Two german girls, busts expressed by the straps of their rucksacks, stood outside a pensione. The windows were shuttered but a side-door was open and the travellers pondered their choice. A cat came past on the road, stretchily satisfied by board and lodging.
Michael emerged from a passageway and slipped between two parked cars, lips moving as he reset his sunglasses.
He stood by the parapet at the road's edge sightlessly gazing at the terraces, at the tapestries of vine falling between them.
He walked, not to her hotel, but high above the town, on a road that wound round gorges and under the branches of walnut trees.
It was only lunchtime but already the sun had passed mid-point in the sky, lowering its angle and casting an afternoon lustre of mellow gold on the distant buildings near the beach; deepening shadows in the cleft of the town, so that an entire hotel was immersed in shade, and, higher up, raising whitewashed walls to a dazzle. Rooftiles became crimson, the soft-hued washes of innumerable façades lit up, window glass refracted slivers of blinding light.
The air up here was fresher, sharp-scented with pine resin. Great jigsaw clouds hung in the blue. A gentle wind ebbed in from the wide plate of the sea, which caught the light in a million places. From way off bright items of sound reached his ear as he stood and gazed at the view. There was something both vivid and placid about the squeak of a scooter, or dog-echo, or men shouting their salutations in some far corner of the town, as if nothing could escape, however remote, the ravine's transfiguring acoustic.
He sat down on the verge. The sea seemed serene, limitlessly incandescent, but in the far distances of the day a storm was brewing. Along the coastline the sea's blue had turned to a rage of white surf against the cliffs. Rollers were polevaulting high against the spits and stacks, lingering in a zenith of foam and freefalling back into the swell.
The weather would soon change. Rain and thunder would sweep in. The glinting town would be lost in mists and drizzle for days, possibly weeks. The sea would become dull, the beaches bare, the restaurants empty.
He held his knees and gazed with the bleary fixity of a drunk at the hairs on his forearm. Hilldyard's revelation made vision seem skew-whiff, and Michael was too shot-up and knocked off to understand where it left him. He was exhausted by the unknowability of human beings. Frances and Hilldyard were an uncanny proposition, bizarre, beyond his ken. The idea mildly disgusted him. He did not yet know what to think, but knew he was shocked. The information was disappointing, morally disappointing; but then he had been morally disappointing, too.
He was relieved to have escaped the scene of his abasement. All that humiliation blew one's fuses.
He clutched his knees and thought of Adela down there somewhere. She was waiting for him to arrive with good news.
Without the option he could not have her. He knew that for sure. All he could do was cup his chin and reflect on the bitterness of this.
They had only just met. He had experienced her ardour, but had no claim. They appreciated certain things about each other, perhaps. If Adela had been direct with her lips, she had been more honest with her tongue. She had come to an age when life and work needed to bind each other. She desired love, but wanted more. Michael as he stood was no use to her, though Michael as a producer in control of the film rights – well, that might be different. If he could get his act together (she had hinted) she might readily succumb to the attraction between them. She needed a person whose energy of becoming was as great as her own. She had ambition, immense talent. Her partner must aid, not oppose that. The right man needed edge, and Michael had no edge at all. He had nothing but himself.
He held his knees as though he were holding his unhappiness, embracing it. He was experiencing new physical sensations, chest pangs, muscular edginess, tingling skin, the ache of repressed energy, as if something were trying to get out of his body. His feelings were on the move again. Frozen matter was being called into life. He realised that he was, quite simply, ready for a relationship in a way he had not been since Christine's death. He was able to fall in love. He was dying to be in love, and the strength of the urge magnified Adela's appeal into something almost unbearable.
He sat with his hands on the grass, and felt sorrow glutting up. Everything was mad. Everything was skewed for maximum pain and disappointment and this had always been so with him. The chance of a second life had come along and he could not take it.