by Isobel Chace
The dog came out from his hiding place at the first sound of her voice, his tail lashing his sides in his enthusiasm and delight. He ran before her into the kitchen, ignoring Giulia’s wail of anguish as she saw him, and rushed on up the stairs, pausing only to scratch softly at the door of Ruth’s room.
“I take him out!” Giulia shouted up the stairs. “I come now!”
Ruth smiled down at her. “No, leave him,” she pleaded. “He’s not doing any harm!”
Giulia went back into the kitchen, muttering imprecations under her breath. Ruth looked after her in a haze of indecision. Was it for her to make the first move? She didn’t know. She caught sight of Pearl’s fair head in the hall beneath her and instinctively pulled back into the shadows so that she wouldn’t be seen. The singing had stopped and the villagers were going home. She could hear them calling out to one another, laughing and joking, as they went.
Saro scratched more imperatively on her door and Ruth went to let him in. He jumped up on to her bed and scratched himself with uncalled-for energy.
“You’ve probably got fleas!” she told him crossly. He paid no attention. When he had finished scratching, he lay down flat on the bed and watched her every movement as she took off her dress and made herself ready for bed. She took a quick shower in the bathroom near her room, summoning up her will-power to cope with fluttering indecision that had seized her.
She had brushed her hair three times over before she came to any decision. If she was Mario’s wife, she told herself, then Mario’s wife she would be!
She took a deep breath to give herself courage and went over to the communicating door between their rooms. Her hand was shaking a little as she reached out to the door knob and turned it. But the door refused to open. It was only then that she realised that he had locked it. With a rush, she flung herself on her bed beside Saro, and burst into tears. She cried until she couldn’t stop and she was still sobbing when she fell asleep just before the grey light of dawn began to creep over the horizon.
CHAPTER NINE
RUTH was the last person down to breakfast next morning. She had expected a sound scolding from Giulia, who usually resented having to make coffee, or anything else, more than once, but Giulia had only wished her a good day, her whole face wreathed in smiles.
“Where is everyone?” Ruth asked her, put out by her unaccustomed attitude.
“They have already departed,” Giulia answered indifferently. “The Signor would not have anyone wake you in case you were tired.” She sighed gustily. “He has already gone about his business, but he said he would be back later. He has some business to do in Palermo.”
Ruth poured out her coffee. “Has my sister gone out too?” she inquired.
Giulia shrugged. “How would I know?”
Ruth gave her a look of gentle reproof and the Italian woman sulkily handed her a roll of bread. “She is waiting for the Signor,” she told Ruth reluctantly. “They go together to Palermo.”'
Ruth winced. “Oh, I see,” she said calmly.
She was glad when Giulia went back to the kitchen, leaving her alone to finish her breakfast. Her head ached and her mouth felt dry and she was utterly miserable. The world was an unyielding and unsympathetic place and she knew that she couldn’t put off telling her father about her marriage for very much longer. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what his reaction would be! Nor could she think that it would be favourable. How could it be? His staid, practical daughter, whose one ambition had been to teach, abducted by a Sicilian and forced into marriage! It wasn’t the kind of thing that happened to her father’s acquaintances, or to anyone else she knew, come to that!
When she had finished her breakfast, she called Saro to her and set off up the garden to the cypress trees. It was a place she looked on as being her own, for she had never seen anyone else there. There she could sit and think to her heart’s content and there would be none to disturb her.
She sat on the fallen tog she had discovered there before and gazed down at the sea below her. Some sea-birds flew over the water, almost level with where she sat, their mocking call echoing her thoughts. Saro barked at something he had seen half-way down the cliff, but she ignored him. The sun beat down over her head, bleaching the colours from the scenery. To her, though, it was still perfection. If she could not find happiness here, then she would find it nowhere!
She was still sitting there when she heard the footsteps of someone coming towards her. She looked over her shoulder, frowning at the intrusion, and was surprised to see that it was Pearl.
“What are you doing here?” she asked her ungraciously.
Pearl collapsed in a heap beside her. “Giulia said you were up here, or rather she pointed in this direction when I said your name a few times. Even then she was quite nasty. La Signora Verdecchio—!”
Ruth blushed. “It does sound odd,” she admitted.
“Odd! It sounds like Mario’s aunt!” Pearl retorted. She looked at her sister curiously. “How does it feel?” she asked.
Ruth shook her head. “What are you going to Palermo for?” she countered.
Pearl pouted thoughtfully. “I see it’s still ‘Keep off the Grass’. Not that it’s any of my business—”
“No, it isn’t,” Ruth agreed heartily.
“Actually,” Pearl began, “I came along to have a talk with you. I figured it was about time somebody did!”
Ruth bit her lip. Why?”
“Let's call it sisterly affection—”
“Indeed?” Ruth put in dryly.
Pearl opened her blue eyes wide. “Truly!” she exclaimed. “I was cross before, but I’m not any longer!”
“You don’t need to be,” Ruth said wearily.
Pearl considered this. “No, that’s true. But, Ruth, what are you going to do?”
Ruth looked at her young sister with some amusement. “What would you suggest?” she asked.
Pearl looked helpless. “I don’t know. Mario isn’t an easy person to manage. If you’d asked me before you came racing over to Sicily in a fit of righteous indignation, I’d have told you so! He doesn’t allow people to walk out on him!”
“So he told me,” Ruth affirmed.
Pearl gave her a look of unmixed respect. “What on earth did you say to him?”
Ruth shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t understand you!” Pearl burst out. “Do you want to be a doormat all your life? He’ll walk all over you!” She eyed Ruth thoughtfully. “I suppose you’d like that!” she added with an aggrieved air.
“I might,” Ruth agreed, a little surprised at her own lack of shame.
“I never thought to hear you say it!” Pearl marveled. “Darling, you really must pull yourself together! I feel so sad and guilty because it was I who got you into this. I’ll just have to rescue you, whether you like it or not!”
Ruth lifted her chin forcefully. “Please don’t!”
“But, Ruth—”
“I can manage my own affairs!” Ruth went on grimly.
“But that’s just what you can’t do!” Pearl exclaimed, exasperated. “You—you’re positively callow when it comes to men!”
Ruth laughed helplessly. “Oh, Pearl! I’m not!”
“Well, you haven’t my experienced approach!” Pearl sniffed.
“I should hope not!” said Ruth, her lips trembling with laughter.
“Well, you haven’t! If you ask me, I think we’d better go back to England and the bosom of our loving family, and forget that we ever met Mario!”
“I can’t!” Ruth said flatly.
“What else can you do?”
“Stay here.”
“On your own?” Pearl looked dumbfounded. “He’d eat you up! Piecemeal!”
Ruth straightened her back and lifted her head. “I don’t think he will,” she said slowly. “You see, one of the advantages of being callow, in fact downright green, is that you don’t break at all easily—”
“But he’s only got to find
out that you’re in love with him!” Pearl protested.
“I’m not sure that I am,” Ruth said with dignity.
Pearl’s eyes grew round with astonishment. “What do you call it?” she asked.
Ruth bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I’m not sure it’s love. I’m not sure I even like him!”
“That’s love!” said Pearl. “Believe me!” She giggled. “Oh, Ruth, you’re such a fool! Did you really believe that it would give you a cosy feeling to fall in love?”
“No, of course not!” Ruth denied hastily.
“Well, anyway,” Pearl went on with single-minded devotion to her own point of view, “whatever you call it, he’s only got to find out about it and he’s got you! You’d do far better to get away while you can!”
Ruth shook her head. “I’m married to him,” she reminded Pearl. “I can’t do anything else but stay here.”
Pearl frowned. “I think last night went to your head!” She said frankly. “You sound exactly like Aunt Lucia!”
Ruth studied her sister with a quizzical expression. “Are you sure it didn’t go to your head?” she suggested gently.
Pearl looked abashed. “Maybe, just a little bit,” she admitted. “The thing is that I like kissing Mario. It was nothing against you.” She took a deep breath. “I know I said I’d take him away from you, but I wouldn’t! As a matter of fact, I probably wouldn’t have come to Sicily with him in the end. He’s a bit deep for me—”
“But he sent you your ticket!” Ruth exclaimed.
“But I hadn’t used the ticket,” Pearl explained. “I might have done, or I might not, I don’t know! Mario is so beautifully handsome that it makes one feel good to be seen with him, but he’s deep. I like to play around in the shallow end.”
Ruth was shocked. “If Father could hear you—” she began.
“He’d call me an amoral baggage and lecture me a little,” Pearl finished for her. “You’re really very alike. That’s exactly what you’d like to do, isn’t it?”
Ruth could not deny it. “I can’t understand it,” she said at last.
“There’s safety in numbers,” Pearl defended herself. “I’m beginning to think you deserve Mario! You’re as archaic in your ideas as this horrid island!”
Ruth felt quite shattered by this vision of herself. Her head ached worse than ever and she wished Pearl would go away and leave her alone.
“I hardly think Father will agree with you,” she said, rather wistfully.
Pearl smiled with smug satisfaction. “Hardly!” she said cheerfully. “But surely you aren’t going to be fool enough to tell him?”
“I must,” Ruth said simply. “He has to know! I can’t stay here for ever without some kind of explanation!”
Pearl wrinkled up her forehead thoughtfully. “A suitably edited version of events will be best for both of us,” she opined finally. “I’ll get Mario to work on it.”
“No, you won’t. I’ll tell Father myself!” Ruth insisted.
Pearl stood up, patting her hair back into position and brushing down her skirt. “Do what you like!” she said in exaggerated accents. “I intend to hide behind Mario’s broad back myself, so you’d better not say anything about my affairs to Father, or you’ll be sorry!”
With swinging hips, she walked back down the path towards the house, looking the picture of youthful innocence and unworldly bliss, and leaving her sister as cross as two sticks and with her head aching worse than ever.
Telephoning England was a complicated operation. Ruth stood for what seemed hours in the hall, waiting for her call to go through. The long delay did nothing for her courage. She quite simply couldn’t imagine what she was going to say to her father at all, when the line burred and clicked and the familiar English double ring rang in her ear.
Her father’s voice sounded as close as if he were in the next room.
“What’s the matter?” he asked her. “Have you run out of money?”
This was a long-standing joke between them, for while Pearl never had enough money with her no matter where she went, Ruth had always budgeted with care and had never yet had to ask her father for money.
“Something like that,” Ruth said in a shaky voice.
“Look, honey, is something the matter?”
“No! Dad, are you there? There’s nothing the matter, only I got married. M—Mario is going to write to you, or something, but I wanted to tell you myself.”
There was a long silence at the other end, then her father said, “Ruth, are you happy?”
“I—I think so.”
“You only think so?”
Ruth licked her lips nervously. “He’s a Sicilian. He’s different from anyone I’ve ever known before. He takes some getting used to,” she added on a desperate note.
To her surprise, her father laughed. “I shall be interested to meet him,” he said cheerfully. “If he can put my staid daughter into a dither, he must be something!”
“Well, he is,” Ruth answered judiciously.
Her father laughed again. “I’ll tell your mother. But for heaven’s sake write, Ruth! We shall want to hear all about him. And get that minx Pearl to come home, you’ll hardly need her on your honeymoon!”
“I will,” Ruth agreed mechanically. “I—I’ll write today.”
She said goodbye to her father with a rush of affection for him and the home he represented. It had always been a happy home. If she hadn’t had much in common with her stepmother, they had always loved one another dearly, and they had laughed a lot. For a moment, she missed them all unbearably and would have given anything to have been going straight back to England and the comfortable ordinariness of her life there. But then the moment passed and she heard Henry’s jeep in the drive and, a second later, he was standing at the front door with a slightly silly smile on his face. “Hullo, Henry,” she greeted him casually.
“Is Mario in?” he asked her cautiously.
Ruth shook her head. “Did you want him for anything special?” she asked.
Henry looked downright guilty. “Actually, I wanted to ask him if I could take Pearl round the vineyards,” he explained. “I’m going to take a look at them now to see how the new irrigation is working.”
“Then you can take me with you instead!” Ruth said firmly.
“I don’t think I should,” Henry said doubtfully. “I don’t want to get in wrong with Mario.”
“You won’t!” Ruth assured him with a confidence she was far from feeling. “As a matter of fact both he and Pearl have gone in to Palermo and, as Lucia is with her husband, I’m the only person about.”
“Oh,” said Henry.
Ruth forced a laugh. “Don’t look so hangdog!” she bade him briskly. “I’ve had a splitting headache all morning and it will do me good to get out and about for a while.”
Henry muttered something about the hot sun and the lack of shade in the vineyards. “Besides,” he added, “I don’t know when we should be back, so he’s bound to know.”
“I don’t care if he does!” Ruth insisted. “Oh, come on, Henry! What possible harm can there be in two English people going round some vineyards together? Just because they have medieval ideas about things, we don’t have to do the same, surely?”
“No,” Henry said bleakly. “Are you sure Pearl isn’t here?” he pleaded.
“No, she’s not!” Ruth snapped, much put out. “Are you going to take me or aren’t you?”
“I suppose so,” he said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “You’d better bring a hat.”
Such was Ruth’s uncertain mood that as soon as she had persuaded him to take her she no longer wanted to go. She went reluctantly up to her room and stuck her hat on the top of her head with a marked lack of enthusiasm. When she went downstairs again Henry was already waiting for her in the jeep, looking just about as miserable as she felt.
“Do you know anything about vines?” she asked him.
“Not much.” He sounded so woeful th
at she felt sorry for him and tried to pull herself together. As she had forced him to take her, the least she could do was to be a pleasant companion, she thought.
“I suppose they need a lot of water,” she said brightly. “Was it Sicilian wine we had last night?”
“I should think it was a mixture of everything!” Henry grunted.
“Well, I thought it was very nice!” Ruth retorted.
Henry cheered up a trifle. “So did I! The Verdecchios mean a lot to the local people, don’t they? I suppose they’ve had the same kind of do every time one of them has married for centuries past.”
“Oh, do you think so?” Ruth asked, impressed.
“Setting the seal of ownership on their women,” Henry added nastily.
Ruth tried to smile and failed. “I don’t think that was kind, Henry,” she reproached him.
“Well, I wish you hadn’t made me take you with me! I have a horrid feeling that you’re using me!”
“You’re afraid of Mario!” Ruth taunted him.
“What if I am?” he demanded crossly. “Aren’t you?”
“Certainly not!”
Ruth sat in a dignified silence while Henry drove rather fast down the drive and along the road to the village. The ground swept past far too quickly for her comfort and she grabbed at the windscreen for support in case they should swerve round a corner and she was thrown out.