Nancy looked at him quickly.
“You’re thinking of the proprieties? There are no proprieties at Sorrento. You want a change of air. I promise not to talk about art. We’ll just take some good walks. Now don’t be missish. Treat me as a friend.”
Yet Nancy still hesitated to accept this invitation. She had no reason that she could express to herself, still less put into words. It was merely an irrational presentiment that she should regret going to Sorrento.
“Why don’t you answer?” he pressed.
“I was only wondering if it was wise to interrupt my lessons,” she told him lamely.
“But you wouldn’t lose more than a couple. We shan’t be away more than five days. I’ve got to be back in London by the fifth of January.”
“All right. I’d really love to come if Gambone won’t think I’m being lazy.”
Kenrick drove her back to the Via Virgilio, and next morning they took the boat for Sorrento.
They stayed in an old sun-crumbled albergo built on one of the promontories, the sheer cliff of which had been reinforced by immense brick arches raised one above another against its face, so that the soft tufaceous rock, which rather resembled rotten cheese, should not collapse and plunge albergo, tangled garden, and pine-dark promontory into the inky blue water two hundred feet below. Sorrento looks north, and the proprietor of the albergo, a toad-faced little man with sandy hair and a food-stained frock coat much too large for him, suggested that his new guests would be more comfortable at this season in rooms with an aspect away from the sea. The south aspect of the albergo formed three sides of an oblong, and the doors of all the rooms opened on a balcony paved with blue and green porcelain tiles and covered with the naked grey stems of wistaria, the convolutions of which resembled the throes of huge pythons. The view looked away over orange groves to the Sorrentine hills, and particularly to one conical bosky peak on which the wooden cross of a Camaldolese congregation was silhouetted against the sky. In the garden below the balcony tazetta narcissus and China roses were in bloom. There were not many other guests in the albergo, and these were mostly elderly English and American women, all suffering from the delusion that Italy was the cheapest country on earth and from a delusion of the natives that all English and Americans were extremely wealthy.
Kenrick apologised for bringing Nancy to the Albergo del Sole rather than taking her to one of the two fashionable hotels.