by Matthew Fort
After further fruitless exploration of Giannutri’s path system, in desperation we make our way back to the bay where we landed, clamber along the rocks to a place of relative solitude and swim and eat our picnic and chat in a most amiable way. Balm at last.
I ask Lois what she makes of Giannutri.
‘It’s very pretty, Dad,’ she says.
‘Hmm.’
‘And the sea is fabulous.’
‘Hmm.’
‘And we’ve had adventures.’
‘Hah!’ I say.
‘Honestly, you expect too much.’
‘But don’t you think Giannutri is missing something?’ I say.
‘Well,’ says Lois. ‘I suppose it’s a bit vacuous, sort of void. I kept feeling that someone had left a place just before we arrived there, that we’d just missed something, and the fun had vanished round the corner.’
Giglio (again)
Over the next few days Lois and I explore Giglio together, swimming at the Cala delle Cannelle, speculating about the relationships and histories of our fellow swimmers; eat fried anchovies, paccheri with squid, prawns, scampi, zucchini and tomatoes, and a fabulously indulgent apple tart at La Paloma down on the harbour; search out the best ice creams on the island at Da Rosa at Giglio Porto; peer at the Costa Concordia, the cruise liner that alerted the wider world to Giglio when it crashed into rocks just off the island and sank killing thirty-two people, now lying by the entrance to the port, being made ready for the breaker’s yard. We laugh and talk. We drink white wine at Altura and sit in companionable silence and watch the sun going down behind Montecristo and Corsica beyond, and dine with Gabriella and Francesco and their friends at Tonino’s at Campesi, where the rocks slope down to the sea, smooth and curved as whales breaching, the waves sliding over them, breaking, cascading down their sides.
‘I am the king because I choose to cook, and you are the slaves because you have to wait,’ says Francesco. It’s Lois’s last night.
‘So what’s on the menu, chef?’
‘Fish roe with apple, zucchini, peas and peperoncino,’ he says as we squeeze in around the dining table.
‘Apple!?’
‘Perche no? I like adding fruit to dishes,’ says Francesco. He opens his eyes wide and spreads his hands.
And then?
‘Cacciucco di Taranto. Just fish, whatever the fisherman gives me, onions, peperoncino, bay leaves, tomato and water left over from cooking the aragosto.’
And so the waiting, eating, drinking and chatting goes on.
‘France-e-e-sco,’ coos Gabriella, stretching out the middle vowel, ‘Tesoro, do you remember how you seduced me?’
She tells us how she and Francesco had met in Florence, and how they had gone on a romantic tryst to a ‘hotel’ run by Tonino, proprietor of the trattoria where we’d eaten the night before. She draws a picture of Francesco wooing her with honeyed words and of herself as a wide-eyed ingénue.
‘Imagine me, a sweet innocent from Mantua,’ she says, eyes wide, daring us to disbelieve her, ‘packing my best nightdress to meet this man. And him telling me that we’re going to a romantic hotel. The hotel turned out to be a building where factory workers had lived. Tonino had bought it, and was trying to turn it into a hotel. Imagine me, a sweet young girl, with this… this… this satyr.’ She dissolves into laughter.
As we eat the roe with zucchini, peas, apple and peperoncino, all delicate tastes and odd accents, Francesco tells us how they organise a concert at Altura every year at the end of July.
‘These are serious musicians,’ he says, ‘from the Nuovo Quartetto Italiano and I Solisti Veneti. They bring their Stradivarius and Amati instruments. Incredible. People say “What about the sun, the humidity, the salt?” But they come. And after the concert, and all the listeners have gone home, we have dinner in the vineyard, just us and the musicians, by candlelight. It’s incredible.’
‘It sounds magical,’ I say.
‘It’s magic that we’re here to do it,’ says Gabriella.
‘We aren’t here because we’re told to do this or that,’ Francesco says. ‘We are here, just here, at this point, because of decisions we’ve made. And I have made some bad decisions.’ For a moment he looks solemn, and then breaks into a great guffaw.
Lois looks on in smiling amusement. We eat. We sleep. The next day she goes back to London.
I sit under a nectarine tree, shaded from the sun, catching up with notes and writing, and adjusting to Lois’s absence. Having her with me, watching her curiosity, braced by her common sense, seeing her evident pleasure in the place and the people, has added immeasurably to the richness of these days. I haven’t been lonely before. How could I be with Francesco and Gabriella? Occasionally, you meet people with whom you feel as if you’ve been friends for ever. I feel that way about Francesco and Gabriella. There’s a warmth, generosity and affection, a sense of being embraced and accepted. But more than that, there’s that feeling of connection, of seeing the world from roughly the same perspective, of being able to explore ideas without careful diplomacy, and of sharing humour at the absurdity of life.
A blast of noise announces to the world that the fish truck is on its way to the piazza at Giglio Castello, the modern incarnation of a very old practice linking the port to the inland. A jade beetle crawls across the table on which I’m writing. The light flickers off the sea in chips, a shifting, irregular lace of diamond points, quick, urgent signals, intimate and immense, personal and impersonal, specific and general.
I have the melancholy sense that I’m tracking a vanishing culture through the islands. Of course, life on them has always been harsh and difficult. I’d read some of the great novels of Mediterranean life – Arturo’s Island, The House by the Medlar Tree, The Law, South Wind, Graziella – and they make clear how impoverished, insular, narrow-minded, restrictive, prescriptive these micro-societies were and are.
But, while social change, improved communication and tourism have brought significant benefits, at the same time they’ve helped erode the communal experience that embraces vines and wines; familiarity of what grows best where and when; seasonal changes; the skills of terracing and wall building; drainage and irrigation; the fabric of communities and their customs; food, songs and language. We’re watching knowledge and experience and wisdom built up over millennia vanish.
The natural pattern of life on these islands will, in all probability, vanish altogether in Lois’s lifetime. If she were to attempt the same journey when she’s my age, the liberal ambitions of Gorgona, the surly insularity of Elba and the unexploited beauties of its coast, the deserted melancholy of Pianosa and its cemetery, the walls that’ve stood for 1,000 years on Giglio, and the terraced magic of Altura with its remarkable proprietors and their circular house will have gone, and the way of life, the awareness and appreciation, the skills that these extraordinary social outposts need to survive, will have withered away. It’s a depressing prospect.
Poppies, rock roses, wild chrysanthemums, wild fennel, curry plant, thistle, cornflowers, vetch, honeysuckle, myrtle, mastic, strawberry trees – I stride out along the track from Giglio Castello that leads to Pardini’s Hermitage, and to lunch. I can’t miss the way Francesco and Gabriella had told me as I set off. Just turn right when you see the sign that reads Cala degli Alberi. The Hermitage is at the end of the track, a hotel and sanctuary, a lovely place. Ghigo will be waiting for you, they say.
The warm air is hazy with spicy, peppery, citric perfumes. Bees buzz. Birds sing. The going’s good. Every prospect is gilded. Lizards scutter from my coming. My shoes whisper-crunch on the dusty surface of the path. Dazzling light and pitch shade flicker on its stony surface. A very small, startled rabbit dashes away into the underbrush. An iridescent green scarab beetle settles on the lacy head of wild carrot. A hornet drones past, as large as an Antonov transport plane. Butterflies – brimstones, fritillaries, swallowtails, gatekeepers – dance up and over the surrounding bush. I laugh. I sing. I’m tempted to
dance, but decide that would be undignified at my age. Besides, the ground underfoot isn’t quite regular enough for that kind of behaviour. This is a path less travelled to judge by the overgrown nature of parts of it.
From time to time I can see the sea through the trees and the headland for which I’m heading, on which a white building, Pardini’s Hermitage, stands in an irregular block of trees. I imagine it as Shangri-La-by-the-Sea, a place where a table and a glass of wine are waiting for me. It vanishes behind a screen of scrub as I dip down towards the coast. I’m beginning to feel the familiar flutter of excitement at the approach of lunch.
I have a surge of joy as I scamper the last few steps from the precipitous final stretch of the path onto a tarmac road. A few strides now and—
And I discover that I’m not where I think I am, that I’m a long way from where I thought I was, and to get to where I ought to be, I’ll have to retrace my steps up the precipitous path less travelled in order to find the turning that I’d been assured I couldn’t miss. My fury at churlish Fate, at my own incompetence, at the world at large, is past describing. I think of Francesco’s Cinciut demon as I plod back up the hillside, sweat cascading into my eyes, every muscle in knees, calves and thighs protesting at the effort, all dreams of lunch scattered to the four winds.
I find the turning I should’ve taken without any difficulty. How I could have missed it in the first place is a mystery. Cinciut has a lot to answer for. But I stride out with renewed hope and vigour, and presently, only two and a half hours later than projected, I descend a well-kept stone track, past a piggery, a donkey enclosure, a chicken run, a place where the goats stand in the shade, past a kitchen garden, olive trees and vines, to a terrace fragrant with the resinous perfume of eucalyptus trees and Corsican pines surrounding The Hermitage.
Scarlet in the face, shirt soaked in sweat, legs bleeding from a thousand scratches, I burst into the calm, orderly world of a well-run hotel. I would’ve turned myself away, but the greeting from Francesco ‘Ghigo’ Pardini cannot be more courteous, more kindly, or more soothing. His only concern is that I’m in one piece. He’d been worried when I hadn’t arrived on time. He’d rung Francesco. Francesco was worried. But that’s all in the past. I’m here, aren’t I? That’s all that matters. What do I need? A glass of beer? Certainly. A little lunch perhaps? Were I not in such a disgusting state, I’d embrace Ghigo.
Where in England can you walk in at 3 p.m. in an advanced state of sartorial dilapidation and physical distress, be received with courtesy and warmth, and sit down to a late lunch of insalata di farro with cheese and rosemary, melanzane alla parmigiana, a salad of carrot and mint dressed in lemon juice, a brochette of prawns, squid, zucchini and tomatoes, and a glass or two of chilled white wine? I know how a weary traveller struggling through the snow in Alpine passes in the dead of winter must feel when he spies a great St Bernard bearing a barrel of schnapps trundling towards him.
‘Do you ever think of doing something else?’ I ask Francesco. ‘Would you like to change your life in any way?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Why should I? If I did, I’d want the one I have.’
I’m happy with the life I have, too, but it’s time to move on. I have to resist the temptation to stay on when time and place are so agreeable. I promise that I’ll return as soon as I can.
2
A RICH AND LOVELY SEA-GIRT LAND
JUNE 2014
Sardinia – Tavolara – Maddalena – Caprera – Asinara – Sant’Antiocco – San Pietro
Sardinia
The man in charge of parking at Porto Santo Stefano directs me to the area for motorcycles waiting for the ferry to Olbia. Nicoletta and I have the place to ourselves.
Soon two people on a muscle-bound BMW motorcycle turn into the enclave. The machine looks as if it’s been sculpted by Jacob Epstein, all angular curves and gleaming black surfaces. More motorcyclists arrive, in groups of two or more. Soon we’re hemmed in by thirty or forty monster Ducatis, Kawasakis, more BMWs and Hondas, with butch metal panniers on either side. Nicoletta looks delicate and dainty among them.
At first sight the riders are clones, armoured in black leather or Kevlar, with reflective piping and flashes of silver or white, and plastic-visored bascinets. When they shed their gauntlets and helmets and undo their jackets it’s almost a shock to see soft, lumpy, vulnerable human beings emerge from the chrysalises of biker-dude uniforms. They’re mostly German and Dutch, and male, of all ages and portliness. Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin in The Wild Ones or Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, they’re not. Neither am I, for that matter.
They eye up each other’s bikes with competitive wariness. Then they start exchanging technical data and comparing travel experiences with cheery camaraderie. Big biking’s obviously a companionable business. Occasionally someone quickly squints in Nicoletta’s direction, and looks away, as if they’ve spotted some strange and unusual creature at which it’d be rude to look too long.
When it’s our turn to board the ferry, they take off, a flock of large, angular, black or silver-grey rooks, engines muttering. I follow them in and find a space to tuck Nicoletta away among them.
Porto Istana is a small, unremarkable resort, more a scattering of holiday homes and chalets among the surrounding dunes and pinewoods, about twelve kilometres from Olbia in northern Sardinia. My base, Casa Anna, is quiet and comfortable and serves splendid, if eccentric, breakfasts cooked by the proprietor, Marzia, or her brother, Jerry. There are airy ricotta pancakes one day, Moroccan bread the next, or a ham and cheese toastie, with random slices of pizza or ham to bulk things up, and superb homemade jams and local honey.
They remind me of the breakfasts at the Hotel Mare e Pineta in Cervia on that first, memorable Italian holiday, where there’d been similar little bowls of honey that attracted wasps. Breakfast in the Mare e Pineta had been a war-with-wasps zone. Like experienced hunters at a waterhole, my brothers and I waited until one settled on the edge of the honey-filled bowl and was sipping the viscous sweetness. Then, with a deft flick of the knife blade, we tipped them over into it. Having watched their struggles in this new medium for a minute or two, we lifted out the unfortunate insect, now stuck firmly to the knife blade, and mashed it on the side of the plate. At the end of breakfast, each plate was ringed with a grisly display of trophy wasps. I don’t follow such barbaric practices at Casa Anna, although I’m tempted.
But, before breakfast, I take to slipping down to the nearest beach, a brisk ten minutes’ walk away, for a swim in the sea that’s still nippy for the time of year. The sand bears the indentations of the day before, but it’s clear of any litter. The sunbrellas and sun beds are neatly lined up, the umbrellas erect but furled. A few early arrivals are already staking out their plots, unfolding chairs, putting up sunshades, arranging the support systems for the day. The real pros have trolleys loaded with their gear.
I have an instinctive revulsion of mass humanity. I want pristine beaches and empty seas to myself. Of course, this is simple selfishness and snobbery, and I soon realise that there’s more pleasure to be had in watching the movements of people, the comfortable couples, garrulous groups and the self-regarding singletons turning in the sun like sausages under a grill, than simply indulging in solitary introspection.
By the time I get back after breakfast the beach is thoroughly colonised with bodies in irregular ranks, glistening with oil. By 10 a.m., the bay’s a glittering mass of multi-coloured sunbrellas and gleaming sun-worshippers laid out like fish on a market slab – an old man as wrinkled and dark as an Egyptian mummy, leaning back, eyes closed, head shielded by a battered stove-pipe hat; a plump wife solicitously slathering sun cream over the mountain of her husband’s belly; a father bouncing around his young children, first with a beach ball, then buckets and spades, then wooden racquets and a rubber ball while his wife lies face down nearby, oblivious to all their activity; a solitary man with a fleshy nose and thick scrub of white hair on his chest,
reading a book with quiet intensity; one couple stretched out, his head on her back, inert as corpses; a full brown bosom escaping from a bikini in a display of topless daring. Not that I stare.
Not many people seem interested in actually going into the water, except for one young woman in a blue-and-white-striped bikini, frizzy hair in a frizzy ponytail, wading resolutely through thigh-deep sea from one end of the beach to the other and back; and three blokes in their seventies cavorting like boys in their teens, squeezing into wet suits, donning an armoury of masks, flippers and air tanks before kersploshing out into the bay while their wives stand by gossiping, oblivious to their husbands’ merriment.
Fifty years ago in Cervia there’d been an old woman who walked up and down the beach shouting ‘A-ror-via gelati e vitamine B-B’ and selling ice creams and grapes and apple and orange segments covered in clear, friable caramel from a box arrangement she carried. She’s given way to a constant progression of African and Indian pedlars selling watches, dark glasses, swathes of brightly coloured clothes. I wonder at their persistence and stoicism as they take rebuff after rebuff. Some sun-worshippers don’t even acknowledge their existence. Others engage them in long, and usually pointless, sessions of bartering. Only occasionally does anyone buy anything.
This is the poetry of human variety: shifting, arranging and rearranging, turning over and over, standing, sitting, eating, drinking, wandering up and down within the strict limits of the beach; talking, gossiping, chattering, prattling, yammering, yattering, yapping, jabbering on mobile phones or even to each other, as companionable as nesting seagulls, until it’s time to go, to fold up, pack up, load up and move back to their holiday chalets or apartments, just as wildebeest or caribou suddenly form into irregular, yet cohesive, masses for migration.