Married Under the Italian Sun

CHAPTER THREE

ANGEL CRIED OUT AGAIN, and this time it wasn’t a word but a long scream of agony.

‘All right, I’m coming.’

At first she wasn’t sure she’d heard the words. The wind snatched them away, then returned them in an echo.

‘Help!’ she screamed again, frantic with hope and fear.

But she could hear no reply. She’d imagined it. Nobody was coming to help her, and very soon she would be dead.

‘I’m here.’

The next moment a head appeared above her. She thought she was hallucinating as she saw it was Vittorio, but he dropped to his knees, then lay flat on the ground.

‘All right,’ he called. ‘Don’t panic. Here-’

He was reaching out his hand, wrapping his fingers around her wrist where she was still gripping the iron rail. Then the other hand, so that he held both wrists.

‘You’re going to have to let go of the rail,’ he said.

‘I can’t-’

‘You must,’ he said patiently. ‘I can’t pull you up while you’re holding it. Trust me.’

But her fingers seemed frozen, defying her will to move them. While she fought to make herself do what she must, there was an ominous crumbling sound, and a little more of the cliff slipped away beneath her. Looking up, she saw that most of it had come from the ground where he was lying, leaving a big hole beneath his upper body.

‘Don’t think about that,’ he said, his face just above her.

‘How can I? You’re lying on nothing.’

‘The hole gives me more room to pull you up. Be positive and trust me. Let go of that rail.’

Gasping, she did so, and immediately felt his hands tighten on her wrists, drawing her up, into the gap that crumbled further as she went through. He was inching back slowly-slowly-until he reached a place where he could draw himself up to his knees. As he did so his forearms were forced to take more of her weight, causing his fingers to tighten on her wrists. She gasped at the sheer power of that grip, and, with her eyes fixed on his face, she could see the terrible strain it cost him.

‘One more heave,’ he gasped.

On the words he yanked back sharply, so that Angel slid swiftly through the gap beneath the rail and landed on the ground, feeling it blessedly firm beneath her body.

She was safe, but that was only a word, and it had no power against the gasping and shuddering that seized her.

‘Oh, God,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, God!’

He put his arms right round her, pulling her hard against the length of his body and holding her there without moving or speaking. She clung to him in return, knowing that if he let her go she would start screaming. She tried to stop herself shaking but it was useless. The safety of the ground beneath her was an illusion, and only he could keep her safe.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked after a while.

‘No,’ she said abruptly. ‘I think-I’m going to have hysterics. Sorry about that.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said, almost impatiently. ‘Nothing wrong with hysterics. Have them if you like.’

After that nothing could have stopped her. Her gasps turned into whooping, her shaking became violent tremors, and tears poured helplessly down her face. It didn’t seem to faze Vittorio. He just tightened his arms, so that an already firm grip became one of steel.

There was nothing gentle or tender about this. It was less an embrace than an imprisonment, but that was what she needed to guard herself from the worst, until the world became steady again, the storm passed and she managed to say, ‘Damn, damn, damn! I thought I had more guts than that.’

He loosened his grip just enough to look at her face. His own was close enough for her to feel his breath fanning her lips.

‘Why?’ he asked mildly. ‘You were a hair’s breadth away from falling to your death. Has that ever happened before?’

‘No.’

‘Then why should you think you should cope?’

‘Well, we both know now that I can’t,’ she snapped, furious with herself and, obscurely, with him.

‘So what? Did someone pass a law saying that you had to be a superwoman? Or is that just what the rest of us are supposed to think?’

‘Will you shut up?’ she snapped.

He grinned. ‘That’s better. Come on. You’re ready to stand.’

She didn’t feel ready, but he seemed to know her better than she did herself, so she allowed him to help her to her feet.

‘Where’s your car?’ he asked.

‘I walked.’

‘Then it’ll have to be my car. It’s just over there.’

His car was small and shabby. Angel eased herself thankfully into the front passenger seat, closed her eyes, and didn’t open them again until they pulled up outside the villa.

‘The padrona needs a good, stiff drink,’ Vittorio told Berta, who bustled out.

‘We both do,’ Angel said, leading the way into the large room that opened onto the garden through tall windows.

Berta produced whisky and two glasses, and Vittorio poured for them both. Angel drank hers in one gulp.

‘Do you need another?’ he asked, holding out the bottle.

‘No, thanks. I don’t normally drink spirits at all, but this was different. Thank goodness you were there. How did that happen?’

‘You mean how dare I still be on your property after you ordered me off?’

‘Not exactly. After all, you saved my life. I owe you for that.’

‘You don’t owe me any favours. It wouldn’t have suited me at all for you to die. Everyone would have thought I’d murdered you.’

His brisk, common-sense manner was a relief. There would be no need for melodramatics along the lines of, My hero!

‘Surely not!’ Angel said ironically. ‘Why would anyone think you wanted to murder me? I know you hate the sight of me, but who knows about it-apart from everyone in the area?’

He grimaced. ‘All right, you’ve made your point.’

‘Then tell me, what were you doing there?’

‘I went to look at the cliff.’

‘You knew it was dangerous?’

‘Only since late last night. Rico called me and said he’d noticed that it was dangerous at that point. He didn’t know what to do.’

‘He could have told me.’

He gave her an ironic look.

‘The poor lad is scared stiff of you. He came to me because that’s what he’s always done. I said I’d check it today, and that’s why I was there. I was going to cordon it off, then come to inform you.’

‘Oh, you were going to let me know what was happening? But only after you’d checked it.’

Vittorio let out his breath in exasperation.

‘All right,’ he said, with exaggerated patience. ‘Just tell me what you’d have done. How would you deal with a crumbling cliff?’

The silence was jagged as they faced each other.

‘You want me to say I’d come to you, don’t you?’ she seethed.

‘I don’t care what you say, only what you do. I hope you’d have had enough common sense to call me, but I don’t count on it.’

‘You’ve got a nerve!’

‘It depends whether you love this place more than you resent me.’

She sighed. ‘You’ve got me there, haven’t you? After all, you love it more than you resent me, or I wouldn’t be alive now. I guess I have to respect that.’

‘Much against your will, of course.’

She spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Look, I’m trying.’

‘I know. It’s years since I enjoyed anything so much.’

‘All right, have your laugh. But please come and look after the estate before it goes to rack and ruin. That is-if you can bear to.’

‘I can bear to. I told you once before that taking care of the land is the only thing that matters. Next to that, nobody’s feelings count. I’ll do a good job for you, and get your lemons in prime condition for the harvest, but I must have a free hand, and you have to take my advice.’

She opened her mouth to protest about this high-handed way of putting it, but then closed it again. He was right. She had no choice.

‘All right,’ she said.

‘My first piece of advice is to get the other gardeners back.’

‘No, it’s not fair to leave it all to Rico, is it?’ she agreed. ‘Plus, he helped to save my life.’

‘True. You should give him a bonus. There’s a heavy workload, not just for the lemons, but the rest of the garden. You sell that produce as well, at least you will sell it if it’s properly tended.’

‘Can I leave it to you to contact the other two gardeners?’

‘Certainly. And my second piece of advice is that you need some fertiliser delivered fast.’

‘Please order it. Is this a truce?’

‘I suppose it is.’

‘Don’t strain yourself,’ she said indignantly. ‘We can make it an armed truce if you prefer.’

‘That might work better.’

‘How much do I pay you?’

‘I’ll send you a formal memo.’ He added with a faint smile, ‘Under an emblem of crossed swords.’

‘Surely sheathed swords is more appropriate?’ Angel asked lightly.

Vittorio regarded her, his head on one side, his smile unreadable.

‘Let’s see how things work out before we sheath our swords.’

Angel slept badly that night. As soon as she closed her eyes, she was back hanging over the drop. Somehow she knew that this was a dream, but would struggle to save herself, feeling certain that she could now manage without him. But Vittorio was always there, hauling her back to safety.

Then she was lying on the grass again, held against him, gasping and feeling her heart pounding. That was when she awoke to find it was still happening, and she would have to calm herself down before she could go back to sleep. But she seemed to be stuck in a loop of terror and excitement that repeated again and again, until she faced the truth-that she had wanted to feel his hands on her. In fact, she had wanted it ever since the first day in the kitchen.

‘It ought to be enough that I dislike him,’ she muttered crossly, when she’d woken up for the third time. ‘You’d think that would protect me.’

But there were some things against which there was no defence.

That kind of consciousness, Angel discovered, was an insidious thing. It didn’t leave you alone for a moment. It was there even when a man was talking to you with barely concealed impatience, without even looking at you properly, all his attention directed at the papers he was spreading out. You might try to concentrate on the figures he was explaining, but you couldn’t help noticing the shapeliness of his hands, or remembering their unexpected power. And afterwards you wouldn’t be able to recall any of the figures.

The gardeners were re-employed and Vittorio brought them to be introduced to her. In a private talk afterwards, he told Angel what he had promised them in wages, and what she would be paying him. She had an odd feeling that he was accepting less than he was entitled to, but his distant manner forbade her to mention it.

The gardeners were polite to her, but there was no doubt whom they regarded as their real employer. In fairness, Angel had to admit that they had a point.

‘Is all this agreeable to you, padrona?’ Vittorio finally asked.

‘I’ve put everything in your hands, and I won’t go back on my word.’

He gave a brief, wry smile. ‘Of course not, since it would not be in your own interests to do so.’

‘Meaning that you think I couldn’t be trusted otherwise?’

‘Meaning that I have the highest regard for your intelligence. Now, if you’ll excuse me, your servants will get to work.’

‘Don’t give me that nonsense,’ she exploded. ‘You’re no servant and we both know it. You’re getting a kick out of this, aren’t you?’

‘If you really believe that, padrona, perhaps you’d like to change your situation for mine.’

She had no reply, and after a moment he moved away, leaving her mentally kicking herself.

She watched the three of them walking across the grass, and she couldn’t help but notice how easily he moved. The other men were clodhoppers by contrast, but he was like a prince, with an easy, languid grace that was a pleasure to behold.

But she would still keep out of his way, Angel decided. Every conversation was like duelling with a thorn bush.

Not that she avoided him entirely. It was only sense to watch him at work and learn how the estate functioned. She told herself that she was guarding against the day he would decide to walk out.

Vittorio found himself as content as he could ever be as a servant in the place where he had been master. Angel behaved well, in his opinion, which was to say that she followed his advice, engaged those whom he wished to engage, spent money as he directed, and didn’t argue with him.

Here in the gardens he could find the only peace possible for him. It wasn’t happiness, or even contentment, but it could be merciful oblivion. Nature didn’t change. The trees still needed the same care no matter what.

The same was true of Luca, the huge, shabby dog who had wandered in off the streets and attached himself to Vittorio four years ago, refusing to be dislodged. He had followed his chosen master, without complaint, from the grandeur of the villa to the poverty of the rented house, and today he had followed him back to a small copse of trees, to sit hopefully at the bottom of the ladder at the top of which Vittorio was working.

It was rare for him to make any noise, so, when he gave an excited ‘wuff’, Vittorio looked down.

‘What is it?’ he asked, seeing nothing.

‘Wuff!’ Luca repeated, his eyes fixed on the distance.

Then Vittorio understood. Walking towards them was Angel, wearing a colourful silk top and snowy white trousers.

‘Stay!’ Vittorio ordered hastily.

He was too late. Luca was already bounding away towards her. Vittorio scrambled down the ladder and began to run, but Luca was too fast for him, hurling himself at her, leaving dirty paw marks over the white trousers and clawing the silk blouse until it tore. Vittorio arrived just in time to witness the demolition job.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, almost choking on the words.

‘Oh, forget it,’ she said. ‘He’s only being friendly.’

Astonished, he realised that she was laughing. Nor had she made any attempt to fend off her new friend, but had dropped down beside him, wrapping her arms about him.

‘That’s very generous of you,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But have you seen the state he’s left you in?’

She looked down at her clothes and sighed.

‘Well, it’s a pity, but he didn’t mean to. Did you, pet?’

She caressed him again and he nuzzled her, sure of his forgiveness. She stood up, brushing herself down, but with little effect, then wandered over to a fallen tree trunk and used it as a seat.

‘Naturally, I shall pay for the damage,’ Vittorio said stiffly, although he was wondering how he could afford to replace garments that, for all their apparent simplicity, shrieked expense.

She gave a cheerful shrug. ‘I shouldn’t bother. He’ll only do it again next time.’

‘There won’t be a next time. I shall keep him away from you in future.’

‘Oh, no, don’t do that. I love dogs.’

He strolled over and also sat on the tree trunk, taking care to keep a distance from her.

‘Yet you don’t have one of your own,’ he observed.

She made a face which disconcerted him, it made her look so much like a small child.

‘I always wanted to have one, but my husband didn’t like them.’

Irony overcame Vittorio’s manners. ‘But surely your husband showered you with every luxury?’

Angel regarded him satirically. ‘You’ve been reading those shallow celebrity magazines. You shouldn’t do it. It’s a bad habit, and they never tell the truth.’

A point to her, Vittorio thought, annoyed with himself. But he couldn’t stay angry. Luca had reared up on his hind legs, draping himself all over Angel again, and she was crowing with delight, tilting her head back so that she seemed to be laughing straight up to the sun. Sunlight poured over her, making her a part of the bright day, giving him a strange, unsettled feeling, as though he was excluded from something wonderful.

‘So,’ he said lightly, ‘he didn’t shower you with every luxury?’

‘Oh, yes. Every luxury. If I wanted diamonds, I had only to ask, but when I set my heart on a nice, big slobbery dog to have fun with, he vetoed it. The mere idea of my expensively elegant person being pawed at made him shudder.’

The satirical way she spoke of ‘my expensively elegant person’ took Vittorio aback. To hear her making fun of her own reputation was the last thing he’d expected. He wished she wouldn’t confuse him.

All he could think of to say was, ‘Hmm!’ which was a compromise, indicating that his prejudices wouldn’t be that easily abandoned.

‘Nobody really knows what Joe’s like,’ she said, interpreting his tone without trouble. ‘He wants what he wants and he’ll pay for it. But when you cease to please, that’s it. The shutters come down and he simply moves on to the next thing. He can be pretty nasty.’

‘Is that why you left him?’

‘I didn’t leave him. He left me. For a younger woman.’

That Vittorio simply didn’t believe. His glance at her slender figure and lovely face was full of involuntary admiration that he would have suppressed if he could, but it was beyond his power.

‘Younger woman,’ he growled. ‘What are you? Twenty-two? Three?’

‘You underestimate the power of the beauty salon,’ Angel said, with a hint of teasing. ‘If you’ve really been reading those magazines you’ll know that I’m an artificial construct who owes everything to a silent army, working night and day to conceal the fact that I’m falling to bits. Twenty-two, my foot! I’m a crumbling hag of twenty-eight. Every day pieces of me fall off and have to be fixed back on with safety pins.’

‘All right,’ he said in a harassed tone. ‘I get the idea.’

‘I’ll bet you don’t, not really,’ she said, enjoying the joke too much to let it go. ‘When I get undressed for bed I take off my wig, remove my nails, and count my fingers to see if any have gone missing. Whatever is left collapses.’

He felt a surge of anger against her. She meant to tease him with that picture of decrepitude, but what had really hit him like a blow in the stomach was ‘get undressed for bed’.

Was she mad to talk like that to a man with all his senses about him? Could she really be so unaware of her own power as to risk putting such thoughts into his head? Or didn’t it matter, because she saw him only as a servant, and therefore a kind of eunuch?

Whatever the answer, the thought of her stripping off her clothes was one he knew he couldn’t afford to indulge for more than a moment. The idea of her in bed was forbidden even for that little moment.

To silence her, Vittorio said coldly, ‘Have you finished?’

‘Quite finished. I just wanted you to understand that I’m last year’s model, so Joe swapped me for one of twenty.’

Angel hadn’t mean to confide so much of her personal history, but the sight of Vittorio uneasily trying to decide what to believe was giving her a lot of pleasure. That would teach him to jump to conclusions.

‘But-he bought this place for you,’ Vittorio said at last. ‘All the time I was showing him around he kept saying, “My lady will love this”, as though he really cared.’

‘But I wasn’t his lady by then. She was. He didn’t buy this for me, but for her. Only she didn’t want it. Not grand enough. So he decided that it would “do” for me. He was determined to divorce me as cheaply as possible, and the battle was wearing me out, so I accepted, just to get rid of him.’

If he’d had any doubts about her, they were dispelled by her last words that so closely echoed his own experience with Joe Clannan.

‘So you didn’t really want to come here?’ he asked slowly.

‘I was happy enough. I love Italy. I even learned the language once.’

‘That surprises me,’ he admitted. ‘I thought-well-’

‘You don’t have to say it.’ She’d been speaking Italian, but now she added in English, ‘You were expecting a miserable old trout.’

‘Trout? Excuse me-my English-surely a trout is a fish?’

‘Yes, but in England it’s also a term of abuse, especially for a woman. I think you had some very bad ideas about me.’

He shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I never thought you a-a trout,’ he assured her. Then, to get off the awkward subject, he reverted to Italian and asked, ‘Do you still want a dog?’

‘If you can find me one like him,’ she said, indicating Luca, who was shoving his nose against her.

‘You’ve made a bad choice,’ Vittorio grunted. ‘He’s a villain.’

‘I can tell. That’s why I like him so much.’

‘I’ll get you one of his offspring. It won’t be hard. He populates the district with them. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I’ve taken too much time away from the work you’re paying me to do.’

Angel would have laughed and passed it off, but the words were clearly meant to put an end to the brief moment of warmth. She had no choice but to accept her dismissal, and walk away.

For three days Vittorio didn’t mention the dog, and Angel thought he had forgotten about it. But on the fourth day he turned up with an animal that looked about four months old and had a marked resemblance to Luca, being brown, untidy, and with mischief in his eyes.

‘His name’s Toni,’ Vittorio said. ‘I found a home for him two months ago, but his owner was glad to give him back. Apparently he’s noisy, disobedient, uncontrollable, and generally possessed by the devil.’

Angel opened her arms. ‘Just what I wanted!’ she said eagerly.

He gave a faint grin. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

Watching them nuzzle each other, Vittorio could see that it was love at first sight, on both sides.

Angel immediately got him to drive her into Amalfi to buy the cheapest possible jeans and cotton tops and after that she wore nothing else when Toni was around, which was all the time.

She also abandoned make-up, since there was little point in putting it on when Toni would immediately shove his wet nose against her face. She knew she should reprove him and fend him off, but somehow she never got around to it.

Her truce with Vittorio held, with the ‘armed’ element becoming less obvious. Angel was wryly aware that she was beginning to win his approval, and even more wryly aware that his approval was worth having.

She practised her Italian on him, as she did with Berta, and was soon talking easily. Then, to tease him, she insisted on having their conversations in English. Vittorio spoke her language well enough to get by, but no more than that, and she told him firmly that it was time he improved. His cynical expression showed that he wasn’t fooled, but he let her instruct him, and didn’t seem to mind her teasing.

He began to teach her the finer points of lemon growing. She learned that the estate produced the type known as Lisbon, that the right compost was crucial and great care should be exercised with watering.

‘Flood them at the start, let them almost dry out, then flood them again,’ Vittorio explained. ‘And you need patience. It can take years from seed to harvest, so your-the orchards here contain trees at several different stages. Some will be ready to harvest this year, some next, some the year after.’

She didn’t miss the way he had begun to say ‘your orchards’ and hastily changed it to ‘the orchards’. Now that she was no longer angry with him, Angel found herself alert to his every nuance, and she thought how painful it must be for him to do this. His love for the place seemed overwhelming, making this a sacrifice that must hurt him to the heart, yet which he endured.

She was beginning to realise that a good harvest was vital. The lump sum Joe had paid her, and which had seemed comfortable at the time, was vanishing fast under the demands she was forced to make on it. Her wage bill alone was alarming. She knew she couldn’t do without a car, but she put it off, and finally bought herself only a modest vehicle.

The time was coming when she would be forced to make money somehow, and it made her uneasy because none of the ways open to her were appealing. She’d already had an offer to sell the story of her life with Joe, complete with juicy details, but to do that was to return to the old life and the old values, the very ones she was trying to escape.

Angel pushed the thought aside, telling herself that there would be time enough to worry later. Just now, she wanted to concentrate on Sam, and getting his new home ready for him.

Every morning and evening she called him, seizing on any sign that he was a little more alert, and concealing her disappointment when he didn’t know her. Afterwards she would talk to Roy or Frank, his nurses, and they would be reassuring.

‘He’s been a little better today-truly-we talk of you, and he seems to understand. He just doesn’t recognise your voice on the phone, but it’ll be different when he sees you.’

‘Of course it will,’ Angel would say, trying to convince herself. ‘Give him my love. Tell him we’ll soon be together again.’

Then she would put the phone down and weep.