by Isobel Chace
Stony-faced, Ruth refused to acknowledge that she had understood the innuendo.
“Where is Signor Verdecchio?” she asked coldly.
“At the bedside of a friend of his,” Giulia replied, a little unsure of this strange English woman. "He is over at Messina. He will be back soon enough.”
Ruth certainly hoped so. She didn’t want to stay any longer at the Verdecchio house than she could help.
“Perhaps I could make myself a cup of coffee,” she suggested gently.
Giulia bridled. “I will bring it to you in the salotto, if you will wait there.”
She almost pushed Ruth before her, through the kitchen and across a wide, elegant terrace. The sitting room, full of austere and awkward furniture, was reached through a large casement window.
“Wait here,” Giulia commanded grimly.
Ruth sat nervously on the edge of an elegant chaise-longue and wondered bitterly how she was expected to fill in her time before the infamous Mario deigned to come home and meet her. It was strange how he had the ability to make her angry whatever he did! She had never known anyone else who made her prickle with sheer temper when he had done nothing more than compare her unfavourably with Pearl’s ash-blonde prettiness—and at least twenty other men had done that! But then they hadn’t looked at her with quite the same cynical amusement that had so exasperated her!
There were a few books on a table by the telephone and Ruth went across the room to take a closer look at them. Only one was in English, an American novel that she had already read. Ruth picked it up nevertheless and began to leaf through the pages to see if she remembered the story as well as she thought she did.
The telephone rang shrilly beside her, making her jump. She hesitated for a minute, then she picked up the receiver.
“That you, Mario?” a particularly English voice said in her ear.
“No,” she stammered back. “I’m afraid he’s out.”
There was a lengthy pause, in which she could almost hear the Englishman’s surprise.
“Who are you?” the voice asked.
“Miss Arnold. Ruth Arnold.”
“Arnold?” There was a faint chuckle. “Are you the Pearl Beyond Price?”
Ruth blushed. “No, I am not,” she said distinctly.
More laughter. “I’m coming over to find out!” the voice informed her. “Mario has no right to keep you to himself anyway.”
Ruth tried to sound sophisticated and cool. “Suit yourself,” she said. She put the receiver back on its cradle and wished she were dead. It had all been so simple back in Naples. She would teach Mario a lesson and that would be that. She hadn’t thought that other people might complicate matters, or that Mario wouldn’t even be there to meet her!
Giulia came running into the room, a cup of steaming coffee in one hand.
“Did you. hear the telephone?” she asked unnecessarily.
Ruth nodded. “It was an Englishman,” she said.
Giulia gave the telephone a knowing look. “That will be the Signor Brett,” she muttered.
“He’s coming over,” Ruth added.
“Did you tell him Signor Verdecchio is away for the day?”
Ruth smiled slowly. “I think he is coming over to see me,” she said.
“It is your business,” Giulia acknowledged. “But the Signor Verdecchio will not be pleased. This man, Henry Brett, he serves the Signor. He works on his land, laying pipes for water. He doesn’t share his leisure-time—”
“Perhaps you will bring a cup of coffee for him when he comes,” Ruth interrupted her.
“Signor Verdecchio will not like it!” Giulia snapped. “He did not bring you here for Signor Brett!”
Ruth held her head high. “I came of my own accord,” she said. “And I’ll do what I like!”
Giulia’s eyes glittered. “I will tell Signor Verdecchio—”
“Signor Verdecchio already knows!” Ruth cut her off curtly and quite untruthfully. “Please show Mr. Brett in here when he comes.”
With a grudging look of respect for Ruth, Giulia set down the cup of coffee and left the room. It was very quiet when she had gone. Ruth walked restlessly up and down the room, looking at this and that just to fill in time. There were several dark portraits on the walls, she noticed. Some of them had a distinct look of Mario, cynical and forbidding, with a touch of the hauteur she so despised in him. They were probably, she thought indifferently, his ancestors who had lived in the house before him.
That it was a very ancient house, she had no doubt. The Moorish arches and the fountain that played on the corner of the terrace spoke silently of the Sicilian past, when the island had been a part of the great Arab civilisation that had stretched from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. Some of the material that had been used to build the arches were older still, with Roman capitals, some of them still bearing the legend of the names of the ancient gods of Rome.
Indeed, the house was so full of history that Mario had scarcely impressed his own personality at all. The discovery gave Ruth great satisfaction. Why should she be afraid of such a man? Not that she was, she told herself hurriedly, but it was nice to know that in some ways he was so nondescript.
Mr. Brett’s arrival was announced by the dog. Ruth could hear him barking long before Giulia brought him in to the sitting room with glowering disapproval. Ruth rose to her feet and smiled at the stranger.
“Mr. Brett?” she asked hesitantly.
He was a man in his middle thirties, she judged, although his hair was already turning grey. His skin was of the very fair kind that refuses to tan, but goes scarlet in the sun, and the backs of his hands were a mass of freckles ending in unkempt nails that had apparently seen a great deal of hard labour. His green eyes smiled at her.
“No, I can see at a glance that you are not Pearl after all!” he said regretfully.
“Pearl is my sister,” Ruth told him.
He looked surprised. “I hadn’t thought that Mario had intended to bring the whole family!”
“He didn’t,” Ruth retorted.
Mr. Brett looked amused and faintly respectful. “Does he know you’re here?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not yet,” she said grimly.
Mr. Brett emitted a long whistle. “Sooner you than me!” he exclaimed.
Ruth sat down with dignity. “I prefer not to discuss it,” she told him. “What are you doing in Sicily, Mr. Brett?”
He raised his eyebrows a little at her sudden formality. “I’m putting in an irrigation system on Mario’s estate,” he answered her. “We hope it’s going to do great things for the local people. They’re not as poor as some of the people in Sicily—Mario has seen to that!—but the old, grinding poverty is only just below the surface.”
“And how will irrigation help?” Ruth enquired, suddenly very glad to have someone to talk to.
“It’ll help,” he said briefly. “They’ll lose less of their topsoil for a start. It’ll mean they can have water piped to their houses too.”
“D’you mean they haven’t water now?” Ruth asked, appalled.
“They share a tap at the end of the street. Would you like to see what we’re doing for yourself?”
Ruth was immediately enthusiastic. “May I?” she said. “Can we go now?”
He smiled lazily. “I don’t see why not. You can come back to my place for lunch if you’d care to?”
“I’d love it!” she exclaimed. “Mr. Brett—”
“Call me Henry,” he interposed lazily.
The easy colour fled up Ruth’s cheeks. “My name is Ruth,” she said awkwardly.
“How apt!” he commented.
She was surprised. “Why do you say that?” she asked him. Nobody had ever suggested that her name was in the least bit like her before, not in the same way as Pearl was like her name, with her ash-blonde hair and fair, creamy skin.
Henry Brett laughed. “I don’t know. Ruth amidst the alien corn and all that sort of thing, I suppose.�
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She smiled too. “Only there is no Boaz for me to set my cap at,” she said gruffly.
His green eyes opened very wide. “I rather thought Mario was already cast for the part,” he murmured.
Ruth looked shocked. “Certainly not,” she said. “I hardly know him.”
Henry laughed a good deal at that. “It isn’t always considered necessary!” he remarked dryly.
“It is with me!” Ruth claimed in a voice that quivered despite her. Why, she didn’t even like Mario, and besides, she had Pearl’s feelings to consider. She had come to Sicily to punish Mario, not to compete with her sister for his favours.
Henry smiled down at her. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you over the estate.”
Henry Brett drove a jeep that was old enough to have been left over from the last war. Its hard canvas seats were ingrained with the dirt of the years, giving the vehicle a seedy look that fitted in well with the surrounding scenery. The land was a hard land. It was dry and dusty, with the occasional olive tree to give an illusion of wealth. Sometimes the rock came right through the tired topsoil to break the old-fashioned ploughs that were still dragged through the dust at planting time. Some long-legged sheep nibbled for a living where they could, watched over by a sleeping youth who was hiding his head from the heat of the sun.
“Have a good look,” Henry said to Ruth. “You’ll see the difference then where the scheme is already in operation.”
“Where is that?” Ruth asked.
He pointed into the distance. “On the other side of the village,” he said.
It seemed to Ruth that Mario owned an awful lot of land. Odd, semi-deserted houses peppered the fields, but most of the people had been gathered into the newer houses that huddled together in the village. From a distance it looked as though the houses were falling over one another in their anxiety to reach the top of the hill, their pantiled roofs and white-painted facades leaning at crazy angles one to the other.
Henry drove the jeep straight up the single, narrow cobbled street with an open drain that ran down the centre, carrying away the water from the women’s washing and the litter of the day’s marketing. In the centre of the village was a square built round a fountain that only played in wet weather, and the church that was the centre of almost everything.
On the other side of the village, it was true, the grass grew greener, the vines were weighed down with fruit, and the animals were sleeker and fatter.
“You see!” Henry grinned in triumph. “That’s what water will do for you!”
“Where does it come from?”
“A nearby lake.” Henry’s interest wavered. “Tell me, Ruth, what do you do at home in England?”
“Me?” Ruth was curiously flattered that he should be interested enough in her to ask. “I teach,” she said.
He stuck his tongue into his cheek. “I never would have guessed!” he said solemnly. “Teach what?
“History mostly,” she told him. “That’s why Pearl and I came to Italy. I’ve always longed to see these places for myself!”
“And now you have?” he said gently.
“Some of them. I haven’t seen anything here yet. Did you know that it was by a lake in Sicily that Proserpina disappeared when Pluto captured her? It must have been somewhere around here that Ceres started searching for her.”
“Is Ceres the same person as Demeter?”
Ruth nodded. “Demeter is her Greek, and Ceres her Roman name,” she explained.
“And she found her lost daughter in the underworld? But the poor girl could only surface for half the year? Is that the right story?”
Ruth smiled. “It makes you think when it all happened around here,” she said earnestly.
“You almost sound as if you believed it!” Henry exclaimed.
“I suppose I do, in a way,” she admitted. “Not the story exactly,” she went on hurriedly, “but the poetic idea.”
Henry stared at her. “You’ve lost me!” he admitted. “You’d better keep that kind of remark for Mario. He goes in for legends and history too. Me, I’m a modern kind of individual bringing water to real people who are living here and now.”
Ruth chuckled. “There wouldn’t be any rain for you to use if Ceres hadn’t cried over the loss of her daughter!”
Henry shook his head. “I never thought of that!” he admitted. “It’s a pity she didn’t cry a bit more, that’s all I can say!”
Ruth enjoyed that day more than any other day she had spent in Italy. She had found it fascinating to watch Henry’s mechanical diggers laying the deep trenches through which the piped water went. She had liked to watch the gangs of sun-darkened men who were working on the scheme. Most of them wore jaunty, bright yellow crash helmets, and all of them had whistled after her and called out the most outrageous compliments to her—but then none of them had ever set eyes on Pearl!
Henry had taken her to a small ristorante in the village for lunch.
“I thought we were going to your place for lunch,” she had said innocently.
“It would cause a deal of gossip,” he had told her grimly.
“Let them gossip, I don’t care!” she had declared.
“But Mario would,” he had retorted. “Meglio soli che male accompagnati!”
“Meaning?” she had questioned him.
“That it is better to be alone than in bad company,” he had translated. “Especially if you are a woman in Sicily,” he had added meaningly.
Ruth had been tempted to ignore his warning, but a single look at Giulia’s face on her return to the Verdecchio house had convinced her that Henry knew what he was talking about.
“Signor Verdecchio is not yet back,” Giulia told her as she answered the door.
“Has his aunt come yet?” Ruth almost pleaded with her.
Giulia shook her head. “She is not expected,” she said flatly.
Ruth would have liked to have asked Henry to stay, but he wouldn’t.
“You don’t understand,” he told her helplessly. “You’re Mario’s girl, and that means something in these parts.”
“But I’m not!” she denied hotly.
“Tell that to Mario!” he said.
It was very lonely after he had gone. Ruth watched the sun go down from the garden, the little dog playing about her feet. She was still there when Guilia called her in to supper.
“I don’t think I ought to stay if he doesn’t come soon,” she told Giulia as the Italian woman served her with a bowl of soup.
“When you are finished I will take you to your room,” Giulia answered, ignoring the English girl’s doubts.
Ruth knew that the Italian woman disapproved of her, but she was too tired to care. Perhaps, she thought, it would be silly to leave the house now. Mario’s aunt was sure to come sooner or later and then everything would be all right.
But when it came to it she was afraid to go to bed on her own in Mario’s house. If he had been there that morning she would be back in Naples by now, braving Pearl’s anger rather than his. But he had not been here and she would be poor-spirited indeed if she didn’t tell him exactly what she thought of his treatment of her sister before she went!
The bedroom Giulia had prepared for her was large and rather beautiful. Thin, fragile carpets, woven into lovely patterns, covered most of the walls, and the four-poster bed delighted her. Giulia brought her a jug of hot water and dourly said good-night, her heavy footsteps dying away down the long passage to upstairs.
Ruth shut and locked the door on to the landing, wishing that she had thought to bring the dog up to her room with her. She wondered if Giulia would think her very odd if she went downstairs and collected him, and decided that she didn’t care.
The dog was more than pleased to be invited into the house. He ran up the stairs ahead of her, his tail waving from side to side. She whistled to him to come into her room and laughed to herself as he sprang straight up on to the bed and curled up to go to sleep. She followed him into the bed, shi
vering slightly for the night was cool, and together they settled down to sleep until morning.
CHAPTER THREE
SOME time in the night the dog got off the bed and barked raucously. Ruth awoke and glanced about her. A slit of light shone into her room through a door she had not known was there.
“Here, dog!” she muttered.
The small animal jumped back on to the bed and licked her face, pleased to have got some response from somebody. The light went out and there was silence in the house. Ruth turned over and slept again.
Giulia’s footsteps, stumping along the landing, awakened her. It was still very early. Ruth got out of bed and went to the window hoping to catch the last of the sunrise, but the sun was already too high and the honey-coloured land was bleached by its strong light, splashed here and there by the green of olive and citrus trees.
Giulia knocked on her door and came straight in with a cup of coffee in her hand.
“What is the dog doing here?” she asked dourly.
Ruth smiled at the small animal. “He kept me company,” she defended him. “What’s his name?”
“Saro.” The Italian woman softened a little. “You had better let me take him back to the stables before the Signor sees him! Though he can hardly have helped to hear him in the night.”
That reminded Ruth about the other door to her room. She looked round expecting to see it, but only the one out to the landing was visible.
“I thought I saw a light—” she said, puzzled.
