During the drive to Torre Astura, Diana opened the car window and let the hot, dusty breeze blow over her, not caring about the mess it made of her hair. It didn’t matter what she looked like any more. There was no one to care. In her head, she kept rerunning all the lies Ernesto had told her: his mother’s shingles, the stories about his sister’s children (she now assumed he had been talking about his own) … and the biggest lie of all – that he loved her. She realised she hadn’t known him. She’d seen him as one person whereas he was someone else entirely, someone she couldn’t fathom. Why would you try to break up a person’s marriage when you had no intention of marrying them yourself? To her, it made no sense. She supposed that it meant she hadn’t truly loved him. She had been in love with a fantasy, an invention that didn’t exist.
The journey took an hour and a half, through fields and across rivers, until eventually they pulled up at some gates set in a fenced-off area. She showed her studio pass to a security guard and was driven into the lot.
Straight away, Diana saw the Alexandria set along the waterfront and she caught her breath. It was so much better than the one she’d seen at Pinewood the previous year, with the turquoise Mediterranean forming a backdrop and white sun bleaching the imitation buildings. The Serapeum was magnificent, with several flights of wide steps leading up to the colonnaded frontage. Hawk-headed sphinxes sat on pedestals and giant sculptures of Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III greeted boats that moored at the C-shaped jetty. To the side was the black pyramid of Cleopatra’s mausoleum, still under construction. It wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it was rather good.
Leaving her overnight bag in the car, she walked down to the jetty, where carpenters were at work on a Roman battleship. The rigging of the sails, the eyelets through which oars protruded, the curved helm – all seemed to follow the advice she had given. There were a few issues to correct: the moorings to which it was tied were wrong, and some of the little craft anchored in the water, which would have transported goods to shore, were too modern-looking. Some fishing pots sitting on the jetty were Greek in style rather than Egyptian but that was plausible. She sat on the edge of the jetty, dangling her feet over the water, and took out her notebook.
Soon after she arrived, at one o’clock, the carpenters abandoned their tools and headed for lunch but Diana stayed where she was, glad for the opportunity to lose herself in work. When she had finished making notes on the jetty, she walked up to the Serapeum. Of course, it was only a frontage with scaffolding behind, but it was majestic – as it should be. Contemporaries had described it as the most magnificent building in the world. The real one had been destroyed in AD 391 by a Christian mob but enough records remained to make historians fairly sure about the scale, the design and the decoration of the temple to the god Serapis, which had been built in 300 BC.
Next she examined the black marble-effect pyramid representing Cleopatra’s mausoleum, in which she would take her own life. According to Plutarch, Mark Antony was hoisted up to it in chains as he lay dying because the great front door could not be opened once it had been sealed. The pyramid was at least two storeys tall and the roof was unfinished because Cleopatra had ordered it to be built in a hurry, but it would have been a huge, impregnable structure that Octavian’s armies could not easily breach so the flimsy film version was unconvincing – but she hoped it would look fine on screen.
Her head began to ache from the heat and she felt mildly sick. She hadn’t eaten breakfast; perhaps she should find out where the men were having their lunch. She would no doubt feel better after some food and a bit of shade from the ferocity of the sun.
The studio car had gone but the driver had left her bag in the security guard’s hut at the entrance. He directed her to a pensione just up the road where a room had been reserved for her – room number eleven, he told her, consulting a list. A trattoria situated round the bend in the other direction would be serving lunch until three. She checked her watch and decided to go for lunch first. The menu offered a full range of pasta, fish and meat dishes but a bowl of minestrone soup and a bread roll were all she could manage. Her stomach was taut with nerves and she felt like an invalid, as if she had been beaten up or run over by a lorry. She decided to treat herself gently for the time being, until her emotions settled down and she could come to terms with Ernesto’s huge betrayal.
Throughout the summer months, when midday temperatures soared into the 80s, Italian workmen took a break from one till four o’clock. Diana wanted to discuss her notes with the chief carpenter but she knew no one would be back on the set till later. She was hot and sticky from the journey and considered going to the pensione to bathe, but then changed her mind: she was by the seaside, so she might as well go for a swim. There was a swimsuit and towel in her bag so she went back to fetch them from the gatehouse then walked down to the seafront to search for a quiet spot.
She could see the army camp in one direction, so she walked the other way, past the back of the set, and stepped over a waist-high fence into no-man’s land. Waves were lapping onto a shingly beach of yellow-gold stones. She walked for some time until she couldn’t see anyone in either direction, and a large rock offered some shade from the sun. Under cover of her sundress, she slipped off her underpants and pulled on the striped swimsuit, a recent purchase from Rinascente. She’d considered getting a bikini but hadn’t felt brave enough to expose her midriff. With a struggle she managed to unclasp her brassiere and pull up the top half of the suit, keeping her dress loosely fastened over her shoulders. She was pretty sure no one was watching, but didn’t want to take any risks.
The water was shallow and warm by the shore, but ten feet out there was a deep trench beyond which it became cooler. She swam for a while, watching a shoal of tiny silver fish gliding below her, then she turned on her back to float. Out there in the water, her emotions felt more manageable. She’d made a mistake in falling for Ernesto – what a fool she had been to trust him – but it wasn’t the end of the world. It would have been better if it hadn’t happened, but it had, and now she would have to readjust to the sudden change in circumstances. It was hard to see how her marriage could survive but fortunately she had time to consider it rationally, with her mind unclouded by thoughts of Ernesto. Poor Trevor. It was difficult to imagine them ever making love again. If she went back to him, should she confess her infidelity? He would be so hurt. But it seemed unfair to keep it from him.
Her thoughts turned to Helen and the argument they’d had: poor, childish Helen, who believed at last a man was interested in her. How rotten that it should turn out to be a married man. She desperately needed to find someone who could see the beauty and innocence of her soul, who would fall in love with her and give her confidence in herself. Diana resolved that she would spend a lot more time with Helen now she was on her own. If they went out together in the evenings, she could make sure Helen didn’t drink too much and vet any potential suitors. Perhaps she would help her to find a nice boyfriend before filming was over.
She swam back to the shore and lay on her towel to dry off, feeling the salt itchy on her skin. She was going to be very sunburned later but she was pretty sure she’d brought some calamine lotion in her toilet bag. The shingle was hard beneath her spine but she nodded off and woke some time later, disorientated from a muddled dream. The sun had moved across the sky and when she checked her watch she was shocked to see that it was six o’clock. The carpenters would be going home soon if they hadn’t left already. She’d have to speak to them in the morning. Meanwhile, she’d go to the pensione and freshen up.
The coast bulged outwards at that point and she sensed it would be quicker to walk across a field towards the main road behind her rather than go back the way she had come through the film set. She pulled her dress over her swimsuit and set off in that direction. Halfway across the field, she saw a rapid movement out of the corner of her eye and suddenly panicked that there might be snakes. She wasn’t sure if there were poisonous snakes in Italy but, if there were, this kind of waste ground covered in scrub would be exactly where they were likely to be found. She walked faster, stamping hard on the earth to scare them away.
The field was divided from the road by a thicket of wispy bushes. She sought a place where there was a natural gap and pushed through, but a sharp branch sprang back across her cheek, scratching it.
‘Drat!’ she exclaimed, and touched the wound. The salt made it sting, and when she pulled her fingers away there were traces of blood. That wasn’t going to look very attractive.
She collected her bag from the security guard then walked up to the pensione.
‘Room number eleven?’ she asked the padrona, but was told that number eleven hadn’t been cleaned or prepared.
‘You can have number two instead. It’s a better room,’ the woman said. ‘Round the back, with its own patio and a view to the seafront.’
It may have been better than the rest but to Diana’s eyes it seemed very basic. The actors and actresses, production, hair and makeup staff wouldn’t stay here when they were shooting the Alexandria scenes but would be bussed down from Rome every morning and taken back each evening. These rooms were just for the men building the set and the place was very run-down, with mould growing on the bathroom ceiling and mattresses that had barely any spring to them. Still, it would do for one night.
Diana bathed to wash the salt from her skin, trying not to think about what might have caused the brown stains on the bath enamel, then she went to sit on the patio to dry her hair. The sun had almost set but she could still make out the hazy shape of the Serapeum and the sea behind. Her stomach growled but she decided she couldn’t be bothered to walk back down the road to the trattoria for dinner. She would feel self-conscious sitting on her own among the evening diners. She’d rather wait and pick up a cornetto with a coffee on her way to the set at breakfast time.
As soon as her hair was dry enough, she climbed onto the bed, pulled a sheet over her and fell sound asleep.