This Rough Magic
Authors: Mary Stewart
| This Rough Magic |
| Mary Stewart |
| 2011 |
‘Resting’ actress Lucy leaps at the chance to join her sister for a holiday on the paradise island of Corfu. And she is intrigued to find that their neighbour is a distinguished actor turned recluse. But the sun-drenched idyll does not last long. Mysterious incidents, seemingly unconnected, throw Lucy into a vortex of danger and death, and she finds herself playing the role of a lifetime …
This Rough Magic
www.hodder.co.ukContents
First published in Great Britain in 1964 by Hodder and Stoughton
An Hachette UK Company
Copyright © 1964 by Mary Stewart
The right of Mary Stewart to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Epub ISBN: 978 1 444 72051 8
Book ISBN: 978 1 444 71120 2
Hodder and Stoughton Ltd
An Hachette UK Company
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
For John Attenborough
Among the many debts I have incurred while writing this book, two are outstanding. I should like to thank especially Mr Michael Halikiopoulos, Director of the Corfu Tourist Services, 5 Arseniou Street, Corfu, for all his kindness, and for the help he gave me. My other debt is to Mr Antony Alpers, whose enchanting
Book of Dolphins
(John Murray, 1960) provided not only the inspiration, but also a great deal of information for this book.
M. S
.
…
A relation for a breakfast
.
The Tempest
. Act v. Scene 1.
‘A
ND
if it’s a boy,’ said Phyllida cheerfully, ‘we’ll call him Prospero.’
I laughed. ‘Poor little chap, why on earth? Oh, of course … Has someone been telling you that Corfu was Shakespeare’s magic island for
The Tempest
?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes, the other day, but for goodness’ sake don’t ask me about it now. Whatever you may be used to, I draw the line at Shakespeare for breakfast.’ My sister yawned, stretched out a foot into the sunshine at the edge of the terrace, and admired the expensive beach sandal on it. ‘I didn’t mean that, anyway, I only meant that we’ve already got a Miranda here, and a Spiro, which may not be short for Prospero, but sounds very like it.’
‘Oh? It sounds highly romantic. Who are they?’
‘A local boy and girl: they’re twins.’
‘Good heavens. Papa must be a literary gent?’
Phyllida smiled. ‘You could say so.’
Something in her expression roused my curiosity, just as something else told me she had meant to; so I –
who can be every bit as provoking as Phyllida when I try – said merely: ‘Well, in that case hadn’t you better have a change? How about Caliban for your unborn young? It fits like a glove.’
‘Why?’ she demanded indignantly.
‘“This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child,”’ I quoted. ‘Is there some more coffee?’
‘Of course. Here. Oh, my goodness, it’s nice to have you here, Lucy! I suppose I oughtn’t to call it luck that you were free to come just now, but I’m awfully glad you could. This is heaven after Rome.’
‘And paradise after London. I feel different already. When I think where I was this time yesterday … and when I
think
about the rain …’
I shuddered, and drank my coffee, leaning back in my chair to gaze out across pine tops furry with gold towards the sparkling sea, and surrendering myself to the dreamlike feeling that marks the start of a holiday in a place like this when one is tired, and has been transported overnight from the April chill of England to the sunlight of a magic island in the Ionian Sea.
Perhaps I should explain (for those who are not so lucky as I) that Corfu is an island off the west coast of Greece. It is long and sickle-shaped, and lies along the curve of the coast; at its nearest, in the north, it is barely two miles off the Albanian mainland, but from the town of Corfu, which is about half-way down the curve of the sickle, the coast of Greece is about seven or eight miles distant. At its northern end the island is broad and mountainous, trailing off through rich valleys and ever-decreasing hills into the long, flat scorpion’s tail of
the south from which some think that Corfu, or Kerkyra, gets its name.
My sister’s house lies some twelve miles north of Corfu town, where the coast begins its curve towards the mainland, and where the foothills of Mount Pantokrator provide shelter for the rich little pocket of land which has been part of her husband’s family property for a good many years.
My sister Phyllida is three years older than I, and when she was twenty she married a Roman banker, Leonardo Forli. His family had settled in Corfu during the Venetian occupation of that island, and had managed somehow to survive the various subsequent ‘occupations’ with their small estate more or less intact, and had even, like the Vicar of Bray, contrived to prosper. It was under the British Protectorate that Leo’s great-grandfather had built the pretentious and romantic Castello dei Fiori in the woods above the little bay where the estate ran down to the sea. He had planted vineyards, and orange orchards, including a small plantation (if that is the word) of the Japanese miniature oranges called
koùm koyàt
for which the Forli estate later became famous. He even cleared space in the woods for a garden, and built – beyond the southern arm of the bay and just out of sight of the Castello – a jetty and a vast boat-house which (according to Phyllida) would almost have housed the Sixth Fleet, and had indeed housed the complicated flock of vessels in which his guests used to visit him. In his day, I gathered, the Castello had been the scene of one large and continuous house-party: in summer they sailed
and fished, and in the fall there were hunting-parties, when thirty or so guests would invade the Greek and Albanian mainlands to harry the birds and ibexes.
But those days had vanished with the first war, and the family moved to Rome, though without selling the Castello, which remained, through the twenties and thirties, their summer home. The shifting fortunes of the Second World War almost destroyed the estate, but the Forlis emerged in post-war Rome with the family fortunes mysteriously repaired, and the then Forli Senior – Leo’s father – turned his attention once more to the Corfu property. He had done something to restore the place, but after his death three years ago his son had decided that the Castello’s rubbed and faded splendours were no longer for him, and had built a pair of smallish modern villas – in reality twin bungalows – on the two headlands enclosing the bay of which the Castello overlooked the centre. He and Phyllida themselves used the Villa Forli, as they called the house on the northern headland; its twin, the Villa Rotha, stood to the south of the bay above the creek where the boat-house was. The Villa Rotha had been rented by an Englishman, a Mr. Manning, who had been there since the previous autumn working on a book. (‘You know the kind,’ said my sister, ‘all photographs, with a thin trickle of text in large type, but they’re
good
.’) The three houses were connected with the road by the main drive to the Castello, and with each other by various paths through the woods and down into the bay.
This year the hot spring in Rome, with worse promised, had driven the Forlis early to Corfu. Phyllida,
who was pregnant, had been feeling the heat badly, so had been persuaded to leave the two older children (whose school term was still running) with their grandmother, and Leo had brought her over a few days before I arrived, but had had to go back to his business in Rome, with the promise to fly over when he could at weekends, and to bring the children for Easter. So Phyllida, hearing that I was currently at a loose end, had written begging me to join her in Corfu and keep her company.
The invitation couldn’t have been better timed. The play I was in had just folded after the merest face-saver of a run, and I was out of a job. That the job had been my first in London – my ‘big chance’ – accounted partly for my present depression. There was nothing more on the cards: the agencies were polite, but evasive: and besides, we had had a dreadful winter and I was tired, dispirited, and seriously wondering, at twenty-five, if I had made a fool of myself in insisting against all advice on the stage as a career. But – as everyone knows who has anything to do with it – the stage is not a profession, but a virus, and I had it. So I had worked and scraped my way through the usual beginnings until last year, when I had finally decided, after three years of juvenile leads in provincial rep., that it was time to try my luck in London. And luck had seemed at last to be with me. After ten months or so of television walk-ons and the odd commercial, I had landed a promising part, only to have the play fold under me like a dying camel, after a two-months run.
But at least I could count myself luckier than the
other few thousand still fighting their way towards the bottom rung of the ladder: while they were sitting in the agents’ stuffy offices here was I on the terrace of the Villa Forli, with as many weeks in front of me as I cared to take in the dazzling sunshine of Corfu.
The terrace was a wide, tiled platform perched at the end of the promontory where wooded cliffs fell steeply to the sea. Below the balustrade hung cloud on cloud of pines, already smelling warm and spicy in the morning sun. Behind the house and to either side sloped the cool woods where small birds flashed and twittered. The bay itself was hidden by trees, but the view ahead was glorious – a stretch of the calm, shimmering Gulf that lies in the curved arm of Corfu. Away northward, across the dark blue strait, loomed, insubstantial as mist, the ghostly snows of Albania.
It was a scene of the most profound and enchanted peace. No sound but the birds; nothing in sight but trees and sky and sun-reflecting sea.
I sighed. ‘Well, if it isn’t Prospero’s magic island it ought to be … Who are these romantic twins of yours, anyway?’
‘Spiro and Miranda? Oh, they belong to the woman who works for us here, Maria. She has that cottage at the main Castello gate – you’d see it last night on your way in from the airport.’
‘I remember a light there … A tiny place, wasn’t it? So they’re Corfu people – what’s the word? Corfusians?’
She laughed. ‘Idiot. Corfiotes. Yes, they’re Corfiote peasants. The brother works for Godfrey Manning
over at the Villa Rotha. Miranda helps her mother here.’
‘Peasants?’ Mildly intrigued, I gave her the lead I thought she wanted. ‘It does seem a bit odd to find those names here. Who was this well-read father of theirs, then? Leo?’
‘Leo,’ said his loving wife, ‘has to my certain knowledge read nothing but the Roman
Financial Times
for the last eight years. He’d think “Prospero and Miranda” was the name of an Investment Trust. No, it’s even odder than you think, my love …’ She gave her small cat-and-canary smile, the one I recognised as preceding the more far-fetched flights of gossip that she calls ‘interesting facts that I feel you ought to know’ … ‘Actually, Spiro’s officially called after the island saint – every second boy’s called Spiridion in Corfu – but since our distinguished tenant at the Castello was responsible for the christening – and for the twins as well, one gathers – I’ll bet he’s down as Prospero in the parish register, or whatever they have here.’