by Isobel Chace
“But you’d like to,” Henry said simply. “You’d do it just to attract Mario’s attention, to see what he would do. I daresay that’s why he kissed Pearl, come to that,” he added darkly.
“I don’t believe you!” Ruth said harshly.
“I’m not asking you to,” Henry retorted, for once sure of his ground. “But I can tell you that no one will cross Mario round_here, so you won’t be able to try! What’s more, I think it’s a jolly good thing. Mario would probably beat you!”
“Just let him try!” Ruth exclaimed through gritted teeth.
“Well, I think he might,” Henry affirmed.
“And yet he can do what he likes!” The blatant injustice of it all cut Ruth to the quick.
Henry had the audacity to laugh. “I think he’s being rather successful,” he remarked obscurely.
“Oh?” Ruth prompted him coldly.
“I should say so!” he went on blithely. “Pearl would be right out of her depth, as I am! You have to hand it to Mario, he probably spotted that from the first!
Ruth blushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said haughtily..
“Oh yes, you do!” He gave her a brotherly shake. “You’re silly too, if you think you can fight him and win—”
“I suppose you expect me to submit to anything?” she demanded fiercely.
“No, I don’t,” he answered promptly. “But I expect Mario does.”
The music came to an end, to the relief of both of them. Ruth thanked him gravely and left him as quickly as possible. She was burning with sheer animal anger, such as she had never known in her life before. No doubt Henry thought he was being very clever, but she had never heard anyone talk so much nonsense! Why, she didn’t care what Mario did for herself! Nor did she care what the local people thought of her! If he wanted to make a fool of himself by kissing Pearl at their wedding party, she didn’t care!
There was one thing that Henry had said that made sense, though. Mario would only hurt Pearl in the long run. He would have broken her without even knowing that he had done so if Pearl had come to Sicily in the first place. Whereas she, Ruth, could give as good as she got any time, anywhere! She might even break him, she thought with satisfaction, for even while the rules were written differently for the man, he was still as much married to her as she was to him!
She was doubly startled when he took her by the arm and led her across the square towards where Lucia and Pearl were standing, glaring at one another in mutual dislike.
“I fancy we have both danced sufficiently duty dances,” Mario said politely.
“Oh, do you think so?” She sounded doubtful. “You don’t seem to have been very successful at cheering up Pearl,” she added.
Mario’s hand on her arm tightened. “Unworthy!” he told her.
“Not at all!” she answered. If he could be polite, so could she! “You really mustn’t let my presence stand in your way!”
“I won’t!” he said promptly.
He delivered her to Lucia’s side and left her there, turning on his heel and walking away without another word.
“You don’t know how maddening it is not to be able to dance!” Lucia told her immediately. “I never thought it could be so frustrating! Not that there is anyone here I could dance with, I suppose!”
“Why ever not?” Ruth asked, barely listening. She watched Mario walking away from herself to Pearl and wished she had kept a still tongue in her head.
“Roberto wouldn’t like it,” Lucia sighed. “But I hate having to wear black on a night like this!”
Ruth felt a rush of sympathy for her. “Do you always do what Roberto says?” she asked with interest.
Lucia’s eyes shone with amusement. “No,” she said. “But I like him to think that I do!”
Ruth lifted her chin. “Why?”
“Because then he is nice to me!” Lucia answered, surprised. “I like him to be nice to me!” she added warmly. She gave Ruth a quick look, shaking her head at her. “You make too much of too little, my dear!”
“Do I?” Ruth said uncertainly.
“Sicilians look after their property,” Lucia told her gently. “Why else do they have blood feuds? If Mario’s mother could understand this, why not you?”
“I am not Mario’s property,” Ruth said grimly.
Lucia giggled. “No? Oh, Ruth, you are so serious! Why don’t you enjoy tonight and let tomorrow bring something new to enjoy?”
Ruth shrugged. “I can’t!” she said frankly.
For an instant, Lucia looked sad too. “And I should be quite happy if Roberto was here!” She poured herself and Ruth each out a glass of wine and sipped it, her feet tapping in time to the music. “Young people cannot dance any more!” she exclaimed. “In my day, we knew all the steps—everything!” She glanced disparagingly at a couple dancing nearby. “Nor did we show our affection in public,” She said in disapproving tones. “That was never done!” She stiffened suddenly, causing Ruth to look at her to see what was the matter. The Italian woman had gone completely white and then, ignoring the dignity that at other times she found so necessary to her, she emitted a squeal of sheer joy. “It’s Roberto! Roberto, I am here!”
Roberto smiled across the dancers at his wife. He had a strong look of Mario, though he was of course an older man. Ruth wondered if that hawklike nose was a feature of all the Verdecchio family. She tried to pretend to herself that she found it unattractive, but her incurably honest mind rejected any such fancy out of hand, and she was left with the glaring truth that it was enough to set her heart hammering in the most uncomfortable way merely because it reminded her of Mario.
“Roberto!” Lucia shrieked, grasping at the cloth of his coat. “What are you doing here?”
Roberto rescued his coat and kissed his wife with careful propriety. “I thought if I were to ever see you again—”
“But I would have come home tomorrow!” Lucia protested.
“I wish I were as sure!” he reproved her. “Besides,” he added on another note, “I wanted to dance at my nephew’s wedding!”
“Oh, can we dance?” Lucia rattled on. “I am still in mourning, you know!”
“Seeing that your dress is black, I did know,” he teased her. “Still, I think you might dance with me!” His eyes slid curiously over Ruth and then asked a question of his wife.
“This is Ruth, our new niece,” Lucia said with pride. “Ruth, this is my husband, Roberto.”
Ruth extended her hand and was a little startled to have it kissed. It wasn’t only Roberto’s nose that reminded her of Mario, she thought, it was also the rich amusement that flooded into his eyes, just as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“Ah, so this is our niece! I thought for a moment it was the other one.”
“N-no,” Lucia said hastily. “Pearl is Ruth’s sister.”
“That explains why she is dancing with Mario,” Roberto approved. His attention was turned fully on to Ruth, who met his stare full on, lifting her chin a trifle to show that she didn’t care.
“Well?” she challenged him.
“Very well,” he said instantly. “But then Mario will have told you that, no?”
Honesty compelled her to admit that he had, but she wasn’t going to admit it to Mario’s uncle or anyone else.
“Won’t you dance with Lucia?” she prompted him gently.
He raised his eyebrows. “And leave you alone? No, my dear, we can wait to dance together. Besides, I want to make your acquaintance. I think I shall join you in a glass of wine and then we can talk.”
Ruth was nervous of any such plan, but she didn’t feel she could complain, for he undoubtedly meant to be kind. She would have made some sort of protest when Lucia suddenly departed, leaving them together, but something in his look prevented her.
“You’re very like Mario,” she confided with a quick smile.
“So I believe,” he agreed. “But then all the Verdecchios have a look of each other.” He raise
d his glass to her. “Shall we drink to many future Verdecchios?”
Ruth blushed. “If—if you like,” she stammered.
“It is a great sadness to us both that Lucia and I have no children,” he went on in the same calm tones. “It makes us more interested in Mario, perhaps, but we don’t mean to interfere.”
Ruth thought that she detected some kind of question in his words and rushed to Lucia’s defence. “Your wife has been kindness itself to me!” she insisted. “She’s a darling!”
He looked amused. “Well, I think so,” he said. “Shall we dance?”
She was relieved to discover that when he was dancing, Roberto was not at all like Mario. He barely touched her he held her so lightly and anyway the music was slower now and much easier to follow so there was less need to follow his lead as closely as she had had to do earlier in the evening when the steps had been strange to her.
“Is Mario being kind to you?” he asked her suddenly.
Ruth came to a full stop in the middle of the square. “Yes, he is,” she said defensively.
“Does he know you are in love with him?” he went on conversationally.
Ruth pulled herself free of him. “I don’t think you have any right to ask that!”
He began to dance again, considering her thoughtfully. “You may be right,” he said at last, then he smiled slowly. “You must not tell Lucia, but you, my dear, are the reason I have come to Sicily. I had a telephone call from New York, from Mario’s mother. She was worried about you.”
“About me?”
He nodded gravely. “She too was a stranger once to Sicily and she felt that somebody ought to look after you, to be on your side—”
Ruth felt the tears well into her eyes and was afraid that she was going to cry. She sniffed instead and forced herself to smile. “Was she—was she kidnapped too?” she asked faintly.
He laughed and shook his head. “She was a very willing captive,” he remembered. “Are you?”
“Is that what she asked you to find out?” Ruth said pathetically, shaken by Mario’s mother’s concern for her.
“More or less. She said you were not to be forced against your will whatever Mario might say. And she wanted to know other things about you too,” he added.
Laughter crept into Ruth’s eyes. “Like whether I am respectable and—and the sort of girl Mario ought to marry?” she pressed him.
“Something like that,” he admitted. “She had heard some quite alarming stories about some girl he was taking about in Naples—”
“From Lucia!” Ruth sighed.
Roberto grinned. “I have never known a woman who didn’t gossip!” he defended his wife.
“And what will you tell Mario’s mother?” Ruth asked him.
“What would you like me to tell her?”
Ruth was embarrassed. “I—I don’t know,” she said at last. She looked up at him and made a decision. “Yes, I do. Will you tell her that being married to Mario is like being married to a tiger? It’s dangerous, but it makes anything else seem dull by comparison!”
He laughed heartily at that. “She will appreciate your choice of simile!” he assured her. “And I shall tell her, too, that you are a very nice girl,” he promised. “It may even stop her taking the next aeroplane across the Atlantic to see for herself!”
“Would it matter if she did?” Ruth asked him curiously.
“I think she would worry to find your sister here with you,” he said gently. “Mary-Anne would not understand that you might like having her with you. She would undoubtedly hatch some plot to have her removed!”
Ruth gasped. It was so very much what she would have liked to do herself, only she hadn’t the courage actually to do anything of the kind.
“Should I like her, do you think?” she enquired, because for some reason it was very important to her that Mario’s mother would like her.
“I think so,” Roberto said, amused, and glanced at his watch. “I think I shall just have time for a dance with Lucia before we shall have to start going home. Come, my dear, I shall take you to Mario.”
A movement ran through the crowd as the evening came to an end. The bonfires had almost burnt themselves out and the musicians were too tired to play for much longer. Only the fountain went on playing with as much gusto as ever, using the same water over and over again. But, at a signal from Roberto Verdecchio, every man there produced a hand-made torch which they lit in the dying embers of the fires. It was a beautiful sight, their sunburned, copper-coloured faces reflected in the orange light of the flames.
Mario turned to Ruth as the last dance came to an end. “I think we are going to be escorted home,” he said dryly.
“A procession?” she asked.
“It used to be the custom. I thought it was dying out. I suppose we shall just have to put up with it,” he added.
But Ruth was quite excited by it all. “It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed.
Mario gave her a warm look. “Then we shall do our best to enjoy it!” he said with zest. “It is not every day that I lead my wife home!”
It was, Ruth thought, a curious custom. The family gathered at the head of the column with herself and Mario in the lead. Behind them came the entire village, carrying their flaring torches to light up the darkness of the road back to the Verdecchio house.
With her band tucked into Mario’s arm, Ruth walked beside him down the street that led away from the square. The night was as black as velvet, lit by a moon of such gigantic proportions that she wondered if it were going to storm on the morrow. Perhaps, though, in the humid heat of the summer, it was often like that, vivid and orange like a golden sovereign. A faint wind blew up the street, stirring the skirts of her dress. With it came the distinctive smells of the village: the grey dust, garlic, the vinegary smell of wine, and the earthy scent of the plants that lined the balconies.
“Does it feel like home?” Mario asked her.
She was astonished that he should have read her mind so exactly. “In a way,” she said.
He laughed. “It is a good night for bandits!” he teased her.
“You forget,” she retorted with dignity, “I am not afraid of bandits!”
“Have you no qualms at all? What if a Sicilian bandit should jump out at us this minute?”
She refused to be disturbed. “With the whole village looking on?” she murmured. “Besides,” she added, “I have you to protect me!”
He looked at her, but it was too dark for her to see what he was thinking. “Remember that!” he said.
They left the village behind them and walked through the vineyards. They were nearly home.
“My uncle Roberto appears to approve of you,” Mario said, half-laughing. “Did my mother send him?”
Ruth forbore to answer. “I like him very much,” she said instead.
“Do you?” He was silent for a minute. “You like us all, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she answered truthfully.
He sighed. “It is not a Sicilian emotion,” he said at last. “To us an emotion is scarlet, jet black, or white. We never dwell in the pale greys!”
If she were honest, Ruth thought, she would have to tell him that she didn’t either. In the past, she might have done, but only because she. had never known any other.
“How exhausting for you!” she said with a smile.
“How English of you!” he retorted.
“Why not? I am English,” she reminded him.
He laughed at her, and she discovered that she liked it. “A quibble! An accident of birth!” he teased her.
Her heartbeat quickened. Did he know?” That reminds me,” she said practically, in a voice that wobbled woefully nevertheless. “I must take my passport to the British Consul—”
“I will do it for you tomorrow,” he cut her off. His voice was as cold and withdrawn as ever and her spirits sank accordingly. Somehow she had managed to ruin the moment and not even their arrival at the house could make up for the lost opportun
ity. And she didn’t know when there would be another—There might never be another! She knew a moment’s panic and dreaded having to walk through the front door into the revealing light. She was tired and she felt defeated, and she didn’t think she could hide either fact for long from Mario’s searching eyes.
Mario’s people pressed closely round them as they stood on the doorstep and faced the circle of proud faces. There was laughter as he slipped his arm round Ruth’s waist, and more when he kissed her on the cheek. “Goodnight,” he called out to them.
“Goodnight! Sleep well!” they answered with meaning.
The door opened behind them and Ruth hurried into fee hall, bitterly aware of the colour in her cheeks.
“I’m going to find Saro,” she mumbled to Mario. “Giulia, shut the back door, so he won’t have been able to get in by himself.”
He stood at the foot of fee stairs, irritated and yet withdrawn. “I should have thought he could have slept in the stables!”
“But I like his company!” she insisted.
“You will spoil him! He is not a lap-dog. His job is to catch rats in the outhouses. How can he do that if you will bring him into fee house?”
Ruth eyed him defiantly. “I don’t believe he ever kills anything!” she muttered.
“Then we had best get another dog! Mario said with crushing effect.
“Then Saro can be my dog!”
Mario’s expression softened. “If you like, he agreed. “You have probably already ruined him for his job.” Ruth didn’t wait for him to change his mind. She rushed through fee kitchen, pretending to herself that she was truly anxious for the dog, when she knew quite well that she would have jumped at any chance to get away from Mario until she had sorted out the chaotic emotions feat seethed within her. She was not helped by the almost liquid quality of the night air and the sound of song from the villagers, serenading them from fee front garden. It was a bitterly ironic moment, for she couldn’t think how happy she would have been if all their good wishes had come true.
