Gino’s Arranged Bride

‘I think our friends will find a way to get by for a while,’ Gino said.

He was right. The five tenants rose up in outrage at the notion that they would be helpless without her, and Laura found herself with no way to back out.

Nikki was over the moon at the thought of going to Italy, and soon had the journey by heart.

‘We take the plane to Pisa Airport,’ she recited, ‘because that’s the nearest airport to Florence, and then we get the train-’

‘I think someone will meet us,’ Gino said, smiling at her. ‘I’ve still got to check final arrangements.’

He called Italy that evening, and Laura heard him say, ‘E, Rinaldo.’

‘Daddy’s talking to his brother,’ Nikki told her in a stage whisper.

‘I know that, and stop earwigging,’ Laura said firmly. ‘It’s none of our business.’

‘Doesn’t matter anyway, they’re talking Tuscan dialect.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Daddy taught me some Tuscan words. Only I don’t know enough to follow what he’s saying,’ Nikki sighed regretfully.

‘So I should hope. Behave yourself!’

‘Oh, Mummy, isn’t it exciting? Daddy’s told me so much about Italy.’

Gino came off the phone.

‘I’ve booked the plane tickets,’ he said. ‘We fly the day after tomorrow. Someone will meet us and drive us to the farm.’

‘Someone?’

‘I don’t know who it will be,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s harvest time, so nothing’s certain.’ Turning his attention to Nikki, he said, ‘So get packing. Capisci?’ Understand?

‘Capisco!’ Nikki saluted and raced off.

The child’s excitement got them through the time, filling in the gaps that yawned because they didn’t know what to say to each other.

The whole house was in cheerful uproar. Everyone seemed to be personally delighted at the trip. Sadie went out of her way to arrange Gino’s time off at work.

‘The job’s there if he wants it again,’ she said, adding, ‘although I don’t suppose he will.’

‘I suppose when he’s sold his share of the farm he won’t need to work as a packer,’ Laura reflected.

‘That’s not exactly what I-oh, well, have a good trip.’

When Sadie had gone Nikki said melodramatically, ‘They’re hoping we don’t come back.’

‘Darling, whatever do you mean?’

‘I heard them talking. They’ve got it all planned. If you stay in Italy they want to club together and buy this place, because they like living here.’

‘You’re making that up.’

‘No, honestly. They want to have a commune.’

‘Now I know you’re making it up.’

‘It’s what Claudia said. She’s dead keen.’

‘Yes, Claudia, forming a commune with Bert! If you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything. They can’t stand each other.’

‘I think that’s mostly for show. They’d miss their spats if they lost them. They’re all dead keen to buy you out.’

‘But darling that isn’t going to happen. Gino’s selling his share of the farm and coming back here.’

‘Does Poppa really want to do that?’

‘Poppa? Since when did you call him that?’

‘That’s what Italian children say. It’s what he called his father. He told me.’

Nikki skipped away, leaving Laura feeling disturbed. The decision was made, surely? Gino was turning his back on Italy and returning to spend the rest of his life in England. And yet from every side there was pressure for a different decision. Nikki was becoming determinedly Italian. And if she were right, the problem about the guest house seemed to have solved itself naturally. It was almost as if she were being guided somewhere, by Fate.

But then she remembered Alex and the fantasy fell apart. If there was one thing that Fate would not, could not, do to her, it was to send her to live close to Alex, Gino’s true love, and the woman for whom he pined in his heart.

Why, oh why, she wondered, had she insisted on him going back to Tuscany? She was deeply regretting it now.

But then she remembered that it would have made no difference what she said. Gino was going back because Alex had said so, not herself.

Everyone came out to see them off, standing on the pavement and waving madly until the taxi was out of sight. And they did look like a family, Laura had to admit.

The rain was teeming down, but no rain could quench Nikki. For the whole of the journey to the airport she bounced with excitement and bombarded ‘Poppa’ with questions, sometimes in reasonable, if basic, Italian. Young as she was, she was rapidly becoming bilingual.

The reason wasn’t far to seek, Laura thought. Nikki learned because her heart was in it.

She had flown before, but so young that she couldn’t remember. Now she enjoyed everything about the airport except for one moment when a couple of boys in their early teens glanced at her face and giggled.

Instantly Gino planted himself in front of them. ‘If you have some comment about my daughter, you can make it to me,’ he said with deadly quiet.

They paled, then took to their heels.

‘Come on,’ Gino said, his hand on her shoulder. ‘Let’s get out of here to a country where the sun shines.’

On the plane Nikki glued herself to the window, regarding the land below with fascination. It had turned into a beautiful day, with little cloud, and she could tell the exact moment when they passed over the coast of France.

‘Have we reached Italy yet?’ she demanded every five minutes.

‘No, that’s still France,’ Gino told her. ‘Then it’s Switzerland, and when you see mountains down there you’ll know it’s the Alps, and we’ve nearly reached Italy.’

‘And then we’re there?’

‘After a few more hundred miles, si,’ he said, grinning.

He ordered some champagne and clinked glasses with Laura. The atmosphere was cheerful, and their first trip abroad together might almost have been their honeymoon.

Briefly she regretted persuading Gino to marry her. She was in love with him, and every day it grew more important to know the truth about his feelings for her. Yet because of the way their marriage had come about, she might never know.

‘Daddy is that the Alps?’

‘Si, piccina. Sono le alpi!’

Soon after that they began to descend, swinging out over the sea before coming in to land at Pisa, near the coast.

From the moment they left the plane Gino felt as though he was watching a tape being replayed. It was harvest, the golden time of year, when the farmer could look at his crops and know how he would prosper in the year ahead.

Last year they had made a mistake, harvesting the grapes too soon because Rinaldo had wanted the money early to repay the mortgage that Alex held. That way he would be free to love her, without the shadow of commerce hanging over his motives. So he’d reckoned.

But he’d got it wrong, harvesting the grapes too early because his mind had been on Alex. At the harvest festival they’d found each other. In the same moment Gino had lost them both.

And now it was harvest again, and it was time for the circle to be completed.

‘Someone’s trying to get your attention,’ Laura said, pointing.

It was Toni, the foreman at Belluna, a huge, grinning man.

‘Don’t worry about Nikki,’ Gino said softly to Laura. ‘I told Rinaldo, and he’ll have warned everyone.’

Toni greeted Gino with a bellow, enfolding him in tree-trunk arms, greeting ‘Signora Farnese’ deferentially, and