The Lovers Read online

  The embalming was a long but painless operation. It began with drinks on the afterdeck, served by Leo, with canapés prepared by Jackie, which earned high praise from the Chef. Then followed a taxi ride to Biot, followed by more drinks in a roadhouse where the patron was an old friend of the Chef and the meal was a Provençal epic, three hours long.

  The Chef, in his cups, proved a garrulous tale-teller. Hadjidakis, on the other hand, displayed a waspish temper and an oddly proprietorial attitude towards the ship and all who sailed in her. Cavanagh, schooled from his youth in wardroom etiquette, listened respectfully, and asked only an occasional discreet question. Somewhere between the fish and the fowl, the talk turned to Lou Molloy and the significance of this cruise in his life history.

  The Chef announced emphatically:

  ‘I know you don’t agree Giorgios, but I think this marriage a good match, wealth on one side, on the other a noble and ancient lineage. Lou Molloy always does things in style.’

  ‘That’s his problem,’ Hadjidakis gave a gloomy assent. ‘He’s obsessed with bloody style. So much of him is genuine, I can’t think why he stoops to the fakery. He doesn’t have any illusions about himself. He’ll tell you straight that he’s a peasant who’s going to be a prince – I understand that. My grandfather was a dirt-farmer from Crete. In his cups he’d swear he was descended from the Kings of Mycenae.’

  ‘Whatever his origins,’ Chef persisted in his argument, ‘Molloy has the presence of a great actor. From the moment he makes an entrance he dominates the company. You talk of him as a peasant. I see him as one of the great condottieri, a mercenary if you like, but one who has earned his own title and his own fiefdom. This marriage he’s about to make is in the same grand manner.’

  ‘You’re cooking up fairy tales,’ Hadjidakis mocked him testily. ‘Lou’s a very rich man. He has money spawning money. But that isn’t enough for him. He wants gilt icing on the cake. The Brahmins of Boston won’t accept him. So he’s marrying back into the old aristocracy – spent bloodlines in a Europe that’s already dead. He doesn’t seem to understand that he’s making himself ridiculous in all sorts of ways.’

  ‘Forgive my ignorance,’ Cavanagh posed the mild question, ‘but whom exactly is he marrying?’

  Hadjidakis shrugged.

  “You tell him, Chef. I’m bored with the whole business.’

  ‘You’re jealous,’ said the Chef, amiably. ‘You and Lou Molloy have been roistering bachelors ever since the war. Now, you can’t bear the thought of breaking up the party.’

  ‘That’s not true. I happen to believe he’s making a big mistake.’

  ‘So it’s his life. He’ll live it the way he wants!’

  ‘Why don’t you tell Cavanagh the whole story? You know the bride’s family. You worked for them at one stage didn’t you?’

  ‘Look! There’s no hurry!’ Cavanagh felt the need to damp down the argument. ‘I’m the new boy. It’s none of my business anyway.’

  ‘Oh, but it is!’ Hadjidakis was emphatic. ‘Tomorrow we clean ship. The day after we taken on water, fuel and stores – and my lady’s personal stewardess arrives from London. She used to be a first-class cabin attendant with Cunard no less! Then we leave for Monte Carlo to pick up Lou Molloy and his guests. Our cruise begins from there. So my young friend you’d better know exactly what you’ll be dealing with for the rest of the voyage. Go on, Chef! Tell him!’

  ‘Pour me more wine, Giorgios. This is a complicated story and you always read it upside down!’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You make Lou Molloy the hunter, instead of the hunted. He didn’t come to Europe looking for a bride. He was looking for business: reconstruction projects using Marshall Aid dollars and local partners. The Farnese were eager to make an alliance with American capital. So they offered him a bonus, the daughter of the house, the little Princess Giulia Farnese.’

  ‘And Lou leapt at it, like trout at a mayfly.’

  ‘Of course he did! It was a match made in heaven – or at least the Vicar of Christ and a bunch of his most powerful henchmen, Cardinal Spellman of New York, Count Galeazzi of the Vatican Bank, Prince Pacelli, the Pope’s nephew, the Cardinal Secretary of State, not to mention the father of the bride, Prince Alessandro Farnese di Mongrifone.’

  ‘That’s a heavy group of matchmakers.’ Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh was impressed. ‘But why did they need so much muscle? Is the bride a bearded lady or what?’

  Giorgios Hadjidakis groaned in theatrical despair. It was Chef who supplied the answer.

  ‘O God! The ignorance of the man! Even I know that Giulia Farnese di Mongrifone is one of the most beautiful women in Italy. The Italian gossip magazines are full of her. Every so often Visconti or Rossellini makes a big song and dance about offering her a film role – which of course she always refuses. Noblesse oblige! She’s named for her ancestor, Giulia the Beautiful . . .’

  ‘So explain please!’ Cavanagh made a dramatic appeal. ‘I come from way down under – next door to the Antarctic penguins. What do I know about Boston carpet-baggers and bartered brides in the Holy City?’

  ‘What indeed!’ The Chef was gentle with his ignorance. ‘On the other hand you’re a Roman Catholic, so you’ll understand when I tell you that in this doubtful and dangerous time, the most stable organisation in Europe is the Vatican. It controls or influences a huge body of international sentiment. All its wartime sins, all its shabby bargains with the Nazis and the Fascists, are conveniently forgotten because the new bogeymen are the Communists. It has a new crop of martyrs in Eastern Europe and China. It has brought out the Confessional vote for Christian Democracy in Italy. It’s funded from all round the world, so it encourages wealthy and loyal adherents like Lou Molloy; and if they’re hard-nosed carpet-baggers as well – which Lou most certainly is! – then so much the better. Money has no smell anyway; but good Christian money like Lou’s earns a special blessing in Rome. Now does it make sense to you, young man?’

  ‘It begins to, yes.’ Cavanagh ruminated on the idea for a few moments. ‘But everything you’ve told me is general. What’s the precise ground of business interest between Prince Farnese and Lou Molloy? And what’s the relationship between Giulia herself and Lou? A woman with a history like hers would hardly let herself be bartered like a chattel – or would she?’

  There was a long moment of silence, then the Chef burst into laughter.

  ‘Now it’s your turn, Giorgios. Answer the man!’

  ‘There’s nothing to answer! It’s Lou’s business. If he wants to discuss it with Cavanagh, he will.’

  ‘Giorgios is right.’ Cavanagh was swift to placate the irascible Greek. ‘I’m the new boy. I do my job and keep my trap shut! It seems to me we need another bottle of wine for the cheese. If you’ll be good enough to choose it, Chef, I’ll be very happy to pay for it . . .’

  Hadjidakis gave him a swift, grateful glance while the Chef buried his nose in the wine list. Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh was suddenly aware that he had just missed making an enemy and might, just possibly, have made a friend.

  It was two in the morning before they stumbled back on board the Salamandra. Now he was thoroughly embalmed, Cavanagh thought it would be a sweet and decorous end to die quietly in his sleep. That mercy, however, was denied him. He thrashed about for hours in a series of nightmares in which he pursued a naked Marie-Claire through the alleys of Antibes, while Lou Molloy thundered at his heels with a cleaver from the galley and Giorgios Hadjidakis laid bookmakers’ odds on whether he would bed the lady or be butchered by Molloy.

  At six in the morning, bleary-eyed, dry-mouthed with a head full of rattling stones, he was rousted out of his bunk and ordered to report to the bridge, showered and shaved, in fifteen minutes flat. Hadjidakis, spruce already in clean coveralls, was implacable. He wanted to be out of the harbour and heading south by six-thirty – and now was as good a time as any for the new boy to demonstrate his skills at pilotage and ship handling.

  Cavanagh made i
t to the bridge with a minute to spare. Hadjidakis had the charts laid out for him. Chef was ready with coffee and croissants. Jackie was standing by the anchor winch, Leo was ready to slip the stern lines.

  ‘Ready when you are, Mr Cavanagh,’ said Hadjidakis.

  ‘Aye, aye sir!’ said Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh. He switched on the intercom and announced, ‘Stand by forward. Stand by aft. Acknowledge loud and clear, please, gentlemen!’

  He knew exactly what Hadjidakis was doing: handing him a million dollars’ worth of vessel to manoeuvre at close quarters, in the middle of the worst hangover of his life. If he failed the test, no harm would come to the ship; Hadjidakis was standing only a pace away from the control console, and the seamen fore and aft could go through the motions in their sleep; but Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh would be finished as a bridge officer, paid off probably in Monte Carlo.

  If he made no mistakes – fine! – he would have passed the first test. He had been embalmed and had still woken up with all his wits about him. But every day would bring new and subtler tests, because Hadjidakis was a Greek and jealous of anyone, man or woman, who intruded into the private domain of his friendship with Lou Molloy.

  When they had cleared the harbour, Hadjidakis told him to head for Cap Camarat, a forty-mile run south-westward along the coast. Just before the Cap they would anchor in the quiet bay of St Tropez. Cavanagh laid off the course on the chart, wrote up the log and took over the wheel. Hadjidakis went below with the two deckhands to lift the carpets in the cabins and expose the entrance hatches into the underbelly of the ship. Grinning like a satyr, he warned Cavanagh that there was no way he could escape his crawl through the bilges. Cavanagh shrugged and laughed.

  His hangover was on the wane. The ship handled like a contented woman. There was a small breeze off the land, bearing with it the faint, elusive scent of spring flowers and mountain herbs. The saddles of the Maritime Alps were dark against a bright sky, the ruffled sea sparkled like champagne in the morning sun. The radar screen was empty of traffic. Cavanagh perched himself in the helmsman’s chair, switched to autopilot and settled down to enjoy the dead straight run from Cap d’Antibes to Cap Camarat.

  In his Navy life these were the hours he had loved; the quiet sunlit times with a fair wind and an easy sea, and the battle no more than an uneasy murmur left far astern. There was a block of blank paper on the chart table, to be used for course calculations and for watch-keeper’s notes, which might later need to be copied into the log. Cavanagh set it in front of him and began to make a series of fluent but precise sketches of the landmarks on his route. It was one of the oldest maritime arts, and the products of it still adorned the British Admiralty charts: carefully hatched drawings of capes and bluffs and inlets and rocky outcrops that warned of hidden reefs. It was also a tranquil exercise in coastwise navigation, dead reckoning by time and speed and available landmarks, all of which could be checked against the radar screen and the shifting graph of the depth sounder, which traced the contours of the underwater shelf.

  Suddenly the Chef was standing beside him with a steaming mug of beef broth, laced with cognac. Cavanagh blessed him eloquently.

  ‘God love you, Chef! May he give you health, wealth, cheerful women and a long life to enjoy them.’

  The Chef, however, was not listening. His attention had been caught by the sketches scattered on the chart table. He asked:

  ‘Are these yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re good.’

  ‘They’re passable. The Navy put me through a crash course in mapping and topography.’

  ‘Mr Molloy would be very interested. He is himself a skilled draughtsman. He has sketchbooks full of drawings of every port we have ever visited.’

  ‘It’s an agreeable hobby.’

  Cavanagh altered course to pass under the stern of a tanker heading southward from Saint Raphael. The Chef pursued his own thought.

  ‘With him it is not a hobby. It’s all connected with his master-plan in Europe.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘Molloy believes there will be an explosion of pleasure-boating all through the Mediterranean. So he plans a series of marina developments in Italy from Portofino in the north to Anzio in the south, then out to the Islands – Sardinia, Elba, Ponza, Ischia, Stromboli. Already the boat designers and builders are gearing up; wartime shipyards are being modernised. Once the craft start coming off the slips, there will be need of all the ancillary services: harbourage, fuel points, provisioning, dockside accommodation – everything! This is what brought Molloy and Farnese together. Molloy has the money connections, the business experience, and high friends like Cardinal Spellman in New York. Farnese served in the Ministry of Marine. He is one of the old Black Aristocracy, a close friend of the present Pontiff and of Galeazzi, who runs Vatican finances. He sees this as a splendid chance to liquidate coastal real estate which has become a liability on the Church’s books: old monasteries and convents, unproductive peasant farms, run-down fishing ports which can be dredged and redeveloped.’

  ‘It sounds like a gold mine.’ The tanker had gone now. Cavanagh eased the Salamandra back on course. ‘Why is Hadjidakis so hostile to it?’

  The Chef gave a small but eloquent shrug.

  ‘He is hostile not to the business but to the marriage. Molloy and Hadjidakis are old shipmates. They have never been equals; but in a democratic America it was easy for them to be friends. Most of the year they lived in separate worlds. In the summer they cruised together, drank, chased women, shared the company of sailing folk. You know how it is at sea. There are no half-measures. You are blood brothers or sworn enemies.’

  ‘But now it’s changing?’

  ‘How can it not change? There is a new woman, a permanent one this time, born to the old feudal traditions of Europe. Once the Farnese and their entourage come aboard, there will be no easy comradeship any more. We will be invited to an occasional cocktail. That will be the end of it. Already Hadjidakis is resentful. Already he is working up an anger about old wrongs: the Italian invasion of Greece, the German occupation which followed it. A pity he wastes so much energy on things he cannot change. I am very fond of Giorgios but he is like a man beating his head on a stone wall just so he can feel better when he stops.’

  Cavanagh asked another question.

  ‘Did I understand that you yourself once worked for the Farnese family?’

  ‘That was the way Hadjidakis put it. The facts were slightly different. Long before the war the Farnese owned a large villa property in Lugano, on the Swiss side of the lake. When the war began to go badly for Italy, the Prince moved his family across the border. I had known him a long time. I had organised business luncheons and political dinners for him at the hotel. Now he offered me, rent-free, a house in the villa domain if I would act as unofficial major-domo and manage the domestic affairs of the Princess, hire the servants, keep the accounts and so on. I was happy to do it. I was well paid. The hotel profited from the extra business I brought in. It worked well for both sides. Unhappily the Princess died in 1943. That was a bad time. The Allies had just invaded Sicily; the Germans were the real masters of the peninsula. So I had to arrange the funeral and act as temporary guardian of the young family.’

  ‘So you know Molloy’s fiancée?’

  ‘Since she was a young girl.’

  ‘What is she like?’

  ‘Beautiful, intelligent, very spoilt. Her father indulges all her whims; but in traditional style he also exploits her.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘As a family asset, negotiable in the marriage market.’

  ‘I thought you approved of this match, Chef?’

  ‘I do. I most emphatically do! It’s a marriage of convenience, yes! But, by all I know of history, it will work better than most romantic follies. Giulia la Bella will lead the dance for a while, but Molloy’s had enough women in his life to know all her moves by heart. He’s strong enough to tame her, wise enough to give her a
loose rein when she needs it, and cold enough to shame her and keep her jealous if she misbehaves. But what’s much more important,’ he gave a short, dry chuckle, ‘and what’s the core of the whole argument, is the marriage settlement. I know the lawyers have been haggling over that for months. There’s no divorce in Italy, the Farnese are too close to the Vatican to countenance an offshore arrangement. Molloy’s an Irish Catholic. So he’s going to make an annulment by church or state too expensive even to dream about. Therefore, according to me, Marcantonio Caviglia, if this isn’t a marriage made in heaven, it’s the next best thing! But why the hell should you care? You’re the luckiest of us all my young friend! No ties, no regrets – and whatever you own of history is twelve thousand miles away, south of the equator! Pass me your mug. I have to get back to my galley.’

  ‘Thanks, Chef! You’re one of God’s good men!’

  ‘Present me to him one day! We haven’t been introduced yet.’

  Then he was gone. Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh watched the landfall open up on the radar screen and altered course to make the dark axe-cut that marked the Bay of St Tropez. With half an hour cruising time on his hands he tried to work out the permutations and combinations of life aboard the Salamandra d’Oro: an owner skipper who demanded clean hands and hearts in the service of his betrothed, yet maintained a jealous Greek friend of the heart; a bachelor Chef from the Grand Hotel du Lac in Lugano; two comely athletes from the Boston ballet – and himself, the passionate pilgrim under scrutiny by them all.

  It took him no time at all to decide that, apart from the social comfort, their opinion didn’t matter a damn. He had a soft berth, on a sweet ship, all found with seventy-five dollars a week to jingle in his white duck pants. Softly at first and then, more strongly, he picked up the refrain of ‘The Low-backed Car’.

  But when the hay was blooming grass,