Michael Ridpath - Amnesia

Once again, Nathan and Tony were there to meet me as the ferry docked in the Marina Grande. Nathan had become sleeker, Tony fatter, and Nathan had grown a thin black moustache. They were both pleased to see me.

We took the funicular up to the Piazzetta where Ernesto was waiting for us with his carriage. Capri was clean, green and prosperous, seemingly untouched by the war. Tony explained that it had been used as a retreat for R & R, first by German officers, and then by their Allied counterparts. Tony had left his villa in the care of a local family in the winter of 1940 and returned to the States. He had spent the war pottering about the Pacific in a minesweeper. Elaine’s visit to Capri in the summer of 1939 had made a deep impression on both of them. They had married in Pittsburgh in 1942 and, as soon as Tony had demobbed, returned to Capri, to find their villa had been fixed up under the supervision of the German officers who had stayed there. Tony was painting again.

The others were waiting for me on the terrace: Stephen, Madeleine, Elaine. And Sophie.

Stephen had changed subtly. He was older, obviously, less floppy, stronger. His arrogance was still there, but it was less superficial, more ingrained. His smile was still dangerous, yet thrilling; he had clearly been working on it. But it was good to see him. After the long, damnably horrible war, it was good to see him. I stepped forward and shook his hand, and then we embraced — something we had never done before as friends.

Madeleine smiled broadly and kissed me on both cheeks — in her mid twenties she had looked like a sophisticated beauty of thirty, and she still did. Elaine had changed the most, but then she had been only sixteen the last time I had seen her. She still had the pert schoolgirl nose, but there was a louche air about her, and she had put on a lot of weight. Standing just behind them was Sophie. Her eyes were shining and her smile was one of relief and happiness, no doubt at seeing her husband and me reconciled.

‘Hello, Angus,’ she said and reached up to kiss me.

‘Hello,’ I said, grinning back. I was relieved myself to realize that I didn’t feel giddy, jealous, embarrassed, humiliated or any of the other reactions I had feared. I was just happy to see her again and pleased that she was married to my former best friend.

Tony broke out the vermouth, and we got down to some serious drinking — the deep blue of the Mediterranean spread out before us. The alcohol, the late-afternoon sunshine and the warmth of old friendship settled upon me like a comfortable blanket. I wasn’t a solitary person: I had formed strong friendships with my fellow soldiers during the war, and there were some good chaps among the other medical students. But there was something more durable, more permanent, more important about my friendship with these people. I was glad Nathan had made me come.

As the sun descended behind Monte Solaro, we moved down the hill to the little Piazzetta, where we installed ourselves in the Bar Tiberio, which took up one wall of the island’s main church, and spent an hour watching inhabitants and visitors parade in front of us. Eventually, Tony took us to dinner at Gemma’s restaurant, which we reached up some steps beside the church, and along a tiny alleyway under arches. Through this gloomy entrance the dining room opened up on to a terrace overlooking the Bay of Naples. The sun had slipped off the broad shoulders of Monte Solaro, and was now a red ball hanging over the gentle peak of Ischia, a golden path leading from it towards us. An enormous American battleship and its two accompanying destroyers loomed black against the silver and the gold. Tony was fussed over by Gemma herself, an energetic lady with a commanding presence for one so small. She liked Tony: everyone liked Tony.

The back wall was lined with paintings of Capri. One, of the cisterns at the Villa Jovis, caught my eye.

‘Is that your signature, Tony?’

Tony grinned. ‘Yes it is. As are those two.’ He pointed to two depictions of the mouth of a cave — presumably one of Capri’s several grottos. ‘They are for sale.’

They were actually quite good. Much better than their brethren on the wall of the restaurant.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sophie’s surreptitious smile. ‘What about the vegetables?’ I asked. I had to.

‘They are history,’ said Tony.

‘Oh.’

Elaine sniggered.

Tony shrugged. ‘I came back from the war and looked at them afresh. I think the idea is good — I still love the idea. But the paintings aren’t. But you know, I don’t feel bad. This is a beautiful island and I want to paint it. I’ve started taking lessons from a little old Scottish lady, Mrs Mackenzie, who is really very good. I’m learning a lot from her.’ He nodded at the walls. ‘And I can get decent money for these.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ I said. ‘If I had any cash, I’d buy one.’

‘We’ve commissioned one of the terrace outside the villa,’ said Madeleine. ‘Tony is going to ship it to New York.’

Over dinner, as we admired the progress of the slowly descending sun over the bay, I caught up on what everyone had been doing. Stephen had just been offered a starring role by one of the Hollywood studios in The Beechwood Legacy . He was flying to California, leaving Sophie and their two children at their home in Twickenham. Sophie had worked at the Free French headquarters in London for a couple of years, until her son had arrived. Sophie was very proud of her children, Fabrice and Beatrice, and looking at their pictures I could see why. They were both strikingly attractive, which wasn’t at all surprising given their parents. Little two-year-old Beatrice, in particular, had Sophie’s big eyes.

Nathan had had an energetic war. A modern war needed oil, and Nathan had made himself very useful getting the oil to the right places. Although young, he had soon established his reputation for getting things done quickly, for reliability and for trustworthiness. As soon as war had been declared by Britain and France on Germany, he had recognized that even though his country wasn’t involved, its oil would be desperately needed. He had arrived at Wakefield Oil’s New York headquarters and taken control. Unlike some of his competitors, he never placed his own company’s profits ahead of the needs of his country, something that had not gone unnoticed by the US government. Wakefield Oil was a much stronger company after the war than it had been before it, and as a result, more profitable. Now Nathan was focusing on the Middle East, which he predicted would be the big marginal producer of oil for the rest of the century. I knew nothing about the stock market, but I resolved that if I ever did manage to save some money, I would work out how to buy shares in Wakefield Oil.

Madeleine was proud of her husband. Her English had achieved a rapid fluency, although her accent was still strongly French, but now with a definite American tinge. She said she loved living in New York. There were as yet no small Giannellis to be photographed, but she seemed to be just as proud as Sophie of the little Trickett-Smiths.

And Elaine? Elaine drank and smoked and laughed, occasionally snuggling up to Tony.

We got up in dribs and drabs the following morning. The plan was to have a picnic luncheon at the Villa Damecuta, one of Tiberius’s villas on the other side of Monte Solaro, near the village of Anacapri. Tony tried to take the bus, but it turned out that it was years since Nathan and Madeleine had taken a bus anywhere, and they insisted on two of Capri’s open taxis. The journey was only two and a half miles, but the taxis took twenty minutes to heave their way up the dramatic winding road, somehow ascending what looked like an impassable rampart of rock. Staring at the soft fissures in the cliff, like wrinkles in an old man’s face, I realized that Capri was made of limestone, just like the Dales back home.