by Jane Arbor
‘But the others may have been? The gossips? Giraldo?’
‘Giraldo, certainly. He says he knows it of you and is pretty sure about it of Venetia, though she keeps him on a rack of not-knowing, just for fun. He is in love with her, hopelessly, and she torments him for sport. I’ve seen her at it—’ Alix paused. ‘And if that sounds tart of me, I’m sorry, but you’ve probably realized that she and I don’t get on.’
Leone agreed drily. ‘It hasn’t escaped me. And if you remember, I suggested a possible cause on her side. But tell me, when did you have this heart-to-heart with Madrigna? Or have you had several, with my alleged cold-blooded plans for their subject?’
‘That time was my first morning at the Villa. Never since.’
‘Your first morning—!’ Watching him, Alix saw one corner of his mouth curve upward—almost to a smile, almost to tenderness. ‘And supposing,’ he went on, ‘all that had been true of me then, which already it wasn’t, are you going to make me spell it out word for word that none of it has been true since a certain morning when I braved the chilly welcome of a Trastevere pensione and the even frostier one of a slip of an English girl I meant to despise—and couldn’t?’ He half turned again to take both her hands, imprisoning them. ‘Tell me, amante, why do you think I turned on everything, short of physical force, to get you to the Villa, and kept you there after Michele had gone away?’
Alix stared at him, doubting her hearing. Amante? ‘Beloved’—from Leone to her? ‘Why, surely, because you thought I could help your stepmother ... didn’t you?’ she faltered.
He nodded. ‘Motive One—yes. Motive Two—and far more vital to me—because I knew I could not, dared not let you go—away, back into the anonymity of Rome or anywhere else where I couldn’t see you and hear you and ache for the day when you might let me touch you in love. If I had lost you that morning I might never have found you again. And if I had failed with you, I think you would have seen to it that I shouldn’t—wouldn’t you?’
‘I—think so.’
‘But you let me persuade you? Why? Just for the dare you once claimed to see in it? ’
‘I never called it a dare. You did,’ she reminded him. ‘I told you I dared not refuse—for pride’s sake.’
‘Only for pride’s sake, amante? Then or later? Tell me?’
She hesitated. ‘Then, just for pride, I think. Pride and pity for the Signora. Later—both those still. But more. Because—because I hadn’t the courage to take the step that meant I’d never see you or hear you again either. So when you made it too easy to put off the hour when I had to go, I let you. I—’
‘Ah! ’ Now he was on his knees before her, his face hidden in her lap. Her hands went lightly, a little fearfully, to his hair. ‘I don’t understand,’ she told his bent head. ‘If—? If Venetia really means nothing to you, why have you taken until now to—?’ She checked on echoing the words which had sent a quiver of amazement and ecstasy along her nerves.
He looked up. ‘To touch you in love? Dio mio, you don’t know how I’ve longed to ... how I’ve had to fight—! But you—how did you see me, I asked myself? Merely as a threat. I’d made you feel guilty about Madrigna, which made me your gaoler until, by staying and helping her, you were able to tell yourself you were working out the guilt. When you had, you would defy me and go. And you weren’t aware of me as a man at all in the meantime.’
‘Oh, Leone! Not aware of you?’ Her voice came shakily. ‘Why, you’ve had only to look my way or say my name and it’s been like—like an electric shock!’
‘No one would guess it,’ he retorted. ‘ “Unspent”, I called you once, do you remember? You let me believe you were. And anyway, I haven’t waited until now to offer you all I have of love. There’s been an earlier time—when you said that if you had ever encouraged me to hope anything of you, you’d have known I wanted you, implying that you might have shown me you wanted me as much. You know when I mean?’
‘That night above the Lake? Yes. But that meant nothing to you! Why, you kissed me as if you hated yourself for doing it!’
‘So I did—for doing it against your will. That “if” of yours spoke worlds!’
‘And—you called it moonlight hysteria and told me to forget it, except as that.’
He laughed. ‘My darling, how else could I help you to make a graceful retreat from the false position I’d put you in? As long as you could think I was merely rounding off a pleasant evening, that let us both out. You allowed it to. But today, when I knew I couldn’t keep you very much longer—today I had to try again. Hence—all this.’ The backward jerk of his head indicated the secret place the little garden was for them.
‘This?’ Alix stared her bewilderment. ‘But we were only coming to the Docks! If Aunt Ursula had been punctual, we couldn’t have come here! Or—’ her little throaty laugh was tender—‘have you the power to manage anything? I suppose you radioed the ship to ask it to get befogged or whatever has delayed it for these three hours?’
His laugh echoed hers as tenderly. ‘You flatter me, but even I have my limitations! No, I can only be grateful to Fate for coming in on my side, though if she hadn’t, I had laid my plans. For shock tactics as a first move. Didn’t I tell you I should think of something to explain myself to your aunt?’
‘Yes. But you didn’t suggest anything. You only let me tell you my version and said you wouldn’t contradict it.’
He took her chin between his finger and thumb and shook it gently. ‘Because, mia bella, I meant to forestall you. I was getting in my word first, you see. I was going to introduce myself as your fiancé. I still shall—!’
‘But—but—’ She watched him enjoying her chagrin. ‘You couldn’t. I should just have contradicted you—flat!’
‘No, you wouldn’t. A moment’s thought, and you must have seen it as a better story than yours. Sooner or later some pointed question from your aunt would have compelled you to admit you had spent the summer at the Villa—and where more convincingly than at his home with your fiancé’s people? Added to which, those exquisitely cool good manners of yours wouldn’t have forced me to lose face with your aunt once I’d claimed you. I calculated I was pretty safe.’
‘But afterwards! You say you haven’t known about me—that I’ve wanted you too. And supposing I hadn’t—what then?’
‘Ah, afterwards!’ He shrugged. ‘That I knew I couldn’t avoid. I had to have your answer. But by then we should have sent Aunt Ursula away convinced and happy for you. She would have sailed.’
‘But if—Oh, Leone, supposing—? Well, supposing I had still let my silly pride or jealousy of Venetia or my fear that I’m not what you want come between us—sooner or later she would have had to know it wasn’t true of us. Or at least that it wasn’t any longer.’
She had to wait for his answer to that. When it came—‘But isn’t this rather where we came in, amante?’ he invited. ‘For tell me, how often have you said that “sooner or later” someone would “have to know”. Or that it would “have to come out”? Or that we “couldn’t keep it up”? Well, how often? And has anyone we know or care for had to be disillusioned yet? Or need be—now? Well?’ He waited. And then—‘You see? You’ve nothing to say. And if you had, I wouldn’t let you say it. Come here instead—’
There was so short a way to come into the ‘here’ of the arms that were waiting to hold her ... guard her ... even hurt her a little with the strength of their pressure. She had known this pain before and had despised herself for accepting it, relaxing to it ... melting, for the few beats of time it had taken for every instinct of pride and self-preservation to warn No.
But that had been the dark of Then and this was the dawn of Now, and now she could say Yes to the pain, and Yes, Yes, Yes! to all that the sweet, savage embrace was asking of her and the promise that the lips, errant on throat and eyes and eager mouth, were demanding.
Later they would have need of words—for wonder and for gratitude and exploring each other’s minds and plann
ing. But in this rapturous Now the whole future of their love was implicit in their looking and their touching and in the little choking incoherencies that each understood.
Presently they withdrew; stood apart, both a little shy of the current of abandonment which had threatened to engulf them. The tide would rise again. They could wait—But real time was passing; the everyday of the real world closing in—cars, roads, a clamorous city; a ship arriving, sailing away and—home.
Leone held out his hand. Alix gave him hers. ‘It’s time we were going,’ he said.
The proprietor, coy on the subject of secluded gardens and the need of young love to find itself alone with itself, came out to see them off.
‘On your way down you and your lovely signorina should call in at the Sybil’s Cave and ask her to tell your happy fortune, signore,’ he advised with a wink.
Leone laughed. ‘According to legend the Sybil hasn’t uttered for around two thousand years, and when she did she was so cryptic she rarely made herself understood,’ he retorted. ‘Anyway’—he glanced at Alix—‘wouldn’t you say, Pietro, that I have my happy fortune beside me?’
‘Ah, si, signore! How right you are! With the signorina for your future, what need have you of Sybil’s or of advice from me?’ The man chuckled fatly as Leone switched on.
‘Arrivederci, signorina ... signore!’ Above the purr of the car’s engine he had the last word. ‘Wedding breakfasts a speciality of the house, signore! You will remember—?’
The hours of the long journey back to Rome were fully dark. Aunt Ursula had had her five hours ashore; had had the surprise of their news sprung upon her and had told her own. Starry-eyed with elderly wonder at all the exotic scenes and experiences behind her, she seemed only too ready to accept Alix’s romance as just another fairytale happening in which she could share at secondhand. She refused Leone’s suggestion that she should leave the cruise ship and return with them to Rome. But she promised she would certainly be back for their wedding. Nothing should keep her away.
So they came back to the Villa in the small hours to find the house still lighted in expectancy of them. But they did not go indoors at once. As if each read the other’s mind they turned together and, hand in hand, walked down through the cypress avenue towards the fountain and the water steps. The fountain was not playing and the silence was intense. A little chill before-dawn wind was beginning to stir and Alix was glad of the warmth of Leone’s arm about her.
During the last few hours she had slipped easily into calling the Signora ‘Madrigna’ as Leone did. ‘Are we going to have to tell her the truth about how you came to bring me to the Villa in the first place?’ she asked him now, rather dreading his answer.
She need not have done. ‘I see no reason why we should,’ he countered. ‘I’m sure Michele won’t, and surely you and I have had time enough since he left home to realize that we were in love? Besides, when we do announce ourselves, I’ve an idea Madrigna isn’t going to be as surprised as all that.’
‘Not surprised?’
‘Very possibly not. Not about me, at any rate.’
‘About you? That you—love me, you mean? What makes you think she knows?’ Alix asked.
‘Ah, that I think I’ll make you ask Madrigna herself,’ Leone teased.
‘Meaning I may ask her?’
‘Always supposing she doesn’t tell you without being asked.’ He dropped a kiss on Alix’s hair and drew her closer still.
Presently she said slowly, working it out, ‘But if Madrigna knows, and you say you think Venetia did, how can it happen that other people are able to guess when one of the two people concerned doesn’t know it? As I didn’t—about you. As I hadn’t any hope of you at all—how can it happen?’
Leone shook his head in mock bewilderment. ‘The eternal mystery, that,’ he said. ‘Fear of repulse. Pride. Jealousy. Self-preservation, perhaps. And if you’d ever been betrayed by love as I was once long ago, I think you’d realize how the dread of a second rejection can hold a man back—until the point of no return at which he has to be sure. But that takes time to reach, amante, and you’re wrong about “one” not knowing. There were two—You left me just as beset by doubt and as unsure as you—do you realize that?’
She turned to lift her face to his. ‘But you know now? You’re sure now?’ she invited.
His lips found hers and lingered gently. ‘As sure as a man dares ever to be,’ he murmured. ‘And you? You’re no longer in doubt either?’
Alix laughed. ‘I never got as far as doubt, nor even unsureness. Mine was just plain not knowing,’ she said.
‘Even when I kissed you above the Lake? Even when—?’ He broke off. ‘But let’s go in, and perhaps Madrigna will answer that one for you,’ he promised.
They tiptoed towards the lighted salon by way of the piazza and, unseen themselves, looked in on the tableau of the three people seated there.
They were not talking. His long legs outstretched, Michele sat on the floor at his mother’s feet, his head lightly against her knee. Baptista sat on a high-backed wing chair, her silk smock a pure Madonna blue; one hand lay along the chair-arm, the other hung down to toy with Michele’s fingertips and her eyes were as eloquent with one kind of promise as Dora Parigi’s were calm and happy with another.
They are Parigi generations, thought Alix. Family—and mine! Then Leone had opened the french door and hand-in-hand they were part of the tableau too.
It broke up at the sight of the radiance they must have brought with them. There were questions, disbelief turning to acceptance, excited talk, embraces.
Michele said, ‘Well, well, the things a chap like me can accomplish without even trying!’
His mother said, ‘Two new daughters for me on one day!’
Baptista said, ‘We shall be sisters, you and I, Alix. You will be Zia to my baby and later I shall be Zia Baptista to yours.’
But for Alix the peak of happiness came when, unasked, Dora Parigi answered the ‘Even when?’ question which Leone had teasingly left in the air.
‘The night you were in high fever from heat-stroke, Alix dear,’ she said. ‘Leone was calling you “my love”—do you remember I told you? Of course it could only have been his way of coaxing you to drink when you wouldn’t. But it made me wonder. Supposing, I asked myself, Leone—? Supposing, I wondered ... and hoped. And I was right after all!’
She broke off there on a long contented sigh. Her glance went from Alix to Leone, from Baptista to Michele. ‘And now, imagine! I haven’t to wonder or to worry ... about any of you ... any more!’
Michele reached for her hand and kissed it with a flourish. ‘Aha, that’s what you think, Mama dear!’ he teased her. ‘In fact, now your troubles are multiplied by two, they’re only just beginning. Wait and see!’
And under cover of the shared laughter of them all at that Leone bent to Alix.
‘Well, amante, if you had heard or understood me that night—mightn’t you have known?’ he said.
