Nine Summers Read online

  ‘Take the helm!’ Felix yelled. I took the wheel, swerved Galatea to port, then starboard, with craft on all sides.

  ‘Let go the rope and let’s get out of here!’ I shrieked over the blazing burasca. Then, as I turned to Felix for instructions, I realised he wasn’t there. For a flash I thought he’d gone overboard, but just as I was about to panic, I caught sight of his feet clinging to the gunwale. The ormeggiatore chose this moment to fire a litany of curses. He made it quite clear that we were to ‘fuck off’. I didn’t see Felix right the dinghy, but I did hear him yell, ‘OK, turn and get out of here!’

  Ignoring all who were after our blood, we made a dash for Procida, Ischia’s ugly sister, a couple of miles away, where we detected a ship that looked as if it had lain abandoned there since Armistice Day, 1945. Without asking anyone for anything, we tied up to it.

  We sat in silence and stared at motorbikes tearing up and down the quay, and turned our backs on yet another ormeggiatore who glared at us. We were both in a foul mood.

  After giving himself time to cool off, Felix approached the outboard motor. ‘The bloody thing’s buggered. I can’t get it to start!’ He tried cursing in English, to no avail, then he poured himself a large whisky and sat for a long time. Later, reverting to his usual patient self, he started to take it apart. He washed all the components in fresh water, dried them and put them together again.

  ‘I’ll give it another go.’ He pulled the starter belt. The motor spat, gurgled, then purred.

  ‘Well, that’s that!’ Felix stretched out on a bunk, closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  The following morning we pretended the previous day had never happened. Our only concession to the events of the day before was an agreement that ormeggiatori (apart from the one in Portofino) were a nasty lot, and that we wouldn’t discuss them again.

  ‘Let’s have a big Oz breakfast, stay downstairs and pretend we’re home.’ Oz breakfasts of bacon and eggs, toast, marmalade and coffee were our cure for most things. If we also stayed in the saloon, we could pretend we were in Broken Bay, near our favourite tree at Smith’s Creek, with a kookaburra on the crosstrees.

  The smell of sizzling bacon and eggs and the aroma of fresh coffee and slightly burnt toast filled the saloon.

  ‘OK, so what do we do next?’ I said.

  ‘There’s a fellow I read about in one of the yachting journals who now lives on Ischia. His name’s Steve Evans. He used to sail for many years, but he’s now decided to become a landlubber. They say he likes to talk to yachties passing through. We can get the ferry from here to Ischia, and see if we can look him up in the phone book.’

  Steve and his partner were at home when we phoned, and invited us to their place. They were very friendly, and we learnt a great deal from them — for instance, about the modus operandi of the quays in Ischia. Apparently we were chased out because the local Mafia controlled the quays there, and only Neapolitan clients who paid were allowed to tie up. Steve also gave us a lot of advice on sailing the waters of southern Italy, including a warning about the horrors of being caught in a gale in the unsheltered waters of the Golfo di Squillace, the Gulf of Squalls.

  ‘When it blows there, it really blows hard. I’ve been through it twice, and let me tell you, I wouldn’t want to be caught there again.’ He also suggested where we should go and what we should see. ‘The Riace Warriors at the Museum in Reggio Calabria, and…you’re going to Capri, of course.’

  ‘Well, we weren’t sure, especially after our experience yesterday. We have this dread of beautiful people in Gucci sunglasses…’

  ‘Capri is too beautiful to miss,’ he said. ‘True, it’s very, very expensive to tie up there, but it’s worth it. This is the best time of the year to see it. Capri in May is at its most beautiful. I’m sure you won’t regret it.’

  It was May, and how right he was! Early next morning we set sail.

  I always marvelled when, having plotted a course and set the autohelm to it, our destination appeared first on the radar, and then imperceptibly through the haze and mist to the naked eye. There is something majestic about an island rising from the sea.

  As we neared Capri, its distant grey came alive with blues, greens and tinges of orange where the sun reflected off the sheer cliff face. All around the island, clouds of gulls soared in the spring sky. Below, a fleet of multicoloured butterfly sails fluttered in the breeze as an array of large yachts paraded in review.

  ‘Shall we radio for permission to enter?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re unlikely to answer, so there’s not much to lose.’

  ‘What if they don’t let us tie up, like in Ischia?’

  ‘We need to think of a way to outsmart them.’ We sat and thought.

  ‘I know, let’s tell them I’m very sick!’ I said.

  ‘What makes you think they’d care?’

  ‘Italians melt when someone’s sick. Especially a mother. A wife is a wife, you can always get another one. But a mother, well, you can only have one.’

  ‘Do you want me to say you’re my mother?’

  ‘Don’t you dare. I’d clobber you one if you did!’

  ‘OK, let’s try my wife is very sick, mia moglie è molto malata, how’s that?’

  ‘Perfetto, what shall I be suffering from? A bad heart would be OK.’

  ‘Right, so here goes.’ Felix went down, turned on the radio, took a deep breath and started, ‘Radio Capri, Radio Capri, this is Galatea, Golf Alfa Lima Alfa Tango Echo Alfa, requesting permission to enter harbour.’

  We were shocked — an instant reply. ‘Galatea, Galatea, qui radio Capri, è impossibile entrare.’

  ‘Shit, what now?’ For some seconds Felix was stunned, but then continued, ‘Radio Capri, Radio Capri, qui Galatea, mia moglie è molto malata.’ Long silence.

  ‘Galatea, Galatea, un momento.’ It was a very long momento. Then, ‘Galatea, Galatea, entrate, we will send somebody to help you.’

  ‘Grazie, Radio Capri...’

  ‘Now you’d better start looking sick!’

  We felt proper frauds as the Capri tender met us at the entrance and guided us to a spot along the quay. They took our lines and helped Felix tie up. The harbour was crowded with boats participating in a regatta. Crowds were milling on shore and along the quay. When I attempted to help tie up, Felix pushed me down. ‘For Chrissake stay down and look crook.’

  I heard him explain that I had a mal di cuore. It was my heart.

  ‘I’m surprised they didn’t bring a doctor and a priest,’ I whispered as they left.

  On one side of us was a small boat flying an American pennant. The fellow on board spoke fluent Italian.

  ‘Excuse me, but where does one go to pay?’ Felix asked.

  ‘Pay, pay?’ he replied in a stunned Brooklyn accent. ‘I never pay, I just play at being dumb.’ We introduced ourselves. Bruno was a laid-back navigator, sailing round the world in the kind of boat where prayers would not go amiss. I wondered which junkyard he’d bought it from.

  ‘Did they just let you come in? What about the ormeggiatore?’

  ‘I never look them in the face. It’s a technique I’ve learnt.’ Felix and I looked at each other and shrugged. When Bruno looked bored with ingenues such as us, we turned to the English couple on the 18-m (55-ft) ketch flying a Hong Kong flag on the other side.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Felix started, ‘could you tell me where the marine office is to pay?’

  ‘Oh...’ the man replied, ‘we never pay. Well, not until they come up and ask us to pay. They haven’t come yet.’

  ‘Don’t they come after you as soon as you enter the harbour?’

  ‘Oh, we never ask for permission to enter, we just go in and berth wherever there’s a suitable spot. Sometimes we put down an anchor in the middle of the harbour if there’s room. Occasionally we have problems with ormeggiatori, but otherwise we say nothing and keep a low profile...admittedly, with a boat this size it isn’t always easy. Still, one tries.’

  We s
pent an informative afternoon with the Smithards. They gave us all kinds of useful tips on how to get by. ‘Above all, try to look dumb and innocent. Play hard at being silly foreigners. Italians will forgive you most things if you do that. Admittedly, some get a little suspicious when they see a boat as big as ours. But on the whole, we get by.’

  After several long drinks, we thanked Tom and Jean, and wished them good sailing. They were leaving for the Balearics the following morning.

  Given the fraudulent way we’d entered the harbour, it seemed wise for me to stay on board until I could afford to look healthier, so we decided not to go to the village that afternoon. Early next morning, however, we couldn’t contain our excitement and boarded the funicular, the tiny train used to ascend the island’s precipitous rock face to the village at the top. On both sides of the tracks, houses suspended at the edge of the rock face defied gravity. Small vineyards and other vegetation surrounded houses, clusters of unripe grapes and creepers hung from pergolas. Tiny groves of citrus trees were in bloom. Flowers nuzzled under rocks and between crevices. Geraniums, daisies, poppies, anemones and buttercups faced the sun and swayed in the breeze. We breathed in the scent of jasmine and wisteria curling up trellises, pergolas and stone arches.

  From the peak of the funicular, we gazed down the sheer cliffs to the marina and the deep blue water below. ‘Hey, look! There’s Galatea!’ The air was thick with birds hang-gliding in slow motion, round and round, tending nests and newborn chicks.

  Narrow alleys radiated from the main piazza, there was a buzz of activity everywhere. Hotel porters puffed and pushed luggage on two-wheeled carts. Tourists filled cafés and promenaded past shop windows.

  ‘I’ve never felt such a fraud in my life,’ I said.

  ‘I know what you mean. At least we’re plagued by guilt. In any case, perhaps someone from the marina office will come and ask us to pay.’ But nobody came.

  ‘Maybe we’re on a public marina that’s free?’ I suggested. ‘Are you going to ask?’

  ‘No.’

  By the third day we had acclimatised to our luck, and felt perfectly relaxed.

  ‘Let’s stay till the end of the week and have a wedding anniversary dinner.’

  ‘Good idea! Meanwhile, let’s visit Anacapri.’

  The bus ride to Anacapri at the peak of the island was terrifying. As the overloaded bus swayed and lurched at hairpin bends, avoiding oncoming traffic on one side and the vertical precipice on the other, tourists craned and stretched from one side of the bus to the other, rapturously applauding each new vista.

  ‘Ach, Alfred, kuck doch, wie herrlich! Look, how fabulous!’

  ‘Harry, did you get that shot?’

  ‘Mon Dieu, comment c’est magnifique!’

  By the time we reached the top I felt like jelly, and had lost interest in the pilgrimage to Axel Munthe’s house, Villa San Michele. ‘If we ever come up here again, it’ll be on a mule.’

  History records that the Emperor Augustus had done a deal with the Neapolitans and exchanged Ischia for Capri in order to build a pleasure garden. However, he died after living on the island for only four years, and the Emperor Tiberius inherited Capri. Tiberius also spent his last years there but like most Roman emperors, he was paranoid about being murdered. And for good reason. To improve his odds of survival, he built twelve villas and lived in a different one each month. But this did not deter his murderer.

  We climbed the steep path that leads to the largest of these villas, Villa Jovis. A haunting silence surrounded it. Clusters of wild flowers burst through crevices, under pebbles, between rocks and ruins. Lizards scrambled in and out of cracks, bees droned among the blooms and pines swayed in the breeze. From the peak of the island and from Monte Solaro, the view is still much as Tiberius saw it — spectacular. On most days pollution and haze lingered over the Bay of Naples, the Amalfi coast and the mainland, but the day we were there, the nor’westerly had cleared the air and Naples, its harbour and the coastline glowed in the afternoon sun.

  ‘Whatever you do, think long and hard before sailing into Naples and leaving your boat unattended,’ a number of sailing aficionados had warned us. As we had no problem leaving Galatea on the marina in Capri, we took the ferry to Sorrento and made our way from there by train to Herculaneum, and by bus to Amalfi and Ravello.

  Like Pompeii, Herculaneum was devastated by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, then lay buried until it was accidentally discovered in 1719. We wandered through its neatly excavated streets, the multistoried houses of commoners and patricians, wine-shops, baths, schools and places of worship, and admired the paintings, decorations and mosaics. Unlike Pompeii, Herculaneum was small enough for us to imagine what life must have been like 2000 years ago.

  Our magical week in Capri culminated in a gastronomic extravaganza at Il Gattino on our wedding anniversary. We drank toasts to the Emperor Augustus for his fine choice of island, to Steve for persuading us to visit Capri, and to our steep upward learning curve and fraudulent entry into the marina.

  ****

  When we sailed out of Capri in the early morning, the air was tinged with blue. Following us, a flotilla of boats with multi-coloured sails made its way to a starting line. It was as though we were part of the racing fleet in Sydney. My eyes grew moist and I couldn’t bear to look back.

  We hoisted sail and set an 80-degree course to take us towards the Amalfi Coast. We planned to sail as far as the promontory before Salerno, then turn south to Agropoli. A light nor’westerly swept Galatea towards the Gulf of Salerno, while we sat on the aft deck in the morning sun and watched the bubbling froth spill astern. Ahead, the Amalfi coastline unfolded through the mist. Galatea’s sails glistened in the morning sun, crystal ripples cascaded from her bow as she cut through the water, and a benevolent breeze swept past us. All around us was space. Limitless, luminous space and an overwhelming sense of freedom.

  In the corner of the cockpit our pot of basil looked happy and released a cloud of scent whenever we touched it. The geranium, tied to the foot of the mizzen, looked a little battered but we hoped our tender care would resuscitate it. Tomatoes strung on their stalks swung on a hook in the galley. Two baskets with lemons, peaches and apricots still moist with dew slid around the floor of the saloon.

  ‘Great forecast,’ Felix announced as he climbed into the cockpit bearing a flask of chianti, olives and crackers.

  ****

  How different a coastline looks from the sea! From a bus the serpentine road — with its twists and turns, jagged rocks, deep gorges, houses stacked precipitously on top of one another and the crystal sea below — is breathtaking, but only a half view. To sail along the coast is to experience the exhilarating whole. Shapes and colours unravel, puffs of air blow the scent from orange and lemon groves out to sea, the sounds of birds echo on the water, seagulls soar above the sails, fish catapult in and out of the sea. From a boat the landscape is a slow, unfolding portrait.

  As we passed Punta Campanella, pastel houses suspended in mid-air appeared woven through the landscape, terraces bright with creepers faced the sea. Pines, olive trees and vegetation hugged steep slopes. Below, the sea rolled onto miniscule beaches and sleepy fishing villages nestled against rocks. Blue, red, yellow and green rowing boats, tied to rocks, lapped close to one another and swung from side to side like playing puppies. We passed Positano and hugged the coast to Amalfi. Ravello gazed down to the sea.

  ‘Time for lunch!’ Tomatoes grown on board, basil, fetta and olives, a touch of olive oil, a glass of chianti, a stick of ciabatta, peaches, coffee and amaretti Capresi.

  At Capo d’Orso we changed course and made for Agropoli.

  We sailed into Agropoli’s near empty harbour in the late afternoon and tied up to the long new pier. Three small boats were riding at anchor in the bay. Apart from seagulls lazing in an updraft and occasionally squawking, the only sounds were of our sails coming down. Not a soul in sight.

  ‘Must be siesta time. Or maybe time to get rea
dy for the passeggiata,’ Felix suggested.

  We folded the mizzen, stood on the aft deck and looked around. The old town sat fortress-like above the bay. Small square white boxes dotted the stony hillside. Windows glowed red and orange in the setting sun. A steep road led up to the town from the harbour below.

  It had been a long day, too full to do anything more than sit with a drink and watch the sunset and the passing parade.

  This began with well groomed young men manoeuvring their motorbikes slowly up and down the pier. As the evening progressed, more joined the slow procession. Like strutting peacocks, the young men displayed their plumage — neat jeans, blow-dried hair lacquered into place, dark sunglasses and a powerful grip on polished handlebars. What communication there may have been between them was conveyed with body language. Only an occasional revving punctuated the silence.

  ‘This must be some kind of ritual,’ I said.

  As the evening progressed, young girls appeared. Long hair, tight miniskirts, high heels, sunglasses judiciously balanced on their heads. The gait was a studied slow motion with a sideways hip swing. Each girl made a brief appearance on the pier, then stepped up onto its protecting wall where she assumed a nonchalant air — with one hand on a swung-out hip, she affected an intense interest in the sky.

  The young men continued their slow parade up and down the mole, but now they inspected the miniskirted offerings posing on the high wall above it. As the sky darkened, they peeled off their sunglasses and displayed them in their left breast pockets.