Paul Ritchie, of mixed English and Italian blood, spent his childhood and youth in Italy. As a mature painter of sixty, during a Mediterranean cruise his ship calls at Naples, and Ritchie recalls his days there as an art student and his lifestyle supported by casket-making. He remembers his friend Pietro Viva, a medical student, and their landlady Cristina with whom he had shared a heart-breaking passion that blossomed during a cholera epidemic in Naples. The disease had struck all three friends, but Paul alone survived. When his boat leaves, Ritchie has not set foot on the land but has managed to exorcise the ghosts of the past. The story is based on a Naples cholera epidemic remembered by Brett Young's Capri neighbour, Edwin Cerio, whilst the character of Paul Ritchie may well have been based on another Capri resident, D H Lawrence.