Island of Mermaids (32 page)

‘
When will you finis
h your opera about the mermaids?’

‘
Oh, I shall be too bu
sy to think of that this summer.’

‘
Why?
’
she wanted to know.

‘
I
’
ve a lot on my mind. One real life mermaid is going to be as much as I can manage. D
’
you know, it was just as your father said—about men making the mermaids an excuse for staying in pleasant places? I was caught that way, too, and here I am, stuck with an old ruined villa which somehow I
’
ve got to turn into a home for my mermaid.
’

‘
But we shouldn
’
t be able to live here all the time. What about your work?
’

He gave her a mock scowl.
‘
I
’
m glad you think about a man
’
s work sometimes. We might have to take a flat for a short time in London. Then we
’
ll roam about and find some oldish house with character that I can buy for a song—plus a few thousand pounds, and we
’
ll restore it. With luck, we ought to be able to spend at least a third of the year here in Capri. That should enable you to play your father
’
s shop assistant now and again.
’

It was early evening before Althea returned to the Villa Stefano, bringing Kent with her for dinner. As he had no facilities at his own villa, he was staying for a few days at the hotel in Anacapri and when he had gone back there to change his clothes, Althea walked with her father in the Stefano garden.

‘
Thank you, Father,
’
she said.
‘
I suppose I have you to thank for making these various assignations.
’

‘
I
’
ve usually been fairly good at arranging appointments. Most times the right people meet in the right places. I came unstuck with Scotland, but that was due to unforeseen circumstances.
’

‘
And today you had an irresistible urge to visit the Garden of Eden pavement in the church.
’

‘
That
’
s right. No one should live so long in Anacapri without seeing such a treasure,
’
he said, unabashed.

‘
Supposing it hadn
’
t come off this time?
’
she queried.
‘
Imagine some other unforeseen circumstances.
’

He shook his head and patted her hand, linked within the crook of his own arm.
‘
Then in that case one of you would not have loved the other. My dear, d
’
you think I haven
’
t known all this last winter how sad you
’
ve been? I could be sure of Kent. He told me long ago that he wanted to marry you, but neither of us wanted to rush you into a marriage you weren
’
t ready for.
’

She stopped and faced him.
‘
Oh, Father, why didn
’
t you tell me this months ago?
’

‘
Because I wanted you to find out what was in your own heart. If you could have forgotten Kent, dismissed him as just a summer friend, a neighbour, then he wouldn
’
t have been the man for you. I had to stand by and watch you eating your heart out for him.
’

‘
How did you know that?
’

‘
Chiefly because you never spoke of him. If he hadn
’
t meant so much to you, you
’
d have talked about him sometimes in general conversation, but the very mention of his name was enough to silence you.
’

She smiled.
‘
Kent said you were astute. He
evidently
knows what he
’
s talking about.
’

‘
Even then, I saw a great danger when I heard that Kent had decided not to come to Capri this year. Shutting up his villa meant that he
’
d given up hope, because all the work he was doing last year was really for you, to make a summer villa for you both. So I wrote to him.
’

‘
Matchmaking father
!’
she murmured.

At dinner Carla declared her heart was entirely broken in little pieces if Kent was going to marry Althea.

‘
You have disappointed me!
’
she scolded him, then giggled.

‘
And what is Ermanno to say about that?
’
enquired her mother.

‘
Oh, perhaps I shall become betrothed to Ermanno in a short time, but in the meantime I shall suffer!
’
She made a melodramatic gesture.

‘
Good luck to Ermanno for taking on such a load of mischief,
’
said Kent.

‘
You can have the annexe house for yourselves,
’
Emilia offered,
‘
when you are married and while your villa is not ready.
’

Althea was delighted with this offer of the
‘
gingerbread house
’
and thanked Emilia warmly. When, later in the evening Kent and Althea sat on the terrace, Carla
’
s voice came through the salon windows.
‘
Dashing away with a smooting iron, she stole my heart away.
’

The garden echoed over and over again with the phrase
‘
She stole my heart away,
’
as Carla repeated it like a gramophone record stuck in the groove.

‘
I should never have gone near the Sirens
’
Rock,
’
murmured Kent, shaking his head sadly.

‘
I
’
ve never sat there, so I can
’
t be blamed.
’

‘
The chair-lift up Monte Solaro is open,
’
he said after a long pause.
‘
Let
’
s go up there tomorrow.
’

‘
Supposing it
’
s misty again, we shan
’
t see anything.
’

‘
It won
’
t be. You can always tell if the cloud is on the top.
’

He was right, for next day not even Solaro
’
s own private cloud dared to sit on top. Today Althea was exultant, for although she was separated from Kent by the distance between one chair-lift and the next, they were as close together as two people really in love could be.

At the top when they dismounted, the view was superb in every direction. The whole island of Capri lay at their feet, pinpointed with villas, clusters of houses, strips of terraced vineyards and in many places the bare lava rock. On one slope a great patch of yellow flowers flowed between an escarpment and the precipitous cliffs; elsewhere the roads
snaked up from sea level converging at Capri or Anacapri, roads so
recently
made that they were referred to by the islanders as the
‘
new roads
’
. Anything here less
than
a hundred years old was a
modern
upstart among
antiquities
of more than two thousand years.

‘
You can feel that
th
is island has known the ups and downs of history,
’
Althea said as she stood by Kent
’
s side, gazing at an amphora salvaged from the sea and now mounted on a pedestal.

The steamer on its way to Naples looked like a toy boat sailing on a pond of dark-blue ruffled silk. How many other kinds of boats had plied across the Bay of Naples, the Bay of Sirens, as it was called, during all the centuries? Peaceful and warlike, pirates and traders, all had roamed around this lovely island and some had stayed.

No clouds today, no mist, but everything crystal clear, with the mainland outlined in purple contours, punctuated by the cone of Vesuvius. This was just as she had seen it on her first arrival in Capri. But then she had not known Kent or that her destiny would be shaped here.

‘
When we go down,
’
Kent whispered,
‘we’ll
put our hands on the red sphinx in the Villa San Michele and wish, shall we?
’

She turned her face towards him.
‘
Of course we
’
ll go, but the red sphinx has already granted my wish that I made when we went there.
’

He raised her hand and kissed her fingertips.
‘
Mine, too, as a matter of fact. Still, we might go and thank the sphinx.
’
They went down by chair-lift this time instead of walking, and strolled in the peaceful garden that Axel Munthe, the Swedish doctor, had created on an old Roman site. He would have been glad to know that here on this beautiful island, steeped in history, reputed to have harboured mermaids and sirens, two people stood at the beginning of what promised to be a lifetime of happiness.