101 Pieces of Me (21 page)

“No, it’s just…” What was it? Aidan sometimes seemed much more than twenty-five, and sometimes much less. He had his drawn, serious face and intense looks, but when he was charming people and making them smile, he seemed no older than me. “I just never really considered it, that’s all,” I ended lamely.

A current of cold air came in as Aidan pushed the heavy door open. “Hold on to your hat,” he said, turning up his collar. “Raining again. Do you think you can walk? It’s not far. Or shall we get another cab?”

It wasn’t raining much, though it was windy. “Let’s walk,” I said. “But where are we going?”

“The post office in Trafalgar Square. If you’re going to come to Italy, you’ll need a passport.”

I
had never known anyone who had a passport. There was not much call for such things in Haverth. The wind was blowing my fur against my cheek and disarraying my hair. “Aidan, slow down, I’m getting out of breath. Do you mean you get a passport from the post office?”

“No, you get a form and fill it in,” he explained, shortening his strides. “Then some other people need to write things on it and sign it, and then it’s sent to the Passport Office. Since you’re under twenty-one, one of those people will be your father.”

“My father! But how can we explain to him why I’m going to Italy?”

“Don’t worry,” he said airily. “It’s perfectly natural that you might have to go abroad to film some scenes. You haven’t told your parents it’s all finished, have you?”

“I don’t think so. I can’t remember.”

“Well, no matter. If you have, we can always say ‘something came up’, which is what people always say when they don’t wish to explain.”

I considered this. “But that would be lying, Aidan. To my family.”

“Oh, not really. A bit of constructive vagueness can be useful sometimes.”

It did not take long to get a passport-application form and establish a poste restante address.

“Miss Clara Hope, Post Office Box 3353, Trafalgar Square, London WC2,”
I read from the paper the assistant gave me. “Sounds very grand.”

“It isn’t,” said Aidan, ushering me towards a table. “People have been using poste restante addresses at hotels and post offices all over the world for centuries, to hide their whereabouts, or their identities, or their infidelities, or their criminal activities…”

“Romantic, then,” I suggested.

“Quite.”

We sat down and I began to fill in the form.
“Sarah Harriet Freebody,”
Aidan read over my shoulder. “Your real name is much nicer than mine. Who would wish to be called Allan Turbin? I used to be nicknamed ‘Dick’ at school, as it’s so like Turpin.”

“I hate Harriet,” I told him. “It’s my granny’s name on my mother’s side. She’s always called Hetty, which isn’t quite so bad.”

“And Sarah?”

“Mam’s name.” I concentrated on writing, trying not to think about Mam. “I much prefer Clara.”

“So do I,” he said, with enthusiasm. “Though I’ll have to get used to calling you Cousin Sarah when we’re in Italy, won’t I?”

I smiled. “So shall I call you Cousin Allan, then?’”

“You’d better not!”

When I had completed as much of the form as I could, Aidan bought a sheet of writing paper and an envelope, wrote a letter to my father asking him to ensure the rest of the form was completed as soon as possible, put everything in the envelope and sealed it. “I’ll send this registered post,” he assured me, “so if it gets lost we’ll know. And if it doesn’t get lost, you’ll soon be the owner of a little navy blue booklet with a number stamped on it and the Royal Coat of Arms. A British passport opens doors across the globe, you know.”

I did not need to open doors across the globe; all I needed to do was travel to Italy under my real name. “How long will it take?” I asked. “To get the passport?”

“A couple of weeks. And you need photographs too.” He scrutinized me sideways. “If I were you I wouldn’t wear all that slap. And put up your hair. The less like Clara Hope you look, the better.”

W
hen we got back to the flat I spread my purchases out on the bed. Although they were lovely, especially the striped cardigan, it gave me an uneasy feeling to see them lying there, waiting to be worn and admired. David had bought me things, spending money for no other reason than to woo me and use me for his own ends. I wondered if I would ever wear the beaded dress or the bracelet again. I was so glad he had not bought me my beloved fox fur! But the clothes spread before me now, which Aidan had paid for without demur, served to point up the difference between the two men. Aidan seemed to care nothing for the trappings of the film business, which were so important to David. Aidan lived modestly, employing no housekeeper, possessing no motor car. His clothes were good but few, and some of them were so old they made him look quite poverty stricken. He smoked and drank, that was true, but not cigars and champagne. He didn’t go to nightclubs or casinos and had seemed uncomfortable that night at the club, and not just because Simona had been flirting with him. It was as if he wished to distance himself from the unabashed acquisition, and display, of wealth.

And yet he must come from a wealthy family. I pondered over this. David had ruined Aidan’s mother in more ways than one; he had taken her reputation and her fortune. I thought about the cruise she had been on when she died. “Someone suggested” she take it, Aidan had said. Had the “someone” also paid for it? What had she felt like, boarding the ship at Tilbury, embracing her son, then watching him go back down the gangplank and join the crowd on the dock to wave goodbye?

What had been in Aidan’s mind, and in his heart? Did his disgust with David extend to disgust with the entire business of acting and making films to the extent that he was considering giving up altogether?

There was a knock on the door and I heard Aidan’s voice. “Are you changing, or can I come in?”

“Oh, I’ll come out!” I began to fold the new clothes back into their tissue paper. If he saw them arrayed like this, he might think I was as obsessed by clothes as the people he despised. “Just a minute!”

When I opened the door I noticed he’d gone into the kitchen, where he stood with a bottle of wine in one hand and a glass in the other. “I would have brought this to you in your boudoir, madam, you know,” he said with the sort of arch look beloved of stage actors. “Madam likes red, does she not?”

“Yes, please.”

I perched on the kitchen stool, hugging my knees. I had to make myself as small as possible because the kitchen was not designed to contain more than one person at a time. Aidan poured us each a glass of wine and held his up. “Chin chin.” We clinked glasses. “To Italy.”

W
e drank. The wine was strong, but delicious. I took two more sips. “Right,” said Aidan. “I’m Sergeant-Major Tobias, and you’re Private Hope. Here’s the drill.”

“Drill! You’re too young to have been in the war.”

“I spent the war in a boarding school, for heaven’s sake. Do you think we didn’t have drill?”

I tried to imagine what Aidan had been like as a schoolboy. I would have been a very little girl. “So while I was learning my letters and knitting socks for Our Boys in France,” I said, “you were practising to
be
one of Our Boys.”

“But luckily the war ended before I had to go, thank God.”

I thought of the memorial in Haverth that bore the names of sixteen young men from the parish who had given their lives in France. One of them was Mary Trease’s half-brother. When the telegram had come, the loss ceased to be personal to the Treases and became that of the whole village. Robert Trease had been killed early in the war; as more and more families were bereaved, and fiancées robbed of their marriages, all we prayed for was the end.

“Ready?” said Aidan. “I’m Signor Lingo, the proprietor of the language school. I speak English, of course, but only just.” He cleared his throat and took on his character. “So, Miss Freebody, you wish to have Italian class? I am so very honoured! But please, you tell me why you come to Castiglioncello?”

“Um… My cousin, Mr Tobias, is acting in a film being made near here. We have taken an apartment in the town, and I shall be keeping house for him. As we are to be here for some time, I wish to learn to converse with Italian people.”

“Very good,” said Aidan. He poured some more wine into his glass and held out the bottle, but I shook my head. “And, Miss Freebody,” he went on, still as Signor Lingo, “may I ask what you do when you are not learning of the Italian here with us? You have free time? You like to come out with me to swimming, perhaps?”

I was frowning at him, my glass halfway to my mouth. “What?”

“I’m trying to be authentic,” he said. He put down his wine glass and shrugged, spreading his hands. “We poor men, we see bee-oo-ti-ful lady like you and we cannot help ourselves. You come to beach with me?”

I took a sip. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Just warning you. Italians are well-known for being Casanovas, as I’m sure you know. They’ll try it on with you, Clara, every single one you meet, so I hope you’re ready.”

“Well…” I was not sure what to say. “I’ll have to be, I suppose.”

He had taken up his glass again and was looking into it, swirling the wine around moodily. “You see, what I’m really trying to say, in my clumsy way, is that I don’t think you realize how very, very
attractive
you are. To men, I mean.” His cheeks suddenly flushed. I was intrigued; I had never seen his composure disintegrate so suddenly.

“Obviously, David’s eye was caught by your astonishing beauty on that newsreel, and, to give him his due, he also recognized talent in you. But every man on that film set would have courted you if he could. Well, except Dennis, but that’s another story. The only reason they kept their hands off you is that David already had his hands
on
you.” He had recovered enough to look at me with glowing eyes. “Believe me, Clara, beauty is a gorgeous thing, but it can be a weapon, too. And in the end, when you’ve fought off God knows how many Italians, you’re going to have to use that weapon against David.”

The kitchen was silent. I sat there on the stool, and Aidan leaned against the stove. We regarded each other warily. I had begun to understand what he was saying to me but was not sure I wanted to. “You mean, I must use the fact that he finds me so attractive to…”

“To weaken him,” supplied Aidan. “And when he is weak, we will be strong.”