Bride By Choice

CHAPTER EIGHT

AXEL Roderick was a plump, easy-going man in his fifties, a hard worker and an able administrator but chiefly a good company man. His aim in life was to impress his employers, and he was happy to rely on the efforts of others. By the time Helen had driven him from the airport and expounded her ideas over dinner he was convinced that this imaginative, energetic young woman was the answer to his prayers. He offered her the job of his personal assistant, and she gladly accepted it. Now she could stay in Sicily ‘long enough to decide about Lorenzo’. That was how she put it to herself.

With the last difficulty out of the way the sale went through quickly, and renovations began. Helen was due to take up her new job the week after the wedding of Fede and Baptista.

It was to take place in Palermo Cathedral, not the vast main body of the church, but a tiny side chapel, private to the Martellis.

Helen arrived first, with Angie and Heather, and while they went ahead she waited for the second car bearing the bride and her three sons. Baptista was magnificent in pale grey silk, adorned only by a pearl necklace, Fede’s wedding gift.

Helen handed Baptista her bouquet, then slipped in behind the bridal party, as they approached the chapel.

It was surely the most extraordinary wedding Palermo cathedral had ever seen. When it was time to give the bride away three tall, handsome young men stepped forward. And the tallest and handsomest by far, Helen thought, was Lorenzo.

Baptista’s elderly face glowed into beauty as she became the wife of her one true love. She had waited forty years for this. They had been full years, yet Helen had the strangest feeling that only in this moment had Baptista’s life really started. And the same was true of the man whose love for her had never abated in all the long time apart.

She looked up to find Lorenzo watching her. He was smiling, not with his mouth but with his eyes, and that smile seemed to reach out and encompass her, drawing her into his heart, into his life, forever. He was telling her that this was where she belonged, and her heart was singing that he was right.

Afterwards there was a small reception at the Residenza, with a cake that had nearly cost Baptista’s cook a nervous breakdown. There were toasts and speeches, including a brief one from Fede, who, as always, seemed a little shy. Afterwards Helen sought him out. From the start she had been drawn to the quiet, elderly man who said little but seemed to see everything.

‘I feel a little overwhelmed by the family,’ she said. ‘Although they are wonderful to me.’

‘And to me also,’ he confessed. ‘But I too sometimes feel overwhelmed.’

‘Won’t that make things a little difficult for you?’ she ventured, for it had been decided that Fede was to live in the Residenza. He had given up his little home in Palermo, and signed over his flower business to his children.

He gave his sweet smile. ‘I know what you mean. Of course I shall have a pension from my business. Even so, were I a much younger man I would not consent to such an arrangement. But at my age you find that the things that once seemed so important fall away. Only love is left. Only love has really mattered all the time.’

‘That’s very true,’ Lorenzo said from just behind Helen. He shook Fede’s hand. ‘We’re all glad to have you in the family.’

Fede thanked him, but not without a little smile at Lorenzo’s unconscious assumption that the bride’s family had absorbed the groom, rather than the other way around. Helen nodded, understanding his thoughts, but also understanding why these things weren’t of such vital importance. Only love mattered.

‘What is it?’ Lorenzo asked, taking her hand.

‘Nothing. This is all so nice.’

‘I thought you didn’t like families,’ he teased. ‘Especially this kind of family. Pity, because they’re over the moon about you.’

‘I feel the same way about them, it’s just-’

With that swift intuition that was one of the loveable things about him, he divined her thoughts. ‘You’ve got your job. You’ll still have everything you’ve worked for.’

‘You make it sound so easy,’ she murmured.

‘It is, if we love each other. I spent a lot of time pretending I wasn’t in love with you, but you weren’t fooled. Not really.’

‘Not really,’ she agreed.

‘You know what I want. Don’t you want it too?’

A bright carpet of flowers was spread before her, tempting, lovely. But it led out of sight, to a future she must take on trust. If only…

Then she became aware of the silence. Looking around, she saw that everyone was watching them, as though following each softly spoken word.

And then Lorenzo did the unforgivable thing, the thing that disarmed her, set her defences at nothing, and destroyed all her good resolutions. In the sight of them all he went down on one knee before her and said, ‘Elena, will you marry me?’

‘Get up,’ she said frantically.

‘Not until you promise to marry me.’

‘Then you’ll stay there for ever.’

‘OK, if I stay here forever will you marry me?’

And suddenly everyone was clapping and cheering and Lorenzo was on his feet, kissing her exuberantly and she seemed to have said yes, although she never recalled saying it. But you couldn’t reject a man who’d knelt before you in front of his whole family. Could you?

When Helen looked back on her first weeks in Sicily they seemed to be full of dramas with no time to breathe between them. After Baptista’s illness came her wedding. And while they were all celebrating the engagement of Helen and Lorenzo, Heather’s child was born.

It was an unexpectedly difficult birth that took far longer than it should have done. For a while everyone had a bad scare. and it took a long night of pacing hospital corridors fearing the worst before the clouds lifted. Helen’s chief memory of that night was of Renato, standing apart from the rest, his face like stone. There was no clue to how his wife’s danger affected him. No hint of love, or any kind of feeling.

It was Lorenzo who showed his emotion, holding onto Helen’s hand as they sat together. There were tears in his eyes, and when Renato was summoned in to be with his wife Lorenzo stared anxiously after him. An hour later Renato emerged to say that Heather had given birth to a healthy son, and was out of danger. The whole family erupted, but it was Lorenzo who jumped up to punch the air, and the next moment Helen was having the life squeezed out of her with a bear hug while he laughed with joy and the tears poured down his face.

She held onto him, laughing and crying too, and wondering how she could ever have pretended to herself that they didn’t love each other.

On the day Heather returned home they had a moment together, and Helen observed ruefully that she felt as though she was already a family member and always had been.

‘That’s true,’ Heather agreed. ‘The Martellis take possession of you from the first moment.’

But she said it with a happy smile and it was clear that she liked it this way. Heather’s experience had been the opposite of Helen’s, as she disclosed in a cosy chat. She had no brothers or sisters, had lost her parents early, and fallen happily into the Martellis’ open arms. Mostly she and Renato lived in Bella Rosaria, the estate that Baptista had given to her. But for the birth of her child she’d returned to the Residenza, and was totally happy sharing a roof with the mother-in-law who adored her.

For Helen, seeking to escape the suffocating embrace of family expectations, it was different. She envied Angie and Bernardo, living in their mountain retreat of Montedoro, where Angie was a doctor and very much her own woman.

To her relief Lorenzo instantly agreed that they should have a home of their own, and they spent happy hours hunting for a house small enough for two, yet large enough for a man who’d been reared in a the huge Residenza. They found a charming little villa in Palermo, near the harbour, and rented it at once, with an option to buy later.

‘They say we can buy the furniture too,’ Lorenzo murmured with a questioning eye on his bride-to-be.

‘Hmmm!’ she said cautiously.

‘Hmmm?’

‘Nah!’

‘Thank goodness,’ he said, with a sigh of relief. ‘We’ll get some of our own, but it’ll have to be later because Renato’s keeping me hard at it while he’s “got the use of me” as he puts it. In fact I have to make for the airport now.’

‘And I can’t even see you off to France. I’ve got a dozen people coming this afternoon and I can’t leave anything to my secretary.’

‘What about Axel?’

She chuckled. ‘Axel’s a dear, but his idea of hard work is to pat me on the head and say, “You do it your way, sweetie”.’

‘Hm! As long as that’s all he pats. Bye, cara.’

The Martelli clan had taken it for granted that the wedding would be as soon as possible.

‘While the weather is still good,’ Baptista had pointed out. ‘Soon it will be autumn.’

Helen, who’d thought perhaps she would take it slowly and get to know Lorenzo in his home background, had found herself conceding. She couldn’t have explained a delay in any terms they would have understood.

With so much to do in her job she had little time for wedding preparations, which suited her prospective in-laws perfectly. Angie too had moved in to the Residenza for the last weeks of her pregnancy, leaving her medical practice in the hands of her brother who had come out from England.

When Helen returned home from work they would all raise their heads from what they were planning, and call, ‘Come and see this.’ Their arrangements would always be perfect, and it would have been unkind to cry, as she sometimes wanted to, ‘Not so much.’

Only once did she voice her thoughts, one afternoon when she, Heather and Angie were sitting together in the gardens of the Residenza, enjoying the autumn sun glittering on the fountain. Before them, on a small table, were coffee and cakes.

‘Sometimes,’ Helen said wistfully, ‘I wish my wedding could be like yours, Angie. All arranged at the last minute, with just your close family in the village church. As it is-’ she sighed.

‘Yes, you are getting a bit swamped,’ Angie agreed sympathetically. ‘Palermo cathedral, and the Jubilate.’

This made them all laugh. Piero Vanzini, a local musician, had composed a Jubilate which he was anxious to hear performed, so he had obtained permission to play it at the wedding, and was rehearsing the choir to exhaustion point.

‘And practically every relative in the whole world,’ Angie finished.

‘My whole family from New York,’ Helen said. ‘It’ll be lovely see Mamma and Poppa, and my brothers and sisters, but there’ll also be fifty thousand others, including some I’m pretty sure we’re not related to at all. They’ve practically chartered the plane. And, of course, Giorgio.’ She made a face.

‘You really don’t like him, do you?’ Heather chuckled from the rustic chair where she sat with little Vittorio in her arms.

‘No, I don’t like him at all,’ Helen said. ‘He thinks now that his sister-in-law is marrying a Martelli his family over here is going to have it easy. He’s already telephoned me twice demanding to that I should “use my influence” for them. But Lorenzo says their produce just isn’t good enough.’

‘Then let Lorenzo tell him,’ Heather suggested.

‘No way,’ Helen said at once. ‘I can deal with him without having to call for male assistance.’

‘Don’t be so prickly,’ Heather laughed. ‘I only meant that Lorenzo has a lot of firmness under that boyish charm.’

‘So do I have a lot of firmness,’ Helen said. ‘Leave Giorgio to me.’

But the other two were smiling at her, and in the pleasant afternoon sun it was easy to let her indignation slip away. Helen had been looking through the photos of Angie’s mountain wedding, appreciating its simplicity and the spontaneous happiness on everyone’s face.

Angie’s dress had been a soft cream silk with a tiny veil, held in place by yellow roses. It had been one of three that Heather had hired to take up to Montedoro, a neat arrangement that struck Helen as nicer than standing for hours being fitted for an extravagant creation.

Her glorious bridal gown was Baptista’s gift, a sign that her future mother-in-law wished to do her honour, and Helen appreciated that. But she felt increasingly suffocated by the tide of finery that signified she was a Martelli bride, and which she knew would send her mother into transports of delight.

‘What are you thinking?’ Angie asked, watching her face.

‘Of my mother, and what she’d say if she could see us now; one new mother, one almost mother, and me in the countdown to my wedding in Sicily, to a Sicilian. After all I’ve said in the past. Of course, Mamma would insist that I’d finally “seen sense”.’

‘And that would make you so mad,’ Angie chuckled.

‘Yes, it would,’ Helen said ruefully.

If only, she thought, it could be just Lorenzo and herself. But he was still in France, garnering orders that must be in place before he could leave on their honeymoon. Helen understood this, but she increasingly felt as though she were marrying a phantom.

With three days to go she put in her final afternoon at the hotel. When she returned in three weeks she would be Signora Martelli. Axel kissed her jovially, gave her a costly gift for the new house and told her he hoped she wouldn’t get seasick, a reference to the honeymoon which was to be spent cruising on Renato’s boat, the Santa Maria.

It was a lovely day, and instead of going straight home she wandered down to a spot overlooking the harbour, where she could just make out the great mast of the Santa Maria. She thought of the honeymoon, when they would be alone, except for the crew, free to please each other and only each other. Unfinished business, she thought, with a smile.

Turning away, she collided with someone who’d been standing just behind her, and saw her go sprawling on the hard ground.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, going down on her knees to assist her victim. ‘Are you hurt.’

The young woman was rubbing her elbows, but didn’t seem injured.

‘It’s not so bad,’ she said. Then she grew suddenly alert as she saw who had knocked her down. At the same moment, Helen’s eyes brightened with recognition.

‘It’s Sara, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘Here, let me help you up.’

When they were both back on their feet and had recovered the oranges that had rolled out of Sara’s bag, Helen resumed, ‘Didn’t you used to work at the Residenza?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Let me buy you a cup of coffee to make up for hurting you.’

They found a little bar and Helen bought them both coffee and cakes.

‘You left very suddenly,’ Helen remembered. ‘Did you have another job to go to?’

Sara shook her head, apparently embarrassed. ‘I was dismissed,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Signora Heather was very angry with me.’

‘But why? Surely you can’t have done anything so very terrible?’

‘I said something-I had no right-I didn’t mean any harm, but nobody is allowed to speak of it in that house-because of you.’

‘Because of me? I don’t understand. Why should I care what anyone says?’

‘Please, Signorina, I don’t want to get into any more trouble.’

‘I won’t make trouble for you,’ Helen said gently. ‘But I think you should tell me what happened.’

‘But you will be angry with me too,’ Sara wailed, ‘if they haven’t told you-’

‘I won’t be angry,’ Helen insisted.

After a little more carefully calculated fencing Sara allowed herself to be ‘persuaded’.

‘It was about Signor Lorenzo,’ she whispered, ‘because he was supposed to marry her-and then he didn’t-’

‘What do you mean?’ Helen asked, frowning. ‘Who was he supposed to marry?’

‘Signora Heather. She came out to Sicily last year to marry him, but on their wedding day he vanished. She went to the cathedral, but he’d gone. He left her a letter saying he couldn’t marry her.’

‘Don’t be silly. If that had happened, I’d have heard.’

‘They won’t have it mentioned,’ Sara said. ‘It’s a great scandal and nobody must speak of it.’

‘You said “the cathedral”,’ Angie echoed, in a daze. ‘Do you mean-?’

‘Palermo cathedral. It was a very grand affair. All the family had come from far and wide, and the building was full. There was a great choir and a beautiful bride-but no bridegroom. He’d abandoned her.’

Sara spoke the last words with relish, but Helen was past noticing. The world seemed to be fragmenting about her, and reforming itself into a monstrous shape.

‘But-Heather married Renato last year,’ she murmured. ‘Surely-?’

‘Of course. Signora Baptista arranged it.’

‘Arranged-?’

‘It had to be done for the family’s honour. The wedding was barely two months after Signor Lorenzo left her standing at the altar. She had to save her pride, so she married his brother, but she was still weeping for him. Perhaps even now-oh, forgive me! I’ve said too much.’

‘No,’ Helen said, speaking like someone in a dream. ‘You haven’t said too much.’

Sara touched her hand. ‘You didn’t know?’

‘No,’ Helen whispered. ‘I didn’t know.’ She pulled herself together. ‘But it’s all in the past. It doesn’t affect me.’

‘Of course not. And surely Signor Lorenzo has forgotten her and loves only you-it’s just that-’

‘Go on,’ Helen said in a dead voice.

‘They say Signor Renato is very angry and jealous because his wife and his brother are still so fond of each other. Last year-’

She shouldn’t listen to this gossip but she couldn’t help herself. The poison had crept into her ear and there was no escaping it now.

‘What happened last year?’ she whispered.

‘Signor Lorenzo went to England, but the next day I was in her room when the phone rang. She answered it and said, “Lorenzo”, then she ordered me out. As I left the room I heard her say, “It’s all right, I’m alone.” Then later she told me she was going away. She didn’t say where but-well-I heard through the door-’

‘Go on.’

‘She told him that she would be with him that night,’ Sara said in a low voice.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Helen said firmly. ‘You must have misheard.’

If she had to listen to any more she knew she would go mad. Forcing a smile to her face she got to her feet, managed to say goodbye, and fled.

Left alone, Sara finished all the cakes and drank the coffee, relishing every crumb, every last drop. She had fantasised how she would hit back at Heather for her dismissal, but who would have thought the chance would present itself so opportunely? It had been a good day’s work.

Somehow Helen got herself to the villa that was to be her future home, and where she wouldn’t be disturbed. Her head was spinning and she needed time to come to terms with what she’d heard.

Lorenzo and Heather had been in love, had planned to marry.

And he’d left her at the altar.

Perhaps it wasn’t true. Why had she believed Sara so easily? It might all be an invention.

Yet a memory disturbed her; Heather, showing her to her room on the first day, saying, ‘It’s where Angie and I slept when I came out here-’ Then the sudden awkward silence.

She’d asked, ‘Did Renato meet you at the airport?’ Taking it for granted that Renato had been the bridegroom.

But the bridegroom had been Lorenzo. And Heather had swiftly changed the subject, embarrassed to realise that Helen didn’t know the truth.

Because Lorenzo hadn’t told her. That was the worst thing of all.

She’d thought they were close, lovers and best friends. That was the strength of their relationship, that it was built on friendship as well as passion. And friendship meant trust and confidence. Suddenly all trust was blown away.

There had been the suggestion that Heather had never stopped loving Lorenzo, marrying Renato on the rebound, and the unsubtle hint that Lorenzo had regretted his action and continued to pine for the woman who was now his sister-in-law: that together they had betrayed her husband.

Heather and Lorenzo were there in her mind, their heads close, laughing together. How readily she put her arms about him, how eagerly he embraced her back.

It was nonsense, she told herself firmly. They hugged as brother and sister, under Renato’s eyes. But only under his eyes? The question slid into her mind like a snake.

And when Heather lay in the hospital, her life in danger, Lorenzo had wept. Renato, that hard man, had looked like a stone. But Lorenzo had wept.

It meant nothing. Renato closed up, told his feelings to nobody. It was his way. Lorenzo’s emotions were near the surface, and he could talk about things.

But he hadn’t told his intended bride that he’d jilted another bride at the altar.

That was the fact she couldn’t escape. It stood across her path like a monolith, barring her way to her wedding.