The Angry Mountain

CHAPTER FOUR

To land at Pomigliano Airport we made a wide sweep that carried us right over Naples. The Bay was a deep blue and Capri an emerald isle. White blocks of flats clawed their way up to the Vomero where the brown bulk of the Castel San Elmo looked out over the city. In the distance the grey ash heap of Vesuvius shone white in the sunlight, a little plume of smoke hanging like a trick cloud over the crater.

‘Looks kind of peaceful, doesn’t she?’ Hacket said. He hadn’t stopped talking since we left Milan. I knew all about his wife and family and the colliery screening business he owned back in Pittsburgh, and I welcomed the change of subject. ‘You wouldn’t think to look at her that she’d produced some sixty major eruptions in the last four hundred years.’ His pale grey eyes gleamed behind the thick, rimless glasses. He gave a chuckle and dug me in the ribs. ‘See Naples and die — eh? Guess the fellow Who dreamed that one up must have been here when she was in eruption.’ He sighed. ‘But she doesn’t look very active now. And I come all the way from Pittsburgh to see that mountain. Geology is my hobby.’

I noticed another puff of gas above the great circle of the crater. ‘Well, she’s more active than when I last saw her in 1945 if that’s any encouragement to you,’ I said.

He had his camera out of its case and was taking a shot of the mountain through the window. When he’d taken it he turned to me again. ‘You were here during the war?’

I nodded.

‘Did you see the eruption in 1944?’

‘No, I just missed it.’

He clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘You missed something big there, sir. My boy — the one that’s running a road haulage business back home now — he was out here. He was driving one of the AMG trucks when they evacuated San Sebastiano. He saw Somma Vesuviana wiped out by the lava flow and watched San Sebastiano gradually engulfed by it. Well, I just had to come and see for myself. He says the dome of the church is still showing just above the solidified surface of the lava rock. And you missed it all?’ He shook his head pityingly as though I’d missed a good film.

‘You can’t choose where you’ll be when there’s a war on,’ I said rather tersely.

‘I guess that’s so.’

‘Anyway, I climbed Vesuvius only a week or two before the eruption.’

‘You did?’ He had swung round in his seat to face me and his eyes gleamed behind the thick lenses. ‘That’s something my boy never done. I kept on asking him, what was it like before the eruption. But he didn’t seem to have taken much notice of Vesuvius until it happened — sort of took it for granted. Now tell me, what was it like? I suppose it was much the same as it is now. Did you go right to the top?’

‘ Yes.’ I was thinking how we’d gone up by the tourist road from Torre Annunziata to where it was blocked by an old lava flow and how we’d climbed the rest of the way on foot. I’d had both my legs then.’ It was very different,’ I murmured.

‘It was? Gee! This is a bit of luck for me meeting someone who saw it before the eruption. What was it like?’

His excitement was infectious. ‘The lower slopes were quite gentle,’ I said. ‘But the last bit was steep, like a battlement of lava. And the top was a plateau about a mile across which steamed with the heat pouring out of the fissures. The whole plateau was composed of solidified lava which rang hollow like metal casing as we walked across it. Right in the centre of the plateau was a huge heap of cinders about 300 feet high. From Naples it looked like a small pimple right at the very top, but close to it was more like a slag heap.’

‘And that was where the crater was?’

I nodded. ‘We climbed the slag heap and from the top we were able to look down into the crater mouth.’

‘Could you see anything?’

‘Oh, yes. She was blowing off about every thirty seconds then, sending stones whistling up to a height of about 2000ft.’

‘You don’t say. Wasn’t it dangerous?’

I laughed. ‘Well, I’ll admit I wished I’d got a tin hat with me. But fortunately the funnel of the crater was sloped slightly away from us. We could hear the stones falling on the other side of the plateau. And inside the mouth of the crater great slabs of red hot, plastic rock were rising and falling like phlegm in the throat of a dragon.’

He nodded, eyes gleaming. ‘A remarkable experience. I must tell my boy about this. A very remarkable experience. And you say the mountain is greatly changed?’

‘It was the ash,’ I pointed out.

‘Ah yes, the ash.’ He nodded. ‘My boy told me that it blew right across to the Adriatic coast — six inches of ash in the streets of Bari, two hundred kilometres away, he told me.’

One of the crew came aft at that moment and ordered us to fix our safely belts. A few minutes later we touched down at Pomigliano. The airport was hot and dusty. The sun blazed out of a cloudless sky. The air was almost tropical after Milan and I wished I’d changed into lighter clothing.

The airport bus took us into Naples through narrow, squalid, tram-lined streets where the houses opened straight on to the road and bare-footed children played half-naked in the gaping doorways. Naples hadn’t changed much — the same poverty and dirt. The white-painted hearses of the children would still be winding up the Via di Capodimonte to the cemetery and for all I knew the homeless would still be dying of malnutrition in the quarry vaults under the Via Roma. We came in by way of the Piazza Garibaldi and the Corso Umberto and as the bus ground its way through the chattering, laughing crowds time seemed suddenly to have stood still and I was back in 1944, a flight-lieutenant with nineteen German planes and more than sixty bomber sorties to my credit and nothing worse than a bullet scar across my ribs. That was before Maxwell had got me posted to Foggia, before I’d started those damned flights up to the north, dropping officers and supplies to the partigiani in the Etruscan hills.

At the air booking office I said good-bye to Hacket. He had been kind and helpful, but I wanted to be on my own. To be honest, I found him a tiring companion. ‘Where are you staying?’ he asked me as we stood on the hot pavement.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ll find some little hotel along the waterfront, I expect.’

‘Well, you’ll find me at the Hotel Grand. Any time you feel like a drink, just give me a call.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you’ll come and have dinner with me sometime.’ A taxi drew up and I got in with my suitcase. ‘And thank you again for being so kind to me last night.’ Then I ordered the driver to go to the Porto Santa Lucia. ‘I’ll telephone you,’ I said as the taxi drove off. I looked back and he waved his grey homburg to me, his rimless glasses catching the sunlight so that he looked like an owl surprised by the noontide glare. He looked very American, standing there in the sun with his sleek grey suit and the camera slung across his shoulders as though it belonged there permanently, like a piece of equipment issued to him before he left the States.

The taxi crossed the Piazza del Plebescito, past the Palazzo Reale where the big Naafi Club had been during the war, and slid down to the waterfront. The sea was flat like a mirror, a misty blue burnished by the sun. The sails of yachts gleamed like gliding pyramids of white, and humped against the skyline was the dim outline of Capri, half lost in the haze. I stopped at the little port of Santa Lucia that nestles against the dark, rocky mass of the Castello dell’Ovo. Sitting there in the warmth of the sun, watching a fishing boat preparing to sail, with the sweep of Naples Bay spread before me and Vesuvius standing in the background like a huge, battered pyramid, Milan faded away, a nightmare only vaguely remembered. I felt relaxed and at peace with the world, like a ghost that has come back and found his youth again — sight, sound, smell, it was the same Naples, a wonderful heady concoction of riches and squallor, sun and dust and ragged, thieving urchins. Probably they still sold their sisters in the Galleria Umberto and stole from every unguarded vehicle that ran down the Via Roma. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care about the mixture of wealth and poverty and the thousands who died every day of starvation and horrible, incurable diseases and filled the hearses that the gaunt horses dragged up to Capodimonte. It was all romance to me and I just sat there, drinking it in and letting the lotus of Naples take hold of me.

I hadn’t booked accommodation. But I knew it would be all right. I just felt that nothing could go wrong now.

For that day, at any rate, I was right. There was a bright, newly-painted hotel that looked out across the port of Santa Lucia and when I ordered the taxi to drop me there they welcomed me as though they had been expecting me. They gave me a room on the second floor looking out over the Bay. There was a little balcony and I sat there in the sun and went to sleep with the blue of the Mediterranean glittering below me.

Later I got a taxi and went to a little restaurant I’d known out beyond Posillipo. The night was warm and there was a moon. I had frutti di mare and spaghetti, and Lachrima Christi, eating at a table in the open with the inevitable Italian fiddler playing O Sole Mio and Sorrento. The stillness and beauty of the night brought a sense of loneliness. And then I remembered that Zina Valle was arriving in Naples the next day and something primitive stirred in my blood. At least I ought to thank her for changing over those drinks. She’d probably saved my life. It was an excuse to call on her at any rate.

That night, when I got back to the hotel, I asked for the telephone directory. Valle, Cssa. Zina, Villa Carlotta. She was there all right and I made a note of her telephone number.

I woke next morning to sunshine and a lovely warm, scented air coming in through the open balcony windows. Sitting up in bed I looked out on to the blue of Naples Bay with the fishing boats and the yachts putting out from Porto Sanazarro Barbaia. I had breakfast on the balcony in my dressing-gown and then sat with a cigarette and a long cognac and seltz, dreaming of what I would do with myself all day in that golden, sunlit world. It seemed so wonderful that I couldn’t believe that the spell could ever be broken. I would go out to the restaurant for lunch and then I’d lie in the sun on the rocks by the water’s edge. And later I would telephone the Villa Carlotta.

I reached the restaurant just after twelve and as I was paying off my taxi a big cream-coloured Fiat swung into the parking place. There was nobody in it but the chauffeur. He got out, tossed his cap into the back and unbuttoned the jacket of his olive-green uniform. He wore nothing under the jacket. He undid the belt of his trousers and slipped them off, revealing a pair of maroon bathing trunks. I stood there, staring in fascination at this transformation from chauffeur to bather. He must have been conscious of this, for when he’d tossed jacket and trousers into the car he turned and scowled at me. He was a well-built, broad-shouldered youth of about twenty with a strong face and a mass of long, black hair which he had a habit of tossing back from his wide forehead. His eyes looked very black under the scowl. And then the scowl was replaced by a wide, urchin grin.

I knew him at once then. Instead of the chauffeur I saw a ragged little urchin with a broad grin and a white American sailor’s hat. He’d been in this car park to greet us every time we’d come out here in that spring of 1944. ‘I know you,’ I said in English.

He came towards me. ‘Me watchee,’ he said, grinning all over his face.

That had been his business slogan. He would jump on the running board or run beside the trucks shouting, ‘Me watchee. Me watchee.’ I had never heard him say anything else in English. He and his gang had kept the parking place clear of thieves and as long as you paid for your protection you could leave anything in the truck and know it would be safe. When I had come back to the restaurant in 1945 there had been the same cry of ‘Me watchee’ but the boy who ran beside the truck had been smaller. It had been his younger brother. Roberto, the original ‘Me Watchee,’ had made enough to buy a boat and we had found him jostling the fishermen at the foot of the steps.

‘What happened to the boat?’ I asked him in Italian.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘The American and English soldiers go, signore. There is no trade, so I sell and buy a truck. Then that fall to pieces and I become a chauffeur.’

‘Come and have a drink,’ I suggested.

‘Grazie, signore. Grazie.’

We went down to the restaurant and I had a bottle of vino brought out to a table on the balcony. The reflection of the sun on the sea was blinding. We talked of fishing and the tourist trade. Then we got on to politics and I asked him about the Communists. The corners of his lips dragged down. ‘Only the Church saves Napoli from the Communists, signore,’ he said. ‘But the Church cannot fight arms.’

‘ How do you mean?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I know nothing. It is all talk. But the arms come in and disappear to the south. They say there is a Communist army in Calabria.’

‘There’s always an army in Calabria,’ I said. When I’d left Naples there had been rumours of a brigand force of 20,000 fully armed with field pieces, even tanks.

He nodded. ‘That is so, signore. But it is different now. It is all organised. I have heard the Conte Valle speak of it with Comandante dell’ Armate del Sud. He is in the Governo and he say arms are arriving all the time and everything go underground.’

‘Did you say the Conte Valle?’ I asked.

‘Si, si, signore. Il conte is in the Ministero della Guerra.’

His mention of the Conte Valle took me by surprise. Somehow I’d got the impression she was a widow. ‘Is that the husband of the Contessa Zina Valle?’ I asked him.

His eyes narrowed. ‘You know the Contessa, signore?’

‘I met her in Milano,’ I said. ‘Conte Valle is her husband?’

‘Si, signore.’ He was frowning and his brown fingers had tightened round his tumbler. ‘Where do you meet the Contessa?’ he asked.

‘At the house of a business man named Sismondi,’ I answered.

The scowl was still on his face. ‘Was any one else there with her?’ His voice sounded thick and angry. It seemed strange for a chauffeur to show such interest in a member of the aristocracy and I said so. He gave me a quick shrug and then grinned. ‘It is all very simple, signore. I am chauffeur to the Contessa. I like to swim. When the Contessa is away I can come out here and enjoy the sea. But I am always afraid she will come back too soon and be angry because I am not there at the Villa Carlotta. She is very bad when she is angry. She telephone that she arrive this afternoon. Did she tell you anything about her plans?’

‘She was staying the night in Florence.’ I answered his question almost automatically. I was thinking what a strange coincidence it was that I should meet her chauffeur like this and find I knew him from the war days. It was almost as though I had conjured him here. He had finished his wine and was getting to his feet. ‘Scusi, signore. Now I must have my swim.’

I nodded. ‘Will you give the Contessa a message? My name is Farrell. Tell her I propose to call on her at the Villa Carlotta this evening at six-thirty and that I would like her to have dinner with me.’

Again I was conscious of that slight narrowing of the eyes and the beginnings of a scowl. ‘I will tell her, signore,’ he said, ‘Molte grade.’ He gave me a little bow which seemed strange, dressed as he was in nothing but his bathing trucks. ‘A rivederla, signore.’

‘A rivederci.’ I watched him as he disappeared down the steps. I felt as though somewhere a string had been pulled, tightening my contact with Zina Valle. A moment later I saw his brown body cleave the brazen surface of the water below me with hardly a splash. He swam with strong, powerful strokes straight out to sea. The soles of his two feet beat the surface like a propeller. I got up quickly and went into the restaurant.

That evening, just after six-thirty, a taxi deposited me at the entrance of the Villa Carlotta. It was a big, white house approached from the Via Posillipo by a long curving drive overhung with the trailing fronds of palm trees. Through a little group of firs I caught a glimpse of the frowning rock arches of the Palazzo Don Anna, golden brown against the blue backcloth of the sea. A manservant showed me into a room on the first floor. My only impression of it is one of soft, powder blue with glass doors open to a balcony that had for background the picture postcard blue of Naples Bay with Vesuvius in one corner and Capri, looking remote and mysterious, in the other. Zina Valle came in from the balcony. ‘It is very kind of you to visit me so soon,’ she said in that soft, husky voice. She was dressed in a black evening gown. Her bare shoulders were covered by a white ermine wrap, which hung loose as that I could see that the top of the gown barely covered her breasts. A shiver ran down my spine as I took her hand and kissed it.

A servant brought in drinks and she handed me one. ‘Is it business or pleasure that bring you to Napoli?’ she asked, raising her glass to her lips.

‘A holiday,’ I replied.

‘So you take my advice, eh?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘That day I come to see you at the Excelsior — I advise you to take a holiday. Remember?’

‘Yes, I remember,’ I answered. She’d said something else, too. ‘You told me Milan was bad for me. Why?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘In Milano it is business, always business,’ she answered evasively. ‘You work too hard.’

But I knew she hadn’t meant it like that. Milan is not good for you. She had meant it as a warning. ‘You were right, you know.’

Her brows lifted. ‘How so?’

‘That night at the Albergo Nazionale when you took my glass — you didn’t drink it, did you?’

She shook her head.

‘Why?’

She shrugged her shoulders again. ‘I think perhaps the flowers want a drink, too.’

‘It was drugged, wasn’t it?’

‘Drugged?’ She laughed. ‘Now you are being melodramatic. And they say the English—’

‘I’m not being melodramatic,’ I cut in. ‘About three-thirty in the morning someone came to my room. If I’d had that drink — I don’t think I should be standing here now. You saved my life.’

‘Oh, come now, you are being ridiculous. It was all a joke.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I will be honest. I thought you very attractive. I wanted to make you think me mysterious. That is all.’

‘Someone tried to murder me.’ My voice sounded obstinate.

‘Why should any one wish to do that?’ She turned and put her glass down on the tray. ‘I think I was right when I say you must have a holiday. Either you pull my leg, or if you really think such nonsense, then the fact that you have been overworking has made you imagine things.’ She pulled the wrap closer round her shoulders. ‘Come now. You invited me to dinner. But please, no more silly jokes about people trying to murder you.’

We went out to the car and then drove to a restaurant high up on the Vomero where we had dinner looking through tall glass windows out across the Bay. I don’t remember what we talked about. I only know that I didn’t refer again to what had happened in Milan and soon I had forgotten all about it in the pleasure of her company. The moonlight and the warmth seemed to fill all the dark corners of my mind, so that Milan and Pilsen were forgotten and I was free of the past, alone with her on a cloud where yesterday and tomorrow were nothing and only to-day mattered. We danced a little, talked a lot, and in a moment, it seemed, the evening was over. ‘I must go now,’ she said. ‘At midnight my husband will telephone me from Rome.’

That mention of her husband broke the spell. ‘He always telephones me at midnight.’ She smiled as she said this as though it was amusing that her husband didn’t trust her. I helped her on with her wrap and then she said, ‘Will you have them call Roberto please.’

When Roberto had driven us up to the Vomero his face had been wooden and impassive. But now, as he held the door open for us to get in, it was dark and alive with something that made him look more of the peasant and less of the grown-up urchin I had known. His eyes didn’t once glance at me and as he closed the door I saw he was watching Zina.

The car moved off and she slipped her hand under my arm. ‘It has been a lovely evening,’ she murmured. Her eyes were deep like velvet, her lips slightly parted. Her skin looked very white against the black of her dress. I wanted to touch it, feel her lips against mine. And then something made me look up and I saw Roberto’s eyes watching us through the driving mirror. I stiffened and she said something violent in Italian. Then she removed her hand from my arm.

As I was getting out at my hotel, she said, ‘Would you like to have a bath with me tomorrow?’ She was smiling as though she had purposely phrased it to sound naughty. When I hesitated, at a loss quite what to reply, she added, ‘I always go to the baths at the Isola d’Ischia when I come back. It is very good for the skin after the chemical atmosphere of Milan. If you would like to come I shall be leaving in the launch at eleven. We could have lunch there.’ She smiled. ‘You do not have to have the bath, you know.’

‘It’s very kind of you,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I’d love to.’

‘Benone. At the Villa Carlotta at eleven then. Buona notte,Dick.’

Roberto was watching me from the driving seat. ‘Good night,’ I said.

Next day was as warm and blue as the previous one. I breakfasted on the balcony, dressed leisurely and then drove out to the Villa Carlotta. Zina was waiting for me in the garden. She wore white slacks, white sandals and a white silk shirt. The white emphasised the warm olive tan of her skin and the raven-gleam of her hair. A blue wave of wisteria cascaded over the summerhouse in which she was sitting. She took me down a rock path, heavy with blossom, to a wooden jetty where Roberto waited for us with a smart little motor launch, white-painted with chromium fittings sparkling against the glossy brown of the teak hull.

‘Buongiorno, Roberto.’ It was said softly, silkily and like that it seemed to have significance. Roberto looked at her as though he hated her. Then he turned quickly and started the engine.

Lounging on the cushions as the powerful engine thrust us out into the glare of the Bay I felt lazy and content as though I were a child again and had never known what it was like to be scared. The sound of the water creaming back from the bows and the touch of Zina’s hand on mine merged to form something beautiful that I wanted to grasp and keep. It was the lull before the storm and if I’d had my wits about me I’d have known it, for it was all there could I but have seen it — in the baffled hatred of Roberto’s glance, in the puff of vapour at the top of Vesuvius and in what happened at Casamicciola.

The sea was smooth as glass and as we roared westward at nearly twenty knots a liner was steaming into the Bay between Capri and the Sorrento peninsula, looking very big by comparison with the yachts whose white sails scudded round it. We passed Procida with its castle prison and the crater harbour of Porto d’Ischia. At Casamicciola, where we landed, the villas and hotels shone in the sunlight and the air was laden with the scent of blossom.

Zina took me to a small hotel where she was apparently known. We had a drink whilst our baths were prepared and I asked her what they were like. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘They are natural hot springs. They say that they are radioactive. I do not know anything about that. All I know is that you feel good afterwards.’ She glanced down at my leg. ‘Is that made of metal?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Some aluminium alloy.’

She nodded. ‘Then I should not take it inside the cubicle. The steam will not be good for it.’

‘The steam won’t hurt it,’ I answered. My voice sounded angry and I could feel the blood coming up into my face. I hate being reminded that the damned thing isn’t a part of me.

‘Do you never take advice?’ she asked, smiling.

‘Sometimes,’ I answered.

‘Very well then. Do not be stupid about your leg. The steam will do it no good. When you are inside, pass it out to the attendant.’

I laughed. ‘I’ll do no such thing. As for the steam being bad for it, there’s one advantage about an artificial limb, you can always go to a shop and get another if it gets rusty.’

Her eyes were suddenly violently angry. ‘You have not had one of these radio baths before, no?’

‘No.’

‘Then you do not know what damage it does to metal. Anything metal — watch, cuff-links, anything — should be given to the attendant. You cannot buy a new leg here in Napoli.’

‘I’ll give it an extra polish to-night,’ I said in an endeavour to allay her fears. ‘You’ve no idea the amount of care and attention I lavish on this leg of mine.’

She didn’t smile. She sat and stared at me as though I were a child and she would like to whip me. Then she relaxed and gave a little pout to her lips. ‘You are a stubborn man.’ She smiled. ‘I should not have tried to reason, eh? A woman should know nothing about radioactivity, she should be all emotion and no brain. Very well then.’ Her voice softened. ‘Will you let me look after your leg for you while you are in your bath?’

The idea of her even seeing it seemed quite horrible. It made me into a piece of machinery that unscrewed and took to pieces so that it could be passed part by part through bathroom doors. ‘No,’ I said sharply.

She gave an angry sigh. ‘You are an obstinate fool,’ she said and got to her feet. ‘I ask you to do something and all you say is No. I shall not speak to you again unless you do as I ask you.’ She left me then, cold as ice, quite remote. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. The obvious thing was to do as she said, but somehow I couldn’t. The queer contraption that was my leg was my own affair, whether it got rusty or not.

A few minutes later the attendant came in to say that my bath was ready. ‘Is the Contessa having her bath?’ I asked him.

‘Si, si, signore.’ He leered up at me as we crossed the lounge. ‘She is in the next cubicle to yourself, signore, so that you will be able to talk. I arrange it myself.’ Apparently his clients enjoyed bathing with only a partition between them. I gave him some lire.

He took me through to the back of the hotel and down some stone steps. The atmosphere became hot and humid as we descended. By the time we had reached the electrically-lit cellars of the hotel I could see the steam and feel the moisture settling on the inside of my lungs and throat. He took me through to a room lined with doors. He opened one and as I entered the steam-filled interior he said, ‘Please pass your clothes out very quickly, otherwise they will become damp. Also anything of metal, even rings, signore. The steam is very bad for metal, you understand.’

I passed out everything, but I was damned if I was going to hand him my tin leg. I unstrapped it and wrapped it up in my towel. Then I got into the bath. It seemed to me much the same as any other bath. I could hear Zina splashing in the next cubicle. Then the splashing ceased, there was the sound of a door opening and a whispered conversation. I heard the bath attendant say, Wo, no, Contessa.’ Then the door was closed and the splashing began again. I called out to her, but she didn’t answer.

I lay and wallowed, wondering why she had been so insistent about my leg. I even began to think I’d been a fool not to do as she suggested. After all, she knew what effect the steam would have on it. And then I ‘tried to remember whether radioactivity could be transmitted through steam. Surely the steam would be just plain water? Anyway it didn’t seem to matter.

After half an hour I got out, dressed and left the bathhouse. My body seemed overcome with lassitude so that it was a great effort to climb the steps to the hotel. I went through to the balcony and then stopped. Seated at a table with a tall glass in front of him was Hacket. He had seen me before I had time to turn back into the lounge. ‘Well, well — Mr. Farrell. This is a surprise. I see you’ve been having one of their damned energy-sapping baths. Guess you could do with a drink, eh? What will it be?’

‘Cognac and seltz,’ I said as I sat down.

He gave the order. ‘Just had a bath myself. It left me weak as a kitten. Feeling better for your holiday?’

‘Much better, thanks.’

‘That’s fine. You look better already.’

‘What brings you to Casamicciola?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, I just came out to have a look at the crater harbour of Ischia and this afternoon they’re taking me up to the top of Epomeo on a donkey.’ He gave a fat, jovial laugh. ‘Imagine me on a donkey. I’ll have to get a picture of that to show the folks at home. They tell me there’s a hermit lives on the top of this mountain. I wonder what the beggar pays the local authorities for a pitch like that, eh?’ Again the fat chuckle. My drink arrived and I sat back enjoying the warmth of the sun and the clink of ice in the glass. ‘Ever been to Pozzuoli, Mr. Farrell?‘he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Now there’s an interesting place. I went there yesterday — a lake crusted with plaster of Paris in the hollow of a crater. I don’t reckon there’s another place like that anywhere in the world. Just a twelve-inch thick crust over liquid lava. Couldn’t understand at first why the guide said we weren’t to walk too close to each other. Then over in one corner he showed us a place where the crust was broken away and there was stuff that looked like black mud bubbling up. Guess I understood then, all right.’ He chuckled. ‘And when you light a torch of paper and hold it to a crack, the whole rim of the crater, five hundred feet above you, begins to smoke as the sulphur gases are ignited. A very remarkable sight, Mr. Farrell. And they say it’s linked underground with Vesuvius.’

‘I see you’re not going to miss anything,’ I murmured.

‘No sir. That’s why I’ve come out to Casamicciola to-day. Did you know that Epomeo is a volcano?’ He showed me a little red-bound book he had with him. ‘This is an old Baedeker I found amongst my father’s things. It’s dated 1887.’ He flipped the pages. ‘This is what it says about Casamicciola. The terrible earthquake of 28th July, 1883, laid it almost entirely in ruins and cost thousands of lives and most of the few houses that are still standing have suffered severely.’ He waved his arm towards the town. ‘Do you realise what that means, Mr. Farrell? It means that when this little book was printed there was almost nothing here but the ruins of that earthquake.’

I believe he would have gone on reading passages to me out of that old Baedeker if Zina hadn’t appeared. I introduced them and she slumped, exhausted, into a chair. ‘Phew! It is very relaxing, no?’ She smiled. ‘But a little later you will feel like a million dollars.’

‘What will it be, Countess?’ Hacket asked her.

‘I do not think I will drink yet.’ She looked across at the American. ‘Are you here on business or pleasure, signore?’

‘Mr. Hacket has come here to look at volcanoes,’ I said quickly.

Volcanoes?’ Her brows lifted. ‘You have your wife with you perhaps?”

‘No.’ He looked puzzled. ‘The wife is a bad sailor. She doesn’t like travel.’

‘You are here alone and you are only interested in our volcanoes?’ Zina smiled.

‘I am interested in everything geological — in rock formation, everything,’ Hacket said. ‘But down here, of course, my interest is in volcanic eruptions. Yesterday I was at Pozzuoli. This afternoon I’m going up to take a look at Epomeo. And—’

‘You have not been out to Vesuvius yet?’

‘No. I guess I’ll leave that to the last.’

‘Well, don’t forget to have a look at Pompeii.’ Zina gave me a quick glance. She was paying me back for my earlier obstinacy. ‘That will show you better than anything else what Vesuvio can do.’

‘I thought of taking a quick look at Pompeii on my way out to Vesuvius.’

‘Pompeii is not a place you can take a quick look at, signore.’ Zina was smiling at him. ‘The Ruggiero — that is the director — is a friend of mine.’

It was an obvious bait and the fish rose. ‘You don’t say. Maybe you could — I mean if you were to give me an introduction—’

‘I will do better than that.’ Zina turned to me. ‘Are you doing anything tomorrow afternoon?’

I shook my head.

‘Then we will all three go out to Pompeii. You have a car, Mr. Hacket? Then, shall we say three o’clock at the entrance to Pompeii?’

‘That’s very kind of you, Countess. I’ll look forward to that with great interest. In the meantime perhaps you will do me the honour of being my guest at lunch to-day?’

Zina accepted at once and there was nothing I could do about it. For a solid hour I had the two of them talking volcanic eruptions across me. Zina seemed remarkably well informed on the history of Pompeii so that I began to wonder if this Ruggiero fellow had been her lover at some period.

At last we were back at the boat. As we left Casamicciola Zina looked at me and said, ‘You do not like our American friend, no?’

‘It isn’t that,’ I said quickly, remembering how kind he had been to me in Milan. ‘It’s just that he will go on talking.’

She laughed. ‘Perhaps he does not get any opportunities to talk when he is at home.’ She sprawled back on the cushions with a little sigh. After a while she said, ‘Do you wish to hear Rossini’s Barbiere to-night? It is at the San Carlo. I have a box.’

So I went with her to the opera that night and that was the end of my idyll in Naples. Sitting in the box with the crystals of the chandeliers ablaze with lights and the orchestra tuning up, I looked down on a sea of faces, a constantly shifting mass of colour stretching from below the crimson red of the curtain right back to the dim recesses of the theatre. And in all that eddying mass, my gaze was caught and held by one pair of eyes staring up at me. It was Hilda Tucek. I saw her nudge her companion and then he, too, looked up and I saw she was with John Maxwell.

‘What is the matter?’ Zina’s hand touched my arm. ‘You are trembling, Dick. What has happened?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all. Just someone I know.’

‘Where?’ I didn’t answer and she said playfully, ‘A girl?’ I still didn’t say anything, but she must have seen the direction of my gaze, for she focused her opera glasses on the centre of the stalls. ‘An English girl — in a white frock?’

‘No — Czech,’ I corrected. ‘Why did you think she was English?’

‘She look so damn’ superior,’ she answered venomously. Then I heard her suck in her breath quickly. ‘What is the name of the man who is with her? I think I have met him before.’

‘ John Maxwell,’ I answered.

She shook her head. ‘No. I do not meet him.’

The lights began to fade as the conductor took his place on the platform. Then they were out and the overture had begun. I was glad to sit back in the darkness and absorb the gaiety of Rossini’s music. But somehow it failed to lift me out of the fit of depression that had enveloped me. Maxwell’s arrival in Naples had shaken me. I had a queer feeling of being trapped and in imagination I felt unseen eyes watching me across the dark pit of the theatre. The knowledge that Maxwell was down there in the body of the theatre stood between me and the music and I got no enjoyment out of it.

‘You are cold?’ Zina’s lips almost touched my ear. Her hand closed over mine.

‘No — I’m quite warm, thank you.’

‘But you are trembling, and your hand is like ice.’ Then her fingers closed violently on mine. ‘What is it you are afraid of?‘she hissed.

‘ Nothing,’ I answered.

‘Is the girl an old love affair?’

‘No,’ I answered frigidly.

‘Then why do you shiver? Or is it the man who frighten you?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said irritably and got my hand out of the clutch of her fingers.

‘So. I am being ridiculous, am I? But it is you who tremble.’ She leaned suddenly close to me again. ‘What does he want, this Maxwell?’

‘Do you mind dropping the subject, Zina.’ I turned away towards the stage where the curtain was just rising.

‘You are obstinate again.’ Her voice sounded petulant. I found myself thinking of the ridiculous scene at Casamicciola when she had tried to get me to give my leg to the attendant. I was still thinking of this and listening to the music at the same time when a hand came out of the darkness of the box behind me and gripped my shoulder. I spun round to see the gleam of a white shirtfront and Maxwell leaning down towards me.

‘A word with you, Dick.’

I hesitated, glancing at Zina. She’d noticed the interruption and was looking up at Maxwell. He bowed, a slight inclination of the head. ‘Signorina Bestanto, isn’t it?’

She gave a slight nod of assent. ‘That was my name before my marriage. But I do not think I have met you before, signore?’

‘No,’ Maxwell answered. ‘I know your name because I happened to see a photograph of you — at the Questura.’

Zina’s eyes narrowed. Then the lids dropped and she smiled. ‘One day, signore, I hope you are very poor, then perhaps you understand many things that seem strange to you now.’ She turned back towards the stage. Her face looked very white in the glare of the footlights and for an I instant I thought I caught a gleam of intense anger in her eyes. Then Maxwell touched me on the shoulder and nodded towards the door of the box.

I followed him out. He shut the door and produced a packet of cigarettes. ‘You certainly do have a way of picking trouble, Dick,’ he said.

‘How do you mean?’ I asked him.

‘That girl.’ He nodded towards the closed door of the box.

‘Well? What about her?’

‘She’s dynamite. The photograph I saw of her was in a dossier about an inch thick. It was shown to me by one of the AMG police at the Questura in Rome during the war.’

‘You mean she was a German agent?’ I asked.

‘There was no definite proof, but—’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘The Field Security Police kept a close eye on her.’

‘If there was no proof, then—’

He stopped me with a quick movement of his hand. ‘I didn’t come to see you about your girl friend,’ he said. ‘Why did you skip out of Milan like that?’

‘Reece was getting on my nerves,’ I answered quickly.

He drew on his cigarette until the point of it glowed. ‘I don’t think that was the reason,’ he said softly.

‘Then what was the reason, since you know?’ I found it difficult to keep the tremor out of my voice.

In the same quiet tone, he said, ‘I think you were scared.’

‘Scared?’ I tried to laugh it off, but it didn’t sound right and I let it trail away uncertainly.

‘Suppose you tell me,what scared you so badly that you sent a cable to your firm saying you were under doctor’s orders to take a rest?’

I didn’t say anything and after a moment he said, ‘Where does that girl come into it?’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

She comes into it somewhere. What’s her name now?’

‘Zina Valle. She’s a contessa.’

‘Valle’s wife? I wonder.’ He stroked his chin. ‘Where did you meet her?’

‘At Sismondi’s flat.’

‘And then?’

‘She came and saw me at the Excelsior. Later I met her again.’

‘Where?’

‘At Shirer’s suite in the Albergo Nazionale.’

‘Was that the night before you left for Naples?’

I nodded.

He frowned. ‘You’re holding something back. Suppose you give me the whole story?’

I hesitated. But I knew it was no use. He and Reece were in the thing together. Reece would never believe it and therefore Maxwell wouldn’t. ‘I’ve nothing to tell you,’ I said.

‘I think you have.’ His voice suddenly had a bite to it. ‘For a start you could tell me what made you leave Milan like that.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘If I could help you over Tucek’s disappearance I would. Damn it!’ I added angrily. ‘You surely believe that? The man was a friend of mine. He saved my life once during the Battle of Britain. Just leave me out of it, will you.’

‘I wish I could,’ he said ‘But somehow you’re a part of it whether you like it or not. Somehow it’s all connected with you.’

‘What do you mean by—’

‘Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. But—’ He stopped and looked at me. ‘The morning you left Milan you were hinting to Hilda that Shirer had something to do with her father’s disappearance.’

‘That’s not correct,’ I answered. ‘There was a carabinieri captain with her. He was investigating her father’s disappearance. I showed him a photograph I had of Sansevino, the doctor at the Villa d’Este.’

‘You told him to go and interview Shirer.’

‘Yes. Did he go?’

‘I don’t think so. There was an American doctor with you who told them you were balmy. However, Reece went along, but Shirer had left Milan.’ He gripped my arm. ‘What do you know about Shirer? Why did you tell Caselli to interview him?’

I hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I had been on the point of telling him that Walter Shirer didn’t exist, that the man he thought was Shirer … But in the moment of putting it into words I was assailed by doubts. He’d only think I was crazy. And here in Naples the reason for my suspicions seemed vague and unreal.

‘You were going to say—?’

‘Nothing,’ I answered quickly.

‘You were going to tell me something. What was it?’ And then, as I remained silent, he said, ‘For God’s sake, Dick, tell me where you come into it. You come into it somewhere. That I’m certain.’

‘I can’t help you,’ I said.

He looked at me for a moment as though testing my mood. ‘All right,’ he said at length. ‘If you won’t talk, I can’t make you — not yet. But watch your step. I think you’re out of your depth. Perhaps you don’t know it. I hope for your sake—’ He ground his cigarette out on the carpet. ‘If you change your mind I’m staying at the Garibaldi.’ He turned quickly and went down the corridor. I went slowly back into the box and sat down again in the seat beside Zina. She didn’t move, but I knew she had seen me. ‘What did he want?’ she whispered.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

Her lips were compressed into a thin line and for a moment she looked almost haggard.

When the curtain came down on the first act and the lights went up I saw there were two empty seats in the centre of the stalls. ‘Your friends have left?’ Zina’s eyes were narrowed and watchful. I didn’t reply and she said, ‘Let us go and get a drink.’ When we were seated in the bar she said, ‘Are you shocked to learn that I work for the Germans?’

‘No,‘I said.

She looked down at her drink. ‘I was in cabaret then. My father had been injured in the bombing of Napoli. My mother was dying of tuberculosis. I had a brother prisoner of war in Kenya and two sisters, one ten, the other twelve. They gave me the choice of working for them or going to the campo di concentramento. If I had refused then my sisters would have become prostitutes in the bordellos off the Via Roma. I do not think I have much choice, Dick.’ She looked up at me and smiled. ‘But now everything is all right. The war is over and I am married to a conte. Only, you see, I do not like to be reminded of the past, by people who do not understand. This Maxwell, he was a British police officer?’

‘No. R.A.F. Intelligence.’

‘And what does he do now?’

‘I don’t know,‘I said.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘What does it matter anyway. Who cares what he does? He has ruined the evening, that is all I know.’ She finished her drink and got to her feet. ‘I wish to go home now, Dick. You are not good company any more and I am upset.’

I followed her out of the bar and down the wide staircase to the crowded foyer. The car was parked in the Piazza. Trieste, but there was no sign of Roberto. I found him in a cafe in the Galleria Umberto. As we drove down to the waterfront Zina slipped her hand over mine. ‘Dick. I do not think this Maxwell is very good for you. Why not come away with me for a little? I have a friend who has a villa on the other side of Vesuvio. It is very quiet there among the vineyards. You can rest and relax, and nobody will know you are there. That is what you want, isn’t it?’ I could feel the warmth of her body very close to mine. I felt my nerves begin to relax as though they were being gently, subtly caressed. It was exactly what I wanted. If I could get right away, so that Maxwell, nobody knew where I was. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly what I want. But there is your husband.’

‘It does not matter about my husband,’ she murmured. ‘He is in Roma. He will be there for several weeks yet. I often go out to this villa. He can ring me there as easily as at Posillipo. What do you think?’

‘Can I ring you in the morning?’

‘No. Come and see me between eleven and twelve. I will be ready to leave if you want to go. Roberto can drive us.’

The car had stopped at my hotel. ‘Good night,’ I said. ‘And thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Buona notte.’

I watched the red tail-light of the Fiat disappear round the bend by the entrance to the Castello dell’Ovo and then I went into the hotel and straight up to my room. But when I’d gone to bed I couldn’t sleep. Something Maxwell had said kept running through my mind — Somehow you’re a part of it whether you like it or not. At length I got up, put my dressing-gown on and went out on to the balcony. The night air was cool after the warmth of the room. A rippled path of silver ran to meet the moon and I could hear the water lapping at the stone breakwater of Santa Lucia. Away to the left a red glow showed for an instant in the night sky and was gone. I watched and it came again, high up, a reflected glow against the underbelly of a cloud. But the stars shone brightly and there wasn’t a sign of any cloud.

Footsteps sounded on the pavement below and I heard an American voice say, ‘It’s just the same as it was in 1944.’ Just the same as in 1944! I knew then what that glow was. It was Vesuvius. The molten lava tumbling about inside the crater was being reflected on the cloud of gases each time she blew off. I lit a cigarette and stood watching it, wondering how it would look from a villa on the slopes of the mountain itself. At the moment it was only a faint flash of red in the sky, no brighter than the glowing tip of my cigarette, far less bright than the moon’s path. I shivered and went back into my room. Tomorrow I would leave Naples. Tomorrow I would go with Zina to this villa. Maxwell wouldn’t find me there. And in a week’s time I’d go back to Milan and start work again.