He sat down on the verge. The sea seemed serene, limitlessly incandescent, but in the far distances of the day a storm was brewing. Along the coastline the sea's blue had turned to a rage of white surf against the cliffs. Rollers were polevaulting high against the spits and stacks, lingering in a zenith of foam and freefalling back into the swell.
The weather would soon change. Rain and thunder would sweep in. The glinting town would be lost in mists and drizzle for days, possibly weeks. The sea would become dull, the beaches bare, the restaurants empty.
He held his knees and gazed with the bleary fixity of a drunk at the hairs on his forearm. Hilldyard's revelation made vision seem skew-whiff, and Michael was too shot-up and knocked off to understand where it left him. He was exhausted by the unknowability of human beings. Frances and Hilldyard were an uncanny proposition, bizarre, beyond his ken. The idea mildly disgusted him. He did not yet know what to think, but knew he was shocked. The information was disappointing, morally disappointing; but then he had been morally disappointing, too.
He was relieved to have escaped the scene of his abasement. All that humiliation blew one's fuses.
He clutched his knees and thought of Adela down there somewhere. She was waiting for him to arrive with good news.
Without the option he could not have her. He knew that for sure. All he could do was cup his chin and reflect on the bitterness of this.
They had only just met. He had experienced her ardour, but had no claim. They appreciated certain things about each other, perhaps. If Adela had been direct with her lips, she had been more honest with her tongue. She had come to an age when life and work needed to bind each other. She desired love, but wanted more. Michael as he stood was no use to her, though Michael as a producer in control of the film rights – well, that might be different. If he could get his act together (she had hinted) she might readily succumb to the attraction between them. She needed a person whose energy of becoming was as great as her own. She had ambition, immense talent. Her partner must aid, not oppose that. The right man needed edge, and Michael had no edge at all. He had nothing but himself.
He held his knees as though he were holding his unhappiness, embracing it. He was experiencing new physical sensations, chest pangs, muscular edginess, tingling skin, the ache of repressed energy, as if something were trying to get out of his body. His feelings were on the move again. Frozen matter was being called into life. He realised that he was, quite simply, ready for a relationship in a way he had not been since Christine's death. He was able to fall in love. He was dying to be in love, and the strength of the urge magnified Adela's appeal into something almost unbearable.
He sat with his hands on the grass, and felt sorrow glutting up. Everything was mad. Everything was skewed for maximum pain and disappointment and this had always been so with him. The chance of a second life had come along and he could not take it.
Chapter Sixteen
Adela's pensione was in the heart of Positano, at an X-junction of restaurants and shops, opposite the post office.
The small man at the desk rang Adela's room, but her phone was engaged. He shrugged, thumbing a number on the key rack and directing a hand upstairs. Michael went up the steps, past skew-whiff pictures of lurid sunsets and snow-white villas and a model of the Madonna on a ledge.
He found the corridor and walked along to her door, ajar. He could hear a bath running, the plumbing working up a din, and could just hear her talking on the phone. He entered the hall and was about to knock when her voice became clearer, and he was struck by the sound of it.
'Oh very beautiful. The apex of two-star.' She laughed. 'About ten by six. Jack would laugh. It's quite a joy, you know, Sarah . . . the bohemian life. Yes, I know . . . Did he? Well, there's nowt wrong with a bit of winking cellulite at the Cottesloe . . . Darling, he wouldn't ask you if you weren't gorgeous. You are! You're beautifuler than me. Tell Bernie to sort him. God, these directors are shameless!'
He stood against the wall.
'At least Jack carried cash. What! Diz hasn't paid for a drink in living memory. Not hard up, Sarah. Very mean. He's chucked and he should stay chucked. Say what you like, Brand, he was never mean! . . . Yes, we met yesterday.' The tone lowered. 'One hopes one wasn't too unmemorable in one's strapless cocktail frock . . . Michael . . . yes . . . He did. No, but Frank Coburn's flying over, which is . . . Yeah. Fingers crossed and everything . . . Look, call Bernie and ask him to phone Tucker and tell him to stick the nude scene down the front of his very sweaty Levi's . . .'
He was about to enter when her tone changed again.
'Brown eyes. Intense. He needs this as much as I do.'
He breathed in.
'Don't give me advice, please . . . Is that your latest phrase? You didn't!' She shrieked. 'The Semen Demon! God . . . Abominable harlot! . . . What? . . . It doesn't mean anything. It means I don't want to talk about it. And that doesn't mean anything. Or that.'
He eased himself backwards, but then couldn't hear.
Her voice was soft now, as though she were talking half into her pillow.
'Anything I tell you, you'll tell Jack . . . So what you don't know you can't pass on. You can't read anything into what I say. Truly, no comment.' She laughed, a snugly girlish laugh. 'Well, do give my best regards to your super new dish of a man and don't forget to call Bernie. Bye, angel.'
He moved swiftly back into the corridor and heard her banging through the inner door into the bathroom. Her phone rang again.
'Damn.' He retreated back down the corridor and from the top of the stairwell heard the hotelkeeper say 'Visitor'.
She was expecting him now, and Michael went back again, a leaden arm rising, a rebellion of nerves in his neck and chest, until his palm hit the opening door and there beyond it, framed by window-light, she stood in a satin robe, her hair pinned up and her eyes wide with surprise.
'You're here?'
He waited on the threshold, amazed by the sight of her.
She reversed through the door, spun into her bedroom.
'Come on in.'
'Sorry to . . .'
'God, the bath!' She brushed past him, a hairpin in her mouth.
The bed was exuberantly unmade; a chaos of bags and clothes and open wardrobe doors crowded the room.
'Hi!' She was bouncily back.
He smiled involuntarily.
'So?'
'This room's tiny.'
'Minute! The bed's like a sandbag.' She clapped her mouth. 'Believe me, I'm not this messy in real life. I can't be. Sit down.'
He walked to the small balcony, leaned on the grille, felt her coming up next to him, sharing his view of the square. He could feel her suspense. She was all nervous energy and her skin creased around the eyes as she resisted the brightness.
'You're very calm and collected.'
He was spaced.
'I've had an interesting morning.'
'And?'
Her uptilted face was searching him; all its beauty, its smoothness, fairness and fullness was aghast for his news, as though it were a yearning for him; as though the news he would bring were like a kiss.
He glimpsed the alternative future.
'Michael?' There was alarm in her eyes.
Something like the tip of a blade ran through him, sectioning his heart.
'You've got the rights?'
'The rights?'
'Did he agree?'
He took in her opalescent eyes, the petal paleness of her throat, the palmable swell of satin breasts.
'Well, anyway . . .' he began.
'You've got the option?'
It sunk inside him, a release of dead weight.
'Are you OK?' She touched him with both hands.
'Yes.' He smiled suddenly.
'The option!'
'The option is signed.'
'He signed the option?'
'Absolutely.' He kept smiling. 'It's signed.'
'Oh God,' she yelled. 'Man of genius!'
H
e succumbed to the collision of a hug and the impact of a kiss, followed by the heat of her breath. 'What happened? Was he OK?'
The lie clotted inside him. 'Yeah . . . Yes.'
'Incredible.' She bounced back against the end of the bed, her bathrobe riding up. She had the thighs of a dancer. 'Tra la la. When do the agents get here?' She put a Scarlet O'Hara hand to her bosom, touched off her hair.
'Tomorrow.'
'D'you know what? You're my saviour.' She sprang off the mattress towards him. 'Can I call Bernie?'
'No.'
'OK, OK. My friend downstairs will bring us a bottle. I've got him . . .' She made a sign with her little finger as she went to the bedside phone, smiled violently as she dialled, with cat-like delight.
Michael gazed over the balcony into the street below. He could feel her through thin air, the imminence of her touch, the scent of her skin, the shapeliness of elbows and shoulders, chin and cheeks, the tensile backs of her thighs, her calves, the gossamer all-overness of flesh as if it were enveloping him.
'Ah!' She was pressing her palms to her face. Her body wilted with the abjectness of relief and when he turned to look at her, she smiled at him through tears. 'Thank God, Michael,' she gasped. 'Oh, thank God!'
Chapter Seventeen
The 'champagne' when it came was, indeed, Asti spumante. The crisps on the tray were also Italian. Michael answered the door and received a smile from the hotel-keeper before taking the tray back into the room and putting it on the dressing table.
He looked around for somewhere to sit.
Adela lay in the bath, listening to the radio.
The bedroom was alive with street sounds. The shutters were half open, casting diagonal lines on the rug.
He cleared a pair of embroidered slippers and a make-up bag off the chair and sat down. He considered the room from a sedentary position, the spectator of his own predicament. He had lost control, and now he felt experimental and on borrowed time, and weird, as though he had crossed to the other side of things.
His mouth tasted queer. Something was turning his breath.
Her bathrobe had pleased him: a gorgeous piece of silver-screen satin, a coming together of sex and luxury and womanly self-love. Adela's body deserved sensuous adornment. Like any actress, she knew the secret of her comeliness, its magical allure and special effects. And for a moment back there she seemed like a hologram of ideal beauty, something unbearably lovely, projected from the needs of overwrought nerve-endings.
She came out of the bathroom wrapped to the armpits in a towel and rubbed at her neck and ears with a hand towel. Standing perceptively before her image in the mirror she threaded back wet hair with fine fingers. She was self-possessed, relaxed, abundant. Things were now on course and she could prepare to flourish. She gave a quaint glance at the Asti spumante and then sashayed past to the wardrobe. 'Excuse me,' she said, bending forward by his side and drawing out on the flat of her hand a folded shirt.
He smelt the almond aroma of hair-conditioner.
'Would you like a bath?' She smiled.
He cleared his throat.
She stood over him and let the shirt unfold, as if she were about to put it on.
'Or would you prefer a drink?'
'I'll take a drink.'
'Shall I wear this?'
'You're staying, then?'
She glanced at him and then sat down on the bed, hand cupping the inside of a thigh. 'I'm staying.'
He took the Asti bottle and wrestled off the cork. The fluid fizzed uncontrollably as he poured, cheap foam overflowing the glasses.
She placed a crisp on her tongue and lolled sideways on the bed.
Michael looked at her softly, a long moment.
She took the glass and played it between her hands and the look she gave him then made him blush.
'What happens now?' she said quietly.
His heart rushed. It seemed like an invitation.
'Oh.' He suppressed the hot air bubble in his chest. 'Um . . . The mother of all negotiations.'
'Shall I call Shane?'
'Too early.'
'He'll talk to Frank.'
He shut his eyes as though reading the words off the back of his lids. 'If we play Shane, we play him as a trump card.'
She drew a hair from her cheek. 'Isn't your trump card the option agreement?'
'I'm a one-card player.' He was bluffing on no cards.
'Shane's on our side.'
He looked at her absently.
'I need to square the agents first. They have to swallow the fact I'm producing this film and it's my baby not theirs.'
There was hesitant admiration in her eyes.
'I'll call Adamson tonight.'
'Adamson?'
'Hollywood contact. He'll give me language.'
'God.'
'Yes?'
She did one of her three-quarter-profile poignant gazes. 'I can hardly believe it's true.'
He looked away. 'Nothing's true, yet.'
She sighed with total relief, as though the tension were still escaping in surges. He had brought about the consummation of something she desired with every sinew of her being: the role of a lifetime. Now that the goal was achieved she was relaxing into herself properly. Her aura had changed. He saw in the colour of her skin and the warmth of her smile just how much one lie had done for her.
'Michael?' The towel had ridden up her leg to reveal a line or crease dividing the upper roundness of her thigh from the muscle underneath. 'Will you sit next to me?'
She was ahead of him. He leaned forward.
'Come.'
He moved from the chair to the edge of the bed, bringing his wineglass, too. He sat by her side in appreciative compliance and she turned a holding look on him that let him see at close range the green filaments of her irises, the delicate lashes.
'Cheers,' she said, over her glass.
He could feel her readiness. His closeness was acceptable to her. She knew what he felt, what he might intend, and her easiness encouraged him. He looked at her collarbone, at the cream beneath it.
She placed a hand on his leg.
'Hello,' he said, setting a hand on hers.
'I've taken advantage of you.'
Her hand slid away.
'I've led you on, I think.'
His heart raced.
'There's a problem, Michael.'
He could not think what to think, except that the moment was ghastly.
'I'm in turmoil.'
'What!'
'Oh . . . Jack.'
'Jack?'
'My . . . my boyfriend!'
He waited for more than the repetition of a name, directing all his nerve endings to what she would say next.
'The . . . He called, and . . .' She craned her neck, inarticulate for once.
He had been a fool to ignore this.
'Right now I don't know what to do. I suppose things aren't quite over. He's got his hooks in me somewhere . . .'
She sat in the limpness of her shame, and he saw that all this 'boyfriend' might stand for had crept up on her and seized her in a way he had not witnessed before; it had taken this moment to bring it to the surface.
He placed his glass delicately on the tray and felt desire curdling in him. He had lied his way into nothing, a double humiliation, and the disappointment was merciless.
'I need this project so much, you see . . . I desperately need a gig.'
He heard this from a distance.
She remained still by his side, as if reckoning the consequences of admission.
He scratched his chin. The first impact was like a burn or cut, a nasty moment followed by numbness; misery later.
'I like you,' she said. 'I do like you.'
He was able to foresee sorrow. Although he had lied to her and had given himself a false opportunity, the true thing, the spur to his deception, was that he honestly wanted her; and what he felt, as he sat like a statue, was the immensity of that need. He would have to pack the thwar
ted force back into himself. The need of years.
'I just don't know what would happen.'
'I see.'
'I want to be honest with you. You of all people.'
He sighed at the dull compensation of honesty.
'What I probably need is an affair.' She avoided his gaze. 'Not what you need. I think you deserve something nutritious.'
He grunted, incredulous.
'You're very serious, Michael.'
'What sort of ''affair''?' he heard himself asking in a strange voice.
'A means to an end,' she said quickly.
He rubbed his forehead.
'I have no idea what I would feel at the moment.' She chucked up her chin.
'What end?'
'Getting over Jack. Or getting him back.'
'You want him back?'
She was half playful, half serious, a victim of her own uncertainty. 'I don't know what I want!'
He nodded, understanding nothing.
'I don't want to use you.'
'Who do you want to use?'
'Nobody! I'm not like that.'
There was a silence in which he felt racked by jealousy.
'You need love, I think. And whatever I could offer, it might not be that.'
Her honesty pained him.
'This is a weird conversation. I mean . . . I mean, nothing's really happened.'
After a pause he stood up and walked to the balcony. He noticed that the light outside had changed. Foreshortened figures crossed the road. One of the restaurant owners from the upper town was snatching out gesticulations before an elegant woman as she moved a display rack into her shop.
He should not have let his hopes run high. Life was not like that. His big chance had been a delusion. Michael bit his lip and felt all hope subside. He must come clean with her. He had a duty to own up, even though it would mean the end of their relationship.
'We must talk to Shane,' she said.
He turned.
She rose to her feet, cradling her arms, throwing her hair back.
'He should know what we know. He mustn't hear it from the agents or he'll think we've been manoeuvring behind his back.'
Sex & Genius Page 20
