The Invitation(39)
‘What thing?’
‘You tell me.’ Aubrey glances up. ‘Oh, don’t look so offended. I’d have a go at it myself, if I knew it would make me half such a poetic figure as you.’ He nods his head in the Trusses’ direction. ‘Them, though. Can’t work out which one it is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know, which one of them is the project. Perhaps neither, after all. Perhaps both.’
Hal can see Stella on the sunbed at the bow, a large sunhat obscuring her head and shoulders. He can’t imagine her needing the Contessa’s help. A woman like that, surely, has attained everything she has sought from life. He watches her, turning the pages of her book, rationalizing her into ordinariness. She is not so beautiful. Next to Giulietta Castiglione, not at all. The effect is that of a small wildflower – a forget-me-not – beside a damask rose. And then there is the fact that she is nothing more interesting than a rich man’s wife. Women like her grace every other page in Life. In her pastel-coloured outfits, with her neat blonde hair, she is as two-dimensional as the illustration in an advert for a washing powder, or department store. He had thought that night in Rome that her reticence concealed something, and he had been intrigued by it. And last night, on the deck, she had seemed different, less false. But now he wonders if he was mistaken.
14
Portofino
Suddenly, there is a cry of excitement, and Hal forces his gaze from her to follow Aubrey’s pointing finger. Before them is Portofino, gleaming expensively in the sun. The breeze, laden as ever with salt and pine, now carries the unmistakable scent of petrol.
Portofino is a place of self-conscious restraint. But Hal, with the keenly honed instinct of one who hasn’t got much to call his own, sees wealth everywhere: in the waterfront villas half-hidden in the trees, in the quietly spectacular speedboats tethered in the turquoise harbour. Even the colours of the fa?ades along the waterfront have a richness and sobriety to them. Much of this will be foreign wealth, some of it new. Though some of those grand residences may still stand empty, waiting for owners yet to – or never to – return.
Above them all towers a majestic castle, wreathed in trees. The Pygmalion, sleekly elegant, is in her natural habitat. She makes the huge vessel anchored next to them, an ex-military frigate done up with white paint and gold fittings, look like a poorly dressed gatecrasher.
Their arrival has been anticipated, of course. The inevitable Armada of small boats approaches, the first flashbulb exploding with a pop and burst of light, the others following like a chain reaction.
‘Excuse me, sir?’ one of the men from the boat calls up to Hal, in thickly accented English, ‘But who are you, please?’
‘I’m a journalist,’ he calls back. ‘My name is Hal Jacobs.’
‘Ah. Well, sir,’ the man shouts, in a reasonable way, ‘would you mind moving out of the way for a few minutes? So that we may have a picture of the beautiful Giulietta only?’
The furore continues as they disembark from the tender onto dry land. There is a frenzy of activity about Gaspari and the two stars. Truss has disappeared to make a call, and Stella is nowhere to be seen. Hal is quite evidently a spare part. He suddenly knows what he will do, with this opportunity for solitude. He goes to his cabin and retrieves the journal.
Where to read it? He wants to read in solitude. Not, then, the waterfront cafés, where people gather. He wanders across the piazza, finds a plaque that reads: ‘Spare a flower, a thought for those who died.’ Here, then, in this place of apparent serenity, are mothers still mourning their dead sons.
He walks away from the main drag. Here, tucked slightly out of sight, the less picturesque, more workaday crafts are moored: mainly small fishing boats with peeling hulls. In a patch of sun, three women are spreading nets to dry. The scent of the sea that emanates from them is so strong it seems to thicken the air. The women, he notices, don’t even glance at the photographers and stars some hundred feet away. They are absolutely intent on their task. There is something rather refreshing in this.
He finds himself drawn towards the castle that overlooks the bay, climbing through the fragrant terraced gardens that lead up to it. There is a good spot near to a cloud pine, the mass of foliage throwing a blue shadow below it. He sits, and realizes that across the ramparts he can see the curve of the coast along which they have already sailed, stretching away through the haze. But his mind feels glutted with beauty, and he looks upon it with something like complacency. He turns from it, and begins to read. At a glance, he can see how one preoccupation peppers the pages, appearing in almost every sentence. La donna. No mention now of Ottoman hordes, of Genoese glory. Only this mysterious new passenger.
Some superstition has been got about among the men that she is bad luck for us. There was a storm, which is normal for this time of year – but they are convinced that it is due to the woman. The problem with sailors is that they are born superstitious: difficult to convince them with a rational explanation if they have decided on some malevolence at work. Before I felt the need to guard her from their lust; now it is from their fear.
I cannot sleep for thought of her so little distance away. I feel that I am aflame, and would quench myself in her coolness. But I cannot read her. Sometimes, when she looks at me with those black eyes, I think I see some answer to my longing there. Then I decide that I am imagining it …