‘It is polipo,’ he said lovingly. ‘The food of the gods!’

‘Polipo?’ said James.

‘Yes,’ said Victor. ‘Didn’t you know? Polipo is Italian for octopus. Signor Poliponi named himself after the creature.’

‘The octopus is the most pure example of a surrealistic animal,’ said Poliponi. ‘What could be less human and more absurd than an octopus?’

James put a piece of tentacle into his mouth and chewed… and chewed. It was the chewiest, rubberiest thing he had ever tried to eat, but he persevered.

‘So this house,’ he said, after washing the last pieces of flesh down with a glass of water, ‘La Casa Polipo, is “The House of the Octopus”?’

‘But of course,’ said Poliponi. ‘The greatest house in the world.’

‘You have not seen it properly,’ said Victor. ‘To fully appreciate it, you need to see it from above. In the morning we will climb up to the rock and I will show you. Now, you must take a glass of wine, James.’

‘No, thank you,’ said James. ‘I don’t think I’d better.’

‘Nonsense. You should learn how to drink. So that you know how not to get drunk. There are few sights more pathetic in the world than a man who is drunk. You must know your limits. You must know when to start and when to stop. I shall give you the smallest measure of wine, and you can add some water. Come. This is a Cannonau, a local wine, from near Oliena.’

He poured James a glass of deep-red wine and James drank some.

Mauro and the cook, Isabella, a loud, jolly woman, cleared away the plates. Victor kept a permanent staff of three, who all lived in the villa. As well as Mauro and Isabella there was Horst, the muscled young man James had seen lifting weights in the inner courtyard. He looked after the gardens and did odd jobs about the place, but seemed to spend most of his time exercising and studying himself in the mirror.

Mauro’s sullen manner hadn’t changed. As he took James’s plate he gave him a dirty look as if to say ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’

Victor said something to Mauro in Italian and the boy slouched across the room and put a jazz record on the wind-up gramophone.

‘How I wish I could play a musical instrument,’ said Victor, conducting the music with his wine glass. ‘It is my one great regret. I love music, but my life has been spent working with steel and concrete. We have had many musical people stay with us here at Casa Polipo. In the spring the great Cole Porter was over from America and last summer your own Noël Coward stayed for a weekend. He played us many songs on the piano. Such a witty man. I think I was not born to be an engineer, James, but it is always too late when we realise that we are only given one life.’

‘You only live once,’ said Poliponi. ‘But you can live a thousand times in your dreams.’