Daisy's Betrayal

by Nancy Carson

  The old uncertainty. The irreconcilable lack of confidence.

  She sighed profoundly, looking straight into his eyes. ‘You are the world to me, Gianni,’ she whispered. ‘The sun, the moon and the stars. You are never going to lose me. I won’t let you. You make me happier than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ll never let you go.’

  ‘I’m happy to hear it.’

  ‘I’m happy to declare it over and over. So what are you trying to say to me?’

  ‘Just that … if we were wed …’ He coughed to clear the lump in his throat. ‘If we were wed I would feel more a part of you. You would feel more a part of me in turn. We have to be married to make our union complete, to complete the circle of our love.’

  ‘But I’m already married. And Lawson won’t divorce me unless it suits him.’

  He was nodding his acknowledgement as she spoke. ‘I know all that, my love. Of course I know it. I know you can never be my wife in the eyes of the law while you are married to him. But I’m going to marry you anyway … Right here, right now. In this most beautiful of churches. I think it’s very appropriate that I should marry you before God in this famous and wondrous church of Santa Maria del Popolo …’

  ‘I don’t see how we can marry yet, Gianni.’

  John smiled mysteriously, almost dreamily and took from his pocket the Book of Common Prayer, which he opened up at the ‘Solemnisation of Matrimony’.

  ‘I don’t suppose the Catholic ceremony differs greatly from the Anglican,’ he said taking her hand again. ‘So here goes … I take thee, Daisy, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.’

  ‘Oh, Gianni,’ Daisy sighed, exquisitely moved.

  ‘Now you say this part …’ He turned the prayer book towards her.

  She ignored the book, looked directly into his soft eyes with love oozing from hers, and recited softly by heart, ‘I, Daisy, take thee, John Mallory, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish and to obey, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth.’

  John fished in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a gold ring. Gently, he slipped it on the bare, slender third finger of Daisy’s left hand and looked into her eyes which were brimming with tears.

  ‘With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.’

  She held her hand out to look at the ring. She put it to her lips, kissed it, smiled at him and then wept. He took her in his arms and she buried her face in his shoulder, overcome by the spontaneity of this most unexpected, ultimately meaningful gesture. Nothing more needed to be said. Both understood it was a symbolic act of the utmost significance, though it bore no legal weight. It was simply a very private and personal vow made between them to endorse the love and commitment they had for each other. In their eyes, however, it was as binding and as real as if it had been conducted by the Pope himself in the sanctity of St Peter’s.

  After some minutes, Daisy took a handkerchief from the sleeve of her blouse. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, looked at him and smiled, tearful but very happy.

  ‘I do love you, Gianni. Oh, with all my heart … I’ll never forget this day …’ She sniffed and wiped her nose again. ‘I’ll have no conscience ever about calling myself Mrs Gibson from now on.’

  Chapter 24

  On the day of their return to Sorrento, John and Daisy booked into the Hotel Tramontano once more, making it their base while they acquired enough furniture to make their new home comfortable. As soon as they unpacked the clothes they would need, they headed for the caffè of Pasquale and Concetta.

  ‘Ah, molto bene!’ Pasquale exclaimed when he saw them, and Daisy saw the genuine delight in his eyes. ‘You have returned. I’m so happy to see you. And you, Daisy … You are more beautiful than ever.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Gianni, you are a very fortunate man to have so beautiful a wife.’

  ‘You are right on both counts, Pasquale … Well, we are here … ready to commence the business of living in the hills overlooking Sorrento and the Bay of Naples.’

  ‘Concetta!’ Pasquale called, and Concetta appeared from the back room, a radiant smile on her face as she greeted them. ‘I am taking Daisy and Gianni to the house. Look after the caffè.’

  The ride up into the hills was not unfamiliar now. Every twist and turn in the mule track that took them to the house was no longer a surprise, half remembered from the first time they had travelled it. Pasquale was full of good humour and it was not difficult to take to his easy-going, charming ways. He took them first to his own house and, whilst they were there, they were obliged to drink a glass of his wine, from last year’s vendemmia he said, and to see the trays of silkworms that were consuming mulberry leaves at an absurd rate.

  ‘But they are so noisy,’ Daisy said incredulously. ‘I can hear them chomping away.’

  Pasquale handed John the key – made of iron, large and extremely ornate – to Paradiso, for that was what they had decided to call this new home.

  ‘Even the keys are beautiful in Italy,’ John said in English to Daisy as he handled it sensitively.

  ‘Let us go on to your house now,’ Pasquale suggested. He insisted that Daisy ride on his cart while he led the donkey.

  Very soon, they were walking up the shaded path that led through the garden of Paradiso. Something seemed different, Daisy thought. Everything was tidier. The ground had been dug over, the weeds were gone. The vines were trained more deliberately over the pergolas.

  ‘Somebody has been busy,’ she commented.

  Pasquale smiled dismissively. ‘My brother-in-law and me. His name is Pietro. You will meet him later.’ They arrived at the house. ‘You will not need the key, Gianni. The door is not locked. We are no longer troubled by marauding Barbary pirates.’

  ‘Perhaps I should carry you over the threshold, Mrs Gibson,’ John suggested.

  ‘I’ve already been over the threshold,’ she quipped. ‘Save your strength.’

  Inside, the house was a revelation and Daisy gasped with delight. ‘The walls have been whitewashed … and the ceiling. The floor has been cleaned and … Oh, Pasquale, you have been very busy. Thank you. We didn’t expect this.’

  ‘I could hardly rent a house to an English gentleman and his beautiful wife if it was not fit for my donkey to live in. Upstairs, too, we have been at work as you will see.’

  Indeed they had been at work. The beams and rafters had been swept off, cleaned and painted, the walls had been whitewashed, the floorboards had been cleaned and freshly varnished, the window frames painted. A handmade rug lay on the floor of the bedroom that looked out over the Bay of Naples, and Daisy commented on it.

  ‘It is a gift from Francesca, my sister-in-law. She made it when she knew you were coming here to live.’

  ‘That’s really kind. And she doesn’t even know us.’ Daisy was taken aback by all this kindness and consideration, which she had not anticipated. She looked at John, who also seemed overwhelmed. ‘These folk are so hospitable,’ she said quietly in English.

  John nodded and said to Pasquale, ‘Today we have to decide what furniture we need to buy before we can live here. Most important is a bed.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Pasquale answered with a knowing look. ‘I agree. A bed is most important, especially when you have such a beautiful and pleasant wife to put in it. But tonight you can sleep at my house. We have a bed for you. We have to pay a tax on it – it might as well be used.’

  Daisy looked at John, then at Pasquale. ‘Oh, that’s not necessary. We wouldn’t dream of putting you to all that trouble. We have a hotel room waiting for us in Sorrento.’

  ‘But it is no trouble. I
t is all arranged. Tonight you are to be my guests. We shall eat, Francesca will sing for us and Pietro will play his fisarmonica. It is all arranged.’

  Daisy and John felt entirely at ease with Pasquale and Concetta Amitrano and Pietro and Francesca Bellaria. It was a warm evening with just a light breeze coming over the headland from the south-west. Conversation and laughter never stalled during that glorious evening at the table on the patio which looked out onto the Bay of Naples.

  Daisy thanked Francesca for the gift of the rug, and Pietro for helping Pasquale with the work on the house. ‘I think we shall be very happy here with neighbours like you,’ she said. ‘And to be so lucky in finding a place with such a view.’ For an instant she mentally compared it with the grim view from Lawson’s front room window overlooking the slag heaps and the Union catch pound. She shuddered at everything else that the association invoked and quickly shut it from her mind. How different life was now.

  The Italians wanted to know about Inghilterra, if the weather was ever this good, if the food was this good, if the vino was this good. They wanted to know whether Queen Victoria was still in mourning over her Albert and was it true that the Prince of Wales was a regular Casanova. They wanted to know if there were any railways in Britain and Concetta gossiped about a young widow in the village who’d had a daughter two years after her husband had passed away.

  ‘It’s a miracolo,’ Francesca declared naively. ‘A gift from God.’

  ‘It’s no miracle,’ Pasquale said disdainfully.

  ‘But the child is so like her husband. Of course it’s a miracle.’

  Pasquale laughed heartily. ‘That’s because her husband’s brother is the father of the child.’

  ‘No!’ Francesca protested in disbelief. ‘But she’s not that sort of woman.’

  Pasquale threw his hands into the air in a gesture of despair at Francesca’s naïvety and they all laughed. ‘Everybody knows it. Everybody knows he has been calling on her to give her consolazione. Everybody knows it except you, Francesca.’

  ‘No, I don’t believe it. The child is a gift from God for being a good Catholic. It’s no different to the Immaculate Conception.’

  ‘Have some more vino, Gianni, Daisy.’

  The children – four in all since Francesca and Pietro had two sons and a daughter – had eaten with the adults. Earlier they had been the centre of attention but now, while the grown-ups talked and drank wine, the children played in the garden amid the vines, the lemon trees and the olives, their excited voices from time to time punctuating the peace and tranquillity.

  As the swollen red orb of the sun hovered over the sea in a cloudless sky, Daisy imagined they were her own children playing safely there. The time must come when she and John would be so blessed; it could surely not be too long. They would be Italians, her children, born and bred in Italy, of English parents of course. They would grow up steeped in Italian culture, in Italian values, in Italian traditions. Daisy had no qualms about that. What she had seen of the country and its people had only delighted her. She had every admiration for them, rich and poor alike. She fondly recalled her own childhood, comparing it to what she might expect for her children. She thought about her father, the mutual affection which they had enjoyed throughout all those happy years. Now it was spoilt, destroyed because her mother and sister refused to understand her feelings, her position. They even sided with her scoundrel of a husband. Well, they were pitifully misguided; soon enough they would discover what Lawson Maddox was really like, the roguery of which he was capable.

  She pondered some of the incidents that had peppered her childhood and was lost in a pleasant reverie of nostalgia for her father. She did not hear the animated Italian voices and penetrating laughter; not until Pasquale had called her name three times.

  ‘What are you smiling at, Daisy?’ he said. ‘You see how she is smiling, Concetta. But it’s at something inside her head.’

  She looked at Pasquale, at Concetta, then at John and took his hand. ‘Oh, I was miles away. Back in England when I was a little girl.’

  ‘Please tell us about it,’ Concetta entreated.

  In her middling Italian Daisy said, ‘You asked whether the wine in England is as good as it is here. My father used to make wine from all kinds of fruit and from flowers …’

  ‘Because it’s difficult to grow grapes in the English climate,’ John interjected.

  ‘Well,’ Daisy went on, ‘I was just thinking about a time once when I was helping him. We had been to the fields and picked some blackberries – we can make wine from blackberries – and he asked me to add the sugar to the must, but I added washing soda by mistake because the bags looked alike.’

  They all roared with laughter.

  ‘And was your father angry?’ Francesca asked.

  ‘No. He didn’t stop laughing for a week.’

  ‘Bravo! He sounds like a typical Italian,’ Concetta commented.

  Daisy did not feel inclined to discuss her family further for fear she let slip anything about their rift, and about Lawson, so steered the conversation away by asking about Pasquale’s late mother. For half an hour, his family was discussed and then Pietro, who had been missing for five minutes, returned carrying an accordion.

  ‘Bene, let’s sing. We Italians love to sing, Daisy.’

  The sun was about to drop into the sea, to be quenched like a blob of molten glass. The sky above the horizon was aflame but overhead it was darkening.

  They sang.

  Oh, magical songs, magical harmonies underlying magical Italian melodies. Pasquale had a fine tenor voice, Concetta a vivid soprano. Francesca’s voice was a rich contralto and Pietro’s a robust bass. And how they used them. Daisy and John listened spellbound to this impromptu but pure singing which matched the setting, the weather and the perfect evening. Daisy looked at John and smiled contentedly, the sunset’s orange glow casting a golden richness onto her skin. He touched her hand. There was something about this moment she would never forget. This wondrous place, this Paradiso. This flawless weather. This wonderful song. This compelling company. Oh, this extraordinary new way of life. It was people working with nature to provide perfection. Never had she been so happy. Never had she been so relaxed. There was such a future here to look forward to with the man she loved. And she loved this delectable man with a passion she would have thought impossible.

  They stayed only one night with Pasquale and Concetta. To have stayed longer – even though they would have been welcomed – would have been an overindulgence, so royally were they treated. Next day, Sunday, when they arose, their Italian hosts were dressed ready to go to church.

  ‘Are you coming with us?’ Concetta asked.

  ‘Not today,’ John replied. ‘We have to go back to our hotel. But some other Sunday, yes.’

  ‘You are not Catholics?’

  ‘Protestants,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, protestanti,’ Concetta replied as if he was afflicted with some sort of disease. ‘But we like you all the same. We must convert you …’

  Daisy and John returned to the Hotel Tramontano, anxious for the next day to arrive, when the shops would open and they could buy some serviceable furniture, utensils and provisions. By Tuesday, their chattels had arrived from Rome and, by Wednesday, enough of what they had purchased was delivered, including a bed and bedding, and they spent their first night together at Paradiso.

  By Friday, John was anxious to recommence working. His latest picture remained unfinished, so he set up his easel on the patio under the pergole and painted.

  That evening, Pasquale and Concetta called in with their son, Alberto, on their way home from the caffè and brought with them a pot wrapped in paper which they handed to Daisy.

  ‘A present for you,’ Pasquale said proudly. ‘Gnocchi. You should eat them tonight while they are fresh.’

  ‘Thank you. But only if you will join us and share them with us.’

  ‘We would be honoured, providing you have time,’ Concetta said. �
��But you must be very busy.’

  ‘I have all the time in the world.’ She took the lid off the pot. ‘Anyway, what’s the best way to cook them? I’ve never had gnocchi before.’

  ‘Gnocchi are easy but so nice to eat. I will show you what to do. As a matter of fact, I will help you with everything.’

  ‘You’re so generous, Concetta, you and Pasquale.’

  ‘Concetta!’ Pasquale called, interrupting them. ‘Come and see this …’ He had wandered onto the patio and seen John’s painting for the first time. Concetta joined him and stood at his side. Daisy followed. ‘Concetta, look at this. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?’

  Concetta gasped. ‘Gianni … This is your work?’

  John nodded.

  ‘Oh, it is a masterpiece, Gianni,’ she said excitedly. ‘It takes my breath away. I have never seen anything so beautiful, so perfect … Look, Pasquale. That is surely Daisy …’ She pointed to the figure in the painting, clad in a flowing blue dress.

  ‘Your wife was to be believed when she said you were better than Raphael, Signore Gianni,’ Pasquale said with renewed respect. ‘Of course, I thought she was exaggerating your ability … But now …’ He paused to admire the image of Daisy again. ‘Your Madonna is far more beguiling.’

  ‘But I paint my Madonna in different situations, Pasquale. As a Catholic, I hope you approve.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Gianni. Michaelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio …’ He hunched his shoulders and held out his hands in a typical Italian gesture. ‘They all painted their Madonnas. I doubt whether the Vatican approved of them all. But me? I am not so prudish. Your Madonna is the essence of femininity and beauty, but she seems unaware of the power of either. If I am any judge, it seems she has no desire to exploit her charms. That makes her all the more fascinating.’

  John smiled. ‘Thank you, Pasquale. I am happy that you approve. But credit must go to Daisy. She is an excellent model.’

  ‘She is very beautiful, as I have commented many times … Oh, I love this painting, Gianni.’