The lieutenant knows there is one more thing he might try. ‘Sire,’ he says, carefully. ‘There is also the matter of your fiancée.’
It was the wrong thing to say. The captain explodes. ‘How dare you speak to me in that way?’ He rises to his full – and not inconsiderable – height. ‘How dare you insinuate that I am in some way lax in my duty to her? My care for this helpless woman in no way affects my deep and long-lasting love in that regard.’
The lieutenant takes his leave, apologizing all the way.
When Hal looks up from the page the light has assumed the bluish quality of early evening. The trees about him are ink impressions, the air is cooler. He is also certain that he is not alone. He looks about, and then sees her emerging from the shadowy gardens below. She looks otherworldly in the strange light: her skin paler, her hair brighter.
She has not seen him yet, he realizes: he is hidden in shadow. He moves forward.
She stops. ‘Oh.’
‘Hello.’
‘I didn’t realize you had come up here.’
No, he thinks – undoubtedly if she had she would not be here.
‘I wanted to find a quiet spot.’
She nods. ‘So did I. And I wanted to see what the view was like.’ They look together in silence, and he sees that lights are beginning to come on along the darkening stretch of coast. Then she glances at the journal in his lap. ‘What were you doing? Reading?’
‘Yes.’
Hal can tell she is curious, in spite of herself.
‘What is it?’
‘Oh,’ he says, ‘just an old book.’
He sees that she is frustrated by his reticence, that she wants to know more.
‘Can I take a look?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ he says. ‘It was given to me in confidence.’
‘Oh.’ He sees that she is stung, a little embarrassed. For a second, this knowledge gives him a kind of cruel pleasure. And then he takes pity on her. ‘It’s a journal,’ he says.
‘Whose?’
‘Someone long dead.’
‘Your friend?’
He stares at her. ‘What?’
‘You told me about him, in Rome. You told me he wrote.’
Did he? He must have done so. Yes: now he remembers. It was when he felt at liberty to share it with her, because he assumed he would never see her again. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘this isn’t his, though.’
‘What was his name?’
‘His name was Morris.’
‘How did he die?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ It comes out more harshly than he had quite intended. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘There isn’t any point in speaking of it now. It happened so long ago.’
She nods. ‘Except, you aren’t writing. You told me that you’d stopped, after he died.’
Her tenacity is a surprise. Only this morning he was thinking how weak she seemed, how flimsy and yielding. Perhaps this is his comeuppance.
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘that’s right.’ And then he remembers something from that night, something he can use, as a way of throwing it back to her. ‘Your father was a writer.’
‘Yes,’ she says. Now she is the one who appears wary.
‘You never told me his name.’
‘I don’t think you’ll know it. He wasn’t famous outside Spain.’
‘You’re Spanish?’ He looks at her. With the blonde hair, somehow, he would never have guessed. And yet it would explain the accent, with that foreign element beneath.
‘I was.’
It is an odd thing to say. ‘You aren’t now?’
She is wrong-footed. ‘Yes – but I mean that I’m an American, now. That is how I think of myself.’ She glances up at the sky. ‘It’s getting dark. I think we should go back to the yacht.’
He almost smiles. She is just as good at this game of obfuscation as he, perhaps better.
When he stands, she takes a quick step back. And then, as though feeling this might reveal too much, she steps forward again. It is too late, though, because suddenly the thing quickens into life between them, strong as it had been in Rome. Stronger, perhaps, because before there was no knowledge of how her skin would feel against his. It is a relief when she turns away.
He follows her back down through the dusk-laden garden. She wears a very simple linen dress, but with the reverse cut away to reveal the expanse of her back, the stippled line of her spine. He knows suddenly that he wants to put his hand there, to feel the soft warmth of her back. At one point she looks over her shoulder to check that he is following, and he nearly stumbles, caught out.
The scent of the flowers is stronger now, as though the dark has kindled it. ‘What is that?’ he asks, and it comes out as a hoarse whisper, as though the perfume is another secret between them. ‘That smell?’
‘Star jasmine,’ she says, as though she has had the answer ready for him.
Forever after, he thinks, his memories of this spring will be steeped in the scent.