To Marry a Tiger (7 page)
Authors: Isobel Chace
She thrust the car through the narrow streets with determination. The pedestrians flattened themselves against the walls as they passed and a stall of melons collapsed under the sheer pressure of people. Some ragged children rushed
d
own the street, the stolen melons in their hands. The stall-holder ran after them, puffing and fuming in the heat. He shook his fist at Signora Verdecchio and, looking a trifle dismayed, she came to a stop.
“The streets are too narrow—” she began to explain.
“Then drive your car somewhere else!” he advised her, his pudgy flesh trembling with anger.
“I’ll help you pick the melons up,” Ruth offered eagerly in her broken Italian.
A
smile spread over his face as he recognised a foreigner. “Then you do accept full liability?” he demanded.
Signora Verdecchio stepped out of the car, a non-stop spurt of Italian issuing from her. Ruth would have loved to have stayed to hear the end of the incident, but she knew that she wouldn’t get a better chance. If she were to escape, this was her opportunity.
She ran as hard as she could and found herself in the Piazza Kalsa, a fine square behind the Porta dei Greca, with its densely populated alleys, full of sailors and fishermen whose wives are famous for their lace-making and embroidery. The Kalsa is the most typically Arab part of the city and there were delightful little courts that Ruth would have loved to explore. As it was, she ran hither and thither, looking for the way to the port, but there seemed to be no end to the narrow alleys, most of them leading nowhere, or only back where she had been before.
Women, dressed all in black, and small, ragged boys watched her pass. She tried to ask them the way, but they only shook their heads and stared at her with black,
apparently sightless eyes. She began to grow frightened and more and more desperate. And then suddenly there she was in the road that led to the port, although she had no idea of how she had got there.
Looking at her watch, she saw that it was already twenty to twelve. She tried to tel
l
herself that it no longer mattered to her. Now that she was not going to be married at noon, the hour of twelve no longer held any meaning. She was cross with herself, therefore, for feeling bereft and forlorn by the knowledge. She sniffed hard and pressed on down the street. She would get on the first boat for Naples and that would be that!
The heat pressed down on her, but she refused to go any slower. She was almost sure that the ticket offices would close at twelve, for the long lunch hour that is universal all round the Mediterranean. She thought that she had made it when she was grasped tightly by the arm.
“I think not,” Mario drawled in her ear.
She t
urned
and faced him, hot and extremely angry. “But why not?” she pleaded. “You know you don’t really want to marry me!”
His eyes widened as he took in her new hair-style and make-up. He whistled softly. It should, Ruth thought, have been humiliating to her to have anyone look at her like that, but it was not. If she were honest, she had to admit that it was pure balm to her shattered nerves.
“I—I
can’t
marry you,” she said.
He smiled. “I think you have no choice,” he answered gently.
“But I won’t—I
won’t
marry you
!
”
He forced her to look up at him. His own eyes were alight with laughter and she could feel an answering quirk of sheer amusement and relief somewhere deep inside her.
“No?” he mocked her.
“No,” she repeated in a shaken voice.
He shrugged. “It’s a pity, don’t you think, with all the preparations already made?” He touched her hair lightly with his fingers. “Was all this for yourself?” He bent and kissed her on the lips. “I think not,” he said.
Ruth said nothing. She knew that if she had, it would have been a total surrender.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE wedding was hardly delayed at all. Mario had done no more than glance at his watch before he had rushed her back down the street to where Henry Brett was waiting with his jeep.
“Will you drive us back to the house?” Mario had asked him with all the charm he had at his command.
“What about your aunt?” Ruth had reminded him. “I left her somewhere over there,” she added vaguely, not really sure which way
s
he had come.
“She will know that I have you safe,” Mario had said.
Ruth had been grateful for the unspoken sympathy of Henry Brett during the silent ride back to the house. It was only when they had arrived and the two of them were standing in the hall while Mario went to discover if the priest had arrived that Henry said:
“I gather the corn has been particularly alien this morning?”
Ruth shook her head. “It’s so ridiculous!” she exclaimed helplessly.
Henry looked concerned. “I’d like to help—” he began.
“No, don’t!” Ruth said quickly. “You’ll lose your job, or—or something!”
Henry’s mouth twisted into a rueful grin. “I very nearly did already,” he admitted. “Your future lord and master was furious that I’d taken you round the village on your own. If I hadn’t known that he didn’t care a button for you, I’d have thought him the original jealous lover seeking revenge!”
Ruth went white. “I wish I could understand it all better,” she sighed
.
“I’d have thought Mario was easily understood,” Henry remarked dryly. “He hates to be thwarted. It’s as simple as that!”
“I don’t think it can be,” Ruth objected.
“
Nobody
in Sicily seems to find it the least bit odd that
today
his wretched honour makes him have to marry me to save my honour!”
Henry grinned. “It does sound a bit medieval, put like that,” he admitted.
“A bit!” she retorted. “
And
as far as I can see the damage to my honour is only a bit of possible local gossip! Can you beat that
?
”
“No,” he reproved her, “that isn’t quite fair. If you were a Sicilian girl, you wouldn’t be able to make a respectable marriage after spending the night here. After all, he was here too!”
Ruth stared at him in disbelief. “But nothing
happened
!
”
Henry’s cheeks went a peculiar shade of pink. “I believe that, of course,” he said awkwardly. “I mean, I believe it because you say so. I mean, Sicilians have pretty hot blood, don’t they? You know, any opportunity and all that—”
“
Henry
!”
“Beg your pardon,” he muttered unhappily.
“I should think so!” she said indignantly.
The colour was still in her cheeks and the light of battle in her eye when Signora Verdecchio came through the front door.
“Ah, there you are!” she said to Ruth. “You’re a very naughty girl! I suppose Mario brought you back
?
” Ruth nodded silently.
“He was right! He said you’d make for the port if you could.” Her voice rose in anguish. “And I thought
you were persuaded that we were doing the best thing
!
” she complained.
“
And
you’ve messed up your hair!”
Ruth’s hand went involuntarily to her hair, patting a loose curl back into place. “I had to,” she tried to explain. “Mario and I don’t want to marry one another!”
“I won’t believe that’s true,” the Signora fussed. “Come here and I’ll fix your hair!”
Ruth refused to feel guilty. Why should she? But nevertheless she found herself hoping that Mario’s aunt was not too cross with her.
“It’s so ridiculous!” she said aloud. “I can’t believe you are all serious about it even now!”
Lucia clicked her tongue against her teeth. “It is you who are ridiculous!” she claimed fiercely. “Why, any girl would be pleased to marry Mario! You will have comfort and security and the joy of having a family about you. What more do you want?”
“Love,” Ruth said flatly.
To her astonishment, Signora Verdecchio laughed. “And do you think that you won’t fall in love with Mario?” she demanded.
Ruth swallowed. “But will he fall in love with me?”
The Signora
sh
rugged. “There are other things,” she told her. “This romantic love that you think so much about is here today and gone tomorrow. You will have respect as Mario’s wife, and affection, and honour as the mother of his children.”
“But not love?” Ruth said sadly.
“It will come,” Lucia said gently. “If you want it, it will come.”
But Ruth could not believe her. She allowed herself to be pushed into the
salotto
and stood disconsolately in the middle of the room, trying not to look at the painting of the Verdecchio who was so like Mario. There were flowers everywhere. It was a
m
ockery, Ruth thought, trying to give a festive air to what had to be an empty feast. Mario’s aunt handed her a bouquet of white flowers that smelt heavily of orange blossom, and then Mario arrived with the priest.
She wondered what would happen if she told him that she was being married against her will, but she found herself smiling when he approached her.
“I don’t speak English,” the priest said apologetically. His thick Sicilian accent made his Italian almost unintelligible to Ruth as well. “It is a very happy occasion.” He looked tired and defeated and went on to mutter something about not holding the wedding in church. Ruth came to the conclusion that it was because she was English and a
stranger.
“He doesn’t want to marry me!” she said in a burst, half in English and half in Italian, which the priest quite clearly didn’t begin to understand. The old man nodded gently. “It is the custom,” he said, as if he were agreeing with her.
“
Non parlo bene italiano
—” Ruth began desperately. She was aware of Mario coming towards her. In another moment, she knew, it would be too late!
“My love,” he said, “are you ready for the ceremony?” He threaded his fingers through hers and squeezed her hand until it hurt.
“But—”
“But?” he echoed.
She was cast into instant confusion. He had called her
my love
! She tried to free her hand, but she could not. He stood quietly beside her, his Satanic looks becoming magnified in her mind, and making no effort at all to help her.
“Well, my love?” he repeated.
“I’m ready,” she said.
He gave her a ring that had been in the Verdecchio family since the time of Frederick II. He gave her gold in the form of a key to his house. And he gave her a silver coin as a symbol of his wealth.
To Ruth, the whole ceremony was as unreal as a dream. The priest mumbled and she couldn’t really understand what he was saying. If Mario’s responses were clear, her own were bungled as she struggled with the unfamiliar Italian formula that committed her life into Mario’s keeping. Only when she was asked if she would take Mario to be her husband, to love him, to honour him, and to obey him, did she make a single, firm response.
“
Si
,”
she said with a willingness that shocked her.
Mario glanced at her, his eyes full of swift amusement, and she could feel herself blushing in the most humiliating way. Then the moment passed and the instant of intimate understanding had gone with it. The priest mumbled on to a conclusion and the ceremony was over.
The civil part of the wedding was no more than a formality. Ruth signed half a dozen pieces of paper, wherever anyone told her she should, and received in return a document, heavy with seals, that she supposed was her marriage lines.
“Was it so painful?” Mario asked her mildly.
She didn’t know how to answer. “I don’t see how you can look so happy about it!” she retorted.
He smiled. “Don’t you? There are compensations, you know.”
“They’re not obvious to me!” she answered.
“No
?
Perhaps one has to be a man to see them.”
Ruth suppressed a smile. Whatever he might say, she was grateful to him for not looking miserable at the prospect of a lifelong liaison with her. That, she thought, was true gallantry!
“I—I shan’t hold you to anything,” she managed to say.
His expression became distant and she was more than ever conscious of his broken nose. “Won’t y
o
u? Well, you can be sure that I shall hold you to your promises. There is no going back, Ruth. The outcome was inevitable from the moment you set foot on Sicilian soil.
”
Ruth straightened her back. If he was proud, so could she be. “That’s my funeral! All I’m trying to say is that it needn’t be yours too
!”
He stiffened. “Indeed? I hope you don’t mean what I think you do. In Sicily, it is the man who rules the marriage, not the whim of his wife.”
She was immediately as angry as he. “You won’t rule me!” she shot at him.
“Another challenge?” he asked her.
“A fact!” she muttered.
To her dismay, he chuckled. “Facts can be changed to suit oneself if one is sufficiently determined,” he said.
“I am determined!” she insisted, more to boost her own morale than to convince him.
Mario smiled. His eyes searched Ruth’s face, making her very conscious of her new hair-do and make-up. Did he think she looked beautiful? Or was he still longing for the obvious prettiness of Pearl? Ruth wished she knew.
“So am I determined,” he said briefly. “And as no house can stand if it is divided against itself, I am afraid that one of us will have to give way, and it will not be me.”
