The Apprentice Lover (29 page)

When I glanced at the table beside me, I noticed that Auden was already gone.

“H
e's quite hysterical,” said Holly, whom I met on my way to the cottage. “I don't know what you've said to him about us.” Annoyance wrinkled her brow.

“Who?”

“Rupert!” She seemed quite hysterical herself, her eyes moist and red.

“You've been crying. What's wrong?”

“I must get away. You're right.”

“Did he hurt you?”

She looked at me as though I were mad. “He's too savvy for that. And too British.”

Mimo was glaring at us, crouching in the garden with a trowel, so I insisted that she come into my cottage.

“What did he say exactly?” I asked, putting a mug of tea before her.

“He said I had disappointed him.”

“That's all?”

I suspected she was not telling the whole truth. Grant was capable of immense scorn. I had seen it, and wondered when it might turn in my direction. I never guessed, however, that Holly could be abused by him in this way. He had, toward her, been almost solicitous.

“It was the tone,” she said. “And the expression on his face. I've never seen him like that.”

“He knows how I feel about you,” I said.

“Please, Alex. We mustn't go there.”

I shrank inwardly, aware that I would not further my cause by making such remarks. “We may actually be in some danger here,” I said.

Holly smirked—one of her patented expressions. “What a lovely streak of melodrama.”

“Thanks.”

“We're not in any danger,” she said, “but we should leave. This place is too uncomfortable.”

“You'll go with me?”

“I've packed,” she said. “We might even go this evening, on the last ferry.”

I agreed at once.

“I've got only two cases,” she said. “Rather large ones, I'm afraid.”

I had only one suitcase and a backpack, but it would not be easy to slip away from the Villa Clio without attracting attention. I wondered if, indeed, it was even advisable to leave in such a manner, as though we'd stolen the silverware. “Maybe we should tell them,” I said. “We owe them something.”

“I don't think so,” she said. “I can't face him.” She smiled through tears now. “I'm rather a coward, as you see.”

I'd been going through my options for several days, and concurred with Holly that under the present circumstances it would be wise to abandon the island without further notice. Grant was behaving perversely, and Vera played along. They had, effectively, terminated my position. On top of which, I felt angry with them both, and wanted to demonstrate that my existence didn't depend on theirs. I could go wherever I pleased. I could write my own books, rather than type Grant's. I could cook my own elaborate dinners, in my own kitchen, without their sufferance.

So I spent the afternoon making arrangements for departure. We'd take the last ferry, at nine, though that meant having to abandon the dinner table rather precipitously. The Grants would, perhaps, suspect that something was amiss; but they would never guess we were leaving, and without notice.

I stopped by the Quisisana to tell Patrice about my plans. “I am not wanting this,” he said, standing on the cool, marble floor of the vestibule
outside the dining room in a white jacket. “Now I am alone here, on Capri, when you go. Maybe I will go, too. With you, Alexi. There is no point to stay.”

That was the last thing I wanted. “You can follow,” I said. “I'll send my address, when I have one. Probably in Rome.” I explained that Holly and I were going together.

“This is love!”

“Not exactly,” I said, “but I'm hoping.”

“I am hoping, too,” he responded. “I am feeling that Giovanni, he doesn't believe this marriage is love. It does never work. He will love me, when he realize…” His eyes widened. “We can join you, in Roma! I have loved Roma, no?” For an awful moment, I thought he might break into song.

“We may go to England,” I said. “I'm not really sure.”

“Go to Roma, Alexi,” he advised in a hushed tone. “The English are very cold. I have told you this many time. England is a country of the head. They have no physical senses. You can examine this in their food, in the ugly clothes. The newlywed, they come to Capri, and they don't hold hands or kiss. They say, ‘Isn't the hotel jolly nice, poppins?' This is their only pleasure!”

I hoped that Patrice, when he turned to philosophy, had greater sophistication, but I doubted it. He was no Jean-Paul Sartre, but I would miss him badly. He had lightened my days on Capri, giving me solace and companionship.

“I am coming to see you away,” he said, kissing me on either cheek, solemnly, before shuffling back to the grand dining hall. The slump in his shoulders spoke volumes. I guessed that his time on Capri had come to an end as well.

Before dinner, I packed my few belongings, cleaned the cottage, finished a last assignment from Grant (typing a batch of letters to his London agent and publishers), then paused to read again a letter from Eddie Sloane, my brother's army friend. It had been waiting for me upon my return from Salerno, having been forwarded by my father. It was postmarked from Iowa, written in a carefully scripted hand—the letters all tipping to one side.

The letter was signed, “Sincerely, Edward Sloane.” I found it strangely comforting that my brother had spent his last months near Eddie. It told me something about Nicky that he would find such a friend. He'd come a long way in a short time, had discovered and amplified a fine, intelligent, and wise part of himself, one that—had he been luckier—he'd have carried back from Vietnam.

Now I put Grant's letters in a neat pile on the table, and wrote a note to him and Vera. It would have to suffice:

It surprised me when, instinctively, I wrote “Love, Alex,” at the bottom. That was a false note, but I could not help it. I still feared Rupert Grant, and continued to admire him; but I didn't “love” him. Vera was, perhaps, another matter. I had made a genuine connection there, and many things she had said to me would reverberate for years to come. I also dashed off good-byes to various friends and acquaintances, such as Peter Duncan-Jones, the Bonanos, and Father Aurelio. Each had offered forms of consolation and encouragement, and I would miss them.

It would have been more pleasant to leave Capri under better circumstances, but I felt an urgency that could not be quashed. I had to go, immediately and without further notice.

Holly came to the door, breathless. “I've asked Mimo to take my bags to the ferry,” she said.

“Won't he tell Rupert?”

“Have you ever heard him speak?”

I saw there was no turning back. We would leave that night on the ferry, after dinner, slipping away into the dusk. Exactly where that journey would end I couldn't imagine.

B
efore dinner, I carried my suitcase and knapsack to the Bar Vittoria, in the Marina Grande. They would keep my things there, with Holly's. I wanted as smooth a getaway as possible, and could visualize an incensed Rupert Grant bearing down on us, a bull with flaring horns, trying to prevent our departure. I'd had a sequence of nightmares about that dagger of his, envisioning it stuck in my back as I walked the metal gangway onto the ferry—a scene from one of Graham Greene's thrillers.

To my horror, the Grants had invited Auden to dinner at the Villa Clio that night without telling either me or Holly. I discovered this when entering the long sitting room, where Auden—or the ghost of the poet—sat alone in a faded linen suit on the white sofa beneath the whitewashed walls and high vaulted ceiling. His pale hands were awkwardly folded before him—like unwelcome pets that had crawled into his lap and made themselves comfortable. Above his head loomed a painting by Peter Duncan-Jones, the one where an androgynous creature with three eyes and two navels was being fondled by several grotesque, smaller figures of indeterminate sex.

“Hello, Mr. Auden,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows when he saw me, as if to say, “What? You again?”

I wondered what Grant had in mind. Was he trying to make up to me, having guessed that I felt dejected about not meeting him the day
before? Was this a conciliatory gesture from Vera? I began to question the whole business of departure. Perhaps I should tell Holly I had changed my mind, and we must proceed in some orderly fashion? We might give a month's or a week's notice. Or resolve to stay on Capri indefinitely: Grant was already talking about a new assistant, another Italian girl (recommended by his Italian publisher, Mondadori) who would replace Marisa, and she would surely consume his erotic imagination for a while. I no longer knew what made sense, though I'd begun to question so much of what I'd appropriated from the Grants. Their way in the world was not mine.

Vera entered with a tray of drinks. Vodka for Auden, with ice. No mixers. Wine for the rest of us.

“Let me introduce Wystan,” she said.

“We've met,” he said.

“Really?”

“In the piazzetta this morning,” he said, looking at me coolly. “We had a little seminar, didn't we?”

Vera looked at me strangely, as if aware for the first time that I had a life apart from her and Rupert. I didn't only exist while lounging in their presence. I was, indeed, a whole forest of falling trees with nobody but myself to hear them crashing to the ground.

Grant himself entered from the kitchen with a glass of whiskey, Holly trailing. She had obviously been crying, but I saw she was dressed for our journey: jeans, leather shoes, a sturdy cotton sweater—one I'd seen her wearing in Salerno and Paestum. I tried to catch her eyes, but she turned away.

“Alex has already met Wystan,” Vera said.

Grant ignored the remark. “How can you drink that bloody stuff, Wystan. Tastes of motor oil.”

“I prefer
good
vodka, to be sure,” he said.

We pulled up chairs, forming a semicircle around the visiting poet, listening as he continued a conversation with Grant that had been underway for some time. He had left New York, he said, forever. It was “too much like Calcutta, only without the amenities.” He didn't like Richard Nixon, nor did he trust Henry Kissinger. Christ Church, his old college
in Oxford, had made him an honorary fellow, offering the use of a college house in the garden behind the Senior Common Room—a tiny cottage, where Anglican clergy were often housed.

“Ah, the Anglicans,” said Vera. “Many are cold, but few are frozen.”

Auden had doubtless heard this before, but smiled politely.

“You're the archbishop of poetry, what?” Grant said, barely concealing his irony. “Stephen will be killing himself.”

“Stephen has become a bore,” said Auden. “Spenders his time trotting about America.”

“Giving poetry a bad name,” Grant added.

“The fees are grand,” Auden said. “I don't think anyone actually reads Stephen now, do you?”

“They never did,” said Grant.

They referred, I knew, to Stephen Spender. Grant always made fun of the line, “I think continually of those who are truly great.” “Nobody ever thinks continually of anything,” he said. “Do you, Lorenzo?”

He and Auden kept the conversation mainly to gossip about old friends and associations—a gambit that naturally excluded me and Holly. I realized how uncomfortable this name-dropping made me. Even Vera looked at a loss, hearing that blizzard of names torn from the contents of an out-of-date anthology: Edgell Rickword, Bernard Spencer, Peter Hewitt, Roy Campbell, E. J. Pratt. A whole generation had sunk like Atlantis into the wine-dark sea of literary history, from which few names are ever recovered.

At seven—very early by Italian standards but typical of the Grants—we went into the dining room, aware that Vera would have prepared a feast for Auden, beginning with scrippelle 'im busse—lovely crepes in beef broth, a speciality of Abruzzo. She had promised to teach me how to make them, but that never happened. There was, as usual, a small pasta dish, followed by succulent pork rolls: cotechino in galera. They were wrapped in prosciutto, browned in sautéed onions, then baked. The dessert was among my favorites: almond cake (torta di mandorle). I had smelled the almond aroma as soon as I entered the house that evening. It felt like a signal from Vera, a sign of truce.

I listened intently to the conversation, my palms sweaty, watching the
black-handed Neapolitan clock on the mantel as it swallowed the minutes. Each fat tick reminded me that my time at the villa was coming to an end. The wine that night was a white Trebbiano—Vera had heard me compliment it one evening—and I found myself drinking more heavily than usual, with Maria Pia's cousin, young Alfredo, filling my glass almost compulsively. Barely through the main course, the room seemed to enlarge and contract. I saw Auden's massively wrinkled face (which he described as looking “like a wedding cake left out in the rain overnight”) through alcohol-distorted vision. But the wine also gave me the courage to inject my own opinions into the conversation, as when Auden referred to Kissinger again and I began a monologue about Cambodia, suggesting that it was insane to attack that hapless nation. There would only be disruptions and reprisals.

“You don't know what you're talking about, Lorenzo,” Grant said, sternly, when I stopped for breath.

“I do,” I said.

“Nonsense,” he said. Blue veins were bulging in his temples, and his lips stretched thin. “You're like most young Americans. They know nothing of history, but they're full of opinions—ignorant and childish opinions.”

“Better than the English young,” said Vera, rising to my defense. “What a gormless lot they are!”

Holly dipped her eyes to the table, gormlessly.

I felt confused, and wanted to pound my fist on the table and shout something terribly incisive, but could think of nothing appropriate. I did not at all want to pursue this subject. I'd been sucked into a whirlpool, and it was time I extricated myself.

“I should relax, Rupert,” said Auden. “One doesn't want a coronary at our age.”

Auden, bless him, assumed control of the conversation now. He began to lecture us on his favorite detective novels, saying it made one feel so “cozy and complete” to lie in a warm bath and read them. He told Grant he should consider writing something along the lines of Dorothy L. Sayers, whom he described as one of the best novelists of the century.

Grant, with a lofty sigh, said, “Wystan, you're such a schoolmaster.”

Auden demurred. “Please, dear. School
mistress
.”

I laughed sharply, but realized as I leaned back in my chair that it was nearly eight-fifteen. It would take at least twenty minutes, probably more, to get to the Marina Grande. I glanced at Holly, leading her eyes to the clock.

“I must go,” I said. “I'm afraid I have a headache.”

Vera looked at me in a puzzled way.

“By all means,” said Grant, delighted to see me go.

I passed through the kitchen and stepped into the violet shade of the garden to wait for Holly, who emerged some minutes later. She had apparently contracted the same headache.

“The last ferry is often late,” I said, trying to reassure her as we hurried toward the gate.

The last thing I recalled of the Villa Clio was the smell of wild cyclamen, soft and mournful, more like the memory of a smell than the thing itself.