Christmas in Venice

‘Why?’

‘Because all my clothes are in the wardrobe that is now completely blocked by your boxes.’

It took them ten minutes to get the wardrobe door clear, and then he wouldn’t let her choose her dress in peace.

‘Not that one,’ he said, dismissing a deep blue silk that she’d bought specially for this trip. ‘The simple white one. It’s far more you.’

By this time she was beyond argument. In fact, beyond speech.

‘I’ll call for you in one hour,’ he said. Halfway out of the door he looked back, ‘By the way, what is your name, please?’

‘Sonia,’ she said, dazed. ‘Sonia Crawford.’

‘Grazie, Sonia. My name is Francesco Bartini.’

‘How kind of you to tell me—finally.’

He grinned. ‘Yes, perhaps we should have been formally introduced before you—that is, before I—’

‘Get out,’ she said, breathing fire. ‘Get out while you’re still safe.’

‘Beautiful signorina, I haven’t been safe since I opened that door. And nor—I must confess—have you.’

‘Out!’

‘An hour.’

He vanished. At once a light seemed to have gone out of the room. Sonia stared at the door, torn between the impulse to hurl something and an even bigger impulse to yield to the smile that seemed to be taking possession of her whole body.

And the really annoying thing was that she discovered she actually did look best in the simple white dress.

Sonia came out of her reverie to find that she was smiling. However badly their love had ended, it had begun in sunshine and delight. Francesco had been thirty-three then, but so comical and light-hearted that he’d seemed little more than a boy, with a boy’s impulsive enthusiasms. Better to remember him like that than as the domestic tyrant he became, or the embittered man of their last meeting.

Nor, however hard she tried, could she silence the voice that whispered the ending hadn’t been inevitable, that something better could have grown from that first moment when he’d stared at her nakedness, smiling with admiration.

If she concentrated she could banish the lonely hotel room, and see again his expression, full of shock and the start of longing, feel again the happiness that just the sight of him had once brought her…

She forced herself back to reality. What was the use of thinking like that?

There was a knock on the door, and with a start she realised how much time had passed. This would be Tomaso to fetch her to the hospital. Slowly she went to the door, and opened it.

But it wasn’t Tomaso. It was Francesco. And his eyes, as they gazed on her pregnancy, were once again full of shock.

CHAPTER TWO

‘MIO DIO!’ Francesco, murmured, sounding as though he could hardly breathe. ‘Oh, mio dio!’

He came in and shut the door behind him, while his eyes, full of accusation, flew to her face. ‘How could you have kept such a thing from me?’

‘But—you knew,’ she protested. ‘Tomaso told you on the phone when he—’ The truth hit her like a blow. ‘He didn’t tell you, did he?’

‘Not a word.’

‘Oh, how like him! How like this whole family! He spoke Venetian, which he knows I can’t follow unless it’s very slow. And when he came off the phone he said he’d told you about the baby, and you weren’t interested.’

‘And you believed that?’ he demanded.

‘Yes, because he said you had someone else, and—oh, this can’t be happening!’

‘Maybe he thought I had the right to know,’ Francesco said in a voice of iron.

She waited for him to say, ‘Is it mine?’ But he didn’t. Like Tomaso, he never doubted the child was his, and she had a brief flicker of the old warmth. These were good people, kind, eager to think the best. Why had she found it so hard to live with them?

‘Don’t expect me to blame Poppa,’ Francesco said. ‘It’s obvious that he had to lie to get you here.’

‘And I suppose Giovanna’s illness was another invention?’

‘No, that’s true. My mother’s heart is frail. She collapsed a few days ago. She wants me to take you to see her in the hospital.’

She thought of the big bustling woman who had always ruled her family, except for Sonia, who wouldn’t let herself be ruled. To Giovanna, every detail of their lives was her domain. The others accepted it as natural and laughed, shrugging it off. But to Sonia, who’d lived alone since she was sixteen, and kept her own counsel even before that, it was intolerable.

Now Giovanna’s inexhaustible heart was wearing out. It was like the end of the world.

‘You don’t mean she’s dying?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen her as tired as this before. It’s as though all the fight’s gone out of her.’

‘Your mother—not fighting?’

‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t squaring up to somebody about something. Now she just lies there, and all she wants is to see you.’

‘Why? She never liked me.’

‘You never liked her.’

‘She never wanted me to like her. Oh, look, we can’t have this argument again.’

‘No, we had it so many times before, didn’t we?’

‘And it never got us anywhere.’

The fight had carried them through the first few awkward minutes, but now, with round one over, they retired to their corners, and regarded each other warily.

The six months since their last meeting had made him a little heavier and there was a weary look in his eyes that was new, and which hurt her to see. His eyes had always danced—with mischief, with delight. And they had made her too feel like dancing. Now the dancing had stopped and the sun had gone in, and everywhere was cold.

‘Where is she?’ Sonia asked.

‘In the hospital of San Domenico. It’s not far.’