*
I’d been given a room at the side of the house, opening on to a balcony from which the view was shared between an emerald-green flank of Monte Solaro and a sapphire-blue wedge of the Tyrrhenian Sea. I stepped out to admire my surroundings after unpacking and noticed that two other rooms also opened on to the balcony. Through the French windows of one, I glimpsed, folded over a chair, a candy-striped dress that was surely Vivien’s. We were close. And perhaps the rooms had been chosen in the knowledge that we might be closer still. A splash of sunlight illuminated the title of a paperback standing on her bedside cabinet: Catch-22. But there was no catch I could see.
A close neighbour and old friend of Luisa’s was joining us for dinner. But there was still time for Vivien and me to walk down into Marina Piccola for a drink at one of the seafront cafés, looking out over the bay dotted with yachts and small boats. Late-afternoon light sparkled on the wavetops and my moisture-beaded glass of beer and gilded the dark-skinned sunbathers on their loungers below us, drugged by the heat and the rhythmic plash of the surf.
‘You may have had a wasted journey,’ said Vivien, smiling at me apologetically with pursed lips, as she set down her glass.
‘How d’you mean?’
‘It’s just that I’ve been here a week and learnt nothing – absolutely nothing – to suggest Uncle Francis is harbouring some dark secret.’
‘No?’
‘I should be relieved, I suppose. I don’t want to think of him as anything more than the kindly old chap he’s always seemed.’
‘Well, I guess I’m relieved too. And don’t worry on my account. It’s smashing to be here … with you.’
‘Flatterer.’
‘It’s true, Vivien.’ I looked at her. ‘You must know that.’
She blushed slightly and waved the compliment aside. ‘It was nice of you to come, Jonathan. And it’s good to see you again. We can … try to put last year behind us.’
‘Sounds fine to me.’
‘But first prepare to be impressed. I was right about the Z on the pig’s egg. It is zeta. And it does stand for Francis.’
‘Really?’ I was impressed. And puzzled. Confirmation that the Z stood for Francis implied the existence of some kind of secret after all. ‘How did you find out?’
‘It’s marked on all the minerals in his collection. I asked to see them, which delighted him, and there it was. He stores the samples in a cabinet in his study. He’ll happily show you. You only have to ask.’
‘The Z – or zeta – is on all of them?’
‘Yes. I told him we’d found a pig’s egg with a Z on it in Oliver’s bedroom. I didn’t want to land you in it by saying where it was really found. Anyway, Uncle Francis wasn’t fazed or surprised. He said he’d given it to Oliver when we were both here two years ago.’
‘Which explains how Oliver came by it. But not why he hid it in my father’s car.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t want it to be lost in the lake. He couldn’t simply hand it over to you without giving a reason.’
‘And Uncle Francis’s reaction when I asked him about pigs’ eggs that night at the Carlyon Bay?’
‘He actually mentioned that without my needing to raise the subject. Apparently, he’d forgotten giving the sample to Oliver. His old noddle, as he called it, had let him down. Being reminded like that … threw him for a moment.’
I wasn’t as convinced as Vivien seemed to be. But I didn’t need to be. It was all about her. If she was happy to let sleeping dogs lie, so was I. Because in her happiness I saw the promise of my own.
‘I think there is a secret at the Villa Orchis, though,’ Vivien continued, lowering her voice conspiratorially. ‘But it has nothing to do with Oliver.’
‘What is it?’
‘Paolo, our chauffeur today. He lives in, you know. He has the room over the garage. A very vain fellow, our Paolo.’
‘I noticed that.’
‘He’s an addition to the establishment since I was here with Oliver and Aunt Harriet. When he’s not polishing the Alfa Romeo and racing it round the island, he’s supposed to be Luisa’s secretary, whatever that means.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘I think he attends to all her needs, not just secretarial ones.’
Catching her drift, I instinctively laughed. ‘You can’t be serious.’
But clearly she was. ‘I saw him coming out of her bedroom one afternoon when Uncle Francis was in town. I could tell from his self-satisfied smirk what had been going on.’
‘I must look out for it.’ I grinned. ‘His smirk, I mean.’
She failed to stifle a grin of her own. ‘It’s not funny.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Actually, I think Luisa may know I’m on to her. She gave me a little talk later that day. She described how trying retirement was for her. “I put so much passion into my performances and I received so much adoration,” she said. “It is hard to live without such things.”’
‘But you reckon she isn’t living without them.’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Well …’
‘Live and let live?’
‘Or love and let love.’
I let the ambiguities of that float in the air for a moment as I swallowed some beer. Sex in the afternoon, when the villa was quiet and the day at its hottest, took dreamy form in my mind. But it was a dream in which neither Luisa nor Paolo played any part.
I cleared my throat. ‘Does Francis know?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe, maybe not. But he’s no fool, so …’
‘He probably does.’
Vivien nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘They put on a good show, considering.’
‘They do, don’t they? And as their guests I suppose we should do our best to keep the show on the road. So, now I’ve told you, try to pretend I haven’t.’
‘All right. Any other … rules of the house?’
‘Not really. Pleasure seems to be the guiding principle of life at Villa Orchis.’
‘Uhuh. Well, I can see I’m going to have a hellish time of it, then.’ I raised my glass. ‘Here’s to pleasure.’
She giggled, more girlishly than usual. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Jonathan. I really am.’
‘So am I.’
And so I was.
Luisa’s friend and neighbour turned out to be a member of the Italian aristocracy, at least so her introduction to me as la contessa Margherita Covelli led me to believe. She certainly looked the part: tall, thin, velvet-gowned and discreetly bejewelled, her aquiline nose and keen eyes giving her a wonderfully predatory appearance, though her manner was actually all softness and gentility. Her grey hair made her look older than Luisa, though according to Vivien that was probably an illusion wrought by the beauty salon Luisa regularly patronized.
Countess Covelli gave the impression of being more contented than Luisa, less effusive but also more thoughtful. She was a widow of long standing, with a family in Milan and a wide circle of acquaintances, who nonetheless valued her solitary existence on Capri. ‘There is a rhythm to my life here that I have come to value,’ she said at one point, which was as much in the way of introspection as we had from her. She was altogether keener to hear Vivien recount the joys of punting and picnicking in Cambridge and insisted I give a blow-by-blow (and somewhat exaggerated) account of my part in the Grosvenor Square riot. She even wanted to know what I thought of the situation in Northern Ireland. And I somehow wasn’t surprised to discover she knew more about it than I did.
‘Margherita has a formidable intellect, don’t you think?’ asked Francis, after persuading me to join him in a brandy and a cigar following the countess’s departure and Luisa’s and Vivien’s retirement to bed. I hadn’t needed a lot of persuasion. It felt good to be treated as an equal by him: a fellow man of the world, as it were, even though I wasn’t. My spluttering debut as a cigar-smoker soon demonstrated that.
I agreed with him about Margherita, naturally, and asked how l
ong she and Luisa had been friends.
‘More than thirty years. They met before the war, in Milan. Margherita’s late husband was a great admirer of Luisa’s singing.’
‘Did you know him yourself?’
‘Ah, no. Count Covelli’s story is rather tragic, I’m afraid. You’re familiar with the events that led up to Mussolini’s overthrow in 1943?’
I confessed I wasn’t.
‘Let me fill you in, then,’ said Francis, benignly unsurprised by my ignorance. ‘The Italians were sick of the war by the end of 1942. It had brought them nothing but disaster. Most of the generals and politicians wanted to renounce the alliance with Germany and make peace with the Allies. But Mussolini would have none of it. So, he had to go. The trigger was the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943. Not a cakewalk, let me tell you from personal experience, but ultimately decisive. The King, Victor Emmanuel, started secret talks through intermediaries with leading members of the Fascist Grand Council to have the Duce deposed. Count Covelli was one of those intermediaries. And the talks soon bore fruit. The Council voted to restore the King as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Effectively, that was a vote to sue for peace. Mussolini was arrested on the King’s orders and held as a prisoner. Hitler had no intention of allowing Italy to surrender, of course. The Germans carried on fighting regardless. They rescued Mussolini and installed him as president of a puppet Italian republic. Those who’d betrayed him and were unlucky enough to find themselves in German-occupied territory were for the chop. And Covelli was one of the unlucky ones. He went into hiding, but was soon tracked down. In January 1944, he and five other prime movers in Mussolini’s deposition were given a show trial in Verona, then executed by firing squad.’
‘Poor man.’
‘Quite so. And poor Margherita. She loved him dearly, according to Luisa. At the end of the war, Mussolini tried to escape to Austria, but he was captured by partisans, along with his mistress, Claretta Petacci, and shot. Their bodies were strung upside down in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan – you probably know this bit – as a demonstration of what the partisans thought of their former Duce. Margherita once told me she went to the square that day to look at the man responsible for her husband’s death. She saw a woman beating Mussolini about the head with a stick and ranting about the loss of her son, killed serving in the army in Greece. Margherita said she was almost as horrified by the violence Mussolini inspired in his victims as she had been by the viciousness of his regime. When Luisa bought this villa, Margherita came to visit her and soon decided Capri was where she could find the peace she craved. I believe she’s succeeded, much to her credit.’
‘It certainly seems a peaceful place.’
‘It does, doesn’t it? Islands, especially those as small as this, have a special quality about them, I think. They exist a little apart from the world and tend to attract people in need of … refuge and healing.’
It seemed to me he might be talking about himself rather than Margherita Covelli. A wistful tone had come into his voice, as if he’d begun reflecting on his own reasons for settling there. He took a thoughtful puff at his cigar and gazed beyond me into some shadowy recess of his past.
Then he rallied and gave me a jaunty grin. ‘Capri has more than its fair share of idlers and lotus-eaters in retreat from nothing more than the obligation to earn a living, of course. I should damn well know. I’m one of them.’ He laughed his growling laugh. ‘A splash more brandy, my boy?’
FOURTEEN
IT’S HARD NOW, looking back, to recall just how happy I was for most of the few weeks I spent on Capri in the summer of 1969. I recall it as a fact, of course, with the reasons clear and simple in my mind. But memory is always overlain with the knowledge of what follows. And what followed then erased many happinesses, not just mine.
You could say tragedy came out of the blue, for Capri was truly and brilliantly blue in the high, strident Mediterranean light, an intoxicating blend of limitless sky and encompassing sea. And no one anticipated what was going to happen. No one set out – as far as I know – to bring it about. So, yes, you could say it came out of the blue.
It wouldn’t quite be true, though. I never saw it coming – never guessed how the dominoes might fall. But I pushed them. There’s no denying that. This tragedy was man-made. I should know. I was one of those who made it.
I wanted Vivien so badly I couldn’t think about much else, certainly not the mystery her brother had bequeathed to us. Even Vivien had lost her determination to pursue an answer since arriving on Capri and concluding that Great-Uncle Francis held the key to nothing but a contented, if very possibly cuckolded, lifestyle. Capri itself was partly to blame for this. Its heat and stillness, compounded for visitors like us by its seductive otherness, made the cares and preoccupations we’d brought with us seem distant and futile and ultimately unimportant.
Vivien didn’t give up without a struggle. She recalled that during their previous stay at the Villa Orchis, while she’d done little but swim and sunbathe, Oliver had gone off on solitary hikes around the coast. He’d been particularly interested in the Roman ruins at either end of the island and so we began our aimless search for his secret by walking out to the remains of the Villa Jovis, on the eastern headland.
From here the Emperor Tiberius had ruled the Roman Empire, but all that remained of his clifftop palace was fallen walls and roofless halls. We wandered the site, surprising basking lizards that scattered before us as we went. The sun blazed down and the pine woods around the villa shimmered in a heat haze. I looked at Vivien as she walked ahead of me, her legs and arms bronzed and her hair bleached from the week and a bit she’d already spent on the island. She was wearing cut-off jeans, a thin-strapped top and a straw hat. Her hair fell beneath the hat to just above her shoulders, bouncing slightly as she walked. A bangle on her wrist winked dazzlingly at me. At intervals, she glanced round and smiled, as if she knew what I was thinking and understood perfectly.
We came to Tiberius’s Drop, a sheer cliff, from which, according to the guidebook, those who’d mortally offended the Emperor were required to throw themselves to their deaths. I imagined leaping out, arms spread, into the void and asked, almost rhetorically, ‘Did they really jump – or were they pushed?’
‘Oh, they jumped,’ Vivien said with utter certainty.
‘How d’you know?’
‘Because I’ve just remembered Oliver describing this place to me and telling me that if you annoyed the Emperor by forcing the guards to push you, your family would suffer for it. So, they jumped.’
‘A cruel choice,’ I said, gazing out to sea.
‘Not according to Oliver. He reckoned stepping out into thin air would’ve been easy. As long as you didn’t think about what happened when you stopped falling.’
Our eyes met. Oliver was there, between us, an invisible but palpable presence. Whether he was blessing us or cursing us I couldn’t have said. Nor, I suspect, could Vivien. Perhaps it made no difference. Perhaps there was no difference.
I took her hand and we moved away from the edge. ‘I’m so glad you knew him, Jonathan,’ she said. ‘I’m glad it’s you who’s here with me.’
And so, it didn’t need saying, was I.
We headed back along the narrow paths and alleys of the island towards Capri town, stopping on our way for lunch at a sun-shaded trattoria, where the wine tasted all the fuller to me for the headiness of sharing it with a beautiful young woman who was nearly, oh so nearly, mine.
From Capri we descended to Marina Grande, where we strolled through the crowds to the beach and swam a little and lazed a lot as the afternoon wore on.
I must have fallen into a doze brought on by wine and heat. When I woke, with the shadow of the bluff above us stretching across the towel on which we lay, I found Vivien propped up on one elbow beside me, staring intently into my eyes. She was still in her bikini from our swim. There was a frown of concentration on her brow, as if she was debating something very seriously.
I didn’t wait for her to say any more. I raised my head and kissed her. I felt her hair tickling my neck, her breasts compressing against me. I put a hand to her shoulder and ran it down her flank, tracing the curve of her waist and hip.
We broke the kiss and gazed at each other. Our course had been set now. We weren’t lovers yet. But soon we would be. The realization carried solemnity as well as desire.
‘Let’s go back to the villa,’ she said. ‘It’ll be cooler there.’
I wished we could have been transported to the Villa Orchis instantly, to the shuttered privacy of her room or mine. But wishes aren’t wings. We had to take the funicular back up to Capri and walk from there through the late-afternoon heat. There were many kisses along the way. I hardly knew how we’d manage our arrival.
To my dismay and frustration, it became apparent as we walked up the drive that Francis and Luisa had been entertaining a visitor to tea, who’d been hoping, we were told, to meet us. We had no choice but to sit down on the terrace and socialize.
The visitor was an Italian man of about Francis’s age, portly and jet-black-haired, well-tailored and syrupy-voiced. Valerio Salvenini, it transpired, was a garrulous native of the island, who claimed acquaintance with numerous famous Capri residents, both living and dead, and proceeded to reel off a succession of well-worn anecdotes about them.
His wife, he artfully lamented, was away, prompting Luisa to invite him to stay for dinner. All I could do, when he accepted, was swap a rueful little smile with Vivien. We were trapped.
The need to shower before dinner supplied a brief respite from Salvenini’s tall tales. I went out afterwards from my room on to the balcony and found Vivien waiting for me, barefoot, wet-haired and wrapped in a bathrobe. We exchanged eloquent smiles and a lingering kiss.
‘I think all that sunshine and fresh air we’ve been out in today means I’m going to need an early night,’ she whispered in my ear.
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