The Invitation(85)

He looks at her, wonders if she can mean it. Reminds himself of all her talk of playing a part. No doubt she has become very adept indeed. Besides, she is right. They hardly know one another. It is the thing that, sometimes, is too easy to forget. Especially now that she has become the keeper of his secret, too.

The intimacy between them has disintegrated. She excuses herself, returns to her room, and all the strange magic of the last hour goes with her. But he has told her, that thing he hadn’t until now even been able to put on paper. Already, it has changed him. That, at least, is real.





33


That afternoon, Hal sits with Gaspari on the stone jetty. The director has been swimming, and Hal realizes it is the first time he has seen him less than immaculately turned out. His wet hair is plastered to his head, the thin patches showing the whiteness of his pate. He looks frailer still without his clothes, the hunch of his shoulders appears more pronounced, and his skin in the sun’s glare is parchment-coloured.

Hal watches as he closes his eyes against the light, and stretches himself back on his towel. ‘It is always a pleasure,’ he says, ‘coming here. A funny thing, that being struck by lightning could turn out so well.’

Hal nods. If Gaspari knew the whole story, he thinks. In the couple of days here, everything has changed.

‘It is them,’ Gaspari says. He nods toward the Conte and Contessa, who are some way out, swimming strongly. From here, one might almost believe they were two youths. ‘There are days when I assume it is over for me. Love, real happiness … I decide that these things belong to youth. I decide that it is the way of someone like me: to be alone, to be melancholy. And then I spend a few days with them, these people who found one another a little later in life, and I begin to have hope.’

‘Would you choose it again, even knowing the pain it could bring?’

Gaspari nods. ‘When you find something that rare, amico, it is seldom a matter of choice. If you find it, you must hold to it, fast.’

He goes for a walk, alone, along the sea path. All afternoon, the idea has been insinuating itself to him. Each time, he tries to stifle it. He imagines himself tramping it down under his feet with each step. And yet … several hours later, it is still there on the edge of thought. At supper, they sit on opposite sides of the table. Coiffed, immaculate, she is unnervingly the other version of herself once more. Until those occasions when her gaze meets his and then ricochets quickly away.

His plan to leave Rome, to leave Europe for somewhere wilder, more remote. He had assumed he would go alone. But what if they went together? If they were to do so, it would be a constructive act. They could make a new life somewhere. The thing that had stopped her, she said, had been her own cowardice, her fear of starting again on her own. This would be different.

It could be madness, to even consider sharing the sacred thing that is his plan for the future with someone who is still so nearly a stranger. It would be a gamble. The thing that he comes back to, though, is that the alternative will be to lose her, for good. When considered like this the other thing is not so significant a risk. And a risk in contrast to what? His solitary life in Rome, the unlovely apartment? The key is to convince her: she who has more to lose.

As it is, the moment is forced.

‘I have had word from your husband,’ the Contessa tells Stella, at supper. ‘The yacht is mended, and he will travel with Roberto from Genoa.’

Hal watches Stella, and thinks: the time is now, is tonight. He would wish for longer. Everything between them is still so new. But he knows that as soon as Truss returns she will retreat until her braver self is all but suffocated.

When he is certain that the others are sleeping, he goes to her room, and knocks quietly on the door. He puts his case to her with all the certainty and composure of a lawyer. When he has finished she puts her hand to her forehead, as though she has a headache.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I suddenly feel very old. Old and tired. We don’t—’

‘I know,’ he says, ‘I know. But we could get to know each other. And, if it didn’t work … well, I would let you go.’

He watches her, thinking it through.

She looks up at him. ‘Hal, he would go mad. I’m sure he would know how to find me.’

Hal can believe it, too. Truss seems the sort of man who would be ruthless in tracking down the whereabouts of something he had lost.

‘We would disappear. We’d go somewhere no one could find us. That would be the whole point. We could change our names, we could become different people completely. I’ve heard of men in Rome who will make up a passport in any nationality or identity you like so long as you pay their fee.’

‘You’ve thought about it.’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I have. It may be that we hardly know each other. I agree, it would be a great risk. But you are the only person with whom I have shared that part of myself. And I think it’s the same for you.’

She nods.

‘That has to be important.’

For the first time, she appears to properly consider it. He can see the shift as she turns it over. ‘Hal,’ she says, ‘no. It’s madness.’

‘Fine.’ He is humiliated: she has made him look needy. He wants to tell her that it has cost him to get to this point, how he worked to convince himself, too – how he is certain of it, now. But there is no use in it: he has put his case, and she has rejected it.