Jonathan Buckley - The Great Concert of the Night

Ludovica Albertoni was sixty years old when she died of a fever, but the Ludovica Albertoni sculpted by Bernini, marvellously, is youthful in her fevered ecstasy. She is beautiful; the stone is etherealised. Her face is Imogen’s face, her hands are Imogen’s hands, her dying eyes are Imogen’s. Which is not to say, as Charles de Brosses quipped, speaking of Bernini’s Saint Teresa : ‘If this is divine love, I know it very well.’

Before the airport, time for one last sight: Sant’Andrea della Valle. In the dome, high above the floor of the church, above the golden walls, a welter of clouds and bodies; amid the celestial turbulence, the Virgin is being taken into the light of Heaven, which is signified by the circle of light in the lantern of the dome. I discern a large figure, clad in red and Virginal blue; a kneeling man, wearing black; a nude male, seated; cherubs; cloaks. Without the use of a lens, the scene is not legible from where we stand. We comprehend the action, but cannot properly see it. A painting created to be imperfectly visible.

Tonight, on BBC 1, part one of June 6, 11pm. An adulterous businessman is involved in a hit-and-run accident, and ‘finds himself lost in a labyrinth of lies’. The businessman is played by Richard Hatton – the Richard Hatton with whom Imogen was once involved. More of his hair has gone, and his face has lost some definition, but I recognised him immediately from the small photo in the paper. I remember the evening: we came out of the cinema near Hyde Park Corner and he must have registered Imogen’s voice, because he turned round with some purpose, as if his name had been called. As soon as he saw her he moved in, arms wide; his delight was immense. Visually he was interesting: sharp facial bones, strong jaw, very tall, lean. Though several years short of forty, he had a receding hairline, but the profile was photogenic in a Mahler-like way. The combination of tweed jacket, white T-shirt and well-worn jeans was artful. ‘An old friend of mine,’ was how Imogen introduced him. His quick smirk clarified the meaning for my benefit. He gave me a handshake of potent masculinity. When he suggested a drink, she looked at me, in the hope, I felt, that I could improvise an excuse. He saw the glance, I am sure, but it did not deter him.

He bought the drinks; in return, Imogen asked the opening question: ‘So how are you?’

Richard was very well; Richard was busy. He was about to start work on a TV three-parter – he was going to be an outwardly respectable man whose mind was a seething pit of violent fantasies. A ‘ticking bomb’, was the phrase he used. The role had entailed a great deal of research. Some of the things he’d been reading had really messed with his head; he told us a horrible story about an outwardly respectable rapist-murderer.

‘And what about you?’ he finally asked Imogen, after ten minutes. The eye contact was powerful; his self-belief was impregnable.

He did not enquire as to how we had met, or what I might do for a living. While Imogen was talking, he glanced at me a few times, thinking, obviously: ‘What does she see in this one?’ A reasonable question; I have often asked it myself. But what troubled me more, at that moment, was that Imogen had been in a relationship with this tedious and self-absorbed character.

When we parted he kissed her and said that he would call, which he did, the following week, to suggest, with little preamble, that they might meet one afternoon and go to bed. One of the things that Richard most admired about himself was that he always went straight to the heart of the matter. Within two days of meeting Imogen, she told me, he had informed her that they were attracted to each other; the statement was made plainly, as if he were merely observing that her hair was the same colour as his. And she was indeed attracted to him. He was an intelligent actor, and his bluntness was disarming. Before long, however, it became apparent that the intelligence of Richard Hatton was a somewhat cosmetic quality. He was intrigued by the paradoxical phenomenon of himself: it was strange that he had become an actor despite the fact that he was, essentially, a ‘deeply introspective’ person. Some people, he knew, disliked him for what they took to be his tactlessness. Honesty was not the easy way to make friends, he knew. He submitted himself to regular sessions of self-inquest, he told Imogen, making it sound like a regimen of quasi-monastic spiritual discipline. But in fact, she said, Richard studied himself ‘as if reading the Sunday papers’; he skim-read himself, to divert himself, and perhaps learn a little. And by the following day he had forgotten everything he’d read the day before.

Imogen was not the same person now as the one she had been when Richard Hatton had been her lover. The relationship had been brief, and was no sooner commenced than regretted. ‘But he is very good at his job,’ she said. I watched part one of June 6, 11pm. Richard Hatton was not very good, I thought. Too much staring into the carpet as if into the pit of damnation; too much stroking of the brow. Too much acting.

Lucretius on love: ‘This is the only case in which the more we have, the more the heart burns with terrible desire. Food and drink, when taken into the body, enter their appointed places easily, and thus our desire for water and bread is satisfied. But from a lovely face or blooming complexion nothing comes into the body for us to enjoy other than images, flimsy images, and vain hopes.’ De rerum natura, Book Four. Saint Jerome maintains that Lucretius became insane after taking a love potion, and composed De rerum natura in his lucid intervals, prior to committing suicide.

Grand Parade: William on a bench, with his head resting against the stone balustrade. At first I thought he was asleep, but then a group of students walked past him and he sat up to speak to them. One of the students, acting as spokesman, turned a pocket of his jeans inside out. William smiled and put a finger to an eyebrow by way of salute. He wiped his face with his palms and leaned back.

Only when I sat down did he open his eyes. ‘Well, hello there,’ he said, in an approximately American accent. A clot of ketchup hung in his beard. He closed his eyes; he was worn out, not drunk. And he had lost a tooth. ‘You’re looking well,’ he said, and laughed.

At this point, although he was in a bad way, I had no intention other than to give him a modest amount of cash, as usual.

‘What happened to the tooth?’ I asked.

‘Came loose, pulled it out,’ he answered. ‘Saved myself a fortune.’

People were walking past us all the time. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, ‘but I’ll have ask you to move on in a minute. No offence. But if they see me talking to you, they think I’ve got some sort of social life. Got to be on your own to maximise the sympathy. Or have a nice dog.’ He turned to look at me. ‘Maybe I should invest in something fluffy. What do you think?’

I asked him where he’d been sleeping. He’d been in another squat, he told me, but a developer had sent some heavies round, and now the place was boarded up. ‘So where will you be tonight?’ I asked.

‘Give us a hundred quid and I’ll try the Holiday Inn,’ he answered.