Michael Ridpath - Amnesia

Capri was an island of beauty, certainly, but it was also an island of evil. Had Tiberius’s depravity inspired Baron Fersen? And all those other Northern Europeans who had visited Capri in search of young boys?

Stephen and Sophie joined me. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it, Angus?’ said Sophie.

‘It certainly is,’ I said, with a touch of polite enthusiasm.

Stephen nodded to me. I smiled back quickly and insincerely.

I drew back; the couple — because that’s what they were — leaned on the wooden railings. I stared at their backs: Stephen’s broad shoulders, his shirt damp with sweat from the climb; Sophie’s lithe body hugged by her white dress in the breeze.

This was an evil island, where evil acts were done, acts which were not tolerated by civilized society. This was the very spot where Tiberius had watched his enemies, real and imagined, being flung to their deaths. On the climb I had almost forgotten my anger, but now it came flooding back through my veins, burning me from the inside. Two steps forward, a lift and a push, and Stephen would tumble down to sea below. What then? I could leap after him into the cool blackness of oblivion. Perhaps I would take Sophie with me. The anger threatened to overwhelm me, so I turned and stumbled down the path away from the cliff edge to the safety of the shade and the water cisterns.

We were on our way back down the via Tiberio towards Capri town, when Sophie stopped by the water fountain. ‘Tony! Is this the way to that villa you were talking about?’

‘That’s it,’ said Tony.

‘Can we go and have a look?’ Sophie asked.

‘Let’s get back home,’ said Stephen. ‘I’m parched. I need a drink.’

‘There’s a water fountain right here.’

‘I mean a real drink.’

Nathan and Madeleine murmured their agreement.

‘I can go by myself,’ said Sophie. ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’

I watched Tony hesitate; on the one hand he wanted to be a good host to his guests and their desire for sustenance back at his villa, on the other he was reluctant to let Sophie go unaccompanied.

‘I’ll come with you,’ I said.

For a moment, Sophie looked surprised. Then she smiled. ‘Thanks, Angus.’

‘OK,’ said Tony. ‘We’ll have lunch ready for you when you get down.’

Sophie and I turned off the road and along a path through orchards and a vineyard. It was comfortable to walk alone with her. I felt calmer than I had on the Salto di Tiberio and I told myself to be civil. She smiled at me and pointed out the general loveliness of the flowers, the trees and Capri. I agreed — how could I not?

After a couple of hundred yards we turned uphill along a walled lane through a wood of pines and cypresses. Suddenly we came upon a wrought-iron gate with a bell pull, which I duly tugged three times. Eventually a small, round woman arrived, dressed in black with her grey hair coiled up on top of her head under a scarf. She smiled at us in a friendly way. In broken Italian, Sophie asked if we could see the villa. I pressed some lire into the woman’s hand and she opened the gate.

The villa rose large and white in front of us, surrounded by a jungle of overgrown trees and shrubs. To the side, a broad stairway led down to a bronze sculpture of a naked boy preening himself, and beyond that a view of the island and the harbour far down below. The entrance to the villa was a grand portico flanked by Ionic columns, its white plaster flaking. Above the doorway were the Latin words Amori et dolori sacrum : ‘Sacred to love and sorrow’.

The heat had risen steadily during the morning, but as we stepped inside the villa’s hallway, the temperature dropped noticeably. The woman led us up a marble staircase with a wrought-iron balustrade and into a magnificent bedroom. We were drawn immediately to the balcony, with its view over the sea, emerald near the foot of the cliffs rather than blue, towards the Cape of Sorrento and the Amalfi coast. Above and behind the villa, rosemary bushes and limestone boulders sprouted out of the steep slope beneath Tiberius’s ruined palace.

The place smelled of damp and dust. There was plaster on the floors, and cracks in the walls.

‘It’s pretty exposed up here,’ I said. ‘It must take a battering from the wind and the rain.’

‘Yes, but isn’t it marvellous?’ said Sophie. ‘Imagine what it would have been like in its heyday. What a place to have a party!’

The caretaker led us down to a salon on the ground floor, decorated with blue and white tiles, and gold leaf, and then down some more stairs to the fumatorio , the opium den. This was a semi-circular room framed by two thick embossed columns. The floor and walls were tiled in orange. Torn tapestries displaying columns of either Chinese or Japanese characters hung between small windows looking out over the garden, and beyond it the Cape of Sorrento. Dusty divans, their cushions richly embroidered, lined the walls. The caretaker withdrew, leaving Sophie and me alone in the room. The irony of her tactful attempt to allow us to enjoy the romance of the place alone bit into me.

Sophie spoke. ‘I like you, Angus.’

‘I like you too.’

‘And you are a good friend of Stephen’s.’

‘That’s true,’ I said, although I wasn’t at all sure if it still was.

‘I’d like it, we’d like it, if you could remain friends with both of us.’

I didn’t answer right away. I sat on the curved window seat and looked out over the garden to the Mediterranean glimmering through the jungle.

‘How long have you been... together?’

‘Since Madeleine’s wedding,’ Sophie said. ‘We got on really well that weekend. Stephen drove me back to Paris and we spent a week there together. Then he went down to Antibes to meet you and bring you on here.’

‘He didn’t tell me!’ I said. Sophie had just stoked the embers of my anger.

‘Didn’t he?’ said Sophie. ‘You English, you don’t talk about anything, do you? Anything important.’

‘It appears not.’ I turned again to stare out of the window. The fury was building. The bastard! Why hadn’t Stephen told me he had spent a week with Sophie? He must have known I would find out eventually.

‘I enjoyed that afternoon in Honfleur, Angus,’ Sophie said. ‘We had an extraordinary conversation. As I said, I like you, I would like to be your friend. But nothing happened. I don’t think I did anything to let you think something had happened. Did I? And it was four years ago.’

I didn’t reply. She was right, of course; I had built her up over the years to mean so much more to me than she really should. Yet foolish though it sounded, I loved her. Not just then, but now. I loved the way she was talking to me, her kindness and awkward sincerity; I loved her big blue wistful eyes; I loved the little freckles on the end of her nose and I loved her body under that white summer dress...

An idea came to me. I recognized it as a bad idea immediately; a mean, nasty idea. I knew I should squash it, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to speak before sense and reason stopped me.

‘Do you know why Stephen and I are friends?’

‘You were in the same college at Oxford,’ Sophie said.

‘Yes. But I went to a school no one has ever heard of and have a Yorkshire accent. Stephen went to Eton and is loaded.’

‘So?’

‘So at Oxford people like that don’t naturally become friends.’

‘That is absurd.’

‘Shall I tell you what happened?’

Sophie shrugged. She looked doubtful; I went on before she had a chance to stop me.

‘Stephen had a friend from Eton named Maurice. I would say his best friend. They were both good-looking — although Maurice was a good deal more feminine than Stephen, dark, exotic, graceful. They were both rich.’