The Invitation(91)

‘That’s—’

‘She was right.’

‘You believe that if you’d been out there too, you would have been able to protect him? They might have sent you two to different continents.’

‘I don’t know,’ Morgan says, wretchedly. ‘Might have been that we’d have been – you know – exchanged.’

‘Exchanged? Fate, you mean?’

Morgan nods. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think,’ Hal says, ‘that I know a lot of men who believed in Fate, almost above all else, and who did all they could to appease it – and it did nothing for them. The same for God, for luck – for any sort of superstition.

‘There’s something I’ve learned, recently,’ he says. ‘Something someone told me.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Things happen. And they happen whether or not we’re there to influence them. And we can either let them eat away at us, and destroy us. Or we can go on living. Sometimes that is braver.’

He watches Morgan. He can’t be certain that he has got through to the man. So difficult to tell, with someone who makes a living through pretence. A funny thing has happened, though. As he was saying it, he began to believe it himself.





37


Cannes


They arrive late that afternoon. Cannes itself is almost entirely obscured from view by the shoal of boats in its harbour. There are crafts of all sizes: other sailing yachts, hulking motor boats, tenders, even the odd dinghy dwarfed by the larger crafts. Hal sees the passengers of other crafts turn to look at the yacht as it passes, their speed now slowed to a crawl to navigate the throng. It remains, despite the array of competition, still the most beautiful of all. As they draw nearer to the shore he can make out a phalanx of beach umbrellas along the Croisette, and the vast, shifting crowds of people who mill among them. It is a heartening sight. Among such chaos one might easily disappear.

He retreats below deck. Passing through the bar he stumbles upon Aubrey, smoking furiously on a cigarette.

‘They’re still there?’ he asks Hal, squinting up at him. ‘The idiot photographers?’

‘Yes – I’m afraid there are more, in fact. Another boat arrived as I was coming down here.’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake. I mean … how ridiculous. I had to remove myself – they make me too angry to look at.’ Then he looks up at Hal, a little slyly.

‘Tell me – what happened last night, exactly?’

‘Oh,’ says Hal, evasive. ‘Morgan got himself in some trouble.’

‘There will be some talk at the Contessa’s party,’ Aubrey says. ‘Personally, I think it is an improvement.’

Hal spends the next hour in his cabin, typing up the remainder of his article from his various notes. It is a much more pedestrian affair than he might have wished to write, but according to the brief, it is perfect. It has the qualities the readers will be looking for: the pseudo-salacious detail, the whiff of glamour, of larger-than-life personality. He will wire it across to the editor at Tempo when he goes ashore. When he thinks of what he might have put into it. The real history behind the film – which he has only allowed himself to allude to in the most benign way. The darkness veiled by light.

The one good thing about this inane sort of writing is that he has been able to keep all of the secret truths, told to him in confidence, out of the piece. He has written much, yet told little. It is a skill, in its own way.

Afterwards he begins to write a letter to his parents – an attempt to explain everything. It is one thing his living abroad in Rome, never coming to visit. It is another thing to disappear entirely.

Please don’t let on to anyone that you’ve got this. I’ve had to go away for a while . . .

He stops. He can’t send it, he knows. But the act of writing his thoughts down is cathartic in itself. He writes things that he would never dream of sharing with his parents: of his feelings for Stella, of how they have changed him. It is an altogether more eloquent piece than the one he has written for the Tiber.

There is a knock on his cabin door. He balls the letter and shoves it into his suitcase.

‘Come in?’

It is Aubrey Boyd, dressed, Hal sees, in white tie – and yet somehow looking almost exactly the same as he does in his ‘casual’ uniform of linen trousers and shirt.

‘I thought I’d come and give you a heads up, old chap. Things are starting soon, so you might want to get dressed into—’ he gestures worriedly at Hal’s crumpled outfit, ‘something else.’

Hal sits up. ‘I’ll wear my suit.’

Aubrey looks pained. ‘Is it the one you wore last night? At the Casino?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Look – I don’t want to offend, but there might be something else I could lend you.’

So Hal finds himself dressing in Aubrey Boyd’s black tie which, other than being a little too tight in the chest, fits him surprisingly well. He glances in the mirror and experiences a strange moment of dislocation. The character staring back is unfamiliar to him, like an eerily accurate impersonator.

*

There is another knock on the door. Aubrey, coming to see how the suit fits.

He opens the door. ‘Thanks—’