Sex & Genius Page 9

  'You are not extinct,' said Hilldyard, breaking his bread.

  He had to laugh. 'You're a great careers adviser.'

  'Well, put it like this. You are certainly enjoying your food.'

  'I am. This is wonderful.'

  'And you have survived because you still have feelings. Your feeling life is intact. Whereas if you'd sold out you might be viable, but the sentient, original Michael Lear would not exist any more. The thing you have struggled to be would have withered. And what use,' said Hilldyard with sudden contempt, 'is a man who sacrifices the instrument of his original self for status or money? Where does that get the human race?'

  Michael gazed into the middle distance. He seemed for a moment painfully close to the history of his own emotions, a swelling or gathering of feeling, as if everything he had suffered had risen to the surface from a deep distillation.

  He looked up. 'But then . . . what does one do?'

  'You know the answer.'

  'I'm not a novelist. I have no great talent.'

  'My friend, your talent is the innate inability to sell out.'

  The agony of it welled up. 'Everyone thinks I'm a fool!'

  'You crave an absolute. A meaningful purpose in life. Your unconscious has rebelled against compromise. There is nothing foolish in that.'

  He recovered from the anguish, laughed as lightly as he could.

  'The decks have been cleared,' said Hilldyard vibrantly. 'Lop off the old life. Start afresh.'

  'And do what?'

  'Remain true to the finest part of yourself.'

  The proposition was so deplorably straightforward.

  'Let fate take you where it will.'

  He looked down at his hands.

  'Once you have grasped the precious thing, you're free.'

  'The precious thing?'

  'What comes to you in that garden.'

  There was a moment.

  'What comes, James?'

  'Oh!' He frowned with true grandeur. 'An absolute reason for living!'

  Michael stared at him.

  'Against which no loss, however great, can compete.'

  They had both lost their wives, he realised. His mouth was dry.

  Hilldyard averted his eyes and swallowed. He blinked fast, mastering feeling.

  'James?'

  The old man came back at him, a strangeness in his eyes; and then he shrugged.

  'What comes there?'

  'The miracle of human consciousness. Death's antithesis.'

  Michael squinted against the growing brightness of the day. He could feel the sun's heat on the side of his face. He brought the wineglass to his lips, sipped and swallowed, as if washing down Hilldyard's words.

  'The kernel of all courage, of all endeavour.'

  'What can I achieve?' he said abruptly, softly.

  Hilldyard was intense. 'You've achieved it. You've stood for something.'

  Michael met his companion's gaze uncertainly. 'What?'

  'You've had an influence.'

  'On whom?'

  'My dear fellow, you've inspired me!'

  'I have?'

  'You have.'

  He did not know what to say.

  'I owe you everything.'

  Hilldyard loomed before him. His eyes were illuminated. They sought Michael out, wanting to know his gratitude had registered. He wanted to penetrate Michael's modesty.

  'Are you . . . ?'

  'I'm going to write a book.' He touched the table lightly. 'Bring on the dancing girls.'

  A smile lit itself on his face.

  'Thanks to you.'

  His heart leapt.

  'I'm dedicating it to you. Your bank manager won't give a toss but posterity might.'

  Michael blushed with pleasure.

  Hilldyard tapped his glass with a fork. 'This is my third phase. I think we can say, biographically speaking, that the florid Indian summer of James Hilldyard's literary career, the majestic late period, commenced formally at the Giordano restaurant, between courses, in the enlightened company of Michael Lear, two dozen monks and a bottle of rosé. Make that two. Waiter!' He raised an arm. 'And the conversation was more than usually inspired. Signor!'

  Michael laughed. He found it hard to contain the emotion.

  The waiter was in attendance immediately. Already new courses were arriving, and as the plates of melanzane and fritto misto slid into position another waiter was dispatched inside to the cellars. Michael marvelled at the clockwork concordance of the stages of their appetite with the promptitude of service. Everything was now more perfect than before. The sun was shining, the table was covered in food; monks were eating fiercely nearby, chomping through the deluge of salads and side-orders, bread and spaghetti that kept three waiters in a relay of perpetual motion from the kitchen; and Hilldyard was going to write again.

  The author rose from the table and silently mouthed the words 'Excuse me'. Michael watched him make his way to the hotel entrance and allowed himself his moment of elation. He was completely mystified by the notion of his 'influence', but to receive the compliment, to feel the gratitude, was unutterably good for him. If he had inspired the writer there was no greatness in it, just sympathy, appreciation, the value of his being unconditionally 'for' Hilldyard. And Michael, in his turn, had felt nourished by propinquity. To be around such a man was to absorb the energy of his awareness. Genius was a higher degree of being human, and although Hilldyard's gifts transcended his individual character as a man, to see the man whom nature had vested with such gifts, who was only a man, was to sense the preciousness of those gifts anew. All he had done was grasp the beauty of that. And however, whyever, he had had his effect.

  He inhaled, glanced at the other diners. Life was beginning. A new bottle came down on the table. The waiter spun off the cork; smiled.

  The young novice he had seen before was now eating. He turned spaghetti on his fork and listened respectfully to his elders. His eyes were downcast, as though he were keeping hold of a seriousness of feeling. He seemed in his bearing more ideally pious than his brethren, more seized of religious emotion, more committed to whatever impulse had drawn him in his early twenties to the cloth. Michael allowed the head and shoulders of the young man to rest on his eye like an icon. He had in his sights the vision of a person who had renounced the world, a man who had quit the party of modern life for a calling that seemed, in this casual age, astonishingly regressive: the love of Christ. But the image soothed Michael, and the line of robed men leaning towards each other, reaching for wine, receiving platters from penitent waiters, their ecclesiastical faces and hands flickering under poplar leaves, was like a painting, a natural work of art, and this in itself was a gift, a blessing, which enabled him to take possession of something new: the unity of himself with the world around him. It was all here for him now, present, tangible and beautiful, and if he had been given eyes to see it by Hilldyard, it was to Hilldyard that he owed his life; what more could he find anywhere else? The notion that Hilldyard had put to him was indeed incredible: that what really counted was the nurturing of something tender and exquisite, the heart of himself, the passionate core that he could feel again, a feeling to be valued in itself. It was a sensation that ran to the tips of his fingers, like a reaction to beauty, an overwhelming gratitude, still to be expressed.

  Hilldyard returned and they toasted in the new bottle, officially celebrating. Michael expressed his great delight. They moved on to a general toast, the view, the restaurant staff, the wine itself, the bliss of sitting above the valley and further sea in the afternoon sunlight. Michael became fluent at last, finding words to describe the Cimbrone Gardens. Hilldyard nodded and smiled, and between the impromptu odes of relish, directed a wagging finger at neighbouring diners.

  'Three o'clock.'

  'Is it?'

  'Three o'clock over there.'

  A young couple sat by the balcony's edge. She read Elle magazine. He took a picture with an automatic camera.

  'English, no doub
t.'

  Through the filter of his happiness he remembered there was something to be dealt with.

  Once or twice during the morning he had thought better of raising it. He had many forebodings on the matter. Hilldyard's answer he already knew. What kept him curious was the form the answer might take. Besides, he could not let down Adela. For her sake he had to tell Hilldyard what had happened, and submit to the reaction. It was better to render honesty to a mentor at the risk of irritating him than to conceal secret knowledge.

  They ordered coffee, and when the cups arrived Michael felt the moment was ripe.

  'I have a confession to make. I don't think the sin is very serious. But it needs confessing.'

  Hilldyard dandled his wineglass. 'Sounds good.'

  'I read your last novel.'

  'Which novel?'

  'The Last Muse.'

  Hilldyard replaced the glass, looked at him expressionlessly.

  'Someone gave me a copy. I know you have misgivings about it.'

  'A copy?'

  Michael wavered. He had to get it out. 'I should have asked permission, James. I . . . curiosity got the better of me.'

  Hilldyard's face paled.

  'Am I forgiven?'

  'Did Basil give it to you?'

  'Would that make any differenc eto the degree of forgiveness?'

  'I'll fire the shite. Damn him!'

  'James . . .'

  'What on earth have I done to deserve such treachery from an agent? How can he do this to me!'

  Michael was shaken. He thought quickly but not quickly enough.

  'I ordered him to destroy the thing. Since when half the world has read it. You've read it? Outrageous! Ghastly!'

  'It's not Basil's fault.'

  'It's infernally his fault. He's a tarnished, deceitful leper.'

  'Someone gave me . . .'

  'All copies lead back to his beastly Xerox machine. I gave him specific orders.' Hilldyard threw his face into his hands, a gesture utterly mortifying to Michael, as if he were out of control. Michael held his coffee cup whilst his insides turned to stone. He could not think what to say.

  'You've read it?' The tone was attacking.

  'I'm sorry.'

  Hilldyard was pierced with pain. He squinted and blinked, on the edge of tears. 'That heinous wanker.'

  'Maybe his judgement's gone.' He knew this was not true. 'He has cancer.'

  'Poor tumours.'

  'He's a sick man.'

  'Basil is more malignant than any cancer. God, I'm cross.'

  'But not with me!'

  The ledges of his eyes showed their pink rim. He looked more stricken than angry. He shook his head slowly, as if to wind down vexation and detach himself from the strength of his feelings. Eventually, he gasped, looking at Michael glumly. There was a moment of unpredictable silence. He scratched his ear. His anger was subsiding into lethargy. His eyes closed for a moment, a prayer, and then he was direct and alert and challenging. 'So what did you think?'

  He took in his breath. 'Of the novel?'

  Hilldyard nodded.

  'I thought it was brilliant.'

  It was a reaction Hilldyard could not absorb. He gazed at Michael blankly.

  'You understand my agony?'

  Michael neither understood his agony nor the sense of the question, which only heightened the embarrassment.

  'I don't think I do.'

  'Oh, come on!'

  'What should I understand?'

  Hilldyard was incredulous. 'It's obvious!'

  Michael frowned, lost.

  'You didn't realise?'

  He was floundering.

  'Oh, good heavens. The entire novel's based on fact.' Hilldyard stared at him, seeing out the charge.

  'Fact?'

  'It's my story.'

  'Your story!'

  'My life!'

  The revelation was Hilldyard's, but it was Michael who blushed.

  So many things were implicit in the confession – it was a confession – that he was at a loss to know how to react. He had trespassed into the author's private world and been caught red-handed.

  Hilldyard watched the declaration sink in with an expression of bitter triumph. And then he sighed, as if suddenly depleted. His expression changed, becoming softer and sadder. He looked engrossed for a moment and then started to speak with slow care.

  'My wife stood by me from the beginning, you see. She sacrificed everything for my work, cooked and housekept, typed my novels. She soothed me through the bad days and supported me with love. And for all that I betrayed her. Once with ''Anna'' . . . the ''Anna'' . . . that . . . And twice by writing the novel. While Joan was in her last months, I was writing a love story about my affair with another woman. Joan died with the unalterable conviction she was unloved. She lay in bed thinking her fund of love in life had been wasted. She died of grief for her own life. Whereas I loved her deeply. But I had to write that book. And after she died, I realised it was not a novel I had written but the agony of our lives together ending in this. And then, the madness over, I realised I had done in her life. The guilt of that is ineffaceable. For her sake alone the book can never be published, because I can't bear to advertise the possibility that my wife's life was in vain.'

  His hands became active tools of distress, working up a dry lather of anguish. 'Every writer gads along, feeding off life, his own feelings, the feelings of others, bending and shaping it to his purposes, until something happens that just can't be stolen into fiction. I can't take Joan's suffering into the life of a novel. I won't. It is my penance to be silent. Her agony, my posterity. Too hideous. If it were in my power I'd snap my fingers and see all copies incinerate spontaneously. And not just for her sake.' He broke off, grimaced at the view.

  Michael was held fast. The information given to him was dense with significance.

  ' ''Anna''–' The voice was croakier now, interfered with. 'She died last year.' Hilldyard managed a swooping-up glance, blinked. 'She was sixty. They are both dead, you see. Brings the whole business to an end.' He cleared his throat, aiming for control. 'And I don't want it survived by any kind of record. Which is not to deny that I loved ''Anna''. No. I loved her as if I had never loved before, as if all previous loves were mere preparation. I was totally remade by her. I became a different person. And there again is unbearability. Because one view of my life is that the highest reality was the space between two minds and that reality I experienced and then lost. Like discovering a musical talent one day and losing the use of your hands the next. And since that extraordinary summer I've been haunted by the sense of something unconsummated, as if I needed to go to another stage before I could write again, and the means to that progression was stolen from me. What could I write? In the name of what? I couldn't start a book when my own life was incomplete! That agony has cost me years, Michael.' He gasped. 'I have to find a new way, a new source for what I need to do. And I have to forget the self that branched towards ''Anna'', blossomed, and was lopped off. I have to forget her as though she never existed.' He touched his temple, as though pressing a point of pain, and then looked at Michael with heavy eyes.

  The pause was interminable. In Hilldyard's story Michael recognised his own life.

  'Can you forget her?' he said softly.

  There was no answer.

  He was struck by many things, a complex of realisations, and the strange emotion that accompanied an insight like this into the structure of another person's life. Later, he fastened on the paradox of a novel that worked artistically while embodying something unacceptable to the author's moral sensibility. He understood Hilldyard's shame, but that which was part of life was surely part of the novel, and in disowning this particular novel wasn't he suppressing the truth of his experience? Or was it perhaps that this bleak fiction, while based on fact, was inconsistent with Hilldyard's view of the novel, expressing something outside the moral compass of his own behaviour which although it had happened could not signify? He had written it and dec
ided it was not worthy of his better self, the self that would not, as an article of faith, hurt a fly.

  He let out his breath, exhaling tension. 'I can see why you didn't want a film.'

  Hilldyard slapped his forehead and screamed silently: a gesture that recapped the horror of the idea whilst saving him the effort.

  Michael spared a thought for Adela. She would be disappointed, but he looked forward to telling her. He was, in a sense, the bearer of good news: in the conscience of an artist the huge publicity of a feature film meant nothing.

  'What applies to the book applies a thousand times to the film.' He made a ghastly expression. 'Just think what they'd do to it.'

  'Well, that's the answer I'll give her.'

  'Give whom?'

  'The girl who lent me your book.'

  'A girl?'

  He already knew that he had to go into this. 'An actress whom Basil's film people cast as Anna. When you turned down the offer she thought there'd been a misunderstanding.' He shrugged. 'So she came here.'

  Hilldyard was appalled. 'She's in Positano!'

  'She is.'

  'Why on earth?'

  'To ask you to reconsider.'

  'My God. These people are shameless!'

  As he feared, Hilldyard was over-reacting. 'Basil told her about me. So instead of doorstepping you, she contacted me.'

  'How atrocious!'

  Michael smiled awkwardly. 'She wanted to be sure you weren't misled by the American agent.'

  'That twit.'

  'She says Shane Hammond is committed to a faithful adaptation.'

  'Who?'

  'He's a film star.'

  'God!'

  'She assured me of their best intentions.'

  'I'll bet she did.'

  He hesitated. He was giving the facts for the sake of completeness, not to seem naive. 'I think she's perfectly sincere.'

  'Actresses are always sincere.'

  This seemed ungenerous. 'She had interesting things to say.'

  'And ambition is always eloquent.'

  'Maybe.' He frowned. 'But so is conviction.'

  'She obviously convinced you.'

  It seemed silly to argue about the bona fides of a woman Hilldyard had never met. Michael had no great mission to stand up for her, but he needed to defend his judgement. 'That should be a recommendation.'