The Apprentice Lover (27 page)

T
he steamy air cleared in late September, when the island emptied of tourists, who returned to office towers in Milan, Paris, Geneva, Frankfurt, London, and Stockholm. The children of expatriate residents—including Nigel and Nicola—returned to schools in England and Switzerland. Adjusting to demand, the ferries began to cut back on their schedules, and Capri felt less besieged. One could get a table in the piazzetta, and the hotels began to whittle their staffs.

“I am soon dismissed,” said Patrice, “but I hope not so. Signore Milone, he says, you are my most intelligent waiter. You can work through the winter season, even if we have no diners.” Now that Giovanni was preoccupied with his intended, Patrice had time on his hands, and would appear at my cottage door in the late evening. Earlier in the summer, I might have discouraged these visits, but I needed him now—a receptive, sympathetic, and nonjudgmental ear.

That I'd not given thought to the consequences of my excursion to Paestum with Holly understates the case. I assumed that Rupert Grant, whose name was known to hundreds of thousands of readers around the world, couldn't care less what Holly and I had done. I imagined the social chemistry at the Villa Clio would adjust to our newly amorous relations, and that I could blithely continue as Grant's secretary. (Holly herself had admitted, in Salerno, that she and Grant were “not on their old terms of intimacy.”)

What exactly would happen between me and Holly was not obvious to me. The morning after our night of love in Paestum, she grew inexplicably cooler. Over a sunny breakfast of coffee, oranges, and cornetti on the rooftop terrace of the Magna Graecia, she appeared unhappy and remote. When I suggested that she move into the cottage with me at the Villa Clio, she said this was “unrealistic.” She warned me not to “make assumptions” about our relationship. When I made a cynical allusion to her and Grant, she suggested that I didn't understand her situation. “He has certain expectations,” she said.

“He expects you to sleep with him,” I said.

She shook her head. “I play a role in his life. It would be difficult to change that role and remain on the island.”

“Are you afraid of him?”

“Of course not,” she said.

“So explain,” I said.

Her face hardened, and I knew that pressing her would yield nothing. Grant clearly exercised a power over her that I couldn't comprehend.

On the journey back to Capri, I tried to resume this conversation, but Holly resisted. The shadow of her British upbringing only darkened, enabling her to remain cool and sheltered in the midst of what seemed, to me, like an emotional storm. “Don't be so naive,” she said, when I told her she had no future with Grant. “Don't assume anything. It's always a mistake to assume things about other people.” When I seized her hand, she cringed, letting me hang on to it for a while, though obviously embarrassed by my need.

Back on the island, I attempted to follow the usual routines, but found this difficult. The situation between me and Holly and Grant was, of course, painful. And the attempt to erase Marisa from memory seemed willfully cruel. Whenever I raised her name, Vera frowned and Grant changed the subject. Even Holly refused to talk about her. “Don't be so morbid, Alex,” she would say. “I feel as awful as you do. We were friends. But one mustn't dwell on such things.” (Sadly, I realized how often a Calvinistic
mustn't
figured in her speech. Perhaps this was the appeal of Grant, whose speech was full of negative imperatives?) The topic drove
a further wedge between us, giving that night on Paestum the status of a beautiful dream that one could not hope to repeat.

It didn't help that she behaved in Grant's presence as though nothing had happened between us. Jealousy peered over my shoulder, and I was convinced that he'd gotten his hooks back into Holly. But it made no sense. Was she simply impressed by his fame? Holly seemed too mature for that. I continued to wonder what drew her to the Villa Clio in the first place. Like me, she had originally approached Grant with a letter, having been given his address by a friend of her father's, who had known Grant at Oxford. She had sought a position as “research assistant,” but it quickly developed into something more, Grant being Grant.

“He chooses very young and unthreatening girls,” Peter Duncan-Jones told me. “Girls whose futures lie elsewhere. They're all in the business of creating a naughty past for their future fantasies about themselves.” He rattled off the names of half a dozen other young women who had come and gone from the Villa Clio over the past decade: Susan, Miranda, Elise, Nicole. His wry companion, Jeremy, added a few other names: Gavin, Alphonse, Gennaro. (They both sighed at the mention of Gennaro.)

As usual, I sought out Vera for advice. Even at the worst of moments we had a visceral connection, and my need to talk now overwhelmed any sense of caution. I told her frankly about Salerno and Paestum, confessing my distress and confusion.

“You've become quite the chap,” she said. “But I should warn you: Holly is not your type.” Her catlike eyes glittered. “I should forget about her.”

“I can't,” I said.

“Dear boy, restraint,” she said. “I really can't bear it when people talk like that, even when they are young and American.”

The line about Americans was beginning to wear thin. “You English,” I said, “you all think you're so fucking wise.”

“You're upset,” she said. “And I don't blame you. Rupert is a beast. He thinks he's doing it all for art, you see.”

Vera had, it seemed, been bamboozled by her husband, who firmly believed that he invented all truth with the tip of his pen, if not his penis.

“Does Rupert love her?” I asked. That I could ask such a question of Vera Grant suggests a lack of focus on my part. I had given up trying to assess my audience.

“Love?” She tasted the word cautiously—like a piece of possibly spoiled meat from the fridge. “What is love?” The question echoed in all its sentimental amplitude.

“You're teasing me,” I said.

“If you will insist on asking foolish questions, I will respond in kind.” She reached for a cask of wine acquired from the local contadina. “Let's have a drink, shall we? I'm hot.”

We sat in the alcove in the kitchen. It was unusual for us to drink so early in the day, but I welcomed it today. “I know that you dearly believe you love this girl,” Vera said. “You've been mooning about for months, sighing at the merest glimpse of her. Rupie and I have found it amusing. He likes Holly himself, of course.”

“Whatever amuses him,” I said, letting my anger show.

Vera raised her fine, penciled eyebrows, like upside-down smiles on her forehead. “Everyone is too cynical these days,” she said.

“Around here, that's true.”

“Everywhere,” she said. “The intractable point is, Holly and Rupert have an arrangement, and it's between them. That's what arrangements are. If you should wish to make your own arrangement with Holly, that's your business. But you mustn't expect Rupert to admire your entrepreneurial skills.” Her voice lowered now. “I should lie back, were I you.”

Lie back? And let Holly drift away from me, as she certainly would? I had already seen this happening. A week or more had passed since the episode at Paestum, and she had shown no signs of wishing to pursue our relationship in any conventional sense. I had stupidly hoped that she would acknowledge me as her lover. I wanted her to move into the cottage with me and expected Grant to give in, possibly to acquire a new “research assistant.” But it was obvious my wishing and assuming would have no effect on the reality before me. I was powerless to change anything at the Villa Clio. After my fashion, I was just another servant—one who could type and translate Latin and supply reasonably civilized conversation at the table. I was also an entertaining subject for Grant and
Vera, one they could chuckle over in bed. But to imagine myself a genuine player on this great stage was simply hubris.

“I must warn you,” Vera said, a raspy voice betraying years of smoking. “Rupert is like certain wild animals. When threatened, they don't understand the meaning of restraint.” She took a sip of wine, searching for my reaction. “Knock, knock? Have I got through, darling? Have you heard what Mother Vera has been saying?” Her eyebrows maintained an interrogative arch.

I understood, but I didn't assent, unwilling to let Holly go so easily. Unfortunately, the course of true love only grew bumpier. I attempted to speak with Holly alone on several occasions, nabbing her outside Grant's study or in the garden, but she brushed me off, pretending that her duties preoccupied her. One afternoon I found her at the poolside and lured her into my cottage for a drink. Sitting at the three-legged table, I explained that I had not slept since getting back to Capri, that I felt desperate. I told her, once again, that I loved her.

“You mustn't carry on,” she said, with the no-nonsense undertones of a British schoolmarm.

“Mustn't?” I repeated.

Holly looked sternly at me, her lips tight. I thought she might slap me.

“I don't understand,” I said. “We had such a good time in Paestum.”

“We had good sex,” she said.

“That counts for something?”

She stared at the table, running her finger along a crack. “One can always find a sexual partner.”

“One can,” I said, repeating her expression in a mocking way that I knew was ill-advised. But I couldn't help myself. It was no longer possible to repress my frustration and anger. “I thought we had,” I said, hesitating, “a kind of sympathy for each other. We seemed—”

“I do like you,” she said, looking up. “It's that you push rather hard. You insist, and that's boring. A man should not insist.”

“But I love you,” I said.

She looked away, and I realized this approach was not going to work with Holly Hampton. Somewhere in her life she had learned to suspect expressions of feeling. And I saw that one could not force affairs of the
heart. Like rainwater coursing down a hillside, they had to carve their own runnels, taking a path that gravity and the terrain allowed.

“I'm sorry about what happened in Paestum,” she said. “I should never have gone away with you. I was angry with Rupert.”

“And you're not angry now?”

“Yes and no,” she said.

I said she was mistaken if she believed she had a future with Rupert Grant. He was merely using her. Vera, too, was using her.

“And what about you, Alex? Are you not using me as well?”

I felt a hardness in the pit of my stomach. She was, of course, right. Nevertheless, I hoped to salvage whatever I could of the fragile relationship begun at Paestum. “Rupert doesn't care about you,” I said.

“But I
do
care, actually,” a voice called.

A look of fear crossed Holly's face.

Grant stood hugely in the doorway of the cottage, as if summoned by our conversation. Like a retired British colonel in the tropics, he wore khaki shorts and a military-style shirt, with epaulets. I couldn't remember the last time he'd come to my cottage.

“May I come in?” he asked, opening the screen door.

“Go away, Rupert,” said Holly.

“This is my house, what?” he said, approaching. He hovered beside the table.

“I'm asking you to leave, Rupert,” said Holly, with admirable calm.

Grant stared at me, as though peering down the barrel of a gun. His eyebrows stood out, white and bristling. The hair streamed upward and backward, electric. There was something wild about him—a throwback to the Stone Age. “I should watch my back, Lorenzo,” he said.

“Don't be melodramatic,” said Holly.

I rose to my feet.

“I say,” he said, “you're a brave man, aren't you? A warrior, like your brother.” After a hideous moment during which I thought he might take a swing at me, he turned and left the cottage.

Holly's cheeks glistened. I had never seen her weep before, and this unsettled me. Ignorantly, I had imagined her a creature of absolute self-confidence and balance, beyond the usual petty reactions. I stood behind
her, putting my hands on her neck, kneading the muscles at the point where her neck and shoulders joined. She appeared to relax into the motion, tipping her head toward one shoulder, then the other.

“We're friends, Alex,” she said. “Not lovers. Can you accept that?”

I didn't want to accept it, but had no choice. “What about Paestum?” I wondered.

“A mistake. I wasn't thinking.”

“I see,” I said.

After giving me a chaste kiss on the cheek, Holly left the cottage. I listened to her footsteps dissolving on the path, and assumed that she was hurrying to catch up with Grant, needing to reassure him that I meant nothing to her. But how could I be sure of this? How could I be sure of anything?

I
returned
Love's Body
to Toni at the Villa Vecchia on the afternoon before her departure, for America, the next morning. Her term at Bryn Mawr began in three days, she explained, while busily packing. I sat on the edge of her bed as she folded items of clothing and put them, like bits of a puzzle, into a candy-red Samsonite suitcase. The door to her balcony was open, and a dry breeze puffed the curtains and felt cool on my face.

“It's a peculiar book,” I said, “but brilliant.”

Toni nodded, studying a box of loose jewelry, trying to determine what she could afford to leave behind and what must go back to college with her. A number of skirts and blouses were lined up on the sofa.

“Brown pulls so many ideas together,” I added, trying to win her attention.

“So many quotes,” she said, distracted.

“Yes. But he somehow makes everything sound like his own voice.”

“Isn't that what writers do?” She sat beside me now, as if suddenly aware of my presence in the room. “What's wrong, Alex?”

“What do you mean?”

“You're still upset about Marisa,” she said. “I don't blame Rupert Grant entirely, but I almost do.”

Marisa was not the issue, but I played along. It seemed easier than raising the specter of Holly. “It's true that he asked her to leave,” I said. “That was a blow.”

Toni shook her head. “Look at the situation with some critical distance, huh? He wanted to turn her into one of his muses, and that's ridiculous. It's sick, even.”

“That's a strong word.”

Toni was flushed with purpose. “It's the right word. He never saw Marisa as a human being. The same is true of Holly. These girls are—were—so naive. I don't know who to kill—them or Grant.”

“Holly sees through him,” I said.

Toni scowled. “Give me a break. She's still there, isn't she?”

I guessed that Holly would soon be gone, but wasn't sure. One could never be quite sure about Holly.

“What about you?” she asked. “Gonna hunker down? Find yourself a little Capresi bride?”

“I'm going,” I said.

“Really?”

I nodded.

“Does Grant know?”

“No, but he'll be glad to get rid of me. I'm just waiting for the moment.”

“Where will you go?”

I realized how much I liked Toni Bonano now, telling her about my lack of plans. Her kindly presence was reassuring.

“Here's my address,” she said, scribbling on a pad beside her bed. “I've got an apartment this year. You can stay there anytime.” As though the inducement would help, she noted that Philadelphia was a brief ride away.

I put the address in my pocket, assuring her that I'd visit—probably sooner than later. Seeing that she was too busy to sit around chatting with me, I said good-bye, kissing her on either cheek.

“Take care now,” she said, gravely, as though I were going into battle.

The idea of returning to the Villa Clio did terrify me, and I wondered if I shouldn't hop on the next ferry, leaving everything of Capri behind in a locked trunk, memories and all. But that would have been immature, I told myself sharply. I must not, under any circumstances, behave immaturely.