Watching them nuzzle each other, Vittorio could see that it was love at first sight, on both sides.
Angel immediately got him to drive her into Amalfi to buy the cheapest possible jeans and cotton tops and after that she wore nothing else when Toni was around, which was all the time.
She also abandoned make-up, since there was little point in putting it on when Toni would immediately shove his wet nose against her face. She knew she should reprove him and fend him off, but somehow she never got around to it.
Her truce with Vittorio held, with the ‘armed’ element becoming less obvious. Angel was wryly aware that she was beginning to win his approval, and even more wryly aware that his approval was worth having.
She practised her Italian on him, as she did with Berta, and was soon talking easily. Then, to tease him, she insisted on having their conversations in English. Vittorio spoke her language well enough to get by, but no more than that, and she told him firmly that it was time he improved. His cynical expression showed that he wasn’t fooled, but he let her instruct him, and didn’t seem to mind her teasing.
He began to teach her the finer points of lemon growing. She learned that the estate produced the type known as Lisbon, that the right compost was crucial and great care should be exercised with watering.
‘Flood them at the start, let them almost dry out, then flood them again,’ Vittorio explained. ‘And you need patience. It can take years from seed to harvest, so your-the orchards here contain trees at several different stages. Some will be ready to harvest this year, some next, some the year after.’
She didn’t miss the way he had begun to say ‘your orchards’ and hastily changed it to ‘the orchards’. Now that she was no longer angry with him, Angel found herself alert to his every nuance, and she thought how painful it must be for him to do this. His love for the place seemed overwhelming, making this a sacrifice that must hurt him to the heart, yet which he endured.
She was beginning to realise that a good harvest was vital. The lump sum Joe had paid her, and which had seemed comfortable at the time, was vanishing fast under the demands she was forced to make on it. Her wage bill alone was alarming. She knew she couldn’t do without a car, but she put it off, and finally bought herself only a modest vehicle.
The time was coming when she would be forced to make money somehow, and it made her uneasy because none of the ways open to her were appealing. She’d already had an offer to sell the story of her life with Joe, complete with juicy details, but to do that was to return to the old life and the old values, the very ones she was trying to escape.
Angel pushed the thought aside, telling herself that there would be time enough to worry later. Just now, she wanted to concentrate on Sam, and getting his new home ready for him.
Every morning and evening she called him, seizing on any sign that he was a little more alert, and concealing her disappointment when he didn’t know her. Afterwards she would talk to Roy or Frank, his nurses, and they would be reassuring.
‘He’s been a little better today-truly-we talk of you, and he seems to understand. He just doesn’t recognise your voice on the phone, but it’ll be different when he sees you.’
‘Of course it will,’ Angel would say, trying to convince herself. ‘Give him my love. Tell him we’ll soon be together again.’
Then she would put the phone down and weep.
CHAPTER FOUR
VITTORIO usually ended a trip to town by collecting his mail. It eased the confusion caused by the fact that he no longer lived in the big house.
‘I’ve got some for you today,’ the post mistress said with a smile. ‘And also some for her.’
She said ‘her’ in the significant tone many of the locals used to signify that they were on his side. This time it troubled him.
‘It’s not her fault she’s the new owner,’ he said mildly. ‘Perhaps we should ease off.’
A guffaw behind him made him turn to see a young man whom, now he thought of it, he’d never much liked. His name was Mario, a ne’er-do-well who drank too much and lived by doing odd jobs, not very well. Vittorio had hired him as a temporary hand at harvest time, and fired him for laziness.
‘I guess she’s been working her wiles on you,’ Mario said now, sounding not quite sober.
‘What do you mean?’ Vittorio asked in a cold voice that should have warned him.
‘Well, we all know what kind of a woman she is. It’s in the papers.’
Moving with deliberate care, Vittorio took Mario’s ear between his finger and thumb, squeezing it painfully, and eliciting a squeal.
‘I’ll tell you just once,’ he said, almost gently. ‘Shut-
A strangulated gasp signified agreement, and Vittorio released him, turning his back at once.
‘I’ll take my mail now,’ he said. Then he walked out of the shop without a glance at Mario, who was still rubbing his ear and regarding him with malevolence.
Sitting in the car afterwards, he took some deep breaths, clenching his hands on the wheel. To calm himself down he checked over the mail. Among the items for Angel was a large brown envelope that had come from England and was falling apart. He laid everything on the seat and started up.
At the villa he walked straight in, going to the room at the back where there was a desk, from which he had once run the estate. As he laid the brown envelope down it suddenly gave up the ghost and split right open, depositing its contents over the floor, and revealing them to be a collection of English magazines. As he picked them up Angel’s face blazed out at him.
She was there on the cover of a publication with a ridiculous name, designed to make every man who read it feel like a daredevil. And her pose reinforced the impression, eyes wide, as though meeting a man’s gaze, lips touched by a provocative smile. It was practically an invitation to bed.
Then he saw the words beneath.
Vittorio made a sound of distaste, flinging the magazine down and heading for the door. But something made him stop, turn back and, hating himself, retrieve it.
Inside, there were more pictures from Angel’s heyday, but there were also amateur snapshots showing her several years back, looking unfinished and barely recognisable as her present self. With her was a handsome young man, presumably her boyfriend.
The headline claimed that this was
What followed was a tragic tale of a young man’s love spurned by a rapacious woman, who callously threw him over for a rich man. Reading it, Vittorio discovered that his English had improved more than he had realised.
I loved her, and I thought she loved me, but she threw me over for the sake of wealth. How could I compete with Joe Clannan’s millions? I bear her no ill-will, but, now that she too has been dumped, I hope she has learned the value of a loving heart.
He grimaced with disgust. Then he took a closer look at the man’s face. Like a god, he thought. Probably an empty-headed god, but exactly what a young girl would fall for. But she’d dumped him for Joe Clannan, and Vittorio reckoned he didn’t have to be clairvoyant to guess why.
He felt suddenly sad.
Angel, coming into the room a few minutes later, found him sitting, staring into space. She stiffened when she saw the magazine.
‘I don’t admire your choice of reading matter,’ she said coldly.
He jumped as though she’d startled him.
‘It belongs to you,’ he said, speaking with an effort. ‘It was with your mail, which I collected with mine.’
‘And you felt you had to open it?’
‘The envelope split.’ In the face of her sceptical look, he held it up, and she nodded.
He watched as she glanced over the story, and saw a bleak weariness settle over her face. It made her look older, almost haggard. At this moment, he thought, nobody would have recognised her as Angel. He found himself
