The Rinuccis: Carlo, Ruggiero & Francesco: The Italian's Wife by Sunset

‘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.

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.’