‘What do you say, Biff? Good idea or not? Perhaps you won’t want to see us again.’ He gave a chuckle.
Biff grinned and picked up his champagne glass.
‘Why not? To our meeting again.’
For the rest of the evening they danced with their partners, getting more and more sentimental.
Just after midnight Biff and Rosemary returned to the table but stayed standing.
‘We are turning in now,’ said Biff.
Konrad and Anna stood up.
‘You lovebirds, eh? Can’t wait to go to bed.’
Rosemary flushed at Konrad’s observation, but still held on to her husband who grinned.
‘No more than you two, I see.’
‘Touché.’ Konrad took Rosemary’s hand and kissed the back of it as Biff lightly kissed Anna on both cheeks in the French style.
‘We’ll see you in the morning, then,’ said Anna. ‘We have the car coming at nine o’clock, don’t forget.’
‘We won’t.’
They made their way to the hotel’s ancient lift with its cage-like doors. When they’d gone Konrad murmured to Anna: ‘Nice people. I’m sorry that we may soon be on opposite sides.’
She stiffened. ‘What do you mean? Do you know something?’
He shook his head and held his new wife tightly around the waist.
‘No my dear, I do not, but….’
What he didn’t say hung heavily in the air.
Involuntarily Anna shivered.
She had found in Rosemary a woman friend she truly got on with – who thought and acted so like herself. And soon they would be enemies? It was unthinkable. When they reached their room, and Konrad began to undress her, she found she was still troubled by what he had said. Only when he lifted her on to the bed did she push it from her mind.
But in the deep dark of the night her mind was troubled once again until sleep came at last – despite Konrad’s snoring like a transatlantic liner’s deep siren.
Biff had found Rosemary more passionate than ever. When they’d finished and were cuddling together she suddenly said from his chest, where she had laid her head.
‘Darling, what do you make of the von Riegners?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well – do you really like them a lot? Despite, well, you know, their being German?’
He grinned unseen in the darkness.
‘What’s that got to do with it, sweetie? People are people, aren’t they? I think they are delightful.’
She snuggled happily against him.
‘I’m glad you think that, because I like them very much. I truly would like to see Anna and Konrad again.’
She would have liked to say more but suddenly she realized that his breathing had become slower, more regular. Like Anna in her room, she lay awake, wondering and worrying about the future as her husband was lost in the deep sleep of post-coital bliss.
They had breakfast in their rooms, but they met in the foyer of the hotel with some luggage, not all of it, as they would only be away for one night in Amalfi.
‘Wie gehts,’ called a very jolly Konrad. ‘Have you seen the car yet?’
Biff shook his head and went with him to the door, leaving the girls to embrace.
‘No, I haven’t seen it. What is it?’
As soon as he stepped out into the open he could see what it was: a very large, drophead, six-seater Mercedes Benz.
‘Good God,’ exclaimed Biff. ‘I thought we’d hired a car, not a tank.’
Konrad slapped his hand on the wing and bellowed: ‘Good German engineering – the best.’
He looked around to see that the driver was nowhere near as he added softly: ‘Not a bloody Italian car that will break down.’
The driver and porter came out with a trolley of luggage and began fitting their cases on the drop-down boot lid, using strong leather straps to secure the load in place.
They took leave of the hotel with the smiling manager and a couple of his staff waving them off. The car weaved its way out through the streets of Sorrento, past the shops and little restaurants, gay with bunting.
There were already many carabinieri, troops, sailors and blackshirts out on the streets and in the squares.
They began to climb up the narrow road that hugged the coast. In the distance they could see Mount Vesuvius dominating Naples and its bay, before, with yet another tight bend of the road back on itself, it went out of sight.
Before them were the white limestone mountains, falling precipitously into the blue sea, the steep valleys clothed in pines and chestnut trees.
Little white houses perched on the cliff sides, smothered with red bougainvillea flowing over their balconies.
In the far distance, where the blue of the sea blurred into a haze where it met the sky, they could see the grey-white hulls of three more Italian warships.
They roared around a blind bend, the driver operating the two-tone horn several times as a warning. A man on a donkey with a cart was coming down the other side. The beast flicked an ear but didn’t alter its rhythm. They climbed and descended, always zigzagging as the narrow road skated the steep valley sides, going from the sea into the green folds of the hills, then out again, sometimes passing through short dark tunnels. The driver said something to Konrad who was sitting beside him. He turned and shouted above the roar of the wind.
‘He says it’s an old Roman road. Brilliant engineering, yes?’
In the back the two girls were sitting together, with Biff next to them on the sea side. Sometimes he was looking down some 800 feet to the sea breaking on the rocks far below. Only a few feet of road and a low wooden fence stopped them from going over. He preferred flying. When there was no direct linkage to the ground, something to judge the height, he felt fine. With this sort of thing, in the hands of a man he had never met before, he was, to say the least, tense. Konrad didn’t seem to notice.
After what seemed ages, but in reality must have been half an hour or so, they slowed and the driver pulled into an observation area. Konrad was immediately out, opening the door and helping the girls.
They all stood looking down on the little town of Positano, with the green, blue and yellow majolica dome of the cathedral of St Maria Assunta.
The driver said something in Italian which Konrad translated for them.
‘He says this is known in Italy as the Vertical Town – you can see why, can’t you? The town’s piazza is the beach apparently; there is nowhere else that’s flat enough.’
‘Look at all those steps.’ Rosemary pointed at a path where they must have numbered a hundred or more.
Anna put her arm through Rosemary’s.
‘How would you like to live there, Rosemary? Everything up and down, up and down, getting the groceries, taking the children to school?’
Rosemary shook her head. ‘It’s so beautiful, but for a woman a nightmare to live in.’
They got back in the car and continued the journey to Amalfi, the little town that gave its name to the coast where they were staying that night.
They came to a village set on a precipitous narrow cliff called Furore.
‘Reminds me of a Norwegian fjord.’
Konrad stood up in the moving car to get a better view down to the tiny beach and flowing stream.
Anna tugged at his trouser leg and shouted something in German that made Biff and Rosemary chuckle: there could be no doubt that it meant ‘sit down you idiot’.
Further on they reached a small natural inlet where the sea sparkled with an added greenness.
Konrad turned around. ‘The driver says they have found a place they call the Grotto della Emeraldo – that means the Emerald Cave. He says it’s very beautiful to see, it shimmers with light coming through the water from an underwater chimney. Do you want to see it?’
The girls chorused: ‘Yes, please.’
The driver pulled into the side of the road where it had recently been widened. They all got out and followed him to the top of a
long flight of steps which led down to the sea.
When they entered the cave the girls’ voices echoed off its limestone walls.
‘It’s extraordinary.’ Rosemary squatted down and placed a finger in the mirrorlike brilliance of the green water. A ripple spread out across the surface to the far side.
Biff said: ‘It’s like the Blue Grotto on Capri.’
‘Only this one is green.’ Anna was teasing him.
‘All right, clever clogs.’
‘Clever clogs?’ Anna giggled. ‘That sounds funny.’
He grinned. ‘Never been called that in one of your Oxford pubs?’
She vigorously shook her head, hair swishing about.
‘Never.’
Rosemary stood up. ‘Don’t be rude, Biff.’
He pulled a face. ‘Oh, you girls are sticking together, are you?’
Konrad grinned. ‘In that case we must also forge an alliance, eh Biff?’
Biff heartily agreed. ‘We certainly must.’
He realized that what he had just said had implications beyond themselves, and he could see that Konrad understood that too.
They held eye contact for a second, then Konrad nodded, just the once.
The girls looked at each other, not understanding, and rolled their eyes at each other as if to say: ‘You haven’t a chance.’
Back in the car, breathless from the steep climb, they renewed their journey, passing trees of beautiful lemons lining the roads.
When they reached their destination the road came into the town at sea level, beside a building that was the old arsenal of what had once been a maritime republic. Drawn up on the beach were rows of fishing boats, with high prows and single masts, each carrying one triangular sail when it was up, reminding Rosemary of Arab boats on the Nile.
The driver turned up a narrow street, Rosemary catching the name Porta della Marina, which meant the Shipway Gate said Konrad, and into the Piazza Duomo.
The driver brought the car to a halt as they all took in the façade of the cathedral of St Andrews.
It was Anna who spoke first.
‘It is truly magnificent.’
At the top of a straight line of fifty-seven steps the portico of the Moorish arches led the eye up to mosaics depicting the Apocalypse of St John and the twelve disciples. Beyond the roof, topped by a crucifix, were the towering milky-coloured rocks, capped by densely-grouped green trees.
‘Come on, we must see inside.’
The girls went ahead as the men followed, leaving their driver to fend off a crowd of children who were gathering around the car.
‘Just a minute.’
Biff aimed his new Kodak camera.
Smiling, Rosemary and Anna clung to each other until there was an audible click as the shutter operated.
They spent nearly an hour in the twelfth century Arab-Norman duomo, especially admiring the cool, peaceful cloisters at the rear of the church.
When they came out again, blinking in the strong sunshine, Konrad said; ‘We’d better check in to the hotel, then how about some lunch?’
The driver took the car up a steadily inclined road cut into the hillside, the via Annunziatella, until they reached a massive building that overlooked the town.
‘It’s a converted convent of the Cappucins,’ explained Konrad as they pulled up in the courtyard.
Unlike their hotel in Sorrento, the rooms were sparsely but comfortably furnished, with high ceilings and whitewashed walls.
There was a wonderful view of Amalfi from the colonnaded terrace, where bougainvillea fell in waves from the balustrade.
They dined down on the shoreline. Rosemary was taken with the fish that swam in the clear water alongside the floating deck of the restaurant, splashing and swirling the water as they fed them titbits of bread.
The tables, covered in white cloths, were arranged beneath awnings striped in red, white and green, Italy’s national colours.
They slept for the rest of the afternoon, but at five o’clock they were back in the car, climbing up the road that zigzagged inland, getting higher and higher until eventually it levelled out at Ravello.
They entered the Piazza Duomo, with its cathedral, stopping at the steps that led up to the massive bronze door. They were remarking on it when Konrad hurried them up.
‘Come on, we haven’t much time.’
He led them towards crowds entering through a rustic stone gatehouse with a square tower, down a hard-packed clay drive into the partly ruined Villa Rufolo.
They barely had time to take a quick look around the magnificent gardens and a larger stone tower which, it was claimed, had so inspired Wagner that it became the Castle of Klingsor in his opera Parsifal, before they had to take their seats, which were set out in an arc.
The orchestra, dressed in dinner jackets, was before them, with the sea as a huge backdrop. They were tuning up as a few stragglers hurriedly took their seats.
When the conductor in a white dinner jacket appeared up a staircase from the right, they all applauded.
As the first chord of the eighteenth variation by Rachmaninov on a theme of Paganini swelled up in the flower-scented air, Biff looked sideways.
Rosemary and Anna’s faces were in profile; both women were lost in the music, one dark, one blonde. His eyes found Konrad sitting at the other end, who smiled as if to say: ‘I know, so beautiful, we’re so lucky.’
It was a magical moment, one that the men would remember for the rest of their days.
It was a short walk through more gardens full of camellias, bougainvillaeas, roses and lemon trees to the Villa Cimbrone. It had been, they were told, renovated only that century, in classical and medieval styles, by the man who was responsible for Big Ben, one Lord Grimthorpe.
But Rosemary was only excited by the fact that Greta Garbo had been there that year during her notorious ‘fling’, as she preferred to call it, with Leopold Stokowski the conductor.
The candlelit dinner, with a string quartet playing softly outside the room, on the terrace, was unforgettable. At the end of the evening they walked slowly back, Rosemary on the arm of Konrad, Biff escorting Anna.
‘That was wonderful, Konrad.’ Rosemary was sleepy, leaning heavily on him. ‘Thank you for organizing it. We would never have done this on our own.’
He patted her hand with his and chuckled.
‘Thank my darling wife, Anna. Her dislike of Il Duce was the reason.’
His wife was apologizing to Biff.
‘I’m sorry – was the concert not to your liking – were you bored?’
He shook his head violently.
‘Not at all, whatever gave you that idea?’
Anna smiled, her face caught in the light from the lamps along the path.
‘I thought you were asleep at one point.’
They were holding hands. He felt close enough to her to lift it and gave it a mock slap.
‘You were mistaken. I was letting the music flow over me.’
She giggled.
‘I could see that.’
They drove back down the hill, still with the roof off, the warm night air full of the scents of the unseen trees and bushes, their yellowish headlights picking out fluttering moths and the occasional black shape of a bat. As they came into Amalfi Biff turned in the front seat and looked back. Konrad was in the middle, the two girls slumped with a head on each shoulder, both fast asleep.
He grinned, but by the time they got to the hotel the girls had begun to stir.
Biff got out first and opened the door for Anna. She was dreamy, so he leaned in and gently pulled her to her feet. She stumbled into him, and he had to steady her with his arm around her waist for a moment. He was conscious of her warmth, her softness, her perfume and the reaction of his body.
Konrad got out. ‘Thank you, Biff,’ he said, and Anna snuggled up against him as Biff hurried around to the other side and helped a blinking stretching Rosemary. He felt guilty, as if he had been unfaithful to her, but he knew that
that was being stupid.
It was not every day that an attractive young woman fell into his arms.
‘Come on, old girl, let’s get you to bed.’
Anna must have woken up a little, because she giggled.
‘You English. If he called me an “old girl” I’d hit him.’
Konrad made a face of horror.
‘I wouldn’t dare, my darling.’
Biff sniffed.
‘Yes, well, it’s a way we English have of showing our affection.’
‘Funny way.’ Anna was staggering a little as they walked into the hotel. Biff realized she had drunk an awful lot of wine – both of them had, only with Rosemary it had made her quiet – up to now.
They got their keys from the desk, the girls making a noise one moment, excessively shooshing with forefingers to lips the next.
Their rooms were adjacent.
Konrad and Biff opened the doors with their keys, keeping one hand on their swaying and still shooshing wives.
For the first time Anna had a slight accent.
‘Now be a good boy, Biff, my friend wants to go to sleep, don’t you, Rosemary?’
Rosemary gave her a huge wink, and they fell into each other’s arms, whispering loud enough to be heard by anybody standing yards away.
Anna said ‘You call me, Rosemary, if you need help – pilots can be very demanding when they are at the controls.’
Rosemary seemed to think that was very funny.
‘And you too, Anna. Don’t let him torpedo you when you are not looking.’
They went off into gales of laughter, which their menfolk did not find amusing, pulling them apart and pushing them quickly into their rooms.
Konrad and Biff shook their heads in mock despair.
‘A great day, Konrad,’ said Biff. ‘Thank you.’
‘It was good, ja? See you in the morning.’ With that they followed their young wives into their rooms and gently closed the doors.
The only sound that could be heard in the corridor after that was the odd girl’s voice giggling with pleasure, and the rhythmic creaking of ancient springs.
To Biff’s bewilderment at first, a tipsy Rosemary had insisted on facing the pillow, rearing and pushing back at him like a young mare. But then, with increasing pleasure and forcefulness he held her by the nape of the neck as she enjoyed herself immensely, pretending to be a long-maned, highly strung and proud arab steed being broken in by her master.
Tears of Autumn, The Page 9