Island of Mermaids

by Iris Danbury

  A light step sounded from the back of the room and Margot appeared.

  ‘Oh! I—’ began Althea, deeply embarrassed, yet glad.

  Brian came into the studio from the street. He was carrying a couple of bottles of wine and a paper parcel that might be food.

  ‘Oh, welcome, Althea! Welcome back!’ His smiling face looked as though illumined from some inner joy. ‘You’ve met Margot, I know.’

  The girl’s eyes softened, for she had been warily gazing at Althea.

  Yes, we’ve met,’ said Margot quietly.

  Brian set down the bottles and the food and placed his arm around his wife. You’ve come just in time, Althea. We’ll all celebrate. We really have something to celebrate, thanks to you.’

  ‘I? I didn’t think I helped much.’ Althea could see that Brian and Margot were on the happiest terms.

  You did,’ declared Brian, now opening one of the bottles. ‘You made Margot wonder if you were a rival.’ He turned a loving gaze on his wife.

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ said Althea hastily and rather alarmed.

  Margot smiled. ‘That’s what worried me,’ she admitted. You seemed so self-restrained and without an axe to grind that I rushed to the conclusion that Brian might—that I might lose him altogether.’

  ‘So a month ago she flew out to me in Tunisia—really to spy on me,’ said Brian.

  ‘I wanted to see what you were up to.’ Margot took the glass of wine and raised it. ‘Here’s to the three of us!’

  When Brian disappeared for a moment in search of plates for the food, Althea said to Margot, ‘Wonderful news. I hope you’ll always be happy.’

  Margot came towards Althea and kissed her. ‘I’m not a very demonstrative person,’ she confessed, ‘but I think your visit made me grow up. I saw things in perspective and I was relieved to know that Brian still loved me in spite of the bad way I’d treated him.’

  ‘No more partings, then!’ It was Althea’s turn to raise her glass.

  After a while she left the other couple together. ‘I’ll be seeing you both quite a bit, I expect. We have the shop next door but one to you. If you need a flashy bit of silk for a dress come and see what we have.’

  She spent some time in the shop, rearranging displays, checking the stock lists, until it was time to return to the villa for lunch. On the way back she felt an irresistible urge to walk through Kent’s garden to his Villa Castagna. She knew there would be no one there.

  The garden had been neglected during his absence, last year’s dead flowers shrivelled on their stems, weeds flourished among the bushes. Leaves that had fallen last autumn from the trees lay untidily everywhere.

  The villa looked forlorn and deserted. She walked along the partly-finished terrace, stepping over chunks of rock and pieces of broken columns, remembering painfully that first day when she had come here and met Kent as she tripped over a stone. Oh, why had she come today to revive those bitter memories? Through the window of what he called his ‘salon’ she could see packing cases, still labelled with an address in Naples. Probably the statuary pieces he had bought at the stonemasons. Never unpacked?

  The piano was covered with a large piece of sacking and on the table beside it lay sheets of untidily-written music scores.

  The atmosphere made her shiver and she was glad to escape along the path that led to Villa Stefano.

  At lunch Carla announced that she had heard that Kent was not returning this year to his villa.

  ‘That is sad, eh?’ She darted a glance at Althea, who schooled her facial expression into one of indifference.

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Lawrence, a trifle sharply.

  ‘Assunta, the woman who looks after the villa for him, told Rosanna this morning. Assunta is looking for someone else to work for in the summer. She needs money for her family.’

  ‘Perhaps we can find a place for her,’ suggested Emilia kindly. ‘We will ask.’

  Lawrence gave her an appreciative look, but made no further remark.

  Althea was hardly surprised that Kent had decided to call Capri a day. After all that had happened he could hardly show his face here, although he might even be brazen enough to bring Jennifer here with him. Before that, however, the Villa Castagna needed a good deal of work on it. So Althea need not feel apprehensive that one morning she would come face to face with him in Anacapri.

  At ‘Lorenzo’ she found the time hang a little heavily at first, but as the season advanced and the first early summer visitors came to Capri from pans of Italy or merely for a day’s jaunt from Naples, business became brisker. The silks were similar to those they could buy elsewhere in Italy, but the lovely tweeds, the intricate hand-woven woollens in such glowing colours, these captivated the women customers.

  By the end of May Lawrence was beginning to be well pleased with his venture and congratulated Althea and himself.

  ‘You’re getting too excited,’ she scolded him. ‘Before long you’ll be tearing all round Italy buying and selling and you know what the consequences will be.’

  ‘Yes, we’ll make a fortune!’ he said happily, then added more soberly, ‘No, I promise you I won’t overdo it.’

  Several days later he suggested that they should visit the church of St. Michael in Anacapri. ‘D’you know we’ve been here all this time and never yet visited that marvellous mosaic pavement they have there.’

  ‘Yes, it’s like living in London and never going to the Tower or St. Paul’s until you take your cousins there. We’ll go one day.’

  ‘Today? The shop is shut for siesta anyway.’

  ‘Let’s go tomorrow. I’ve something else I want to do this afternoon.’

  She heard him sigh and turned to smile at him. ‘Oh, all right, if you really insist of going today.’

  The church was only a small one, but the floor was unique, for the mosaic represented an enormous picture of the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, the serpent, the apple-tree and all the appropriate symbols. To preserve this exciting work of art, visitors walked on a wooden platform raised a few inches above the floor level.

  Intent on examining the intricate patterns below, she moved slowly along the boards. ‘I wonder when it was made,’ she murmured.

  ‘Eighteenth century, I think. Not Roman.’

  Her head came up with a jerk at the sound of that man’s voice. ‘Kent!’ she gasped. ‘You!’ She leaned against a nearby chair for support. Then she glanced wildly around the church for her father. Oh, no, she prayed, not another trick!

  ‘Please go away!’ she begged in a whisper.

  ‘No. Not this time,’ he almost hissed the words at her.

  ‘Then I will leave,’ she said curtly.

  ‘Yes, we can’t quarrel here.’

  Outside the church door she turned to him, although against her will. Her instinct was to run, to flee through the village and into the sanctity of her home. Yet the word ‘quarrel’ caught her attention.

  ‘We’ve nothing to quarrel about.’ She marched away towards the street.

  ‘Althea!’ He caught her up in two strides. ‘I’ve come a long way to listen to your explanations and give you mine.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to say to you. Never! And I don’t want to see you.’

  The main street of Anacapri was not one that two English people would choose for a really good storming row and Althea knew she was at a disadvantage, but she hurried towards the piazzetta, hoping that she would not meet anyone she knew, although on second thoughts that might be an advantage. But the street was not crowded, for this was siesta time, and the cafes were deserted.

  It was unfortunate from her point of view that the entrance to Kent’s villa came before she could reach the gates of the Villa Stefano, for here he pulled her roughly along the path and into the shade of the first clump of chestnuts.

  ‘Let me go! If you don’t, I’ll—’

  Yes? What will you do?’ he challenged.

  ‘This!’ she exclaimed, freeing one hand and slappin
g his cheek, but still he refused to release her.

  ‘Calm down and behave like a grown-up girl, not like a hysterical idiot. D’you think I’m going to kidnap you?’

  Tears began to pour down her face. ‘Why did you have to come back here?’ she asked brokenly. ‘Wasn’t it enough that you—’

  ‘Why did I come back here? Because I couldn’t stay away, that’s why. Because I had to know the truth of why you ran away from that pub in Scotland.’

  She raised her tear-stained face to look at him in astonishment. ‘You ask that!’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘When you flirted with me that afternoon, knowing that you had that girl Jennifer staying at the same hotel. What could I do but run away?’

  ‘You could have stayed to listen to quite a simple explanation. That girl Jennifer is my brother’s wife. What conclusion did you jump to? That she was mine? Or even not quite my wife?’

  Althea’s head drooped. ‘I suppose so. The register was lying open and I heard her called “Mrs. Sanderby”.’

  ‘Exactly. And you had so little trust in me that you wouldn’t even give me the slightest chance to tell you who she was. If you’d stayed to dinner, you’d have met my brother, if you wanted proof.’

  ‘And how much did you trust me over Cristo?’ she demanded. ‘You didn’t give me a chance to explain that he’d wandered into my part of the villa and I had the job of turning him out? You jumped to the wrong conclusions, just as much as I.’

  He released part of his fierce grip on her arms and his voice became more gentle. ‘Darling, I’ve bitterly regretted that night, but I was so angry. I just let words run away with me. You see, I came because I wanted to tell you how much I loved you.’

  ‘But you were ready to condemn me,’ she muttered.

  ‘Yes. One thing that enraged me was that I’d bought you a Neapolitan coral necklace—you know that all Capri girls wear those—and I’d not had a single chance to give it to you. Then that artist chap Brian bought you a lava necklace on the top of Vesuvius. I just wanted to tear it off your neck.’

  Althea was calmer now, but she needed more reassurance before she would allow even a glimmer of hope to enter her mind.

  ‘Why were you so jealous?’ she asked.

  He turned her shoulders towards him and cupped her face in his hands. ‘You can ask me that? Because I was enslaved, I was daft about you. That day we went up Monte Solaro in the chair-lift, I nearly told you then. Then that other time when we went down the Phoenician steps—’

  ‘All seven hundred and seventy-seven of them.’ She was beginning to regain her confidence.

  ‘On every one of them I wanted to hold you in my arms.’

  ‘Why didn’t you try on at least one step?’ She gave him a shaky smile.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. You were remote and calm as an iceberg.’

  ‘But I was never that. I was seething inside with jealousy. First it was Carla, and then Jennifer when she came with the others to the carnival.’

  ‘Carla was never a problem, but I admit I asked Jennifer to act the fond sister to me when we met you. She was safely engaged to my brother and very soon to be married, so we put on a show for you. Oh, I know it was probably childish and a grown man ought not to go in for pranks like that, but I had to get some reaction from you.’

  ‘And you didn’t like the one you got?’

  ‘Far from it. Your father suggested I should come and see you at your house in London, but I telephoned you once and there was no reply. The Scottish hotel was his idea and it might have worked well if you hadn’t spoiled it.’

  ‘Perhaps it would have worked if I’d met only you there, instead of—’

  ‘Yes, that was a fool idea of mine. My brother and Jennifer were married a month before and spent their honeymoon in Norway. I suggested that when they landed at Newcastle, they might put in a few days in Scotland at the hotel where I was. I wanted you to meet them. I’d no idea you’d seen Jennifer in the hall. I made enquiries and was told you’d left in a rush. I’d have come after you if I’d had the slightest notion of where you were heading for.’

  ‘I thought you were playing with me that afternoon,’ she murmured.

  ‘Did you? Then see if you think I’m playing with you now,’ was his grim reply, as he held her close to him and kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her neck.

  She sighed with contentment when he partly released her, but his arm was still around her waist, as though he dared not let her be entirely free.

  They walked a little way along the path towards his villa. ‘I suppose it was my father who arranged this dramatic meeting today in the church?’ she asked.

  ‘It didn’t fall out by a happy coincidence. Your father’s a very astute man ‘

  ‘Naturally, or he wouldn’t want you for a son-in-law,’ she said with a flash of her old sarcasm. ‘I suppose you do intend to marry me at some future time? Or am I taking too much for granted?’

  ‘I shall have to consider that question,’ he said gravely. He put up a hand to his cheek. ‘Why on earth should I tie myself to a vixen who slaps my face? It’s still smarting. One inch higher up and I’d have had a black eye!’

  She laughed hilariously. ‘What a sight you’d have looked!’

  ‘In future I might duck when I see your love-pats coming my way.’

  By now they had arrived at Kent’s deserted villa. ‘It looks a mess, doesn’t it? But then, after that fiasco in Scotland, I’d decided not to come back here again at all.’

  ‘And now?’ she queried, her eyes sparkling.

  ‘I shall find myself dragged back here from time to time, I suppose. Oh, those cases,’ he broke off to point through the window. ‘The bits of statues I bought in Naples. I’ve never even unpacked them.’

  ‘I know. I saw they were from Naples.’

  He turned towards her. You’ve been down here? Spying?’

  ‘I couldn’t keep away. I tried to,’ she confessed. ‘The place made me feel sad because it was so deserted.’

  He planted a kiss on the bridge of her nose. ‘Then you do love me a little?’

  Althea turned her head away and spoke to the lavender-blue sea. ‘I’ve been wasting my time all this afternoon,’ she said. ‘How much more does the man want to convince him?’

  He grunted, ‘Let’s go in and unpack those statues.’

  They were both on their knees surrounded by wood shavings from the cases when he said suddenly, ‘Oh, I brought this along with me.’

  He took out the coral necklace and she bent her head towards him. When he had fastened it, he said, ‘I think I shall attach a lead to this collar. Then I might be sure of keeping you.’

  ‘Invisible chains will always keep me tied to you,’ she answered softly.

  The terra-cotta head of a laughing boy was, as Carla had said, delightful. Then there was the blue wolf and, in addition, a small group of white marble nymphs disporting themselves on a long plaque.

  Kent went over to the piano and pulled off the covering. He tried a few notes and shook his head. ‘Wants tuning.’

  ‘When will you finish your opera about the mermaids?’

  ‘Oh, I shall be too busy to think of that this summer.’

  ‘Why?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘I’ve a lot on my mind. One real life mermaid is going to be as much as I can manage. D’you know, it was just as your father said—about men making the mermaids an excuse for staying in pleasant places? I was caught that way, too, and here I am, stuck with an old ruined villa which somehow I’ve got to turn into a home for my mermaid.’

  ‘But we shouldn’t be able to live here all the time. What about your work?’

  He gave her a mock scowl. ‘I’m glad you think about a man’s work sometimes. We might have to take a flat for a short time in London. Then we’ll roam about and find some oldish house with character that I can buy for a song—plus a few thousand pounds, and we’ll restore it. With luck, we ought to be able to spend at least a third of the year here in Capri. Th
at should enable you to play your father’s shop assistant now and again.’

  It was early evening before Althea returned to the Villa Stefano, bringing Kent with her for dinner. As he had no facilities at his own villa, he was staying for a few days at the hotel in Anacapri and when he had gone back there to change his clothes, Althea walked with her father in the Stefano garden.

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ she said. ‘I suppose I have you to thank for making these various assignations.’

  ‘I’ve usually been fairly good at arranging appointments. Most times the right people meet in the right places. I came unstuck with Scotland, but that was due to unforeseen circumstances.’

  ‘And today you had an irresistible urge to visit the Garden of Eden pavement in the church.’

  ‘That’s right. No one should live so long in Anacapri without seeing such a treasure,’ he said, unabashed.

  ‘Supposing it hadn’t come off this time?’ she queried. ‘Imagine some other unforeseen circumstances.’

  He shook his head and patted her hand, linked within the crook of his own arm. ‘Then in that case one of you would not have loved the other. My dear, d’you think I haven’t known all this last winter how sad you’ve been? I could be sure of Kent. He told me long ago that he wanted to marry you, but neither of us wanted to rush you into a marriage you weren’t ready for.’

  She stopped and faced him. ‘Oh, Father, why didn’t you tell me this months ago?’

  ‘Because I wanted you to find out what was in your own heart. If you could have forgotten Kent, dismissed him as just a summer friend, a neighbour, then he wouldn’t have been the man for you. I had to stand by and watch you eating your heart out for him.’