The Mediterranean Rebel’s Bride

by Lucy Gordon

  ‘I just called to say I’ve got my own ward at St Luke’s,’ she said, ‘and I have two vacancies. I’d love you to fill one of them. Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m in Italy.’

  ‘But you’ll come home soon, won’t you? Pop over and we’ll have a chat.’

  ‘Can I call you back about that?’ Her eyes were fixed on the track.

  ‘Sure, just remember there’s a job for you any time.’

  She hung up.

  There was a cheer. The bikers were coming out now. They all looked alike in their black leather and visors, but Polly would have known Ruggiero’s tall, lean body anywhere.

  Don’t do it! Don’t do it!

  She saw him walk towards the bikes with the others, saw him stop and look around. His gaze seemed fixed on the place where she stood. He seemed transfixed, rooted to the spot, as though something was there that was revealed only to him.

  What can you see?

  Then a murmur went through the crowd as Ruggiero pulled off his helmet and turned to the man beside him, saying something. The murmur turned to a groan of disappointment as Ruggiero made a gesture indicating his bike. The other man let out a yell of delight and punched the air, but Ruggiero never saw it. He was already walking away.

  He went on walking across the track until he came to the place where Polly stood, her eyes glistening, her heart overflowing.

  ‘Enrico will ride for me,’ he said. ‘That’s it. Basta!’

  ‘What made you change your mind?’ she asked, hardly able to get the words out. ‘Did you see her?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I saw you. And Matti was in your arms.’

  ‘It’s what you tried to tell me, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  They were sitting in a small restaurant. After speaking to her Ruggiero had gone back to change out of his leather gear, giving her time to call Hope and tell her all was well.

  Then they had left the track, finding the first place where they could sit together and talk quietly.

  ‘I tried to find the words, but there aren’t any,’ Polly said.

  ‘I had to learn it for myself,’ he agreed. ‘And now I have-just in that moment. I saw you holding Matti in your arms. The two of you were looking at me. But he wasn’t really there, was he?’

  ‘He’s at home with your parents. But, yes-he was with me.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘And with me. For the first time I feel that he’s mine.’

  ‘And you are his,’ she reminded him. ‘Or it doesn’t work.’

  He took her hand. ‘Let’s go home.’

  Hope and Toni were watching for them, standing on the steps with Matti between them, each holding one hand. They came down slowly, releasing him when they reached the ground, so that he had only to waddle two steps before clinging onto his father’s leg for support.

  Ruggiero dropped down to one knee to put his arms about his son.

  ‘We got there,’ he said huskily.

  Polly stood back, watching them with pleasure, then exchanged glances with Hope and Toni. A decision was forming inside her.

  She waited a few more hours, studying Ruggiero and Matti, but in her heart she was sure. These two had a road to travel yet, but they had found the start and placed their feet on it together.

  She was even more certain when Ruggiero tried to assist his son in walking, holding his hand, and Matti impatiently thrust him away.

  ‘There’s a chip off the old block,’ Toni said, and Ruggiero nodded.

  ‘You used to fall over more often than not,’ Hope reminded him.

  ‘But he doesn’t fall over,’ Ruggiero said, regarding his child with pride.

  At that moment Matti sat down hard.

  ‘That was my fault,’ Ruggiero hastened to say, speaking loud to be heard through his son’s bawled indignation. ‘He fell over my foot.’

  At last Hope said, ‘It’s time this little one was in bed. Polly, shall we put him back in your room?’

  ‘No, let him stay with you,’ she replied quickly.

  She joined the procession upstairs, but remained in the background during the ceremony as the last pieces of her resolution fell into place. Afterwards Ruggiero found her brooding on the terrace, and sat down, smiling contentedly.

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m glad this has happened now,’ she said. ‘It makes it easy for me.’

  ‘There’s something in the way you say that that makes me nervous.’

  ‘I have to go home for a while.’

  ‘For a while? Are you coming back?’

  She hesitated. ‘I don’t know. I need to be away from here, and you need to be alone with Matti. I’m starting to be in the way.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. I couldn’t have got this far without you.’

  ‘But you have reached this far, and you’ll manage the next stage better if you let go of your nurse’s hand.’ She smiled. ‘If you should need a hand to hold onto, take Matti’s. You’re both going in the same direction.’

  ‘Matti needs you,’ he insisted.

  She waited, daring to hope. But Ruggiero didn’t say that he needed her, and her heart sank again.

  ‘I think Matti will be fine without me. This is his home now, and he loves it. He loves Hope and Toni and you.’

  ‘He’s getting used to me-’

  ‘No, you’re winning his heart. He’s as bright as a button, and he’s just like his poppa. Everyone can see that. That’s the bond. All you have to do is use it. You managed the big first step today.’

  He didn’t look at her as he said, in a strange voice, ‘You’re not doing this very well, Polly.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked in alarm.

  ‘You’re doing what you once accused me of-just reciting the words. Why don’t you tell me the real reason?’

  For a moment she thought he’d guessed her feelings and was challenging her to speak them. And, if so, would it be so terrible to say that she loved him?

  But then he added, ‘I suppose Brian’s cutting up rough, and you feel you have to get back to him?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, letting out her breath slowly. ‘It’s Brian.’

  ‘I wish I knew what you see in him. Isn’t he worried about you?’

  ‘I told you, he’s a doctor.’

  ‘Ah, yes-a man so busy serving humanity that he has no time for you. To hell with him! If he loved you, he’d be hammering on your door.’

  ‘Not every man shows his feelings by tearing the walls down.’

  ‘Just Neanderthals like me, huh?’

  ‘I didn’t-’

  ‘Well, you’re right. I told you how I went crazy in London when Sapphire vanished-roaming the streets, starving, half mad, knocking at doors. Why isn’t he pounding doors for you?’

  ‘Because for one thing he knows exactly where I am,’ she replied in her most common sense voice.

  ‘But does he know who you’re with?’

  ‘He knows I’m with a patient.’

  ‘Does he know about this patient? How close we are? Does he know how I depend on you? That I’ve kissed you. Does he know that you’ve kissed me?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she said quickly. ‘I didn’t push you away because your ribs-’

  ‘So that was a nurse’s concern, was it? What about your other patients? Do you-?’

  ‘Stop it,’ she flashed, her eyes daring him to say any more. ‘Stop right there.’

  He flushed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t mean to say that.’

  ‘Never speak of this again. The sooner I go the better.’

  She left quickly, before he could answer. Her breath was coming sharply, and every nerve in her seemed alive with conflicting emotions-anguish, temptation and desire contending with fear.

  The fear was because she knew how close she’d come to yielding to what she must resist. Ruggiero wanted her to stay for Matti’s sake, but also because his own nature needed her. It wasn’t love, but for a woman who was pas
sionately in love with him it might have been a bearable substitute.

  Except for Sapphire.

  He could say what he liked about being over her. It wasn’t that simple. Her body might be dead, but still she would always be alive in the son they shared, in the memories that would live as long as his heart and soul lived.

  And while that was true he could never really be hers.

  What tormented her most was the knowledge that if she’d pushed matters, said the right words, she could probably have manoeuvred him into a proposal. But hell would freeze over before she did so. No half measures. He must be hers completely or not at all. Anything else would mean years of misery.

  So the answer was not at all. And now she would flee this place, while she could still bear it.

  Hope took the news of her impending departure calmly.

  ‘Yes, you need to return for a while,’ she said. ‘Everything will still be here when you get back.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I-I don’t know how things will work out.’

  Hope kissed her.

  ‘We’ll meet again,’ she said placidly.

  Her goodbye to Matti was tearful on her side but not on his. He’d perfected the art of putting shapes into the right holes and was eager to demonstrate.

  ‘And he knows you’ll be back soon,’ Ruggiero said quietly.

  ‘Perhaps. Are my things in the car?’

  ‘Yes, I’m all ready to drive you to the airport, if you still want to go.’

  I don’t want to go, she told him silently. I want to stay with you always. I want to love you and have you love me. But you don’t love me, and perhaps you never will. Maybe this is the only way I can find out.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I still want to go.’

  At the airport he carried her bags to Check-In, and walked with her towards the departure lounge.

  ‘Stay,’ he said suddenly. ‘Don’t go. You belong here.’

  If he’d said, Stay with me, she would have done so, even then. But ‘Stay’ wasn’t enough.

  ‘I’m not sure where I belong,’ she told him. ‘I have to find out.’

  ‘Will he meet you at the other end?’

  ‘No, he’s-’

  ‘I know-he’s busy,’ Ruggiero interrupted her, exasperated. ‘Then he has only himself to blame for anything that happens.’

  He pulled her close and laid his lips on hers. Polly closed her eyes and gave herself up to the feeling for perhaps the last time. In this public place she couldn’t embrace him as she wanted to, but she tried to let him know silently that her heart would remain here, although the rest of her might never return.

  ‘Polly…’ he said softly.

  ‘I must go now. Goodbye.’

  ‘We’ll see each other again soon.’ He was still holding her hand.

  ‘Goodbye-goodbye-’

  The little flat seemed to echo around her. The year spent there with her cousin and Matti had been terrible in many ways, but now that they were gone it was somehow worse. The emptiness struck her more fiercely for its contrast with the last few weeks in the cheerful villa, with members of the huge Rinucci clan wandering in and out.

  She had nobody, she realised. Her only relative was Matti, and she’d parted with him for his own sake. She would visit him in Naples, and know herself to be welcome, but then she would come back here and the family doors would close behind her.

  Why, that’s it! she told herself. It’s all of them I’m missing. Not only Ruggiero. I just loved being part of a big jolly family. I’m not in love with him. Not really.

  With that settled it was easier to concentrate on settling in. She whisked around with a duster, bought herself some fish and chips from across the road, made a huge pot of tea and settled down to read the post that had arrived while she was away.

  It was very silent. The scream of the phone was a relief.

  ‘Did you have a safe journey?’ Ruggiero asked from the other end.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you.’

  ‘Matti has been waiting for you to call and say you’d arrived. When you didn’t, I told him I’d call you.’

  Something caught in her throat, half-laughter, half tears.

  ‘So the two of you had a nice little talk?’ she asked.

  ‘He did most of the talking. He wants to know how you are.’

  ‘I’m just fine.’

  ‘Was it a good flight? He knows you don’t like flying, and he’s worried about that.’

  ‘Tell him it was a nice smooth flight.’

  His voice became muffled as he turned away to say, ‘She says it was a nice smooth flight.’

  Matti answered, ‘Aaaah!’

  ‘He says he’s very pleased,’ Ruggiero passed on.

  ‘Give him my love.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell him yourself? Here, Matti. Put it to your ear-like that.’

  ‘Aaaah!’ he said.

  ‘Is that you, darling?’ she asked.

  ‘Si, si, si, si, si.’

  ‘You’ve learned another word. How clever you are.’

  ‘Aaaah!’

  ‘He says he loves you,’ came Ruggiero’s voice. ‘He wants you to say it too. Here, Matti.’

  ‘I love you,’ she said softly. ‘Matti?’

  ‘He slid off my lap and went to Mamma,’ Ruggiero said.

  ‘It’s time he was in bed.’

  ‘She’s just about to take him.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ll be there, too.’

  ‘Good. I must go now. Goodnight.’

  ‘Ciao!’

  ‘Ciao!’

  She put down the phone and sat quietly in the dusk, until there was no light left.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THERE’S a letter for you,’ Hope said, putting it in Ruggiero’s hand. ‘From England.’

  Conscious of his parent’s eyes fixed eagerly on him, he pulled open the envelope. Inside was a letter and a photograph, showing a small headstone in a graveyard. Beneath it was the name of the church and the village.

  I found this when I got home. One day Matti might like to have it. Talk to him about her. Remember what I told you-that she was a good mother and she loved him with all her heart, until the last moment of her life. Think of her like that, and try to forgive her the rest.

  It was signed, ‘Your affectionate Bossy-Boots.’

  ‘She talks as though she wasn’t coming back,’ Hope observed.

  ‘I don’t think she is,’ Ruggiero said heavily.

  ‘And you’re just going to accept that?’ Hope demanded, outraged. ‘Why didn’t you ask her to marry you?’

  ‘Have you forgotten that she’s engaged?’

  ‘Poof! Don’t tell me you’re going to let yourself be put off by a trifle like that?’

  ‘Mamma,’ he said with a faint grin, ‘sometimes I think you’re completely immoral.’

  ‘I can remember when, if you wanted a woman, you’d have elbowed a whole army of fiancés out of your way.’

  ‘Well, perhaps it’s time I stopped doing such things. Other people have rights.’ He gave a grunt. ‘I guess I finally learned that.’

  ‘Not from me. I tried but I failed there.’

  ‘No-from her. It’s odd,’ he said softly, ‘but when I think of all the things I learned from her it really makes her seem like Nurse Bossy-Boots. And yet…’ He paused and smiled faintly, as though he barely realised he was doing so. ‘She wasn’t a bit like that.’

  ‘What was she like?’ Hope asked, her gaze fixed fondly on him.

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t tell. Even to me she’s-I don’t know.’

  ‘But what does she say on the phone? You call her every night.’

  ‘Matti calls her every night,’ he corrected fondly. ‘They talk and I put in the odd word. I’m not sure she’d talk to me as easily. Now she’s with her fiancé again…’ Ruggiero sighed. ‘Heaven knows what kind of man he is, but she seems very set on him.’

  ‘She told you that?’

&n
bsp; ‘No, she gave me only bare details. If I ventured onto that territory I got ordered off.’

  ‘Hmm!’

  ‘Mamma, you can put more meaning into that one little sound than anyone I know.’

  ‘Has it ever occurred to you that this man may not exist? That he may be simply a device she has found useful?’

  He nodded. ‘At the start I wanted her to keep Matti, but I had to give up when she mentioned the fiancé, and it did cross my mind that she’d invented him to silence me. But when she returned from England with you he called her.’

  ‘She said so?’ Hope demanded sceptically.

  ‘No, but I heard her say something about a hospital. And since he works in one-’

  ‘That could have meant anything. Her friends had to return Matti early because their daughter had been rushed to hospital. Perhaps she was talking to them?’

  ‘But you told me she went out to see him while you were there.’

  ‘I said she went out for a couple of hours. I don’t know who she saw.’

  ‘But he was there when I called her the other night.’

  Hope turned, thoroughly startled now. ‘She actually told you that?’

  ‘No, but I heard him in the background, asking where she kept the glasses.’

  She breathed again.

  ‘And it didn’t occur to you that if he were her fiancé he’d have known that without asking?’

  ‘You think-? No, there could be many things to account for it.’

  ‘You won’t know unless you go to find out.’

  Unwittingly, she’d touched a nerve. Suddenly he was back in London, searching uselessly for someone who wasn’t there, turning corner after corner, always hoping that he would find his dream around the next one. An icy dread went through him at the thought of doing it again.

  He didn’t call her that night, hoping she would call him. But the phone was silent. And when the next night came he found that he couldn’t force himself to call. The silence of the evening before held him in a grip of dread. The next night he admitted to himself that he was afraid, and the admission was a kind of release, so that he snatched up the receiver and dialled her home number.