‘Is that your signature, Tony?’
Tony grinned. ‘Yes it is. As are those two.’ He pointed to two depictions of the mouth of a cave — presumably one of Capri’s several grottos. ‘They are for sale.’
They were actually quite good. Much better than their brethren on the wall of the restaurant.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sophie’s surreptitious smile. ‘What about the vegetables?’ I asked. I had to.
‘They are history,’ said Tony.
‘Oh.’
Elaine sniggered.
Tony shrugged. ‘I came back from the war and looked at them afresh. I think the idea is good — I still love the idea. But the paintings aren’t. But you know, I don’t feel bad. This is a beautiful island and I want to paint it. I’ve started taking lessons from a little old Scottish lady, Mrs Mackenzie, who is really very good. I’m learning a lot from her.’ He nodded at the walls. ‘And I can get decent money for these.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ I said. ‘If I had any cash, I’d buy one.’
‘We’ve commissioned one of the terrace outside the villa,’ said Madeleine. ‘Tony is going to ship it to New York.’
Over dinner, as we admired the progress of the slowly descending sun over the bay, I caught up on what everyone had been doing. Stephen had just been offered a starring role by one of the Hollywood studios in The Beechwood Legacy. He was flying to California, leaving Sophie and their two children at their home in Twickenham. Sophie had worked at the Free French headquarters in London for a couple of years, until her son had arrived. Sophie was very proud of her children, Fabrice and Beatrice, and looking at their pictures I could see why. They were both strikingly attractive, which wasn’t at all surprising given their parents. Little two-year-old Beatrice, in particular, had Sophie’s big eyes.
Nathan had had an energetic war. A modern war needed oil, and Nathan had made himself very useful getting the oil to the right places. Although young, he had soon established his reputation for getting things done quickly, for reliability and for trustworthiness. As soon as war had been declared by Britain and France on Germany, he had recognized that even though his country wasn’t involved, its oil would be desperately needed. He had arrived at Wakefield Oil’s New York headquarters and taken control. Unlike some of his competitors, he never placed his own company’s profits ahead of the needs of his country, something that had not gone unnoticed by the US government. Wakefield Oil was a much stronger company after the war than it had been before it, and as a result, more profitable. Now Nathan was focusing on the Middle East, which he predicted would be the big marginal producer of oil for the rest of the century. I knew nothing about the stock market, but I resolved that if I ever did manage to save some money, I would work out how to buy shares in Wakefield Oil.
Madeleine was proud of her husband. Her English had achieved a rapid fluency, although her accent was still strongly French, but now with a definite American tinge. She said she loved living in New York. There were as yet no small Giannellis to be photographed, but she seemed to be just as proud as Sophie of the little Trickett-Smiths.
And Elaine? Elaine drank and smoked and laughed, occasionally snuggling up to Tony.
Chapter VIII
Amori et Dolori Sacrum
We got up in dribs and drabs the following morning. The plan was to have a picnic luncheon at the Villa Damecuta, one of Tiberius’s villas on the other side of Monte Solaro, near the village of Anacapri. Tony tried to take the bus, but it turned out that it was years since Nathan and Madeleine had taken a bus anywhere, and they insisted on two of Capri’s open taxis. The journey was only two and a half miles, but the taxis took twenty minutes to heave their way up the dramatic winding road, somehow ascending what looked like an impassable rampart of rock. Staring at the soft fissures in the cliff, like wrinkles in an old man’s face, I realized that Capri was made of limestone, just like the Dales back home.
I was sitting next to Stephen.
‘I have an apology to make, old man,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago.’
‘No, it’s important. I promised Sophie I would make it, and I will.’
I listened.
‘I don’t apologize for marrying Sophie, but I behaved like a cad when we were driving down here that summer. Of course I knew how you felt about her. I should have told you right away. It would have been unpleasant, but you would have found out soon enough. Which of course you did. So — sorry.’
I smiled. ‘Apology accepted. Gratefully.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now, does your old mucker Suetonius have anything to say about this place we’re going to?’
‘No idea. I haven’t read Suetonius for a long time.’
‘Glad to hear it. He always struck me as a bit fishy. Even in the original Latin.’
Anacapri was much less sophisticated than Capri town, and it was also a couple of degrees cooler. It was a pleasant walk from the village down through farms and smallholdings of vineyards, olive groves, vegetable gardens and lemon trees. The villa itself turned out to be a pattern of low ruined walls in a field of flowers, grasses and thistles, guarded by a round medieval watchtower. Another cliff edge, another stunning view of Ischia.
Tony had brought along bread, cheese, Italian ham and many bottles of light rosé from Ravello. It was a hot day, but the breeze drifting in from the sea made it bearable. I lay back on one of the walls, closed my eyes and pointed my face towards the sun. Birds chirped lazily from the shrubs behind me. Bees murmured as they plundered the flowers. Butterflies hopped and skipped. Conversation drifted around me in a gentle swirl, interspersed with trickles of laughter.
I let my head loll to the side and opened one eye. Sophie was sitting on a low wall opposite talking to Nathan. She might be thirty and a mother of two, but she was still very pretty. As was Madeleine. Girls in summer dresses at picnics were a good idea, I thought.
Sophie wasn’t mine, and that was all right. There would be other women. There was a student nurse called Gillian with whom I had been out three times. She was much younger than me, but she made me laugh. Not as pretty as Sophie, though. I would have to learn to live with that; most girls just weren’t as pretty as Sophie.
For some reason, just then, she turned quickly to glance at me. She caught my one eye staring at her. I closed it.
‘Hello.’ It was a voice from behind me. An American voice.
I hauled myself up on my elbows. Elaine had sat down on the wall next to me, with a glass half full of rosé. A cigarette was hanging from her open lips. I realized that was why she had struck me as louche. It was her mouth: her full lips that never quite closed. They were sloppy, uneven, sexy.
She puffed at her cigarette. ‘You poor darling,’ she said. ‘You look quite exhausted.’
‘It’s the wine. And the sun. And the view.’
‘Here, let me get you some more.’
I didn’t object and she brought me a glass. We sat in silence looking out over the bay at the mysterious island of Ischia. There was something unsteady about Elaine’s silence.
‘It must be lovely living here,’ I said.
‘It is,’ said Elaine. A pause. ‘It gets a bit dull after a while.’
‘What are the people like?’
‘The expats are all old. Old queers. Old lesbians. They are quite fun in their way but, like I said, it gets dull.’
‘Tony likes it, doesn’t he?’
‘Tony loves it. And I love Tony.’ She sighed. ‘It would be nice to go up to the Riviera. Antibes. Juan. Cap Ferrat.’
‘That shouldn’t be too hard from here.’