Gino’s Arranged Bride

CHAPTER TEN

‘WHATare you afraid of?’

The words seemed to glitter in the air, like knives, flashing between them.

Laura regretted them the moment they were out, but it was too late. Gino rose and threw her a look of bitter reproach.

‘Why do you do this?’ he asked. ‘Why do you threaten what we have with meaningless fears?’

‘How can they be meaningless when you’re afraid too?’

‘Laura, for both our sakes, be quiet. There are things it is better not to say. I have made my life here with you and Nikki. It’s a good life. I’m happier than I ever thought I’d be again.’

‘Yes, happier. That’s not the same as happy.’

‘I can’t make these fine distinctions.’

‘But you know what I mean.’

‘Yes, I do, and I beg you to say no more.’

‘And if I stay quiet, will that change anything? Will the truth you fear go away?’

‘There are some questions I don’t want to ask, not because I’m afraid of the answers, but because there may not be any answers. I want to protect what we have. For pity’s sake, don’t make it hard for me to do that.’

Suddenly her eyes were filled with tears. ‘I don’t know what we have,’ she said huskily. ‘But if we quarrel, we won’t have it any more. Can’t you see that?’

She waited, tense and hopeful for his reply. But none came. After looking at her for a long moment he turned and walked out and she heard him going downstairs.

Why couldn’t I be sensible? she raged inwardly. Why can’t I leave it there as he wants? We’ve been granted so much more than I hoped for. Why don’t I treasure that without demanding even more?

Because a love on those terms is no love at all, her heart answered. It’s a patchwork love, a make over and mend, artificially constructed from second-hand bits and pieces. And it’s not enough.

Gino didn’t come back to bed all that night. It was the first time since their marriage that they hadn’t slept in the same room.

Next day he greeted her with a kiss and a smile, but he didn’t say any more about selling the farm. Laura would have given anything to understand his thoughts. Perhaps she should be glad that he planned to turn his back on Italy and throw in his lot permanently with her in England.

If only she could convince herself that it was that simple!

One day he said to her, ‘Have you given in your notice at The Running Sheep?’

‘No, you never mentioned it again. I wondered if you’d thought better of it.’

‘I haven’t changed my mind. I want you to tell them that you’re leaving. I’ve written to Rinaldo saying that I want to sell. He should get the letter about now, and he’ll probably telephone.’

After that whenever the phone rang Laura jumped, but the days passed with no call. Gino never spoke of it, or what might be going on inside him, but Laura could sense a rising tension in him, that filled her with foreboding.

When the answer did come it was not a phone call but a letter.

It fell onto the mat in the morning, when Gino was out at work, and she was alone in the house. Laura picked it up, trying to control the sudden racing of her pulse as she saw the Italian stamp.

She couldn’t tell whether the writing belonged to a man or a woman. Had Alex herself written to him?

Laura put the letter on the mantelpiece and tried to forget it. But that was impossible, and she kept returning for another look.

Gino telephoned in the afternoon, as he sometimes did, asking whether there was anything she wanted him to bring from the supermarket near the factory.

‘There’s a letter from Italy,’ she said.

She would have given anything to see his face during the long silence that followed. At last he said, ‘Fine, I’ll see you soon.’

She gave him the letter as soon as he returned home, and watched him grow pale as he read it.

‘What is it?’ she asked in alarm. ‘Does he refuse?’

‘It’s not from Rinaldo,’ Gino said slowly. ‘It’s from Alex.’

‘What does she say?’ Laura asked, trying to speak normally.

‘She says Rinaldo can’t afford to buy me out, but she can, with the money from the sale of her London apartment. She’d buy it in her own name. But first of all she wants to meet us and talk about it.’

‘Us?’

‘She wants me to take you, and Nikki, to Tuscany. She says it’s time we met as a family. She’s mad at me for not bringing you before, or inviting them to our wedding. I suppose she’s right.’

‘Gino, have you only just told them that you’re married?’ she asked, astounded.

He nodded.

‘You quarrelled with them as badly as that?’

‘It wasn’t a quarrel-not exactly. It was just that we couldn’t be close any more. I needed the distance.’

‘Do you still need it?’

‘I think it’s time to do as she suggests,’ he said, not answering directly. ‘The sooner we go the better.’

‘All of us?’

‘All of us, including Nikki. Do you both have passports?’

‘Yes, but-’

‘But what?’

For some reason Laura took fright. ‘But I can’t come. Who’ll run this place?’

‘I think our friends will find a way to get by for a while,’ Gino said.

He was right. The five tenants rose up in outrage at the notion that they would be helpless without her, and Laura found herself with no way to back out.

Nikki was over the moon at the thought of going to Italy, and soon had the journey by heart.

‘We take the plane to Pisa Airport,’ she recited, ‘because that’s the nearest airport to Florence, and then we get the train-’

‘I think someone will meet us,’ Gino said, smiling at her. ‘I’ve still got to check final arrangements.’

He called Italy that evening, and Laura heard him say, ‘E, Rinaldo.’

‘Daddy’s talking to his brother,’ Nikki told her in a stage whisper.

‘I know that, and stop earwigging,’ Laura said firmly. ‘It’s none of our business.’

‘Doesn’t matter anyway, they’re talking Tuscan dialect.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Daddy taught me some Tuscan words. Only I don’t know enough to follow what he’s saying,’ Nikki sighed regretfully.

‘So I should hope. Behave yourself!’

‘Oh, Mummy, isn’t it exciting? Daddy’s told me so much about Italy.’

Gino came off the phone.

‘I’ve booked the plane tickets,’ he said. ‘We fly the day after tomorrow. Someone will meet us and drive us to the farm.’

‘Someone?’

‘I don’t know who it will be,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s harvest time, so nothing’s certain.’ Turning his attention to Nikki, he said, ‘So get packing. Capisci?’ Understand?

‘Capisco!’ Nikki saluted and raced off.

The child’s excitement got them through the time, filling in the gaps that yawned because they didn’t know what to say to each other.

The whole house was in cheerful uproar. Everyone seemed to be personally delighted at the trip. Sadie went out of her way to arrange Gino’s time off at work.

‘The job’s there if he wants it again,’ she said, adding, ‘although I don’t suppose he will.’

‘I suppose when he’s sold his share of the farm he won’t need to work as a packer,’ Laura reflected.

‘That’s not exactly what I-oh, well, have a good trip.’

When Sadie had gone Nikki said melodramatically, ‘They’re hoping we don’t come back.’

‘Darling, whatever do you mean?’

‘I heard them talking. They’ve got it all planned. If you stay in Italy they want to club together and buy this place, because they like living here.’

‘You’re making that up.’

‘No, honestly. They want to have a commune.’

‘Now I know you’re making it up.’

‘It’s what Claudia said. She’s dead keen.’

‘Yes, Claudia, forming a commune with Bert! If you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything. They can’t stand each other.’

‘I think that’s mostly for show. They’d miss their spats if they lost them. They’re all dead keen to buy you out.’

‘But darling that isn’t going to happen. Gino’s selling his share of the farm and coming back here.’

‘Does Poppa really want to do that?’

‘Poppa? Since when did you call him that?’

‘That’s what Italian children say. It’s what he called his father. He told me.’

Nikki skipped away, leaving Laura feeling disturbed. The decision was made, surely? Gino was turning his back on Italy and returning to spend the rest of his life in England. And yet from every side there was pressure for a different decision. Nikki was becoming determinedly Italian. And if she were right, the problem about the guest house seemed to have solved itself naturally. It was almost as if she were being guided somewhere, by Fate.

But then she remembered Alex and the fantasy fell apart. If there was one thing that Fate would not, could not, do to her, it was to send her to live close to Alex, Gino’s true love, and the woman for whom he pined in his heart.

Why, oh why, she wondered, had she insisted on him going back to Tuscany? She was deeply regretting it now.

But then she remembered that it would have made no difference what she said. Gino was going back because Alex had said so, not herself.

Everyone came out to see them off, standing on the pavement and waving madly until the taxi was out of sight. And they did look like a family, Laura had to admit.

The rain was teeming down, but no rain could quench Nikki. For the whole of the journey to the airport she bounced with excitement and bombarded ‘Poppa’ with questions, sometimes in reasonable, if basic, Italian. Young as she was, she was rapidly becoming bilingual.

The reason wasn’t far to seek, Laura thought. Nikki learned because her heart was in it.

She had flown before, but so young that she couldn’t remember. Now she enjoyed everything about the airport except for one moment when a couple of boys in their early teens glanced at her face and giggled.

Instantly Gino planted himself in front of them. ‘If you have some comment about my daughter, you can make it to me,’ he said with deadly quiet.

They paled, then took to their heels.

‘Come on,’ Gino said, his hand on her shoulder. ‘Let’s get out of here to a country where the sun shines.’

On the plane Nikki glued herself to the window, regarding the land below with fascination. It had turned into a beautiful day, with little cloud, and she could tell the exact moment when they passed over the coast of France.

‘Have we reached Italy yet?’ she demanded every five minutes.

‘No, that’s still France,’ Gino told her. ‘Then it’s Switzerland, and when you see mountains down there you’ll know it’s the Alps, and we’ve nearly reached Italy.’

‘And then we’re there?’

‘After a few more hundred miles, si,’ he said, grinning.

He ordered some champagne and clinked glasses with Laura. The atmosphere was cheerful, and their first trip abroad together might almost have been their honeymoon.

Briefly she regretted persuading Gino to marry her. She was in love with him, and every day it grew more important to know the truth about his feelings for her. Yet because of the way their marriage had come about, she might never know.

‘Daddy is that the Alps?’

‘Si, piccina. Sono le alpi!’

Soon after that they began to descend, swinging out over the sea before coming in to land at Pisa, near the coast.

From the moment they left the plane Gino felt as though he was watching a tape being replayed. It was harvest, the golden time of year, when the farmer could look at his crops and know how he would prosper in the year ahead.

Last year they had made a mistake, harvesting the grapes too soon because Rinaldo had wanted the money early to repay the mortgage that Alex held. That way he would be free to love her, without the shadow of commerce hanging over his motives. So he’d reckoned.

But he’d got it wrong, harvesting the grapes too early because his mind had been on Alex. At the harvest festival they’d found each other. In the same moment Gino had lost them both.

And now it was harvest again, and it was time for the circle to be completed.

‘Someone’s trying to get your attention,’ Laura said, pointing.

It was Toni, the foreman at Belluna, a huge, grinning man.

‘Don’t worry about Nikki,’ Gino said softly to Laura. ‘I told Rinaldo, and he’ll have warned everyone.’

Toni greeted Gino with a bellow, enfolding him in tree-trunk arms, greeting ‘Signora Farnese’ deferentially, and offering his hand to la piccina.

Soon their luggage had been piled into the car and they were turning out of the airport, heading north. Nikki, sitting in the back with her mother, gazed eagerly out of the window. Laura had expected the two men in the front to talk in Italian or Tuscan, but after a few early remarks nothing was said. Gino too was looking out of the window, and Laura could only guess his thoughts as familiar scenery came into view.

Once he glanced over his shoulder to say, ‘This is Belluna now, that you can see all around you.’

She saw rising terraces of vines, with men and women picking grapes vigorously. The sun was warm and brilliant on the vivid colours, reminding her how Gino hated the English rain. How could he have borne to leave this place? she wondered.

‘There’s the farmhouse,’ Gino said at last.

At first Laura couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The building was pink and almost palatial, with two shallow staircases curving up the front.

‘That’s a farmhouse?’ she asked, dazed.

‘It is now,’ he said. ‘It was a great house, many years ago. There is Teresa, in the upper window.’

An elderly woman was leaning out to wave, then disappearing. As the car drew up outside the house a man appeared at the top of one of the staircases, and stood watching them.

This had to be Gino’s brother, Laura thought, seeing the resemblance. Rinaldo was older, heavier, but they clearly came from the same family.

He came slowly down the steps and paused at the bottom, regarding the brother he hadn’t seen for a year. Gino gazed back, and Laura had the strangest sensation that neither of them knew what to do. Then Rinaldo opened his arms and Gino went into them. They held each other for a long time in an embrace that spoke of a closeness deeper than any estrangement.

Rinaldo held his brother at arm’s length, considering him.

‘You’re older,’ he said in English.

‘You’re not,’ Gino said.

Rinaldo nodded and a slow smile came over his face, as if he were saying that happiness was the reason for his improved looks. It seemed to Laura that he could imply his happiness, but not put it into words, even with his brother.

‘You have kept a secret from us,’ Rinaldo said, still in English, indicating Laura. ‘You should not have done so. Such happiness should be shared. Signora, I salute you. You are welcome to our family.’

He kissed her on both cheeks.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m really glad to meet Gino’s family.’

Gino had moved to stand behind Nikki. ‘And this is my new daughter,’ he said. ‘La mia figlia.’

Rinaldo and Nikki shook hands.

‘Buongiorno, signore,’ Nikki said.

‘She’s been practising her Italian,’ Gino said proudly.

‘So I see.’ Rinaldo thought for a moment before asking, ‘Come sta?’ How are you?

‘Molto bene, grazie,’ Nikki returned at once. Fine, thank you.

Rinaldo grinned his approval. ‘Your daughter is a credit to you, signora,’ he said. ‘Come inside and meet my wife.’

Now that the moment was here Laura tried to stay calm, but she was filled with tension at the thought of the coming meeting between Gino and Alex.

Rinaldo led the way into the house, not back up the stairs but through a French window on ground-floor level. The room ran right through the house, and at the far end was another French window, through which a woman was walking.

At first Laura could see her only in silhouette. After the first glance she looked away, in Gino’s direction and saw him stop, a look of astonishment on his face as the woman came into clearer view.

‘Alex?’ he whispered.

‘You see, you’re not the only one who’s been keeping a secret,’ Rinaldo observed, smiling. ‘Congratulate us. Our baby is due next month.’

Seemingly in a daze, Gino approached the heavily pregnant woman, and took her hands.

‘Gino, dear, you’re going to be an uncle,’ she said, smiling into his face. ‘We’re both so glad you came home in time.’

‘Rinaldo was right,’ Gino said. ‘Secrets should be shared with families. Especially wonderful secrets. I’m very happy for both of you.’

He kissed her cheek and led her forward.

‘Alex, I want you to meet my wife, Laura.’

The two women shook hands, each regarding the other with deep interest, and each recognising the interest of the other.

‘Rinaldo and I were so glad when we heard that Gino was married,’ Alex said. ‘We know you’re going to make him very happy.’

Laura said something polite, but she was trying to equate this calm woman with her inner vision. Gino had said she was an accountant who had lived in London, and Laura had built up a picture of cool, precise elegance, ultra-professional, ultra-chic, composed. The person she’d seen in the picture had been chic even when enjoying herself at a street festival.

But this Alex was somebody else. Her fair hair, falling to her shoulders, looked as though she’d dragged a comb through it at the last moment. And her loose floaty garments weren’t just the result of her pregnancy. She somehow conveyed the impression that they represented the person she was.

She kissed Laura warmly. ‘Let me take you up to your room,’ she said. ‘I’ve put you in Gino’s old room, and Nikki is in the one next door.’

She took the child’s hand and indicated for Laura to come upstairs with her. The house was beautiful, old and homely and lived in. Nikki clearly thought so too, because she was looking around her, smiling and nodding her head.

Behind them came the men, carrying the heavier suitcases. Laura noticed how Rinaldo positioned himself just behind his wife on the stairs, and kept anxious eyes on her.

Gino’s old room was large, with a low ceiling, and heavy exposed beams. The furniture was deep, burnished walnut, polished until it gleamed.

‘Oh, look, Mummy,’ Nikki breathed at the window. ‘Look at the view!’

The house stood on a small incline, with a view right across a shallow valley. The valley was an almost enchanted place, with pine trees, grass and a stream wandering through it, shining in the sun.

‘What’s that over there?’ Nikki asked, pointing at a building standing on the far side, a little way up the facing incline.

‘It’s a house,’ Alex said.

‘Who lives there?’

‘Nobody. Rinaldo has offered it to people who work on the farm. It’s big enough to take two families. But it’s supposed to be haunted and nobody will touch it.’

‘Haunted? You mean a real ghost?’ Nikki demanded, wide-eyed.

‘That’s what they say,’ Alex said, amused. ‘But I don’t know if anyone’s actually seen it.’

‘Can I go and look some day? I’m sure I’d see it.’

Laura sighed. ‘I’m afraid Nikki’s a real little ghoul.’

In Nikki’s room they found a welcome gift, a huge jigsaw puzzle of the Ponte Vecchio bridge over the River Arno.

‘We’ll go there and see it soon,’ Alex promised her. ‘Come down as soon as you’ve finished unpacking, and we’ll have something to eat.’

Rinaldo was waiting for her in the doorway. Laura, returning to her own room, saw him draw Alex’s arm through his as they went down the stairs.

‘He really fusses over her,’ Laura said, going into her room.

When there was no answer she looked up and found Gino staring out of the window at the golden landscape. He seemed transfixed.

Quietly Laura came to stand beside him. He neither moved nor spoke, but she could sense feelings of satisfaction, almost of joy, coming from him as he looked out at his home once more.

‘It’s not raining here,’ she said softly.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It does rain sometimes, but not-it’s different.’ He seemed to come out of a dream. ‘I’m sorry, what were you saying?’

‘About Rinaldo and the way he fusses over Alex. You wouldn’t think it at first. He looks one of the strong, silent types.’

‘I suppose he is,’ Gino said. ‘But he lost his first wife when she gave birth. It always haunted him, and I suppose now more than ever.’

Downstairs they met the housekeeper Teresa, an elderly woman, and the two maids, powerfully built young females called Claudia and Franca, whom Gino told her were Teresa’s great-nieces.

The meal was a banquet. The table had been decorated with flowers and candles, and the fare was a celebration of Tuscan cooking. First there was finocchiona, salami flavoured with fennel seeds, then black cabbage soup, followed by stuffed pheasants with cream and truffles. To finish there were sorbets, or fruits in syrup, with ice cream.

Rinaldo sat at one end of the table with Laura on his right. Alex sat on her other side. Rinaldo sometimes engaged her in courteous conversation, but mostly he left the talking to his wife. If Laura happened to glance at him she always found his eyes on Alex, anxiously brooding.

To Laura’s relief, the three servants all spoke English, even if a fairly basic kind. Rinaldo explained how Alex had won Teresa’s heart by alerting him to the fact that she was getting old and needed help in the house.

‘For her sake Teresa started to learn English,’ he said fondly, ‘and she also made Claudia and Franca learn it, on pain of a terrible fate.’

Nikki had made instant friends with the maids, practising her Italian, which was getting better by the day, and teaching them new English words. When it was time for her to go to bed the three of them went upstairs in a companionable threesome.

The others went out onto the patio to drink coffee. It was dark now, and after a while they began to see moving lights between the trees.

‘Our friends are coming to welcome you,’ Rinaldo said.

‘You told everyone we were coming?’ Gino asked.

‘We told nobody, but you know this district.’

As he spoke he rose to his feet to greet their first guests. After that someone arrived every few minutes, until Laura reckoned there must be almost two hundred people.

They all greeted her with a kindness that didn’t disguise their curiosity. It was clear that the word had gone around the district that Gino had returned, bringing a wife with him, and nobody wanted to miss it.

But hand in hand with the curiosity was an unmistakable warmth. She was welcome. They knew nothing about her, but she was welcome.

And when Nikki, attracted by the noise, crept down the stairs and hovered in the doorway, there was a roar of greeting for her, and nobody was startled or disconcerted by her appearance. Like Gino, they seemed oblivious.

She began to understand her husband better that night. The warmth in his nature was his own, but it was also a reflection of the people from whom he came. He had said, ‘I’m an Italian, not a milky Englishman,’ and she’d thought she knew what he meant. Now she realised that it meant much more.

Smiling, she turned to look at him, wanting to tell him what she had discovered.

But he wasn’t there. After looking around for a while Laura saw him sitting in a corner with Alex, his head bent close to hear what she was saying. He looked completely absorbed, as though he’d forgotten everyone else in the world.