Hal sees Stella’s head turn slightly. He shrugs, eager to deflect attention from himself. ‘I think, in art, it is as noble a thing to try to make people happy, to help them escape, as it is to make them think. And perhaps more difficult.’
After lunch, there is a move to the sand. Hal and Aubrey Boyd sit against the sun-warmed bank of rocks that flanks the shingled beach on one side. The shadow from the rocks bisects the ground between them: Hal on the sunny side, Aubrey on the other, in what might be the only patch of shade on the whole beach. He has somehow got very sunburned: his skin is a terrible, raw pink and there are painful-looking blisters along his hairline.
‘I’m not built for this climate,’ he tells Hal, forlornly. ‘Mine is a Nordic complexion, suited only for temperate weather, not this barbaric heat. I have delicate skin.’
Hal has fared better than Aubrey: his skin has merely begun to tan. Only the crevices between his fingers bear evidence of his former, paler self.
Ahead of them, Giulietta Castiglione frolics in the surf in a bikini that displays her formidable curves to their best possible effect, laughing for the few photographers that have, of course, materialized among the crowd. Hal is beginning to recognize familiar faces among them: a couple have appeared at every stop. They click away delightedly as Giulietta splashes the water, tosses her hair, and is that carefree child–woman once more – quite different to the shrewd, often morose person that Hal has glimpsed in private moments.
‘She’s a little bitch,’ Aubrey says, ‘as far as I can tell. But she photographs extremely well. And one has to admit she’s divine to look at.’
‘She is.’ It is inarguable fact.
‘I’ve always loved beautiful things,’ Aubrey says. ‘Ever since I was a boy. There was very little beauty at the school I was sent away to. Grisly place, terrible interiors.’ The glib tone has a brittleness to it. It can’t have been easy, Hal thinks, for someone like Aubrey at a boys’ boarding school.
‘If it was anything like mine, I can imagine.’
‘Of course, it makes one appreciate one’s home all the more.’
‘Where did you grow up?’
‘Kent. Not much more than a cottage,’ Aubrey says, ‘but a big garden, which was the walled kind, you know – with climbing roses, and beds of lavender, and apple trees. In the summer, I wanted to spend my every waking moment there. And there was Feely …’
‘Feely?’
‘My older sister. Ophelia. When she came out into the garden she was the most beautiful thing in it. She’d let me dress her up in shawls and paste jewels – as an empress, or a fairy queen, and paint her in watercolours.’
Hal looks at Aubrey, and realizes that a change has occurred. In his voice, his gestures, there is a new softness, where before there was all haughtiness, arch sarcasm.
‘Cigarette?’ Aubrey asks.
‘If you’re having one.’
Aubrey passes him one, and lights it. When Hal inhales he coughs at the peculiar taste.
‘Sorry,’ Aubrey says. ‘Should have warned you. They’re Turkish: perfumed. I won’t be offended if you hate it.’
Hal sniffs it, dubiously. ‘Perhaps they take some getting used to.’
Aubrey takes a long drag on his, and gives a little sigh of pleasure. ‘I discovered these on a job in Istanbul. Never looked back – the normal stuff tastes ever so boring now.’ He waves away the cloud of smoke between them. ‘Where was I?’
‘Your sister – the garden.’
But now Aubrey is distracted, looking towards the water. ‘Oh look. Mrs Truss is going for a swim.’
They watch as Stella wades through the shallows, with only a momentary hesitation at the shock of the cold, and then begins a steady crawl directly away from the beach. His thoughts return inevitably to the walk. How different she had briefly been, before the inevitable retreat into herself. He wonders how he could have thought her two-dimensional. And remembering her on the path, quick and nimble, watching her now, swimming steadily, he wonders how he could have thought her weak.
He looks up and finds Aubrey watching him, curiously, realizes that he is vaguely aware of him having said something.
‘What?’
‘I said you’re rather pensive. Penny for them?’
‘Oh,’ he says quickly, ‘I’m a little tired, from the hike.’
‘Goodness, I can imagine.’ Aubrey takes a drag of his cigarette. ‘She doesn’t appear to be tired, though. One might almost think she were attempting to swim to Corsica.’
Hal follows his gaze. Stella is a long way out now, and still swimming hard. He can see the occasional flash of her limbs, her golden head.
‘Perhaps she is.’
‘Can it be safe out there?’ Aubrey says. ‘It looks rather choppy. Oh look – he’s wondering the same thing.’