by Jane Arbor
Ruth said wearily, ‘Why not? I see that you couldn’t. But you should have wanted to try—for my sake.’
‘What would have been the use? You know perfectly well that Cicely, in Rome again, would have looked you up. And you were glad to see her and to meet her mother, weren’t you?’
‘Of course I should have been—in any other circumstances. As it was, it was the most embarrassing experience I’ve had since—’
‘Since we got engaged? Well, bless you for a good actress. No one would have guessed.’
‘I’ve had enough practice, the last month or two. But that didn’t make this evening any the less hurtful.’ Ruth looked out of the car window at an unfamiliar street. ‘Where are you going? Isn’t this an odd way to take me home?’ she asked.
Erle turned a corner. ‘I’m not taking you home—yet,’ he said.
‘Not? Where then? Please—I’ve had enough. I’m tired.’
‘You can be tired later. We’re going out to the Casa. I’ve a fancy to serve you a nightcap in the belvedere.’
She sat upright, outraged. ‘Not at the belvedere!’
‘Why not? You’ll like what I’ve had done to it. The Fontes never furnished it, except as a summerhouse. But I’ve had some rather nice period pieces found for it.’
‘I—I wonder you dare!’
‘Dare furnish my own property? Why shouldn’t I?’
She was convinced he was deliberately baiting her, ‘You know quite well what I mean!’ she accused him. ‘The—the associations it has!’
He threw her a quick glance. ‘But I understood from Fonte that you turned him down. That being so, I didn’t suppose the belvedere would have all that many nostalgic associations for you?’
‘It hasn’t any,’ she snapped. ‘You know I meant—for you!’
He shook his head. ‘None for me—so far.’
‘No? Then I suppose it’s over-sensitive of me to hope you’d have scruples about asking me there, after the use you made of the place on the night of Stella Parioli’s party?’
He looked at her again and she saw he knew she was serious. ‘I made no use whatever of it that night. I’d put it out of bounds,’ he said.
‘To everyone but yourself, maybe. Perhaps that was why—’
She watched his hands tighten on the steering-wheel. ‘The ban was at Agnese’s request. I told you so at the time,’ he said coldly. ‘Except on my way over to the stables to check the whole place, as I’d promised her, and when I carried her back to the house, I wasn’t within shouting distance of the belvedere all evening. So just what are you implying?’
‘I’m not “implying”. I’m stating what I saw for myself—you, taking Stella into the belvedere in the dark.’
He laughed then, though not amusedly. ‘My dear girl, with the whole of the amenities of Rome available—hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, not to mention a lot of shadier joints; nor, come to that, my apartment or hers—do you suppose for a minute that I’d need to skulk into a neglected summerhouse to keep assignation with grande dame Parioli? Use your reason, do!’
Ruth found she could not look at him. ‘But it was Stella, and it must have been you. After you had announced the ban, nobody else would have dared.’
‘It wouldn’t have deterred Stella, if she fancied some private dalliance. And if you’re right, someone else must have done.’
‘I—I thought it was you. Stella’s costume was unmistakable, and I saw your hand, your cuff, your sleeve——’
‘Not mine. What about trying, say, her friend Bernanos for size? Or even some smaller fry? She collects worshipping fans by the dozen and occasionally extends one of the handsomer ones a regal hand.’
Ruth watched her suspicions begin to disappear like receding pain under a drug. ‘But if you weren’t at the belvedere, how were you able to get into the stable yard as quickly as you were?’ she asked.
‘Oh dear, I thought you understood that too.’ He spoke with assumer patience. ‘I’ve told you, I’d promised Agnese Fonte I’d do the rounds, so I had a powerful torch at the ready with me at the party, and was nearly there when I heard the fireworks explode—and ran.’
‘O—oh—’ she murmured, defeated but briefly happy.
‘So—o,’ he mimicked her long-drawn word. ‘Then I take it you can bring yourself to look over the belvedere in its new dress?’ When she did not reply, he went on, ‘The house must wait for a while. Architects and decorators first. After that, I want to give time and money and all the professional skill I can command to make it a house to be proud of—and a home.’
‘Your home? Is that why you bought out Cesare at what even he thought was an inflated price—to keep it as entirely a private property?’
‘Partly, yes. For the rest, I rather wanted to see what a sizeable lump of capital might do for his prospects with you.’
Ruth worked that out. ‘He’d told you I had refused to marry him, but you thought that if he had more money, I might change my mind?’
‘If you had, I’d have crossed you off my visiting list for a gold-digger. But I had to find out. I mentioned, I think, that I always need to clear my decks?’
‘Even of other people’s affairs which don’t concern you?’
‘Ah, but this did concern me very closely.’
‘As to whether or not I married Cesare? Why should it?’
‘Suppose you guess—?’
But he didn’t wait for her to answer that, alighting instead to open the locked gates of the Casa and to close them again behind the car. In his seat again and moving on, he said, ‘Well? Or shall I put it another way? Why do you think I’ve brought you to a kind of mini-housewarming of the belvedere tonight? You. Just you. No one else?’
Ruth was aware only of the deep thudding of her heart. ‘Perhaps for something of the same reason you sent Stella Parioli to vet the house for you—you want the woman’s angle on the facelift you’ve given the belvedere?’ she suggested.
There was silence. Erle pulled up alongside the tamarisk hedge and helped her out. ‘I never asked Parioli to look at the Casa,’ he said.
‘Well, she came, before Cesare knew who’d bought it, and depressed him immeasurably with her comments on it.’
‘Not with my authority. I hope I have better manners than to ask one woman’s advice on the decor of a house I hope to share with another.’ He had put a hand beneath Ruth’s elbow to guide her, and at the low step to the portico he paused.
‘Some ceremony called for here? Or no,’ he answered himself, ‘that’s for a bride—the carrying across the threshold bit. It can wait.’
He unlocked the door to the first of the tiny rooms, touched a switch which lighted fat electric candles in waist-tall, floor-standing gilt sconces, casting attractive light and shadow on chair seats embroidered in gros-point; on a gilt love-seat, on twin couches, button-studded and covered in old velvet; on dark wood and a circular carpet.
His arm went round Ruth’s waist, drawing her to stand very close to him. ‘Well, suppose you try to guess now?’ he said gently. ‘To begin with, why I wasn’t over-concerned that you should have been embarrassed in front of Cicely tonight. I’ve been worried for you before, but not tonight. Doesn’t that say anything to you, my Ruth?’
Frightened lest she thought she knew and didn’t, she said, ‘Wh—what did you want it to say?’
He gave her a little shake. ‘Come! I’m asking the questions. Don’t you know that I meant it should be the last time you should suffer conscience, or have to hedge or lie by omission? The last time for me too—Not that any of it was ever a lie for me. I’ve meant our engagement, Ruth. All along. And hoped, even before that. On my side none of it was false or without a future—the hope of being allowed to claim you; of making a home to share with you. If not here, then anywhere you would come with me.’ He turned her to face him, looking deep into her eyes. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? Asking?’
‘If—’ She broke off, then found words slowly. ‘If it wer
e anyone but you, I think you would be asking me to marry you. But you’ve always poured such scorn; said that marriage wasn’t for you; that you didn’t need it, that it would cramp your style.’
‘Ah, the wilder ravings of a bachelor about to succumb to the most maddening woman on his scene, my love!’
‘Me—maddening?’
‘Uh-huh. Maddeningly detached. Maddeningly honest. A fighter—frequently with no holds barred. And quite maddeningly lovable.’
‘I’ve only fought you when you’ve fought me!’ Ruth disclaimed.
‘Ah, but how—when you did! All claws out for your defence of Cicely’s honour; for your own integrity— remember your affront over the Roscuro dress I gave you?—and even against your need of love, if not mine when I kissed you at Siena. That night I was frightened for you, Ruth. And despairing for myself, lest, being as hungry to be loved as you seemed, you might be tempted to snatch—and not at me.’
‘Yet you didn’t trouble to find out where I wanted to snatch?’
‘How could I? Once your control took over again, you rejected me; said the whole thing was meaningless, that you were putting on an act.’
‘Because you had said you were only curious, experimenting.’
‘Oh, come! A guy has to have some kind of opening gambit. Especially against opposition like yours.’
Shyly she looked down and away. ‘Except that there wasn’t any opposition. I was snatching at you with all I had.’
Erle drew a long sigh. He stroked her hair, lifting a strand of it. ‘You say that now? Mean it?’ he queried.
She nodded. ‘As much as I did then, though I think I didn’t admit it until Siena.’
‘Nor I, until I realised I was learning what jealousy was. I’d never experienced it before.’
‘I’ve known for a long time. But you dismissed it once as a mere waste of spirit,’ she reminded him.
‘I was whistling in the dark, denying it was on my very heels. I never did know how things stood between you and Cesare Fonte, until I asked him straight out and he told me. And who was there for you to be jealous of in particular? I’d told you my alleged harem was as innocuous and necessary to my job as—as porridge is to a Scot!’
‘I’ve been jealous of Stella Parioli, for one. And with cause, I think.’
‘Nonsense. With almost every word I’ve spoken to you about her, I’ve shown you I’ve taken her measure. She’s glamorous—’
‘As I can never be.’
‘As you don’t need to be. You’re a honey as you are. And she’s talented, and ambitious, and as single-minded as her profession demands. And going places, with the sky as her limit, through my good services to her. You don’t grudge me my star pupil, surely?’
‘Only your star pupil? You give her valuable presents!’
‘On the wrong side of your rigid line?’ Erle laughed. ‘That was petty of me, I admit. To pay you out for scorning my present to you, I deliberately didn’t explain that that bit of jewellery nonsense was to mark the anniversary of Stella’s debut as a professional singer—a kind of birthday present, no more. And if it had been anything less than expensive jewellery, she’d have taken a very poor view, considering all the money I make out of her.’
‘I—see.’
‘I hope you do now. But I must say I got more than a spark of malicious fun out of watching your dear disapproving face.’ He led her to one of the couches, went to pour drinks, brought one to her, and sat beside her.
She said hesitantly, ‘I don’t understand. When did it all begin for you?’
He spread a hand. ‘Who knows where love begins? It could even have been on a hockey pitch in a fog.’
‘Not for you then.’
‘Probably not. I forgot your name. But there has to have been a morning when I woke—or perhaps a night before I went to sleep—when I said to myself, “I mustn’t let this girl get away from me,” and began my campaign from there.’
Ruth laughed at him over the rim of her wineglass. ‘You didn’t let it show!’
‘I dared not. You were so becalmed in your widowhood. You’d come to terms with it, and I felt I had to hasten slowly. But that night when I said that you and I could afford to ignore the man-woman thing, I was just one ache of desire for you.’
And you left me feeling wrapped around with your friendship—which I destroyed when I doubted you about Cicely.’
‘Yes, you were pretty obtuse about Cicely. But it didn’t do you any harm to be a little bit jealous.’
Ruth reddened. ‘I wasn't jealous of Cicely!’
Erle laughed. ‘I’d like a head-shrinker’s ruling on that!’
‘Well, perhaps I was a little envious of her,’ Ruth admitted. ‘She was able to reach you so easily and so gaily. Whereas I—’
He laid his free hand over hers in a tight clasp. ‘I think you, my darling girl, wouldn’t admit to jealousy of a new love because that implied a betrayal of the old—your first, your Alec. You say you were hungry at Siena. But you were guilt-ridden too, perhaps?’
But Ruth shook her head. ‘No. I think I’d accepted by then what you had put into words. I knew that loving a man as different from Alec as you wouldn’t be any real disloyalty to him. What I had of him I’ve still got and shall always keep. He’d understand that, I know.’
‘And I shan’t trespass,’ promised Erle. ‘You won’t be forced to comparisons, please God. And I’m going to think that he’s glad for you.’
‘I must too. Our last words to each other whenever we parted, even for a few hours, were, “Be happy,” and I am. I am!’ Ruth stirred her hand within his. ‘But if you’ve loved me as you say, why didn’t you make our engagement a real one, instead of—?’
‘Because you were still so aloof; because Fonte was still hovering and I was too craven to try my luck and find I’d lost. And for a more practical reason, supposing I did win, I wanted you to experience a kind of trial run—to learn just what committing yourself to me would entail.’
‘You mean—?’
He nodded. ‘I thought you’d know. All the differences. The social stuff. The brittle contacts. The razor edge between success and failure. Show business from behind, instead of from in front. The sporadic travelling, hither and yon. The temperamental stars, male and female—Do you realise, my Ruth, that around and about me there’ll always be Pariolis and Gancias and their like? And accepting that, can you still be very sure and content that I chose you, and none of them? Never even considered one of them as a wife?’
‘You said you considered no one as a wife. But I think I can.’
‘Only “think”? he urged.
‘No. More than that. If you want me, I can take it— all of it. Though I can’t help remembering how hurt I was that when we parted in the future and I left Rome, you wouldn’t have wanted to know where I went.’
‘But that was your decision—that I wasn’t to know.’
‘I still felt you ought to care enough for me as a friend to want to know.’
Erle feigned a sigh. ‘The irrationality of even the dearest of women! I only agreed because if we had reached that point—of your turning me down—though I’d have cared like the devil, I’d have preferred not to know, lest I’d be tempted to come after you, only to take my punishment all over again. Cutting my losses, d’you see?’ He set aside his glass and took hers almost roughly from her. ‘What are we doing, holding inquests on the past when we’ve got a Now?’ he demanded. ‘We’re wasting good time, even if we’ve plenty of the same ahead.’
He pulled her against him. His hands moved caressingly, touching her hair, making a frame for her face, drawing her closer, then holding her off.
‘You know,’ he said, as if in awe of the discovery, ‘I’ve gone through most of the motions in dealing with women, but I’ve never known before this need to have and to hold ... to love and to cherish—and the rest; never felt as caveman-fierce as I do now. Of course I realise what’s happened to me. You have. But it’s a new experience
for me and I may overplay it. So are you going to bear with me, my all-in-all, if I need to show the world pretty blatantly that you’re mine, my woman, my prize?’
She laid her head in the hollow of his shoulder, equally in awe of a nearness to him in spirit and in body which she had never thought would be hers by right of love. She said a little fearfully, ‘I can’t believe it’s happening, but if it is, I think I’d be sad and worried if you didn’t want to claim me—like that.’
‘Or like this?’ A forefinger under her chin turned her face up to his, and he kissed her long and deeply, taking lips which at first quivered shyly to the demanding touch of his, but then softened to a response that was all acceptance, all tenderness, all gift of herself.
For a long time after that they said nothing coherent; spoke only by look and touch and smile and little wordless murmurs of delight and promise to themselves of the ultimate mastery and sweet surrender to come.
Then they were spent, and only holding hands like children. Erle stood, drawing Ruth to her feet. He fingered a pocket, took something from it, tossed it in his palm, and showed it to her.
‘My soldino,’ he said. ‘For your pennyworth of sky that I have to give you. Come and see which bit you’ll have, and be sure to choose one with plenty of stars.’ Laughing, she went to stand on the portico with him. Head on one side, she pretended to consider the expanse of the sky. ‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘I’ll have the bit that’s east o’ the sun and west o’ the moon.’
‘And which bit is that?’
‘How do I know?’ she teased. ‘A good astronomer could probably tell you.’
‘The book says I have to afford one soldino’s worth or sky. Astronomers come too expensive and they aren’t thrown in,’ he retorted.
‘All right, skip the astronomer. Suppose you choose?’
‘I was hoping you’d ask me.’ Putting his arm round her, he turned her in the direction of the dark mass of the Casa, just discernible against the horizon. He said, ‘I’ll go for a short-term bargain. I’ll buy you the whole of the dawn sky on just one morning—the day that we first make this place our home, yours and mine. Would you regard that as value for money, my Ruth of the Biblical name and the eyebrows that got left out in the wet until they rusted up?’
