feels the curious glances of the others as they leave. To his relief no questions are asked about his sudden disappearance. He is still shaken by how quickly it all took hold of him. Nothing for so long and now this. His life in Rome, he realizes, was static, was safe.
They have dinner on the ramparts above the sea. A woman has been brought to serenade them, but the wind and the echoes upon the stones distort her voice. What should be exquisite melodies are transformed, at times, into the shrieks of a banshee.
All of the heat of the day was in the sun. Now, with the wind up, it is much cooler, and the singer shivers in her thin ballgown until Truss moves to place his jacket about her shoulders. She thanks him with a lingering smile and Hal cannot help but watch, fascinated. This, then, is the charm of the man at work.
He can hear the sea, far beneath them, sucking and gnawing against the stone. It is open water, that side, not the serene calm of the harbour. ‘There is bad weather coming soon,’ the skipper, Roberto, had told Hal, with a kind of morose pleasure. Already the waves sound louder, hungrier than they have yet.
They take their seats for supper, and Hal finds himself placed between Stella and Giulietta Castiglione.
He tries, first, to engage Giulietta in conversation, but she resists every attempt to be drawn out. Finally, when she begins to study her reflection in the back of the spoon, he gives up, and turns to his left.
‘How are you?’ he asks Stella, with faultless formality.
‘Well, thank you.’ She gives him a quick, polite smile.
‘Good.’
Then she says, in a barely audible murmur, ‘I’m sorry.’
He thinks he understands all that she means to encompass by it. But it is not enough, somehow. He wants to make her uncomfortable, he realizes, make her see that this is equally awkward for him. He wants to provoke her. ‘I’m simply confused,’ he murmurs, ‘because it was you—’
‘Mr Jacobs.’ She looks up at him, and he sees something in her expression that unnerves him: fear. ‘Please,’ she says. And then, through her teeth, ‘People are looking.’
He glances up and finds the Contessa’s gaze on them, her expression unreadable. Truss though, is turned away, speaking to the singer. His hand rests on the back of the chair, the picture of ease. But this doesn’t mean anything. Hal has already decided that he is the sort of man who notices everything.
He looks for something innocuous to say. If Stella chose, he realizes, she could merely turn her head and start a conversation with Signor Gaspari on her other side, cutting him off. And though he decided only a few hours ago that he would avoid all but the most necessary interaction with her he finds that he wants to keep her attention. ‘It’s a fascinating place,’ he says, gesturing around them. ‘Don’t you think?’
He expects her to simply agree but he can see her considering the question, turning it over. Then she says, ‘I’m not sure that it is, actually. It feels full of … of death.’
‘Well,’ he says, curious, ‘there’s a great weight of history here. But surely that is part of its charm.’
She appears not to have heard him. ‘These stones – they’re like a skeleton that has been left out in the open, that has suffered the indignity of not being given the burial it deserves.’ There is something like real pain in her voice. He stares at her. Now she is the one not playing by the rules.
‘Stella,’ he says, and then quickly corrects himself. ‘Mrs Truss, this castle was built centuries ago. The people who once lived here have been dead – and buried – for hundreds of years. These are nothing more than stones.’
But she does not seem to be listening. ‘How long do you think it takes,’ she asks him, ‘before the dead are forgotten entirely?’ She sounds intent now, almost angry. He wonders briefly if she has had too much to drink – but her wine glass appears untouched.
‘I’m not sure,’ he says, cautiously. ‘But probably as long as there is someone living to remember them.’
He looks at her, hoping that it is enough.
It isn’t. ‘But don’t you think there are some things that should never be forgotten? Even as time softens the marks?’
I don’t know what you want from me, he thinks.
‘What can you two be talking about?’ Hal looks up to find Truss regarding them across the table. At his words the other guests turn to look, too. He smiles at Hal. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Jacobs – is my wife giving you a hard time already?’ Now he looks at Stella, who has not raised her head. ‘She gets carried away, sometimes – don’t you, Kitten?’
Silence.
‘Well, Kitten?’
She nods. Truss gives a little mock toast with his glass and turns back to Gloria. Stella takes a long sip of her wine. Then she turns to Hal. ‘Forgive me,’ she says – shortly, bitterly, as though it was he who chastised her in front of all present. Before he can think of something to say to her, she has turned away.
The evening seems to have fractured, after this. The guests sit in silence, the plates have been cleared away, the wine bottles emptied. The wind has picked up, and Aubrey Boyd shivers miserably in his thin blazer. A faint-hearted soul might call an end to the dinner now. But the Contessa is not that.
She speaks fearlessly into the silence. ‘Some of you,’ with a nod to Gaspari, ‘already know this, but I thought it might be interesting for those who don’t. The film is based on a strange legend in my family. My ancestor was the sea captain played so superbly by our leading man here,’ she turns to Earl Morgan, but his eyes are glassy with drink, and he seems barely to register her comment. Undeterred, she takes something from the pocket of her jacket. Hal tries to get a closer look at it. A little pot, made from ivory – with some sort of design carved into it.
‘This,’ she holds it up, ‘belonged to him.’
She passes it to Earl Morgan, who studies the pattern for a few seconds disinterestedly, and then hands it on. Now Stella has been passed the pot by Gaspari. Hal watches her examining it, with quiet focus. She turns it over and around in her hands. And then, with an audible pop, she prises the thing open.
‘Ah,’ the Contessa says, pleased, ‘you have discovered its secret. I was wondering when someone was going to do that.’
The others crane to see. Stella holds it up, so that the inside is visible. A dial of some sort, with spokes of alternating red and green, encircled by a gold band.
‘A compass,’ Aubrey says, peering over her shoulder.
‘Broken,’ she says. ‘The arrow …’ she watches it for a few seconds, tilting it back and forth, ‘it keeps going round and round.’
‘Yes,’ the Contessa says. ‘A shame. But perhaps only to be expected, considering its great age.’
Finally, it has come to Hal, and he has a chance to study it himself. There had been a large bronze compass mounted on the captain’s bridge of the battlecruiser, which he had got to see only after they had been decommissioned. Funny, how little the design has changed. It has a peculiar
