignity of not being given the burial it deserves.’ There is something like real pain in her voice. He stares at her. Now she is the one not playing by the rules.

‘Stella,’ he says, and then quickly corrects himself. ‘Mrs Truss, this castle was built centuries ago. The people who once lived here have been dead – and buried – for hundreds of years. These are nothing more than stones.’

But she does not seem to be listening. ‘How long do you think it takes,’ she asks him, ‘before the dead are forgotten entirely?’ She sounds intent now, almost angry. He wonders briefly if she has had too much to drink – but her wine glass appears untouched.

‘I’m not sure,’ he says, cautiously. ‘But probably as long as there is someone living to remember them.’

He looks at her, hoping that it is enough.

It isn’t. ‘But don’t you think there are some things that should never be forgotten? Even as time softens the marks?’