The Italian’s Wife by Sunset

CHAPTER EIGHT

FOR a moment Carlo didn’t speak, refusing to allow her words to alarm him.

‘You still haven’t told me what’s happened,’ he pointed out. ‘What did Sol tell you?’

‘He’s got a girl pregnant. I’m going to be a grandmother in a few months. What’s so funny?’

A roar of laughter had burst from him, but he controlled it quickly, his eyes on her face.

‘I’m sorry, cara, I can’t help it. If there’s one young man in the world I’d have thought would land in that kind of trouble, it’s Sol. Don’t tell me you’re surprised. I suppose he called you to sort it out for him?’

‘Carlo, did you hear what I said? I’m going to be a grandmother.’

‘But why make such a tragedy of it? What are you saying? That you’re going to go grey-haired and wrinkled in the next five minutes? Or are you planning to get a walking stick?’

‘Don’t laugh at me.’

‘But it is laughable the way you make a fuss about trifles.’

‘I’m going to be a granny.’

‘So what? You haven’t changed. You’re still you-the same person you were five minutes ago. You haven’t suddenly become eighty just because of this.’

‘I’ve moved up a generation,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Then I’m coming with you,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’ll buy two walking sticks and hobble along together. Now, come back to bed. The night isn’t over, and Sol’s problem has given me some interesting ideas.’

He tried to draw her down between the sheets again, but she resisted.

‘Will you try to be sensible?’

‘What for? What did being sensible ever do for anyone?’

She loved him in this mood, but this time she couldn’t yield to him. It was too serious.

‘I wish you’d listen,’ she said. As she spoke she fended him off, which made him stop and stare at her, puzzled.

‘I’ve said that you’re still you,’ he said. ‘The woman I love, and will love all my days. None of this makes any difference.’

But she shook her head helplessly.

‘It does.’

‘But why? You haven’t aged by so much as a second.’

‘Haven’t I? I’ve suddenly seen myself aging.’

‘Because of a word? Because that’s all “grandmother” is-a word.’ He tried again to take her into his arms. ‘Cara, don’t give in to fancies. None of this matters to us.’

He didn’t understand, she realised. His words were logical, but they had no effect on the chill of fear in her heart.

‘No, it’s more than a word.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a thought with a picture attached. You saw that picture yourself-grey-haired, wrinkled, walking stick. And it’s made me face up to something that in my heart I’ve always known.’

She took his face between her hands, trying to find the courage for what had to come next.

‘I fooled myself that it could work between us,’ she said at last. ‘What we have is lovely, and I didn’t want to spoil it. I still don’t. We can have everything we want-except marriage.’

He frowned, and the light died from his eyes.

‘What kind of everything do you have in mind?’

‘It’ll take months to make the programme, and we can have that time together. Afterwards-we’ll see what happens.’

There was a silence before he said, in a strange voice she’d never heard before, ‘Afterwards you think I’ll act like a spoilt brat who’s had his fun, dumps the woman, and goes onto the next thing? That’s your opinion of me? Do you even realise that you’ve insulted me?’

‘I don’t intend to insult you. I just think we should take life as it comes and not make too many demands on the future.’

He pulled away from her and got to his feet.

‘No,’ he said harshly. ‘What you think is that I’m not sufficiently adult to make a commitment. That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? Behind all this “too old” talk, what you’re really saying is that I’m too young-not up to standard? Why can’t you be honest about it, Della?’

‘Because that’s not what I mean,’ she cried passionately.

‘Isn’t it? Della, I’m thirty-one, not twenty-one. A man of thirty-one is usually reckoned mature enough to make his own decisions, and you’d see that too if you didn’t have this fixation about being older. I may look like a kid to you, but nobody else would say so.’

‘A man of thirty-one is still young, but I’m on the verge of middle age,’ she said fiercely. ‘You may not want to face it, but I have to.’

‘That’s a damned fool argument and you know it. Perhaps it’s just a cover for something uglier?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think you decided you needed me just so long and no longer.’

Both his eyes and his voice were cold.

‘Have you been stringing me along? Making a fool of me just to get material for your programme?’ he demanded.

‘That’s nonsense. If all I wanted was research, I’ve got people to do it for me.’

‘But not as we’ve done. Living it. Feeling it. And why not have a nice little vacation at the same time? He looks promising, so let’s pick him up and try him out. If he succeeds as a toy-boy he may even succeed as a presenter-’

‘Don’t you dare say such a thing,’ she flashed. ‘There was nothing even remotely like that in my mind.’

‘From where I’m standing, that’s what it looks like.’

‘I never thought of you as a toy-boy-’

‘You thought of me as someone to be used-someone you could treat as a kid. I should have learned my lesson that first day, when you didn’t tell me the truth about why you were in Naples. I thought I’d met the woman of my dreams, and all the time you were sizing me up, assessing whether I fitted the slot. I had my warning, but like an idiot I ignored it because-well, never mind.’

He turned and moved away from her, as though he needed to put space between them.

‘You were going to keep me around for just so long, then end it when it suited you,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘It was nothing but a game to you.’

‘I thought it was only a game to you,’ she said wretchedly. ‘It ought to have been.’

‘“Ought to have been”?’ he echoed, aghast. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘In the beginning-’ She stopped, for emotion was making it hard for her to speak.

‘Yes?’ he said remorselessly.

‘At the start I thought it was just a fling, for both of us. It had to be for me, and honestly I thought you were just passing the time. Carlo, be honest. Women have come and gone in your life, haven’t they?’

‘Yes,’ he said bleakly. ‘Too many. But none of them meant anything compared to you. You’ve always been different. I tried to make you understand that, but obviously I didn’t do a very good job.’

‘I thought I’d be just another of them. What we had was lovely, but I knew it couldn’t last. I thought, Why shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves for a while? I truly believed you’d be the one to end it. I didn’t think your feelings would get that much involved.’

‘You treated me as something that had no feelings at all,’ he said harshly. ‘But I didn’t stick to the script, did I? I fell deeply in love with you and wanted to marry you.’

Suddenly he began to laugh, but not with amusement. It had a bitter sound. ‘Oh, boy! What a joke! How you must have loved that one!’

‘I swear you’re wrong. Carlo, listen to me. I love you more than I ever thought I could love any man, and I’ve tried to believe it’s possible for things to work out for us. Now I know they can’t.’

‘I’ve told you I don’t give a damn about your age. It doesn’t matter.’

‘But it’ll matter later. That seven years is going to stretch. I’ll be forty-five while you’re still in your thirties. Then fifty. Fifty is a big milestone, and I’ll pass it years before you do. You’ll be in your prime and I’ll be having face-lifts and injections.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ he said at once. ‘I want you as you are.’

‘Darling, when I’m fifty we won’t be together-’

‘Stop that talk. In a hundred years we’ll still be together.’

One minute they were quarrelling, the next he was laying out their future as though nothing had happened. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. His refusal to see the barrier between them made her love him more, but the effort of making him understand tore her apart.

‘Maybe we will be together longer than I thought,’ she conceded. ‘I’m not saying we should separate immediately-’

‘Just when the programme’s complete. I’ll have my uses until then.’

‘No, it can be as long as you like. I won’t marry you, but I’ll live with you.’

‘How?’ he demanded. ‘When the series is over we’ll be working in different countries. Or are you planning to give up your career and follow me about the world?’

‘I can’t do that, but-’

‘Or am I supposed to abandon my career and live in your shadow?’

‘Of course not. But we could still find ways to be together as often as we can manage.’

‘A weekend here, a weekend there,’ he said bitingly. ‘Until one day I turn up a day early and you won’t look up from your computer because I don’t fit into the schedule-’

‘Or the day I arrive early and find you with some sexy little thing who’s got all the youth I no longer have-’

‘Don’t say any more!’

‘Why not?’ she cried. ‘You’re bound to face the truth one day. Why not now? It’ll happen, and I won’t blame you because it’ll be right and natural. Can’t you see that that’s the only way we can love each other-to be ready to let go when the time comes?’

‘And if I don’t want to let go?’ he demanded fiercely.

‘Then we’ll stay together as long as you want.’

‘You’re so sure I’ll be the one to break us up, that I’ll betray you,’ he raged. ‘You think my love is worth so much less than yours?’

‘No, I’ve never thought that. But those seven years matter. I know you don’t think so now, but one day you’ll see it.’

‘You mean, give me enough time and I’ll learn to agree with you?’ he said, with a touch of a sneer.

‘When you see me getting old before you, getting lined before you, losing my strength while you still have all yours-then-’

‘Then what?’

She forced herself to say it.

‘Then you’ll realise what a mistake you’ve made. But there’ll still be time to escape.’

‘Your opinion of me is really down there in the dust, isn’t it?’ he asked quietly. ‘All this time I thought we loved each other. But you were humouring me, treating me like a child to be indulged.’

She tried to deny it, but the words wouldn’t come. Dreadful as it sounded, might this be true, even a little? She’d taken it on herself to make all the decisions in their relationship, without telling him.

On the first day she’d concealed her real purpose in being there, and then she’d concealed her age, always telling herself that she was doing it ‘for the best’. Wasn’t that what mothers did? Perhaps she’d had no right?

Suddenly he began to speak more gently.

‘Listen to me, Della. I’m asking for more than your love. I want everything about you-the whole of your heart and mind and your body-for the rest of your life. I want to know that you trust me enough to commit to me, instead of arranging things for an easy escape.’

‘An escape for you-’

Her answer roused his anger again.

‘Oh, no-that’s the gloss you’ve put on it, but it’s your pride you’re protecting. If I prove as shabby as your expectations-well, you’ve arranged it that way, haven’t you?’

‘I’m only leaving the door open for you-’

‘No, you’re practically pushing me through it,’ he raged. ‘It looks generous, but it’s actually a form of control. You say how long we’ll last, you arrange the conditions of the break-up-my God, you’ve even written the scene! You come back suddenly and find me in the arms of a luscious beauty. What then, Della? Do I stutter something like, You weren’t meant to find out this way?’

‘Don’t,’ she whispered.

‘Or how about, Della, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. Yes, I think that would be better. Or haven’t you written my lines yet?’

He drew a long, shaky breath before continuing.

‘But our love-or what I thought of as our love-isn’t some damned programme you’re planning, where you can cut and edit and rewrite until it’s just what you want.’

She was silent, stricken to the heart by this judgement-so cruel, yet so alarmingly near the nerve.

He came close and laid his hands on her shoulders. He was in command of himself now.

‘I meant what I said, Della. It has to be marriage and total commitment-or nothing. I’m not asking you to give up your career. Just relocate. You can produce your programmes from here as well as London. But I want you for my wife-not a glorified girlfriend with an escape clause, who treats me like an idiot. I want to know you trust me to be a husband, not an inferior to be guarded against because he’s bound to let you down.’

‘That’s a terrible way to put it,’ she said, aghast.

‘It’s how I see it.’

‘Carlo, all you see is what you want. You once told me of how you go after things you’ve set your heart on. But you don’t know the reality of marriage, and I do. I’ve endured two, and I know how feelings die. Not all in a moment, but inch by inch: the little irritations that loom large when they happen for the thousandth time, the moments of boredom, the times you want to bang your head against the wall, the unending day-after-dayness of it. You have no idea-’

‘And neither do most people who marry,’ he interrupted her. ‘Follow your argument and nobody would ever get married. But they do it anyway, because they love each other enough to take the risk. And because it’s how they show their trust in each other. If you don’t trust me enough to marry me, then we have no future together-not even the few months you’ve allocated me.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, searching his face.

‘I want your promise now, or it’s finished. When you go to England, don’t bother coming back.’

She gasped. ‘You don’t mean that.’

‘I do mean it. You’ve been playing with me, and it stops here. Before you leave I want us to tell my family that we’re going to be married. Mamma’s expecting the announcement anyway, and we’ll leave her planning the wedding.’

‘My darling, I can’t do that.’

He drew back, looking at her coldly.

‘Of course you can’t. The answer was always going to be no, wasn’t it? It was no from the very first moment. It was no when everyone saw us together at the party and knew that I worshipped you. You saw what they were thinking-what I was thinking-and you let us all think it. You could have told me the truth at any time, and you chose not to.’

‘No,’ she whispered, horrified. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Wasn’t it? Look me in the eye and tell me honestly. Was there ever one second when you really meant to marry me?’

‘Carlo-’

‘Answer me!’

‘I don’t really know what I meant. I always knew that I ought to refuse, but-’

‘But it would have been inconvenient. Isn’t that it?’

‘No, I just couldn’t bear to. It was lovely, and I wanted it to last. Sometimes I deluded myself that it might even be possible. I didn’t want to admit that it couldn’t happen, so I put it off and put it off.’

‘Very convenient,’ he said softly. ‘The truth is that you made a fool of me.’

‘I swear I didn’t.’

‘Then prove it. For the last time-will you give me the commitment I want? Because if not we have nothing more to say to each other.’

Her temper rose. ‘Are you giving me an ultimatum?’

‘I suppose I am.’

‘Don’t do that, Carlo. I won’t be bullied, and certainly not into marriage.’

‘I suppose that’s my answer,’ he said softly.

‘It has to be.’

‘All those nights you lay in my arms and whispered to me-all those dreams you let me indulge-you knew I was living in a fool’s paradise, and you left me there because it was more convenient that way.’

‘It could never last. You can’t see that now because you want me-’

‘Della, I am not a little kid to be protected. Don’t insult me.’

‘All right,’ she said, tortured by this scene, unable to endure more. ‘Maybe you were right when you said I’m trying to protect myself, so that I don’t have to be around to see the disillusion come into your eyes. I don’t want to know the moment when you ask yourself how the hell you could have done anything so stupid. I don’t want to see you avert your eyes so that you don’t have to look at what’s happening to me. I don’t want to watch you treading on eggshells because you’re trying to be kind.’

There was an expression on Carlo’s face that she had never seen before, and it frightened her. It was close to contempt.

‘At last,’ he said. ‘The truth.’

‘It’s one truth.’ She sighed in near despair. ‘But there are so many different truths in this. Don’t just look at that one-please, Carlo.’

His mouth twisted.

‘Are you sure there’s any other truth but that?’ he asked, in a deadly cold voice.

After a long time she said, in a defeated voice, ‘I don’t know. Maybe there isn’t.’

He seemed to consider this dispassionately, before reaching for the pair of trousers that he’d tossed onto the floor last night in his haste, pulling on a shirt and walking out of the door.

For some time she sat without moving, listening for his return. She couldn’t believe that he’d really left her like this. It wasn’t like him.

But as the minutes passed, with no sound of his footsteps, she was forced to recognise the truth. He would not return and she had mistaken him, seeing only his sweet temper and laughing disposition, missing the steely core that had made him fight her with a touch of cruelty.

She’d been prepared for his pain, but not for his rage and scorn.

‘That’s the getting of wisdom,’ she thought wryly. ‘We neither of us knew or understood the other well. It’s better as it is.’

After a while she forced herself to rise, call the airport, and book a seat on the afternoon flight to London. Then she set about packing her things, leaving out the clothes she would wear to travel while she showered.

It was finished. He would stay away until she’d left, and then she would never see him again. She said it over and over, trying to make herself believe it, accept it.

Lost in her sad thoughts, covered by cascading water, she failed to hear the bathroom door open, and had no idea that anyone was there until she turned off the water and opened the shower door. The shock caused her to slip, and she would have fallen if his arm hadn’t shot out and curled around her waist, holding her firmly.

He reached up for a towel, then carried her back into the bedroom, still holding her with one arm, set her on her feet and began to dry her. He didn’t speak. Nor did she expect him to. His face showed too much sadness for words.

When he’d finished she tried to take the towel, to cover herself, but he tossed it away and drew her against his chest. He hadn’t bothered to do up his shirt, and the feel of his bare skin came as a shock, as though she’d never felt it before.

And in a sense that was true. In the last hour they had moved into a new world where everything was unfamiliar-everything for the first time, everything for the last time.

He drew her down on the bed and removed the rest of his clothes so that they were naked together. She tried to protest that this wasn’t a good idea, but he simply laid his face between her breasts, his eyes closed. Unable to stop herself, she clasped her hands tenderly behind his head. Whatever came later, she would have this.

He began to kiss her everywhere, murmuring softly as he did so. Bittersweet pleasure and happiness warred within her. It was the last time, but the joy of the moment was there, hot and fierce, driving out any other thought. She would love him now, and afterwards she would survive somehow.

His lovemaking was like never before, yet still the culmination of all the other times. He drew on everything he’d learned about her to increase her pleasure, calling up a storm of memories with each movement, prolonging the moments while her tension rose and she wanted to cry out for her release. But he made her wait, reminding her of how she loved this, how long the years ahead would be without the warmth of his love, asking whether she could live without it.

The answer terrified her. But she had made her decision, and she wouldn’t let him suspect that her heart was already breaking.

‘Don’t go,’ he whispered. ‘Stay with me.’

Before she could answer he entered her, moving against her with passion and tenderness until she wanted to weep. As her climax came she clung to him, looking up into his face, filled with love and fear.

Their parting was a kind of death, and brutal reality was still there, waiting, remorseless.

‘Stay with me,’ he whispered again. But even as he said the words he saw the desperation in her face, not what he was searching for.

‘It’s changed nothing, has it?’ he asked bleakly.

‘Nothing. I’m sorry.’

He rose and left the room without looking at her. After that there was nothing to do but get dressed and prepare to leave.

‘I’ll take you to the airport,’ he said when she joined him.

‘There’s no need. I’ll take a taxi.’

‘I’ll take you to the airport,’ he repeated obstinately.

The journey was a surreal experience. They travelled mostly in silence, and when they spoke it was about mundane matters-her ticket, her luggage.

At Naples Airport he came inside with her, watching as she checked in her luggage.

‘I’m a bit late for the plane,’ she said, looking anxiously at the board. ‘I should go.’

‘Yes, you’ll have to hurry. By the way-about the series-of course I can’t be in it.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘But you’ll find another frontman,’ he said coolly. ‘They’re ten a penny.’

Then, without warning, he broke.

‘I can’t stay angry with you,’ he whispered. ‘Della, for pity’s sake, forget everything-forget what I’ve said-what you’ve said. None of it matters. Let’s put all this behind us and love each other as we did before.’

She shook her head violently.

‘I’ll always love you,’ she said. ‘But it was only a dream-’

‘And you can let it go just like that? Did it mean so little to you?’

‘Don’t,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘You’ll never know what it meant to me. But we can’t build a life on it, and one day you’ll know I was right.’

He grasped her hand so hard that it hurt.

‘But you’re not right. You’re taking us to disaster and you can’t see it. Della, I’ll beg you one last time-don’t do this to us both.’

‘This is the final call…’

‘No,’ he said fiercely, taking hold of her. ‘I won’t let you go. You’re staying with me.’

She didn’t answer in words, just shook her head in dumb misery, and at last he released her with a gesture of despair. She walked through the gate, meaning to go on without looking back. But at the last minute she had to know if he was still there, and turned slowly.

The crowd was building up, other faces passing in front of his. But she could just make him out, watching her until the very last moment, motionless, like a man whose life was ebbing away, until the crowd moved again and she could no longer see him.