‘So you don’t think the words matter very much?’
‘Yes, the words are nice, but they’re not everything.’
‘I thought women attached a lot of importance to them.’
‘That’s because we know a lot of men don’t find them easy. So if he manages them, it means more. But if he doesn’t-I promise you a woman knows the man who loves her and the man who doesn’t. Whether he says it or not, it’s there in the tone of his voice, the way his eyes rest on her, the things he remembers to do.’
She had meant to comfort him with the thought that his wife had died content in the knowledge of his love, but to her horror he closed his eyes suddenly and turned his head away. She groaned, realising how insensitive she had been.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Please forget I said anything. What do I know?’
‘Don’t put yourself down,’ he said, turning back. ‘I think I’d rely on your experience more than anyone’s.’
‘Even when I can’t remember what it was?’ she asked wryly.
‘Especially then.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘It makes perfect sense. If you’re not using your memory you’re relying on your instincts. I trust your instincts.’
‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘I wish there was some way I could help you. But nothing really helps, does it?’
‘I once believed that. I’ve sat in this place and listened to the silence and wondered how I was going to get through the rest of my life. I’m not sure how I’d cope if I had your problems, probably not as well as you do, but I can talk to you, not to anyone else.’
‘But you don’t-I mean, we never talk about anything much, unless it’s about me,’ Ruth protested. ‘You don’t talk about you.’
‘But you were the one who said the words mattered less than what you pick up in the atmosphere.’ He gave a brief laugh. ‘You might describe our atmosphere as two desperate characters drowning. But we’re not drowning anymore.’
‘Not as long as we just cling on to each other,’ she said. ‘You’re right. It makes all the difference.’
‘With any luck we may hold each other up until one of us can touch the bottom,’ he said lightly.
‘One of us? If I can touch land do you think I’m going to go off and leave you to drown?’ she asked. ‘Would you leave me?’
He shook his head.
‘That’s what I thought,’ she said softly.
Ruth fetched him another mug of tea and when she returned he was going through a large photo album. Several more rested on a chair.
‘I gathered these to get them out of Franco’s way when he takes over the building,’ he said.
To her surprise she saw the pictures were of children; two boys and a girl. The boys were in their late teens, the girl about thirteen.
‘That’s me,’ Pietro said, pointing. ‘The other one was my friend Silvio, and the girl was Lisetta, his sister. She used to trail along behind us, and we were kind to her in that selfish, casual way of boys.’
‘What are you doing?’ Ruth asked, peering closer. ‘You all look as though you’re about to throw something.’
‘Dice. We had a special game where you had to toss the dice better than anyone else. If you won, the prize was a stone. Lisetta played it better than either of us. She had a naturally straight “eye”. She’d win stone after stone, and when she had a pile of stones, she’d risk the whole lot on one throw. Sometimes she won, more often she lost, but losing never bothered her. She’d just laugh and start again.’
He studied the picture, smiling. ‘I think it was her idea of being kind-let the boys win in the end so that they don’t feel too bad.’
‘That sounds very traditional. Was she really like that?’
‘She was very kind.’
‘Is this her?’ Ruth had come across a large portrait of the same girl, now grown up, dressed in the garb of a college graduate.
‘That’s her on the day she graduated with honours,’ Pietro said. ‘She was the bright one, put us all to shame. After that she became a professor herself, the youngest they’d ever had.’
‘Wow!’
Ruth studied the calm face, which already held more than a touch of assurance. She wasn’t pretty, but she was handsome, and she looked as though she did nothing by chance.
Something made her look back to the first picture. There were several of them showing her ready to throw the dice, always smiling, and always with something in her eyes that made Ruth sure Pietro had misread her.
This wasn’t an old-fashioned girl letting the boys win out of a misplaced concern for male pride. This was a high roller with the nerve to stake her entire winnings on one throw, and the courage to laugh if she lost. Even as a child it had been there. Later, beneath the professor’s exterior, beat the heart of a risk-taker. Ruth found herself liking Lisetta.
For her wedding she’d worn a fancy confection of satin and lace that didn’t quite fit with the severity of her looks. Her veil swept the ground, her bouquet was enormous, but what stood out most was the look of blazing happiness on her face. There could be no mistaking her feelings, even when she was pictured alone. But when she was looking into Pietro’s smiling face she was consumed by radiant joy.
Until now Ruth had pitied him, grieving for the woman he’d loved, but this was also the woman who had given him an adoration few men ever knew. What would it do to him to lose that love? Looking around at the bleakness of his life, Ruth thought she knew.
She found him watching her. Without a word he took the photo and put it out of sight.
‘She looks like a marvellous person,’ she ventured.
‘She was, generous and giving…’ His voice trailed away and he sat staring at the floor, his hands clasped between his knees.
She could bear his pain no longer. Dropping to the floor, she laid her hands over his.
‘If only there was something I could say,’ she whispered.
He shook his head. ‘You don’t need to. If I could talk to anyone, it would be to you, but-Ruth, I wanted to say…I wish things were different. I wish I was any use with words-’
She silenced him with her fingertips over his mouth. Then, because it seemed natural, she slipped her arms around him. He hugged her back with all the force of a man who hadn’t been hugged for a long time, and they held each other in silence for a while.
CHAPTER EIGHT
RUTH waited, tense with hope to see if Pietro would move his hands over her, but he only held her without stirring until at last he disengaged himself. Now he would send her away, she thought, but he got to his feet, saying, ‘I need a walk before I can sleep. If we’re keeping an eye on each other, are you coming?’
‘Yes, of course.’
As they reached the door downstairs they heard a soft pattering of feet and Toni caught up with them.
‘I guess we’re all going,’ Ruth said.
‘He never did like being left behind.’
Pietro locked the door behind them, then crooked his arm for her to slip her hand through it, and they began to wander through the tiny streets, lit only by a faint silver glow from above. At first they did not speak, and for a while the only sound was their feet echoing on the paving stones, and the soft noise of Toni padding behind them.
‘I think this must be the quietest place on earth,’ Ruth mused. ‘Anywhere else you’d always be able to hear a car, even at night, but here there’s no noise at all.’
‘Oh, yes, there’s noise, if you know how to hear it,’ Pietro said. ‘Listen to the water.’
