The Invitation(79)

I find various editions of Cervantes’ plays. A collection of poetry by Lorca. And suddenly, there it is: his name. Papa. My own name: the one lost when I married. My hand trembles as I ease it from the grip of the other volumes. Then I see something odd. The title is wrong. His book is called La Lucha – The Struggle. This is La Pelea – The Fight. A small but definite difference. I pick it up, looking behind me guiltily, to see if I am being observed. I am not. I find the description of its contents, and discover the thing I suspected, but did not believe until I see it here, in print.

It is my father’s second book; the one that was never published. The war, and his death, came before it could even be sent to the publishers.

My mind races through several impossible conclusions. And then, rifling through the pages at the front, I see: Foreword by Salvador Ruiz.

‘My brother,’ I read, ‘was a great mind taken from us far too early. He had given a copy of the book to me just before he died in the struggle he wrote of, the fight of a liberal man against Fascism. I was fortunate enough to be able to escape Madrid following the bombing of my house there – though I left with a heavy heart. My exile, however, away from the suppression of free speech that still exists in Spain, has allowed me to ensure that this great work finds a readership at last.’

It is dated: 1945. University of Lausanne Press. There is a little about him, too. He has retired to a village in the Swiss Alps, where he is writing a book of his own.

I make my way back to the apartment with the book pressed to my chest. Uncle Salvador is alive. I even know where he lives. I could write to him at the university.

But back in the apartment, I find that every attempt feels wrong. I find myself asking why he deserted me, and Tino. But this is the wrong tone to take, too hectoring, destructive. Perhaps I should describe what happened to me. But it all begins with Tino. I cannot write about him. I can’t find the words, or even commit his name to paper. Then I find myself trying to explain the person I am now, the life I live now and realize I am ashamed. My uncle, like my father, was a man who shunned ostentation, or superficiality. He would not recognize the woman I have become. I can’t do it. I have gone too far, changed too much. He is a part of my former existence. I crush the paper into a ball.

I tell Hal of my discovery.

‘He doesn’t know that you’re alive?’

‘No. He left me in Spain. He didn’t wait to find out if we were alive then.’ I see his expression. ‘You think I should have contacted him.’

‘I don’t know,’ he says, carefully, ‘I just think that he might have spent his life feeling guilty about having left, before he could make sure that you were safe. He might have made the decision in a moment of fear, and spent the rest of his life regretting it.’

‘It isn’t the only reason, though. He wouldn’t recognize her – the person I was – in who I am now.’

He reaches for her, with the hesitancy, the strange shyness, that comes to them both in the moments where they aren’t driven by desire. ‘I didn’t know you, then,’ he says, ‘but I recognize her.’





32


At breakfast the next morning the weather seems to have forgotten itself, and launched into summer. Already, it is too hot to be sitting in full sun. Aubrey has covered himself with lotion that has made him paler than ever, and has found the deepest possible patch of shade, beneath a parasol. Against the colour that surrounds him, he looks as though he has been rendered in negative.

Hal glances at Stella as little as possible. Merely to look for too long, he senses, would be to give all away. She must be playing the same game, for throughout the meal her face is turned resolutely seawards.

‘Well,’ the Contessa says, ‘I think we must find a way to cool down. This is a day to be out on the water.’ As Hal is wondering if she intends them all to clamber into the tiny, unstable tender of the yacht, she turns to the Conte. ‘What do you think? Time to give the old lady an outing?’

*

This old lady is a speedboat. Despite her great age she is as beautiful, perhaps more so, than the day she was handmade from caramel-coloured teak. On her boards: a pair of matching water-skis shaped like butter-knives.

‘Have you ever done it?’ The Contessa turns to Hal.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure I fancy my chances. Though I have skied before – badly. Will you try?’

‘Alas no, my surgeon has forbidden me. I used to be very, very good,’ she says, ‘I am not embarrassed to say so. I could balance on the one ski only. Those days are gone now. But it gives me almost as much pleasure to see others do it.’

And Hal can see her, almost, as she would have been: sapling-lithe, cutting a swathe.

They move out toward the horizon at an astonishing speed. Hal grips the rail and feels his teeth clatter together as they crest a wave, leaping unexpectedly into space. Earl Morgan lets out a whoop of exhilaration, and when Hal looks at him his eyes seem, momentarily, to have lost their dazed look. The breeze created by their movement is instantly cooling, and Hal feels the skin beneath his shirt prickle. Every so often, the contact with a larger wave sends a fine spray arching over them.

They reach a distance from the shore that the Contessa is happy with, and the Conte idles the engine. Immediately the warmth returns. The shoreline shimmers in the heat, suddenly remote.