The Italian’s Cinderella Bride

by Lucy Gordon

  ‘Really?’ She looked at her watch, apparently startled. ‘Oh, yes, I didn’t notice the time.’

  ‘So you had such a good time that now you’re full of ideas for translating his books?’ Pietro’s voice had a touch of sarcasm.

  ‘Yes, I-oh, heavens! The books.’ This time her alarm was genuine.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I must have left them in the hotel room. I’ve got to go back. How did I manage to forget them?’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ Pietro said dryly.

  At that moment there came the sound of the bell from the side door down below. Exchanging glances, they went to the window and looked out. There stood Salvatore, accompanied by a beautiful woman in her forties.

  ‘Ruth,’ she called up merrily. ‘You left the books behind.’ She held them up.

  ‘Amanda, I’m so sorry,’ Ruth called.

  ‘I’ll come down and let you in,’ Pietro said.

  ‘No, no, we can’t stay,’ Amanda called. ‘We leave early tomorrow morning and we must get some sleep. I’ll leave the books here on the ground. Goodbye.’

  She and Salvatore blew kisses and vanished into the night, arms about each other. Pietro hurried down and collected the books.

  ‘Don’t lose them again,’ he said, giving them to Ruth. ‘And who is Amanda?’

  ‘His wife, of course. Isn’t she sweet?’

  ‘His wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s been with you all the time?’ Pietro asked slowly.

  ‘Of course. Actually I learned more from her than from him. I think she helps to write the books, or even writes most of them. She’s probably the one who insisted on having me to translate.’

  ‘Does Ramirez do anything himself?’

  ‘Well, he tells very good funny stories. I’ve never laughed so much as I did tonight-at least, I don’t think I have. But like many men, he’s chiefly window-dressing.’ She yawned. ‘Now I must go to bed. Goodnight.’ When he didn’t answer she raised her voice. ‘Goodnight, Pietro.’

  He jumped. ‘What?’

  ‘I said goodnight, but you were staring into the distance. Did you hear me?’

  ‘No-yes-goodnight.’

  She smiled as she went into her room. For reasons she couldn’t have explained, she had enjoyed the last few minutes more than she would have thought possible.

  Now her days were pleasantly full, either working at the shop or sitting up late working on the books she was translating. Ruth clung to her resolve not to brood about Gino, and found that it worked better that way. Odd snippets did come back to her, to be fitted, piece by piece, into the wall that her mind was gradually building up. It helped, but it wasn’t a final answer.

  ‘Perhaps there won’t be a final answer,’ she mused to herself. ‘Maybe I’ll just have to remake my life from here.’

  Once that thought would have scared her, but now she could consider the prospect calmly, even deal with it. In Venice she’d found the last thing she’d ever dared to hope for: safety. It had something to do with Pietro, whose steadying hand was always held out to her.

  She found it easy to get on with his associates, particularly Barone Franco Farini, a big, bouncing man who’d started as a porter, made a fortune out of kitchen utensils and was now anxious to ‘better himself’. To this end he’d bought a palace on one of the islands in the lagoon and managed to get a defunct title of nobility revived and attached to himself.

  Among his other acquisitions was a much younger wife who’d married him for his spurious title and liked nothing better than to prance around in what she felt was his glory.

  Ruth found that it was hard to take seriously a man so naively pleased with his toys, but there was something charming about his innocence and open-heartedness.

  ‘How did he ever make a fortune in big business?’ she chuckled after their first meeting.

  ‘By using a completely different part of his brain,’ Pietro said with a grin. ‘The business part is tough as old boots, and none too scrupulous. The bit that went gaga for Serafina is just plain thick. Since you’re a language expert, you probably know the derivation of the term “Barone”?’

  ‘Its Latin root is “bara”, meaning simpleton,’ she said, laughing. ‘Poor Franco.’

  ‘It will be poor Franco when Serafina leaves him and demands millions.’

  ‘You don’t know that she’ll do that.’

  ‘You haven’t met her,’ Pietro replied ominously.

  Part of Franco’s plan to better himself was to improve his English, which was terrible. To this end he engaged Ruth in long, eager conversations about his island and the spectacular party he was planning there during Carnival, and for which Pietro was selling the tickets.

  ‘It will be big, big, big,’ he explained. ‘Everybody will be there-all the big people. We all go over the water in gondolas, and there is my Serafina looking more beautiful than any other woman.’

  ‘He’s spent a fortune in jewels for her, and she can’t wait to show them off,’ Pietro observed later. ‘And that’s in addition to the other fortune that he’s spending on the rest of the party.’

  ‘Are you going?’

  Pietro shuddered.

  ‘Definitely not. I’ve given him as much advice as I can, which was only fair considering what a profit I’ve made from the tickets. But all that noisy jollity isn’t for me. I guess I’m getting old.’

  He looked anything but old. He was dressed as he had been the morning she’d watched him lifting the box from the boat, and seen him simply as a man. And, viewed dispassionately, he was a man to take the shine out of other men, at the height of his strength and masculine beauty, yet seemingly oblivious. Nobody could be more careless where his own attractions were concerned, and that was almost the greatest attraction of all.

  Yet it was only half the story, she knew. No woman could live as close to him as she did and not see that inside him everything was different. The ‘other’ Pietro shunned the world, because only in that way could he find peace, albeit a bleak, arid peace. And she thought the contrast between his two selves explained why he sometimes gave the impression of living on the edge of a volcano.

  CHAPTER SIX

  F OR the next few days Pietro was mostly silent, and then one afternoon he paused in the shop doorway and said, ‘I’ve just got to run an errand across town.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Ruth said. ‘I need a walk.’

  ‘Not this time,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m leaving right now.’

  ‘I’m ready now.’

  ‘I said no. I’ll see you later.’

  He left quickly, before she could reply, and it took a moment for her to realise that she had been snubbed.

  ‘Don’t mind too much,’ Mario said. ‘I think he must be going to San Michele. That’s a little island in the lagoon, and it’s the Venetian cemetery. His wife and child are buried there. He goes over every month. He never says anything but I always know because he’s very quiet on those days.’

  ‘Oh, goodness!’ Ruth groaned. ‘I’m so clumsy.’

  ‘No, how could you have known?’

  ‘You started to tell me about his wife once, but we were interrupted. Did you ever meet her?’

  ‘Oh, yes, several times. Her name was Lisetta Allucci. She and Pietro had grown up together, She used to come in here a lot, a very nice lady. Everyone was happy for them when they got engaged, and then she became pregnant at once, which was wonderful because he would have an heir.’

  ‘Do people still think like that nowadays?’

  ‘They do if they have a title. The count must have an heir. They were married in St Mark’s, and all Venice was there. You never saw such a happy couple, how proudly they walked down the aisle. But they hardly had any time together, just two years. She lost the baby, but soon she was pregnant again. This time the child was born, but she died the same day, and the baby died within a few hours. They were buried together, the child lying in his mother’s arms.’r />
  Horror held Ruth silent. She had known that Pietro was a man haunted by tragedy, but it was a shock to hear the cruel details spelt out. She saw him, living almost alone in that great echoing palazzo, shunning human company to be alone with his memories.

  ‘And I barged in,’ she murmured. ‘Just like I tried to barge in just now. How does he put up with me?’

  Now she remembered how grimly he reacted to any mention of those he’d lost, walking away as though unable to bear the reminder.

  She was ready for him to be in a bad mood when he reached home that evening, but the hours passed with no sign of him.

  ‘I suppose I ought to go to bed,’ she mused to Toni, who eyed her without comment.

  ‘But I expect you’d like a walk, wouldn’t you?’ she suggested. ‘Come on, we’ll take a little stroll.’

  They would just drift quietly around the local calles, she told herself. There was no need to go far, in case she got lost. And if she happened to see Pietro along the way, that would just be a coincidence.

  But he was nowhere to be seen, and at last the two of them wandered back to the empty house, and let themselves quietly in. Pietro still wasn’t home, so she put some fresh water down for Toni and went to bed.

  Where had he gone when he’d left his wife’s grave? Had he walked around the city, revisiting the places they had been together, just as she did with her memories of Gino? Only in his case the impressions would be more vivid because the reality had been fulfilment, even though it had ended in tragedy.

  Lying there, listening to the echoing silence, Ruth knew that Lisetta’s real tomb was this house. Its very emptiness was a shrine to her memory, an outward symbol of the desolation within, his way of telling the world that she had been the love of his life, and there would never be another.

  She listened long and hard, but never hearing the sound of his key, until at last she slept, and awoke next morning to find him still missing. Nor did he appear at the shop all day. He was there when she went home, but he only nodded briefly and shut himself into his room, from where she heard the click of his computer.

  She thought of knocking on his door later to ask if he wanted some coffee, but backed off, lacking the courage.

  The next day he was back to his usual self. He never mentioned his dark mood, and nor did she.

  A few afternoons later, when darkness had fallen early, as it did in January, she found Mario gazing up into the sky where the moon glimmered. Interpreting this as romantic yearning, she said kindly, ‘It’s a beautiful moon, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he sighed. ‘And it will be a full moon any day now, unfortunately.’

  ‘Unfortunately? Isn’t a full moon beautiful?’

  ‘Not when it brings aqua alta,’ Mario said promptly.

  ‘That’s high water, isn’t it? Flooding.’

  ‘That’s right. Venice is flooded about four times a year, and sometimes it happens at full moon, because of the tides. We might be in for it soon.’ He shivered.

  ‘Not nice?’ she hazarded.

  ‘Everywhere you go you have to walk on planks over the water, and it’s always crowded, so that you fall off and get your feet wet. Brr!’

  So much for romantic yearning, she thought, with wry amusement. That would teach her to jump to conclusions. But then Mario added wistfully, ‘Don’t worry, you won’t get pushed off. Everyone will make way for you.’

  Since her transformation he’d made no effort to hide his admiration. Nor did other men. Wherever she went she received the homage of lingering looks, except from Pietro. True, he studied her appearance, but only to tell her gruffly to keep warm.

  The incident sharpened her eyes, and as she walked home that night she realised that the city was full of people studying the sky. Pietro too halted as they were crossing a tiny bridge over a narrow ‘backstreet’ canal, and looked up.

  ‘Do you think we’re going to have aqua alta?’ she asked him.

  ‘So you’re learning to be a Venetian?’

  ‘Mario was telling me about how it’s connected to full moon.’

  ‘Or new moon. It can be either. This one was new about ten days ago. The water didn’t rise then, but there’s been a lot of rain recently. It’ll be a relief when full moon is over.’

  ‘Does it worry you very much?’ she asked as they walked on. ‘I suppose it damages the buildings?’

  ‘It can if they’re not properly cared for. I’ve had all the floors at ground level inside the palazzo raised, and we’re well supplied with sandbags, but some people are surprisingly careless.’

  ‘But do you have time to put in sandbags?’

  ‘Yes, because sirens start blaring out a few hours before, so we get some warning.’

  When they reached home he showed her the raised floors and she realised that she’d always been vaguely puzzled at having to step up from the street.

  ‘I had all the marble and mosaic taken up,’ he explained, ‘then three layers of brick laid down, and the floor relaid on top of them. It protects us against many of the floods, which usually aren’t more than a couple of inches. But nothing could have protected us against this.’

  He pointed to a line on the wall, about six feet up.

  ‘That’s how high the water came in nineteen sixty-six,’ he said. ‘My father always refused to clean that mark off. He said it must be a warning to us never to be complacent about what the sea could do.’

  ‘You mean it could be that bad again?’

  ‘I doubt it. Such a flood will happen only once in a hundred years. But my father was right about not being always on our guard.’

  ‘The water came up that high?’ she murmured, running her finger along the line.

  ‘All through the house. Come and see.’

  He began to lead her the length of the building. Although these walls had been cleaned they all bore the faint line with its warning for those who could understand.

  ‘Did Gino show you this?’ Pietro asked.

  ‘We walked through it quickly, but it was the rooms upstairs he wanted to show me.’

  ‘Ah, yes. It’s a lot finer up there,’ he said lightly.

  Instead of the back stairs that they usually used he led her to the main staircase, a marble edifice wide enough for four people abreast, and from there into the great ballroom, where he switched on the lights.

  This was truly the centre of a palace. The ceiling soared, here and there were exquisite carvings, and although most pictures had been put into storage there were still one or two portraits on the walls.

  ‘My ancestors,’ Pietro said. ‘That one over there is Giovanni Soranzo.’

  ‘I don’t like the look of him much,’ she said, regarding the man with the scowling face and magnificent robes, who looked down on them in haughty disapproval.

  ‘Not a nice character,’ he agreed. ‘He locked his daughter up so securely that she didn’t get out until seven years after his death.’

  ‘Charming.’

  She continued her wandering. One wall was lined with tall windows, each with a little balcony, looking out over the Grand Canal.

  Then something in her mind clicked, but silently, and she was back in another time.

  ‘This is where we’ll have our wedding reception, cara.’

  ‘But it’s much too grand for me.’

  ‘Nothing is too good for you. I shall show you off with such pride.’

  And she had believed him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Pietro asked, watching her face.

  ‘Yes, just remembering. Gino talked about having our reception here.’

  ‘You would have done. It was going to be my wedding gift.’

  ‘He told me.’

  She went to one of the tall windows, which Pietro unlocked so that she could stand outside on the balcony.

  ‘The bride and groom would have come to stand here together,’ Pietro told her, ‘and everyone in the gondolas going past would have hailed them. Did he tell you that?’

>   ‘Probably. He said so many things. I suppose he believed them when he said them. But I don’t think that wedding was ever going to happen. More and more the whole thing feels like a book I read about someone else.’

  ‘How much do you mind?’

  ‘I’ll tell you that when I know how it ends-if it ever ends.’

  ‘Do you often think that way?’ he asked.

  ‘I think it more and more. Have you heard anything from Gino?’

  ‘No. I can’t contact him.’

  ‘Which means he doesn’t want to talk to you. Or rather, he doesn’t want to talk to me. Ah well.’

  She stood looking up at the full moon, covering the scene with silver.

  ‘I wonder if it’s going to rain,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he said as a drop fell on him. ‘I think the storm is approaching with a vengeance. Let’s get inside.’

  He locked the window and they left the ballroom, climbing the stairs to his apartment. Toni was there, lying on the floor, and he came towards them as he always did. But he didn’t stay long tonight, seeming anxious to get back to his shabby sofa and curl up again.

  Ruth wasn’t sure what made her kneel down beside him, suddenly disturbed.

  ‘What is it, old boy?’ she whispered. ‘Are you all right?’

  But he wasn’t, and the next minute Toni made a convulsive movement, gave a huge gasp, as if choking, and began to shake violently.

  ‘Poor old boy,’ Ruth said at once. ‘You’re having a seizure, aren’t you? Here, come on.’

  She reached out and tried to put her arms about the big body that was thrashing madly in a way that might have been alarming if she hadn’t seen this before. She murmured soothingly, knowing the poor creature could hear very little, but trying to get through to him with a wordless message of comfort.

  ‘It won’t last long,’ Pietro said. ‘Just a few minutes. Shall I take him? When he starts thrashing around he gets a bit violent.’

  ‘No, leave him with me,’ Ruth said. ‘I don’t mind what he does.’

  Even as she spoke Toni’s teeth sank into her wrist. She winced and pulled herself free.

  ‘He didn’t mean that,’ Pietro said quickly. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s doing.’