Sex & Genius Page 8

  He held his chin between forefinger and thumb; was struck to think of what he had come through.

  Later, after the stone's coldness had gone through the seat of his trousers, he rose and made his way along the avenue of cypresses. He was poised. He almost felt he had wept. He was ready for the walk to the belvedere.

  Hilldyard had shared the garden with him and now, even in his solitude, he felt the impulse repeat itself; as though the blessedness of the place called out for more souls. It was so romantic here: romantic for the young man with his book of verse, romantic for the Italian girl on her tour of the Riviera, romantic for hitch-hikers and backpackers, who in the hot months would teem over Ravello, fighting the sun and swigging from plastic bottles until they found a bench on which to flop and gaze at the aery pines and violent blue sky.

  When he returned to the main path all he could see ahead was a formal arch and through the arch brightness. He glanced to his side, taking leave of the garden, as though preparing for something inordinate, which suddenly began as he went under the arch and on to the balcony and saw the sky stretch ear to ear across space. He crossed to the rail where another dimension plummeted to a yonder of minute roads and pink roofs, as though the famous coastline had sunk in prostration at his feet. He murmured at the sight of it. Ahead, the vast expanse of sea and sky was seamed at the horizon. Beneath him, a kingdom of warped fields and miniature basilicas rolled off to the shore. He was caught in the element of light and strained to encompass its impact on vision, as if everything in creation were laid out before him and could only be known by the shock of its magnitude. The view could not be reckoned. Its immensity overwhelmed the senses. He stood by the rail, suffused with the spectacle, as if the worries and sorrows of an average human life were here to be dazzled off; and as he realised that the view had always been here, waiting for him to arrive and succumb to its awesome grandeur, he felt something subside within him, and in his eyes the sting of an agonising gratitude.

  He stood by the rail for several minutes and let the breeze cool his cheeks. When in due course he was brimful, he turned away, looking for a seat, and found Hilldyard behind him, crossing the balcony and preparing to conclude his own pilgrimage.

  He stood back, allowing the older man his moment.

  After a minute, the novelist turned round, blank-faced.

  Michael went to his side and together they silently strolled in the planned direction of lunch, Michael thinking lightly, warmly, that she would have liked it here. Christine would have loved it.

  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 di
ning.'

  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?'