Читать книгу Married Under The Italian Sun - Lucy Gordon - Страница 8

‘LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, here we are again with your favourite TV programme, Star On My Team, when the famous—and sometimes the infamous—ha-ha!—team up with you to win fabulous prizes…’

Sitting backstage, Angel prayed for the burbling introduction to be over soon. In fact, she thought, please let the whole mindless business be over. Just as her marriage was over, and only awaited a decent burial.

The presenter was getting into his stride.

‘On my right, Mr and Mrs Barker, and their famous team member—’He named the star of a minor soap opera. Watching the backstage screen, Angel saw him enter, flashing his teeth and grandstanding to the audience.

Nina, her personal assistant, surveyed her with critical approval.

‘You look perfect,’ she said.

Of course she did. Angel always looked perfect. That was her function. Long blonde hair, large, dark-blue eyes, slender figure encased in a tight gold dress, cut teasingly low. Masses of glittering, tasteless jewellery. Bling, bling!

‘And now, the lady I know you’re impatient to see—’

Not as impatient as I am to finish this, she thought wryly, while trying to remain good-tempered. Time to get out there. Big smile!

‘The one we’ve all been waiting for…’

Especially since my husband plastered my face all over the front pages, trying to divorce me on the cheap. Never mind. Smile!

A look in the mirror, a final adjustment of her dress to ensure that her assets were displayed to advantage, mouth widened just so far, no further. And now for the last walk to where the lights beckoned and the cameras preyed on her. It felt like a walk to the guillotine.

‘Here she is. The beautiful, the fabulous—Angel!’

She’d done this a hundred times before, and it should have been easy, but as she emerged and the applause washed over her, something terrible happened. The lights seemed to dim, and suddenly her mind was filled with darkness and panic.

Please, not now! I thought those attacks were over!

Mercifully, the dreadful moment passed swiftly. She could cope again, just.

She advanced on the suicidally high heels, hands outstretched, voice tuned to a note of artificial ecstasy to greet the presenter.

Her fellow contestants were Mr and Mrs Strobes. She’d met them in the hospitality room before the show and it had been an endurance test.

‘We’re so sorry about your divorce,’ Mrs Strobes had said. ‘We think it’s just terrible the way he threw you out.’

‘Parting was a mutual decision,’ Angel had hastened to say.

But what was the point, with Joe flaunting his new companion at every party and nightclub?

The audience was agog to see her, so she smiled and waved, turning this way and that so that they shouldn’t be disappointed. She could almost hear the comments.

‘A right sexy little piece—a bit of all right.’

That was what her husband had wanted from her. For him she’d been a ‘right sexy little piece’ for eight years, and suddenly eight years felt like a very long time.

The show started. The questions were ridiculously easy, but even so she gave a performance of racking her brains, giggling at her own ‘ignorance’. They wanted ‘dumb blonde’ so that was what she would give them.

The soap actor on the other side seemed to be genuinely dumb, and Angel’s team was soon in the lead. The clincher came when the host burbled, ‘And now, Angel, here’s a real tough one for you. Who painted the Sistine Chapel? Was it a) Maisie the Mouse, b) Michelangelo, or c) Mark Antony?’

She did her bit, putting her dainty fingertips to her mouth and giving an ‘Angel’ giggle.

‘Ooh, dear! I don’t know. I never studied music.’ Roars of laughter from the audience. ‘Could you repeat the question, please?’

He did so and she gave a little squeal.

‘You always give me the hard ones. I’ll have to guess. Michelangelo.’

‘Michelangelo is right, and you have won.’

Cheers, applause, her team mates bouncing with joy. It would be finished soon. Cling to that thought.

At last it was over and she could escape. Nina was waiting for her with the car, so that she could make a speedy escape from all the prying eyes.

Nina had been with her for eight years, secretary, maid, gofer and good, solid friend. She was a little younger than Angel, plain, funny, and a rock to cling to.

When they were on their way, Angel let out a long sigh of relief.

‘At least that’s over,’ Nina said. ‘With luck you’ll never have to do another one.’

‘Not once I’m living in Italy,’ Angel agreed. ‘Amalfi, here I come.’

‘I really wish I could come with you.’

‘So do I,’ Angel said, meaning it. ‘I’ll miss you, but I shan’t need a secretary, even if I could afford one now. I’m going to live a very quiet life.’

‘Joe called me today and asked me to go back to work for him. He said “darling Merry” needs me. Merry! I ask you. Her name’s Meredith.’

‘And mine’s Angela, but I let him rename me Angel for the sake of his image.’

‘I told him I’d found another job. As though I’d work for him again—a great, stupid vulgarian who thinks he’s somebody because he’s rich.’

‘Mind how you talk about my ex-husband,’ Angel said mildly.

‘You object?’

‘Certainly. “Great, stupid vulgarian” doesn’t begin to do him justice.’

‘How about, “coarse, spiteful, bullying thug”?’

‘That’s much better,’ Angel said with a wry little laugh.

‘You’re well shot of him. And, even if he did cheat you out of a proper settlement, you got an Italian palace out of it.’

‘The Villa Tazzini isn’t a palace. If it had been, “Merry” would have wanted it. He bought it for her, but without letting her see it first. It was to be a wonderful surprise. But when she realised it wasn’t palatial, just a large country house, she didn’t think it was wonderful at all.’

‘Rumour says it cost him a million.’

‘A palace would have cost at least five million. I heard he showed her a lot of pictures he’d taken, and she ripped them up.’

‘I suppose Freddy told you that,’ said Nina, naming Joe’s PA, who was secretly on Angel’s side, as was everyone who’d worked for her.

‘That’s right. Apparently her language would have made a stevedore blush.’

‘And Joe let her talk to him like that?’

‘She’s twenty, and sexy. It boosts his ego to flaunt her—’

‘Next to his fat, forty-nine-year-old self?’

Angel laughed. ‘Next to his fifty-two-year-old self, actually. But that’s a secret. Even I only found out by accident. But the point is that as long as Merry does him proud, she can talk to him how she likes. Anyway, he finally tossed the place to me and said, “You can have that as your divorce pay-off. Take it or leave it.”’

‘And that’s all?’

‘I get a lump sum as well, but I’ll have to be careful with it. It’ll cover my expenses until the lemon harvest comes in. Part of the estate is an orchard, and when I sell the crop I’ll have enough to get by.’

‘Even so, you could have fought Joe for a fair share. With his millions he’s got off cheap.’

‘I know, but he could have tied me up for years, fighting him and his army of lawyers. I simply felt very tired, so I took it. After all, I’ve always loved Italy.’

Once, she’d planned to study art at college, then go on to Italy to study some more. She’d even learned Italian. But that dream had come to nothing, when her beloved grandfather had fallen ill and needed her.

Now, ironically, she was going to Italy after all. But not to Rome or Florence, the centres of art. Her new home was a villa on the Amalfi coast where the cliffs plunged dizzyingly down to the sea.

Anything was worth it, she told herself, if she could still take care of the old man who had offered her a home after her parents died when she was eight. They had been strangers, not having seen each other for five years.

‘Hello, I’m Sam,’ he’d said, refusing to have any truck with that ‘talking down to kids nonsense’, as he had called it. And Sam he’d been ever since.

They had been poor, and life had been a struggle, but they loved each other, and when Sam’s health had failed all she’d cared about was looking after him. For a while she had had a boyfriend, Gavin, who had dazzled her with his handsome looks, but she had broken up with him when he made it clear there was no place for Sam in their lives.

Hoping to win a little money, she had applied to enter a television quiz show. That was how she had met Joe Clannan, a shareholder in the production company that made the show. He was a property millionaire, and, when he had proposed, she had accepted for Sam’s sake.

Joe wanted a young sexy trophy wife, and he made her change her name. To him, ‘Angela’ was dull and provincial, but ‘Angel’ was the sexy, young ‘bit’ that he wanted.

He took her to every film premiere, every fashionable restaurant opening, and she was always dressed to the nines and dripping with jewels. The idea was to show the world that coarse, vulgar Joe Clannan had a wife that other men envied him for.

She did what pleased him because she was grateful that Sam now had a comfortable life with her, cared for by two nurses. Often he didn’t know who she was, but he seemed happy, and that was all she asked.

She became a minor celebrity, famous for being famous, appearing on reality TV, fluttering her eyelashes, giggling and doing all she could to make Joe proud.

But when she became pregnant Joe showed his true colours. He already had two grown sons from a previous marriage, and he wasn’t keen on Angel losing her figure. He even suggested that there was ‘no need to have it’. That provoked a fierce row in which she stood up to him so determinedly that he never mentioned it again.

But it was all for nothing. Two days later, she miscarried. In the weeks of depression that followed, she became, as he put it, poor company. He found a younger woman, a girl of twenty. He reckoned Angel was past her best, at twenty-eight.

She had always known that beneath the surface bonhomie Joe could be a very unpleasant man. Just how unpleasant she discovered during the divorce, when he drove her and Sam out of the house and gave her as little as he could get away with.

She cared nothing for the money. If it weren’t for her grandfather, she would have thought herself well rid of Joe.

After the hideously gaudy mansion in the heart of London’s West End where she’d once lived— ‘Nothing too good for my Angel!’—she now rented a small house on the edge of town, just big enough for herself, Sam and the two nurses. She’d taken it on a short-term lease, and in a few weeks she must have the Villa Tazzini ready for them all.

On the night before she left for Italy, she dropped in to Sam’s room.

‘I’ll be leaving very early tomorrow,’ she told him.

‘Why are you going away?’ he asked, puzzled.

‘Darling, I told you. I’m going to Italy, to see this house where we’re going to live. It’s my divorce settlement from Joe.’

‘Joe who?’

‘You remember Joe—my ex-husband.’

He frowned. ‘What became of Gavin?’

‘We quarrelled. Never mind all that now. We’re going to have a new home in Italy. Look, here are the pictures of it that I brought you. You’ll come and join me as soon as possible.’

He fixed her with the smile she loved, full of warmth and affection.

‘Why are you going away?’ he asked.

Vittorio Tazzini was waiting at the window, watching the street for the moment when his friend appeared. As soon as he saw Bruno he was at the door, almost pulling him inside.

‘Have you got it?’ he asked eagerly.

‘Vittorio, my friend, I’m still not sure this is wise. You’re obsessed, and that isn’t good.’

‘Obsessed! Of course I am. I’ve been cheated by two men: the first was one I called a friend, until he stole from me and vanished, forcing me to sell my home to pay his debts. His debts, Bruno, that he had persuaded me to sign for. The other was Joseph Clannan, who saw my desperation and used it to beat me down on the price. I sold for much less than the place is worth because I needed money quickly. If I could have got a fair price I’d have had enough to give me some hope for the future. I wouldn’t be penniless and living here.’ He cast a scornful look around the shabby rented room that was his home now.

Bruno regarded him with pity, which he was careful to conceal. They were both thirty-two, and had been friends since their first day at school. Nobody knew the fierce, embittered Vittorio better than his gentle friend. Nobody understood him as deeply, or feared for him more.

He was silent, watching Vittorio pace the narrow confines of the room, his tall, rangy body looking so out of place in it, after the spaciousness of the Villa Tazzini, that it was like seeing a wild animal trapped in a tiny cage. Sooner or later the animal would go mad.

Vittorio wasn’t a handsome man. His face was too harsh for that, his cheeks too gaunt, his eyes too fierce. His nose was irregular, so that people meeting him for the first time wondered if it had been broken. His wide, firm mouth suggested an unyielding nature, one that could love or hate with equal ferocity, and never forgive an injury from foe or lover alike.

Even Bruno, his closest friend, was slightly afraid of him, and pitied anyone who got on Vittorio’s wrong side.

‘Won’t you forget that man for a moment?’ he begged now.

‘How can I forget him?’ Vittorio asked savagely. ‘He forced the price down until he practically stole the estate from me! And do you know why? To impress a woman. To make her a gift of my home at the least possible expense to himself.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Bruno pleaded.

‘But I do. As I showed him round I heard him say, “My pretty lady will just love this. It’s just what she said she wanted.” All for a woman. So now I want to see that woman. You said your friends in England could send you something that would show her to me. Do you have it or not?’

‘Yes,’ Bruno said, reluctantly unwrapping the small parcel he carried. ‘This is a video of a television show called Star On My Team. It was shown last week, and they taped it for me. But I still wish you’d drop this. Hate the man if you must, but why blame her?’

‘Do you think they can be separated? Do you think I don’t know the kind of woman who puts a price on the bedroom door, and then ups the price again and again? We all know them. Give me the tape.’

Taking it, he pressed it into an ancient video recorder that stood in the corner of the room, poured two glasses of wine, and the two of them sat down to watch.

‘Here she is. The beautiful, the fabulous—Angel!’

Vittorio never took his eyes off the ravishing blonde, with her long hair, luscious make-up and a sexy pout, as she sashayed out to meet her audience.

Flaunting herself, he thought cruelly, taking in the golden figure-hugging dress and flashy jewels. A woman used to being waited on, who demands the best, and gets it.

‘Putana,’ he muttered. Prostitute.

‘That’s going too far,’ Bruno protested.

‘You think a wedding ring hides what she is?’

‘She may not be wearing it any more. My friends say there is talk of a divorce.’

‘So she demanded my home as her parting present? Is that supposed to make me feel better?’

At that moment, Angel gave her famous inane giggle. It went up the scale, growing more lush and significant with every teasing note. She put her fingertips daintily over her lips, looking from side to side as if to say, Silly me.

A perfect performance, Vittorio thought. Apparently fatuous, but actually calculated to tempt a man through his weakness. Even he had felt a faint tingle up his spine, and it served to increase his rage.

Bruno stared at Angel’s polished beauty.

‘She may be all you say,’ he mused, ‘but you can see why—’

‘Oh, yes,’ Vittorio said contemptuously. ‘You can see why!’

There was a tinkling sound as his wine glass broke in his hand, crushed by the cruel pressure of his fingers. He seemed unaware of it. His eyes were fixed on the screen, and the beautiful, provocative woman laughing as though she didn’t have a care in the world.

The journey began with a flight to Naples. It would have been easy to call the villa and ask for someone to collect her from the airport, but getting there under her own steam seemed a good way to start her new, low-profile life. Besides, Angel liked the idea of arriving unexpectedly and seeing the house as it was naturally.

It was an impulse she soon regretted. Being independent was fine if you had only a few bags. But if you were carrying all your worldly goods it was a pain in the neck to have to load them into a taxi at Naples airport, unload them again at the railway station, then onto the train to Sorrento, followed by a bus to Amalfi. By the time she was in the last taxi, to the villa, she was frazzled.

But she forgot the feeling as she gained her first glimpse of the dramatic Amalfi coast. She’d heard of it, and studied pictures, but nothing could have prepared her for the dazzling reality of the cliffs swooping down, down, down into the sea.

‘They’re so high,’ she said in wonder. ‘And those little villages clinging to the sides—how come they don’t slide down into the water?’

‘They are protected by a great hero,’ the driver announced proudly. ‘The legend says that Hercules loved a beautiful nymph, called Amalfi. When she died, he buried her here, and placed huge cliffs all around to safeguard her peace. But then the fishermen protested that they would starve because now they couldn’t get to the sea, so he built them villages on his cliffs, and vowed that he would always keep them safe. And he always has.’

Looking down, Angel found the pretty tale easy to believe. What else could explain how the little towns clung on to the steep sides, rising almost vertically, white walls blazing in the sun?

‘Is the Tazzini estate up there?’ she asked.

‘Right on top, although the lemon orchard stretches down the cliff face, in tiers, to catch as much sun as possible.’

‘Are the lemons good?’ she asked, trying to sound casual.

‘The best. The makers of limoncello always compete to buy Tazzini lemons.’

‘Whatever is limoncello?’

‘It is a liqueur, made with lemons and vodka, straight out of heaven.’

So she had a ready market for her produce, she thought, with a surge of relief.

‘There they are,’ the driver said suddenly, pointing as they rounded a bend. ‘Those are lemon flowers.’

Angel gasped and sat totally still, riveted by the sight that met her eyes. It was as though someone had tossed a basket of white blooms from the top of the cliff so that they cascaded down, shimmering, gleaming, dazzling in the sun, awesome in their beauty.

On the last stretch she took out a mirror and checked her appearance. She’d resolved that those days were behind her, and in future she would worry less about her appearance. But she simply couldn’t let her first entrance be less than perfect, and so she checked her mascara and refreshed her lipstick. Now she was ready for the fray.

They were approaching a large pair of wrought-iron gates which were closed but not locked, so the driver was able to open them and go through. Another few minutes and she could see the villa.

As she’d told Nina, it wasn’t a palace but a large country house, although built on impressive lines. Made of pale grey coloured stone, it reared up three floors, with a flight of stairs running up to the second floor from the outside, where a covered balcony ran the length of the building. Down below there was a riot of decorations. Little half-fountains appeared out of the walls, watched over by stone animals carved to incredible perfection. Angel found herself smiling.

Three broad steps led up to the double doors that formed the entrance, and which stood open. She went right in, followed by the driver, who was hauling her many bags. Looking around, she saw a hall that was spacious yet strangely domestic, even cosy. Warm red tiles stretched away across the floor, leading to archways that seemed to invite her in. Incredibly, she felt welcome.

She tried to be sensible. This feeling of having come home to the place where she belonged was the merest sentimentality, sugar coated with wishful thinking. Yet the sensation pervaded her, despite her efforts to resist it. It was almost like being happy.

She paid the driver, refusing his offer to carry the bags further. She wanted to be alone to enjoy her first minutes in this lovely place.

From the hall a flight of stone stairs with wrought-iron banisters streamed upwards, beckoning her. Angel began to climb it slowly, feeling as though she were moving in a dream. Halfway up she stopped to look out of a window, and realised that the house was close to the edge of the cliff, directly overlooking the sea. From here she could see the water stretching into the distance, incredibly blue, shining serenely under the clear sky. The window was open and she stood there a moment, breathing in the clear air, listening to the silence.

When had she last heard silence? When, in her rackety life, had there been such peace, such potential for tranquil joy? If she hadn’t come here, how much longer would she have survived?

Soon she began to climb again. After the heat outside, the house was blessedly cool, protected by the thick stone walls. She emerged onto a large landing, leading to a corridor with several doors. One in particular attracted her attention, because it was the only double door. No doubt this would be the master bedroom, and the one she would take as her own.

Eager to see it, she pushed open both doors and walked in.

For a moment she could discern nothing, as the wooden shutters at the three windows were mostly closed. Then the gloom cleared slightly and she saw that one of them was open a few inches, and a man was standing there, looking out through the narrow gap.

At first Angel could make out little of him, except that he was tall and lean. Then, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she saw that he was dressed in old jeans and a frayed denim shirt, with scuffed shoes to complete the picture. Probably the gardener, she thought. But what was he doing here?

‘Hello?’ she said.

He turned quickly.

‘Who are you?’ they both said together, in Italian.

Angel gave a brief laugh, realising that her indignation was a tad illogical.

‘I’m sorry, this is my fault,’ she said, ‘for not letting anyone know I was coming today.’

He pushed the shutters further open so that light streamed into the room, falling directly onto her like a spotlight as she moved towards him. She saw him grow suddenly tense, his face harden, but he didn’t speak.

‘I’m the new owner of the estate,’ she said.

‘The Signora Clannan.’

Angel had reverted to her maiden name, but she let it go for the moment.

‘That’s right. Obviously you’ve been expecting me.’

‘Oh, yes, we’ve all known you were coming, although not exactly when. You kept that detail to yourself, so that you could catch us unawares. Very shrewd. Who knows what discoveries you might have made?’

She could see him better now, and thought she’d never come across any man who looked so hard and unyielding. There was a gaunt wariness about him, not just in his face, but in his tall, angular shape, the way he crossed his arms defensively over his chest, telling the world to keep its distance.

He might as well have warded her off with a sword, she thought.

‘I wasn’t trying to catch anyone out,’ she said, trying to remain good-tempered. ‘It was an impulse decision.’

‘And you couldn’t even have made a phone call from the airport to give Berta a chance to be ready for you? She’s your housekeeper, and a more faithful, hard-working soul never lived. She deserves better.’

Angel had a faint sense of remorse, but it was quashed in the rush of indignation. What the hell did he think gave him the right to talk to her like this?

‘Look,’ she said, ‘I presume you’re one of my staff, so let me make it clear right now that you don’t speak to me like that. Not if you want to go on working for me.’

‘Is that so? Then how fortunate that I don’t work for you, or I’d be shaking in my shoes now.’

‘Don’t be impertinent. If you’re not one of my employees, what are you doing in this room, where you most decidedly have no right to be?’

She thought he grew a little paler, the twist to his mouth a little more sardonic.

‘True,’ he said. ‘I have no right. Not any more.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My name is Vittorio Tazzini, and I used to own this place.’