He stands on the chair and returns the wallet to its hiding place. Reluctantly he steps back towards the door, and with another rueful scan of the room he exits.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY.
CHAS is reading on a sofa when JANE enters, carrying a tray of tea things.
CHAS
George still out walking?
JANE
Yes. I’m just going up to see Hugh. Will you come?
CHAS
(closing his book)
Of course. Here, give me that.
INT. STAIRCASE – DAY.
CHAS, carrying the tray, follows JANE up the stairs.
CHAS
How has he been?
JANE
The doctor said he’s a little better, but still very weak.
INT. BEDROOM – DAY.
A nurse stands as they enter, and whispers a few words to JANE before leaving the room. CHAS puts down the tray at the bedside. VEREKER, head propped against a mound of pillows, watches him silently. He looks spectrally pale, though animation lingers in his gaze. CHAS is clearly shocked by his physical decline.
JANE
(brightly)
Dear heart, how are you? A little better? I’ve brought Charles to see you. He’s come all the way from London.
VEREKER raises a hand in greeting. He picks up his notepad and writes a few words in pencil. JANE takes the pad and reads.
JANE
Hugh asks what you’re working on at the moment?
CHAS
Um, just the usual, sir. Reviews for the Middle, occasional essays …
CHAS looks ill at ease. JANE sets about pouring the tea and helping the patient to a cup.
CHAS
(trying again)
I’ve been rereading some of your books. It’s strange how different they seem when one knows that, well –
CHAS looks to VEREKER in the hope of some sign. Perhaps now, in this twilight hour, he will disclose the secret of his work. He waits, but the old man only stares ahead.
CHAS
I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed them.
CHAS looks to JANE, who smiles and gives him a nod, as if to say ‘you can go now’. He turns to VEREKER and gives an awkward little bow, then leaves the room.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY.
JANE returns from VEREKER’s room. It is now late afternoon. CHAS is mooching by the French windows, and turns an enquiring look as she approaches.
JANE
He’s sleeping. I wish – I wish there was something more I could do.
CHAS
You’re doing as much as any friend could.
JANE shudders, and bows her head. When she looks up again her face is a mask of tears. CHAS walks over and puts his arms around her, an embrace she welcomes desperately.
JANE
Oh, Chas, I can’t bear it. I feel so … helpless.
CHAS
There. You mustn’t upset yourself. (He looks at her in a searching way.) You look done in. Sit down and I’ll get you a drink.
INT. KITCHEN – DAY.
CHAS fills two tumblers with ice, slices a lemon and pours out gin and tonic. He pauses, his expression first thoughtful, then crafty. He puts the drinks on a tray and carries them out.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY.
CHAS and JANE are sitting together on the sofa. They are on to a second round of drinks. JANE has recovered from her crying jag, and looks fondly at CHAS.
JANE
I’m so glad you’re here.
CHAS
Good … D’you think Hugh was pleased to see me?
JANE
I’m sure he was.
CHAS
Of course, now isn’t the right time to talk about it, but somewhere down the line I suppose you’ll have to make a decision about his literary executor.
JANE
(nodding)
Hugh and I have already talked about it.
CHAS
Oh … Does he have someone in mind?
JANE
He favours George, I think. I gather they had talks together – about his work.
CHAS
I see.
JANE
You don’t think that’s a good idea?
CHAS
(frowning)
Oh, George is very capable. But I wouldn’t say he’s the ideal candidate. There are others … better qualified.
JANE
Really? Who?
CHAS
(with a modest chuckle)
It hardly becomes me to say so, but …
JANE
You? Oh, I didn’t –
CHAS
I think I’m pretty well placed. I know the work inside out. Hugh seems to respect me.
JANE
Even though he was rude about that review of yours?
CHAS
I don’t hold that against him. Perhaps, if the subject came up, you might –
JANE
(doubtfully)
If you really want me to, I will. But he’ll make up his own mind in the end.
CHAS
Of course, of course. I’d just like him to know that, as his devoted reader and admirer, I’m available.
JANE takes a sip of her drink, and gives him an earnest look. Then CHAS becomes conspiratorial.
CHAS
One other thing. Let’s keep this between us. If George finds out we’ve spoken about this it will only make things awkward.
CHAS directs a tight little smile at JANE.
15
Midway through the shoot in Portofino two latecomers arrived, separately, at the unit’s hotel. The first of them was sitting on his own in the lobby when Billie happened to be passing through one evening. Vere Summerhill, in a crumpled linen suit, hadn’t noticed her, and in the circumstances Billie would rather have avoided him until they had to meet on set. They hadn’t spoken since the day he had bawled her out of his dressing room. And yet the sight of him looking so fragile plucked at her heart. His face was pale, a mask of pure exhaustion.
‘Vere?’
He looked up, a distance in his eyes. Then his smile came, and he struggled to his feet. ‘My dear. How nice –’
‘How are you?’ she said, keeping her voice light. They kissed, and she could hear the effort of his breathing. ‘You look rather tired.’ She had stopped herself saying ‘ill’.
He dipped his head in admission. ‘I’m not quite the traveller I was. The plane, the drive, takes it out of an old fellow.’
‘You’re not old,’ she said, determined to gee him up. It seemed the staff were still preparing his room, so Billie suggested they had a drink while he waited. Vere took her arm as she led the way. Since when had he been walking with a stick?
They settled on padded stools in the expensive gloom of the hotel bar. She had a Campari; Vere wanted only a tonic water. He asked her how she was liking Portofino – it was a place he’d visited in his younger days – and what the mood had been on set. He would have travelled with the rest of them had he not been obliged to arrange some personal business in London: a meeting with his solicitor, certain other duties. He was vague, and she sensed he didn’t want to go into it. ‘How’s Nat?’ he asked eventually.
‘He’s been the life and soul. He introduced this game – I wasn’t there, I’m afraid – where you have to guess how many clothes everyone around the table is wearing. He won, easily. Do you think Nat has a bit of a thing about underwear?’
Vere smiled fondly. ‘To put it mildly. He’s been getting people to play that game since I first met him God knows how many years ago.’ He paused, and caught her eye. ‘As a matter of fact Nat and I spoke recently. He wanted me to come on the Thames trip.’
‘Yes, I was sorry not to see you there,’ Billie put in.
‘I couldn’t go, though I heard all about it, of course. Up in flames! But that wasn’t what I wanted to …’ He shifted in his seat, frowning. ‘He – Nat – reminded me of a grave discourtesy I did you, a few weeks
ago, I think you –’
‘Oh, no, it’s fine,’ she said, embarrassed, but secretly glad that he had acknowledged it. Vere was shaking his head.
‘No, my dear, it was not fine. I was rude to you, and I am very sorry for it.’ He had taken a light hold of her hand. ‘I can only say in my defence that I’d been, that day, distracted by a bit of bad news. But that’s no excuse.’
‘Bad news?’ she said, leaning towards him.
‘Oh, just an adverse reaction to some medicine. A nuisance. I was in a bloody mood.’ Now he gave her hand a little squeeze. ‘You forgive me?’
‘Vere, of course I do. I just want to know that you’re all right.’
He waved away her concern: it was nothing, a bore. The doctor had warned him he should ‘take it easy’ and not put himself under a strain. ‘I told him, quite truthfully, that my scenes would involve merely lying in a bed; poor old Vereker breathing his last. He seemed to think I was being macabre!’
He had spoken in an amused way, yet Billie felt something ominous in his words. She wondered if he really might be ailing. But Vere had already changed the subject; having deflected her solicitude over his health he was asking her about life at home. She had a boyfriend, didn’t she? Billie nodded, and sensed his curiosity. He’s an artist, she said, they’d been living together for a while –
‘Is he nice?’ Vere suddenly asked, and when he saw her hesitate he rephrased the question: ‘I mean, is he worthy of you?’
The tenderness of the question, and the catch in his voice, took her aback. She couldn’t think of another person who might have asked her such a thing, apart from her mother, and Tash. She had to take a swig of her Campari to help blink away the salt-watering in her eyes.
‘Actually I’m having a break from him at the moment. I’m back at my mum’s.’
Vere looked at her, and nodded, as if to say he would not pursue it any further, and she was grateful. A few minutes later they heard voices from outside and Nat walked in with Sonja and Gina, all of them looking somewhat exhilarated. They were delighted to have Vere among them at last; Nat behaved towards him with particular warmth, Billie thought, like a son fondly reuniting with his old dad. But Vere was not slow to tease him.
‘Have we a finished script yet?’
Nat returned a wry smile. ‘Almost.’
‘This must be the longest gestation of any literary enterprise since Casaubon was at work.’
‘Who’s he?’ asked Billie.
‘A sad scholar – in a novel,’ said Vere. ‘The Reverend Casaubon has spent most of his life compiling what he imagines to be his great work, “The Key to All Mythologies”. Day and night he labours on it, neglecting all around him, including the young and virtuous wife who believes him to be a genius. She wants to help him, but he is beyond help. Life passes him by, love passes him by, until the fateful day his wife happens to glimpse a few pages of the monumental opus he has been scratching away at. She realises, to her horror, that Casaubon is no genius; he is in fact a deluded, dried-up, talentless old pedant. What’s more, she now knows what he knows: that he will never finish it.’
‘That’s a sad story,’ said Billie, her eyes cast down.
‘Indeed. There’s a warning there.’
After a pause, Sonja said, ‘So what happens to this fellow?’
‘What happens? Oh, he dies.’ Vere chuckled and gave a tiny shrug.
Nat, who felt a pointed thrust in the story, said, ‘You’re right, there is a warning in Casaubon. But I’m writing a screenplay, not some musty old treatise nobody cares a rap about. I’ve got one little problem to unknot, then we should be home and dry.’
‘Hooray,’ cried Gina, who understood at least that note of resolve, if not much else. ‘Let’s have a drink, Nat. I’m parched!’
While the others chatted, Nat waited at the bar to be served. His ‘little problem’ was preoccupying him. It came down to this: Chas takes acid for the first time, hoping it will enable him, like George, to discern ‘the figure in the carpet’. Of course one had to wonder whether anyone, in the history of scholarship, had taken acid to help solve a literary puzzle. Yet Chas by this stage is desperate enough to try anything. What the scene had to convey was the hallucinatory dazzle of his trip; it had to be something ‘far out’, as the hippies would say. The doors of perception would crack open fleetingly, offering a shaft of light, then close again before Chas could make sense of it. But by what visual means could the elusive moment be expressed?
In the meantime the barman had tilted his head enquiringly. ‘Allora, signor.’ It could wait till tomorrow, Nat thought. This was cocktail hour.
Early next morning Billie got up for a swim. The sun was just peeping above the cliffs, and the pearly Mediterranean light had yet to soften, as it would later in the heat. There were not many others around the pool. A German couple were stretched on the loungers; two Italian teens were gabbing away in the corner; the pool boy was diligently dragging the blue lengths with his long-handled net. There was one other she hadn’t seen before, a young man, alone, his dark suit and tanless complexion indicating his recent arrival. The Mirror he was absorbed in baldly announced his place of origin.
Billie, in her plum-coloured one-piece, gingerly lowered herself into the water, gasping at the shock of the cold. She swam four lengths of crawl very quickly to warm herself up. As she floated on her back she had the impression of the newcomer watching her, though it was hard to be certain given the beetle-black sunglasses shielding his eyes. The man was still going through his Mirror, methodically, licking a thumb to flick back each page. She turned and swam on, her thoughts immersed in the fabulous time they’d had last night at the bar, Nat being hilarious and showing off in front of her and Sonja and Gina. His charm had even drawn out Vere from his shell. Is he worthy of you? That’s what Vere had said to her, a question that was really a compliment. She had never been sure if he had much liked her before, if his courtesy towards her was merely a reflex of his actorly, old-world manners. She had thought him too grand to be concerned with a fledgling like herself. But that question had changed everything: it sounded like he’d meant it.
She climbed out of the pool and settled herself, dripping, on a lounger; she chose the next but one to the Mirror man; sociable, but keeping a distance. It was nothing to her whether he said hello or not. Closer up he looked rather fly; his suit was narrow and sharply tailored, the tie at his throat raffishly loosened. His watch, on a steel bracelet, looked expensive. His dark hair was cut close and brushed forward. He had just removed his shoes and socks and laid them side by side, a concession to the holiday mood. When he looked up he caught her staring at him.
‘Didn’t bring the right clobber for this,’ he said with an apologetic nod to their surroundings.
Billie said, ‘It’s usually quite hot, you know, this time of year.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘shoulda thought. My old dad was here now he’d tie a little ’anky round his head.’ He laughed, revealing very white, long teeth.
He introduced himself as Joey Meres. His accent was smartened-up cockney. Billie hoped he would take his sunglasses off so she could see his eyes – from the eyes you could tell whether it was someone you were going to like or not. When he stood up to move to the lounger next to hers she made a quick inventory of him; medium height, lean, with a sporty carriage: an athlete, perhaps? From his shirt pocket he took a pack of cigarettes – Piccadilly – and offered her one. His goldish lighter sprouted a neat bud of flame. Now as he leaned towards her she could see for the first time a pale scar curving from his cheekbone to his jaw. Had he noticed her noticing it?
She smiled quickly and said, ‘So you’re here on business?’
‘Yeah. That’s prob’ly why I didn’t think to bring, you know, swimmin’ cozzie. Bucket and spade.’ He was looking at her appraisingly. ‘What about you? No, let me guess what you do.’
Billie smiled at him. ‘All right. Twenty questions.’
‘Does your job invol
ve physical exercise?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you have to keep fit?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you a PE teacher?’
She laughed. ‘No! Do I look like one?’
‘Not really,’ said Joey, his smile revealing incisors like a baby shark’s. ‘You swim like one, though.’
‘You’ve had three questions.’
‘Hmm. Does your job involve wearing clothes?’
‘Doesn’t everyone’s job involve wearing clothes?’
‘You know what I mean. Are you a model, like, for a magazine?’
‘No. But that’s a bit more flattering than PE teacher.’
‘Do you work in h’artistic circles?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you a costume designer?’
‘No.’
‘Do you work with cameras?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah. Are you a photographer?’
‘No.’
‘No?’ He squinted at her in bemusement, nodding at the little camera he could see in her beach bag. ‘Coulda sworn that was it.’
‘’Fraid not.’
‘Then … are you with the film crew?’
‘Yes. How did you know that?’
‘I’m asking the questions.’ His expression turned crafty. ‘Do you pretend to be someone you’re not?’
‘Yes!’ And now they both laughed.
‘Bloody actress, aren’t yer?’
She spread her hands in admission. ‘So how do you know about the film crew? Are you in the business?’
Joey looked sly. ‘Not the sort you mean. I look after certain interests of a gentleman you may have heard of. Harold Pulver.’
‘Oh yeah. I was at a party on his boat the other day. Do they know who’s …’
He shook his head. ‘Not yet. “The investigation continues.”’
‘So what are you doing here?’
‘You know – keep an eye on things.’
The drowsy calm was shattered by a splash at the other end of the pool: the Italian kids were cooling off. The sun had just got a little fiercer. Joey stood up and opened the white canvas parasol, creating a billow of gloom overhead. He asked Billie if the shade was to her liking, and she nodded. His expression had turned thoughtful.
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