The Italian’s Baby

CHAPTER TEN

SHE was gathering up the remains of the snack and preparing to go indoors when she heard the faint sound of a voice behind her.

‘I’m sorry, Becky, for everything.’

‘What?’

She turned sharply, not sure if she’d really heard the words, but Luca was already rising.

‘Time I was getting back to work,’ he said, stretching his limbs. ‘Let’s see how far we can get with this roof today.’

He fixed several beams, but then the light was too poor for him to go any further, so he fetched some roofing felt from the van.

‘I’ll just nail this over the gap for tonight, so that you’ll have some cover,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, with any luck, the roof should be finished.’

When he’d fixed the felt into place he ate the meal she’d prepared as quickly as possible. She had hoped they might talk some more, but he said goodnight and left.

He had made the repairs just in time. That night the heavens opened. Summer was finally over and the first storm of autumn was impressive, especially to the woman looking up at the felt, and wondering how strong it was. But no water was dripping down into the bedroom. As a builder, Luca knew his stuff.

Just as she was beginning to relax she heard a crash from outside, and sat up sharply, listening for any further worrying noises. But the pounding of the rain blotted out all else.

At last she got out of bed, threw on a dressing gown and made her way outside. The wind hit her like a hammer, hard enough to blow her back inside if she hadn’t clung to the doorpost. Breathing hard, she steadied herself and tried to look around through the rain that was coming down in sheets.

She could see no sign of trouble, but another noise came from around the corner of the cottage and she headed that way, arriving just as a fork of lightning illuminated the lean-to where the logs were stored, revealing that the roof had come down.

‘Oh, great!’ she muttered. ‘Now the wood will get wet and it won’t burn, and the kitchen will fill with smoke, and probably fifty other things will happen. Great! Great! Great!’

There was only one thing to do. Gathering up a pile of logs, she began to stagger back to the front door. On the way the dressing gown fell open and she tripped over the belt, falling into the mud and taking the logs with her.

Cursing furiously, she got to her feet and surveyed the soaking logs, aided by the lightning that obligingly flashed at that moment.

‘Damn!’ she told the heavens. A blast of thunder drowned her out. ‘And the same to you!’

Suddenly Luca’s voice came from near by. ‘Becky, what are you doing out here?’

‘What does it look as if I’m doing?’ she demanded at the top of her voice. ‘Dancing the fandango? The lean-to came down and the wood’s getting even wetter than I am, which is saying a good deal.’

‘OK, I’ll fetch it in,’ he yelled back. ‘Go inside and get dry.’

‘Not while there’s wood to be moved.’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘It’ll take too long for one person. It’ll be drenched.’

‘I said I’ll do it.’

‘Luca, I swear if you say that once more I’ll brain you.’

He ground his teeth. ‘I am only trying to take care of you.’

‘Then don’t! I haven’t asked you to. I’ll do the wood on my own.’

‘You will not do it on your own!’ He tore his hair. ‘While we’re arguing, it’s getting wet.’

‘Then let’s get on,’ she said through gritted teeth, and went back to the pile of logs before he could argue again.

They got about a quarter of the wood inside before he said, ‘That’s it. There’s enough there for a few days, and during that time we can bring some of the rest in and dry it out.’

‘All right,’ she said, glad to leave off now her point was made. ‘Come in and get yourself dry.’

They squelched back indoors, Luca slamming the van’s open door in passing with a force that showed his feelings.

Once inside, Rebecca lit some candles, then rooted inside a cupboard, glad that the one luxury she had allowed herself was a set of top-quality towels and two vast bathrobes. They were chosen to be too big, so that the occupant could snuggle deep inside, which was fortunate, or Luca could never have got into one.

‘Why didn’t you call me?’ he asked, sitting down and pulling the robe as far around him as he could.

‘Because I’m not a helpless little woman.’

‘Just a thoroughly awkward one,’ he grumbled.

‘Oh, hush up!’ She silenced him by tossing a hand towel over his head and beginning to rub, ignoring the noises that came from underneath.

‘What was that?’

He emerged from the towel, tousled and damp, and looking oddly young.

‘I said you should have knocked on the van door and woken me.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear the lean-to go down, the noise it made.’

But then she remembered that he had always slept heavily, sometimes with his head on her breast.

‘Well, I didn’t. It was mere chance that I woke up when I did. Otherwise, I suppose you’d have taken the whole lot indoors.’

‘No, I’d have been sensible and stopped after a few, like we did.’

He grunted.

‘And don’t grunt like that as though you couldn’t believe a word I say.’

‘I know you. You’d say anything to win an argument.’

She grinned. ‘Yes, I would. So don’t take me on.’

‘No, I’ve got the bruises from that, haven’t I?’ he asked wryly.

‘We’ve both got bruises,’ she reminded him. ‘Old and recent.’

He looked at her cautiously. ‘But you’re still speaking to me?’

‘No, I’m speaking to this man who turned up to mend the roof,’ she said lightly. ‘Good builders are hard to find.’

He gave a brief laugh. ‘My only honest skill.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ she said quietly.

She thought he might say something, but he only grabbed the towel and began rubbing his head again.

She made some tea and sandwiches and they ate in near silence. He seemed tired and abstracted, and she wondered if he was regretting that he had ever started this.

‘What happened to you?’ he asked suddenly, while he was drying his feet.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Where did you vanish to?’

‘Didn’t your enquiry agents tell you that?’

He grimaced an acknowledgement. ‘They traced you to Switzerland, then the trail went cold. I guess you meant it to.’

‘Sure. I knew you’d hire the best, and they’d check the airlines and the ferries, and anywhere where there was passport control. So I slipped across the Swiss-Italian border “unofficially”.’

He stared. ‘How?’

She smiled. ‘Never mind.’

‘As simple as that?’

‘As simple as that. Then I made all my journeys by train or bus, because if I’d hired a car I’d have left a trail.’

‘Is that why you have that incredible bike around the back?’

‘That’s right. I bought it for cash. No questions asked.’

‘I should think so. They must have been glad to get rid of it before it fell apart. What’s that thing at the back made of?’

‘You mean my trailer?’

‘Is that what you call it?’

‘Certainly,’ she said with dignity. ‘I’m very proud of it. I just got some boxes and hammered them together. There was an old pram in the little barn behind the house and I took the wheels off. I’m sorry, I know they belong to you.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t ask for them back. If it’s the pram I think it is, it was collapsing anyway. In fact, it was collapsing when my parents got it. My father won it in a card game when my mother was expecting me, and I gather she made him sorry he was born. I can’t believe that you actually use it.’

‘I only go short distances to the village for supplies, food, logs, that sort of thing.’

‘You’ve brought logs back in that little box?’

‘I did once, but I put in too many and it fell apart. I had to come back here for a hammer and nails, then go back, put it together and finish the job. The logs were just where I’d left them.’

‘Of course. People around here are honest. But why didn’t you have the logs delivered?’

‘Because then people would have known for sure where I lived.’

‘What about hotels when you were travelling? Didn’t they ask to see your passport?’

She shrugged. ‘I pass as Italian. I’ve been all over the country, never staying anywhere for very long.’

He drew a long breath. ‘Of all the wily, conniving…! I thought I was a schemer, but I’ve got nothing on you.’

‘Pretty good, huh?’ she said with a touch of smiling cockiness.

‘You could teach me a thing or two,’ he said, grinning back at her.

But their smiles were forced, and faded almost at once.

‘I kept meaning to stop awhile in this place or that,’ Rebecca continued, ‘but I never felt I belonged in any of them. So I always moved on to the next place.’

‘Until you came here.’ He left the implication hanging in the air, but she did not pick it up.

At last he said quietly, ‘You were very determined to escape me, weren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said simply.

He didn’t answer, and she looked up to see his face in the flickering candlelight. It might have been the distorting effect of the little flames, but she thought she had never seen such a look of unbearable sadness.

He didn’t turn away or try to hide it, just sat regarding her with a look so naked and defenceless that it was as much as she could do not to reach out to him.

‘Luca…’ She didn’t mean to say his name, but it slipped out.

Then emotion overcame her and she covered her eyes, letting her head drop onto her arm on the table. She didn’t know what else to do. What she was feeling now was beyond tears: despair for the lost years, the chances that could never be recovered, the love that seemed to have died, leaving behind only desolation.

And if there was a hint of hope, it was of a muted kind. She might yet have his child, but it was too late for them.

She thought she felt a light touch on her hair, and perhaps her name was murmured very softly, but it was hard to be sure, and she did not look up. She didn’t want him to see her tears.

She heard him go to the stove and put in some more logs, then sit down again.

‘That will keep it going until morning,’ he said. ‘Go back to bed and keep warm.’

She looked up to see him near the door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to the van. I’ll put some dry clothes on in there, and let you have the towels back tomorrow.’

‘No, wait!’

She hadn’t asked herself where he would sleep, but it seemed monstrous for him to have to return to his bleak conditions while she had all the comfort.

‘You can’t go back to the van,’ she said.

‘Of course I can. I’m quite happy there.’

She jumped up, arm outstretched to detain him, but stopped abruptly at the weakness that came over her. For a moment her head was fuzzy and the kitchen danced about her. Then the giddiness cleared.

She wasn’t sure whether he’d taken hold of her, or whether she was clinging to him, but they were gripping each other tightly and she was furious with herself. Now he would know.

She waited for his exclamation, the questions: why hadn’t she told him? And at the end of it all she would feel cornered and trapped.

‘Maybe you didn’t have enough for supper,’ he said. ‘Hauling logs about on an empty stomach. Shall I get you something?’

‘No, thank you,’ she said slowly.

‘Then you should go straight back to bed. Come on.’

He kept a firm but impersonal hold on her all the way into the bedroom, held her while she sat down on the bed, then tucked her in.

‘All right?’

‘Yes. Thank you, Luca.’

‘Let’s get some sleep for what’s left of the night. There’s another heavy day tomorrow.’

He closed the door quietly behind him, and after a moment she heard the front door also close.

The darkness held no answers. She tried to conjure up his eyes in that brief moment when he’d steadied her, and to read what she had seen there.

But she had seen only what he’d chosen to reveal. Nothing. His eyes had been blank, their depths barred to her. It was as though he’d stepped back, giving her space, even space enough for a denial, if she wished.

She had thought she knew him through and through. Now she wondered if she had ever known the first thing about him.

She discovered in the following days that the space she’d sensed him offering her was no illusion. In a way it was what he’d done since the moment he appeared, sleeping outside in all weathers, never intruding or saying a word that could have come from a lover.

But now something was different, as though he too needed that space. Perhaps, she thought, he was doing this for himself. He would finish the house to keep her safe, but then he would drive away and never ask about the child. Because now he did not want to know. It was rather like living with a ghost. But above all it was peaceful, and peace was what she most valued.

Bit by bit the house was coming alive again. The completion of the roof would mean that another room, which had been completely open to the skies, would become inhabitable. Rebecca set herself to clean it out, sweeping soot from the floor and the walls.

Luca’s response was to vanish for nearly a day. When he returned he had a small portable generator and a vacuum cleaner.

‘I had to go to Florence to get these,’ he said. ‘The generator was the last they had. It’s not really big enough, but the bigger one had just been bought by someone else, and all my pleading wouldn’t make him part with it. Still, it’s big enough to scoop up the soot, and prevent you looking like a chimney sweep.’

She blew a stray lock of hair away from her forehead, but it settled back again. He grinned and brushed it back.

‘Is supper ready?’

‘Nope. I didn’t know if you were coming back, so I didn’t prepare anything.’

‘OK. That’s cool.’

‘Oh, stop being nice!’ she growled. ‘It’s steak. I’ll start it now.’

From then on the job was easier and they had some light in the evenings, although they still relied on the range for warmth and cooking.

‘You could move in there,’ Rebecca said cautiously one day, when the room was finished. ‘To sleep, I mean. Better than the van.’

He considered for a moment. ‘OK,’ he said at last briefly.

He took the van into the village and returned with an iron bedstead, bought second-hand, as he explained to her with great pride.

‘It’s very narrow,’ she said doubtfully. ‘It can’t be more than two feet six.’

‘People live in small houses around these parts. The furniture has to be narrow.’

But the mattress was unusable, and he was forced to buy another. This time he splashed out on a brand-new mattress that was a foot wider than the bed.

‘You see, it won’t matter that the bed is narrow,’ he said triumphantly. ‘All I’ll feel is the mattress beneath me.’

‘But it’ll hang over six inches each side. Every time you turn over you’ll roll off.’

‘Nonsense. I’ve worked it out scientifically.’

He explained the science of it to her in detail, and Rebecca made a noise indicating scorn. That night he went scientifically to bed and fell out scientifically three times. After that he put the mattress on the floor and used the bed as a dumping ground for anything he couldn’t find a place for.

Humour was a lifeline, making the journey possible until they knew where the road led. But even while they were laughing over his mishaps they knew that the fragile atmosphere could not last forever.

The thing that shattered it crept up on them without warning. They were sitting in the kitchen, listening to a concert on Rebecca’s battery radio, and laughing over Luca’s attempts to repair the ‘trailer’.

‘Well, I’ve got it together,’ he said at last, ‘but is it worth it? Do you have a use for it?’

She shook her head.

‘Good.’ He tossed it into a corner, where a wheel fell off.

‘My father insisted on keeping that thing,’ he said after a moment, ‘just in case they had another child. But it never happened. Then Mama died when I was ten.’

‘Yes, I remember you telling me once,’ she said, thinking back. ‘It must have been lonely without brothers or sisters.’

‘I had my father to look after. He was lost without her.’ He gave a brief laugh. ‘Bernardo Montese, the local giant, big man, made everyone afraid of him. But he was a softie inside, so first she looked after him, then I did. It was like looking after a child.’

‘You loved him very much, didn’t you?’ she asked softly.

‘Yes, I did. We were on the same wavelength. I realise now that it was partly because he was like a child that never grew up. You wouldn’t have thought it to look at him shouting the odds, but under all that mountainous strength there was a hidden weakness, and if you touched it he crumbled.’

She watched him, holding her breath, knowing that something was happening. Beneath the calm of that little cottage things were whirling out of control. If she wanted to stop it happening she must do it now.

‘Go on,’ she whispered.

‘And he still wouldn’t get rid of the pram. He said my wife would be glad of it one day. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was only fit for the scrap heap. The thought seemed to mean a lot to him. Then he got drunk and fell into a stone quarry, and died the next day. I was sixteen.’

He had talked about his parents when they knew each other before, but never like this. She tried to find the right words to encourage him to say more, but before she could speak he said,

‘When we met in London…’ He stopped as though his courage had failed him.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘I never asked you about the birth. I kept meaning to, but-’

‘The time was never right.’

‘No, it wasn’t. But I’d like to know, if you can bear to speak of it. Was it very hard?’

‘It was over fairly quickly. She was small, being premature. It was what came after that was hard. I longed for you so much. I didn’t know that you were being kept from me by the police.’

‘Your father must have called them while I was calling the ambulance. They arrived fast and arrested me, on his say-so, for “violent behaviour”. I pleaded to be allowed to go with you, but they wouldn’t let me. I remember the ambulance doors shutting, and it driving away with you inside, while I was being pulled in the other direction by the police.

‘I went mad, and then I did become violent. It took four of them to haul me away, and I know I gave one of them a bloody nose, so then they had something to charge me with.

‘I was in the cells for days, unable to get any news of you. Then your father came to see me. He said the baby had been born dead, so I could “forget any ideas I had”.’

‘He said what?’ She was staring at him.

‘He said our child was born dead. Becky, what is it?’ She was staring at him with a livid look that alarmed him.

‘She wasn’t born dead,’ she whispered. ‘She lived just a few hours in an incubator. I saw her. She was so tiny, and attached to machines in all directions. It looked terrible, but I knew the doctors and nurses were fighting for her. They tried so hard, but it was no use. She just slipped away.’

‘But she was alive?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘She actually lived, even if just for a little while?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you able to hold her?’

‘Not while she was alive. She needed to be in the incubator. It was her only chance. But when she’d died they wrapped her in a shawl and put her in my arms. I kissed her, and told her that her mother and father loved her. And then I said goodbye.’

‘You can remember that?’

‘Yes, at that stage I was still functioning. The depression didn’t hit me until a few hours later.’

‘Didn’t you wonder where I was?’

‘Yes, I kept asking Dad, and he said, “They’re still trying to find him.”’

‘He said that, knowing I was trapped in a cell, where he’d put me?’ Luca asked with quiet rage.

‘He kept saying you’d gone. And then she was dead, and after that-’ she faltered ‘-after that things became dark. A black cloud enveloped me without warning. I felt crushed, suffocated, and absolutely terrified. The whole world seemed to be full of horror, and it went on and on without hope.’

She passed a hand over her eyes. ‘Maybe it would have happened anyway, with losing the baby. But maybe if we could have been together it wouldn’t have happened. Or I might have got over it sooner. I’ll never know.’

‘There was nothing your father wouldn’t do to separate us,’ Luca said. ‘No matter how wicked or deceitful, it didn’t matter as long as he got his own way.’

She nodded. ‘I think he believed it would be easy at the start. Only then things spiralled out of control, and he had to do worse and worse things so as not to have to admit he’d been wrong. He kept trying to rewrite the facts to prove he’d been right, and of course he couldn’t do it.’

He looked at her quickly. ‘You defend him?’

‘No, but I don’t think he started out as a bad man. He became one because he didn’t know how to say sorry. He destroyed us but he also destroyed himself. He knew what he’d done. He couldn’t admit it but he knew, and he couldn’t face it.’

‘Did you ever confront him with what he’d done?’

‘Yes, just once. We had a terrible fight and I told him that he’d killed my baby.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing. Just stared at me and turned white. Then he walked away. Later I found him staring into space. About a year after that he had a massive heart attack. He was only fifty-four, but he died almost instantly.’

‘I am not sorry for him,’ Luca said with bitter emphasis. ‘I do not forgive him, and I will not pretend that I do.’

‘I know. I can pity him a little because I saw what he’d done to himself as well as to us. But forgiveness is more than I can manage too. Besides…’

She was silent for a long moment, getting up and pacing the room as though tormented by indecision.

‘What is it?’ he asked, looking up at her quickly. ‘Is there more?’

‘Yes, there’s something I’ve been waiting to tell you, but it had to be when the moment was right. Now, I think…’

She stopped, torn by indecision, even though she knew there was no turning back. Luca took her hands between his.

‘Tell me, Becky,’ he said. ‘Whatever it is, it’s time I knew.’