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.