The Invitation

by Lucy Foley

  He repeats his question.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, improvising. ‘I’m looking for a pen.’

  ‘A pen? Why would you want a pen?’

  ‘I—’ I try to think, but my mind is a blank. ‘I wanted to write a note.’

  ‘What sort of note?’

  ‘To … to thank you. For everything you’ve done for me.’

  ‘Ah. But you aren’t going anywhere – are you?’

  ‘No.’

  He smiles, kindly. ‘You don’t need to write me a note, then. You can simply tell me.’

  ‘Of course. Thank you.’

  In the morning, a wrapped parcel is left outside my room. I lift the layers of tissue to reveal a dark-blue fountain pen, exquisitely made.

  For the first few weeks, I see the city through the windows of the sitting room, which look out onto a wide thoroughfare of shops and traffic. He does not want me to go out alone, at least for now. He is worried I might get lost, or picked up by the police. I could be deported. I am aware that my status in this new country is hazy. He arranged all of it: the passage out of Spain and into France, the flight from there. I have seen nothing of my new country other than the airport and a blur of streets, filled with people, on the drive to the apartment.

  Then, one day, he tells me that we are going shopping. He wants me to have everything new, he says, as I am draped by the shop assistants in silk and chiffon, cashmere and tweed. He wants me to be transformed.

  Looking in the mirror, back at the apartment, I am filled with wonder and a kind of horror. The person before me is not someone I recognize. I look several years older, several degrees more beautiful. I have never been beautiful before. I have never worn make-up before, and am fascinated by its transformations. The red lipstick, in particular, that has made my mouth into a symbol. And there is the French eau de parfum that leaves its voluptuous impressions upon my clothes, in my hair.

  I move differently in my new clothes. Or, rather, I move less: they are cut tight about the body, in fabrics quick to stain or crease. These are garments for one who lives a rarefied indoor life: my new existence. My old clothes withstood many daily abuses. These clothes are a beautiful forbiddance.

  And there is the lingerie too. He left the boxes on the dressing table of my room: wisps of silk and lace held together by boning and ribbon that bite more fiercely than one might expect, stockings as fine as cobweb. They weigh almost nothing, and yet I am more aware of them than of any other aspect of my dress.

  Does he think about me wearing them, these items that he has selected?

  He hasn’t touched me, yet. I’m not sure why, because certainly he looks. Though sometimes I cannot help thinking that there is something in his look that is less like appreciation than a qualified sort of appraisal. He will make remarks – always with the greatest possible tact: do I really want to wear this scarf with this blouse? Don’t I feel that it would be better to wear my hair swept back, my hemline longer? Perhaps drink the wine a little more slowly, with my hand held just so? Ah, no – always patient – that’s not quite it. Like this, yes, exactly.

  I am becoming someone new – no longer an almost-woman, but a definite person. And yet who that person is, exactly … of that I am unsure.

  ‘Sometimes I think about it,’ she says. ‘If I had stayed, in Madrid. I had no home, no money, no family. I think I would have ended up selling myself – if I was lucky.’

  ‘If you were lucky?’

  ‘Or I might have ended up dead. After, when Madrid fell. If they had found out who I was, who my father was.’ She sees his expression. ‘You don’t believe me.’

  ‘I think you would have found a way of surviving – without any of those things having to happen.’

  ‘I think you have more faith in me than I do in myself.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he says. ‘But it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.’

  She seems about to say something, but stops herself. As they look at one another, the silence between them shifts. It becomes like the silence of the night before, when he had waited for her to knock on his door. It becomes like the silence of that night in Rome, when she had shrugged out of her clothes, her eyes on his.

  The woman appears to collect their coffee cups. As soon as she sees them, she stops, and begins to retreat – apologizing as profusely as if she had caught them in a state of undress. So, Hal thinks, it is not only in the imagination then, this thing that is happening between them. It is visible to a stranger.

  The last part of the walk is along a coastal path, close to the water’s edge. The sea is more agitated now, and every minute or so there is a wave powerful enough to send spray foaming up into the air, speckling them with seawater. On one occasion Hal hears a curse behind him, and turns to see Stella has been got by a wave, her hair drenched. They stare at one another for several seconds, and then they begin to laugh. The laughter is a surprise, like the sudden hit of some euphoric drug.

  He has a light pullover with him, and he unties it from about his waist, so that she can dry herself. He is about to hand it to her when she inclines her head toward him. Her eyes are on his. He doesn’t know what it means, so he focuses instead on the task. Slowly, he begins to dry her hair for her with the gentlest movements possible. There is a peculiar intimacy to the act. He notices at this proximity the soft, downy hair at her temples, paler than the rest, and the way her freckles cluster in the skin nearest to her hairline. He notices the white creases in the corners of her eyes, the blonde at the tips of her eyelashes like a fine gold dust. Her mouth is slightly open. He could kiss her. Or rather, he could try – and he thinks she might not prevent him. The thought goes through him like a dart. He hasn’t wanted anything like this, not for as long as he can remember. His desire in Rome was uncomplicated, little more than instinct. It was the simple excitement of the unknown. This is something altogether more complex. For this reason, he steps away.

  28

  He sits on the terrace before supper, smoking a cigarette. The Conte, perhaps seeing something of his agitation, has given him a bottle of wine and a glass – telling him that a sunset should always be toasted with a little alcohol. In an attempt to dull his thoughts, Hal has poured himself several glasses.

  Not to do it had felt against nature.

  He fishes his tin of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one. His hand is clumsy as he does it, his fingers won’t work properly.

  He had taken a step back, and, in this one action, the possibility of it had been extinguished. Her expression had been inscrutable, before she looked away.

  It was the only thing to do.

  He had his chance with Suze. She was everything he once thought he would have wanted. She was phenomenally clever – far more so than he – and beautiful, and great fun. But he had found himself cancelling plans they had made, or worse, simply not turning up.

  In a gentler time, it might have been safer. But in this violent, bloody century, when death rained from the sky or rose up from the sea to meet you, with the spectre of a bomb that could flatten cities overshadowing everything . . . Love, in a century like this, was too dangerous to contemplate.

  ‘For God’s sake, Hal,’ she had said, after he failed to make her birthday party, ‘anyone would think you were going out of your way to destroy things for us.’

  Was he?

  He did know that whenever he felt happiest with her – when they had taken a bottle of wine and a picnic blanket down to the riverbank, and kissed one another with the drone of summer insects all around, or when she had emerged from the bathroom in the hotel room they had booked (Suze was very much emancipated) looking like all his boyhood fantasies combined in one being – he would think of Morris’ wife, when he had gone to see her. Little Flora Eggers in her bedsit, crying quietly, politely. And then he would want to ruin everything.

  That last, dreadful meeting, in a café near her flat in Kensington. He had never seen her cry before. And now, suddenly, she was crying so much he could hardly make out the wo
rds.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he had said, taking hold of her hand. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘Oh, Hal,’ she had shaken her head, pulled her hand away. With the other she had brushed at her blotched face, trying to stem the flow of tears. ‘Don’t. I’ve tried so hard. But it’s enough now. It’s enough. Nothing’s happened yet, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I’ve met someone else. He isn’t you, Hal. But you aren’t you, any more.’

  He had waited, on the walk back to his flat, to feel the hurt of it. That was the worst thing of all, though – it never came. He only felt numb.

  ‘Hello.’

  It is a woman’s voice, and he turns, thinking that it is her. But, to his surprise, it is Giulietta Castiglione, carrying a glass of spumante.

  ‘Hello,’ he says.

  ‘May I sit here?’ It is rather amazing, Hal thinks, that she has bothered to ask at all. It doesn’t seem to be in her usual way.

  ‘Of course.’

  She takes the seat next to him, then gestures to his tin of cigarettes. ‘Can I?’

  He lights one up for her, and she puts it to her lips with a little sigh of pleasure. He watches her, thinking that of all the strange occurrences that have taken place on this trip so far, this is perhaps the most surreal of all. The most lusted after film actress in Italy – some might even argue the world – is sitting next to him in her sundress, smoking one of his cigarettes. Many would pay thousands of dollars for this opportunity. And yet, though he is aware of the charisma that emanates from her like perfume, and though her beauty is an unarguable fact, she leaves him almost unaffected.

  She opens her eyes now and looks directly at him. He had not realized before, but her eyes are not black, as he had believed, but a dark blue.

  ‘I think we have not talked properly before,’ she says, ‘you and I.’

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘I think you’re right.’ He remembers the short-lived interview.

  ‘And I think,’ she says, squinting slightly, ‘that you do not like me much.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he says.

  But Giulietta ignores him. ‘I know what you believe I am.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A …’ she searches for the word, ‘a bimbo.’ Her accent draws it out: beem-bo.

  He shakes his head. ‘No, that’s not true.’ He wonders, too, why she would care.

  ‘Really?’ She surveys him. ‘That is what most people think. Why should you be any different?’

  ‘I have spoken to Signor Gaspari about you. He told me that he believes you are one of the most intelligent actresses he has ever worked with.’

  She squints at him, as though trying to decide whether to believe him. He can see that she is pleased, in spite of herself. But she is not finished. ‘Tell me then,’ she says, challengingly. ‘What you do think of me.’

  ‘I think you are very talented. I remember thinking it when I saw your first picture, A Holiday of Sorts.’

  ‘Oh that,’ she says, rather dismissively, ‘that was not my best work. It was a Hollywood picture. I was typewritten.’

  ‘Typecast.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ She waves a hand, to show that it doesn’t signify either way.

  Hal has remembered the incident with the bedrooms. Here, out of context, she seems no longer a lofty movie star and more like any young, arrogant nineteen-year-old. And he finds that the alcohol has loosened his tongue. ‘I do think that you are spoiled, though.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ But she has heard him. Something flashes across her expression – but it is not outrage, as might be expected, but something else, almost like excitement.

  ‘You think that I am spoiled.’ She speaks slowly, as though trying the words out for size. ‘You know … no one ever say that to me before.’

  ‘They probably didn’t dare to.’

  She considers this. ‘No, perhaps that is true. I find it … I find it amusing.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Do you know how hard I have worked to get here?’

  ‘No doubt extremely hard.’

  But she is not finished. ‘Yes, but that is only something you are saying, to placate me. I do not think you understand the whole thing. I am not like …’ she gestures, dismissively, ‘oh, your Signora Truss, married to a rich husband who will provide for her. I could have that – but I do not need it … or want it. When I might have needed it, there was no chance. Shall I tell you a story?’

  He seems to have little choice in the matter. ‘All right.’

  She takes a delicate sip of her spumante. And then she begins.

  ‘There were ten children in my family. My mother was a shell of a woman: old before her time. You have never seen such an ancient-looking thirty-year-old. But that is what it does to you, that sort of life: to have a new baby every year and to care for the others at the same time. My father left her, in the end, because she grew so tired and ugly. She was like … an old husk of wheat, when the goodness has been removed and left is the dry part – not good for nothing. Once upon a time she was beautiful, I think – maybe almost as beautiful as me … though her figure was never so good, and her nose was not such a good shape as mine.

  ‘The war nearly was the end of her. We were put in a camp – where my littlest brother died … though he was always sickly, so perhaps he would have died anyway.’ She says it almost matter-of-factly, as though she is talking of someone she hardly knew.

  ‘Why were you put there?’

  ‘We were Romani. I am Romani – it is where I get this face.’ She lifts her chin. ‘Romani women are the most beautiful. But they don’t like me to talk of my background. It is bad for my image.

  ‘Once the war ended it was better – we could make our living once more. And the tourists began to return. We lived near the city of Firenze, a beautiful place – but to us that didn’t mean very much. It was simply where we worked, in the shadow of the Duomo – you know it? – helping my mother.

  ‘When we grew old enough, you see, we could be useful to her. We stop being like little maggots, hanging off her, asking for feeding. We were a team: my three older brothers, my sister and I. When the piazza was full of people it was easy to move amongst them and take things from them: wallets, bags, cameras, watches. We did this so we could eat, not because we were greedy.’ She gives a quick, sly grin. ‘But I kept a pretty thing for myself sometimes: a watch, a bracelet.

  ‘My mother felt badly about letting us do it. She went to her grave feeling badly about it. But she have no choice.

  ‘Then I grow older, and I turn from being a little toothpick into someone who men stop and stare at. It was even easier, then. I, you know … open my blouse a little, bat my eyes like this … and while they were looking, looking,’ she gives a slack-jawed impression, ‘one of my brothers would sneak up behind him like a monkey and fish everything from his pockets.

  ‘One day, there was a man who kept looking. Normally, they would stop – they’d get embarrassed, or their wives would appear. But this one … he would not stop. I begin to have fear, because I thought that he could be a policeman – something like that – trying to catch me out. And then he start walking over to me. I panic, and turn to walk away. He follow me, up towards the mercato and when I went faster he come after me faster, too. By the time I got to the market I was nearly running, but my shoes were poor and in the end he caught me.

  ‘I could tell that he was an American, but he spoke Italian all right. “I’ve let your brother – your boyfriend, your pimp – whoever he is … take my wallet, my camera and God knows what else. The only thing he hasn’t taken is my goddamned watch – do you know why?” I said that I didn’t. “Because I don’t wear one.” Then he said that the least I could do, after his trouble, was to come and have a drink with him.’

  She looks at Hal, frankly, and says – without any apparent embarrassment, ‘I decide that I will at least go with him, and see what sort of hotel it was. I wanted to know
how much money a man like that might have. And I was curious … I had only ever seen hotels from the outside, you know. I wanted to see what one might be like inside.’

  ‘And what was it like?’

  ‘To me then it was a palace. Now, of course, I know that it was not of the best sort. But I had nothing to compare it with, you know?’

  Hal nods.

  ‘He tell me that he wants to take my photograph. He thinks I have a certain “look”, he says … the quint … the quinta-something.’

  ‘Quintessential?’

  ‘Yes … yes, the quintosensual Italian goddess. I do not tell him then – or ever – that I am Roma. I think that might spoil his idea of me. Anyway, he tell me that he work for a new business, exporting olive oil to the United States, and they need a “face”. He can’t promise anything, but he will take some photos and send them off, and we will see what happen.’

  ‘So you let him take the photos?’

  Giulietta raises her eyebrows, as though she cannot believe the stupidity of the question. ‘Yes – of course. I was a little rat, running around stealing crumbs in the Piazza del Duomo. Anything would have been better than that.’

  ‘What were they like?’

  ‘Terrible. I do not want to talk about that part – it is too ugly. But I think of it now as like … you know how some monks wear shirts of hair, or starve themselves, in order to become holy? I think of it like that. That man, who probably like to think he “made me”. He want to marry me, you know. I laughed in his face. I left him far far below me, looking for his next prey.’

  She flicks the ash from her cigarette, and Hal has to quickly slide a foot out of the way to avoid it falling on his shoe. She takes a long, pensive drag upon it and as she does, lost – apparently – in the memory of the inauspicious start to her career, Hal studies her face. Some of her features, on their own, taken out of context, veer towards ugliness. The nose is a little too long, the eyebrows thick and dark – almost mannish. And yet there is something magnificent in these peculiarities, in their audacity. If one had the talent, Hal thinks, it is the sort of face that could be drawn with a thick stub of charcoal in a few seconds, and the essential character of it would be immediately recognizable.