The Invitation

by Lucy Foley

  With their new documents they will board a ferry to Tangiers. It will all happen during the screening. He won’t enter the cinema at all: in the chaos, he won’t be missed. Then Stella, halfway through, will excuse herself to go to the bathroom, and never return. Hal has studied a map of the city in the library room. The ferry port is within running distance: he’ll be waiting with their tickets.

  In making these plans, it has become real. The disaster of yesterday evening feels like something that happened in a dream. The future is before them, in all its captivating uncertainty.

  ‘Morning.’

  He turns. Earl Morgan looks terrible. The bruise is in the first, purple stage: the eye swollen, almost half-closed. In strange empathy, Hal’s knuckles smart with the memory of the blow. Hal wonders if the Contessa or Gaspari have seen him yet. Their leading man looks like he has been in a bar brawl – which isn’t altogether so far from the truth.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Look, old man,’ Morgan says, ‘I came to say I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry?’ Hal wonders if the actor was so drunk that he has forgotten how it all played out.

  Morgan indicates the other seat. ‘All right if I sit there?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He collapses into it. ‘Here’s how it is. I’m a mess, I know it.’ Hal can’t think of any way to refute it without sounding disingenuous, and remains silent. ‘I think I got lost somewhere along the way.’

  When Hal doesn’t answer, he says, ‘Can I tell you a story?’ And then, showing a surprising level of awareness, ‘It can’t go in that piece you’re writing, of course.’

  Hal almost laughs. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘It won’t go in.’

  ‘The problem,’ Morgan says, ‘is that I’m not who people think I am.’

  ‘Are any of us?’

  ‘You are. You’ve got it together, I can tell.’

  ‘I’m flattered,’ Hal says, ‘but it’s not true. And besides, you’re an actor. Surely it comes with the territory, pretending to be someone else?’

  Morgan covers his face with his hand, and then drags it down until his features are distorted in a grotesque mask. ‘But that’s the thing,’ he says. ‘In the movies, I’m the hero. I’m running around saving the good folk, killing baddies, winning the broad.’

  ‘Like in POW.’ Hal remembers it well. He and Suze had gone to watch it at the Lumiere. If only it had all been like that, he had thought at the time: light and dark, good and evil. Enemies who were never vulnerable, or afraid, or simply like men also caught up in a catastrophe not of their own choosing. The enemies in the film had made no secret of their desire to kill innocents, to enact evil. They had exploded in conflagrations, fallen riddled with bullets, snarling until the end. And around him in the picture house, the audience had roared their approval: many of them schoolboys still in short trousers. In the midst of all of it had been Morgan: the affable, handsome, all-American hero. Morgan without, yet, the yellowish cast to the whites of his eyes.

  Morgan groans. ‘That’s the worst of all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In real life, I’m a goddamned coward. All of that war hero stuff in the movie – it’s a joke.’

  ‘Ah,’ Hal says. ‘I was in the war. I don’t think anyone was as heroic as they make out in the movies. You aren’t alone.’

  ‘But I wimped out.’

  Desertion, Hal thinks. Still a word never spoken aloud. He didn’t come across it much – mainly because of the practical difficulties of escaping a ship at sea. But there were tales of men never returning to base after leave: and of the retribution that could follow.

  ‘I got out of the draft, on a medical.’

  ‘Oh,’ Hal says. ‘Well, you can’t blame yourself for that.’

  ‘A false medical.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The studio head. He got some quack to sign whatever he told him on the form, so long as it kept me out of service. Told me that what he paid the guy would put one of his kids through college. Blood pressure problems, that was what went on the form. Though I’d always been healthy as an ox. Sure I’ve got those problems now – probably a whole heap of other ones besides.

  ‘But the studio head, he told me that I could do more good for my country by staying home and making movies. Morale. I knew it was bull. But it worked for me: I didn’t want to go fight in Europe, in some other people’s war, maybe get killed. So I agreed.’

  ‘You know,’ Hal says, carefully, ‘there are many men who, if they’d been given that chance, would have taken it.’

  ‘My little brother, though,’ Morgan says.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He didn’t have a studio head, or a paid-up doc. He worked our pa’s old farm – would never take anything I offered him. He was shipped off to the Philippines.’

  ‘He was … killed?’

  Morgan shakes his head. ‘Had his legs destroyed. He’s a cripple now.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You know what my ma said, when I went to visit?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘“It should have been you.” She come up to me, and she said, quiet and calm, “It should have been you. Never set foot in this house again.”’

  ‘That’s—’

  ‘She was right.’

  ‘You believe that if you’d been out there too, you would have been able to protect him? They might have sent you two to different continents.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Morgan says, wretchedly. ‘Might have been that we’d have been – you know – exchanged.’

  ‘Exchanged? Fate, you mean?’

  Morgan nods. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think,’ Hal says, ‘that I know a lot of men who believed in Fate, almost above all else, and who did all they could to appease it – and it did nothing for them. The same for God, for luck – for any sort of superstition.

  ‘There’s something I’ve learned, recently,’ he says. ‘Something someone told me.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Things happen. And they happen whether or not we’re there to influence them. And we can either let them eat away at us, and destroy us. Or we can go on living. Sometimes that is braver.’

  He watches Morgan. He can’t be certain that he has got through to the man. So difficult to tell, with someone who makes a living through pretence. A funny thing has happened, though. As he was saying it, he began to believe it himself.

  37

  Cannes

  They arrive late that afternoon. Cannes itself is almost entirely obscured from view by the shoal of boats in its harbour. There are crafts of all sizes: other sailing yachts, hulking motor boats, tenders, even the odd dinghy dwarfed by the larger crafts. Hal sees the passengers of other crafts turn to look at the yacht as it passes, their speed now slowed to a crawl to navigate the throng. It remains, despite the array of competition, still the most beautiful of all. As they draw nearer to the shore he can make out a phalanx of beach umbrellas along the Croisette, and the vast, shifting crowds of people who mill among them. It is a heartening sight. Among such chaos one might easily disappear.

  He retreats below deck. Passing through the bar he stumbles upon Aubrey, smoking furiously on a cigarette.

  ‘They’re still there?’ he asks Hal, squinting up at him. ‘The idiot photographers?’

  ‘Yes – I’m afraid there are more, in fact. Another boat arrived as I was coming down here.’

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake. I mean … how ridiculous. I had to remove myself – they make me too angry to look at.’ Then he looks up at Hal, a little slyly.

  ‘Tell me – what happened last night, exactly?’

  ‘Oh,’ says Hal, evasive. ‘Morgan got himself in some trouble.’

  ‘There will be some talk at the Contessa’s party,’ Aubrey says. ‘Personally, I think it is an improvement.’

  Hal spends the next hour in his cabin, typing up the remainder of his article from his variou
s notes. It is a much more pedestrian affair than he might have wished to write, but according to the brief, it is perfect. It has the qualities the readers will be looking for: the pseudo-salacious detail, the whiff of glamour, of larger-than-life personality. He will wire it across to the editor at Tempo when he goes ashore. When he thinks of what he might have put into it. The real history behind the film – which he has only allowed himself to allude to in the most benign way. The darkness veiled by light.

  The one good thing about this inane sort of writing is that he has been able to keep all of the secret truths, told to him in confidence, out of the piece. He has written much, yet told little. It is a skill, in its own way.

  Afterwards he begins to write a letter to his parents – an attempt to explain everything. It is one thing his living abroad in Rome, never coming to visit. It is another thing to disappear entirely.

  Please don’t let on to anyone that you’ve got this. I’ve had to go away for a while . . .

  He stops. He can’t send it, he knows. But the act of writing his thoughts down is cathartic in itself. He writes things that he would never dream of sharing with his parents: of his feelings for Stella, of how they have changed him. It is an altogether more eloquent piece than the one he has written for the Tiber.

  There is a knock on his cabin door. He balls the letter and shoves it into his suitcase.

  ‘Come in?’

  It is Aubrey Boyd, dressed, Hal sees, in white tie – and yet somehow looking almost exactly the same as he does in his ‘casual’ uniform of linen trousers and shirt.

  ‘I thought I’d come and give you a heads up, old chap. Things are starting soon, so you might want to get dressed into—’ he gestures worriedly at Hal’s crumpled outfit, ‘something else.’

  Hal sits up. ‘I’ll wear my suit.’

  Aubrey looks pained. ‘Is it the one you wore last night? At the Casino?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Look – I don’t want to offend, but there might be something else I could lend you.’

  So Hal finds himself dressing in Aubrey Boyd’s black tie which, other than being a little too tight in the chest, fits him surprisingly well. He glances in the mirror and experiences a strange moment of dislocation. The character staring back is unfamiliar to him, like an eerily accurate impersonator.

  *

  There is another knock on the door. Aubrey, coming to see how the suit fits.

  He opens the door. ‘Thanks—’

  It isn’t Aubrey.

  It seems to happen in a fraction of a moment – a span of time far too short for movement. And yet the second before, Truss was several feet away, framed by the doorway. Now, suddenly – unbelievably – his hands are about Hal’s neck. For another distinct moment, Hal is too transfixed by shock to move. And then he begins to struggle. He tries to shout, but his windpipe is being crushed closed: the only sound he can make is a low growl; like an animal in pain. The pressure is incredible, intolerable. And Truss’ face, close to his own, betrays little of the immense effort it must be costing him to exert such pressure. Hal’s hands are on Truss’ wrists: grasping, pulling, scratching – anything to try and tear them away. He should be the stronger of the two – he is taller, broader. Yet there is some magic to Truss’ grip. He cannot break it.

  His vision now is clouded with silver fish, with blooms of red. His thoughts feel confused, washing tantalizingly close, and then ebbing away. There is something that he needs to do … but he cannot think what it is. The pain is still terrible, but it is something remote now, almost as though it were happening to someone else.

  And then, suddenly, the agony, the awareness, come screeching back in. He is on the floor on his knees, retching, clawing at his neck. The deadly pressure has gone and yet his flesh remembers the fingers, strong as iron bands, pressing into the soft tissue.

  He looks up at Truss, who stands over him. He has never been bested in a fight. Truss merely had the element of surprise. If he wanted to – when he gets his breath back – he could knock him to the ground. He could kill him.

  ‘You may have been wondering,’ Truss says – and there is no strain, Hal realizes, no breathlessness, in his voice – ‘if I have noticed.’ He smiles. ‘Well. I have noticed.’

  38

  His first thought is that he needs to find her. They shouldn’t wait, he thinks, not now. They should go this evening. He staggers to his feet and hurries from the cabin. She is nowhere to be found below deck. He climbs up the ladder, and sees that the bow of the yacht has been transformed. A bar has been set up, and one of the crew is pouring glasses of champagne with a commendably steady hand, considering that the boat is listing slightly on its anchor. Lanterns have been lit around the perimeter of the deck, and in place of the sunbeds, right in the centre of the bow, is a grand piano.

  But no sign of Stella.

  He finds Roberto. ‘Have you seen Mrs Truss?’

  ‘No, Signor Jacobs,’ the man says, giving Hal an odd look. ‘I imagine that she and Mr Truss are getting ready for the party.’ He continues to look, so curiously that Hal begins to wonder if he has something on his face.

  Sitting down at the piano, a man in a tuxedo begins to warm his vocal cords. A champagne cork is discharged. The Contessa, gold-turbaned, is issuing instructions.

  Hal is beginning to be worried for Stella. He is half-tempted to go to the cabin and find her, challenge Truss outright. He would have the upper hand – he will not let himself be bested again. But that would be to blow it all wide open and jeopardize their plans. There is no saying whether Truss believes it to be a one-sided infatuation or not. He will wait for half an hour, he thinks, and then he will go down. One of the waiters brings him a glass of champagne, and he drinks it down without tasting it.

  Gradually, the guests begin to arrive. They come on a fleet of boats, dressed in all their finery. Here and there appear faces so familiar that they do not look quite real – or at least less so than their celluloid or newsprint form. Giulietta, however, clad in wasp-waisted Dior, is the toast of the evening: and she leaves none present in any doubt of this fact. He watches all of this like one in a dream, waiting for the only face that is important.

  Aubrey, in his element, moves through the crowd with his little portable Leica. He sidles up to Hal, gesturing to the suit. ‘It fits you. I wasn’t sure if it might be a bit tight.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Hal cranes over his shoulder, still looking for her.

  ‘Not at all.’ Now Aubrey is looking at him more closely. ‘But my God, man, what’s happened to you?’

  In answer, Aubrey fishes a gold compact from his pocket. ‘It’s not for me. I keep it for the models, naturally, so they can touch up their lipstick before I shoot.’

  Hal flips it open. In the mirror he sees that the whites of both his eyes have filled with blood.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, the first thing that comes to mind, ‘some sort of infection, probably.’

  Aubrey takes a marked step back, and reaches for the compact. As Hal goes to hand it to him he seems to change his mind and shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says, faintly, cringing away, ‘I have another. You may keep that one.’ And then his eyes light up. ‘Oh, doesn’t she look divine. You know, I’m almost converted to blonde.’

  Hal turns, and sees her.

  She wears a black dress that stops at mid-calf. It is a simple piece, high at the front and falling away behind. And yet against the pale gold of her skin, and with her slender arms left bare, the effect is anything but mundane. No deep décolletage and no heavy carapace of jewels for her, only the two small gems winking at her lobes, and a thin, diamond-set chain about her neck. Surrounded by famed beauties of screen and stage, she is – Hal thinks – the most exquisite.

  She is unharmed. He sags with relief.

  How to get her attention? He watches them across the crowd – but particularly her: listening politely to one guest, her head on one side – and then to the next, nodding in understanding. He sees that Truss has
his arm about her waist. Then he sees Stella reply to something Truss has said, and, quick as a flash, Truss’ hand flies back up – but this time to land on her upper arm. To the casual observer, it would be a protective gesture. But Hal can see how tightly the fingers grip. He remembers the feel of them about his neck.

  He moves a little closer, aware, vaguely, of someone turning to say something to him, but absolutely fixed on his goal. Now he almost has a clear view. Now, in fact, Stella’s face is turned in his direction. Her arm is still caught in Truss’ grasp. He wouldn’t dare do anything here, Hal thinks. So long as he keeps them both in his sights …

  And then Truss turns, and looks straight at Hal. Hal freezes where he is. And Truss smiles, and raises his glass.

  For several seconds Hal is pinioned by the look. Then he lifts his own drink, and returns the toast. Finally, to his relief, Truss looks away again. Hal takes a long gulp of his drink.

  ‘Hello.’

  He turns, and sees Gaspari, moving toward him with Nina trailing at his heels.

  ‘What are you doing,’ he asks, ‘over here all by yourself? What were you looking at? I watched you come over here – you were like a hound following a scent.’

  And then he looks, and sees. ‘Oh,’ he says.

  He watches Stella for as long as he is able, waiting for his opportunity to catch her alone. The crowd mills between them, and they are frequently lost to view. He tries not to let his frustration show. To be too concerned, too watchful, would be the most unhelpful thing he could do. He goes to the bar, and orders a whisky: it will help him to relax.

  ‘Hello.’ He turns. It is her – somehow she has detached herself from Truss, who is caught in conversation on the other side, his back towards them.

  ‘Hal,’ she is peering up at him, ‘what’s happened to you? Your face …’