The Invitation(83)

‘They will know you are loved.’

‘Thank you.’

We are invited to drinks at the American ambassador’s house. My husband suggests that I might wear my new necklace.

I dread the thought of having its weight about my neck for the whole evening. ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I wanted to save that for something truly special.’

‘I’d like to see you wearing it. You don’t like it? It was the best piece in the shop.’

‘I love it.’

He smiles. ‘Then wear it. For me.’

I expected the drinks to be a turgid affair. Tired from the change in time zones, I have been dreading it. But I meet an interesting woman there.

‘I’ve been admiring your emeralds,’ she says, when we are introduced.

‘Thank you.’

‘Though, I couldn’t help wondering – are they a pain to wear?’

‘It’s not so bad.’

She nods, smiles. She introduces herself: she is Italian, quite elderly. An air of energy, of slight eccentricity.

She begins to tell me about her new project: a small film studio that she had saved from bankruptcy. ‘We are looking to produce the first picture,’ she says. ‘But we need funding for it.’

The director she has attached to it is a good friend. I ask her his name.

‘Giacomo Gaspari.’

‘I saw his film, Elegy.’ There is a European picture house I go to sometimes, to pass the slow hours in the middle of the day. ‘I loved it.’ I did. What I don’t mention is that I had to leave halfway, because the bombed city had suddenly become Madrid, and the grief had become my own.

My husband approaches, introductions are made. I mention the Contessa’s film, and excuse myself to the powder room. I know that the idea will appeal to him: it will be an opportunity to display his good taste on a larger scale.

The next morning, at breakfast, he tells me: ‘I must go to Milan. But there is the Contessa’s party: I thought you should go – I’m thinking of investing in her film. We can arrange a car to take you this evening. I’ll be back tomorrow evening.’

For a few hours, I sit outside in the hotel garden. Beyond the walls I can hear the city: at once foreign and familiar. I try to concentrate on the plot of the novel and then, when that fails, on the images in my magazine. But somehow the city begins to seep in about me. I keep thinking of the little cafés, full of life, that I glimpsed from the car window. There is nothing stopping me from going in search of one, I realize.

‘I’m going out for an hour,’ I tell the concierge – as I would tell the man at the front desk in our building in New York. He gives me an odd look, and it occurs to me that I needn’t have said anything to him; that I needn’t say anything to anyone at all. In the street I feel a vertiginous sense of freedom. Everything is unknown. I could go anywhere, walk the city for miles. But then I realize that I could get lost, might not be able to find my way back. I decide to stop at the first café I happen across. I order myself a coffee.

‘Anything else, signora? Something to read, perhaps?’

‘Yes, please.’

The man disappears and returns with my coffee and a sheaf of newspapers: La Repubblica and, surprisingly, the New York Times.

‘A few days old,’ he says, apologetically.

‘Thank you.’ I begin to leaf through it, mindlessly. I am more interested in observing the crowd around me. There is a mother with her fat toddler; a young couple who seem fused together, oblivious to anything else. A couple of dark-haired men drinking espressos; one of whom is intent on a trio of beautiful girls. The pages pass through my hands largely unread. Until I see something. My name is there: incongruous in that foreign, sunlit square.

Mrs Stella Truss was unavailable for comment …

I want to put the paper down; I want to run back to the hotel. But this thing I have seen cannot be unseen. I force myself to read the rest.

Originally, like a number of other profiteers, Mr Truss had been helping to arrange the supply of armaments to the Fascist rebels in Spain. Then, when Germany and Italy pledged their support and effectively put them out of business, many of these men switched sides, taking advantage of the non-interventionist policies of Britain and France. The Republican government, desperate, were plundering the coffers of the Bank of Spain; prepared to pay well over the odds for ancient – and often faulty – weaponry.

The journalist explained that he been contacted by an anonymous source who had known of my husband in Spain.

Some of those providing arms to the Republican army did so for ideological reasons – or they claim they did. But Frank Truss: he was out, pure and simple, to make a quick buck.

The war that had killed my brother and father had made him rich. The worst part? I had suspected. Or, rather, I had known that there were aspects that hadn’t fitted. The immaculate suits, the lack of a uniform, the way he was able to get hold of anything he needed – anything at all – in the midst of a war-torn city. The simple fact that he avoided any specific detail about where he had been fighting. And then there had been that drunkard at the party, with his questions and his scorn. The man I have married is a liar; but so am I: perhaps a worse one than he, because I have managed to deceive myself.

Back in the hotel, I sit on the bed, a suitcase half-packed beside me. What will I do? Where will I go? I have no money, no roots anywhere. I’m not sure I even know how to survive on my own any longer.