by Lucy Foley
25
Her
I have seen the plane coming for us. I have seen it this time: I know, somehow, that it is coming for us. I reach out to Tino.
‘Tino,’ I say, ‘we have to jump now.’
I think for a moment that he is coming, too – that we will both escape. And then I see him hesitate. I see him turn back into the dark space in the truck’s interior. I never manage to get him out of the truck.
There is a sudden violence between us, a white blast. But I am still reaching for him, clawing the air.
*
A sudden cry, splitting the silence. He walks to the corridor, puts his head outside. Bars of blue moonlight slit the dark, illuminating dusty lengths of stone. Stella’s door, he cannot help noticing, is slightly ajar. The silence is absolute once more. It is a nearly full moon – particularly low and large, as though buoyant upon the water at the horizon. It seems to Hal that the light of it is forming a path for him: along the corridor, and out into the garden. And so he follows it.
Outside the air is quite cool, with only the faintest breath of the earlier heat in it. As he descends through the terraced gardens he is aware of an odd sound, low and guttural, fracturing into a multitude of separate sounds as he nears it. Not the sound he heard – in fact, it is like nothing he has heard before. As he passes the stone well it grows louder, and he realizes that it is coming from within. Frog music. He peers down into the dark mouth of the well and the noise wavers, then stops completely. He imagines the creatures looking back up at him, but can see nothing beyond a black gleam of wetness at the bottom. As he moves away the noise resumes, hesitantly at first, and gradually building to the pitch of before. Now that he understands it, it makes him smile.
He continues down the steps beyond the courtyard, where there is a second paved level that he hasn’t yet explored. As he moves away from the uproar of the frogs there is another sound, a liquid sound, coming from the direction of the swimming pool. Curious, he moves towards it. And then he sees her. A white shape in the blackness, entering the water. He begins to run.
‘Stella,’ he calls to her, stumbling, tripping down the path. ‘Stella, stop!’
She is in up to her waist. The fabric of her nightdress foams about her like a pale sea creature.
Without thinking he plunges into the water. He reaches for her and finds her arm and then her waist, through the floating skeins of material. He pulls her toward him.
At first she is limp in his arms, still lost to sleep. But then her hands are gripping him. She is blinking, gasping with the shock of the cold – which must be what has woken her. ‘Hal,’ she says, staring at him. ‘How—’
‘You were sleepwalking,’ he says.
She shuts her eyes. ‘I thought I was there,’ she says. ‘I had almost got him free.’ Her teeth are beginning to chatter. For the first time, he becomes aware of the cold, and of the warmth of her against him.
‘Come on,’ he says, helping her to climb out.
She is silent on the journey back up through the garden – embarrassed, perhaps a little in shock. But when they split to go to their separate rooms, she lays a hand on his arm. The warmth of her palm sears him through the wet material.
‘Hal,’ she says, ‘thank you.’
There is something in her face, a new openness, he thinks. Something has changed.
He returns to his room and towels himself dry, changes into dry clothes. He can hear her moving about in her room too, no doubt going through the same ritual: the opening of drawers, her feet on the flagstones. And then, after a few minutes, he hears the groan of her door opening. He listens, intent. She is outside, he is certain.
He goes to the door. He cannot hear anything, but he can sense her presence on the other side, as tangibly as if he could see her. What is she doing? Is she deliberating whether to knock? He imagines her hand, lifted, wavering. Well, he thinks, he will decide for her. He turns the handle. It is stiff, slow to move, and he has learned now that he has to put his whole weight against the door to get it open. When it finally does, he is greeted by darkness on the other side, the blank dark of the empty hallway.
It is for the best.
He climbs back into bed, and reaches for the journal, which is increasingly becoming a means of silencing the clamour of thought.
THE PROCESS BEGINS. The painter visits the house on the Via Cairoli every day, and the captain waits eagerly for the great unveiling. He asks, on a number of occasions, whether he may see the portrait in its unfinished state, but the young artist assures him that it would ruin the effect of the final piece for him. So over the weeks that follow he tries not to become too impatient, reminding himself constantly of the great prize that awaits.
When he visits Luna she seems happier than before. She is friendlier with him when he visits, too. The housekeeper tells him that she no longer leaves the palazzo as often, which is a pleasing result – though the restless sleep wandering does continue, to the perturbation of the whole household.
On one visit, encouraged by her smiles, he attempts to embrace her. It is the first time he has made such a move toward her – he feels that the moment has come. But as he reaches for her, a fearsome growl comes from the corner of the room. He draws back, confused. The dog is crouched low, its teeth bared in a snarl. It looks as though it is readying itself to leap: at him. He takes a step away from the girl, and the animal relaxes slightly. He glances at Luna, seeking some sort of explanation, but she merely looks back at him steadily, as though nothing is amiss.
Again, he moves towards her. Again, the dog growls. It is a terrible sound. This time the creature is stalking towards him. Feeling foolish, and not a little afraid, he makes his excuses and begins to retreat slowly from the room, all the while keeping the animal in his sights, making sure that it is not about to pounce on him.
There is nothing for it, he thinks furiously, back in the safety of his own palazzo. The beast must go. It will not be easy explaining this to her – there is such a bond between girl and dog that he suspects she will be upset. There is another thought, too, one that he tries to avoid entertaining. But it keeps coming to him, try as he might to push it away. There is something they say about women who share a peculiar bond with a particular creature. It is meant to be a sign of something … But no, it is mere superstition. He is a modern, intelligent man who can allow no time for such ideas. And she is good, and innocent. He is certain of it.
Hal feels a shiver of recognition. The painting, in Genoa. One and the same, surely, as the piece mentioned here. And there was something in it, wasn’t there? A sense of complicity that felt like some secret, shared, between subject and viewer. Or subject and painter.
26
The next day dawns warm and gorgeous: there is summer in it. Hal has come down to the stone jetty with the intention of going for a swim. The cold water hits his skin like a slap – memories of the previous night surfacing – but he becomes accustomed to it. He turns onto his back, sculling away from the shore. This sea supports him, seems almost to cherish him. Above him the land rises high as a cathedral into the blue.
As he turns to make for shore, blinking the sting of the salt from his eyes, he sees a figure on the jetty. It is Stella, sitting on the jetty, watching him.
‘Hello,’ she calls.
‘Hello.’
He hoists himself up onto the stone, and as he stoops to pick up his towel he can feel her eyes upon him, on the naked skin of his chest and stomach. He enjoys it. And when he turns to look at her, and catches her watching, she looks quickly away.
When he has towelled himself dry he sits down beside her. In her sundress and her white plimsolls, with her hair tied back, she looks very proper – like a country club tennis star. So different to his vision of her last night, with her wet hair across her forehead, her nightdress sodden.
She has her handbag beside her. ‘Are you going somewhere?’
‘I was going to walk to Cervo,’ she tells him. ‘The little town?
The Contessa tells me it’s worth a visit.’ A beat. ‘Do you want to join me?’
He gestures down at himself. Once again he feels rather than sees the warmth of her gaze upon his skin. ‘I’ll have to get dressed.’
She inclines her head. ‘I can wait.’
He dresses with a kind of frenzy. He had thought, after the strangeness of the night before, that she might be guarded with him. But the opposite seems to be true. He can feel her eyes on him, still.
Her
I don’t know what makes me ask him. But I’m not sure why I’ve done many things over the last few days. I don’t feel completely in control. Last night, for example. Waking to find myself in the dark water, with him wading in after me. This is exactly why my husband insists I should be taking the pills: the sleepwalking is dangerous, he says.
After I returned to my room I found myself opening my door, stepping outside. I stood in the corridor beside his door with my hand raised, ready to knock, before I realized what I was doing. But I was very much awake then.
This is not the woman who thinks out every sentence before she utters it, who is measured, self-possessed, never unexpected or controversial. But then neither was I her the other night on the yacht when I opened my mouth and sang. These are the actions of someone who meets a stranger at a party and asks him to take her with him into the nighttime city.
27
Cervo
A red-roofed, pastel-coloured town – little more than a hamlet – perched above the blue sweep of the Mediterranean. On the flat rocks that extend into the sea several dozen bronzed bodies are visible, lying prone in the warm wash of the sunlight. A place where one might live like a king on very little. He could be happier in a place like this, Hal thinks, than if he were to stay in the best hotel in Portofino.
The cobbled walkway up to the town is fringed by an embarrassment of flowers: reds and pinks, yellow and purple and white: colours that might never be put together by design. But nature, who knows nothing of convention, has the audacity of a genius.
In the medieval streets at the heart of the place the buildings seem to lean towards one another, pressing inwards. Stella moves in front of him like a pale flag against the shadows, looking about herself. He wants to know exactly what it is that draws her attention there, at the apex of two buildings, or there, in that dark corner. But there is almost absolute silence around them, and to speak into it would be to break the spell. Perhaps the entire population of the town is on the beach, because it seems they are the only ones here.
Suddenly they are launched into sunlight: a bright square above the sweep of the sea revealed on one side. Now the heat of the day is upon them again: a vivid, pressing warmth. Before them is a majestic church decorated in marine colours – seafoam, coral, palest sand – looking almost as though it were once something dredged from the sea.
‘Do you want to go in?’ he asks Stella.
‘You go,’ she says. ‘I’ll sit there—’ gesturing to an ironwork table and chairs set up in one corner of the square.
He knows what she will do: sit, and gaze out at the sea. It holds a particular fascination for her, as though she never grows tired of looking at it. He thinks he understands. For one who grew up with it, as he did, it was – until recently – something like an old friend. For her, it is still a mesmerizing stranger.
‘All right.’
The colours used inside are the same, but in the shadows they gain depth, majesty. There are a couple of bowed white heads in the pews: indistinguishable from Hal’s position as men or women, their stillness absolute. They could have been sitting here for hours – days. He never inherited his mother’s religion – agnosticism is one of the only things on which he and his father agree. And yet he has always been fascinated by her faith, her absolute trust in a higher power. He has wished at times, since the war, that he shared it. That belief in a higher plan in particular, the conviction that everything that happens – even the terrible things – happens for some reason too complex and mysterious for understanding. And the act, too, of confessing – and through that confession, to have some hope of finding absolution. The funny thing is, he often finds himself in the role of confessor, like some sort of a secular priest. It has always been this way: at school, friends had confided in him their various misdeeds, their shameful secrets. And on Lionheart, too. But since he has had something of his own to confess he seems to have met only with resistance. Suze brushing his words away as though they might soil her. Or his own suppressions, his own shame.
He steps outside a few minutes later. Stella, he sees, has been joined by an elderly woman, and both sit deep in conversation. It takes him a moment to recognize the language they are speaking in as Spanish.
As he approaches they both glance up, and the old woman springs to her feet with surprising agility. She is quite incredibly small: not much taller standing than Stella sitting, and Hal wonders whether she has always been that height, or whether it is the press of age. They have been drinking coffee. The woman now is gesturing to the cups, hurrying inside a door behind them that he had not noticed before.
‘She’s going to bring you one,’ Stella tells him. ‘She has a café here.’
Hal looks at the solitary table, and thinks that it is possibly the smallest café in existence. ‘You were speaking Spanish?’
‘Oh,’ Stella says. ‘Yes. Her parents were Spanish – the family moved here before the turn of the century. We got talking about the town, and I asked her how long she had lived here.’ She takes a sip of her coffee, frowns. ‘I’m not sure how it happened. Suddenly, I was no longer speaking English … and it was so easy. I thought I had forgotten it. I hoped that I had.’
‘But it came back?’
‘Yes. Surprisingly well.’
‘She wanted to know why I knew it.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘That I’d spent some time in Mexico. I’m not sure she believes me … my pronunciation is too different. But I didn’t want to get into a long discussion—’ Stella breaks off, looking up as the woman appears with a cup for Hal, and a metal pot, from which she pours a thick dark stream of coffee. Then she disappears inside and returns with a plate of little cakes, which she places proudly between them.
‘Please,’ Hal says, gesturing to the remaining chair. ‘Sit with us.’
‘Ah, no, grazie, no.’ She looks between them and grins, broadly. Then she leaves them. They sip their coffee in silence for several minutes, and eat their cakes, which are delicious. Almost immediately tiny birds appear to search out the crumbs, scurrying about on feet as fragile as leaf skeletons.
For the first time since they started out for Cervo, Hal finds himself properly aware of their aloneness together.
‘When was the last time you spoke Spanish?’ he asks.
‘A long time ago – 1937.’
‘That was when you left Spain?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Her
New York, June 1937
In New York, I discover that he is rich. It feels less a part of the metropolis, the area in which he lives, than it does some exclusive settlement. There are manicured box hedges, ivy wending its way up old stone. Of all the grand buildings on the street his apartment is grandest of all, a gothic tower spearing the sky, the lights glittering like so many precious stones.
I left Madrid with him, when he made his offer, because I had no other choice. If I had stayed I might have become another Maria, but I knew that I had nothing of her strength, at least not any more. Here was an opportunity for a new life – if one could look at it in that way. Really it was more like dying. It was a relinquishing of the struggle to survive, the shedding of a self. Though my grief crossed the ocean with me. It was the one thing I brought with me from my old existence to this new.
In the second week, I find myself left for a couple of hours in the apartment. His home is so different from everything I have known. The two guiding principles a
re wealth, and order, neither of which had any place in the farmhouse. Hard, gleaming, geometric. Metal and glass. It feels like being caught inside a vast lantern. Every so often I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the many reflective surfaces, and see a small pale being: a moth who has flown in by accident.
It is in good taste – even with no knowledge of such things, I can tell that much. But then I already knew that my husband was a man of taste: it is evident in the elegance of his person. What I want now is to discover new, as yet unknown aspects of him, to educate myself about this man who fascinates and frightens me. Furtively, I find myself looking for things that might reveal these. The home is where one learns such things about a person, isn’t it? The private self, of which they only expose choice glimpses to the world.
Papa claimed that a person’s bookshelf revealed most about them, so I go to these first. I don’t quite know what to make of what I find. There are a great many volumes, but they are anonymous in their ubiquity. The complete works of Shakespeare. Boxed collections of Dickens, of Thackeray, of Austen. Sets of encyclopaedias, the histories of the Romans, Ancient Greeks, the Americas. They are beautiful editions. But where are those idiosyncrasies of appetite? The odd preoccupations, the dog-eared indulgences? Our house had more than most, perhaps, but everyone must have them.
I look for photographs. I have a sudden need to find a picture of my husband at another stage of his life – in a more fragile, unformed phase, perhaps as a fat baby, or in adolescence. Best yet, a family member – to lend context to who he was before, his history. I begin to look in drawers, to open cupboards.
‘What are you doing?’ His tone is one of curious amusement. I am pleased that he isn’t angry – the idea of him angry is horrible. But I am also humiliated, aware of how ridiculous I must look, caught red-handed like this.