Lucy Gordon - Married Under the Italian Sun

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.

FOR a while Angel had no time for anyone but Sam. She’d dreamt of the time when he would come here, she would show him his new home and they would be happy together, and now she would not accept that the dream could be spoiled.

She had been prepared for him to be sometimes confused, even not to know her, but this prolonged confusion and forgetfulness was a shock. Nonetheless, she argued it away. The long journey had been a strain, and he would soon return to some kind of normality. If only, she thought, it would happen soon.

It was strange to think that they had been apart for such a short time, because he seemed far more frail than she remembered, and she realised, with a sense of terror, that he was eighty-four.

He seemed happy enough. Each morning he greeted her pleasantly and waited while Frank or Roy introduced them all over again. He’d apparently decided that he was a guest in a pleasant country house and that she was his hostess. On this basis they had some cheerful talks. He asked her about her life and told her about his own early years, which he could recall with disconcerting clarity. It was only as he drew close to the present that the fog descended on his mind.

Sometimes he would chat about his beloved granddaughter, speaking of her with a love that made a lump come to Angel’s throat.

‘I haven’t seen her for a while,’ he said once, sounding puzzled and a little hurt. ‘She used to visit me a lot but now-do you think she might be angry with me?’

‘Of course not,’ Angel said, trying to speak brightly. ‘I’m sure she loves you very much.’

‘Then why doesn’t she call me any more?’ he asked sadly.

‘She’s probably on her way here to see you,’ Angel said desperately.

‘That’s what I keep thinking, but she never comes.’

She could hardly bear it when Sam said that. Later, when he was having his afternoon nap, Angel slipped out of the house and ran to the lemon terraces, where she knew Vittorio would be. It was a place she usually avoided after her fall, but today nothing mattered except to talk to him, and she climbed hurriedly down.

Taking one look at her face, Vittorio said not a word, but held her in his arms until she stopped shaking.

‘Was it very bad today?’ he asked.

‘He was telling me about his granddaughter, how much he loves her and-and how hurt he is that she doesn’t come to see him. And all the time he’s sitting looking at me-and he doesn’t know me.’

‘But he will,’ Vittorio said. ‘You told me yourself that this happens sometimes, but then his memory comes back. You have to hang on for those moments.’

‘I know, I know. It’s just-’

‘Why don’t you take a day off? We’ll drive, just have a few hours together.’

‘I couldn’t leave him alone.’

‘He’s not alone. He’s got the lads, and you know he’s fine with them.’

‘He’s better with them than he is with me,’ Angel sighed. ‘But still…’

What made her decide in the end was that Roy said much the same thing.

‘All the time you’re with him you’re tense,’ he told her. ‘He can sense it, and it makes him tense too. You should take a few hours off, go and do some shopping.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

When Sam greeted her next morning, still with no sign of recognition, she took a deep breath and announced that she was going out for a while. She almost ran to where Vittorio had told her he would be in the garden.

As soon as he saw her coming he understood. By the time she reached the place where he’d parked his shabby car, he was holding the door open for her as elegantly as a chauffeur with a limousine.

‘What is the padrona’s pleasure?’ he enquired, getting behind the wheel.

‘You can stop that padrona nonsense, and just take me to a coffee shop.’

‘As the padrona wishes.’

‘I’m warning you.’

He grinned and started up.

Amalfi stood at the foot of the cliffs, a little town that went back more than a thousand years. Once it had been an important trading centre, economically way ahead of the rest of Italy, and an independent republic until the twelfth century. Now, although its great trading days were past, it still flourished, attracting visitors who fell in love with the beauty of its picturesque streets and the pleasures to be found on its beach.

Vittorio found a little coffee shop and plied Angel with ice-cream sundaes, as though she were a child on a treat. While she was eating, he said, ‘Wait here,’ and went outside, returning a moment later with a glossy magazine.

‘The shop next door specialises in English publications for the tourists,’ he said, ‘and I thought it was worth a try. Your journalist friend didn’t waste any time.’

The magazine was the new edition of GlamChick, the cover sporting one of the pictures Mack had shown her of Joe with his bride on his arm. There were two tag lines, one announcing, Joe Clannan weds another beauty and the other saying, How I feel about Joe’s wedding: Angel reveals all.

‘Well, that’s a lie,’ she said indignantly. ‘I never said a thing about the wedding except the most boring platitudes.’

Vittorio was reading over her shoulder. ‘You didn’t utter boring platitudes about Gavin,’ he observed.

‘But I did.’

He began to read. “‘Angel is particularly incensed about the recent feature in which the lover she dumped-”’

‘Lover, my left foot!’ she seethed.

“‘The lover she dumped…”’ Vittorio continued, silencing her. ‘…“spoke for the first time of his heartbreak at losing her to wealthy Joe Clannan. According to Angel, Gavin is fantasising. In fact she can hardly remember him. ‘He was history before I met Joe,’ she said sweetly. ‘Not that he was ever anything much. Everything about Gavin was limited, starting with his conversation.’ Modesty prevented her enlarging on this subject, but clearly Gavin wasn’t impressive in any way.”’

Vittorio leaned back, regarding her with humorous appreciation. ‘You sure got your revenge.’

‘But I didn’t,’ she exploded. ‘I just said his conversation was limited, and they’ve dressed it up with all those suggestive hints.’

‘Never mind. Serves him right after what he said about you.’

‘Yes, I don’t feel very guilty about it either. It was clever of them to get both features in the one issue, wasn’t it? They must have moved fast.’

She studied her ‘tell-all’ piece, realising that the glossy creature in the pictures was a stranger. That was fine by her. Then she turned her attention to the wedding pictures, which she regarded with a wry smile.

‘You’re not upset?’ Vittorio asked, watching her.

‘Only by having my name associated with all that purple prose. Never mind. I got the cheque this morning. It’ll keep the wolves from the door.’

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have given him back the jewellery,’ Vittorio observed mildly. ‘You were too generous there.’

Angel regarded him with an amusement that had a touch of the hysterical.

‘Don’t you understand Joe better than that yet? I didn’t give him back anything. He took it all out of the bank and hid it before he ever mentioned divorce.’

‘Of course. I should have thought of that.’

‘Those jewels belong to Mrs Joe Clannan, whoever she happens to be at the time. In effect, on loan. When I no longer suited his requirements, he called the loan in. Now it’s Merry’s turn.’ She looked at the picture of the smirking, diamond-laden girl. ‘Poor thing.’