Last night I dreamt I went to paradise again. I believe we can credit the encounter to Daphne du Maurier. My tour in Cyprus was at an end, but I had hung on for a month, sending my wife back to Washington, D.C., to get the house open up again and everything there back in working order and to guide one of our children into a new university year. I had stayed past my assignment rotation date to attend an artists' gathering in the Troodos mountain village of Platres. A internationally well-known naive artist lived there during her summers and held an annual week-long artists' retreat there. I had been invited to the retreat because I had just published a novel based loosely on her intriguing life and she had done the cover for the book. We got along famously, and so here I was, gathered with her artist friends and trying to keep up with the talk of light and shadow and balance and depth perception—not unknown concepts for the creative writer either, I happily realized.
The artists were dotted around in various residences in the rustic mountain village and met in the afternoons at the artist's rambling and cool house for discussions and then at 10:30 PM each evening at the central open-air restaurant to celebrate their talent in local wine and a meze, which was a never-ending march of finger foods across the table top. After this, they dragged back to their host homes and slept until the next afternoon's gathering at the artist's home.
I opted for other lodging, however. I was leaving a country I loved and wanted to make the most of every moment I could. There was a fine old, internationally known English-style hotel, the Forest Park, at the edge of Platres, high on a hill. I opted for that partially, but not solely, for its somewhat dishabille opulence but also because of the room I requested and was able to book—the suite where Daphne du Maurier wrote the draft of her classic novel Rebecca.
I had just begun to learn what my direction would be after a career of spying, thanks to the success of my novel, and I wanted to seek inspiration in the room where Rebecca had been drafted—perhaps even conceived. This had already worked well when I had managed to rent the home of Lawrence Durrell on the island's northern coast, where he wrote much of his Alexandria Quartet. So, I was seeking a muse. I would never have imagined to have also found a prince.
He knocked on my door at the Forest Park late on the morning after I had arrived and politely asked if he might just have a look at the room. He introduced himself as Gregor and said he was a student, majoring in creative writing, and wanted just to see where Du Maurier had worked the magic of her pen. Thus, he was established immediately as a fellow seeker.
Over lunch on the large, tiered stone terrace at the back of the hotel, I learned that there were several other parts to his name, with the one that really rang a bell being Hapsburg. He acknowledged he was of those Hapsburgs and was, in fact, a prince on paper, although he'd never been permitted to see what would have been his domain in Hungary if a couple of world wars had not interceded.
He was a very presentable young man of solid build, handsome features other than a very prominent jaw that I was to learn was the genetic curse of his family, pale blue eyes, and an exuberance of dark hair leaping from his head in an unruly, but not unattractive fashion. He was a wonderful conversationalist, and I was already going over the artist retreat scheduling in my mind to determine when I could possibly see him again, when he obviated my efforts. While my mind had been spinning, I asked him what he was doing here in Cyprus other than pilgrimaging to famous writers' dens.
"The contrast of sporting interests," he answered with a winsome smile.
"Excuse me?" I asked. "What sports would those be?"
"I want to snow ski and swim in the ocean on the same day."
"And you can do that here?" I asked, not really believing his answer, thinking he was just being flippantly sparkly in his conversation.
