by Dilly Court
It was Gino who broke the shocked silence. He slipped his arm around Phoebe’s shoulders. ‘I am proud to be the father of Phoebe’s baby. I’ve never wanted anything other than to marry her and take care of her for the rest of my life.’
There was a stunned silence, and it seemed to Phoebe that even the clock on the wall had stopped ticking. Her uncles were staring at her in disbelief and Ivy was gazing at her wide-eyed in astonishment.
‘What?’ Fabio’s roar echoed round the house like thunder. ‘You were in the family way when we left for Italy?’
Maria rushed at Phoebe and slapped her across the face. ‘Whore,’ she cried angrily. ‘I thought better of you, but you’re just like her. No wonder Annie died. It must have been of shame.’
Phoebe’s hand flew to her afflicted cheek and hot tears welled up in her eyes. She bit her lip to prevent herself from crying, but she could say nothing in her defence without giving away Teddy’s true parentage.
‘Hold on, Maria.’ Fabio caught her by the wrist as she was about to strike Phoebe for a second time. ‘This is not the way.’ He glowered at Gino. ‘You left her to bring a bastard child into the world.’
‘He didn’t know,’ Phoebe protested. ‘I didn’t tell him.’
‘I begged her to marry me before we left for Italy,’ Gino said, taking Phoebe’s hand in his. ‘But she wanted to be sure of her feelings before she agreed to wed.’
‘Her feelings.’ Maria’s voice rose to a crescendo. ‘What about family honour? You’ve disgraced the Giamatti name, and you’ve brought a stranger into our house without our permission.’ She pointed at Ivy who was cowering against the wall, her escape barred by Lorenzo who was somewhat sinisterly rolling up his sleeves as if ready for a fight.
Teddy began to howl dismally. ‘Baby needs his feed, missis,’ Ivy whispered, glancing nervously at Maria as if fearing she might be the next victim of her wrath. ‘Shall I take him upstairs now?’
‘You had to hire a woman in to feed your baby. You cannot even suckle your own child.’ Maria curled her lip in scorn. ‘What sort of woman are you, Phoebe? Your father would be turning in his grave if he could see you now.’
‘Shall we take Gino outside and give him a good thrashing, Papa?’ Lorenzo flexed his muscles, smacking a fist against his open hand.
Fabio shook his head as Julio prepared to follow his brother’s example. ‘There will be no violence. The deed is done. I want to know what he intends to do about it.’
‘My wish has always been to marry Phoebe.’ Gino gave Phoebe’s hand a comforting squeeze. ‘But it’s up to her.’
‘Not now it isn’t,’ Maria said angrily. ‘She will wed you, like it or not.’
Fabio shot her a warning glance. ‘I won’t force my granddaughter to do anything she doesn’t want to. It’s your decision, Phoebe.’
Ignoring the others, and still clutching Phoebe’s hand, Gino went down on one knee. ‘I love you with all my heart. Will you marry me, and make me the happiest man in London?’
There was no doubting his sincerity, but she felt trapped. If she refused his offer of marriage she had no doubt that the baby would be taken from her. One look at Nonna’s intractable expression was enough to convince her that Teddy would at best be sent to Italy to be raised by distant relations, or at worst sent to an orphanage. And Gino, who had bravely admitted fathering a child not his own, would share in her disgrace. He would be shunned by his family and his life would be ruined. She knew there was only one answer she could give him, but deep down she felt as though her world was crumbling about her ears. She had thought she could marry Gino and learn to love him as he undoubtedly loved her. She had been pleased to see him as she had demonstrated impulsively when she first saw him, but she had felt nothing deeper. His presence was comforting but did not make her pulses race. He was solid, dependable and everything she ought to want in a husband. He had lied to save her from blurting out the truth. So why could she not give him her heart? She jumped as her grandmother prodded her sharply in the ribs. ‘Give him your answer, girl. Or do you want to shame your family?’
Fabio frowned. ‘Let the girl speak for herself, Maria.’
‘Will you be my wife, Phoebe?’ Gino said softly. ‘I will love you always and any other children we might be blessed with. What name did you give our son?’
‘Edward,’ Phoebe said automatically. ‘I call him Teddy.’ She took the baby from Ivy’s arms and Teddy stopped crying. For a moment she thought that he gave her a gummy smile, but it was merely the onset of hiccups. Gino reached out to stroke the baby’s downy head. ‘He’s a fine boy. I’m proud to have him for a son.’
Phoebe smothered a sigh. There was no way out for her now. Teddy’s welfare must come first. ‘I will marry you, Gino.’
‘The sooner the better,’ Maria said, turning her back on them. ‘Now get out of my kitchen all of you or you won’t get supper until midnight.’
Teddy’s face crumpled and his mouth drooped at the corners. Recognising the warning signs, Phoebe handed him back to Ivy before he had gathered enough momentum to scream for his next feed. Ivy scuttled off in the direction of the staircase as Fabio shepherded his sons through the cellar door. ‘We’ll start cleaning up now and get a head start on tomorrow’s work. Call us when supper is ready, Mamma.’
‘Come outside,’ Phoebe said, tucking her hand into the crook of Gino’s arm. ‘We must talk.’
‘Yes,’ Maria called as they left the kitchen. ‘You must decide a date for the wedding.’
An April shower had just ceased as they left the house. The sun had struggled out from between grumpy grey clouds but its feeble rays barely managed to penetrate the squalor of Saffron Hill. It was not until they reached the river that it was possible to appreciate the full impact of sunlight reflected on the tea-coloured water. Gino led Phoebe to the spot on Pigs Quay where he had first proposed to her all those months ago. In the shadow of the gas works it was not the most romantic of places but it was quiet in the late afternoon. He took her gently in his arms. ‘Now tell me everything, Phoebe.’
She stared down into the water as it swirled around the wooden structure of the quay wall, lapping and making sucking noises. The green weed growing on the stanchions waved rhythmically in the current creating the impression of mermaids’ hair, and as she peered into the murky depths Phoebe could see pale faces staring back at her. It was like looking into a crystal ball, only now it was the muddy waters of the River Thames that were trying to tell her something. She closed her eyes. Suddenly she did not want to talk about what had happened in Brighton. She wanted to close the chapter on her mother’s death and her difficulties with Caspar. What she desired most of all now was to forget the past and to move on towards the future. Opening her eyes, she met Gino’s tender gaze with a smile. ‘Thank you for standing by me, even though I told a dreadful lie to my family. It was wrong of me but I didn’t know what else to say.’
He laid his finger on her lips. ‘Hush now, Phoebe. I’d do anything for you, you know that, and as far as I’m concerned Teddy will be as much my son as any children of our own.’
‘Even though he’s part Paxman?’ She had to be sure that he understood.
‘Even so.’ Taking her in a close embrace he devoured her lips in a hungry kiss. ‘I want you so much, Phoebe. I can’t wait to make you my wife, but I promised my mother that we would be married in Stresa. That means waiting until the autumn, although your grandparents want us to marry straight away. What do you think?’
A wave of relief almost took her breath away. ‘I think it would be lovely to be married in the church by the lake.’
‘And you don’t mind waiting until the autumn?’
She detected a note of disappointment in his voice and she answered his doubts with a kiss. He held her close, whispering endearments in her ear in between kisses that excited her body but left a cold place in her heart. ‘We will be married in Italy,’ she said when he allowed her to draw breath, but it was more to convince
herself that this was what she wanted than to answer Gino’s question.
‘And now,’ he said, sitting down on an upturned crate that had been abandoned on the quay wall and drawing her onto his lap, ‘tell me what happened in Brighton. Your last letter was very brief, little more than a note, when you told me that Annie had died.’
She related the facts simply and without embellishment, omitting any mention of Caspar’s unwelcome advances. That was all in the past and to mention it would only upset Gino. Neither did she mention the fact that she had bumped into Rogue Paxman in Farringdon market. She omitted the fact that he had come to the house and had seen her with Teddy in her arms and that she had told him that he was Dolly’s child. The web of lies and deceit seemed to be enfolding her in its silken mesh, but there were things that she felt Gino did not need to know.
Maria received the news that Phoebe and Gino were not to be married immediately with her customary fiery outburst of temper which was calmed by her less volatile husband. Fabio pointed out that the deed was already done. The child was born and thriving and it did not matter what the gossips said. Gino was prepared to make an honest woman of Phoebe, and, he added smiling, to wait several months would mean they could save for a bigger wedding at home and make their relations green with envy. Maria accepted this with the glimmer of a smile and Phoebe knew that her grandfather had won this particular battle. But she could see that Nonna was going to have the last word as usual and Maria did not disappoint. She fixed Phoebe with a gimlet eye. ‘It will give you time to wean the boy before you get that way again. Me, I had Paulo nine months after our wedding day, and in less than a year Lorenzo arrived, followed eleven months later by Julio.’ She stood arms akimbo. ‘You see how they ruined my shape. I was a slip of a girl before my babies were born.’
Fabio slid his arms around her ample waist. ‘But now I have more to hold on to, Mamma. And you were a little minx if my old memory isn’t failing me.’ He gave her a smacking kiss and she pushed him away, giggling like a girl and blushing.
‘You silly old fool. We’re past that sort of thing.’ She wriggled free from his grasp, patting her hair in place. ‘If you are half as happy with Gino as we have been all these years then you will be a fortunate woman, Phoebe. I suppose it doesn’t matter if you wait until September to marry Gino. At least it gives me a chance to outshine Cousin Violetta, who has never stopped boasting about the wedding of her ugly daughter to that boring town clerk.’
‘I’m glad you don’t mind, both of you,’ Phoebe said, smiling with relief. ‘I thought you might want to talk it through with Gino’s mother and that would end in a row.’
Lorenzo had come into the kitchen halfway through this conversation. ‘Say the word, Papa, and I’ll show Gino what I think of a chap who has dishonoured our little Phoebe.’ He glanced at Ivy who was busy at the sink washing the last of the supper dishes. ‘I would respect my woman, if I had one.’
Phoebe was quick to notice that Ivy paused, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder in Lorenzo’s direction, before going back to her task with renewed vigour. Phoebe slipped her hand through the crook of her uncle’s arm. ‘Any girl would be lucky to get you, Nenzo.’
He dropped a kiss on top of her head. ‘Thank you, cara. But just say the word and I’ll be glad to sort out young Gino. If he’s refused to marry you …’
‘No,’ Phoebe said hastily. ‘That’s not it at all. We’re going to be married in September, in Stresa. That’s what his mother wants and if Nonno and Nonna don’t mind then that’s all there is to be said.’
Lorenzo looked to his parents for confirmation and they nodded in unison. ‘Well,’ he said grudgingly. ‘If you’re certain, but any man who dishonours a member of our family deserves to be treated like a cur. As it is, I will take Gino to the pub and buy him a drink.’
Fabio shook his head. ‘We don’t waste our money on cheap grog, Nenzo. We are saving now for the biggest wedding that Stresa has ever seen, and I expect you to contribute to it and Julio too, if only for the sake of Paulo who is not here to see his daughter married into a good, respectable family.’
Lorenzo shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘One glass of beer is not going to break the bank, Papa.’ With a last glance in Ivy’s direction he sauntered out of the room calling for his brother to join him.
Phoebe could only be grateful that none of the male members of her family knew that Ned Paxman was Teddy’s real father. If they were to discover the truth it would result in a terrible vendetta. There would be a blood feud such as never seen before in London. It did not bear thinking about. She went to the sink and picked up a drying cloth. ‘I’ll finish up here, Ivy. Go to bed. I’m sure you must be exhausted.’
Ivy shook the greasy water from her work-reddened hands. ‘Ta, miss. I am a bit tired. Young Teddy wakes so often in the night.’
Maria opened the larder door and reached inside to pick up a jug of milk from the marble slab. She poured some into a cup and handed it to Ivy. ‘Drink this. You’re feeding my great-grandson and he needs proper nourishment if he’s to thrive. I still say it’s a crying shame that Phoebe can’t make her own milk, but better luck next time. You probably didn’t try hard enough, my girl. When you have your second child I’ll be there to show you how it’s done.’ She replaced the jug and swept out of the room beckoning to Fabio. ‘Come, it’s time for bed. You have to be up at four o’clock if you’re going to collect ice from the importer.’
Obediently he rose to his feet from his chair by the range. Winking at Phoebe he followed his wife out of the room.
During the next few months life slipped into an everyday routine where Phoebe did readings of the tarot cards and the crystal ball in the mornings, and conducted table tipping sessions and séances in the afternoons. With the return of the Italian community who had overwintered in their native land she found that she was increasingly busy. She employed none of the tricks that her mother had used but somehow, whether by luck or some power that she had failed to utilise in the past, she found that she could pass on messages to her eager audience from their loved ones. It must, she thought, be simply her vivid imagination and the fact that she knew most of her clients and their family histories, making it a matter of commonsense to relay good tidings from beyond the veil.
Teddy flourished and quickly became a favourite with his great-grandparents and his great-uncles. Watching them with him Phoebe could not help wondering how they would feel if they knew that he was the proverbial cuckoo in the nest, unrelated to them but being reared as one of their own. She had not seen Rogue Paxman again or his brother and she avoided going to places where their paths might cross. Gino came to call every evening after the day’s work ended, but as spring turned into a hot summer and the days grew longer their time together shortened. They went for walks after supper when Teddy was asleep in the wooden crib that Lorenzo had made for him out of old packing cases. Maria had cut old sheets down to size and had spent her evenings crocheting a blanket, using wool she had bought from a market stall in Petticoat Lane. Lorenzo, Phoebe noticed, spent rather more time than she would have expected with Teddy, and when she saw him walking out one summer’s evening with Ivy on his arm her suspicions were confirmed. She had seen from the start that they had a mutual attraction and she was pleased to think that her favourite uncle had at last found a woman who appealed to him. Ivy had changed almost out of all recognition from the half-starved, timid creature who had accompanied Phoebe and Teddy to London. She had thrived on the diet of pasta and vegetables, and having lost the scrawny waif-like look she was almost pretty. Dressed in some of Annie’s old clothes that Phoebe had not had the heart to sell to the dolly-shop, Ivy looked like a different woman. Her dark hair now glowed with auburn lights and Phoebe had shown her how to fashion it into a heavy chignon that complemented her heart-shaped face. She would never be a beauty, but her small features had a sweetness of expression that belied her unhappy past. Even more in her favour was the fact that she deferred respectfully to
everything Maria said. She obeyed without question and never once offered an opinion of her own.
Gradually, as the summer wore on, Phoebe began to worry less about anyone discovering the truth about her small brother. He was thriving and beginning to sit up and take notice of his surroundings. He was a placid child with a happy temperament, quite unlike either of his parents, and had won hearts with his smiles and the delighted cooing noises he made when he recognised someone close to him.
Phoebe put aside her doubts about marrying Gino. His open adoration and tender kisses were a balm to her soul. She concentrated on returning his affection as best she could. What was love after all? She vowed that she would try her utmost to make him happy, but as the summer days began to shorten she knew that time was running out. Soon it would be September and the wedding in Stresa that her grandparents had spent the last few months planning and saving for. Tiny arrows of doubt pierced her heart and sometimes in the middle of the night she awakened in a panic, but with the dawn commonsense reasserted itself and she was calm again. There were no monsters. Her life would be safe and secure when she married Gino. She and her brother would never want for anything.
Phoebe was alone in the house. Maria had gone to market with Ivy, who was pushing Teddy in the perambulator that Fabio had bought from a pawnshop around the corner in Charles Street. The men were out on their rounds selling hokey-pokey and Phoebe had no bookings that morning. She was washing some of Teddy’s clothes in the stone sink when someone hammered on the front door. Thinking that it might be one of their neighbours wishing to borrow something, or perhaps a prospective client, she wiped her hands on her apron and hurried to open it. Shielding her eyes against the bright light, she stared in disbelief at the man who had his hand raised to knock again. ‘Caspar.’ She attempted to close the door but he stuck his foot over the threshold and with a mighty shove sent her stumbling backwards into the hallway.
