The Lovers Read online

  ‘I don’t see why not, sir. The ship’s not a problem. As far as the guests are concerned, we can provide whatever service they require on ship or on shore. I can put in a courtesy appearance at mealtimes and after dinner. We’ll cruise quietly down the coast, do some diving and fishing and meet you wherever you want between Porto Santo Stefano and Naples. We’ll keep constant radio watch, so you can contact us at any time.’

  ‘Good. That’s what I wanted to hear – oh, and Giulia did refer back to me on the matter of her scuba lessons. You’re a tactful fellow when you want to be, Cavanagh. I appreciate that; and your new hand performed well today – quick to execute orders and very unobtrusive with the passengers. I told him he was hired at Italian rates . . . That’s about all, I think. Your ship, Mr Cavanagh!’

  He glanced at his watch, signed off on the log and left the bridge without another word. Cavanagh was not unhappy with the commendations, however grudgingly they might have been offered. However, he was left with the uncomfortable feeling that the Greek symbols in Hadjidakis’ black book were already beginning to complicate the once-simple equation of his life.

  Once the day visitors were gone and the Salamandra was clear of the harbour, a vesper quiet descended on the ship. The guests were in their cabins resting after the clatter of the afternoon. Leo and Jackie were dozing to the sound of ballet music in the forepeak. Chef and Lenore had retired. Rodolfo the mechanic was hosing and scrubbing the deck, crooning happily to himself as he pursued his solitary task. Cavanagh sat alone on the bridge with one ear cocked to the transceiver traffic from Portishead, in case the Salamandra’s call sign, MUHY, popped up in the transmission.

  There was traffic in the sea lanes too: fishermen trawling the twenty-fathom banks of the Tuscan archipelago, small tankers serving the coastal ports, a Lloyd Triestino liner heading northward from Naples to Genoa, a destroyer, low down on the horizon against the westering sun. Eastward were the lowlands of the Tuscan coast and behind them the misty rises of the foothills where the first lights were pricking out from the hillside towns. It was pleasant cruising, but a certain extra vigilance was demanded. Trawl nets were bad things to tangle with, and sometimes a submarine from the Sixth Fleet popped up without warning for a surface run to recharge batteries and change its fetid air.

  Refreshed by his siesta, Cavanagh was alert and interested in every detail of the passage. His sketchbook was open on the console and from time to time he set down swift, nervous impressions of the shoreline and the craft that came within his scan. Normally his spells on the bridge were times of renewal, of meditative quiet. This evening, however, he had another preoccupation. The phrase which Molloy had used about Hadjidakis buzzed in his ears like an angry wasp: ‘He has a good marriage. We mustn’t put a burr in his bed.’ To hell with Hadjidakis! Now there was a burr in his own bed, in his breeches too, and the name of the burr was Giulia Farnese.

  At first she had seemed unattainable, as far beyond his reach as a painted lady on the canvas of an old master. Then, a series of incidents, some contrived, others apparently accidental, had brought her close enough for him to be able to nourish desire without making a fool of himself. Lucietta, the racy lady with leanings to the Left had offered – albeit in sardonic jest – to finance an elopement with an eligible suitor. Galeazzi the Godfather had accepted without reproof – though not without warning – his confession of attraction to Giulia. Soon, and most conveniently, Molloy would absent himself, leaving to Cavanagh the care and nurture of his guests – Giulia among them. Hadjidakis’ book was a manual of black magic in his hands. Most important of all, Giulia herself had made the first small gestures to tempt him into the dangerous game.

  So what now Cavanagh, me wild colonial boy? Do you want to play or don’t you? No shame if you don’t. Keep your eyes on the sea and the charts and the radar screen. You run the ship and the crew. You smile and say: ‘Yes sir, no madam’ to the guests. You have your little fun and games with Lenore Pritchard, and at the end of the tour you collect the handsome residue of your hundred bucks a week plus a good conduct bonus, and finish your Grand Tour in style. And what’s wrong with that? Not a damned thing – as any right-minded man or woman would willingly admit.

  And the other choice? Well, that’s a mite different; but given the fact that you’re part exhibitionist, part gambler, a half-arsed scholar and a would-be lawyer and something of a sentimentalist whose brains get mislaid when the Old Adam stirs inside his jock-strap, it sounds like an interesting flutter.

  What have you got to lose? Not much in the way of job or money – something maybe in the way of dignity, when the nobility and gentry remind you, as they will, that you’re a hired hand dreaming above his station. There are also other penalties, like the vengeance of Lou Molloy, with his long reach and bottomless purse, and the enmity of the Farnese and the threat of political avengers. What’s to win? No fortune certainly; but possibly, just possibly, the lady, Giulia the Beautiful, who might, just might, count her world well lost for love, if Cavanagh the wild colonial boy could show her what love meant, and if – the biggest if of all – if he had the passion and the talent to teach her and she the desire to learn.

  How would the outcome be determined? In symbol if not in fact, he saw it clearly. One fine day, one night of stars or storm, Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh would find himself standing alone in a great amphitheatre, ringed with silent spectators. He would be facing the door to the caverns where the wild beasts were penned. When the door opened, what would emerge? Giulia the Beautiful, running to his embrace amid the plaudits of the crowd; or Declan Aloysius Molloy, a ravening tiger bent on devouring him?

  He was jolted out of his reverie by the sudden appearance of a fast, fifty-foot pleasure cruiser cutting across his bows on a collision course, a bare hundred metres away. He swung the wheel hard to pass under her stern, and cursed himself for the dangerous folly of day-dreaming on watch. As he resumed his course there was a call on the intercom from Molloy:

  ‘What was that, for Christ’s sake?’

  Cavanagh, Navy-trained, lied cheerfully.

  ‘A fifty-footer, playing chicken. I had him marked, but he clapped on speed at the last moment. I had to take evasive action. Sorry if you were jolted about.’

  ‘It’s not me. It’s the ladies I’m worried about. Keep your mind on your job and your hands out of your pockets! Do you hear me?’

  ‘Loud and clear, sir! Loud and clear!’

  He looked up at the chronometer. It showed eighteen-thirty hours, Greenwich Mean Time. He noted it in the log and wrote a one-line notation. ‘Altered course to avoid speeding pleasure craft.’ On the open page of his sketchbook he wrote the same time, with the date, and made a lightning sketch of a bookie at a country race track. Under the sketch he wrote the words he had heard from a tout at his first race meeting. ‘Hurdler or flat-racer, mate, it makes no difference. You’ve gotta be in it to win it.’ It was not exactly a historic inscription. It might not be worth the cheap art paper it was written on; but he would remember it, by God, the date, the time, the mind-set in which he first set out in pursuit of the Princess Giulia Farnese, called Giulia la Bella.

  It seemed that all the omens were favourable. A few minutes later Prince Farnese himself came to the bridge and asked, with due deference:

  ‘May I join you, Mr Cavanagh?’

  ‘By all means, sir. We have a clear sea at the moment. We’re on automatic pilot. Please, take the chair.’

  ‘You’re free to chat for a while?’

  ‘So long as we both keep an eye on the sea and the radar screen, sure! What can I do for you?’

  ‘Mr Molloy has told you he will be leaving the ship for a few days?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He has also told you I’ll be bringing a lady friend on board?’

  ‘Yes.

  ‘Has he told you who she is?’

  ‘Only that she’s a British actress.’

  ‘A very well-known one, Mr Cavanagh. Miss Aurora Lambert.’<
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  ‘We’ll do our best to make her welcome, sir.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, Mr Cavanagh. That, however, is not my problem.’

  ‘What precisely is your problem, sir?’

  ‘In one word, privacy. Miss Lambert and I are not married, nor, let me say it frankly, are we likely to be in the foreseeable future. We are, as the vulgar press would put it, “just good friends”. Even that could, if wrongly presented in the gutter journals, raise certain embarrassments at the Vatican for my friend Molloy himself and of course for my daughter.’

  ‘I understand, sir.’

  ‘I’m sure you do; but there is one very special problem. Do you know the meaning of the word paparazzi?’

  ‘That’s a new one to me, sir.’

  ‘Well, paparazzi are photographers who make a precarious but sometimes quite rich living by taking intimate or scandalous photographs of celebrities and peddling them to the world press. They are clever and persistent and they will go to any lengths to trap their victims. Places of resort like Porto Santo Stefano are their favourite stamping grounds; but they are as likely to hire a speedboat and follow one out to a deserted cove on Giglio or Giannutri. They are equally capable of bribing a crew member to provide intimate glimpses of life on board a yacht like this one. You see my problem?’

  ‘I do. Let’s try to cut it down to reasonable size. Item one. I can make sure this crew doesn’t talk. Leo and Jackie are already in Mr Molloy’s black books. Miss Pritchard has been trained on the Cunarders; she will be going back to them after the summer. She will not make gossip ashore. Neither Chef nor I has any interest in creating mischief. Rodolfo Arnolfini is a new hand desperately anxious to hold his job. So – you have a reasonable bet on everyone’s discretion. Item two: no photographers or members of the press are allowed on board. However, we cannot prevent photography from near or distant vantage points. So, while we’re in port or under possible surveillance, you and Miss Lambert will have to be careful . . . And if you are waylaid, well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to handle it lightly . . .’

  ‘You have experience in these matters, Mr Cavanagh?’ Farnese was a very practised ironist. Cavanagh took his time over the answer.

  ‘No, sir. My only experience was in keeping myself and my crew out of trouble in waterfront bars. I learned that it was easier to mend hurt feelings than broken heads.’

  ‘A shame perhaps that you were not with your shipmates last night in Porto Ferraio.’

  ‘Who knows?’ Cavanagh shrugged off the barb. ‘Brothels have never been my scene.’

  ‘There’s enough going free for the asking, eh?’

  ‘I’m sure your Highness would know that better than I.’

  Farnese flushed with sudden anger, but managed an unsteady laugh.

  ‘A hit, Mr Cavanagh! A palpable hit! That’s Shakespeare isn’t it?’

  ‘If your Highness says so.’

  ‘Come now, Cavanagh! I made a joke. I meant no harm. Where’s your sense of humour?’

  Before Cavanagh had time to answer, Rodolfo Arnolfini eased his gangling form onto the bridge.

  ‘Excuse me gentlemen, please. The deck is finished, sir. The furniture is in place. I have checked the pressures in the engine room. What now would you like me to do?’

  ‘Relax Rodolfo!’ Cavanagh gave him a grin of approval. ‘Take a shower! Stretch out for a while. We’re still two and a half hours out of Santo Stefano.’

  ‘If you are sure, sir?’

  ‘I’m sure. Go!’

  When Rodolfo had disappeared Farnese said, without obvious malice:

  ‘You have a pleasant way with staff, Mr Cavanagh.’

  ‘I’m staff myself,’ Cavanagh reminded him. ‘I give what I hope to get.’

  ‘And what is that, pray?’

  ‘Respect. Arnolfini knows more about engines than I’ll learn in a lifetime. If, God forbid, anything goes wrong at sea, he’ll be the one to fix it. I’ll just be the man holding the lamp and handing the tools. He’s working his guts out to make the jump from apprentice to journeyman. Maybe, as Europe puts itself together again, he’ll have a chance to get himself an education and make the next jump to engineer. I hope so.’

  ‘Is Mr Hadjidakis a good engineer?’

  ‘The best.’

  ‘A good seaman?’

  ‘That too. I’m happy to serve under him.’

  ‘Then how do you explain what happened last night in Porto Ferraio?’

  ‘I can’t. Not all of it anyway. The carabinieri were somewhat at a loss too. Clearly they do not normally expect violence in houses of appointment – at least not enough of it to invite police intervention. I imagine they were glad to see us gone.’

  ‘But they will have the ship marked, make no mistake about it. Their intelligence service is very good. In the absence of depositions from our side, they will make and circulate their own record of the incident, impossible to overturn.’

  ‘It seems then I made a mistake, compounding so easily with the brigadiere.’

  ‘A mistake? I would not say that. I have not said it to Molloy, who now approves the action you took – as indeed I do myself. All I am pointing out to you, Mr Cavanagh, is that in this country, the norms of judgment, the Aristotelian categories, the concepts underlying the law and its administration, are vastly different from those in Germanic or Anglo-Saxon countries. If you propose to spend any time here – to further your legal studies, for example – you must learn the idiom of life, as you have obviously learned the idiom of the Italian language. I would remind you, however, that our common tongue expresses only half the thought and even less of the emotion of the peoples of this peninsula. Their private lives are carried on in dialects, Pugliese, Calabrese, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Sard . . . Are you listening to me, Mr Cavanagh?’

  ‘I’m listening, sir; but I’m also watching the traffic. That big white spot on the radar is a tanker or a fast freighter. He’s doing twenty-five knots and from where he is now, he has the right of way . . . I understand what you mean by idioms of language and of life. Such differences are not unique to Italy. We have them even in my country, which has less than two hundred years of recorded history – which includes the genocide of the indigenous peoples who occupied the continent for at least 40,000 years.’

  ‘Truly, I did not know that.’ Farnese was genuinely surprised and interested. ‘Where did your indigenous peoples come from?’

  ‘It is believed they came on the now-drowned land-bridge from Asia. They are not negroid but Aryan. Their nearest Asian relatives would appear to be the black Tamils of Ceylon and Southern India . . . They are nomads, hunter-gatherers, with clearly defined tribal areas and a highly elaborate cosmogony, preserved by oral tradition only . . . Their treatment at the hands of the white invaders was, and still is horrendous, an ulcer that will take a long time to heal . . .’

  The tanker was closing fast now. Cavanagh took a long, easy swing to pass under her stern, and bring the Salamandra back on course. Farnese gave him an approving smile and a left-handed compliment.

  ‘If you handle your women as you handle your ship, you must have a very successful love life.’

  ‘Why?’ Cavanagh demanded with a certain asperity. ‘Why in God’s name is everyone suddenly interested in my love life?’

  ‘Do you really want the answer to that?’

  ‘Yes, I do!’

  ‘Because the women desire you and the men wish they could be your age again. You should be flattered, my dear Cavanagh.’

  ‘On the contrary, I’m bloody embarrassed. I feel like a stud bull in an auction ring.’

  ‘I could think of a metaphor more apt.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘You are the young bull being paraded to tease the old one into activity.’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Just what it says. Molloy is totally obsessed with business. The attention he gives to Giulia is quite minimal. So naturally her attention is focussed on you, the youn
g scholar-adventurer from the far end of the earth. Not to marry, of course; that commitment is already made. But for diversion, yes, for the flattery of your obvious admiration . . . Don’t mistake me, Cavanagh! I’m not blaming you. I’m not discouraging you. I’m just trying to play fair, because I find you agreeable and interesting. Sometimes you remind me of the son I lost . . .’

  For once in his life Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh had nothing to say. It was as if he had been punched in the belly. All the air came out of him in a long exhalation. His hands were clammy on the wheel. He changed to autopilot and dried his palms with a pocket handkerchief. Farnese crossed to the chart-table, and by way of changing the conversation began making his own dead-reckoning. Finally he said:

  ‘I make us just level with Ombrone . . .’

  Cavanagh looked at the radar screen.

  ‘A small promontory just south of a river mouth?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like.’

  ‘Is there a larger city in the hills behind?’

  ‘Yes. According to the chart that’s Grosseto.’

  ‘So your reckoning is accurate.’ Then, impelled by unspent anger, he demanded: ‘Let’s finish the other discussion. You tell me I’m co-opted as a player in some kind of game between Lou Molloy and the Farnese family. You obviously take my role seriously enough to raise the matter with me . . .’

  ‘Not too seriously, Mr Cavanagh.’ Farnese shrugged in deprecation. ‘So long as Giulia is in control, which at this moment she is. I do not – let me say it frankly – see you as a fortune-hunter or as a cavalier’ servente in the old Byronic mode. Once Giulia is married, she will do as she pleases – or at least as much as her husband will tolerate. You are a young man of good education and breeding. I do not fear you too much. I believe you will play by the rules.’

  ‘That’s the problem isn’t it?’ Cavanagh reminded him softly. ‘Whose rules are they? Yours or mine?’

  ‘You disappoint me, young man!’

  ‘Why so? You told me yourself one must learn the idioms of life as well as the idioms of language. In this game, however you describe it, the deck is stacked to favour the big names, the heavy players. I’m a nobody from nowhere, a Mediterranean cowboy; but of all the folk on this ship, I have the least to lose, therefore the least to fear.’