Sex & Genius Page 3

  Whatever specifics were involved in Michael's 'helping' Hilldyard, the author's primary goal was apparently neither administrative nor editorial. He wanted to introduce Michael in stages to his cherished retreat, to its views and walks and extraordinary light, and to encourage the deepest relaxation, as if nothing laborious should happen until they were fully acclimatised. Hilldyard wished him to be calm, rested and at ease; and if this were indeed required, he would not object. Hilldyard was, after all, a genius, and geniuses must set the pace. And so they went on walks, and drank in caffè, and took the scenery very seriously; and as Michael began to unwind so Hilldyard took pleasure in being his guide.

  Their first walk had been along the Viale Pasitea, which made its way from the top of the town, down and around the hillocks on which Positano's multicoloured villas clung, descending on its hairpin meander past alimentari and pasticceria and projections of rock to the church at the base of the town. At every turn the light seemed to modify; the plumb-line of the sea became a backdrop one moment, then the mountains; and gradually the two men descended through the different strata of local life: policemen at the top, reviewing the junction for signs of work; mistresses of the pensione, airing rooms, stacking laundry; and way down, in the town's crowded basement, the boutique bazaar, relatively quiet in October, but still purveying to the more opulent visitors clothes in the Lucrezia Borgia style.

  If the involutions of the town were a temple to the visual sense, Positano's beach prescribed sensual abandon; and it was here that Hilldyard insisted, to Michael's amusement, that they rent deckchairs, position themselves at the water's edge and 'stake out the scene'. Hanging out on the beach was a major pastime for the Booker Prize winner. He juggled three pairs of sunglasses, seeking the best tint for the view, and presented himself to the October sun with abandon. He snoozed off, sat in silence; and he summoned waiters to ply Michael's thirst. It was here on the beach that their first strolls culminated and where new ones were planned. 'We have to get you up to Montepertuso and over to Capri. There's also the corniche, Via Whatsit, which scoops around the ravine. That's a great walk.' All this was training for the ultimate experience, the view from a garden in Ravello, 'Where I like to have epiphanies if I possibly can.' The plan was to work up to that moment, 'Because,' he gravely said, 'if that doesn't jump-start me, I may as well jump off the belvedere.'

  To Michael's mind Hilldyard had been jump-started. Since his arrival there had been an acceleration in the old man's vitality. The grizzled figure of their first meeting had turned into a spry elder statesman, sociably keen to escape his intense inner world. Determined to court Michael and secure his 'assistance', he flourished precisely those qualities that a fan might hope to see in his idol. He was wise and witty, deep and paradoxical, always innumerable steps ahead. He improvised generously on all subjects of literary interest, without hesitating to halt gold-dust disquisitions on the art of the novel if something caught his eye.

  'D'you see the way those briefs, which are only a line of red, have the power to transform that pendulous dough-sack of a gut into two skinny legs?'

  He also asked questions, drawing Michael out with tact and curiosity; and thus it emerged that Michael had been in television for ten years, first at the BBC, then as an independent; that he had produced films about Henry Miller and Sylvia Plath, plus a drama for Screen One, and an interview for Profile, which got the lowest rating in arts-programming history. Michael spoke of his recent difficulties; the grim fate of The Western Canon, the demise of The Great Pianists, the subjugation of all programme proposals to the quest for the Pinot Grigio-post-wine-bar-twenty-something demographic. He explained how he had been forced to cut a sequence in his documentary about Gina Ginsburg, and how that had depressed him; and how, gradually, he had lost the ability to adapt to whatever Zeitgeist was prevailing in the multi-channel era; and how monkeying around with ratings-obsessed corporate stooges 'totally devoid of passion or culture' had come to seem futile; unworthy of Christine, who had been a real painter, a proper artist. And in this way Hilldyard learned that Michael's wife had died six years ago.

  Hilldyard was sensitively alert to this information, though tactfully more focused on Michael's girlfriend deficit. 'I'll keep my eyes peeled. There must be someone more toothsome than the ladies we saw this morning, heaven help them, and us. Even Rubens would have drawn the line. Why will such venerable dears wear cut-away bikini bottoms? . . . Neapolitan women are, of course, dramatically feminine. The longest lashes. The sultry upper lip. And can you believe it, even in this day and age their hips sway when they walk!' He would cast an eye around. 'Any pulchritude ahoy?'

  On the whole there was not. Michael abandoned himself to other pleasures. He lay in a crucifix position on the pebbles, his ribs becoming dry and hot, the gust of the sea breeze stroking his chest hair, the sun appearing through eyelids like a magnified version of itself, a swarming brightness against which the familiar dot grew hyperactive, bouncing up and down, aside and across, slowing down and then pinging off as though kicked. He listened to the open echo of voices, the feet of nearby pigeons crunching around in search of food, the martial super-crunch of bathers traversing the shale; and when he became too hot, and opened his eyes to a scene that was bleached in the foreground and watery in the distance, he would lean on his elbows and gaze at the blue-grey level openness of the sea until his head was cleared by the antics of the surf, pouring itself on the pebbles in perpetual somersaults, never quite gaining, but crushing out a wave now and then that teemed forward, foam boiling all the way to his feet, before flattening to a hiss and dispersing.

  One morning someone beautiful did appear. Michael caught sight of her over his book. Thirty feet away a beach boy arrived with a deckchair, which he settled on the pebbles. The newcomer following behind him was a young woman with swept-up hair and a cotton skirt. Michael's attention mellowed into soft regard as she came on the scene, dropping her bag and perching on the edge of the seat. In due course she pulled a book from the bag and arranged herself more comfortably. He noted the evocative line of her profile. He was very happy to receive the impression as an extra caress to relaxation, as something rippling in sensuous space, but after a while he appreciated he had not seen her before. She was a newcomer to the beach, apparently alone. Her straw-gold hair was far more English pastoral than Riviera Italian. She lay back, book on her knees, without seeming overly warm in seventy degrees; though after a few minutes she was kicking off sandals and reaching for the sun-tan lotion.

  On a beach scattered with supine bodies any activity is oddly mesmerising to the recumbent sunbather; and thus Hilldyard's attention drifted from his book and sharpened on the middle distance when the same girl made her way to the water's edge. She had peeled off skirt and T-shirt and now made lurching steps across the pebbles. She balanced with lithe inflexions of hip and hand, carrying herself flexibly over each step, showing taut thighs and graceful arms and the side of a bikinied bosom. The men looked on seriously. She entered the water, hips shuddering. Surf fizzed around her, waves slapped at her tummy, but she waded on, rinsing her wrists and bending forward until the agony of the rocks unbalanced her, and she toppled into the sea. The water was warm, and soon she was flourishing, flicking the hair from her face and floating on the waves.

  Hilldyard turned to Michael and raised his eyebrows. Here at last was pulchritude; both of form and movement, and something in his gaze evinced the deepest fulfilment. It was almost to confirm, such a vision, which the author likened to Venus reversing her birth, that physical beauty was artistically complete, untrammelled by desire, because, as a novelist, his sensory possession of it was already total.

  On this and other occasions Michael felt something valuable transferring, something he would not have noticed as a documentary maker. Through Hilldyard he was learning not just to see things more particularly, but to steal them into his imagination. The mastery of one's sensory life, its being seized and registered, was an act of willed consciousness.
It became rewarding to look at things in this way and to discern how an impression struck Hilldyard – not as he would write it, but as he encountered it, with reactive vitality. And yet Hilldyard's superiority in this department, which represented a whole technique of being, made him doubtful of his own value. Beyond and around their amiable conversation Hilldyard was living at a higher pitch than Michael, noticing things, processing and retaining them, bringing to experience a matrix of intentions. He had an angle on every detail, a view on every subject, the fuel of temperament driving his intelligence. And despite his kindness to Michael – he was solicitous to a fault – Michael's value to him seemed intellectually minimal. Certainly there was 'work' to be done when the sunbathing stopped (if ever it did), but Michael sensed that such work as there was was not of the essence. Hilldyard, he began to understand, needed an intelligent companion more than a literary secretary; and although there was talk of admin and editing, Hilldyard had seen fit to solicit a 'busy' television producer precisely because secretarial support was not what he needed. He needed an ideal reader by his side, a devotee, someone whose sense of the best in his writing would help him regenerate; and if this person came in the form of a producer, the complications of that were immaterial to him. Hilldyard had found his man, knew what he wanted, and everything else would just fall into place.

  This realisation was a relief to Michael. In his current straits it felt good to be useful, especially to a novelist. Indeed, there seemed rather more value in facilitating the work of a great writer than making programmes about great writers for the extremely bored and totally indifferent. And besides, he had come close to the thing that interested him, the life of an artist, the enterprise of writing, the implicit belief that novels mattered. Just by staying in Positano, in a haven of sensation and memory, he was recovering contact with an old passionate self that years ago had impelled him to a career in the arts, because that was what seemed important – the reflection of one's inner life, the registration of philosophical, aesthetic and spiritual responses in forms that contained and interpreted life, as opposed to the life that one necessarily lived, full of compromise and tired superficiality. If he could forget the pass which that life had brought him to, something valuable might result.

  Hilldyard's spirits continued to improve, and a pleasant routine established itself. In the mornings, Michael would sit in the villa's walled garden under the spires of the cypresses, reading an A4 Xerox copy of the author's first novel, and annotating the pages against editorial discussion. Hilldyard might attend to correspondence upstairs, or read in his chair, or make the odd telephone call. Before lunch they would walk a little; and after lunch they might bathe or take their books to the hills. The author, despite his years, was hale. To Michael's surprise he climbed the hundreds of steps from Positano's second beach without losing breath. His physical willpower was as marked as his creative resolve, and Michael took this as a hopeful sign that his company was helping. He was confirmed in this view a few days later by a telephone exchange with Basil Curwen.

  'You two seem to be thriving,' he said. 'James is singing your praises.' Curwen expressed disappointment at the fate of the documentary. His hopes had not been high. The business of the vetting, all that awkwardness, was behind them and Michael admired the way Curwen switched on the charm with shameless inconsistency now that it was necessary to do so. 'We may have some arrangements to draw up. In this matter I'll be led entirely by James and yourself. Perhaps you can give me your hotel details.' Cerberus himself had turned nice. His next call did not come too immediately, of course.

  The day after Curwen's call someone else telephoned. Michael saw the old man's face fall as he took up the receiver and he decided to make himself scarce. When he returned a few minutes later Hilldyard had gone to his bedroom. He didn't disturb him and simply made a sandwich and sat on the terrace with a bottle of beer, continuing his reading. But when at teatime the old man had still not surfaced he took the precaution of knocking on his bedroom door.

  There was a groan from within.

  'Would you like something to eat?' he said.

  'I'll never eat again.'

  The tone was theatrical, cueing Michael to enter the room in the same grave spirit. Hilldyard lay prostrate on the double-mattress, blankets pulled up to his chin.

  'Are you officially ill?'

  'Don't switch the light on.'

  'Sorry, I'll go away.'

  'No, stay!'

  Michael left the door open, lighting his way to a chair by the wall, which he drew over to the bed. The author's eyes glistened. Age had caught up with him again. He was really quite old, a fact belied by his recent vivacity; and now he seemed pathetic, too. An expression of baby-like distress puckered his brow.

  'Something absolutely awful has happened.'

  'What?'

  He breathed in deeply, rehearsing the pronouncement.

  'My niece wants to visit me.'

  Michael was unfamiliar with Hilldyard in this vein. 'Is that absolutely awful?'

  'Catastrophic.'

  'Oh! Where is your niece?'

  'In Rome, God help us. And she wants to come down here.'

  Hilldyard's eyes widened as though he had uttered something terrible.

  Michael took in the situation to the best of his ability. 'Is she . . . ?'

  Hilldyard sighed tremendously.

  'Is she . . . ?'

  'I don't know what she is.'

  'You obviously don't like her.'

  'Like? I'm terrified of the woman!'

  'Terrified of your niece?'

  'I'm supposed to be a writer, not a hotelier.'

  Michael nodded uncertainly.

  'Now her mother, bless her, dies this year, leaving Frances with two ugly half-brothers and a cad of a dad who lives in America, and it's awfully incumbent on yours truly to be kind, and I want to be kind because I am her relative, but not now!' He gazed at Michael in misery. 'And maybe not for a very long time. I don't have the strength of character when I'm writing to be nice to highly-strung women of a certain age.'

  Michael understood only too well how much Hilldyard needed to work.

  'Can't you put her off a bit?'

  'I'm wrestling with my conscience.'

  'When did you last see her?'

  'Don't make it worse!'

  'Perhaps I could look after her, show her around. Who knows? She might like me.'

  'Of course she'd like you!'

  'Any pulchritude?'

  Hilldyard gave out a snort. 'Frances doesn't deal in pulchritude.'

  'Is she good company?'

  'Oh God,' he groaned, 'she cut her wrists two years ago. She's a tragic, agonised creature, at times quite potty. And to be blunt, she'll try to kill herself again and she'll probably succeed.'

  Michael was distressed by the idea. 'Then let her come.'

  'I don't want to be responsible for anybody ever again.'

  'Offer her a weekend. Say you have to work.'

  'She's going to claim me as her guardian. I'll be latched on to like a drizzling titty.'

  Michael held his eye.

  'You don't know Frances. She affects me. We affect each other.'

  He replied by offering to make some tea, which Hilldyard accepted, and then left him to his dilemma.

  By now the sun had passed behind the mountain, and Michael leaned momentarily on the balcony to follow the ochreous glow on the spits of cliff to the east of Positano. Twilight had passed its bluey tint across the shapes of the town, now speckled with streetlamps, and a light hubbub issued from reopened shops on the Viale. A car in low gear eked its way round a bend; a scooter, weighed low on its springs by two teenage boys, whined stoically down the hill. At this early-evening hour life gathered in hidden elevations and secret niches of the town: kids mingled on corners, men drank in caffè; in hotel kitchens chefs' knives were being sharpened. A singer in Chez Black would be tapping a microphone, testing her eye on the backdrop of grand piano and drums. A prete
rnatural calm lay on the town, a stillness coming in from the deep reaches of the darkening sea, so that for any one person, taking the air on his balcony and looking into the dusky hues of the twilight hour, a delicious ease of solitude enveloped thought, softening existence and lifting one into the sky's pale reverie.

  Michael decided to walk to the alimentari for a bottle of wine. He returned at six-thirty. Hilldyard was sitting on the balcony smoking a cigarette.

  'I didn't know you smoked,' said Michael, adding his bottle to the scene.

  'Special celebration.'

  'How come?'

  'Got shot of Frances.'

  'Oh.' He was startled. 'And how is your conscience?'

  'Conscience! I haven't had one of those in years.'

  Frances had apparently called back, and Hilldyard had said something about Michael being his special editor, and being tied up with work, and having doubts about the weather and how long he would stay.

  'Was she disappointed?'

  'I don't really care.'

  He was intrigued. 'I'm sure you would have noticed.'

  'Didn't notice a thing.'

  'You're supposed to notice everything.'

  'One can read too much into people's telephone manner.'

  Hilldyard had changed his tune.

  'I hope she's OK,' said Michael.

  'I'm not her only friend in the world, you know.'

  There was a pause.

  'You're her only uncle.'

  Hilldyard blushed but was instantly on top of it. 'She's got two half-brothers!'

  'But . . .'

  'I haven't written seven novels by availing myself to the world as an agony aunt. I have to be selfish and I'm on cracking form when I remember that fact. It's more than my right. It's my duty to whatever I have left. Open that bottle.'

  He found a corkscrew in the kitchen. 'A complex man,' he mumbled to himself, as if that would contain his perplexity.

  But later, when Hilldyard had retired to his bedroom, leaving him on the balcony with the red wine and the evening air, he heard what he thought was coughing. The sound was muffled by piano music, a transcription of 'Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring', ushering from the gramophone at the end of Hilldyard's bed.