Husband By Necessity

‘I was wrong to do that, and I’m sorry. I should have thought of this-I suppose I just assumed that, since you were a doctor-’

‘Stop! Don’t say any more. You’re making it worse with every word. You blame yourself for not thinking I might get pregnant, but not for the way you hurt me. Have you any idea what it did to me to wake and find you gone? And that charming little note-“little” being the operative word. Was that really all I deserved?’

He reddened. ‘I’m not good with words-’

‘You’re all right with words, Bernardo. It’s feelings you’re no good at. You wouldn’t marry me for love, but now I’m a brood mare, that’s different, isn’t it?’

He tore his hair. ‘All I meant was-your pregnancy seems to solve the problems.’

She regarded him in pity. ‘I said you were no good with feelings and you’ve just proved it. If I married you for such a reason our problems would just be beginning. I would gladly have married you for love, but I don’t want a man who feels I contrived a child to trap him. Without love, the deal’s off.’

The bitter words seemed to be coming out of their own accord. Part of her longed to bite them back and fall into his arms. He wanted to marry her. No matter how it had come about, wouldn’t a sensible woman take what she could and build on it?

But the ‘other’ Angie wasn’t a sensible woman. She was an awkward, prickly, troublesome creature who reacted like a hedgehog when her pride was affronted. She was the one who’d jumped at Baptista’s suggestion of coming out here, and she wouldn’t be banished back into her box now she’d served her purpose.

So now she was the one who regarded Bernardo out of furious eyes and said, ‘Marry you? What do you think I am?’

‘I don’t understand anything you say. You’ve won, isn’t that enough?’

‘No, it’s not enough. We’re further apart now than before you mentioned marriage because if you think I’ve “won” then you believe you’ve lost. I didn’t even realise we were fighting. I thought we were trying to find the way to each other. And that night-’ her voice shook as memories came back to her, but she controlled it and kept her distance ‘-after that night, it almost seemed as if we’d found the way. You told me what was troubling you. All right, maybe I pushed too hard, but you might have trusted my love.

‘But I forgot, you can’t cope with someone who loves you because it means coming close.’ Tears were sliding down her cheeks, but she ignored them, speaking softly and with heartbreak. ‘You’ve spent the last twenty years rejecting anyone who tried to get near you, and now you can’t see a pair of open arms without turning your back. So go ahead, turn it again. My arms aren’t even open any more, because there’s no point.’

‘You don’t really mean that,’ he said quietly.

‘You think not? Why shouldn’t I? Remember what you said in your note? “I only know how to give pain.” It was true, but I was too stupid to realise it. We should have stayed strangers.’

‘We can never be strangers again,’ he said quietly.

‘Why, because I’m having your child?’

‘Not only that. Because of things we can’t forget. I’ve tried to forget them, tried night after night to blot out everything you are to me, but I can’t do it. If this hadn’t happened I was coming back anyway to beg your forgiveness and ask to start again.’

‘Words,’ she said with a sigh.

‘Meaning that you don’t believe me?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said huskily. ‘I only know that it’s too late for words. I once wanted to marry you so much. Now I know that marrying you would be fatal. Please Bernardo, just go away.’

‘I’ll go, but it isn’t final. Nothing has been settled tonight. I won’t give you up so easily.’

She watched as he went to the door and gave her one look before departing. She dried her tears and found that she was simply too tired to feel anything. The emotions they’d shared that night should have wrung her out, but they didn’t because she was already wrung out. All she could think of was getting to bed, going to sleep, and not having to think or feel anything, ever again.

She knew now that the problems she faced with the town would get worse, and they did. There wasn’t a soul in Montedoro who didn’t know that Bernardo was the father of her child, but they’d suspended judgement until he returned.

‘They were so sure he was going to “make an honest woman” of me,’ Angie said bitterly to Heather, who came to call, full of concern.

‘You mean he isn’t?’

‘Oh, he wants to. It’s me that won’t make an honest man of him.’

‘You two have got yourself in a pickle, haven’t you? It’s the sort of situation that needs Baptista to sort it out, like she did for me.’ Heather patted her own pregnancy bump. She was three months ahead of Angie, who didn’t show at all as yet.

‘I don’t think even Baptista could do much with this situation,’ Angie said wryly.

‘Not unless Bernardo asked her,’ Heather agreed. ‘And he won’t do that. You know what he’s like.’

As the town realised that Bernardo’s return didn’t herald an immediate marriage they began to look uneasily at Angie. She was too popular to be totally condemned, but now nobody knew what to make of her. Bernardo had said he wasn’t giving up, but he too seemed to keep his distance, until the night she returned late from being called out, and found him leaning against her front door. Too tired to argue, she let him in.

‘Where is Ginetta?’ he asked, looking around at the empty house.

‘Her mother forced her to stop working for me.’

He remembered suddenly how his mother’s servants had all been middle-aged. No mother would let her daughter work for the town prostituta.

‘Then you should have got a replacement,’ he said. ‘It’s too much for you to do all on your own.’

‘I’m not alone. One or two of the nuns drop in to help me. They’ve been wonderful. But some of the others-’ he thought she sighed a little ‘-won’t come near me now.’

‘We are not like other people,’ Marta had said to her son. ‘We are set apart because of your father. There are those in this town who will never come near me. You-yes. Me- no.’

Now he tried to remember if anyone had shunned him as an unmarried father, and he couldn’t. It was she who was shunned, even if not wholly, because these people knew that they needed her. They would take from her, but not give to her. Rage consumed him, and it made him cruel.

‘Why should that worry you?’ he asked coldly. ‘You don’t depend on this for your bread.’

He was ashamed before the words were out of his mouth. A sick, weary look washed over her face as she said, ‘That’s true.’

‘Forgive me,’ he said gently. When she didn’t answer he went on his knees beside her and took her hands. ‘Forgive me. I should never have spoken to you like that.’

She smiled, but he knew she was still withdrawn from him. ‘I’ll make you something to eat,’ he said.

‘I don’t really-’

‘You will eat it,’ he said firmly. ‘You must keep up your strength. And perhaps-’ he laid his hand briefly on her shoulder ‘-perhaps you will also do it to please me.’

In another moment she would have rested her cheek on his hand, but it was gone before she could move.

She heard dishes clattering in her little kitchen and soon delicious smells began to waft towards her. Of course Bernardo could cook, she thought. It was all part of his determination to need nobody else. Right now she was glad of it.

She began to remove her outdoor clothes, and he was there at once, taking them from her and hanging them up. He neither smiled nor uttered pleasant words, but his hands were as gentle as they were firm. When they were finished he said, ‘Sit down.’

‘Let me lay the table.’

‘I will lay the table. You will do as you are told.’

It was blissful to be waited on. She sat in sleepy content while he spread the checked cloth on the little table, set out knives and forks, salt, pepper, plates and wine glasses.

‘No wine for me,’ Angie said. ‘Not while I’m pregnant.’

‘What do you drink?’