Cast the First Stone: A stunning wartime story

by Angela Arney

  Nicholas did not feel guilty about leaving. Liana was happy and wanted to stay.

  ‘I can’t leave Broadacres now, not in its first open season.’ She linked arms with Nicholas as they walked the estate late one evening. ‘Besides, I’ve got my eye on some property in London. We must invest the money from the garden in something, and this is a real bargain.’

  Nicholas immediately felt doubtful about leaving. ‘Darling, will I ever be able to persuade you to stop work? It doesn’t seem right for me to go gallivanting off if you are about to embark on something new.’

  ‘Rubbish. It isn’t work, not if I enjoy it, which I do. Anyway, escorting Eleanora across Europe won’t be exactly restful! Have you seen the list she’s made? She wants to see every tourist attraction, large and small, on the entire route.’

  ‘I know.’ Nicholas laughed. ‘She takes after you. When she does something she does it thoroughly.’

  Eleanora and Nicholas departed with Liana’s blessing and Margaret’s dire warning about foreign drivers. ‘They all drive like maniacs, and on the wrong side of the road!’

  *

  ‘I think perhaps it would be wiser not to mention that we’re going on into Italy,’ said Nicholas.

  Eleanora looked up from her postcard-writing. ‘What shall I say, then?’

  ‘Don’t say anything much. Just say we are here at Nyon, near Geneva; the weather is lovely; the hotel is good. You know, all the usual things. We can send another postcard when we get back into France or Switzerland.’

  Eleanora grinned. It had been surprisingly easy to persuade her father to go on down to Italy and revisit the castello. Unbeknown to her, he had been longing to do just that anyway.

  ‘Do you think Mummy will be furious?’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas, wishing he felt as confident as he sounded.

  But he forgot Liana’s possible displeasure as he and Eleanora drove on down through Italy, eventually arriving in Naples. They booked into a hotel overlooking the castle and the harbour. Memories came flooding back to Nicholas. He had forgotten the breathtaking beauty of the spectacular coastline and the bay of Naples.

  ‘How can Mummy never want to come back here?’ asked Eleanora, echoing Nicholas’s unspoken thought. She leaned over the edge of the restaurant terrace, a glass of spremuta al limone in her hand. ‘Even the drinks are deliciously different.’ Then she stopped and gazed around her. The sea was slowly changing – purple to deep navy blue in the evening light – and the mountains darkened with the cloak of night. ‘It’s magic,’ she said softly and turned back to her father. ‘Do you know something, it’s strange, but I feel almost as if I’ve come home. I’d like to learn Italian; I don’t want to be only English. I ought to be proud of my Italian half as well. You don’t mind, do you?’

  Nicholas smiled gently; he had been thinking how well she blended in with her surroundings. She fitted in with the brilliance of the colours and now, seeing her beside the Neapolitans in the hotel, Nicholas realized for the first time how very Italian Eleanora looked. ‘Of course I don’t mind. Why should I? You are half Italian, so why deny it? I’m very glad we came.’

  ‘Oh, so am I.’ Eleanora turned back to the sea. ‘And I can’t wait until tomorrow when at last I shall see the castello.’

  ‘It’s going to be in ruins,’ warned Nicholas, ‘so don’t be disappointed.’

  He looked at the sheaf of papers in his hand. They had stopped off at the local authority’s modern offices in Naples. Nicholas thought it prudent to try and find out the fate of the castello. He wanted it to be just the two of them when they got there, just himself and Eleanora. The thought that someone else might have moved in and taken it over worried him, and he wanted that matter settled and out of the way. So, while Eleanora zoomed in and out of souvenir shops buying up junk jewellery, he took himself off to the local authority records office. As far as the records showed – and being Neapolitan they were slightly chaotic, masses of yellowing documents stacked higgledy-piggledy in an old box file – no-one had ever laid claim to the castello and the authorities were certain it was still empty. With the aid of his marriage certificate and Liana’s birth certificate, it had not been difficult to register the building as now belonging to the Countess of Wessex, formerly the Marchesa Eleanora Anna Maria, Baroness San Angelo di Magliano e del Monte. God, he had forgotten how long her name was! Nicholas grinned: of course, the fifty pounds in cash had helped oil the wheels of bureaucracy. Naples had not changed!

  As he walked through the Roman portals of the gateway the next day, Nicholas sensed a shadowy doubt. Had they been right to come? Liana would not have wanted it. In opening the doors to the past, would he in some way get more than he had bargained for? But within a moment the doubts had gone as Eleanora darted about the courtyard, exclaiming with little cries of delight and wonder. The castello had hardly changed at all. Apart from being overgrown with ivy and brilliant yellow broom which had taken root in crevices in the walls, it looked much the same. He showed Eleanora the flagstone in the kitchen where Liana had hidden the jewels, and she lifted it up and peered inside.

  ‘When you met her, she lived here in this huge place all alone?’

  ‘Quite alone. All her relatives had been murdered.’

  ‘Why did you marry her? Did you feel sorry for her?’

  ‘I married her because I fell in love with her. And no, my darling,’ he ruffled Eleanora’s dark hair, ‘I didn’t feel sorry for her. Your mother was very proud. She didn’t feel sorry for herself, or if she did, she never showed it. And she would not have liked it either if I had shown pity.’

  Eleanora walked across to the gateway and stood looking out across the curve of the bay of Naples. She sniffed. ‘It’s so different from home,’ she said. ‘It smells so dry. And all those wild herbs! Meg would go mad with delight. I must take some back for her. In England we have doves and wood pigeons cooing; here its cicadas. You’d think they’d get tired of scraping their back legs together, wouldn’t you!’ She wheeled round abruptly. ‘This place is crying out to be restored. Can’t you feel it? Oh, Daddy, say we have enough money to restore it. I don’t mean all of it, at least, not in the beginning. Only part of it. Then we could come here for holidays, and maybe even Mummy would come, too.’

  ‘We have the money, but . . .’ Nicholas hesitated. ‘The decision isn’t really mine to make. We must ask your mother. After all the building does belong to her. The decision must be hers.’

  *

  ‘But Mummy why not?’

  ‘Because I say not.’

  ‘That is not a good enough reason.’

  ‘It is the only reason I intend to give.’

  ‘Go on, clam up the way you always do when you don’t want to do something. You put on that hateful superior expression and refuse to discuss it.’

  ‘Eleanora, don’t shout at your mother like that.’ Nicholas was torn between the two women he loved most in the world.

  ‘I will shout. Why shouldn’t I? Everything has to be done her way. You never complain, Daddy. I don’t know why not. Is it because you are henpecked? Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? Henpecked, henpecked, henpecked?’ Eleanora was hysterical with rage.

  ‘Eleanora!’ Liana stood up, her face dark with anger. ‘Leave the room and apologize for your behaviour before you go.’

  ‘I will not apologize, not unless you say we can restore the castello.’

  Liana’s voice was low but a terrible anger trembled through it. ‘You might as well know now, Eleanora, that I will never agree to it. As far as I am concerned it can fall down, stone by stone. I never intend to return to Italy as long as I live, and I have no intention of letting any of the money I have worked so hard to earn for this family be wasted on such a project.’

  ‘You are denying me my birthright. Do you know that? I’m half Italian, too. When you die the castello will belong to me, and I want to be able to live there if I wish.’

  Liana sank down on to the nearest settee and buried her
head in her hands. She had never envisaged it would come to this, quarrelling with Eleanora about the castello. Half Italian indeed.’ If only she knew. Oh, god, if only she knew. It was more than she could bear. ‘I’m not dead yet, Eleanora,’ she said, the words half muffled by her hands, ‘and you will have to wait until I am before you can touch the castello.’

  Eleanora stormed from the room. But Nicholas knew the battle was not yet over. He felt helpless. Two strong-minded women, locked in combat – a head-on collision of wills.

  *

  Later that night in the relative calm of their bedroom, Nicholas tried to heal the rift.

  ‘Would it really be so bad if you agreed to have the castello restored? You need never go there. I can understand that memories, particularly the death of your mother, must be painful. But Eleanora is not haunted by such memories; she loves Italy. She loved Naples. She felt she belonged there, and, of course, in a way she does. She is our child, conceived there on our honeymoon. Remember?’

  But Liana could not bear to remember and did not answer. Crossing to her dressing room she flung off her clothes and put on a bathrobe, then entering the bathroom turned the bath taps full on: anything to keep herself occupied; anything to keep memories at bay; anything to put off answering Nicholas. His words had snared her emotions like a savage flick from barbed wire.

  Nicholas, thinking she was still angry with Eleanora, followed her into the bathroom, and standing behind her gently put his hands on her shoulders.

  ‘Remember?’ he repeated softly. ‘Remember our wedding night?’

  ‘Nicholas, don’t!’ Liana shrugged her shoulders away.

  Suddenly she felt very frightened, sick with fear. Remember? How could she forget? God, how guilty she felt. All the long years of fighting, of keeping it at bay, and then suddenly, just when she thought she was safe, without warning it was there again: the ugly truth staring her in the face; the deceit. If only Nicholas knew the deceit. Nicholas, dear, gentle Nicholas who thought he was Eleanora’s father, who thought his wife loved him, and she never had. Never had! Not in the way he deserved to be. She wanted to weep, to seek relief in confession. But that was not possible. There was no-one to trust, no-one in the world she could talk to. Oh, God, if only there were someone. But there was not; she faced an empty void and in her fear took refuge in anger, turning on Nicholas, bitter words spilling out.

  ‘Isn’t it bad enough that you betray me by going there without telling me? Don’t ask me to remember and then try to tell me what I ought to do for Eleanora’s sake. The answer is still no. No, no and it will always be no!’

  Twisting away Liana turned off the bath taps with trembling fingers. Sight blurred with fear and unshed tears, she fumbled in the cupboard for a clean towel, and finding one jerked it from the shelf. Too late she saw the small box pulled out with the towel, saw it falling. Clattering across the floor it spilled its contents which came to rest against the wainscot.

  Nicholas bent and retrieved first the box and then the object it had contained. He stared down at the smooth round rubber object he held in one hand. Liana caught her breath. It was her dutch cap, the latest in a long line of contraceptive devices she had hidden so carefully all the years of their marriage at Broadacres.

  ‘What is this?’ he said, his voice careful and quiet.

  ‘Well . . . er, it’s a . . .’ Liana flushed, and for the first time Nicholas could ever remember she was at a loss for words.

  ‘Is this the reason you’ve never conceived?’

  No amount of lies or intricate fabrication could alter the evidence he held in his hand. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ His voice was ominously low.

  ‘Because.’ The world she had so carefully nurtured, and which was already showing signs of cracking, cartwheeled crazily through her head and she realized the very real danger of losing everything, everything. How could she say to Nicholas because I only ever wanted Raul’s children, and if I couldn’t have his, then I didn’t want anybody else’s? How could she say this to the man who thought he was Eleanora’s father? ‘Because I was afraid,’ she said at last. ‘I couldn’t bear the thought of having another baby. Donald Ramsay must have told you what a bad time I had.’ It was not the truth but it would have to do.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I couldn’t, I . . .’

  ‘It was easier, I suppose, to let me go on longing, hoping for a son and heir, while all the time you made damned certain I’d never have one. Christ, Liana, don’t talk to me about betrayal!’ Nicholas’s voice rose in anger.

  Liana stood and faced him. Slipping her arms around his neck, she tried to work the old magic, anything to distract him. ‘Nicholas, I . . .’

  ‘You’ve used me.’ Nicholas’s voice broke with emotion and with a savage push he thrust her away from him. Liana turned and fled into the bedroom. What could she do? What could she say? In her haste and agitation she stumbled and fell across the bed.

  ‘Nicholas, listen to me. I . . .’

  ‘Used me!’ Nicholas repeated, standing towering over her.

  ‘No! Nicholas, I didn’t mean to. Please let me explain,’ Liana whimpered, trying to scramble backwards off the bed. ‘Please, Nicholas. No!’

  But it was not the Nicholas she knew who bent over her body, violently ripping away her bathrobe in one vicious movement. It was a stranger, a man hell-bent on revenge.

  ‘Christ! You bitch, you bitch.’ Resentment hit Nicholas with blood-red violence. He felt sick. How dare she deny him his rights as a man, as a father. How dare she? His brain exploded with anger and he flung himself down on top of her writhing, struggling body, pinning her down. ‘A dutch cap. A sodding dutch cap! All these bloody years!’

  Liana fought, desperately trying to get away. ‘Nicholas, wait, listen. Don’t spoil what we . . .’ She screamed in fear and pain.

  Impervious to her screams and her scratching hands, Nicholas brutally prised her legs apart and rammed his body into hers.

  ‘Deceiving bloody bitch. Deceiving bloody, bloody . . . bitch.’ He sobbed as he ground himself into her in an unthinking frenzy.

  Finally it stopped, and Nicholas rolled over on to his back. Liana could feel warm liquid trickling down the inside of her thighs and knew it was blood. In his blind rage he had torn her. Neither moved nor spoke. They lay, silent and still, side by side, two strangers, each battling to emerge from a hideous darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Staring at the square of moonlight and starlit sky that was the window, Liana shivered. Then, knowing that she must, or surely perish, she began to reassemble the dismembered pieces of her life. The bruised and aching body stretched out rigid on the bed was nothing compared to the shattered mess of her mind.

  She did not consciously begin anywhere in particular. At first random words and isolated snatches of memory battered aimlessly about inside her skull, bluebottles in a closed room, frantically throwing themselves against the window pane in a vain attempt to escape. But gradually things began to accumulate in a more ordered manner and her existence slid into focus.

  She remembered the time in Nicholas’s office in Naples. She could hear his voice telling her that he was certain Raul was dead. It was so clear it might have been yesterday, and Liana remembered, too, the vow she had made that day. No matter what happened, or wherever the path led, she would follow it for the sake of Raul’s child. The child would never know the meaning of the word ‘want’.

  And I did it, she told herself, I kept faith with that vow. I did whatever needed to be done, no matter how sordid, no matter how painful or unpleasant. And I succeeded in forging a new life for myself and for my child. I achieved everything and more that I set out to achieve. And I made Nicholas happy. Even though I deceived him, he was happy. It was a kind of justification, a fact she always clung on to in moments of doubt. It was a comfort to know that she had made Nicholas happy. And he would have gone on being happy but for that disastrous discovery. But f
ate, cruel, quirky fate, had intervened in her life yet again, violently disrupting the illusion so carefully constructed over the years. Never, never in Liana’s wildest imaginings, had she thought it possible that a quarrel with her own daughter would lead to the violent and ugly disintegration of her relationship with Nicholas.

  It was no use logic’s hammering away inside her head, telling her that she was to blame, that she had deceived Nicholas enough by presenting him with a daughter who was not his, without cruelly adding to the deception by denying him a child of his own. Cold, unremitting logic told her that; but she didn’t need telling, she knew, had always known, but had for ever turned her face away from the knowledge. Grown bleak with remorseless practice by continually ignoring the cries from within herself, Liana had become almost immune, persuading herself that her path was morally defensible, that the pursuit of her goals, no matter the cost to others, was justified – almost persuading, almost, but never entirely. Every now and then guilt stabbed a little deeper than usual, causing an instinctive flinch of contrition, but it was only a temporary affliction because she had made her choice many years before, and had no intention of deviating from that chosen path. Her eyes were closed and her ears shut to cries of logic and fairness.

  The rationale was her unreasoning but unshakeable love for Raul. To her it seemed so simple: it was Raul, always Raul. At times he receded, fading into an insubstantial shadow, but he always came back as if to remind her she would never be free. Liana could not imagine life without Raul superimposed over every living moment. Convinced that each day without him would be intolerable, she clung desperately to his memory, pushing Nicholas away when he threatened to get too close or claim her affection. Whatever the cost Raul had to stay alive for her. He had to be safe and real in the separate world he inhabited, the secret world she was free to float into whenever she wanted. In her innermost heart she knew it was absurd, a madness, to go on idolizing a dead man but the adoration was beyond her control; he was the most precious thing of all. Nothing, not another baby, not even Eleanora, could be allowed to get in his way.