It was not much of a wine.
As he said, it did not even taste like strawberries.
We went back to capri.
One evening I was short of money and George loaned me a hundred lire.
"That's all right, Tenente," he said. "I know how it is.
I know how a man gets short.
If you or the lady need money I've always got money."
After dinner we walked through the galleria, past the other restaurants and the shops with their steel shutters down, and stopped at the little place where they sold sandwiches; ham and lettuce sandwiches and anchovy sandwiches made of very tiny brown glazed rolls and only about as long as your finger.
They were to eat in the night when we were hungry.
Then we got into an open carriage outside the galleria in front of the cathedral and rode to the hospital.
At the door of the hospital the porter came out to help with the crutches.
I paid the driver, and then we rode upstairs in the elevator.
Catherine got off at the lower floor where the nurses lived and I went on up and went down the hall on crutches to my room; sometimes I undressed and got into bed and sometimes I sat out on the balcony with my leg up on another chair and watched the swallows over the roofs and waited for Catherine.
When she came upstairs it was as though she had been away on a long trip and I went along the hall with her on the crutches and carried the basins and waited outside the doors, or went in with her; it depending on whether they were friends of ours or not, and when she had done all there was to be done we sat out on the balcony outside my room.
Afterward I went to bed and when they were all asleep and she was sure they would not call she came in.
I loved to take her hair down and she sat on the bed and kept very still, except suddenly she would dip down to kiss me while I was doing it, and I would take out the pins and lay them on the sheet and it would be loose and I would watch her while she kept very still and then take out the last two pins and it would all come down and she would drop her head and we would both be inside of it, and it was the feeling of inside a tent or behind a falls.
She had wonderfully beautiful hair and I would lie sometimes and watch her twisting it up in the light that came in the open door and it shone even in the night as water shines sometimes just before it is really daylight.
She had a lovely face and body and lovely smooth skin too.
We would be lying together and I would touch her cheeks and her forehead and under her eyes and her chin and throat with the tips of my fingers and say,
"Smooth as piano keys," and she would stroke my chin with her finger and say,
"Smooth as emery paper and very hard on piano keys."
"Is it rough?"
"No, darling.
I was just making fun of you."
It was lovely in the nights and if we could only touch each other we were happy.
Besides all the big times we had many small ways of making love and we tried putting thoughts in the other one's head while we were in different rooms.
It seemed to work sometimes but that was probably because we were thinking the same thing anyway.
We said to each other that we were married the first day she had come to the hospital and we counted months from our wedding day.
I wanted to be really married but Catherine said that if we were they would send her away and if we merely started on the formalities they would watch her and would break us up.
We would have to be married under Italian law and the formalities were terrific.
I wanted us to be married really because I worried about having a child if I thought about it, but we pretended to ourselves we were married and did not worry much and I suppose I enjoyed not being married, really.
I know one night we talked about it and Catherine said,
"But, darling, they'd send me away."
"Maybe they wouldn't."
"They would.
They'd send me home and then we would he apart until after the war."
"I'd come on leave."
"You couldn't get to Scotland and back on a leave.
Besides, I won't leave you.
What good would it do to marry now?
We're really married.
I couldn't be any more married."
"I only wanted to for you."
"There isn't any me.
I'm you.
Don't make up a separate me."
"I thought girls always wanted to be married."
"They do.
But, darling, I am married.
I'm married to you.