by Isobel Chace
“Well, my love?” he repeated.
“I’m ready,” she said.
He gave her a ring that had been in the Verdecchio family since the time of Frederick II. He gave her gold in the form of a key to his house. And he gave her a silver coin as a symbol of his wealth.
To Ruth, the whole ceremony was as unreal as a dream. The priest mumbled and she couldn’t really understand what he was saying. If Mario’s responses were clear, her own were bungled as she struggled with the unfamiliar Italian formula that committed her life into Mario’s keeping. Only when she was asked if she would take Mario to be her husband, to love him, to honour him, and to obey him, did she make a single, firm response. “Si,” she said with a willingness that shocked her.
Mario glanced at her, his eyes full of swift amusement, and she could feel herself blushing in the most humiliating way. Then the moment passed and the instant of intimate understanding had gone with it. The priest mumbled on to a conclusion and the ceremony was over.
The civil part of the wedding was no more than a formality. Ruth signed half a dozen pieces of paper, wherever anyone told her she should, and received in return a document, heavy with seals, that she supposed was her marriage lines.
“Was it so painful?” Mario asked her mildly.
She didn’t know how to answer. “I don’t see how you can look so happy about it!” she retorted.
He smiled. “Don’t you? There are compensations, you know.”
“They’re not obvious to me!” she answered.
“No? Perhaps one has to be a man to see them.”
Ruth suppressed a smile. Whatever he might say, she was grateful to him for not looking miserable at the prospect of a lifelong liaison with her. That, she thought, was true gallantry! “I—I shan’t hold you to anything,” she managed to say.
His expression became distant and she was more than ever conscious of his broken nose. “Won’t you? Well, you can be sure that I shall hold you to your promises. There is no going back, Ruth. The outcome was inevitable from the moment you set foot on Sicilian soil.”
Ruth straightened her back. If he was proud, so could she be. “That’s my funeral! All I’m trying to say is that it needn’t be yours too!”
He stiffened. “Indeed? I hope you don’t mean what I think you do. In Sicily, it is the man who rules the marriage, not the whim of his wife.”
She was immediately as angry as he. “You won’t rule me!” she shot at him.
“Another challenge?” he asked her.
“A fact!” she muttered.
To her dismay, he chuckled. “Facts can be changed to suit oneself if one is sufficiently determined,” he said.
“I am determined!” she insisted, more to boost her own morale than to convince him.
Mario smiled. His eyes searched Ruth’s face, making her very conscious of her new hair-do and make-up. Did he think she looked beautiful? Or was he still longing for the obvious prettiness of Pearl? Ruth wished she knew.
“So am I determined,” he said briefly. “And as no house can stand if it is divided against itself, I am afraid that one of us will have to give way, and it will not be me.”
“Because you are a man and I a woman?”
“Exactly!” He sounded amused. “It is sometimes easier for a woman to be generous,” he added.
Ruth’s eyes mocked him. “Whoever told you that?” she demanded.
“Why, you did!” he answered simply, completely taking the wind out of her sails.
“I did!” she repeated in complete disbelief.
“Not in words,” he admitted. “But if you truly believe in equality, then I can only think it is generosity that makes you offer to be faithful yourself while offering me my freedom. I should never make you such an offer!”
Ruth’s cheeks reddened. “It wasn’t an easy offer to make,” she began, her words tripping over themselves in her embarrassment.
“But for me,” he drawled softly, “the offer would have been so difficult to make, I should not have made it at all.”
It was a lesson to her, she thought, not to cross swords with him. “Then I withdraw the offer,” she said with dignity.
The crack of his laughter made her jump. “An honourable withdrawal?” he inquired softly.
Her own lips twitched. “It’s better than an ignominious defeat,” she told him.
He feigned a shudder. “Infinitely better!” he agreed. “It gives us a chance of calling a truce for the afternoon. Well, Signora Verdecchio?”
She offered him her hand in silent agreement. It was better, she thought, to rest her fire until she really needed it. Besides, she needed time to accustom herself to her new circumstances, so that her heart didn’t jump like a clap of thunder every time anyone called her by her married name.
Ruth saw her husband through new eyes that afternoon. He sent the chauffeur away and drove his own car, pointing out the improvements he had made locally as they went.
“The roads were mostly improved by the Fascists,” he told her. “It was one of the good things they left behind them. Before, when you went through the fruit-growing districts, all the orchards were walled in, but the Fascists forced the people to dismantle them and now you can drive for miles through lovely scenery.”
“But you’re not old enough to remember Mussolini,’ she said.
“Just about!” he grinned.
She wanted to ask him how old he was, but she didn’t dare. She turned her attention to the countryside they were driving through.
“Mario, I must send a telegram to Pearl,” she said at last. “She’ll be worrying about me.” She twisted her fingers together nervously. “I won’t let you talk me out of it,” she continued quickly. “I left her some money and a note saying I would be back in a day or so. It—it isn’t fair not to contact her!”
“But of course!” he responded politely. “We shall stop at the next post office we come to. You can send your message from there.”
“I’m sorry to be a nuisance,” she gulped. “But you do see, don’t you?”
“I have said so,” Mario answered. “As a matter of fact I telephoned to her yesterday, so she will not be as worried as you think.”
“You telephoned her?”
“Why not?”
It was impossible to tell him why not when she thought about it. She only knew that she bitterly resented his having done any such thing.
“It was for me to tell her,” she said. “She is my sister!”
He smiled faintly. “I don’t think she’ll feel particularly sisterly when next she sees you,” he remarked.
“What do you mean?” she asked, puzzled.
His smile widened. “She is used to being the pretty sister!” he reminded her.
Ruth took a deep breath. “That isn’t kind!” she said.
“Why not? Can’t I pay compliments to my wife if I like?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think it was a compliment,” she said.
He was taken aback by the accusation. “It was intended as one,” he assured her earnestly.
“To Pearl?” she retorted.
“No,” he admitted with disarming candour, “perhaps not. I find it difficult to remember that you and Pearl are sisters—”
“I know,” Ruth interrupted him. “We are so unalike.”
“Well, so you are!” he told her, annoyed. “Tell me about your own mother, Ruth. Was she like you?”
Ruth shook her head. “I hardly remember her,” she answered vaguely. “I remember my father marrying again, but that’s about my earliest memory.”
“And then along came Pearl,” he said dryly.
“Why not? She was welcome!”
He smiled and said no more, but his questions had set a whole train of thought in motion. She snuggled into the comfort of the car seat and allowed her mind to wander back to her earliest childhood. She hadn’t welcomed Pearl, she remembered. She had bitterly resented her arrival, for Pearl had been the most perfect bab
y that anyone in the Arnold circle had ever remembered. Her golden locks and bright blue eyes had been an advantage even then. Ruth, who had been only average even at that age when it came to looks, had watched her little sister twist their father round her little finger and she had been hurt when she herself had been ignored.
But Ruth had been clever. When Pearl had been collecting her first string of boy-friends, Ruth had been collecting diplomas. She had even wondered what Pearl had seen in the juvenile young men who had practically overrun the house. She herself had ruthlessly suppressed any like interest that she might have felt. She had her work and that was enough for her.
In the last two days it had not been enough, she admitted to herself. She cast a sidelong look at Mario, marvelling that his hawk-like features should have made her so vulnerable. His nose was undoubtedly too big, she decided, and his mouth, when he was not amused, could be cruel. But quite why he should stir up such a hornets’ nest inside her, she couldn’t imagine. He wasn’t her type any more than she was his.
They came to Potella di Mare, once famed for the violence of its footpads, but now no more than a row of yellow, pink and blue houses against a backdrop of orchards. The inevitable group of children came running out to look at the car, admiring its smooth lines with all the volubility of their elders. Mario flung the eldest amongst them a coin to look after it from the thieving fingers of his friends and strode off down the straggling street, in search of a post office.
When he came back, Ruth had finished composing her message to Pearl on the back of an envelope. It was the most difficult thing she had ever written. How did you tell your sister that you had married the man she thought she was in love with? Ruth had compromised in the end by not admitting the marriage at all.
NOT RETURNING NAPLES. INSTEAD SENDING MONEY FOR YOUR RETURN PASSAGE ENGLAND. LETTER FOLLOWING. LOVE RUTH.
She had written the message carefully, printing the letters so that it could be easily read by the post office official. It was unlikely, she thought, that he had ever had to send a wire in English before in such a small place.
“Is it far?” she asked Mario as he lounged elegantly against the car, his forearms resting on the open window beside her.
“No,” he said. “I sent the telegram while I was there.”
She looked up at him in quick anxiety. “What did you say?”
“That I’d be in Naples tonight and would look her up,” he said quietly.
“But you can’t!” Ruth exclaimed.
“Why not?” he returned. “There are other boats besides the one to Tunis.”
Ruth bit her lip. “That isn’t what I meant,” she admitted. “Won’t—won’t people think it odd if you go tonight?”
His eyes met hers. “It isn’t their business,” he said dismissively. “I will go to Naples tonight and bring Pearl back with me tomorrow.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said doggedly.
But he shook his head. “One of us has to stay to entertain our guest,” he told her.
“What guest?” she demanded.
“My aunt.”
“But she’s hardly a guest!” Ruth protested. “I’m not joking, Mario. If you go to Naples, I’m going with you!”
“Another challenge?” he asked her.
“Yes, if you like,” she said bravely.
His smile disarmed her. “I had thought you could be happy in my house. Is that not true, Ruth?”
She didn’t want to answer the question. It struck too near home. If she admitted that there was nothing she wanted more than to live in his house and be his wife, it would be all the more humiliating to know that he hadn’t chosen her out of love, but because his Sicilian notions of honour had forced him to. That was bad enough! But that he should bring Pearl to his home too—Pearl, who flitted in and out of love as easily as she breathed, but who would resent having any man taken from her!
“You can’t do it!” she exclaimed bitterly.
“What can’t I do?”
“I will not have Pearl brought here!” she said clearly.
“I think you have no choice,” he retorted silkily.
“But I do! I didn’t want to be, but I am your wife! Surely I have some say in who is and who is not invited to the house!”
He didn’t answer immediately. He walked round the car and got in beside her. His face was bleak and unyielding.
“I think I shall take you home,” he said finally.
“I don’t want to go home!” She knew that it was a childish response and promptly wished it unsaid. But she didn’t want to go home. The truce between them had been so short, and now it was worse than it had been before. However, it was nothing to cry about, she told herself sharply. Tears would be the final humiliation.
Mario gave her a distant look. “I think perhaps you are more like your sister than I had supposed.”
“Oh?” she said, her voice every bit as cold as his.
“I believe that you came to rescue your sister from me—”
“I did!” She blinked. “I see now that it wasn’t a very sensible thing to do—”
“Sensible!” he cut her off. “That’s the point. Your sister was well .aware that I had no intention of marrying her. Is that why you came?”
Ruth stared down at her fingers, saying nothing.
“Is it?” he demanded. He grasped her by the arm and shook her, but she still said nothing. “You may as well tell me! I’ll get the truth out of Pearl easily enough if you don’t!”
“You’re welcome to try,” Ruth said fiercely.
“I will!” he blazed at her.
“Then perhaps you’ll let me go,” she said with dignity. “You’re bruising my arm!”
He released her, but only to start up the car. She expected him to drive straight back to Palermo, but he didn’t. He drove fast in the opposite direction, down the hill, across the level crossing and into Misilmeri, the small country town that had once been Menzil-el-Emir, ‘the quarters of the Prince’, when the Moors had founded the place centuries before. Now, it had forgotten its Arab antecedents. Down the centre of the town ran the main street and to either side countless alleys ran up the steep slopes of Gibilrossa. Ruth thought they might stop there, but Mario hardly seemed aware that the town existed. He barely altered their pace at all as they continued down the hill to the bridge below. On either side of the road were fields spread with vines and olives, wilting under the hot sun, but rich and verdant in comparison to the dried out land of much of southern Italy.
The gradient upwards was now so steep that even Mario’s car protested at the treatment it was receiving. Ruth thought the engine might boil, but Mario remained unconcerned and forced his way up to the top. There the car came to a shuddering stop.
“Have you ever seen a better view than this?” Mario demanded.
Ruth looked back the way they had come, across the fields of vines and sun-ripened corn, the dusty leaves of the olive trees etched in green on the scorched land that formed their background. It was certainly the best view of Misilmeri, or of any town that she had ever seen. The ruins of the medieval castle that topped the town stood cut against the magnificent mountainous scenery. Beyond, she could catch a glimpse, here and there, of the blue waters of Palermo. In another direction lay the Capo Zafferano and, to the east, the whole bay of Termini.
There was too much of it. Ruth secretly preferred the ‘magic casement’ she had discovered for herself by the cypress trees in Mario’s garden.
“I suppose not,” she said in answer to his question.
“Is this what you wanted?” he pressed her.
Her eyes opened wide. “No. I didn’t know what Sicily would be like.”
He appeared to accept that, merely shrugging his shoulders. “My temper is easily aroused,” he confessed ruefully. “You had better look out!”
She smiled with sheer relief. “I don’t mind,” she said quite untruthfully, for she had minded very much. “I—I expect it takes getting used to,” she
went on sagely. “I hadn’t thought that you might find it difficult too.”
He cast her an amused look, and she wondered how she ever could have resented it before. Now she was so glad that he was no longer angry with her she would willingly have withstood anything else from him.
“Are you making excuses for me?”
“Oh no!” she said hastily, a little shocked. “But it is a little awkward at first, isn’t it? I mean, until we get used to it.”
“But you do think that you may grow used to it?” he asked innocently.
“I don’t know,” she confessed, wishing that she could lie as easily as Pearl did whenever it suited her. “I—I’ll try to.”
He turned to face her. “It isn’t often that I apologise to anyone,” he said fiercely, “but I do apologise to you, Ruth. It’s a nuisance that I have to go away tonight, but I have to do something about Pearl—”
She stiffened. “I don’t see why,” she said.
“I feel some responsibility for her. Goodness knows what she’s been up to in Naples by herself!”
Ruth straightened out the envelope on which she had written the telegram she had wanted to send to Pearl.
“Don’t you think,” she began humbly, “that it would be better if she went back to England?”
He read her telegram, his lips twisted with displeasure. “You don’t know much about your sister if you think she’ll meekly pack her bags and go back to England!” he told her frankly.
“But she hasn’t enough money to go on staying at the hotel!” Ruth told him earnestly.
“I don’t suppose she has,” he agreed dryly. “The sooner I get to Naples the better!”
Ruth clenched her fists. It was Pearl, Pearl, always Pearl! And if she came to Sicily, she would see nothing wrong in picking up with Mario exactly where they had left off. And that Ruth didn’t think she could bear.