I noticed another puff of gas above the great circle of the crater. ‘Well, she’s more active than when I last saw her in 1945 if that’s any encouragement to you,’ I said.
He had his camera out of its case and was taking a shot of the mountain through the window. When he’d taken it he turned to me again. ‘You were here during the war?’
I nodded.
‘Did you see the eruption in 1944?’
‘No, I just missed it.’
He clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘You missed something big there, sir. My boy — the one that’s running a road haulage business back home now — he was out here. He was driving one of the AMG trucks when they evacuated San Sebastiano. He saw Somma Vesuviana wiped out by the lava flow and watched San Sebastiano gradually engulfed by it. Well, I just had to come and see for myself. He says the dome of the church is still showing just above the solidified surface of the lava rock. And you missed it all?’ He shook his head pityingly as though I’d missed a good film.
‘You can’t choose where you’ll be when there’s a war on,’ I said rather tersely.
‘I guess that’s so.’
‘Anyway, I climbed Vesuvius only a week or two before the eruption.’
‘You did?’ He had swung round in his seat to face me and his eyes gleamed behind the thick lenses. ‘That’s something my boy never done. I kept on asking him, what was it like before the eruption. But he didn’t seem to have taken much notice of Vesuvius until it happened — sort of took it for granted. Now tell me, what was it like? I suppose it was much the same as it is now. Did you go right to the top?’