Husband By Necessity

by Lucy Gordon

  ‘Angie, it’s wonderful to see you again. Come and dance with me.’

  She looked up into Lorenzo’s laughing face. As Heather had said, he was quite untroubled by a situation that another young man might have found embarrassing. Smiling, she took his hand, but at once another hand reached out to clasp hers and disengage it.

  ‘No,’ Bernardo said quietly. ‘Sorry, Lorenzo.’

  His brother grinned and promptly found another partner. Bernardo tightened his grip on her hand. There was a look in his eyes that went to her heart. She let him draw her onto the dance floor and hold her close. She could feel his body trembling next to hers, and she knew the truth he would have hidden from her. If she’d doubted that he still loved her, she didn’t doubt it now. He looked as though the heart had been torn out of him.

  She didn’t speak. For the moment it was enough to be here with him again, held in his arms.

  ‘You should not have come,’ he murmured as they circled the dance floor. ‘But I have longed for you.’

  ‘Then why shouldn’t I have come?’

  ‘Because I have longed for you,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I can’t see you without weakening, and I mustn’t weaken.’

  ‘Why must you talk like that? Is it weak to love?’

  ‘It might be weak to yield to love,’ he said sombrely. ‘Amor mia, can’t you understand? You’re a bird of paradise, and Montedoro is a place only for eagles.’

  ‘But you know so little about me. How do you know I couldn’t be an eagle too?’

  ‘Don’t-please don’t-you can’t know what you’re saying.’

  Yet he was so torn that even as his words rejected her he pulled her closer and her senses swam. The misery in his face hurt her, yet beneath the misery she still sensed a stubbornness that she would have to fight. Suddenly she stopped dancing, seized his hand and began to lead him off the dance floor. She didn’t stop until they were outside, under the stars.

  ‘Angie-’

  ‘Shut up and kiss me,’ she said, pulling him into her arms.

  Through the trembling of his body she could feel that he would have resisted her if he could, but he hadn’t strength enough for that. Taking her courage in both hands she built on her advantage, kissing him in the ways that he loved, the ways that would call their brief happiness back.

  ‘You can’t say goodbye to me again,’ she murmured.

  ‘Angie don’t do this-don’t destroy me-’

  ‘I’m trying to stop you destroying us both. You want me, don’t you?’

  ‘You know I want you.’

  ‘Enough to take my hand and jump into the unknown. That’s all it needs, my love, just a little courage.’

  Between the words her lips were sending him other messages of incitement and delight, torturing him with bliss held just out of reach, driving him crazy. With triumph she sensed that he couldn’t hold out against her. She felt his hands in her hair, tearing down the pretty confection that the hairdresser had achieved, so that it felt wildly about her bare shoulders, and his lips followed it, leaving a burning trail against her skin.

  ‘Don’t tempt me-’ he whispered. ‘Sorceress-I’ll fight you-’

  ‘I’ll tempt you until you’re brave enough to take any risk with me. If we can’t live in each other’s worlds we’ll make our own.’

  ‘Don’t-’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Yes, my love, take the chance and jump from the highest point of Montedoro, and we’ll fly like eagles together.’

  ‘It’s crazy-mad-’

  ‘Don’t think about that. Haven’t you wanted me to kiss you like this?’

  ‘More than anything in life-but it changes nothing-’

  ‘It changes everything,’ she said, her lips against his. ‘You’re mine. You belong to me as I belong to you, and I won’t let you go. I don’t care what the difficulties are.’ To desire was suddenly added anger. She seized his shoulders and shook him, her blazing eyes staring into his. ‘We love each other. Doesn’t that count for anything?’

  ‘Perhaps it counts for less than you think,’ he forced himself to say. ‘Must love be the whole of life? Must it matter more than anything else in the world?’

  ‘If it’s strong enough-yes,’ she said fiercely.

  ‘Do you think I don’t love you? Do you think I haven’t lain awake night after night, thinking of you, longing for you, telling myself the world would be well lost if only I could make love with you, just once?’

  ‘Then make love to me-now-my room’s near-no more questions or decisions-’

  ‘But with the dawn I regained my sanity. It’s easy to talk of the world well lost, but it never is lost. It stays there, devastated by one foolish action, and we have to live with the consequences of what we’ve done. How quickly do you think we’d come to hate each other if we tried to live together? You couldn’t live my life and I couldn’t live yours. We’d destroy each other. Why can’t you see that?’

  ‘Because you’re everything to me,’ she cried in passionate anger. ‘And maybe love has made me stupid-stupid enough to believe we can make anything possible if we love enough. But I’d rather be my kind of stupid than yours, believing nothing is possible and love isn’t worth fighting for.’

  Suddenly she saw that all her arts, all her passion and determination had achieved nothing. The agonising sensation of her own heart breaking made her step back sharply, repulsing him with a gesture that was almost a blow.

  ‘If it means so little to you, then maybe it isn’t worth fighting for,’ she cried. ‘Maybe I belong back in my old life, but only because you won’t grant me the dignity of making my own decisions, even when they’re hard. Perhaps we would destroy each other, not for the reason you think, but because I couldn’t live with a man who’s hard, judgemental, and thinks I need him to tell me what to do.

  ‘Goodbye, Bernardo. I thought I’d made a mistake in coming here, but now I’m glad. It’ll save me indulging in regrets.’

  Midnight on the terrace. The house was silent. Far out, the moon was reflected on a tranquil sea. Angie stood looking, trying to imprint the scene on her memory, knowing this was the last time she would ever be here.

  ‘So he was as much of a stubborn fool as always?’ came Baptista’s ironic voice from the shadows.

  ‘Yes,’ Angie said bitterly. ‘I thought if he’d missed me as I’ve missed him, it might change things. But nothing changes.’

  ‘No, nothing changes with Bernardo, and it never will change. He’ll love you all his life, and he’ll suffer for it so dreadfully that it hurts me to think of.’

  ‘What about my suffering?’ Angie asked wryly.

  ‘My dear, I know you are in pain, but you will survive, and you will love again-perhaps not as you love him, but enough. You are warm and open-hearted. You know how to embrace life.

  ‘But Bernardo-’ Baptista sighed ‘-none of this is true of him. He is a hard man, even a harsh one, who doesn’t know how to compromise. He conceals himself, even from himself. One woman-just one-found the way to tempt him out into the sunlight, and if he loses her, I don’t think he’ll ever find the way out again. Think of his life as it will be then. How cold and stunted it will be, and finally how twisted.’

  ‘I know,’ Angie whispered huskily. ‘When I think of him alone up there, and how happy we could be if only-’ She pressed her lips together, but she couldn’t stop the tears pouring down her face. ‘He thinks I’m only a bird of paradise,’ she said, and the cry broke from her, ‘but I wanted to be an eagle.’

  ‘Then be an eagle,’ Baptista said trenchantly.

  ‘How can I if he won’t let me?’

  ‘Let?’ Baptista’s voice was scathing. ‘Are you that kind of woman, the kind who waits for a man to “let” her? I expected better from you. Do what you believe in. Don’t ask his permission. Weak women say, “if only”. Strong ones make it happen.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t long to make it happen?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t know the way.’

 
‘But I do,’ Baptista said, ‘and I’m going to show it to you.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  I N WINTER Montedoro was a ghostly, deserted place, swathed in mist. Now the boutiques were closed and most of the cafés. Feet echoed on the cobbles and all the colour seemed to have drained away, leaving only grey behind.

  With the tourists gone, little more than six hundred people remained, and most of them seemed to have crowded into the narrow street to watch the new arrival. Two vans had drawn up. The front one was disgorging furniture, but not very much, because the new doctor had bought Dr Fortuno’s practice, house and furniture, lock, stock and barrel.

  The largest item was a bed which, even in its dismembered state, spoke of quality and money. The head and foot were highly polished walnut, the mattress thick and springy. There would be trouble getting it through those narrow doorways, they reckoned. It was big. Too big for one person.

  Hmm!

  The second van was even more interesting. No furniture this time, but large, shiny metal items that the more knowledgeable guessed were medical equipment. There were murmurs in the crowd. ‘Dr Fortuno never had any of that stuff.’

  ‘He was an old man… They say he never read a book after he qualified.’

  ‘So who’s this new man?’

  ‘It’s a woman.’

  ‘Don’t be funny!’

  ‘That’s her over there.’

  ‘What, that little thing? She’s young enough to be my daughter.’

  But, for all her youth and her dainty appearance, the new doctor had an air of authority, and when she offered twenty thousand lire to anyone who would help carry her heavy goods inside there was a rush from men enduring the unemployment of winter. In a short time everything was in place and the vans were able to leave.

  More people had pressed through the open door to regard the new doctor, wide-eyed.

  ‘Some of you may remember seeing me here last year,’ she told them in Italian. ‘Now Dr Fortuno has left and from now on I’m going to be the doctor here.’ Angie took a deep breath and looked around the circle of faces that gave nothing away. She was gambling everything, and they would never know how nervous she was.

  She showed them around the surgery, explaining the new equipment and what it could do for them. At first she was on tenterhooks, ready to beg them not to touch anything, but nobody tried. They seemed to regard it with awe tinged with fear, and she sensed that this part hadn’t gone so well. Their eyes, as they regarded her, were curious, baffled, not unfriendly but not welcoming. She was alien to them.

  At last somebody spoke. ‘Where’s Dr Fortuno?’

  ‘He went to live with his sister in Naples,’ Angie said.

  ‘He’s not coming back then?’

  ‘No,’ Angie said with a sinking heart. ‘He’s not coming back. Have I shown you-?’

  But she’d lost their attention. She felt, rather than heard the silence descend and turned from the machine she’d meant to demonstrate to see that the crowd had parted and everyone was looking at a man who’d just entered.

  Bernardo stood in the doorway regarding her with a look of dismay and anger she’d never thought to see on his face. This was the man who loved her, but he wasn’t glad to see her. For a moment she flinched, then her head went up. She’d known it wasn’t going to be easy.

  The little crowd melted away, leaving them alone together, watching each other over the distance of the floor.

  ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded at last.

  ‘I’m Dr Fortuno’s replacement. I’m surprised the gossip hasn’t reached you by now.’

  ‘It reached me as soon as I came through the main gate. But you know what I’m asking you. Why you?’

  She faced him. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you don’t belong here.’

  ‘That’s for me to say.’

  His face closed against her. ‘Why do you have to make things harder on both of us? This isn’t a place to play games. It’s bleak and harsh and it’ll crush you in a week.’

  ‘I told you once, I’m a lot tougher than I look.’

  ‘And I told you that this is an old-fashioned place. It’s never had a woman doctor, and it’s not ready for one. You must leave here.’

  ‘Says who?’ she demanded, beginning to be angry.

  ‘I will not allow you to stay. Is that plain enough?’

  ‘Perfectly plain. What isn’t so plain is how you’re going to get rid of me, seeing as how I’ve bought the house, and the practice. You may own a good deal of this village, but you don’t own this house. Nor do you own the convent.’

  ‘What has the convent got to do with anything?’

  ‘Sister Ignatia is a qualified nurse. She’s coming in to help me two mornings a week. The nuns are delighted to have a woman doctor.’

  ‘But how-?’ Bernardo ran his hand through his hair and looked around him. ‘How did you ever get a license to practise in this country?’

  ‘Because I have excellent qualifications which are completely acceptable over here. The only hurdle was getting the paperwork translated and approved. At every stage there seemed to be a new committee who had to agree, and I know it can take a very long time. One of the officials told me about an English doctor who took two years to get his paperwork approved.’

  ‘Exactly. Then how-?’

  ‘But he didn’t have Baptista behind him. First she persuaded Dr Fortuno to go. He’d been wanting to go for some time, apparently, but he couldn’t find a buyer. When my paperwork came through she got onto Cousin Enrico who knows someone in the Sicilian regional government, and he knew a high-ranking official in Rome, who pulled strings and twisted arms, and the whole thing got done in a couple of months.’

  ‘Baptista,’ Bernardo said bitterly. ‘Baptista did this.’

  ‘Perhaps she felt I was entitled to prove myself. Because actually, Bernardo, your attitude to me is pretty insulting. You decided I wasn’t good enough for you-’

  ‘I never-’

  ‘That’s what it amounted to. Not good enough for you, not good enough for your home. Just a bird of paradise who’s always had a cosy nest. You dumped that on me, never mind whether it was true. Well, now I’m dumping myself on you, and there isn’t a thing you can do about it.

  ‘I’m a good doctor and I’m going to be good for this place. To start with I’ve imported some very modern medical equipment, the kind of thing I’ll swear Dr Fortuno had never heard of, and he certainly couldn’t have afforded to buy. But I can, because I’ve got all that disgraceful money that you think puts me beyond the pale.

  ‘Take a good look at this place and see what my wicked wealth has bought. With Sister Ignatia’s help I could even do operations, although I devoutly hope I never have to.’

  ‘And how are you going to communicate with your patients?’

  ‘My Italian is excellent, although most of them speak English. They learned it from the tourists.’

  ‘In Montedoro, yes. But your practice spreads far out, to the farmhouses where they only know Sicilian. What will you do then?’

  ‘I’ve spent the last three months learning.’

  ‘Three months-?’

  ‘I’ve been working with a Sicilian coach, several hours a day. She says I’m coming on fast. And if necessary I’ll hire someone here to help me.’

  ‘And when the snow comes-?’

  ‘I’ll get snow shoes,’ she yelled. ‘I know there are problems, but there are also answers. Why can’t you be a little glad to see me?’

  ‘You know why-’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ she said furiously. ‘You made a decision. It concerned me, but you didn’t involve me. You decided for both of us. Now I’m telling you, it’s not on. You don’t decide for me. And you really have a problem with a woman who won’t accept your edict, don’t you? Boy, are you a Martelli?’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ he said harshly.

  ‘I will say it. It’s true. If you don’t
like it, tough!’

  Exasperated, he began to look about him at the plain dwelling with its shabby furniture and kitchen equipment that came out of the Ark. ‘You’re going to live with this?’ he demanded.

  ‘Not all of it. I’m having a new kitchen delivered soon-and, yes, it is going to be top of the range at a very fancy price. Like this.’ She threw open the bedroom door to reveal the luxurious bed. ‘I can do without my creature comforts if I have to, but why should I have to just because you’re pig-headed? I won’t be a worse doctor because I sleep soft. Better, in fact. Dr Fortuno might have been better if he hadn’t slept on a mattress filled with turnips.’

  ‘Please-signore-dottore-’

  The interruption came from a girl of sixteen who’d just come in from the street. She smiled shyly at Bernardo who greeted her as Ginetta.

  ‘You can clean the bedroom and make the bed,’ Angie told her with a smile. ‘You’ll find all the new bed linen in those cardboard boxes.’

  When the girl had disappeared she explained, ‘She’s going to do my housework. Apart from paying her money I’m going to talk English to her. The Mother Superior found her for me in the convent school. She’s the elder sister of the little girl whose leg I tended.’

  ‘Yes, I know the family,’ he said curtly. ‘You’ve evidently gotten everything worked out, and what I think doesn’t count?’

  ‘No more than my wishes counted with you. It’s a different ball game now, Bernardo. We’re playing by my rules.’

  ‘And what is it supposed to achieve? At the end of the day, do I give in and marry you?’

  At that, Angie lost her temper, big time.

  ‘Oh, boy, you really fancy yourself, don’t you? You think I went to all this trouble because I’m desperate to marry you? What do you think I’ve been doing recently, Bernardo? Sitting at home like a wallflower because no other man wants me?’

  He regarded her, trying to maintain his distance, reluctantly taking in everything he’d been trying to forget: her dainty figure that had been designed for dancing in costly evening wear, not roughing it in the mountains, her angel face with its halo of flyaway blonde hair.