For once, everything went according to my mother's plan. The couple arrived shortly after we had, sat down and ordered their drinks, gin and Italian vermouth, a fashionable pre-war cocktail. ("Gin and It," my mother whispered to us, "it's too perfect!") My mother, who had been an actress in her youth, was the possessor of a very audible voice, so our conversation was soon overheard.
Presently we saw that the lady was coming over to us. She seemed to hesitate momentarily, looming over us, before saying: "I couldn't help noticing that you were speaking English." Her mouth was gashed with a thin streak of dark red lipstick, of a primeval 1920s shade.
So we joined them at their table, and they introduced themselves as Hugh and Penelope de Walter. I was a well-behaved boy at that time and, being an only child, had no siblings with whom to fight or conspire, so I think I made a favourable impression. Besides, because I had either inherited or acquired by influence my mother's appetite for human oddities, I was quite happy to sit there with my sumo d'ananas and listen to the grown-ups.
The de Walters were, as my mother had correctly surmised, expatriates, and they had a villa at Monte Rosa, a village in the foothills above Estoril.
De Walter had been in the wine trade, hence his acquaintance with Portugal, and, on retiring in the 1950s had decided that England was "going to Hell in a handcart", what with its filthy music, its even filthier plays and the way the working classes generally "have the run of the place these days". De Walter conceded that Salazar, the then-dictator of Portugal, "might have his faults, but at least he runs a tight ship". I had no idea what this meant, but it sounded impressive, if a little forbidding.
Their life at the Villa Monte Rosa — so named because it was the grandest if not the oldest dwelling in their village — was, they told us, more serene and civilized than any they could have hoped to afford in Worthing or Eastbourne. I wondered, though, if it were not a little lonely for them among all those foreigners, but said nothing.
I think it was after a slight lull in the conversation that the de Walters turned their attention on me. In answer to enquiries I told them where I was presently at school and for which public school I was destined. De Walter nodded his approval.
"I'm a Haileybury man myself," he said. "Are you planning to go to the 'varsity after that?"
I looked blank. My father came to my aid by informing me that "the 'varsity" meant Oxford or Cambridge. I said I hoped so without really knowing what was meant.
"Never got to the 'varsity myself," said de Walter. "I was due to go up in '15, but a certain Kaiser Bill put the kibosh on that."
The First World War was ancient history to me — a series of faded sepia snapshots of mud-filled trenches and Dreadnoughts cutting through the foggy wastes of the North Sea, a tinkle of «Tipperary» on a rickety church piano. Trying to imagine a young de Walter going to war all those years ago silenced me.
"Do you have children yourself, Mr and Mrs de Walter?" my mother asked.
There was an unpleasant little silence. My father, who was frequently embarrassed by my mother's forthrightness, passed a hand through his thinning hair, a familiar gesture of nervous exasperation. The broken veins in de Walter's face had turned it a very ugly shade of dark purple. Mrs de Walter seemed about to say something when her husband restrained her by tightly grasping one of her stick-like arms.
"No," said de Walter in a lower, firmer voice than we had hitherto heard. "We have not been blessed with that inestimable privilege." There was another pause before he added: "We couldn't, you see. War wound."
With Old World courtesy, he cut off my mother's abject apologies for raising the issue. "Please, dear lady," he said, "let us say no more on the subject." Soon we were discussing the present state of English cricket in which de Walter took a passionate interest, even if he could not quite grasp that Denis Compton was no longer saving England from the defeat at the hands of the Australians, or some people whom he called "the fuzzy wuzzies".
My father, an enthusiast whose information was rather more up-to-date, was able to correct some of de Walter's misapprehensions, while Mrs de Walter told my mother how she had all her clothes made up and sent over to Portugal by her dressmaker in England.
Everything passed off so amicably that we found ourselves being asked to take lunch with the de Walters the following day at the Villa Monte Rosa.
The next day a taxi delivered us to a pair of rusty wrought-iron gates in the pleasantly unspoilt hill village of Monte Rosa. The gates were situated in a high stone wall that surrounded what looked like extensive grounds; a drive from the gates curved into the leafy obscurity of palm and pine trees, and other overgrown vegetation.
We were about to push open the gate when down the drive came a wiry middle-aged woman in overalls. Her head was tied up in a bandanna and she had a narrow, deeply lined face, the colour and consistency of an old pigskin wallet. Silently she shook our hands with an attempt at a smile on her face, then gestured us to follow her up the drive.
The grounds were not well kept, if they were kept at all, but we saw enough of them to guess that they had once been laid out and planted on a lavish scale. Once or twice through some dense and abandoned screen of leaf I caught a glimpse of a lichened piece of classical statuary on a plinth. Then we turned a corner and had our first sight of the Villa Monte Rosa.
It looked to me like a miniature palace made out of pink sugar. Both my parents were entranced by it, but, as they told me later, in slightly different ways. To my father, the ornate neo-Baroque design evoked a vanished world of elegant Edwardian hedonism. Had it been only a little more extensive, it could have passed for a small casino. To my mother, this rose-coloured folly encroached on all sides by deep, undisciplined vegetation, was a fairy-tale abode of the Sleeping Beauty. She said it reminded her of illustrations by Edmond Dulac and Arthur Rackham in the books of her childhood.
The de Walters were there to greet us on the steps that led up to the entrance portico. Lunch, simple and elegant, was served to us on the terrace by the woman who had escorted us up the drive. She was their housekeeper and her name was Maria. The terrace was situated at the back of the villa and looked down a gentle incline towards the sea in the distance. What must once have been a magnificent view was now all but obscured by the pine trees through which flashes of azure tantalized the spectator.
Mrs de Walter informed us proudly that the Villa Monte Rosa had been built in the 1890s by a Russian Prince for his ballerina mistress. It might not have been true, but it was plausible.
The conversation did not greatly interest me. It consisted largely of a monologue on wine from de Walter, who obviously considered himself an aficionado. Though my father knew more than enough to keep up with him, he had the journalist's knack of displaying a little judicious ignorance. My mother and Mrs de Walter, who appeared to have less in common, sporadically discussed the weather and the flowers in the garden of the Villa Monte Rosa.
After lunch, Maria wheeled out a metal trolley on which a large selection of ports and unusual liqueurs were displayed. De Walter proposed a tasting to my parents and then turned to me.
"Why don't you go and explore the grounds, young feller? We won't mind. We'll hold the fort for you here, what? All boys like exploring, don't they? Eh?" This project appealed to me and was acceptable to my parents.
"Don't get lost!" said my mother.
"It's all right," said de Walter with a raucous laugh. "We'll send out search parties if you do!"