Seducing Ingrid Bergman by Greenhalgh Chris

Author:Greenhalgh, Chris [Greenhalgh, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

11

Ingrid receives her final summons from the studio. They’re calling her back. She signed a contract and can’t delay any longer. There are repeated telegrams, too, from Petter, urging her return.

Light rain soaks the streets and everywhere the green scent of the trees mixes with the dark sweet odour of wet earth. The city is damp and lit.

For dinner, we go to Maxim’s. One last luxury. Afterwards we go to the clubs. Monseigneur first, then Jimmy’s.

It’s still raining when we leave Jimmy’s. We feel the tiny pressure of it on our faces. We walk slowly, arm-in-arm in the mist and drizzle, listening to the sound of the wind like a river in the dark and our footsteps hollow on the cobbles. Tables remain on the pavement outside the cafés, dripping, cane chairs stacked on their metal tops. A barge glides by silently, lights dimmed, disappearing under the low curve of a bridge.

We saunter past the New York Herald building, its windows full of clocks. Each clock tells the time in a different part of the world. We work out that Ingrid will be nine hours behind in Los Angeles, so that when it’s light here, it’ll be mostly dark there and vice versa. Not to mention the thousands of miles of ocean and space in between.

The day dawns. Things start to separate out from their shadows.

In her hotel room, Ingrid’s voice grows thin. ‘Why are we doing this?’

I can’t find an answer.

She begins removing her earrings. They each plink as she places them in a glass ashtray. ‘If you ever get bored…’

‘Why would I get bored?’

What she wants me to say, of course, is that I’ll follow her. And the better part of me wants to agree with this, but the perverse part urges me to say nothing, to withhold any decision, to make no promises, to tell her that if she wants more, then maybe she’d better look elsewhere. But I don’t say this either. I don’t say anything.

She turns so that I see the back of her head in the mirror. ‘I don’t want to play games, Capa.’ There’s a silence. ‘You want to run away like always?’

I try not to blink.

Something brims within her, spills into a wet smile. She’s never seemed so beautiful. ‘I’m scared,’ she says.

‘Of what?’

‘You going off to another war.’

‘I’m not going anywhere – for the moment anyway.’

‘But you will, I know it.’

I shrug. ‘I’m lucky, remember.’

‘I’m serious. You’ve got to stop.’

It’s true. Terrible though it is, however, it’s still the only job I’d consider getting up for in the morning. Nothing compares to the sensation of being there, testing yourself against it. Nothing compares to the dreadful energy that floods your body. You become focused on what’s happening and the fact that it really matters. It sounds nuts, I know, but everything else seems dull and unimportant, and it’s hard to imagine that I won’t keep on with it until either I die in my sleep or – more likely – in some hotspot, with an unpaid hotel bill, some cameras and a couple of fancy shirts.

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