Page 69 of The Dolce Vita Divas
And much to my surprise, he did.
Paulo paid the bill, looking rather amazed that it cost quite so much to satisfactorily clothe one weedy boy, and we went back out into the sunny afternoon, which after the aggressive air-conditioning of the shop, was quite a shock.
‘We’d better go home,’ Paulo said, and Eric grinned up at me, swinging the glossy carrier bag with rope handles that the assistant had given him for his old clothes.
‘Do I look like a cowboy?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, ‘apart from the stegosaurus.’
* * *
On our return home, Eric was as subtle as a Chieftain tank driving over a watermelon and raced off upstairs shouting to find his mother. Paulo and I exchanged a look and he took my arm, and we escaped into the gardens. Well, it was nearly four thirty and surely time for a cup of tea and one of the delectable little cakes from the kitchens.
We found a table to the far side of the hotel where we couldn’t immediately be seen by anyone else and settled down to watch the sun dipping slowly towards the sea. It was very quiet, just a few insects buzzing in the lemon trees, and far off the sound of a car, labouring up the hillside.
This reminded me it wouldn’t be long before I would be leaving and driving back down that road towards the harbour and then onwards to get the ferry to Naples and the flight home. It made me feel sad and uncomfortable to think of it.
This place was so filled with light in comparison with my ordinary little town, the gardens here still filled with colour and fragrance, where my little patch would by now be losing its flowers and the leaves would surely be falling from the trees into wet piles.
We drank our tea in a companionable silence. I wondered if perhaps Paulo should be busy doing something behind the scenes inside, but he showed no desire to leave.
‘I hope you have enjoyed your day?’ he said at last.
‘I have,’ I said, my eyes fixed on a seabird, which was wheeling above the cliffs.
Were those the same cliffs where Tiberius flung his enemies to their doom? I had no idea. And I realised that even after a few days I knew nothing of this place. I was just a tourist, like thousands of others.
‘The history here must be fascinating,’ I said. ‘Weren’t the Romans here? I’ve heard about Tiberius.’
Why was I talking about that when I wanted so much to resume our previous conversation?
‘The Phoenicians and the Greeks too,’ he said. ‘The legend is that the Faraglioni rocks were created when Polyphemus threw them at Ulysses. I must take you there, so you can see. There were rumoured to be angry mermaids who lived there and lured sailors to their death. But Greek legends are very variable and other stories exist. But there were more ancient people before them. Then there were pirate attacks and the French under Bonaparte. The Spanish, the English; a lot of people wanted to control Capri until it was given back to Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies.’
‘I would have thought one Sicily would have been enough for any king?’
He chuckled. ‘But yes, Tiberius was the most infamous. I should take you to see some of the villas he built. And the Faraglioni rocks I mentioned earlier. They are very beautiful.’
I gave a deep sigh. ‘Everywhere here is beautiful.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’
There was another long silence between us then, and my thoughts began to race. Was this it then? The moment when we would not be interrupted by Eric and his endless questions, or guests wanting to ask about buses or boat trips, and we would actually talk properly to each other?
‘I’m sorry it took so long for you to be here,’ he said. ‘I would have liked to see you, but then time passed, things happened.’
‘Perhaps you were right and Ellen did that on purpose,’ I said, ‘and perhaps I would have done the same in her position.’
‘I don’t think you would. You were always more…’
I waited while he found the right word.
‘…easy going. More trusting. Ellen knew that I had feelings for you which were different from what I felt for her, and I respected her reluctance to let the past into our future.’
He had feelings for me.
‘I was married with a family, and so were you.’
He nodded. ‘But she knew.’
