by Anne Weale
They ate in silence fraught with questions. But the essential question had already been answered. Last night, in the pool pavilion, they had come together like two parts of a whole.
She had once interviewed an actress who had talked at length about Yin and Yang, the two complementary principles of Chinese philosophy whose interaction maintained the harmony of the universe and influenced everything in it.
Anny had listened and made notes while privately thinking it nonsense. Perhaps it wasn’t. All these years while she and Van had been separated, she had never felt as she did now. There had always been something missing, some flaw, some subtle discordance. Now that feeling had gone.
When they had finished eating, Van rose to clear the table. When she would have helped him, he laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘No, sit tight. I’ll do it. The washing up can wait. First things first.’
‘Do you have a T-shirt I can borrow? Now the sun’s stronger, this robe is beginning to feel hot.’
‘Sure.’ A few moments later he came to the main hatchway. ‘Catch!’ A bundle of white cotton flew through the air.
Anny shrugged off the robe and for a few seconds sat enjoying her nudity. Then the thought of all the people who had had their privacy invaded by the long-range lens of a press photographer’s camera made her quickly put on the shirt which had the schooner’s name printed in a small circle on the front of it.
‘Aren’t you afraid of being pried on by paparazzi?’ she asked, when Van rejoined her.
He had two glasses in one hand, a bottle of champagne in the other. ‘We’re anchored too close in for anyone to focus on us from outside my boundary wall.’
‘They could climb the wall.’
‘Not without breaking electronic beams and alerting the security guards. We have some unpleasant surprises for unauthorised visitors, including two large guard dogs trained to terrify trespassers. They don’t actually eat them, but they look as if they might.’
She watched his fingers deftly unfastening the wire cage over the cork. He peeled away the gold foil and eased the cork from the neck of the thick green bottle, releasing a wisp of vapour.
‘Don’t you hate having to live surrounded by security precautions?’
‘Have you found them intrusive since you’ve been here?’ He filled the glasses.
‘Not except for having to prove my identity when I arrived yesterday. But if they had been in place in the contessa’s time, you and I would never have met.’
‘I think we met too soon.’ He handed her one of the glasses. ‘That was the root of our problems. From the time I found you talking to yourself in the belvedere to the time we split up, we were always at different stages of development. Had we met for the first time yesterday, it would have been a lot simpler.’
‘But we wouldn’t have ended the evening making love,’ she said dryly. ‘It was only because I did know you that I let you...overwhelm me. One can recognise attraction instantly, but love is something else. It depends on a whole lot more than sexual attraction.’
‘I agree. But when I fell in love with you, you weren’t ready for grown-up emotions. I should never have agreed to our living together in Paris. You were still trying your wings and I wanted to cage you. I wanted to bend you to my will. No one has the right to do that. A man and a woman can share some ambitions and dreams, but they need to keep their individuality and have goals of their own. I know that now. I didn’t then. Or, if I knew it theoretically, I didn’t apply it to us.’
He touched the rim of his glass to the side of hers. ‘To getting it right this time.’
Without being quite sure what he meant, she echoed the toast and lifted the glass to her lips, feeling a slight effervescence tickle her nose as she took her first mouthful of the vintage champagne.
Having drunk some of his, Van put his glass on the table and took her free hand. ‘Will you many me, Anny...keeping your freedom to be yourself as well as being my wife? If you will, I swear I will never put obstacles in the way of your career. I love you and need you...on any terms you care to name. If we can’t be together all the time, so be it. Any share of your life you can give me will be better than the misery of living without you.’
The passionate declaration made her eyes fill with tears.
‘It was misery for me too. I thought it was over between us and I tried to stick my broken heart back together and convince myself I could learn to love someone else. But no one could ever match up to you.’ Her voice cracked, the tears overflowed. ‘Why am I crying when I’m happy for the first time in years?’ Having no handkerchief, she wiped her eyes with her fingers.
Van removed the champagne glass from her other hand and drew her out of her chair and onto his lap. ‘You haven’t answered my question. Will you marry me?’
‘Yes, please.’ She gave a long, tremulous sigh and snuggled against him. A few moments later she chuckled.
Stroking her back, Van asked, ‘What’s the joke?’
‘I was visualising Greg’s reaction when I call him to tell him the interview is off...and why. He’ll think I’m out of my head. He has no idea that I know you.’
‘Why scrap the interview? Why not go ahead and do it? That’s what you came for.’
‘No, it isn’t. I told myself that I didn’t want to come here...that I was under pressure...jeopardising my career if I didn’t. All that was self-deluding rubbish. I came because I needed to see you again... needed to be near you if only for a few hours.’
She sat up straight, turning to face him and putting her hands on the warm brown skin of his shoulders.
‘You said you wanted to see how I had turned out? Was that the only reason?’
‘You know it wasn’t. I’d been keeping discreet tabs on you. When word reached me that you might be getting serious about a guy you were seeing, I had to use the only ace in my hand.’
‘Why didn’t you use it sooner?’
‘You held the same card in your hand. I’d been waiting for you to use it. You were the one who broke up our relationship. For a long time I hoped you’d be the one to mend it. It was Emily who told me I was being a stiff-necked ass. She told me that, when she was a teenager, James and Summer were crazy about each other but held off from saying so. She quoted Shakespeare at me. Something Puck said in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”’
‘I think Emily could be in love with you herself,’ Anny said, looking troubled. ‘I hope not. I wouldn’t wish that sort of unhappiness on my worst enemy, and I liked her very much... when I wasn’t being stupidly jealous of her.’
‘Don’t worry about Emily. She had a bad case of calf love but she recovered. Since then there’s been no one serious. The right man for her will turn up sooner or later. She’s not that old,’ said Van.
His hands were under the T-shirt, caressing her waist and hips. ‘Would you like to see what’s been done to the cabins?’
An hour later, wearing a pair of shorts he had found for her, Anny climbed down the ladder into the dinghy and they went ashore.
Strolling up the steep paths with her hand in his, she discovered that Van had become a knowledgeable plantsman who now knew the botanical names of everything in the garden.
They were passing the ancient olive tree, said to be six hundred years old, when he said, ‘I sense that you’re not too happy with the way Orengo is now. You liked it better the way it used to be.’
‘It’s always a bit of a shock to find somewhere, or someone, you loved has changed since the last time you saw them. I thought you were different...and you are, but it’s an improvement,’ she teased him. ‘As for the house and the garden, perhaps they’re a little too perfect. What they need is some children running around and mussing things up a little.’
His fingers tightened on hers. ‘Do you really want children? I don’t want you to do anything because you feel it’s required of you. If I can have you in my life, even if not all the time, that’s enough for me. I’ve had ye
ars to think about this. It’s clear to me now that the fundamentals of happiness are good health, satisfying work and someone to share life with. There’s a lot you can add on, but all those things are a bonus, not the basic essentials.’
She lifted their linked hands and pressed her lips to the back of his for a moment.
‘I don’t think it’s possible to love a man and not want to have a child by him. I’ve also spent hours and hours thinking. I wrote a profile of a famous violinist for his eightieth birthday. I won’t ever meet a wiser, more tolerant person. At one point in our conversation, he quoted that bit in the Old Testament about “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”.’ I wanted to make my name as a journalist, and that was right...at that time. Now I want to be a wife and mother. If I can keep my career ticking over until the children are school age or even college age—fine. If I can’t, I shan’t feel frustrated. Maybe I’ll change tack...become a different kind of writer. I might write the history of Orengo and some of the other great gardens along the Riviera.’
By a different route from the one she had run down earlier, they had come to the steps leading up to the belvedere on the opposite side from the terrace. The sides of the steps had been planted with tumbling nasturtiums and, behind them, great clumps of strelitzias, their flowers rising from their big leaves like long-necked birds with jade beaks and orange crests.
‘I used to sit here alone, wishing I had you with me.’ Van released her hand to put his arm round her waist and draw her close to him. ‘Must you go back to London? Can’t we get married right away? We’ve only just got back together. It’s too soon to say goodbye.’
‘We’ve said so many goodbyes and I always pretended not to mind, but I minded terribly inside,’ she confessed.
‘So did I. You’ll never know how hard it was to behave like an older brother while you were growing up...that time in Minorca when you asked me to make love to you. Bart would have torn me apart.’
‘I still can’t quite believe it’s come right for us. It’s taken such a long time. What a fool I was ever to leave you.’
‘Let’s put all that behind us. It’s not important any more. We can’t change the past, or erase our mistakes. The here and now is what matters.’
She looked up into his eyes which, when they had stood here yesterday, had not held the tender ardour she saw in them now.
For a moment she glimpsed the future they would make together, foreseeing their happy family life at Orengo and on board Sea Dreams.
Then Van bent his head to kiss her. The fleeting vision faded. As he said, all that mattered was today, being here in his arms and his heart where she belonged.
Author’s Note
Long ago there was a real house called Palazzo Orengo on the Riviera dei Fiori, near the border with France.
In 1867, after many years in China buying silk for the European market, a Quaker merchant, Thomas Hanbury, spent a winter on the French Riviera, looking for a property. Eventually, from a boat, he saw the ruined Palazzo Orengo on a promontory on the Italian side of the frontier. He bought the land, demolished the ruin and built himself a palace to house his collection of Roman antiquities and oriental treasures. The new house was called La Mortola. For almost a century it remained in the hands of his descendants, becoming increasingly famous for the beauty and variety of the plants in the extensive garden.
Recently, in the spring, I visited some of the legendary gardens on the Côte d’Azur. They included La Mortola of which it has been said that passing through its gates is one of the great experiences of a garden lover’s life, something they will never forget.
The house and its grounds are now in the care of the University of Genoa. The great garden is so large and labyrinthine that people can wander about and only catch distant glimpses of others there. My time there inspired the story you have been reading. Later, when I started to write it down, it seemed appropriate to borrow the name of the original building in that glorious location for the house where, in my imagination and, I hope, the minds of my readers, Van and Anny will raise their children and love one another for the rest of their lives.
ISBN: 9781472067432
THE IMPATIENT VIRGIN
© Anne Weale 2013
First Published in Great Britain in 2013
Harlequin (UK) Limited
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