The Invitation

by Lucy Foley

  The men like their captain. More than that, they respect him, and many among them feel they owe their lives to him. He is bringing them home unharmed – or as little harmed as might be hoped – to their wives and families, to their beloved city. He has always seemed clear-headed. A man to be trusted. But now the rumours start to attach themselves to him too. He is glassy-eyed and listless, they notice: like a sleepwalker. He guards the entrance to his cabin jealously, as though any man would dare enter without his permission. He acts, some say, like a man in love. Or, others mutter, like a man possessed.

  Hal is aware, suddenly, of footsteps behind him. Remembering Gaspari’s words, he tucks the journal beneath him, out of sight. Then he turns and sees with a shock the white shape coming nearer through the gloom. There is something strange about the way she moves, but he cannot quite identify what. Her arms hang absolutely still at her sides, her feet appear to drag.

  ‘Mrs Truss?’

  No answer. Though she is saying something: one word, over and over. It is an eerie sound. He feels the hairs on his arms prickle to attention. It is a name, he is certain: though not one he can decipher.

  ‘Stella?’ He stands, and takes a step toward her. She wears a nightdress that falls to mid-thigh but her legs, her long pale legs, are bare. Her hair is mussed, sticking up at the front from her forehead in disarray. And only now does he see why she doesn’t answer him. Her eyes are open, but filmy-looking, unseeing as a blind person’s.

  What should he do? He has heard somewhere that you should not wake a sleepwalker. But it feels wrong to be watching her without her knowledge. It makes him a voyeur. He tries her name once more, softly. Finally, he sees the tremor of a response, and watches as the glazed look clears. She stares about herself in confusion.

  She sees Hal. ‘What—’

  ‘You were asleep.’

  ‘Oh no.’ She moves her head, as if trying to shake the sleep from it. ‘Not here.’

  ‘It happens a lot?’

  ‘Sometimes. I have pills, that I’m meant to take, to help me sleep more deeply. I must have forgotten …’

  ‘I didn’t know whether to wake you.’

  But she isn’t listening. She is looking down at her naked legs and feet below the hem of her nightgown. It takes some effort of will for him not to follow her gaze. He keeps it fixed, resolutely, above her shoulders.

  Now she is looking back towards the steps, probably deciding how quickly she can get back to them. He thinks of how she must have climbed them with her eyes closed. She could have broken her neck.

  ‘Stay.’ He doesn’t know what makes him say it, and the urgency of it embarrasses him. To cover himself he says, quickly, ‘You should probably sit down for a couple of minutes, wake yourself up properly.’

  She wavers. He moves across on the seat, to give her room. But she chooses the other sunbed, several feet away.

  And to his surprise, she says, ‘Yes, please. I do feel a little strange.’

  They sit for a while in silence. He can’t think of anything to say to her.

  ‘You couldn’t sleep?’ she asks him.

  ‘No. It’s too quiet.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t think it’s ever quiet in New York – not even in the middle of the night. What time is it now?’

  ‘Two a.m.’

  ‘Oh. So late – I didn’t realize.’

  He can feel her unease at being here alone with him. It is in the way she holds herself, absolutely upright, shoulders rigid, bent legs drawn as far from him as they will go.

  When he sees her wrap her arms about herself he offers her his sweater. ‘Please. You must be freezing.’ He shrugs it off and leans forward, thrusts it toward her. She flinches away from him, as though his nearness might scorch her, and shakes her head. ‘I’m fine.’ And then, in an afterthought, she takes it.

  She does not leave. She could, but she chooses not to. He wonders if it would be worth broaching the unspoken thing: that night in Rome. Let her know that it didn’t mean anything to him – that he understands it was the same for her. She must be thinking the same thing. ‘I don’t know why I did it,’ she says, as though he has asked the question, ‘I wasn’t myself, that night. I didn’t think …’ she trails off.

  ‘I wondered whether you did it because you thought we’d never see each other again.’

  For the first time, she looks directly at him. He feels her answer, though she doesn’t say it aloud. Yes.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘it was a surprise for me, to see you again. It must have been an unwelcome one for you.’

  She swallows.

  ‘I think, if he found out—’ She stops herself, suddenly. ‘I don’t know what he would do.’

  ‘You don’t think he knows anything?’

  ‘No,’ she says, as though reassuring herself. ‘There’s no way that he could.’ Watching her, he thinks he sees a small convulsion of fear. It gives him pause.

  ‘I didn’t mean anything by it,’ he says. ‘I felt he was almost too pleased to make my acquaintance. I wondered if it meant anything.’

  She relaxes, ever so slightly. ‘He’s like that with everyone. My husband is … well, he’s a very charming man.’

  It is precisely the word, Hal thinks: charming. It expresses perfectly the superficiality of the man’s manner.

  ‘I wish I could explain,’ she says, suddenly, ‘why I did it.’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ he says. ‘I think I understand it. Your husband was away.’ He knows that he is being cruel, but can’t seem to help himself. He sees her make an effort not to mind.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she says. ‘I really was a little mad, I think. I had just learned something …’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About myself, I suppose.’

  He waits.

  ‘I was in an odd frame of mind. And then you appeared, and you were different, not part of that world …’ She looks at him. ‘I haven’t explained it, have I?’

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘but I understand. We’ve all made a mistake.’ It feels unpleasant to say that word: mistake. It is his pride, of course.

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Quite clearly,’ he says, ‘it was a mistake. But that’s all right. You don’t need to say any more. If you don’t mind, I’m tired. I’m going to go back to bed. Goodnight, Mrs Truss.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Probably, he should guide her back to her cabin, make sure that she gets down the ladder safely. It would be the gentlemanly thing to do. But it is, somehow, beyond him. There is only so much injury to his pride that he can take. There is only so much, too, of sleep-mussed hair, of pale bare skin.

  When he glances back, she is still sitting there. She is looking not towards Portovenere, but out to sea, into blackness. She seems, suddenly, to be somewhere else entirely.

  11

  Her

  December 1936

  In the distance, we can hear the war, growing nearer; a constant barrage of artillery. Sometimes it sounds as though it is almost upon us. Tino wakes in the night, crying. I go to his room, and sit with him and Señor Bombón long into the small hours. I read to him with his hot form pressed against my side and the cat stretched across our knees, sometimes until dawn shows pale on the horizon. Sometimes I sing to him, snippets of song heard on the radio, lullabies remembered from my mother.

  He has a new preoccupation now; a fear that has supplanted all the others. I wish that I could tell him, as I have in other times, that it is all only in his mind – that there is no threat. But I can’t quite bring myself to tell him a lie.

  ‘What will we do,’ he asks, ‘when they come here?’

  ‘If they do, Tino,’ I say, ‘they won’t hurt us.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’re children.’ I try to make it sound as though I believe it myself. There is talk on the radio of what they are doing to people: to children younger than him, to young women like me. Though if you trusted everything you heard, you would g
o mad.

  ‘And Señor Bombón?’

  ‘He’ll be fine too.’

  ‘What about Papa?’

  ‘He’s in Madrid, with Uncle Salvador and Aunt Aída.’

  ‘When will he come back for us?’

  ‘Soon, Tino.’

  It has been a month since my father left us. Every day, I walk into the town to see if there is a message from him at the telegraph station. He promised that he would try and send word. But each time, there is nothing for me. I remind myself that this does not mean anything in particular. Papa has never been exactly reliable at keeping these sort of promises. And it may simply be too difficult: perhaps he is not allowed to. I know nothing of such things. I know nothing of war, other than what I can hear of it, and what I learn on the radio – none of which is without bias.

  The woman in charge of the station, Señora Alvarado, is a dour, matronly type with thick spectacles and prominent whiskers that Tino pointed out, once, before I could stop him. She transcribes the messages into blocky pencil capitals, which lends them a certain harshness, as though the words are being shouted. I remember Papa saying that a message of love would lose any romance when transmitted through this hand, read beneath her stern gaze.

  Except that I have seen less of this sternness, of late. The first couple of times, when I asked if there were any messages, she shook her head at me impatiently. But now, when I ask, I sense something else. I think it is pity. One time, she asked me about ‘the poor little boy’ – evidently forgetting Tino’s comment about the whiskers. I felt a flare of anger – though I know she only asked out of kindness. Yet I felt that I had been called remiss in some way. As though I don’t spend most of the day worrying about how to keep him safe.

  I have inherited Papa’s preoccupation with the radio. I listen whenever Tino is out of hearing range, trying to hear through all the bombast and propaganda the truth of what is going on in Madrid. It hasn’t fallen: that much is clear. If not from the government’s announcements, dubiously optimistic, then from the fact that there are no triumphant broadcasts from the rebels to tell us that they have taken the capital.

  I wonder what he is doing now, where he is. I have an idea that if I can conjure an image of him clearly enough, I might be able to convince myself that he is safe. I try to imagine him as a soldier, with a weapon, and find that I can’t. I have only ever seen him in one of his loose shirts, worn thin and soft with age. In his old peasant’s trousers, held up by a finely wrought leather belt: a contrast that exemplifies my father, in all his contradictions. Does he even know how to fire a rifle? Could he kill a man? Because for all his talk of the ‘great fight’, Papa is a gentle man at heart.

  It has come at last. A telegram, for me.

  And then suddenly I wish it hadn’t. I don’t want to read it. Because, when it is passed to me, Señora Alvarado whispers: ‘Lo siento.’

  It isn’t from my father – it is from Uncle Salvador. And there, in Señora Alvarado’s laboured handwriting, I read that my father is dead.

  I have no memory of the walk home: I know only that I seem to arrive back at the farmhouse too quickly. I haven’t had time to prepare myself for what I have to do.

  When I reach him he is drawing in his sketchbook, humming something under his breath, his eyes half-closed against the bright light. He looks so content that for a second I hesitate. What if I could somehow delay his pain by not telling him yet? But that is a dangerous way to think. For a moment, I think he hasn’t heard me. He looks up at me, squinting, still with that half-smile on his face. But then: understanding. I see the change happening, moving across his face, across the whole of him. It is like watching something slowly freezing.

  12

  Cinque Terre

  The next morning the sky is clear once more and huge above them: the clouds strung into thin contortions. On one side the coast masses steel grey and dark green, shearing out of the waves.

  Riomaggiore, the first of the five towns, reveals itself in this mythic landscape like a practical joke, a sudden exclamation of colour.

  They are like sisters, Hal thinks, the towns. Each has her own personality, but they are linked by a definite familial likeness. Manarola – the great beauty, Corniglia, in her clifftop eyrie, Vernazza, with the protective arm of rock shielding her from view, and finally blowsy Monterosso al Mare. They are good-time girls, carnivalesque.

  ‘You know the reason for the different colours?’

  Hal turns, to find the Contessa by his side. He shakes his head.

  ‘So that every fisherman could know which was his own house when he looked back to shore. And, if he had good eyesight, see that his wife was at home behaving herself.’

  They gaze at the spectacle together for a few moments.

  ‘They’re in the film, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did they exist back then?’ They appear at once new – the vibrancy of the hues, perhaps – and timeless, as though they might have grown across the stone like brightly coloured lichen.

  ‘Oh yes. Though they were perhaps not in such good repair as you see now. The inhabitants would have been poor country people, you know. But then the Victorians started coming and they got, you might say, a little rouge and powder.

  ‘You know, that is what I would like to do, with this film. When the English think of Italy, I suspect some still think of words like Monte Cassino, Mussolini. No?’ Without waiting for Hal to speak, she continues. ‘Or perhaps they think of poverty and defeat. I want them to think again of this beauty, this land of fable and romance. Somewhere in which love flourishes. How could it not, in a place like this?’

  Monte Cassino. They are rebuilding the monastery there, Hal read, exactly as before, the one that was bombed almost out of existence. ‘Where it was, and as it was,’ the Abbott had said. If only the same could be done with a person.

  They stop in Vernazza for lunch at a restaurant. When the waiter comes to take their orders, Hal sees Truss lean across Stella. ‘La bistecca,’ he says, in a rather elegant accent, perusing the menu carefully. He indicates his wife. ‘E le cozze per mia moglie.’

  Hal looks away.

  He is seated next to Giulietta again. She has covered half her face with huge round sunglasses, but these have the effect of drawing attention to her, rather than the opposite. He is determined, this time, to draw her out.

  ‘Miss Castiglione.’

  She turns to him.

  ‘I wonder if I might interview you, about the film.’

  She frowns. ‘Now?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  Suddenly, capriciously, she grins: showing a slight gap in her white front teeth. The effect of the smile that of a lamp being turned on. ‘All right. Why not?’

  ‘Would you prefer Italian?’

  ‘No, English is fine.’

  ‘So, tell me. What is it like being called “Italy’s finest export”?’

  She shrugs. ‘It makes me sound like a tomato.’ A toss of her head.

  ‘Still, what an incredible thing, to become so famous so quickly. Has it all been a great surprise?’

  ‘No. I knew it would happen.’

  ‘You did? Well that’s … you must have a remarkable drive, to have made sure that it did.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means. Drive. Come una macchina?’

  ‘Well, no … ambizione, istinto sfrenato.’

  She shrugs again. ‘Perhaps.’

  It is already quite possibly the most tiresome interview Hal has yet attempted. Even the Roman politicians, with all their slipperiness, have proved easier subjects than this.

  ‘All right. Next question. What was it like working with Earl Morgan? You two make a wonderful onscreen couple.’

  She wrinkles her nose. ‘He is a – oh, how you say. It begin with an “i”?’

  ‘Say it in Italian, perhaps.’

  She shakes her head, stubbornly. ‘I will think. It will come to me.’ She drums a manicured hand on the tab
le.

  ‘Icon?’

  At the same time she shouts, in triumph, ‘Imbecile!’

  The conversation about the table stutters to a halt. Hal feels the eyes of the party upon them. With the exception, thankfully, of Earl Morgan, who has drunk a bottle of vino rosato and slipped into unconsciousness.

  ‘Ah.’ Hal says, quietly, reasonably, ‘I’m not sure that will look so good. Perhaps something about how talented he is …’

  ‘So.’ She narrows her eyes at him. ‘So. I think I understand it. You want me simply to say exactly what you tell me?’

  ‘Well, no, but …’

  ‘Write exactly as you like,’ she says, suddenly. Like a sudden shift in the wind her mood has changed. The smile is gone. ‘That’s what you want, I think.’ She puts down her fork and stands. ‘I’m tired of this now.’

  ‘Please,’ Hal says, ‘Miss Castiglione, that’s not at all—’

  But his words have fallen on deaf ears, because she has already stalked away to pose for the photographers loitering inevitably just beyond the entrance, arranging herself with feline haughtiness. Hal looks down at his pad. Nothing there that will make an interesting sentence, let alone a paragraph. She is a child, he thinks, a spoiled child. Yet on screen, she had had so much complexity and maturity. He rips out the page in disgust.

  *

  After Vernazza, they sail along the coast until they reach the bay of Levanto. If one is to continue with the metaphor, she is the mother: serious and stately, her beauty faded, but arguably the more charming for it. Along the distant quay fishermen are waiting for an evening catch.

  After dinner, Hal sits with Gaspari at the bow. The little dog is asleep at the director’s feet. Every so often she will let out a small, subconscious whine, and her paws will twitch with some movement carried over from her dream.