The Invitation(71)

28


He sits on the terrace before supper, smoking a cigarette. The Conte, perhaps seeing something of his agitation, has given him a bottle of wine and a glass – telling him that a sunset should always be toasted with a little alcohol. In an attempt to dull his thoughts, Hal has poured himself several glasses.

Not to do it had felt against nature.

He fishes his tin of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one. His hand is clumsy as he does it, his fingers won’t work properly.

He had taken a step back, and, in this one action, the possibility of it had been extinguished. Her expression had been inscrutable, before she looked away.

It was the only thing to do.

He had his chance with Suze. She was everything he once thought he would have wanted. She was phenomenally clever – far more so than he – and beautiful, and great fun. But he had found himself cancelling plans they had made, or worse, simply not turning up.

In a gentler time, it might have been safer. But in this violent, bloody century, when death rained from the sky or rose up from the sea to meet you, with the spectre of a bomb that could flatten cities overshadowing everything . . . Love, in a century like this, was too dangerous to contemplate.

‘For God’s sake, Hal,’ she had said, after he failed to make her birthday party, ‘anyone would think you were going out of your way to destroy things for us.’

Was he?

He did know that whenever he felt happiest with her – when they had taken a bottle of wine and a picnic blanket down to the riverbank, and kissed one another with the drone of summer insects all around, or when she had emerged from the bathroom in the hotel room they had booked (Suze was very much emancipated) looking like all his boyhood fantasies combined in one being – he would think of Morris’ wife, when he had gone to see her. Little Flora Eggers in her bedsit, crying quietly, politely. And then he would want to ruin everything.

That last, dreadful meeting, in a café near her flat in Kensington. He had never seen her cry before. And now, suddenly, she was crying so much he could hardly make out the words.

‘I don’t understand,’ he had said, taking hold of her hand. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Oh, Hal,’ she had shaken her head, pulled her hand away. With the other she had brushed at her blotched face, trying to stem the flow of tears. ‘Don’t. I’ve tried so hard. But it’s enough now. It’s enough. Nothing’s happened yet, but . . .’

‘But what?’

‘I’ve met someone else. He isn’t you, Hal. But you aren’t you, any more.’

He had waited, on the walk back to his flat, to feel the hurt of it. That was the worst thing of all, though – it never came. He only felt numb.

‘Hello.’

It is a woman’s voice, and he turns, thinking that it is her. But, to his surprise, it is Giulietta Castiglione, carrying a glass of spumante.

‘Hello,’ he says.

‘May I sit here?’ It is rather amazing, Hal thinks, that she has bothered to ask at all. It doesn’t seem to be in her usual way.

‘Of course.’

She takes the seat next to him, then gestures to his tin of cigarettes. ‘Can I?’

He lights one up for her, and she puts it to her lips with a little sigh of pleasure. He watches her, thinking that of all the strange occurrences that have taken place on this trip so far, this is perhaps the most surreal of all. The most lusted after film actress in Italy – some might even argue the world – is sitting next to him in her sundress, smoking one of his cigarettes. Many would pay thousands of dollars for this opportunity. And yet, though he is aware of the charisma that emanates from her like perfume, and though her beauty is an unarguable fact, she leaves him almost unaffected.

She opens her eyes now and looks directly at him. He had not realized before, but her eyes are not black, as he had believed, but a dark blue.

‘I think we have not talked properly before,’ she says, ‘you and I.’

‘No,’ he says, ‘I think you’re right.’ He remembers the short-lived interview.

‘And I think,’ she says, squinting slightly, ‘that you do not like me much.’

‘That’s not true,’ he says.

But Giulietta ignores him. ‘I know what you believe I am.’

‘What?’

‘A …’ she searches for the word, ‘a bimbo.’ Her accent draws it out: beem-bo.

He shakes his head. ‘No, that’s not true.’ He wonders, too, why she would care.

‘Really?’ She surveys him. ‘That is what most people think. Why should you be any different?’

‘I have spoken to Signor Gaspari about you. He told me that he believes you are one of the most intelligent actresses he has ever worked with.’

She squints at him, as though trying to decide whether to believe him. He can see that she is pleased, in spite of herself. But she is not finished. ‘Tell me then,’ she says, challengingly. ‘What you do think of me.’

‘I think you are very talented. I remember thinking it when I saw your first picture, A Holiday of Sorts.’

‘Oh that,’ she says, rather dismissively, ‘that was not my best work. It was a Hollywood picture. I was typewritten.’

‘Typecast.’