Late afternoon, and the light has assumed an unusual golden hue, like that of a pale white wine. Beyond the coast, the mountains are a steep, purplish shadow. To Hal they are surreal and ungraspable, like something read about in a child’s storybook.
They are running under motor now and the yacht cuts through the still waters effortlessly. The engine purrs.
Hal sits with Aubrey Boyd, playing gin rummy. Aubrey is surprisingly competitive, and a deft player. His gains are made all the more quickly for the fact that Hal isn’t able to concentrate properly on the game.
‘What did you mean,’ he asks, ‘when you said that we’re little projects for the Contessa?’
‘Well,’ Aubrey raises an eyebrow. ‘I mean, you only have to look at us all. Apart from Giulietta, perhaps. We’re quite a ragtag bunch. She collects hopeless cases. You have Gaspari, with his melancholy, Morgan, with his drinking. Me, well, look at me for goodness’ sake. And you, with whatever it is you’re carrying about.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘The thing you’re carrying about. The thing that makes you act like the walking wounded. Aha! Big gin! That’s thirty-one points, I think.’ He sits back, happily.
‘What thing?’
‘You tell me.’ Aubrey glances up. ‘Oh, don’t look so offended. I’d have a go at it myself, if I knew it would make me half such a poetic figure as you.’ He nods his head in the Trusses’ direction. ‘Them, though. Can’t work out which one it is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know, which one of them is the project. Perhaps neither, after all. Perhaps both.’
Hal can see Stella on the sunbed at the bow, a large sunhat obscuring her head and shoulders. He can’t imagine her needing the Contessa’s help. A woman like that, surely, has attained everything she has sought from life. He watches her, turning the pages of her book, rationalizing her into ordinariness. She is not so beautiful. Next to Giulietta Castiglione, not at all. The effect is that of a small wildflower – a forget-me-not – beside a damask rose. And then there is the fact that she is nothing more interesting than a rich man’s wife. Women like her grace every other page in Life. In her pastel-coloured outfits, with her neat blonde hair, she is as two-dimensional as the illustration in an advert for a washing powder, or department store. He had thought that night in Rome that her reticence concealed something, and he had been intrigued by it. And last night, on the deck, she had seemed different, less false. But now he wonders if he was mistaken.
14
Portofino
Suddenly, there is a cry of excitement, and Hal forces his gaze from her to follow Aubrey’s pointing finger. Before them is Portofino, gleaming expensively in the sun. The breeze, laden as ever with salt and pine, now carries the unmistakable scent of petrol.
Portofino is a place of self-conscious restraint. But Hal, with the keenly honed instinct of one who hasn’t got much to call his own, sees wealth everywhere: in the waterfront villas half-hidden in the trees, in the quietly spectacular speedboats tethered in the turquoise harbour. Even the colours of the fa?ades along the waterfront have a richness and sobriety to them. Much of this will be foreign wealth, some of it new. Though some of those grand residences may still stand empty, waiting for owners yet to – or never to – return.
Above them all towers a majestic castle, wreathed in trees. The Pygmalion, sleekly elegant, is in her natural habitat. She makes the huge vessel anchored next to them, an ex-military frigate done up with white paint and gold fittings, look like a poorly dressed gatecrasher.
Their arrival has been anticipated, of course. The inevitable Armada of small boats approaches, the first flashbulb exploding with a pop and burst of light, the others following like a chain reaction.
‘Excuse me, sir?’ one of the men from the boat calls up to Hal, in thickly accented English, ‘But who are you, please?’
‘I’m a journalist,’ he calls back. ‘My name is Hal Jacobs.’
‘Ah. Well, sir,’ the man shouts, in a reasonable way, ‘would you mind moving out of the way for a few minutes? So that we may have a picture of the beautiful Giulietta only?’
The furore continues as they disembark from the tender onto dry land. There is a frenzy of activity about Gaspari and the two stars. Truss has disappeared to make a call, and Stella is nowhere to be seen. Hal is quite evidently a spare part. He suddenly knows what he will do, with this opportunity for solitude. He goes to his cabin and retrieves the journal.