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hotel touts, and the tumbledown houses on the Marina and the walk
up to the hotel, and dining on the terrace—well, it just got me. That's
the truth. I didn't know if I was standing on my head or my heels. I'd
never drunk Capri wine before, but I'd heard of it; I think I must have
got a bit tight. I sat on that terrace after they'd all gone to bed and
watched the moon over the sea, and there was Vesuvius with a great
red plume of smoke rising up from it. Of course I know now that
wine I drank was ink, Capri wine my eye, but I thought it all right
then. But it wasn't the wine that made me drunk, it was the shape of
the island and those jabbering people, the moon and the sea and the
oleander in the hotel garden. I'd never seen an oleander before."
It was a long speech and it had made him thirsty. He took up
his glass, but it was empty. I asked him if he would have another
strega.
"It's sickly stuff. Let's have a bottle of wine. That's sound, that
is, pure juice of the grape and can't hurt anyone."
I ordered more wine, and when it came filled the glasses. He
took a long drink and after a sigh of pleasure went on.
"Next day I found my way to the bathing-place we go to. Not
bad bathing, I thought. Then I wandered about the island. As luck
would have it, there was a festa up at the Punta di Timberio and I ran
straight into the middle of it. An image of the Virgin and priests,
acolytes swinging censers, and a whole crowd of jolly, laughing,
excited people, a lot of them all dressed up. I ran across an
Englishman there and asked him what it was all about. Oh, it's the
feast of the Assumption, he said, at least that's what the Catholic
Church says it is, but that's just their hanky-panky. It's the festival of
Venus. Pagan, you know. Aphrodite rising from the sea and all that. It
gave me quite a funny feeling to hear him. It seemed to take one a
long way back, if you know what I mean. After that I went down one
night to have a look at the Faraglioni by moonlight. If the fates had
wanted me to go on being a bank manager they oughtn't to have let
me take that walk."
"You were a bank manager, were you? " I asked.
I had been wrong about him, but not far wrong.
"Yes, I was manager of the Crawford Street branch of the York
and City. It was convenient for me because I lived up Hendon way. I
could get from door to door in thirty-seven minutes."
He puffed at his pipe and relit it.