The Italian’s Wife by Sunset

CHAPTER NINE

DELLA took off from Naples in sunshine and landed in England in pouring rain. The perfect comment on her situation, she thought, if you were of a dramatic turn of mind.

Sol was at the airport, relieved that she had arrived to sort out his problems.

‘Good to have you back, Mum,’ he said, hugging her.

They’d had this conversation before, and her next line was, It’s lovely to be back, darling.

But this time the words wouldn’t come, and she was glad to hurry to the waiting taxi.

As they reached the houseboat Sol said, ‘I’ve done some cleaning up, so that it’s perfect for you.’

‘You’ve done some cleaning up?’ she queried.

‘Jackie helped me a bit,’ he conceded.

‘Hmm!’

The place was spotless, which convinced her that this was mostly her secretary’s work, but she let the subject drop. Sol was on his best behaviour-carrying her bags into the bedroom, telling her to sit down, making her coffee.

‘The situation must be pretty bad to make you such a perfect gentleman,’ she said, slightly amused despite her unhappiness.

‘I just don’t know what to think. What am I going to do with a baby?’

‘I thought the idea was for me to arrange everything?’

‘You’re wonderful.’ He kissed her cheek.

‘Sure I am,’ she said wryly.

With such domestic diversions she was able to fend off reality for a while. Even when she went to bed and lay thinking of Carlo she fell mercifully asleep within a few minutes. She began to think she might be let off lightly.

She discovered otherwise the following morning, when she awoke at dawn and went on deck to watch the sun come up over the river. It was a mistake. She found herself reliving the day they’d met when she’d told Carlo about this scene.

‘You have to catch the moment because it vanishes so quickly.’

She’d said that, meaning the magic of dawn on the water, not knowing how perfectly the words would apply to their brief time together. The moment had come and gone, vanishing for ever, uncaught.

Now the memory would always be there, waiting for her with every dawn.

She went quickly back inside.

Nobody in the Rinucci family thought it strange that Della should need to return to England for a while. It took time for it to dawn on them that she wasn’t coming back. Carlo did not encourage questions. Only to Hope did he go as far as to say, ‘It could never have worked, Mamma, and we both knew it. Our careers wouldn’t have fitted together.’

‘Your careers?’ Hope echoed, disbelieving.

‘Of course,’ he said lightly. ‘That was always going to be a problem.’

‘Can’t you tell me the truth, my son?’

He sighed and gave up the pretence. ‘It was the age-gap. She made so much of it that-it was really an excuse. She didn’t want me.’

‘She rejected you? Rubbish!’

He managed to laugh at that.

‘Unbelievable, isn’t it?’ he asked with a hint of teasing. ‘There’s actually a woman in the world who thinks I’m not up to standard.’

‘Well, she must be the only one,’ Hope declared, staunchly loyal. ‘She’s mad, and you’re better off without her.’

‘Yes, Mamma, if you say so.’

‘Don’t you take that tone with me,’ she snapped.

‘What tone?’

‘Meek and mild. I know what it means.’

It meant that inwardly he had vanished to a place nobody could reach. Carlo, so soft-spoken and easygoing on the surface, had another self that he visited rarely and only he knew about.

Hope glared at her son, furious with him, with Della, with the world that had dared allow her darling to be hurt.

That night she confided in her husband.

‘But it’s what you wanted,’ Toni protested. ‘You never thought she was good enough for him.’

‘But I meant him to reject her,’ Hope said, outraged.

‘He was never going to do that,’ said Toni, who saw more than he said.

As if to allay their fears, Carlo began to spend more time at the villa, often staying overnight, sometimes bringing female company, but always sending the ladies away in taxis. He seemed to become his old self, laughing, flirting, always ready for a party. And the more he enjoyed himself, the more Hope’s fears grew.

Once she asked him, ‘Have you heard from her?’

‘Not a word. What is there to say?’

‘That project you were working on-?’

‘Nothing will come of that now.’

‘I thought-if it caused you to see each other again, then maybe…’ She trailed off, not sure what she’d hoped for, but ready to accept anything that would make him happy.

‘Mamma, there’s no point in talking about it. It’s over. Let’s forget it.’

‘Will you forget, my son?’ Hope asked pointedly.

He smiled faintly and shook his head.

‘No, I never will. But that’s because I’m under a special kind of curse. Forgetfulness would be a blessing, but I’ll never have it, and I just have to accept that.’

Hope nodded. She, too, knew about that curse. She never spoke of it, but now she wondered if her youngest child had suspected her secret. Part of her still thought of him as the baby of the family, but now she saw that this man had a painful wisdom that he, too, kept to himself.

‘Can you accept it?’ she asked quietly.

‘I can manage. And I’m damned if I’ll make everyone else suffer by going around in a black cloud. We’ve got a lot of good news coming in this family. Justin’s twins, for a start.’

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘And yet…’ She paused as she came to something that was hard to say.

‘What is it?’

‘I see you empty and hurting inside, and I wonder how much of it is my fault.’

‘How can any of it be your fault?’

‘I didn’t welcome her as perhaps I might have done,’ she forced herself to say. ‘She wasn’t what I wanted for you. Oh, I said and did all the right things. But she knew I was forcing myself, to conceal a lack of warmth inside. My son, did I drive her away and ruin your life?’

‘Of course not,’ he said, honestly puzzled. ‘Mamma, you don’t know how it was between us. Nobody could have driven her away from me-not if she didn’t want to go. We had our world, and it was everything. Except that I spoiled it by-’ there was a faint tremor in his voice ‘-by not being the man she wanted.’

‘But-?’

‘Try to understand this, and then never let us speak of it again. It wasn’t your fault, or anyone else’s except mine. In her eyes I just don’t measure up. That’s all there is to it.’

She understood. He was telling her, gently, that even she was irrelevant when set against his love. His eyes were kind, softening the hint of rejection, but she had no doubt that he meant it.

For a moment she hated Della with a ferocity that shocked her. All this might have been hers, and she’d tossed it away, breaking his heart, abandoning him in an endless desert.

But the man he had become understood even this, and said quietly, ‘Don’t hate her, Mamma. For my sake.’

‘Very well, I won’t. In fact, I think you should go to England. Whatever is wrong between you put it right-if that’s the only thing that will make you happy.’

It was a bad thing to say. Carlo’s face was hard and set.

‘Go after her?’ he echoed. ‘Beg from a woman who’s turned me down as not up to standard? What do you think I am?’

‘My dear, don’t let your pride get in the way.’

He shrugged and made a wry face.

‘Let a man keep his pride. It matters.’

‘Well, can’t I help? If I talked to her-’

She stopped before the anger that flashed in his eyes.

‘Never even think of such a thing. Not even for a moment. Do you hear me, Mamma?’

‘Yes,’ she faltered. ‘I won’t do anything you don’t want.’

For a moment she had glimpsed the fierce will inside him, and it had almost frightened her.

Carlo softened and put his arm about her.

‘Forgive me for speaking to you so,’ he said contritely. ‘But you mustn’t interfere. You can’t help this situation.’

‘Then what can help it?’ she cried.

‘Nothing,’ he said quietly. ‘Nothing at all.’

Della’s first job was to visit the flower shop where Gina worked.

There, she saw a pretty, tired-looking girl of about nineteen.

‘Can I help you, madam?’ Gina asked, but no sooner had she spoken than her eyes closed and she swayed.

Della caught her and guided her to a chair.

‘The same thing used to happen to me,’ she said sympathetically.

She looked up as the shop’s manageress bustled out.

‘I’ll take her home,’ she said, in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘I’m her aunt.’

Gina lived in a couple of rooms a few streets away. Recognising a stronger personality, she made no protest as Della called a cab and took her away.

The rooms were much as Della had expected-shabby and basic, but clean and cared for. Having urged Gina to a sofa, she made a pot of tea and sat down beside her while they both drank.

‘I’m Sol’s mother,’ she said. ‘I came to see how you were.’

‘Did he send you?’ Gina asked, with an eagerness in her voice that touched Della’s heart.

‘No, I’m afraid not. I wouldn’t hope for too much from Sol, if I were you.’

‘I know. He doesn’t want anything to do with the baby.’

‘What about you?’

‘I want it,’ Gina said eagerly. ‘I’m going to have my baby, no matter what anyone says.’

Della hadn’t expected to like the girl, but she found herself drawn to her instinctively, and this remark drew her even closer.

‘Good for you,’ she said.

‘Do you mean that? You didn’t come here to tell me to-? I know Sol hates the idea-’

‘Forget Sol. He has nothing to say about this. He’s very immature, I’m afraid.’

‘Yes, he gets bored easily,’ Gina admitted. ‘I know he’s fed up with me.’

‘Some men are like that,’ Della said quietly. ‘But not all of them. There are men in the world you can rely on, who want to stay with you for ever and face everything side by side.’

‘Are you all right?’ Gina asked suddenly.

‘Yes, of course. Why do you ask?’

‘Your voice trailed off suddenly, and you just stared into space.’

‘Did I? I didn’t realise.’ She added quickly, ‘Tell me about your family.’

‘My mother’s dead, my dad’s remarried, and they don’t really want to know. My mother’s mother is still alive, but Dad quarrelled with her when Mum died. He said she kept interfering, and wouldn’t let her visit us.’

‘Then you’re going to need some help, and that’s why I’m here.’

She took over, arranging to pay the girl an allowance, and practically ordering her to leave work with a firmness that afterwards made her blush to recall. Luckily Gina recognised the good will behind the ruthless organisation, and was only too ready to do as she was told.

Della went home feeling happier, although slightly shocked at herself.

Bossy, she thought as she looked out at the lights on the river that night. I arrange things for people without asking how they feel.

And I never saw it until now, she added wryly to herself.

The year was moving on, and the work at Pompeii was coming to an end. Now Carlo was there at all hours, going back to his apartment to sleep, then rising early to get to work next morning. One afternoon he looked up to find Ruggiero staring at him with a baffled expression on his face.

‘What is it?’ Carlo asked.

‘I’m trying to recognise you. What have you done to your hair?’

‘Cut it off,’ Carlo said, rubbing his scalp self-consciously.

‘But why so short?’

‘It was an accident,’ Carlo said defensively. ‘I spilt some goo on one side and it wouldn’t wash out, so I had to cut it off, and then I had to cut off the other side, too.’

‘And you did it yourself, by the look of it.’

‘I was in a hurry.’

‘So that’s why you haven’t been home for ages. You can’t face Mamma.’

‘Not at all. I just don’t want to give her a fright. I thought I’d let it grow a bit first.’

‘Get your things and come with me.’

‘Where?’

‘First to a barber, so that he can make you look human again. Then your apartment, so that you can shower and get presentable. Then we’ll have a night out. You look like a man with an urgent need to get drunk.’

‘Let’s go.’

Many hours later, as the Villa Rinucci was preparing to close down for the night, Toni suddenly grew still and cocked his head towards the door. ‘Can I hear singing?’

They both listened, and Hope said with wry amusement, ‘I think it’s meant to be singing, anyway.’

The next moment their twin sons appeared in the doorway, supporting each other.

‘Good evening,’ Ruggiero declaimed tipsily.

‘Who’s that with you?’ Hope demanded, staring. ‘Good grief!’

‘It really is Carlo,’ Ruggiero said. ‘Although it doesn’t look like him.’

‘You didn’t drive home like this?’ Hope demanded, aghast.

‘No, we took a cab,’ he said, adding as an afterthought, ‘Both ways.’

‘So you went out knowing that you were going to get disgustingly drunk?’ Toni enquired with mild interest.

‘That was our intention,’ Ruggiero agreed.

‘Well, you might have taken me with you.’

‘Next time, Poppa, I promise.’

‘Stop talking nonsense,’ Hope said, trying to sound stern. ‘Sit down before you fall down.’

They made it at far as the sofa before Carlo collapsed and lay sprawling, his shirt open at the throat, his head thrown back, dead to the world.

Hope regarded him for a moment, trying to see the perfect picture of a happy playboy, as had happened so often before. But her mind went back to the night not so long ago when he’d slept on this very sofa after a party. That had been a man living life to the full. This was a man seeking oblivion.

Looking up, she saw the same memory in Ruggiero’s eyes. A silent question passed between them, and he shook his head.

In early December the weather became much colder, and sometimes Della could barely make out the river through the rain.

She began to look forward to Christmas, when she would see Sol again and hear how his time at college was progressing.

She had become good friends with Gina, accompanying her to the clinic whenever she could, and helping her become reconciled with her grandmother. Now she had gone to spend Christmas with the old lady, and Della was alone.

She made a point of going out in the evenings. In this way she could tell herself that she was dating again, and had put Carlo behind her, but the truth was that her ‘dates’ were usually with men who were dealing with her professionally. Often there were four in the party.

One night in December she came home to find a light on in the boat.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, as she boarded and Sol appeared. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been thrown out?’

‘No, no-it’s not as bad as that,’ he said, in a soothing tone that made her heart sink. ‘They just suggested that I come home for Christmas a few days early, to cool off.’

‘Off from what?’

‘Well, a group of us made merry. Only we had a bit too much and it turned into a fight, and-well, the police were called-’

His shrug implied that it was all a storm in a teacup, and he topped it off with a sheepish smile, designed to charm her out of making a fuss. It had worked so often before, but now she saw him through different coloured lights. He was no longer a boy but a grown man, always seeking the easy way.

‘I think I’d better call the head of your college-’

‘But I’ve told you what happened-’

‘Yes, and he’ll tell me what really happened. Don’t take me for a fool, Sol.’

His look of surprise said clearly enough that this hadn’t been a problem before. Her eyes warned him not speak.

‘You’d better go to bed now, and tomorrow I’ll let you know where you stand with me. Right now I’m not sure.’

This time he actually gaped.

When he’d gone to bed she sat up, brooding.

She knew that since returning to college Sol had continued to be extravagant, despite his good resolutions, but she guessed that now things were even worse. He’d accepted it as normal when she’d taken responsibility for his child. She had spoiled him all his life, damaging him in the process.

And only one person had seen it.

Carlo had known how to deal with Sol. He hadn’t got heavy. He’d simply been quietly implacable, and the young man had backed down in the face of authority.

I wish he was here now, she thought. I could do with his advice.

Next day she made the call and learned the worst.

‘The principal says you’re a big disappointment,’ she told Sol later. ‘A lurid social life, and doing as little work as possible. That’s it! I’m cutting off your funding. You get a job, and from now on you support yourself.’

‘But I’m good for nothing,’ he said, trying to charm her again.

‘That’s the truest thing you ever said. But even good-for nothings can work. Get a job as a road-sweeper if you have to, but get a job.’

‘Hey, Mum, don’t give me orders. I’m not a kid.’

‘As long as you’re living off me, you are a kid. You want to be a man-earn a living.’

He gulped.

They entered into edgy negotiations. Now he had to take her seriously, as though something warned him that she’d really changed. His master stroke was to go out and get a job delivering parcels, then work himself into the ground.

He returned home triumphantly one evening, with his first wage packet.

‘I haven’t even opened it,’ he told her virtuously.

‘Good,’ she said, whipping it out of his hand. ‘I had a phone call today from the bank behind your credit card. Your payments are overdue. This will come in very handy.’

‘But can’t you-?’

‘No,’ she said remorselessly. ‘I can’t.’

Caution born of self-preservation kept him silent, and sent him back to work hard enough to make her reconsider. She relented up to a point, and when the New Year began he returned to college to ‘make a new start’.

Della didn’t allow herself to hope for too much, but she felt a mild sense of triumph. Sol was treating her with a cautious respect that was new, and for that she knew she had Carlo to thank.

She sent him a silent message of gratitude, wondering where he was and what he was doing. Did he ever think of her. And, if so, how?

Evie’s twins had been born in late November. Carlo had entered the villa to find his mother on the phone, his father dancing a little jig of joy, and Ruggiero grinning.

He’d mouthed, ‘Boy and a girl,’ to Carlo.

‘I’m so relieved,’ Hope said, hanging up. ‘The birth was a few days late and I was getting worried. And poor Justin was tearing his hair out.’

‘Justin?’ everyone cried sceptically.

Justin Dane, Hope’s first son, parted from her at birth, had reappeared in their lives three years ago. In time he’d grown close to his family, but it had been hard at first, for he’d been marked by the harsh way life had treated him. He was a grim, taciturn man, who’d developed a protective shell designed to fend off human contact.

Evie’s love had warmed him, so that these days he was more relaxed, and had learned how to be happy. Even so, the thought of him revealing strong emotion made the three men hoot with laughter.

‘Tearing his hair out?’ Ruggiero teased.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Hope said. ‘He says little, but I can tell.’

She and Toni departed early next morning, stayed away three days, and returned with a hundred photographs.

‘Evie looks happy,’ Ruggiero observed, studying the pictures.

He’d had a soft spot for Evie ever since her first visit. She was mad about motorbikes, and he’d been just about to buy a share in a bike factory, and they’d each recognised a kindred spirit in the other.

‘When do we get to meet them?’ Carlo asked, studying the pictures.

‘They’re coming for Christmas,’ Hope said.

Christmas was the time the Rinuccis gathered in force. Primo and Luke returned with their wives, Francesco came over from America, Ruggiero produced a new girlfriend. And Justin and Evie came over from England with their baby twins, accompanied by Justin’s fifteen-year-old-son Mark, from his first marriage.

It was he who’d brought Evie and Justin together, when she’d been a temporary language teacher at his school and he’d been her star pupil, with a propensity for playing truant. He was fascinated by languages, especially Italian, which he’d learned from her, and he loved his visits to Italy, seizing the chance to brush up not only his Italian but also on the Neapolitan dialect.

Carlo found him one day, deep in a newspaper article about Pompeii.

‘Can you understand it?’ Carlo asked, grinning.

‘Enough to know it’s about you,’ Mark said.

But Carlo shook his head. ‘No, it’s about the site. I added a few opinions, but a good archaeologist never lets himself become the story.’

‘Aren’t you going to do a whole series?’

‘No, that fell through,’ Carlo said hastily.

‘But Evie said-’

‘What do you think about Pompeii?’ Carlo interrupted him with a touch of desperation. ‘Would you like to come and see it? I’m making my final visit tomorrow.’

Next day they drove out to Pompeii together. Mark was an ideal pupil, wide-eyed, eager, drinking everything in, responding intelligently. Carlo began in much the same way as he’d done with the schoolchildren, the day he’d met Della, and Mark enjoyed the performance. But then he said, ‘But it’s much more than that, isn’t it?’

‘Much more,’ Carlo said, recognising a kindred spirit with pleasure.

He showed the boy around the whole place, talking to him as to a fellow academic, and introducing him to the team, who were finally packing up to depart. Mark was enthralled by the museum, especially the plaster figures. He lingered over the mother sheltering her children.

‘How do you get on with Evie?’ Carlo asked curiously.

‘She’s great,’ Mark said at once. ‘Dad’s ever so much nicer now he’s got her.’ He giggled suddenly. ‘The night we were waiting in the hospital he said he wanted us to have a talk, “man to man”.’

‘Heaven help us!’ Carlo said with feeling.

‘Yes, I thought it would be awful, but he just wanted to talk about Evie. He said when my turn came I shouldn’t be in a hurry, because a man had to wait for the right person, even if he waited for years and years.’

‘Justin said a thing like that?’ Carlo queried, trying to imagine this from his taciturn half brother.

‘Well, the twins were being born,’ Mark said, as though this was a complete explanation. And Carlo thought perhaps it was.

He left Mark talking to Antonio, one of his team, and moved quietly away, brooding on the unexpected words that he’d just heard.

Even Justin had found the secret that had eluded himself.

He walked, without looking where he was going, and came inevitably to the place where the lovers still clung together-as they had done on that far-off day when he and Della had seen them for the first time; as they had still been when they were together here for the last time, when everything had seemed most perfect between them.

Nothing had changed. The lovers lay as they had done for nearly two thousand years, dead to the world but alive to each other for all eternity.

For all eternity. That was what he’d wanted, what he’d been so sure of. And he’d been wrong. He hadn’t understood her for a moment.

How do I love thee…?

He could never have answered that. There were no words for how he had loved her.

Let me count the ways.

For him the ways were too many to count. For her they were too few to bother with. They had run out, leaving nothingness behind.

‘I’ll be going now,’ said a voice nearby.

‘What?’ He came back to himself with a start.

‘I’m on my way,’ Antonio said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m fine-fine.’ ‘The job’s done. There’s nothing to stay for.’ ‘No, there’s nothing to stay for.’