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Authors: Mary Stewart

BOOK: This Rough Magic
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‘Your “distinguished tenant”?’ This was obviously the
bonne bouche
she had been saving for me, but I looked at her in some surprise, remembering the vivid description she had once given me of the Castello dei Fiori: ‘tatty beyond words, sort of Wagnerian Gothic, like a set for a musical version of
Dracula
’. I wondered who could have been persuaded to pay for these operatic splendours. ‘Someone’s rented Valhalla, then? Aren’t you lucky. Who?’

‘Julian Gale.’


Julian Gale?
’ I sat up abruptly, staring at her. ‘You can’t mean –
do
you mean Julian Gale? The actor?’

‘As ever was.’ My sister looked pleased with the effect she had produced. I was wide awake now, as I had certainly not been during the long recital of our family affairs earlier. Sir Julian Gale was not only ‘an actor’, he had been one of the more brilliant lights of the English theatre for more years than I could well remember. And, more recently, one of its mysteries.

‘Well!’ I said. ‘So this is where he went.’

‘I thought you’d be interested,’ said Phyl, rather smugly.

‘I’ll say I am! Everyone’s still wondering, on and off, why he packed it in like that two years ago. Of course I knew he’d been ill after that ghastly accident, but to give it up and then just quietly vanish … You should have heard the rumours.’

‘I can imagine. We’ve our own brand here. But don’t go all shiny-eyed and imagine you’ll get anywhere near him, my child. He’s here for privacy, and I mean for privacy. He doesn’t go out at all – socially, that is – except to the houses of a couple of friends, and they’ve got
Trespassers Will Be Shot
plastered at intervals of one yard all over the grounds, and the gardener throws all callers over the cliff into the sea.’

‘I shan’t worry him. I think too darned much of him for that. I suppose you must have met him. How is he?’

‘Oh, I – he seems all right. Just doesn’t get around, that’s all. I’ve only met him a couple of times. Actually it was he who told me that Corfu was supposed to be the setting of
The Tempest
.’ She glanced at me sideways.
‘I – er – I suppose you’d allow him to be “a literary gent”?’

But this time I ignored the lead. ‘
The Tempest
was his swan-song,’ I said. ‘I saw it at Stratford, the last performance, and cried my eyes out over the “this rough magic I here abjure” bit. Is that what made him choose Corfu to retire to?’

She laughed. ‘I doubt it. Didn’t you know he was practically a native? He was here during the war, and apparently stayed on for a bit after it was over, and then I’m told he used to bring his family back almost every year for holidays, when the children were young. They had a house near Ipsos, and kept it on till quite recently, but it was sold after his wife and daughter were killed. However, I suppose he still had … connections … here, so when he thought of retiring he remembered the Castello. We hadn’t meant to let the place, it wasn’t really fit, but he was so anxious to find somewhere quite isolated and quiet, and it really did seem a godsend that the Castello was empty, with Maria and her family just next door; so Leo let it go. Maria and the twins turned to and fixed up a few of the rooms, and there’s a couple who live at the far side of the orange orchards; they look after the place, and their grandson does the Castello garden and helps around, so for anyone who really only wants peace and privacy I suppose it’s a pretty fair bargain … Well, that’s our little colony. I won’t say it’s just another St Trop. in the height of the season, but there’s plenty of what you want, if it’s only peace and sunshine and bathing.’

‘Suits me,’ I said dreamily. ‘Oh, how it suits me.’

‘D’you want to go down this morning?’

‘I’d love to. Where?’

‘Well, the bay, of course. It’s down that way.’ She pointed vaguely through the trees.

‘I thought you said there were notices warning trespassers off?’

‘Oh, goodness, not literally, and not from the beach, anyway, only the grounds. We’d never let anyone else have the bay, that’s what we come here for! Actually it’s quite nice straight down from here on the north side of the headland where our own little jetty is, but there’s sand in the bay, and it’s heaven for lying about, and quite private … Well, you do as you like. I might go down later, but if you want to swim this morning, I’ll get Miranda to show you the way.’

‘She’s here now?’

‘Darling,’ said my sister, ‘You’re in the lap of vulgar luxury now, remember? Did you think I made the coffee myself?’

‘Get you, Contessa,’ I said, crudely. ‘I can remember the day—’

I broke off as a girl came out on to the terrace with a tray, to clear away the breakfast things. She eyed me curiously, with that unabashed stare of the Greeks which one learns to get used to, as it is virtually impossible to stare it down in return, and smiled at me, the smile broadening into a grin as I tried a ‘Good morning’ in Greek – a phrase which was, as yet, my whole vocabulary. She was short and stockily built, with a thick neck and round face, and heavy brows almost meeting over
her nose. Her bright dark eyes and warm skin were attractive with the simple, animal attraction of youth and health. The dress of faded red suited her, giving her a sort of dark, gentle glow that was very different from the electric sparkle of the urban expatriate Greeks I had met. She looked about seventeen.

My attempt to greet her undammed a flood of delighted Greek which my sister, laughing, managed at length to stem.

‘She doesn’t understand, Miranda, she only knows two words. Speak English. Will you show her the way down to the beach when you’ve cleared away, please?’

‘Of course! I shall be pleased!’

She looked more than pleased, she looked so delighted that I smiled to myself, presuming cynically that it was probably only pleasure at having an outing in the middle of a working morning. As it happened, I was wrong. Coming so recently from the grey depressions of London and the backstage bad tempers of failure, I wasn’t able as yet to grasp the Greek’s simple delight in doing anyone a service.

She began to pile the breakfast dishes on her tray with clattering vigour. ‘I shall not be long. A minute, only a minute …’

‘And that means half an hour,’ said my sister placidly, as the girl bustled out. ‘Anyway, what’s the hurry? You’ve all the time in the world.’

‘So I have,’ I said, in deep contentment.

The way to the beach was a shady path quilted with pine needles. It twisted through the trees, to lead out
suddenly into a small clearing where a stream, trickling down to the sea, was trapped in a sunny pool under a bank of honeysuckle.

Here the path forked, one track going uphill, deeper into the woods, the other turning down steeply through pines and golden oaks towards the sea.

Miranda paused and pointed downhill. ‘That is the way you go. The other is to the Castello, and it is private. Nobody goes that way, it is only to the house, you understand.’

‘Whereabouts is the other villa, Mr Manning’s?’

‘On the other side of the bay, at the top of the cliff. You cannot see it from the beach because the trees are in the way, but there is a path going like this’ – she sketched a steep zigzag – ‘from the boat-house up the cliff. My brother works there, my brother Spiro. It is a fine house, very beautiful, like the Signora’s, though of course not so wonderful as the Castello.
That
is like a palace.’

‘So I believe. Does your father work on the estate, too?’

The query was no more than idle; I had completely forgotten Phyllida’s nonsense, and hadn’t believed it anyway, but to my intense embarrassment the girl hesitated, and I wondered for one horrified second if Phyllida had been right. I did not know, then, that the Greek takes the most intensely personal questions serenely for granted, just as he asks them himself, and I had begun to stammer something, but Miranda was already answering:

‘Many years ago my father left us. He went over there.’

‘Over there’ was at the moment a wall of trees laced with shrubs of myrtle, but I knew what lay beyond them; the grim, shut land of Communist Albania.

‘You mean as a prisoner?’ I asked, horrified.

She shook her head. ‘No. He was a Communist. We lived then in Argyrathes, in the south of Corfu, and in that part of the island there are many such.’ She hesitated. ‘I do not know why this is. It is different in the north, where my mother comes from.’ She spoke as if the island were four hundred miles long instead of forty, but I believed her. Where two Greeks are gathered together, there will be at least three political parties represented, and possibly more.

‘You’ve never heard from him?’

‘Never. In the old days my mother still hoped, but now, of course, the frontiers are shut to all, and no one can pass in or out. If he is still alive, he must stay there. But we do not know this either.’

‘D’you mean that no one can travel to Albania?’

‘No one.’ The black eyes suddenly glittered to life, as if something had sparked behind their placid orbs. ‘Except those who break the law.’

‘Not a law I’d care to break myself.’ Those alien snows had looked high and cold and cruel. I said awkwardly: ‘I’m sorry, Miranda. It must be an unhappy business for your mother.’

She shrugged. ‘It is a long time ago. Fourteen years. I do not even know if I remember him. And we have Spiro to look after us.’ The sparkle again. ‘He works for Mr Manning, I told you this – with the boat, and with the car, a wonderful car, very expensive – and also with
the photographs that Mr Manning is taking for a book. He has said that when the book is finished – a real book that is sold in the shops – he will put Spiro’s name in it, in print. Imagine! Oh, there is nothing that Spiro cannot do! He is my twin, you understand.’

‘Is he like you?’

She looked surprised. ‘Like me? Why, no, he is a man, and have I not just told you that he is clever? Me, I am not clever, but then I am a woman, and there is no need. With men it is different. Yes?’

‘So the men say.’ I laughed. ‘Well, thanks very much for showing me the way. Will you tell my sister that I’ll be back in good time for lunch?’

I turned down the steep path under the pines. As I reached the first bend something made me glance back towards the clearing.

Miranda had gone. But I thought I saw a whisk of faded scarlet, not from the direction of the Villa Forli, but higher up in the woods, on the forbidden path to the Castello.

2

Sir, I am vex’d
.

IV
. 1.

T
HE
bay was small and sheltered, a sickle of pure white sand holding back the aquamarine sea, and held in its turn by the towering backdrop of cliff and pine and golden-green trees. My path led me steeply down past a knot of young oaks, straight on to the sand. I changed quickly in a sheltered corner, and walked out into the white blaze of the sun.

The bay was deserted and very quiet. To either side of it the wooded promontories thrust out into the calm, glittering water. Beyond them the sea deepened through peacock shades to a rich, dark blue, where the mountains of Epirus floated in the clear distance, less substantial than a bank of mist. The far snows of Albania seemed to drift like cloud.

After the heat of the sand, the water felt cool and silky. I let myself down into the milky calm, and began to swim idly along parallel to the shore, towards the southern arm of the bay. There was the faintest breeze blowing off the land, its heady mixture of orange-blossom and pine, sweet and sharp, coming in warm
puffs through the salt smell of the sea. Soon I was nearing the promontory, where white rocks came down to the water, and a grove of pines hung out, shadowing a deep, green pool. I stayed in the sun, turning lazily on my back to float, eyes shut against the brilliance of the sky.

The pines breathed and whispered; the tranquil water made no sound at all …

A ripple rocked me, nearly turning me over. As I floundered, trying to right myself, another came, a wash like that of a small boat passing, rolling me in its wake. But I had heard neither oars nor engine; could hear nothing now except the slap of the exhausted ripples against the rock.

Treading water, I looked around me, puzzled and a little alarmed. Nothing. The sea shimmered, empty and calm, to the turquoise and blue of its horizon. I felt downwards with my feet, to find that I had drifted a little further out from shore, and could barely touch bottom with the tips of my toes. I turned back towards the shallows.

This time the wash lifted me clear off my feet, and as I plunged clumsily forward another followed it, tumbling me over, so that I struggled helplessly for a minute, swallowing water, before striking out, thoroughly alarmed now, for shore.

Beside me, suddenly, the water swirled and hissed. Something touched me – a cold, momentary graze along the thigh – as a body drove past me under water …

I gave a gasp of sheer fright, and the only reason I
didn’t scream was because I gasped myself full of water, and went under. Fighting back, terrified, to the surface, I shook the salt out of my eyes, and looked wildly round – to see the bay as empty as before, but with its surface marked now by the arrowing ripples of whatever sea-creature had brushed by me. The arrow’s point was moving fast away, its wake as clear as a vapour-trail across the flat water of the bay. It tore on its way, straight for the open sea … then curved in a long arc, heading back …

I didn’t wait to see what it was. My ignorant mind, panic-stricken, screamed ‘
Sharks!
’ and I struck out madly for the rocks of the promontory.

It was coming fast. Thirty yards off, the surface of the water bulged, swelled, and broke to the curved thrust of a huge, silver-black back. The water parted, and poured off its sides like liquid glass. There was a gasping puff of breath; I caught the glimpse of a dark bright eye, and a dorsal fin cusped like a crescent moon, then the creature submerged again, its wash lifting me a couple of yards forward towards my rock. I found a handhold, clung, and scrambled out, gasping, and thoroughly scared.

It surely wasn’t a shark. Hundreds of adventure stories had told me that one knew a shark by the great triangular fin, and I had seen pictures of the terrible jaws and tiny, brutal eye. This creature had breathed air, and the eye had been big and dark, like a dog’s – like a seal’s, perhaps? But there were no seals in these warm waters, and besides, seals didn’t have dorsal fins. A porpoise, then? Too big …

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