Though she had found the story ‘a bit silly’, Samantha assured me that she had enjoyed Devotion, especially Imogen’s performance. ‘She really has something,’ Samantha said, congratulating me on my good fortune. Val concurred. Imogen was ‘the best thing about it’, Val told me. But Imogen had deserved a better film, she thought. Aspects of Devotion had troubled Val. The scene in which we are shown Beatrice after the wedding, preparing for bed, for example. Why, she wondered, was it necessary for us to see her naked, even if only for a second or two? Why do we not see her husband undressed? Why always the woman? Some observations were made on the topic of objectification.
Perhaps, I suggested, this had been what Devotion had been about, to some extent.
‘Of course, of course,’ said Val. But she was inclined to think that the good intentions were something of an alibi. Not that she was accusing Imogen of any such thing; the fault was the director’s. ‘It annoys me,’ she said, in case I had not noticed. We were at the customary café, which had a rack of newspapers and magazines for the customers’ use. Taking a magazine, Val searched for evidence. It was easily found. ‘This sort of thing,’ she said, displaying pictures of a woman on a yacht. She too was an actress, and not one whose reputation was dependent upon the excellence of her body, as far as I knew, but here she presented herself in a bikini, in scenes of ersatz spontaneity: sipping a drink through a straw; shielding her eyes from the sun to gaze out to sea; laughing with a male companion. One picture was honestly posed – a coy topless shot, from the back, revealing nothing more than the undercurve of a breast. ‘This is what gets me,’ said Val. ‘The collusion. It gets me down.’
First impression of Vaclass="underline" the lack of embarrassment was remarkable. We had met to ‘clear the air’, on neutral territory – the café that became our favoured venue. Val’s eyes compelled attention, and her posture was exemplary. Much work had gone into the maintenance of the hair’s lush dishevelment; the same was true, I felt, of the air of well-being. Sauntering stride, beneficent smile, slow-blinking eyes – it all advertised the deep inner harmony that she had managed to achieve. I found the performance too studied. But for Samantha the attraction had been powerful and immediate: the conduct of Val’s son’s had become disruptive; she was called to the school to discuss the situation; and in the course of the third or fourth discussion a moment of ignition occurred. I could not understand it.
Crossing the park this evening, I heard a harmonica. The sequence of sounds was simple and not unpleasant, if not quite a tune; the improvisation of someone who could not really play. It was William. ‘Another skill I picked up on my travels,’ he told me. ‘Hear how sad I am,’ he said, and produced a mournful fading slide of notes. He was wearing exactly the same clothes as when I saw him before; they had not been washed in the interim. The house-clearing job was for one day only; since then, nothing. I asked him if he were staying at the Melville Street hostel. The notion appalled him. ‘You get some desperate characters there,’ he said, ‘and I’m not desperate.’ For now, he’s at a friend’s place. It’ll do for a day or two, but there’s not a good atmosphere, because the friend has some dodgy mates. One of them is a dealer; a ‘cold-eyed bastard’, said William. He had a lot to say about the cold-eyed bastard.
It was not so much a conversation as an attended monologue. I could not speak to William as easily as Imogen could. This was what I was thinking when he asked abruptly: ‘And what about Imogen? You still in touch with her?’
I told him what had happened.
William looked at me as though at a picture that had suddenly gone out of focus, and said nothing. He turned away and stared into the ground. ‘That’s terrible,’ he whispered. Grimacing, he scrubbed at his face as if to ease an exasperating itch.
We talked about Imogen, briefly.
‘It’s unbelievable,’ he murmured. ‘I really liked her.’
‘So did I,’ I said.
Still gazing into the ground, he put a hand on my arm, gingerly, like a blind man ascertaining the location of a rail.
‘Why have you been hiding her from us?’ asked Emma, slighted, after Francesca had reported that my attachment to the actress was somewhat stronger than had been supposed, and that she was a charming and unpretentious person. Imogen was in the midst of preparations for Le Grand Concert de la Nuit, which gave some plausibility to my excuse – that her schedule made it difficult to make plans. The explanation was accepted, provisionally. Emma believed that she knew the reason for my evasiveness. She had not seen La Châtelaine or Devotion, but from what she had found out she could understand why I might not feel comfortable with the idea of introducing Imogen. But Emma wanted me to know that she was rather more broad-minded than she imagined I imagined her to be – no less broad-minded, in fact, than her daughter. ‘She’s intrigued,’ Francesca told me.
The date of the visit was agreed many weeks in advance; when the day came, Imogen’s mood was beginning to darken, but she was well enough, she assured me. On another day, she would have answered more expansively the questions that Emma and Nicholas had for her. They had many questions about the business of film-making; they talked to her as if she were some sort of explorer. That evening, Imogen’s manner was polite, patient, modest, self-deprecating. They had expected someone more voluble, I am sure; more vivid; perhaps more glamorous. Nobody looking at pictures of the group around the table would have guessed her profession, said Emma, when she phoned the following day. This was by way of praise. The reticence had been something of a surprise, Emma confessed, but she understood why I would be attracted to her. Some people, without really doing anything, manage to transmit a certain charge, Emma said. ‘Charismatic, isn’t she?’ she said. She talked about ‘still waters’, and surmised that Imogen might be easily bored. ‘I think we bored her, a bit,’ she said, not as a complaint. That was not so, I assured her, though there were times when Imogen was bored by herself. But there was never to be another visit.
Walking home, I am startled by a laugh from a young woman. The sound is exactly the delighted laugh that Imogen produced for the scene in which Julius does the sleight-of-hand trick, seeming to make his fiancée’s handkerchief disappear. A dozen takes were required, because the handkerchief would not fly as Marcus Colhoun wanted it to. At each take Imogen’s laugh was a perfect expression of spontaneous delight. Afterwards, Marcus remarked that it was easier to fake an orgasm than to do what Imogen had done. To make herself laugh, she told Marcus, she brought to mind an incident from her childhood: her brother being chased by a demented duck. The mirth of Beatrice is indistinguishable from genuine mirth. And her laugh is not at all like the sinister laughter of Agamédé, or the soft laughter of the elegant Claire, or the laughter of young Caroline, all of which were quite different from Imogen’s.
Imogen started to rub her brow. After two or three slow strokes she began to rub quickly, scowling, as if trying to remove an ink-stain from her skin. Then she lowered her hand and looked right at me, fearfully. ‘I can’t remember anything,’ she said. ‘I can’t think.’