Married Under the Italian Sun

CHAPTER SEVEN

VITTORIO ate in the kitchen that evening, waiting until the house was quiet. He would have given a great deal to know what was happening, but although he could hear the others moving about it was impossible to guess details.

Berta, who served their meal, was cheerful because Sam seemed to have a hearty appetite. ‘He’s gone to bed,’ she told Vittorio when she’d collected the coffee cups. ‘One of the nurses has gone too, and the other one is talking to the padrona. I think she’s upset.’

Later she took them more coffee and returned with the information that the other nurse had retired for the night. Vittorio lingered awhile, then strolled out into the garden, where he could see Sam’s darkened windows.

As he’d half hoped, Angel was there, sitting on the sloping lawn that led down from the terrace, looking up at the rising moon, and the stars that were just beginning to appear in the softly darkening sky.

‘So that’s Sam?’ he observed, dropping down beside her.

‘Yes, that’s my darling Sam.’

‘Did it get any better after he arrived?’

‘Not really,’ she said despondently. ‘He’s all right when he’s with the boys, but he doesn’t know me.’

‘How long has he been this way?’

‘About nine years, maybe a little more. He’s not always like today. Like I said, I handled it badly.’

That was probably true, yet it hurt him to hear her finding reasons to blame herself. He risked saying gently, ‘Is he ever very much better than today?’

‘Oh, yes, he often knows who I am.’

‘And he often doesn’t,’ Vittorio said shrewdly. ‘That must be hard for you.’

‘Yes,’ she said a little huskily. ‘But I know he’s all right with Roy and Frank.’

‘It must cost you a fortune to pay their salaries, and I expect there are other expenses.’

‘Yes, the extras add up. But I don’t want Sam to go without anything he needs. He never let me go without.’

‘Is this where Joe came into the equation?’

Angel nodded. ‘I told you I married him for his money. It was a fair bargain. I got what I wanted for Sam, Joe got a trophy wife to flaunt. I did all I promised him, jumped through every hoop he wanted, acted sexy, gazed at him adoringly. It was quite an act but, if I say it myself, I put on a good show, because I keep my word.’

‘For pity’s sake, you don’t have to justify yourself to me.’

She looked at him quizzically and he had the grace to blush.

‘I supposed I deserved that,’ he grunted.

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘You didn’t have to. From the first day I acted as though you owed me explanations. I judged you in ignorance, and-’

‘Hey, that’s enough,’ she said, reaching over and taking his hand. ‘We’ve put all that behind us.’

‘So I thought, but I keep learning new things about you, and discovering again how wrong I was.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said, squeezing his hand tightly. ‘Friends.’

Angel thought Vittorio hesitated a long time before agreeing, ‘Friends.’

They were both silent for a while, their hands tightly clasped.

At last he said awkwardly, ‘Go on telling me about Sam.’

‘He brought me up after my parents died, and he was always lovely to me. He had such plans for my future. You wouldn’t think it to look at him now, but he was quite a slave-driver. He decided that I was going to college, and that was that.’

‘You didn’t get a say?’

‘Oh, yes, I was allowed to choose what I wanted to study, but even then he had to take control. I said I’d like to do the history of art, and Sam said, “In that case you’ll need to learn Italian”. So I did.’

‘You tamely did as you were told? You?’

‘Well, I actually liked the idea a lot. I loved art, and I pick up languages easily, but I hadn’t thought about college because we weren’t an academic kind of family. Sam knew better. He simply took over, making me do my homework, and no nonsense. Then he declared war on junk food and insisted that I eat plenty of fruit.

‘He also started doing a second job so that he could save money for me. He shouldn’t have done that, it tired him out, but he was determined that I should have a nest-egg.’

She fell silent, looking into the distance.

‘What happened?’ Vittorio asked quietly.

‘I took my exams, did well, won a place at a good college. And then-then Sam had a stroke. It wasn’t very severe, and he recovered, but something had changed. He’d been getting absent-minded for some time, but only in little ways that we could joke about. Suddenly it was serious. He was forgetful about everything. I put off college, said I’d go next year, but I think I knew in my heart that it wouldn’t happen.

‘I got a job to support us, but I soon had to give that up. He kept leaving things on the stove. When he set fire to the house for the second time I left the job and stayed at home with him. We lived on his savings for a while.’

‘The nest-egg for your college career?’

‘That’s right. When it ran out we had to rely on state benefits.’

‘When did Ghastly Gavin enter the picture?’

Angel gave a choke of laughter. ‘How do you know he was ghastly? You never met him.’

‘I met him in the pages of that damned magazine, and he’s ghastly all right.’

‘Not to me, then. At nineteen all you see is looks, and his looks were gorgeous. I had sentimental fantasies of marriage, a happy home, with Sam making a third.

‘Then I entered a television quiz show and won some money. I paid a few bills and bought Sam some new clothes. Gavin hit the roof. He wanted to splash out on a holiday. We had a row, he said it was time I had Sam “put away”, so I kicked him right out of my life.’

‘Good for you. But how does Joe Clannan come into this?’

‘He had shares in the production company that made the programme. He was there during the recording, and he asked me out. I was still mad at Gavin and Joe seemed like a nice guy. We dated for a while, and when he proposed I accepted on the condition that Sam must live with us and have the best of care. Joe promised, and as long as he kept his word I was prepared to put on the performance he wanted.

‘Even at the worst times I never quite gave up hope that one day I’d find my way back to my true path. You don’t look at me and see an academic, do you? But that’s how I’ve always felt inside, even when I was flaunting myself in the most vulgar fashion, plunging necklines, skirts slit up the thigh, perfectly timed wiggle. I practised that wiggle, you know, in front of the mirror, and, oh, boy, you should have seen me doing my stuff for the cameras!’

‘I have,’ Vittorio said, and could have bitten his tongue out straight afterwards.

‘You mean some of those programmes have been shown over here? By satellite?’

‘No, I got a video tape-when the sale had gone through…’ he said awkwardly.

‘What did you see?’ she asked in a voice that gave him no clue as to how she was taking this.

‘Star On My Team.’

‘You mean-the one where I had to choose between Michelangelo and Maisie Mouse?’ she asked unsteadily.

‘That’s the one.’

It was too much for her. Angel gave a choke, then exploded into laughter, leaning back against the slope of the lawn, gasping helplessly. Vittorio watched her, wryly remembering his violent reaction at the time.

‘Come on, see the funny side,’ she chided him when she could speak.

‘I can. It’s just that at the time I-well, let’s just say it wasn’t one of my better moments.’

‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. You got a little figure of an angel and stuck pins into it.’ Seeing his embarrassment, she crowed, ‘You did! Admit it!’

‘I didn’t, I swear-’ Then he groaned. ‘But only because I couldn’t find an angel.’

She collapsed against him, chuckling helplessly, and he held her, finally able to laugh with her.

‘You are the most forgiving woman,’ he said unsteadily. ‘And you shouldn’t forgive me. I don’t deserve it. If you only knew…’

‘But I do know,’ she said, her arms about his neck. ‘You never bothered to hide it, even when you demanded the job. I’m not surprised you made a mess of it. It was a toss-up whether you loved this place more than you hated me.’

‘I never hated you,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes you did.’

‘No, that didn’t happen,’ Vittorio said, suddenly serious. ‘It didn’t happen because it couldn’t.’

He took her face between his hands and looked at her tenderly.

‘I could never hate you,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t you know that?’

‘I’m not sure that I do,’ she whispered. ‘Perhaps you should explain. I could take a lot of convincing.’

Even now something held him back. There was almost desperation in his eyes as he searched her face, knowing that whatever he did at this moment would be dangerous.

But Angel had reached the end of her tether. If he didn’t kiss her now she knew she would do something stupid-and perhaps they would both be the better for it.

‘If you can’t explain,’ she said, driven beyond endurance, ‘then maybe I can.’

She made it all so simple, pulling his head down until his lips touched hers, moving her mouth softly against his, teasing him, but meaning it too, because the time for games was over.

‘Angel,’ he murmured. ‘Angel…Angel…’

Now he wasn’t merely invoking her name. In his arms, she felt like something both less and more than human-unearthly, magical, an angel, but with a little spice of the devil that was always going to be his undoing. Hadn’t he known that from the start?

As he felt her using all her feminine power to make him hers, Vittorio made a last effort to stay aloof from the siren’s song, to keep his soul his own as a man should. But he had no strength to fight her. Somewhere inside him, somewhere beyond words, deeper than conscious thought, he knew that victory would be defeat, and defeat would give him all he longed for.

Now she was stronger than him, every soft caress binding him like chains. She’d wanted him almost from the start, and only now did she understand how much.

But at the last moment he tensed and tried to draw back.

‘Wait-this isn’t right-I must tell you-’

‘It’s too late for that. There’s nothing to tell.’

‘I didn’t mean this-we need to talk first-I’d better go home,’ he said raggedly. ‘Right now. Angel, please, don’t make it hard for me to go.’

‘But I don’t want you to go,’ she whispered, her lips almost touching his face. ‘And you don’t want to-not really.’

‘If I don’t go now I won’t be able to. Have you any idea just how badly I long to stay?’

‘Why don’t you show me?’ she asked pointedly.

‘Not now. Don’t you understand that? After the things you’ve said about the men who pursue you in a herd-do you think I want to be one of that herd, tolerated but despised? You hate it, don’t you-all the clowns who chase you with their eyes, and fantasise about going to bed with you?’

‘Do you fantasise about going to bed with me?’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I do not.’

‘Oh,’ she breathed, deflated.

‘What I dream about is making love to you. Since the first day I’ve wanted to…’ a tremor went through him ‘…I’ve wanted things I knew I had no right to want. Why do you think I hated you? Because I couldn’t hate you.’

Vittorio’s voice was rising, and Angel raised her own to make herself heard. ‘Will you stop talking?’ she begged. ‘Don’t you know the time for that is way past?’

‘Please listen-’

‘Oi!’

They both froze, turning dismayed glances on the windows of Sam’s room, from where the cry had come. After a moment’s silence it came again, loud and indignant.

‘Do you mind keeping it down? People are trying to sleep here.’

‘That’s Sam,’ Angel said, aghast. ‘I forgot we’re right outside his room.’

‘Does he understand Italian?’

‘No-that is, I don’t think so,’ she said frantically. ‘But I wouldn’t put anything past him.’

There would never be a better chance to catch Vittorio with his defences weakened. Taking him by the hand, she drew him swiftly into the house by a side door, and locked it after them.

‘No more arguments,’ she said. ‘From now on, we do it my way.’

Angel prided herself on being a realist, and she knew that the problems were still there when she awoke in the morning, but it was hard to think about them after the night that had passed.

It had been as Vittorio promised, not a sex act but lovemaking, infused with tenderness. Everything about him had taken her by surprise, starting with the way he’d undressed her slowly, almost with reverence, lingering over each revelation before laying his lips against it.

When they had lain naked together he’d touched her everywhere and she had been astonished, both at him and at herself. His fingers had been skilled and gentle, lingering as he’d sensed her response, waiting for her, always giving her time, so that her desire mounted slowly.

She’d been overwhelmed as much by surprise as by passion. Eight years of marriage to an insensitive boor hadn’t prepared her for a man who put her first all the time. There had been a moment of apprehension, when she’d feared that no dream could possibly live up to the weight of hope that she had loaded onto this one.

But he’d seemed to understand even that, meeting her eyes as he’d claimed her, smiling in reassurance, so that all fear had fallen away and she’d been free to yield herself to the mounting delight. She had known Vittorio as a man who knew how to hate. Now she’d discovered him as a man who knew how to love.

He was only the second naked man she had ever seen, Joe’s flabby over-indulged form not having inspired her to explore further. She hadn’t known that a man’s body could be such a combination of strength and beauty, with dark hair lightly covering his chest down to his loins. Without his clothes he’d seemed more powerful, or perhaps that was merely her memory from the night, when his vigour had left her gasping and eager for more.

They’d seemed to fall asleep at the same moment, but she’d awoken later and had seen him, in the dim light, propped on his elbow, watching her.

‘Go back to sleep,’ he’d said. ‘Everything’s all right.’

And she’d fallen asleep at once, because everything truly was all right.

When she awoke again, she found him lying with his head against her breast.

‘Are you awake?’ she whispered.

‘Yes. I’ve been lying here watching that crack of light in the shutters, wishing it wouldn’t grow any brighter.’

‘I know. I don’t want the day to start either.’ She looked at her bedside clock. ‘But it’s only just six.’

‘I’m usually up by now.’

‘Not today,’ she murmured. ‘I want a little longer, just like this.’

He gave a contented grunt that she took to indicate consent, and didn’t speak for so long that she thought he’d fallen asleep again. But then he said, ‘I didn’t mean this to happen. I told myself I must not even think of it, but somehow-’

‘I know. I tried to be strong too, but maybe I didn’t really mean it.’

‘I guess neither of us is strong.’

Angel laughed. ‘Well, we’re united about something anyway, and that’s a miracle. At one time it choked you to speak to me.’

‘I was angry at the world, and I took it out on you,’ he confessed. ‘And I was angry at myself because I brought so much of my misfortune on myself.’

‘I thought it was Joe’s fault.’

‘In the second place, but in the first place it was my fault for being so easily taken in by a man I’d thought was a friend.’

‘What happened?’

‘His name is Leo Vari, and we’d known each other from childhood. He had a business that ran into trouble. He begged me to put some money into it, just to tide him over. He swore he wouldn’t let me lose, no matter what happened. But when the business folded he vanished, and I found myself legally obliged to pay every penny he owed. There was only one way I could do it, and that was to sell up.’

‘And then Joe cheated you again,’ Angel said softly.

‘If I could have got a fair price I might have had enough to make a new start. But then, I ask myself, what would I have done? Where would I have gone? I think I might still have returned here, because the estate has always been my life. My father was a good man, and an affectionate father, but he had no gift for managing an estate. When I was twenty I took over, and he was relieved. He died five years later, but at least his last five years were happy because he wasn’t worried.’

‘But you had to worry,’ she hazarded.

‘I didn’t mind. I enjoyed everything about it-turning it around financially, making the place bloom, working with my hands. There’s no smell in the world like the earth in spring, when the rain has fallen and rebirth is happening just underground. And there’s no feeling like watching something you planted grow and flower.’

He gave a short bark of self-mocking laughter.

‘I thought my fiancée felt the same, but I guess that was foolish of me.’

‘You’re engaged?’ she asked, horrified.

‘Not any more, but I was once. It lasted two years. Then she got tired of waiting for the right moment, and I don’t blame her. We were planning a big wedding, a romantic honeymoon cruise-’

‘Just as soon as you could bear to be away for longer than five minutes,’ Angel finished, amused.

‘Yes, I guess that was it. She married a friend of mine and I’m godfather to their first child.’

‘And there’s been nobody else?’

‘Oh, yes. Too many. I didn’t want to get close again, so I decided life would be simpler with only one love.’

‘The estate.’

‘Yes. I put all my eggs in one basket. I knew that was unwise, but when you love something that much you can’t help yourself. My friend Bruno says I became obsessed and impossible to live with, and I guess he was right. I didn’t care. I had the only thing that really mattered to me. I never asked about tomorrow. I suppose I thought that one day I’d meet a woman who felt about the estate as I did.’

‘But it had to be on your terms?’ she asked, amused.

‘Those are the only terms I know how to accept. But what difference does it make now? What do I have to offer?’

‘You want me to tell you?’ she asked softly, with a smile that contained memories of the night.

Vittorio raised himself on one elbow and looked down into her face.

‘I’m talking seriously.’

‘So am I,’ she said, taking his hand and laying it on her breast.

In the luxury of his lovemaking, she cared for nothing else. It was only later that she looked back and realised that his words had contained a warning.