‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I meant to tell you that I’ve read your new novel.’
‘You have?’ asked Dash, looking up hopefully.
‘Yes. It’s your best in many years, if you don’t mind me saying so. I thought I might write a little notice about it for the New Yorker, if that’s all right with you. Something to recommend it to readers.’
‘That would be very kind of you,’ said Dash. ‘Every little helps, as you know.’
‘Maurice was telling me earlier that he was reading it on the plane,’ said Gore.
‘Yes, I must admit I was flattered when he plucked it out of his bag as we took our seats.’
Gore, lifting his wine glass, set it down and looked from Maurice to Dash and back to Maurice again.
‘You brought the novel with you?’ asked Gore.
‘Of course, I posted him a copy upon publication,’ continued Dash. ‘But I know how busy he is and didn’t expect him to find the time to read it.’
‘I thought you said that Dash gave it to you at the airport,’ said Gore, looking at the boy.
‘You must have misunderstood,’ said Maurice. ‘I said that there were many copies of it in the airport bookshop.’
‘Is that what you said?’ asked Gore. ‘I remember differently.’
‘It’s a fine piece of work, Dash,’ said Maurice, turning to his benefactor. ‘Very moving and insightful on the ways of the flesh. I hope to be able to write as well as you one day.’
Dash looked around the table proudly, beaming from ear to ear, while Maurice reached for his wine glass and drained it in one go. Gore enjoyed the look on the boy’s face at that moment, although it was almost impossible to interpret exactly what he was thinking. Why, he thought, he could write a thousand words on that expression alone.
He discovered Dash walking the grounds early the following morning, when Howard and Maurice were still asleep. Gore usually took a walk at this time of day, immediately following his bath, the morning air clearing his mind of the fog that lingered from the night before. In recent times his dreams had become disturbing and his sleep more fretful, a condition he put down to looming old age. He would be sixty-five this year. Pensionable. Neither of his parents had made it past seventy-four and the idea that he had less than a decade to live was alarming to him. There were still so many books to write and, although he feigned indifference to the current publishing world, so many that he wanted to read.
Sometimes he wondered who would go first, he or Howard. Wasn’t there something in Wuthering Heights about Heathcliff wanting Cathy to die before him so she wouldn’t have to go through the trauma of a life spent alone? Or was it the other way around? He couldn’t remember. It had been so long since he’d read the novel. But the line was in there somewhere. Do I want Howard to die before me? he asked himself now; and no came the unequivocal answer. Let me go first, he muttered, appealing to the gods. Let him deal with the loneliness. In ancient times, a sacrifice would have been offered for such petitions. An animal slaughtered and its vital organs burnt upon an altar while the priest wore a mask to prevent himself from witnessing evil rising in the smoke. For a brief moment, he considered how easy it would be to set out a dais at La Rondinaia and how he could procure a young lamb from one of the village boys, but then shook his head, laughing at the absurdity of the notion. Howard would have him committed if he came out to discover him dressed like a monk and chanting incantations on the terrace.
He spotted Dash strolling where the garden met the cliff-face, cutting a ridiculous figure in a garish Hawaiian shirt and shorts that revealed pale, hairless legs. Gore’s first instinct was to walk back towards the villa, where he could breakfast in solitude, but his friend’s dejected gait and unhappy expression persuaded him to walk in his direction.
‘Mio amico,’ he said, raising a hand in greeting, and Dash smiled back, nodding gloomily. He looked tired and Gore suspected that he hadn’t slept well. Cassiopeia had put Dash and Maurice in adjoining rooms, only a thin wall separating the beds from each other, and it was possible that he had heard the young man rising in the night as he went about the business of ambition.
‘Hello, Gore,’ said Dash. ‘It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?’
Gore didn’t reply for he hated talking about the weather and despised people who did so. But his step fell in time with Dash and they walked in silence at first, looking at the wild flowers as they made their way in the direction of the olive groves and the vineyard.
‘You’re lucky to live in so beautiful a place,’ said Dash eventually.
‘I am,’ admitted Gore. ‘I don’t believe I could ever leave.’
‘Don’t you miss America?’
‘Not particularly. I’ve had enough of America to last me ten lifetimes. It’s not the country it was. Occasionally I even find myself missing Nixon and, when things have reached that point, it’s time to wave goodbye.’
Dash smiled. ‘Who do you see?’ he asked. ‘From the past, I mean?’
‘Everyone. Sometimes when I’m awake, sometimes when I’m asleep. I was sure that I could sense Nina here last month, even though she’s been dead more than ten years.’ He paused, reached down for a stone and threw it casually into the greenery. ‘Jackie comes when she’s in Italy, which is good of her. She and Lee visited together last year, in fact. We got drunk and took turns seeing who could make the most vulgar comments about George Bush.’
‘Who won?’
‘The Princess Radziwill, of course. She may be a terrible actress but she knows more dirty jokes than a sailor and her delivery is always pitch-perfect.’
Dash said nothing as Gore cocked his head back a little, closing his eyes and breathing the scent of the flowers deep into his lungs.
‘You’re working on something new, I suppose?’ Dash asked after a while, and Gore nodded.
‘A compendium of my essays,’ he told him.
‘All your essays?’
‘Well, a lot of them, anyway. It’ll be a big book.’
‘Will you come home to promote it?’
‘My dear Dash, I am home.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I expect so,’ said Gore. ‘I may even stay for a month or two. Catch up with whoever’s still alive and terrified of running into me.’ In the olden days, of course, he would have been invited to stay in the White House when he was visiting Washington but there was precious little chance of that now. He’d slept in the Lincoln Bedroom dozens of times when Jack and Jackie were in charge. Never under Lyndon, who’d frozen him out because he didn’t like the idea of a queer sullying the bedsheets. Twice under Tricky Dick, including a night where they’d got drunk on whisky and ended up making midnight raids on the kitchen, like a pair of teenage boys, leading Pat to come down and give them a thoroughly enjoyable scolding. Ford had never liked him, Carter had never understood him and Reagan had never approved of him. Bush, he assumed, had never even heard of him. So that was that, he was certain, until a cultured Democrat, if such a thing still existed, got elected again. ‘Shall we sit?’ he asked, indicating a bench that stood beneath the shade of an olive tree, facing in the direction of the coastline.