Leo nodded slowly, but didn’t look convinced. “We shall see.”
There was a silence then Maria said, “I have some homework to do so if it’s okay I’ll go up to my room.”
“Of course – of course. Would you like something to eat? I brought a nice pizza back from the restaurant.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Maybe a sandwich?”
“No, honestly. It’s late and I’m not really hungry. I’ll do a bit of homework and then I’ll go to bed.”
Leo beckoned her towards him, and then he folded his arms around her. “You know you are the most important person in my life – don’t you?” His eyes were still grave but his voice was much calmer now.
“Yes,” she replied, “and you are the most important person in mine.”
“Sleep well,” he told her, “and we’ll work out how to solve this problem in the morning.”
Maria went out into the hall, took her coat off and hung it on the stand by the front door, then she picked up her bag and walked slowly upstairs. Inside her room, she closed the door and stood for a few minutes with her back against it. What she really wanted to do was go and lie on the bed and rerun the whole evening with Paul in her mind – every minute of the time they spent together. But instead, she was now swamped with anxious feelings about her father – and about herself.
She gathered herself together and moved to her desk by the window where she did her studying.
She had some algebra she needed to do for her next lesson, but it was the last thing she felt like doing. She would catch up on it at some point tomorrow before the class. Thank God, she thought, that she had the weekend ahead to look forward to.
She got changed into her pyjamas and then went into the bathroom to wash and brush her teeth. She was coming back to her bedroom when she decided she would go downstairs for a glass of water, and use it as an excuse to reassure her father once again, for she knew he would not be able to relax for thinking about it. She also thought that if he was calmer she might mention about Paul Spencer walking her back from the cinema. She would make it sound casual, and would let him think she met Paul there if he didn’t specifically ask if she had arranged to go there with him.
She went down the stairs barefoot, her feet making no noise on the thick stair carpet. She was just about to knock on the sitting-room door when she heard her father’s voice and realised he was on the phone.
She waited for a moment and listened to see if he was nearly finished. Then she heard him say, “Thank you, Franco. It was good of you to lock up tonight when I had to leave at such short notice. You are a good friend, and you know how much I appreciate you.”
He was quiet for a while, and then she heard his voice again.
“I hear what you say, Franco. And no, I won’t do anything to put me or my daughter at risk. But, sooner or later, I will find out who the men are who came to my house and frightened Maria.”
Maria felt a shiver run through her. The slur in his voice told her that in the short time since she had been upstairs he had drunk a lot more whisky. She knew he drank glasses of red wine in the restaurant and wondered now if the whisky had become habitual when she was in bed.
“Oh, I have to do this,” her father said now. “But, Franco, if I discover that it is related to the loan company I used for the interim payment on the horse, then I will be very angry. Very angry indeed. You and I both know that it is not the way people should do business. ”
There was a silence again and then she heard her father say, “It will be sorted first thing in the morning. I’ve decided if I have to extend the mortgage on the house to pay for it, I will. I had hoped not to do that, but I need to pay these people off. I’d rather my bank owned the house than have some loan shark think they have a claim on it.”
Maria stepped backwards until she was touching the bannister and then quietly crept back up the stairs.
Chapter 10
After the Ten O’Clock News, Diana had washed and dried her supper dishes and then wiped down the top of the cooker which had some small splashes from her scrambled eggs. Then she had brushed and mopped the black-and-white tiled floor. She’d finished off by polishing her glass-topped kitchen table with Windolene.
She’d then gone into the sitting room and settled down to look over her order forms for the coming month. Apart from all the new fashion lines they included the usual women’s perfume she stocked which was otherwise only available in select department stores in Manchester.
Finally, propelled by guilt, she lifted her diary. It was a particularly nice hard-backed diary, a gift from Sandra, an old school friend in Washington, and every alternate page featured a painting from a special collection in the capital’s main art gallery. Diana had promised herself that she would do a daily entry in the diary to prove to herself that her life was improving after her relationship ended with Brian. But, after starting off well, her entries had dwindled down to just a couple a week.
She ran through her day in her head, trying to think of anything noteworthy to put in, and found precious little. Eventually, she wrote down that she had gone to Benediction at the local church. She wasn’t overtly religious, but her Catholic mother had taken her regularly as a child, and she found herself drawn to the short peaceful evening service with its incense, candles and the Blessed Sacrament on the alter in its golden sunburst monstrance. She knew quite a few of the other people from going to Sunday Mass and, besides, she had little else to do mid-week and it passed the longest part of the evening. It was usually eight thirty by the time she got in and made supper while watching television or listening to the radio.
Apart from the church entry, she made a note of what she had worn to work that day and at the top of the following day’s page she jotted down the suit and sweater she planned to wear to work the next day. She tried to wear something different every day for about ten days before repeating the cycle, and writing it down ensured she didn’t wear the same things too often.
Then, she sat for a while leafing through the diary, looking at the beautiful paintings. She paused at Robert Henri’s misty Snow in New York, and studied it for a few minutes, and it set her mind to wondering about holiday plans for the coming year. There were so many places she would love to visit and New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, were top of her list. She had an open invite to Sandra’s home close to the centre, but Sandra had three young children and a husband with a busy law practice. She had told Diana to come with a friend and see the sights but, so far, a suitable friend to travel with had not materialised. Of course she did not tell Sandra this – instead, she explained how busy she was with the two shops and attending fashion shows in London, and that America would have to wait.
She flicked on through the pages of paintings until her gaze fell on her favourite one,La Coiffure by Henri Matisse. If she was brave enough, she would have loved a print of the beautiful nude for her bedroom or even her bathroom but she felt it would look weird to have a painting like that in a single woman’s house. Maybe, if some kind of miracle happened and she met the right man, she might just hang a print of it on her bedroom wall. Meantime, like her trip to the Art Gallery, it would just have to wait.
She closed the diary, put the order sheets back into the folder, and then went out into the hallway and down to the kitchen to make sure the blinds were closed and to lock the back door. She came back to the sitting room and went around the lamps switching each one off and, just as she touched her hand to the main light switch, the phone suddenly rang out, startling her.
She put her hand to her throat to still her breathing and then, when she had composed herself, she lifted the receiver. As soon as she heard the voice, she closed her eyes.
“Diana, it’s me . . . please don’t hang up.”
“What is it? What do you want?”
“You know what I want. You know why I’m ringing.”
She sank down onto the arm of the sofa. “I don’t know what you
want me to say.”
“Have you given my proposal serious thought?”
“No, Brian,” she said, “I haven’t.”
“Please! You must at least give me a chance.”
“There is no point in us trying again.”
“It’s not just trying again – this time I want us to get married straight away. We can do it quietly if you prefer – any way you want. We can go travelling together for a month afterwards like we always said we would.”
“I can’t . . . I can’t do it.”
“Please, please, think about it. Apart from that one . . . that one indiscretion . . .”
“An indiscretion?”
“Come on, Diana, give me a break. You know what I mean.”
“I take it that you are referring to the weekend with your so-called business colleague when you say ‘that one indiscretion’? I take it you are deliberately ignoring the other episode with the magazines?”
There was an uncomfortable silence before he spoke again.
“How many times do I have to say that was normal curiosity? It meant nothing and had absolutely nothing to do with the mistake I made later.”
“To me they were very much linked,” she said.
“I cannot keep apologising. You know how sorry I am, and you know how much I have tried to make it up to you since. It’s all in the past and we have to look forward. That’s what I’m trying to do if you will just give me another chance. Everyone knows that we are perfect for each other. We are perfect for each other.” There was another pause. “Diana, are you even listening?”
“Yes, and I’m trying to imagine what people will think if I suddenly tell them that we are to be married within weeks.”
“It will be a nine-day wonder,” he said. “And then everyone will get on with their own lives. It doesn’t matter what they think.”
“But I know what happened.”
“It has nothing to do with our life up here. What happened was down in London and it’s over. It will never happen again. I promise you with all my heart. I do understand that it may take a little time for it to fade . . . but it will. I’ve told no one, and I know you haven’t either.”
She presumed he took the silence that followed as an indication that she was actually considering his proposal when he said: “Why don’t we have a holiday away together in the next few weeks to talk things over? To make concrete plans for the future. I know I dragged my heels before, but I was stupid, I hadn’t worked things out. If we could just take the time now to talk properly and sort things out. Somewhere lovely on our own. We can go anywhere you want. You name it and I’ll have it booked in the morning.”
Her mind went back to the places and the paintings that she would like to see. Brian would, of course, be her ideal companion. Apart from being wonderful entertaining company, he was confident driving up and down the country, and had no problems booking trips further afield and negotiating airports. He spoke French well and, when they visited Paris a few years ago, he had studied it all beforehand and was as good as any tour guide.
It would be so easy to say yes to him. To say yes to the big house he owned, to the good salary he earned, and to become part of his lovely extended family. Brian’s parents and his two sisters and even a special auntie were devastated when their engagement was broken off, and it was only recently that they had stopped sending letters and birthday cards as though she were still part of the family.
It would be so easy to fall back into it all again – having someone so handsome and presentable by her side, as her husband – as the father of her children. Especially when no one else had come along in the interim to fill the gaping hole he had left in her life.
But she knew she couldn’t go back there. Despite all his promises and his very good intentions, it would all end the same way. It was inevitable. She could not let loneliness and her yearning for a marriage and a family take her back down that dark and dangerous route again.
“I’m sorry, Brian,” Diana said, “but you’re wasting your time. I have no intention of marrying you or going on holiday or anywhere else with you. The problem that broke up our engagement has not gone away, and you’re deluding yourself if you think so. It might disappear for a short time, but it would only come back again.”
“It won’t come back, because I refuse to allow it,” he told her. “I only want you.”
“Well, that,” she said, “is something you cannot have.”
Chapter 11
After a fractured, dream-filled night, Maria woke in the morning with a dull ache in her chest.
She went downstairs in her pyjamas, filled the coffee percolator, switched it on and put a slice of bread in the toaster. Then, she went into the sitting room and made straight for the drinks cupboard to check the whisky bottle. It was no great surprise to her to see that it was almost empty.
She then went over to the white marble mantelpiece and lifted the Italian Rococo-style frame that held her parents’ wedding photo. Her eyes went straight to the small, neat figure in white lace. It was rarely she allowed her thoughts to dwell on her mother as it always resulted in sadness.
It didn’t matter this morning as she was already sad and her mind full of shadowy images of her mother from the dreams. When her vision was too blurred with tears to see the image properly, she held the heavy frame to her chest and said a silent prayer. She didn’t pray to her mother too often, as there were more occasions than not when the situations she had asked for intervention in showed no noticeable change for the better. This only made Maria question her Catholic religion and the afterlife it promised, and made her worry about her mother’s fate if that didn’t actually exist.
The smell of fresh coffee and toasted bread came through the open doors from the kitchen. She took one last look at the picture then kissed the pristine, suited image of her father and her white-veiled mother and carefully put it back in its place.
There was no doubt that her parents had loved each other with a great passion. Her father told her that on a regular basis when he recounted the story of how they met and married. He described the beautiful, gentle Anna Donovan who had come to work in Manchester. A year or so later she was disowned by her family when she told them she was getting married to a foreigner – an Italian – Leonardo Marco Conti.
The resulting rift was so bad that Maria had only met her grandparents once, at her mother’s funeral when she was nine years old.
Some time afterwards, Maria – trying to make sense of it all –asked her father for more information.
“I know my mother always told me she wouldn’t go back to Ireland on the boat because she had a stormy journey one time which terrified her – and she said she had always been too frightened to go on the plane.”
“That’s very true,” Leo said. “And it wasn’t just Ireland – if you remember she wouldn’t fly to Italy with us either because she was so afraid.” He shrugged. “Some people are like that with travelling. Franco hates flying as well.”
“But why didn’t my Irish grandparents come to stay with us here?” Maria had persisted. “Lots of my friends have grandparents who live in London and Scotland and they come to stay regularly. And I have two uncles – why didn’t they come to visit us?”
“I don’t know much about them – they were a lot younger than your mother. I do know that you have an uncle around the same age as you, and that he wasn’t well when he was born and your grandmother couldn’t leave him.”
“Why didn’t my mother talk about them? I used to ask her things about them but I could tell she didn’t like it.”
Leo had shrugged and looked away. “Your mother was waiting until you were old enough to explain. I think she was hoping things would change . . . that someone might get in touch with her.”
“It all sounds peculiar to me . . .”
Leo had then taken his young daughter’s hand. “Maria, I don’t want to lie to you. I’m afraid there is more to the story. There was bad blood between your mothe
r and her family because she married me.”
“But why?”
“Because,” he told her, “they did not like that I was an Italian.”
Maria could only think to say once again, “But why?”
“They did not like to have a foreigner marrying into their family.”
“But that’s ridiculous! Did they ever meet you?”
“No. I did offer to go over to Ireland with your mother after we were married, but she wouldn’t because of the travel.” He shrugged and held his hands out. “I can’t answer that, Maria. Your mother got upset if I talked about it, so I just left it.”
“It’s awful that the first time you met her family was at the funeral, isn’t it?” Maria’s voice was incredulous.
His eyes suddenly filled up. “Sadly . . . yes.”
Maria eventually gave up asking questions about her mother’s family because it was quite clear that it upset her father and perhaps made him feel guilty for the estrangement from the Donovan family.
The Christmas following the funeral, Maria received a card from her grandparents, saying that they hoped she might visit them some time when she was old enough to travel to Ireland on her own. The words ‘on her own’ underlined how deep the grudge was towards her father. After everything that had happened, they expected her to turn her back on her father and ignore all the hurt they had caused her mother.
She showed the card to Mrs Lowry and talked it over with her. They both agreed it was best that the soft-hearted Leo knew nothing about it, so Maria ripped the card into tiny pieces and burned it before her father came home.
After that, she thought only of her mother in terms of their own little family and blocked out any thoughts to do with her relations in Ireland.
She finished her breakfast now, leaving the mug and plate in the sink as Mrs Lowry was due in at lunchtime and tiptoed upstairs to get ready for school without disturbing her father. She would catch the bus today as she did not want to see his morning-after face and bloodshot eyes, and she did not want him to start interrogating her again about the two men. She had no real worries about them – from what she had heard of her father and Franco’s phone conversation last night, the men’s reasons for calling yesterday had nothing whatsoever to do with her.
Music from Home Page 9
