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The Rough Magic

The Rough Magic
by Mary Stewart retold by Diane Mowat

1
The magic island

`And if it's a boy,' Phyllida said cheerfully, `we'll call him Prospero.' I laughed. `Poor child! But why Prospero? Oh, of course, because of Prospero in The Tempest. Corfu was Shakespeare's magic island in The Tempest, wasn't it?' `Yes. We've already got one character from the play here − Miranda.And her brother's called Spiro, which sounds a bit like Prospero, doesn't it? Miranda and Spiro are twins.' My sister smiled at me, and reached for the coffee pot. `More coffee, Lucy?' she asked. We were having breakfast outside in the sun, on the terrace of my sister's house on the beautiful island of Corfu, which lies off the west coast of Greece. Below the terrace, wooded cliffs fell steeplyto a small, sheltered bay, where the sea lay calm and still. From where we sat, we could not see the bay, as it was hidden by the trees. But we had a wonderful view out across the sea, and to the north we could just see the snow−topped mountains of Albania in the distance. My sister Phyllida is three years older than I am, and when she was twenty she married a Roman banker, Leonardo Forli. TheForli family had owned land on Corfu for many years and Leo's great−grandfather had built an enormous house, the Castello dei Fiori, in the woods above the bay. Later, Leo's father had built two smaller, more modern houses on the cliffs on the north and south sides of the bay. The house on the northern side was called the Villa Forli, and it was used by Phyllida and Leo. The house on the southern sidewas called the Villa Rotha, and it stood above the big boat−house which Leo's great−grandfather had built. This villa was rented by an Englishman, Godfrey Manning, who had been there since the previous autumn. He was writing a book, Phyllida had told me, and was taking a lot of photographs for it. The three houses were connected with the main road by the private road up to the Castello, andconnected to each other by various paths through the woods and down to the bay. That spring Phyllida was expecting her third child and the heat in Rome was too much for her. Therefore, Leo had persuaded her to go to Corfu, and to leave the other two children, who were at school, in the care of their grandmother in Rome. Leo, of course, was working, but he was going to visit Corfu at weekends wheneverhe could. Phyllida had asked me to go and stay with her, and her invitation had come just at the right time. I'm an actress and the play I was in, my first in London, had closed after only two months. I was feeling very miserable. It had been a bad winter, and I was tired, depressed, and seriously wondering − at the age of twenty−five − if I should look for a different job. So it was wonderful tofind myself on this magic island, with the sun shining brightly. It was far away from the cold of an English April. 1 1

The Rough Magic I sat back in my chair, drank my coffee, and enjoyed the peace and beauty as I looked out towards the distant snows of Albania. `Well, Corfu is certainly a magic island for me,' I said dreamily. `Who are these Shakespearean twins of yours, anyway?' `Oh, they'reMaria's children. Maria's the woman who works for us here. Miranda helps her mother here, and Spiro works for Godfrey Manning at the Villa Rotha. Maria and the twins live in the village.' But I could see that Phyllida had something else that she wanted to tell me. `Someone very famous is renting the Castello,' she informed me. `What? That huge old house?' I said. `Who wants to rent that?' `JulianGale.' `Julian Gale!' I sat up suddenly and stared at Phyllida in surprise. `Do you mean Julian Gale, the actor?' `Yes,' my sister replied, pleased by my excitement. Julian Gale had been one of Britain's finest actors for many years, and then two years ago, he had suddenly left the theatre and disappeared. `So he came here,' I said. `I knew he was ill after that terrible accident, but then he...