Chapter Seven

Hilldyard cocked an eyebrow. Between forefinger and thumb he had received the edge of a menu; and to his adjusted ear he learned the specials of the day, amiably recited by their waiter. His expression conveyed the near indecent serendipity of finding 'this' restaurant after visiting 'that' garden. The setting could not have been bettered. The hotel garden was itself a belvedere, cut into the hill, and giving on to a view that was scarcely less beautiful than that from the Cimbrone balcony, but less dizzying, and thus a gentler résumé of the morning's sights for the purpose of accompanying lunch. They sat by the rail, contentedly gazing at the folds of the valley. Hilldyard's forehead had caught what rays there were, showing a flushed pink against the grey urn behind him. He seemed extremely pleased. Silver glinted on the tablecloth. Waiters in white jackets came in relays from the hotel, serving diners under the cover of pollarded poplars. Ice buckets were positioned, side-tables drawn up, bottles of wine proffered and uncorked. The two men had been greeted by a maiître d'hotel who treated their arrival as inevitable and their gratification as imperative. He instinctively led them to the right table, fastidiously decked them with napkins, and allowed the setting to complete his welcome, whilst bringing at easy intervals the accoutrements to their pleasure. They dawdled over the menu, peeked at neighbouring tables, and were soon cheered by the sight of a bottle of rosé.

The service was no doubt always good, though Michael sensed the waiters quickening in the presence of Hilldyard. In his linen jacket and white shirt he seemed very much the Riviera veteran. His venerable bearing lent cachet to a place. He let them seat him with dead-pan dignity, as if to show that their ministrations might be taken as invisibly discreet – the essence of good service.

Michael viewed Hilldyard's self-containment with care. He had little certainty of the sort of things that might be playing in the author's mind. This had been an important excursion, a pilgrimage of sorts. Much seemed to hang on the trip, and the garden was manifestly affecting, absorbing, evocative. He could see why the old man returned here – for inspiration and restoration. What he could not see, because talkative Hilldyard was at root so inscrutable, was the nature of his memories, his inspiration, the personal nostalgia of the visit. Reading the novel had made him more curious. Over the past two weeks they had discussed art, artists, writers; Hilldyard had descanted on the beauty of Positano. There had been much play of mind, a good deal of quick candour on a variety of topics and almost nothing on Hilldyard's personal history. He was very much the observant writer winding up his awareness of things, and very little the reminiscing sage. Michael was left with the sketchy sense of a man who had lived thirty years in Italy and whose greatest adventures were fictional and in the third person. Hilldyard was no Graham Greene or Somerset Maugham. He was not a man who had witnessed famine, war, foreign regimes and whose life was defined by those experiences. On public issues he could improvise; he could do politics, and he was not untouched by the human-interest clamour of current affairs. Hilldyard was not uninterested in what could happen. He was simply more interested in the data of eventuality. He wanted reality's fabric, the details that made you believe a story rather than the story itself. These he could use. And thus his creative requirements formed the slant of his conversation. What he said was a function of how he wanted to look at things artistically. What he wanted out of life was almost a warm-up for the act of recreating it, or so it appeared; and yet, behind the gauze of his disciplined awareness, was the life that had been lived, and Michael suddenly felt a solicitude for that life, its incompletenesses, its losses. When all was said and done the author had ended up alone, exiled from friends and relatives by the needs of his muse, on anonymous terms with his Italian neighbours, at several removes from the world of agents and publishers, his place in the literary scene. He had known many people in his day, spoke lightly of the famous and fondly of the obscure, but those names were no use to him now. All those relationships were a finished book, its continuities expired. Hilldyard had to support himself on one thing alone: the will to write. He had to press on, looking for what was new, and the thought of him restlessly seeking, in his seventy-fifth year, a way of extending his life through the life of a novel was stirring to Michael, and terrible, too. If he found inspiration, there was still the struggle of composition. He would be striving at the most difficult thing in his late years. And although this kindly man was desperate to write again, there was no guarantee his next novel would work. He had already jettisoned one manuscript. Fifteen null years could turn into twenty.

Michael regarded his companion, sitting across the table, with fondness and trepidation. He looked so thoughtful, so full of the day. With the October sun on the side of his face and the stem of a wineglass in the crook of his thumb, he was a picture of contented seniority. He played the dignified patron with the waiters, ordered his meal in Italian, and sat back with a certain acumen as if posing himself for maximum enjoyment.

Michael gazed at the valley below. It amused him to recall that a fortnight before he had wanted to interview Hilldyard, get him on television. The idea seemed meaningless now. He wanted the interview to continue, of course, but unrecorded. He wanted to be sure that Hilldyard the historical man was OK. He raised his eyebrows and then his glass.

'Cheers,' said the author with an equivalent nod. 'Isn't this dandy!'

'It certainly is.'

'Sorry I'm not a beautiful damsel for you to be wining and dining.'

Michael laughed. 'Lunch with a genius will have to do.'

'Very gracious. But I'll bet you'd prefer a genius with long hair and beautiful eyelashes.'

He smiled. 'Today I prefer your company. Besides, that kind of ''genius'' wouldn't be dining me.'

'What!'

'I doubt it.'

'That's an odd thing to say!'

'I'm not in the mood at the moment.'

The author laughed gently. 'Actually, d'you know, the setting is so romantic, romance itself might be distracting.'

'Distracting?'

'The scenery might tend to upstage one's escort.'

Michael was not too sure about this. 'That would depend on the escort.'

'But then she would upstage the scenery. Which would be equally unproductive.'

He thought for a moment. It was something he could aver. 'I'd want to come here if I were in love with someone.'

The author coughed into his hand. 'Bit dire if she didn't like the scenery.'

'Of course she'd like the scenery!'

'How could one love anybody who wasn't moved to distraction by the scenery?'

There was a moment's pause.

Hilldyard nipped a bread roll from the basket and gazed directly at him. 'I take it you liked the garden?'

He was struck by the keen concern in the author's eyes.

'I feel baptised.'

Hilldyard nodded. He wanted more.

'I feel much better, actually.'

'Baptised. Yes. Precisely!'

There was another silence.

'How was it for you?' Michael smiled.

Hilldyard glowed humorously. 'Oh, the earth moved!'

'Did it?'

'I feel stroked like a cat. I feel as if somebody had manipulated my soul.'

Michael was pleased.

' ''Struck with deep joy.'' I pick it up, God bless me. I'm more riven by that place with every gliding year. It sucks the love out of you.'

He was steeply curious. 'Do you feel jump-started?'

Hilldyard's attention wavered. He pointed over Michael's shoulder.

He turned and saw that the terrace had been invaded by a party of monks, who were filing in from the wicket gate. All of a sudden there were more men in sandals and brown tunics in the restaurant than ordinary diners. They spilled between chairs and trolleys in the direction of two long tables in the shady part of the terrace. The tables were laid and ready for them, and as they milled along waiters sped anxiously among them, ushering them to their seats.

It was a pleasing spectacle. The men had come from the local convento, a few minutes down the path, and although proximity was as good an excuse as any for dining in such a beautiful spot, Michael assumed they were marking an occasion and wondered what that might be. The prospect was somehow captivating.

The faces were varied, as were the figures. One saw the gaunt Father taking his place at the head of the table, setting the tone with sober profile and moderated spirits; an antique elder drooling over a place-mat; the standard-issue Friar Tuck, porcine, jovial and not entirely promotable. Some of the faces were refined by their calling, others were desiccated by piety. The last to be seated was a young man, a novice, who went to his place with the solemnity of a person newly committed to a course in life. He looked like the young Rachmaninov, strong-featured, crop-headed, finely serious.

It was a sight that held the attention: pious profiles and quarter-profiles under jigsaw leaf-light. He took it in thoroughly, particularly the novice, until anxiety got the better of him.

Hilldyard was entranced; an impression was being taken. Michael stared at him enquiringly.

'Jump-started?' The author was at some remove from the idea.

'Inspired?'

He smiled. 'If anything has inspired me, you have.'

This seemed like an evasion.

'I beg your pardon!'

'Yes. I think you believe in something.'

Michael was nonplussed. 'I believe in your writing.'

'That's not what I mean.'

He had not got an answer. He sipped his rose´. 'What are you talking about, James?'

'That you live according to values generated by a deep response to life. That you are emotional, intelligent, sympathetic, and you invest the things that touch you with a sense of significance. You conform to my view that the felt life brings one closer to reality. The knowledge of one's senses and feelings is the essential knowledge for an artist, and the more one cultivates a sensibility of response the more one perceives. I see that faculty in you. And I see someone who ardently believes in awareness as the predicate to a civilised life. You are the writer's true friend.'

Michael was completely unprepared for the eulogy, utterly astonished to hear himself described in such terms.

'I wish my dad could hear you say that!'

'Oh really! Why?'

He shrugged, looked thoughtful for a moment. 'He wanted me to be an academic, not a television producer.'

'I'll gladly put it in writing.'

Michael laughed. 'Please do.'

'I would! You've been very kind to me!'

'Nonsense. You've been far kinder.'

'You deserve the highest endorsement.'

Hilldyard had certainly changed the subject and Michael felt himself blushing.

'Of course, I know you've had difficulties.'

This surprised him, too.

'You've been in creative tension with commercial life.'

'With the whole of reality.'

'A healthy condition.'

'Oh sure,' said Michael. 'It's the condition of failure.'

'Failure!'

The waiter arrived and inserted between them a bowl of mixed salad and two plates of crespolini. Hands freed, he moved round to top up their glasses.

'If this is failure,' said Hilldyard, reaching for his fork, 'I'd like to try success.'

Michael raised his fork likewise and felt strangely apprehensive. He was unsheltered. Hilldyard was thinking about him directly.

'You believed in television?'

He ate and dabbed his mouth. He was disappointed if this was the belief Hilldyard had referred to.

'That's like asking me if I believe in the present tense. One has no choice.'

'You wanted to disseminate your interest in the arts to a wider public?'

'I conned myself into thinking all kinds of grand ideas were possible. I must have been mad, or totally naive. The trouble is, nothing else seemed important. I mean, if the important things were irrelevant, what else was there? Money, I suppose. I couldn't grasp that.'

'Excellent.'

'I doubt it.'

'It's called integrity.'

'I call it stupidity.'

'The age is stupid. A century ago your talents would have been welcome, rewarded, esteemed.'

Michael laughed outright. 'I'm a century too late. Great.'

'The world is hardly crawling with people like you.'

'My type don't make the world go round.'

'Who cares about rotation? Bicycle wheels go round.'

He smiled. It was nice to have someone stand up for him. Hilldyard was very fatherly all of a sudden, unlike his real father. His real father had never rated Michael's cast of mind, preferring intellect to sensibility. And as a result, perhaps, he had lacked faith in his own view of things. He had been waiting for a mentor like Hilldyard to approve of the very qualities he thought were shortcomings, and launch him as a legitimate model of a man.

'You reckon I'm washed up in the wrong century?'

'I think we all are. This is the age of commercial exploitation. In the public field aesthetic experience has no place. The only type of ecstasy comes in pill form. No one knows or avers the spiritual importance of the arts. From the political standpoint the arts are a sub-set of tourism or nightlife. Those with spiritual needs are viewed as consumers of a certain type of product. The culture is amenity-and leisure-driven and all insight, all passion, all moral illumination is treated as private stuff, non-transferable and therefore irrelevant as public value. Few people would consider the properties of a great painting or symphony sacred. But for those who feel the arts as you do, their beauty and mystery are as sacred as life itself. And that feeling of reverence finds no wider echo in the way our age has expressed itself, and much that it does express diminishes feelings. Certainly. You're born out of time if you feel that passion signifies. That it's more than just a thrill, a chemical experience in the brain.'

Michael was quiet for a moment. Hilldyard had drawn inferences about him. He did believe in the sublimity of the arts; and in the sanctity of the forms which embodied such experience; of course he did, though Hilldyard's terminology seemed somehow dated.

'Doesn't that make me an anachronism?'

'Or a prophet!'

Michael shook his head.

'You have a grasp of the aesthetic,' insisted Hilldyard, 'which is timeless, of course.'

It was strange indeed to hear these words, and to be reminded of something known previously, and then almost forgotten. He had discovered it with Christine beside him in an art gallery in their first year at university. Looking at a painting by Veronese he had felt for the first time the still concentration that takes you into every detail of a canvas and allows you to experience it in all dimensions simultaneously, to the point where noticing becomes a current, a circuit between viewer and artist, sparking sensory delight and dramatic involvement and producing an emotion of aesthetic rapture, which he decided right away was extraordinarily precious.

To hear it come back at him now, re-presented to him by the old man, was strangely affecting. Hilldyard had been very sympathetic, and Michael was touched. He was also distressed. They were talking about a life; his life. 'Surely, in any age, the only criterion is survivability. One has to adapt. You have to be the thing the age requires. Otherwise you go mad or broke. And what use is a sense of the aesthetic' – he spoke half ironically, half believingly – 'if it leads one to financial martyrdom? The boring fact is that I haven't succeeded, James. And without success and influence what use are my values?'

'You are not extinct,' said Hilldyard, breaking his bread.

He had to laugh. 'You're a great careers adviser.'

'Well, put it like this. You are certainly enjoying your food.'

'I am. This is wonderful.'

'And you have survived because you still have feelings. Your feeling life is intact. Whereas if you'd sold out you might be viable, but the sentient, original Michael Lear would not exist any more. The thing you have struggled to be would have withered. And what use,' said Hilldyard with sudden contempt, 'is a man who sacrifices the instrument of his original self for status or money? Where does that get the human race?'

Michael gazed into the middle distance. He seemed for a moment painfully close to the history of his own emotions, a swelling or gathering of feeling, as if everything he had suffered had risen to the surface from a deep distillation.

He looked up. 'But then . . . what does one do?'

'You know the answer.'

'I'm not a novelist. I have no great talent.'

'My friend, your talent is the innate inability to sell out.'

The agony of it welled up. 'Everyone thinks I'm a fool!'

'You crave an absolute. A meaningful purpose in life. Your unconscious has rebelled against compromise. There is nothing foolish in that.'

He recovered from the anguish, laughed as lightly as he could.

'The decks have been cleared,' said Hilldyard vibrantly. 'Lop off the old life. Start afresh.'

'And do what?'

'Remain true to the finest part of yourself.'

The proposition was so deplorably straightforward.

'Let fate take you where it will.'

He looked down at his hands.

'Once you have grasped the precious thing, you're free.'

'The precious thing?'

'What comes to you in that garden.'

There was a moment.

'What comes, James?'

'Oh!' He frowned with true grandeur. 'An absolute reason for living!'

Michael stared at him.

'Against which no loss, however great, can compete.'

They had both lost their wives, he realised. His mouth was dry.

Hilldyard averted his eyes and swallowed. He blinked fast, mastering feeling.

'James?'

The old man came back at him, a strangeness in his eyes; and then he shrugged.

'What comes there?'

'The miracle of human consciousness. Death's antithesis.'

Michael squinted against the growing brightness of the day. He could feel the sun's heat on the side of his face. He brought the wineglass to his lips, sipped and swallowed, as if washing down Hilldyard's words.

'The kernel of all courage, of all endeavour.'

'What can I achieve?' he said abruptly, softly.

Hilldyard was intense. 'You've achieved it. You've stood for something.'

Michael met his companion's gaze uncertainly. 'What?'

'You've had an influence.'

'On whom?'

'My dear fellow, you've inspired me!'

'I have?'

'You have.'

He did not know what to say.

'I owe you everything.'

Hilldyard loomed before him. His eyes were illuminated. They sought Michael out, wanting to know his gratitude had registered. He wanted to penetrate Michael's modesty.

'Are you . . . ?'

'I'm going to write a book.' He touched the table lightly. 'Bring on the dancing girls.'

A smile lit itself on his face.

'Thanks to you.'

His heart leapt.

'I'm dedicating it to you. Your bank manager won't give a toss but posterity might.'

Michael blushed with pleasure.

Hilldyard tapped his glass with a fork. 'This is my third phase. I think we can say, biographically speaking, that the florid Indian summer of James Hilldyard's literary career, the majestic late period, commenced formally at the Giordano restaurant, between courses, in the enlightened company of Michael Lear, two dozen monks and a bottle of rosé. Make that two. Waiter!' He raised an arm. 'And the conversation was more than usually inspired. Signor!'

Michael laughed. He found it hard to contain the emotion.

The waiter was in attendance immediately. Already new courses were arriving, and as the plates of melanzane and fritto misto slid into position another waiter was dispatched inside to the cellars. Michael marvelled at the clockwork concordance of the stages of their appetite with the promptitude of service. Everything was now more perfect than before. The sun was shining, the table was covered in food; monks were eating fiercely nearby, chomping through the deluge of salads and side-orders, bread and spaghetti that kept three waiters in a relay of perpetual motion from the kitchen; and Hilldyard was going to write again.

The author rose from the table and silently mouthed the words 'Excuse me'. Michael watched him make his way to the hotel entrance and allowed himself his moment of elation. He was completely mystified by the notion of his 'influence', but to receive the compliment, to feel the gratitude, was unutterably good for him. If he had inspired the writer there was no greatness in it, just sympathy, appreciation, the value of his being unconditionally 'for' Hilldyard. And Michael, in his turn, had felt nourished by propinquity. To be around such a man was to absorb the energy of his awareness. Genius was a higher degree of being human, and although Hilldyard's gifts transcended his individual character as a man, to see the man whom nature had vested with such gifts, who was only a man, was to sense the preciousness of those gifts anew. All he had done was grasp the beauty of that. And however, whyever, he had had his effect.

He inhaled, glanced at the other diners. Life was beginning. A new bottle came down on the table. The waiter spun off the cork; smiled.

The young novice he had seen before was now eating. He turned spaghetti on his fork and listened respectfully to his elders. His eyes were downcast, as though he were keeping hold of a seriousness of feeling. He seemed in his bearing more ideally pious than his brethren, more seized of religious emotion, more committed to whatever impulse had drawn him in his early twenties to the cloth. Michael allowed the head and shoulders of the young man to rest on his eye like an icon. He had in his sights the vision of a person who had renounced the world, a man who had quit the party of modern life for a calling that seemed, in this casual age, astonishingly regressive: the love of Christ. But the image soothed Michael, and the line of robed men leaning towards each other, reaching for wine, receiving platters from penitent waiters, their ecclesiastical faces and hands flickering under poplar leaves, was like a painting, a natural work of art, and this in itself was a gift, a blessing, which enabled him to take possession of something new: the unity of himself with the world around him. It was all here for him now, present, tangible and beautiful, and if he had been given eyes to see it by Hilldyard, it was to Hilldyard that he owed his life; what more could he find anywhere else? The notion that Hilldyard had put to him was indeed incredible: that what really counted was the nurturing of something tender and exquisite, the heart of himself, the passionate core that he could feel again, a feeling to be valued in itself. It was a sensation that ran to the tips of his fingers, like a reaction to beauty, an overwhelming gratitude, still to be expressed.

Hilldyard returned and they toasted in the new bottle, officially celebrating. Michael expressed his great delight. They moved on to a general toast, the view, the restaurant staff, the wine itself, the bliss of sitting above the valley and further sea in the afternoon sunlight. Michael became fluent at last, finding words to describe the Cimbrone Gardens. Hilldyard nodded and smiled, and between the impromptu odes of relish, directed a wagging finger at neighbouring diners.

'Three o'clock.'

'Is it?'

'Three o'clock over there.'

A young couple sat by the balcony's edge. She read Elle magazine. He took a picture with an automatic camera.

'English, no doubt.'

Through the filter of his happiness he remembered there was something to be dealt with.

Once or twice during the morning he had thought better of raising it. He had many forebodings on the matter. Hilldyard's answer he already knew. What kept him curious was the form the answer might take. Besides, he could not let down Adela. For her sake he had to tell Hilldyard what had happened, and submit to the reaction. It was better to render honesty to a mentor at the risk of irritating him than to conceal secret knowledge.

They ordered coffee, and when the cups arrived Michael felt the moment was ripe.

'I have a confession to make. I don't think the sin is very serious. But it needs confessing.'

Hilldyard dandled his wineglass. 'Sounds good.'

'I read your last novel.'

'Which novel?'

'The Last Muse.'

Hilldyard replaced the glass, looked at him expressionlessly.

'Someone gave me a copy. I know you have misgivings about it.'

'A copy?'

Michael wavered. He had to get it out. 'I should have asked permission, James. I . . . curiosity got the better of me.'

Hilldyard's face paled.

'Am I forgiven?'

'Did Basil give it to you?'

'Would that make any differenc eto the degree of forgiveness?'

'I'll fire the shite. Damn him!'

'James . . .'

'What on earth have I done to deserve such treachery from an agent? How can he do this to me!'

Michael was shaken. He thought quickly but not quickly enough.

'I ordered him to destroy the thing. Since when half the world has read it. You've read it? Outrageous! Ghastly!'

'It's not Basil's fault.'

'It's infernally his fault. He's a tarnished, deceitful leper.'

'Someone gave me . . .'

'All copies lead back to his beastly Xerox machine. I gave him specific orders.' Hilldyard threw his face into his hands, a gesture utterly mortifying to Michael, as if he were out of control. Michael held his coffee cup whilst his insides turned to stone. He could not think what to say.

'You've read it?' The tone was attacking.

'I'm sorry.'

Hilldyard was pierced with pain. He squinted and blinked, on the edge of tears. 'That heinous wanker.'

'Maybe his judgement's gone.' He knew this was not true. 'He has cancer.'

'Poor tumours.'

'He's a sick man.'

'Basil is more malignant than any cancer. God, I'm cross.'

'But not with me!'

The ledges of his eyes showed their pink rim. He looked more stricken than angry. He shook his head slowly, as if to wind down vexation and detach himself from the strength of his feelings. Eventually, he gasped, looking at Michael glumly. There was a moment of unpredictable silence. He scratched his ear. His anger was subsiding into lethargy. His eyes closed for a moment, a prayer, and then he was direct and alert and challenging. 'So what did you think?'

He took in his breath. 'Of the novel?'

Hilldyard nodded.

'I thought it was brilliant.'

It was a reaction Hilldyard could not absorb. He gazed at Michael blankly.

'You understand my agony?'

Michael neither understood his agony nor the sense of the question, which only heightened the embarrassment.

'I don't think I do.'

'Oh, come on!'

'What should I understand?'

Hilldyard was incredulous. 'It's obvious!'

Michael frowned, lost.

'You didn't realise?'

He was floundering.

'Oh, good heavens. The entire novel's based on fact.' Hilldyard stared at him, seeing out the charge.

'Fact?'

'It's my story.'

'Your story!'

'My life!'

The revelation was Hilldyard's, but it was Michael who blushed.

So many things were implicit in the confession – it was a confession – that he was at a loss to know how to react. He had trespassed into the author's private world and been caught red-handed.

Hilldyard watched the declaration sink in with an expression of bitter triumph. And then he sighed, as if suddenly depleted. His expression changed, becoming softer and sadder. He looked engrossed for a moment and then started to speak with slow care.

'My wife stood by me from the beginning, you see. She sacrificed everything for my work, cooked and housekept, typed my novels. She soothed me through the bad days and supported me with love. And for all that I betrayed her. Once with ''Anna'' . . . the ''Anna'' . . . that . . . And twice by writing the novel. While Joan was in her last months, I was writing a love story about my affair with another woman. Joan died with the unalterable conviction she was unloved. She lay in bed thinking her fund of love in life had been wasted. She died of grief for her own life. Whereas I loved her deeply. But I had to write that book. And after she died, I realised it was not a novel I had written but the agony of our lives together ending in this. And then, the madness over, I realised I had done in her life. The guilt of that is ineffaceable. For her sake alone the book can never be published, because I can't bear to advertise the possibility that my wife's life was in vain.'

His hands became active tools of distress, working up a dry lather of anguish. 'Every writer gads along, feeding off life, his own feelings, the feelings of others, bending and shaping it to his purposes, until something happens that just can't be stolen into fiction. I can't take Joan's suffering into the life of a novel. I won't. It is my penance to be silent. Her agony, my posterity. Too hideous. If it were in my power I'd snap my fingers and see all copies incinerate spontaneously. And not just for her sake.' He broke off, grimaced at the view.

Michael was held fast. The information given to him was dense with significance.

' ''Anna''–' The voice was croakier now, interfered with. 'She died last year.' Hilldyard managed a swooping-up glance, blinked. 'She was sixty. They are both dead, you see. Brings the whole business to an end.' He cleared his throat, aiming for control. 'And I don't want it survived by any kind of record. Which is not to deny that I loved ''Anna''. No. I loved her as if I had never loved before, as if all previous loves were mere preparation. I was totally remade by her. I became a different person. And there again is unbearability. Because one view of my life is that the highest reality was the space between two minds and that reality I experienced and then lost. Like discovering a musical talent one day and losing the use of your hands the next. And since that extraordinary summer I've been haunted by the sense of something unconsummated, as if I needed to go to another stage before I could write again, and the means to that progression was stolen from me. What could I write? In the name of what? I couldn't start a book when my own life was incomplete! That agony has cost me years, Michael.' He gasped. 'I have to find a new way, a new source for what I need to do. And I have to forget the self that branched towards ''Anna'', blossomed, and was lopped off. I have to forget her as though she never existed.' He touched his temple, as though pressing a point of pain, and then looked at Michael with heavy eyes.

The pause was interminable. In Hilldyard's story Michael recognised his own life.

'Can you forget her?' he said softly.

There was no answer.

He was struck by many things, a complex of realisations, and the strange emotion that accompanied an insight like this into the structure of another person's life. Later, he fastened on the paradox of a novel that worked artistically while embodying something unacceptable to the author's moral sensibility. He understood Hilldyard's shame, but that which was part of life was surely part of the novel, and in disowning this particular novel wasn't he suppressing the truth of his experience? Or was it perhaps that this bleak fiction, while based on fact, was inconsistent with Hilldyard's view of the novel, expressing something outside the moral compass of his own behaviour which although it had happened could not signify? He had written it and decided it was not worthy of his better self, the self that would not, as an article of faith, hurt a fly.

He let out his breath, exhaling tension. 'I can see why you didn't want a film.'

Hilldyard slapped his forehead and screamed silently: a gesture that recapped the horror of the idea whilst saving him the effort.

Michael spared a thought for Adela. She would be disappointed, but he looked forward to telling her. He was, in a sense, the bearer of good news: in the conscience of an artist the huge publicity of a feature film meant nothing.

'What applies to the book applies a thousand times to the film.' He made a ghastly expression. 'Just think what they'd do to it.'

'Well, that's the answer I'll give her.'

'Give whom?'

'The girl who lent me your book.'

'A girl?'

He already knew that he had to go into this. 'An actress whom Basil's film people cast as Anna. When you turned down the offer she thought there'd been a misunderstanding.' He shrugged. 'So she came here.'

Hilldyard was appalled. 'She's in Positano!'

'She is.'

'Why on earth?'

'To ask you to reconsider.'

'My God. These people are shameless!'

As he feared, Hilldyard was over-reacting. 'Basil told her about me. So instead of doorstepping you, she contacted me.'

'How atrocious!'

Michael smiled awkwardly. 'She wanted to be sure you weren't misled by the American agent.'

'That twit.'

'She says Shane Hammond is committed to a faithful adaptation.'

'Who?'

'He's a film star.'

'God!'

'She assured me of their best intentions.'

'I'll bet she did.'

He hesitated. He was giving the facts for the sake of completeness, not to seem naive. 'I think she's perfectly sincere.'

'Actresses are always sincere.'

This seemed ungenerous. 'She had interesting things to say.'

'And ambition is always eloquent.'

'Maybe.' He frowned. 'But so is conviction.'

'She obviously convinced you.'

It seemed silly to argue about the bona fides of a woman Hilldyard had never met. Michael had no great mission to stand up for her, but he needed to defend his judgement. 'That should be a recommendation.'

'Is she very beautiful as well as persuasive?'

The tone did not please him. And then he remembered something. 'You seemed to think so.'

'What!'

' ''Venus reversing her birth''!'

Hilldyard flinched. 'That girl!'

Michael nodded and watched carefully.

'She's a young woman!'

'Twenty-eight.'

Hilldyard inhabited the state of astonishment very physically, eyebrows knitted, fingers wandering. With his open mouth he seemed to be drinking in the information as though there were now a lot more to the matter. He had been struck by the sight of a nameless bather, had taken his impression, preserved it in memory, only to find the owner of the impression turning up at his back door as a real person demanding something in exchange.

'What's her name?'

'Adela Fairfax.'

Hilldyard needed a few moments. 'She wants to play Anna?' he said softly.

'Yes.'

The mouth opened, breath going out.

Michael sensed something.

'Is there a resemblance?'

'Resemblance?' The laugh was ugly, a bark of contempt. 'Oh God, you'd never want Anna's double on the screen.'

He felt himself colouring.

'Her face had been lived in, Michael. She had lines under her eyes. Experience had written on her face, her body. Time was attacking her. But she was the full person, Michael. Not some corkscrew blonde. Not some nubile clone any beachload of adolescent strummers could fancy.'

Michael tried to absorb the contempt. He had set himself up for this.

'I think there's more to her than that.'

'Do you? You think she can play the woman who stopped me in my tracks for fifteen years, the creature I've bathed in the best words I could wring from my pen?'

He hesitated. He felt the full heat of Hilldyard's integrity, his passion for the truth bearing down on the issue.

'She's an acclaimed Shakespearian actress.'

'She's fluff.'

'She's talented, James!'

'She's twenty years too young for the part!'

'Then they'll age her!'

'Don't you see! They don't want my character. They want a lovely young fresh woman for the audience to fall in love with, and to hell with the book, they'll recast the story round her. And there goes the point of my novel. A total bastardisation!'

Michael frowned. Hollywood's blandishments had affected even his judgement. The glare of interest from famous actors, the production millions, the flattery of all that focusing its beam on a particular book dazzled away obvious objections.

'Fine. That makes it easier for me to tell her.'

'Easier for you?'

'I obviously agree with you.'

There was a pause. The author was incipiently dissatisfied. 'She'll be awfully upset.'

'That's her problem.'

'There are difficult scenes ahead. She'll make it your problem.'

Michael shrugged. 'I can explain it to her.'

'She'll make you take pity on her.'

He was irritated. 'James, you haven't met her. She's intelligent. She'll respect your decision.'

'You're very taken.'

The insinuation frustrated him. 'Not with the idea of a film! To be perfectly frank, what I liked about her was her enthusiasm for your writing!'

'I see. Soul mates.'

'We've only met once.'

'All the more testimony to her allure.'

'Or her intelligence!'

'Intelligence!' he spat. 'Nobody with intelligence would suggest the idea.'

It was like a blow that at one strike disposed of Adela, her talent, her integrity, the reality of her view of things, and to Michael it was terrible to think so harsh a verdict might be true. Because if Adela were tainted by the vulgar urge to turn books into films, he too had been crass in offering to help her. He could suffer the criticism if it came from Hilldyard, but he saw, in a flash, the loneliness such rigorous standards implied.

'Michael.' Hilldyard was worked up, forceful. 'I can't expect you to relay my feelings to this girl.'

'You can!'

'She won't let up. Until she's seen me. Exerted her wiles.'

He shook his head. 'She's not like that!'

'Don't you see? This eloquent actress. She's using you as a stepping stone. She won't take a no until she's had a crack at me.'

'You make her sound hideous!'

'Then prove me wrong.'

'What?'

'Bring her to the villa.'

He felt oppressed. 'That's not necessary.'

'I'd like a word with this young Venus.'

'James!'

'Especially as she's so intelligent and discriminating.'

'Please don't!'

'And then we will see.'

'See what?'

Hilldyard tossed his napkin on the table. 'Which of us is right.'

The old man rose from his chair, and Michael waited a moment before getting up and following him out of the restaurant, glancing distractedly at the remaining diners as he went. A waiter nodded him goodbye as he moved to the wicket gate, giving him to understand that Hilldyard had paid the bill on his return from the lavatory. He caught up with him on the footpath outside and they walked off in silence.

In his heart he felt the lightness of his own will, of his own meanings, which travelled meagrely next to the solemn figure of Hilldyard.

After a few uncomfortable moments, Hilldyard took him by the sleeve. He came to a halt, inhaling deeply. The leafy smell was sweet, evocative: a poplar tree.

The tight clasp eased.

Hilldyard smiled and for a moment rested his hand on Michael's back, as if to pat him along the path.

Later, in the bus, Michael sat swaying with the movement of the vehicle as it lurched around tight bends. The author had sunk heavily into his seat; he seemed pensive, full of the things they had touched on over lunch. Michael noted with tired admiration the old man's ability to go on thinking about things, refining experiences that Michael had only felt, and which were passing in his case over the edge of memory, feelings that he had not known what to do with, feelings misused, unchannelled, frustrated. He had not managed any kind of memorial for Christine in the end. And now she too was passing over the horizon, the sense of her almost lost to remembrance, her spirit slowly parting as the pain eased.

He gazed up at the leaves overhead, and at the fading sky.