End of story.
After Blaine had added the ginger cordial and sesame seeds to the pan and cooked for a further minute or so, he divided the contents between two plates on which nestled a green salad. They carried their plates and wine out to the courtyard and ate under the blue Italian sky. Maisie thought she had never understood how something could be bitter-sweet until tonight.
She didn’t accompany him back to the kitchen for the second course but sat sipping her wine as she watched the sun go down. The shadow-blotched courtyard was still as warm as toast, even when the sky became streaked with tumescent crimson and enriched with bands of gold.
A violet dusk was settling when Blaine brought out the plates, and the tortelloni and lobster was every bit as delicious as the first course had been. He set out to be amusing and entertaining while they ate, the perfect host, and in spite of how Maisie was feeling inside she found herself giggling and enjoying herself. Probably the three glasses of red wine she had consumed by the time her plate was empty helped.
‘And now for dessert.’ Blaine’s teeth were very white as he smiled at her in the indigo shadows. ‘I cannot take the credit for these. There is an excellent little patisserie in Positano. You can choose from Sicilian lemon tart or pistachio cake.’
Maisie groaned. ‘I can’t eat another thing. I thought I’d lost some weight before I came here tonight but I’m sure I’ve put it all on again. I shall go back to England looking like the Michelin woman.’
‘I do not think so,’ he said softly. ‘Just beautiful.’
That was the wrong tone of voice for friends, besides which it wasn’t fair to say she was beautiful. Friends wouldn’t say that. Jackie or Sue would have agreed with her and put in their own suggestions, like one of the Roly-Polys or a jelly on a plate. Maisie frowned, her sense of being misused aided and abetted by the fact that he hadn’t the grace to even pretend to look devastated at the thought of her going back to England. ‘No dessert for me, thank you,’ she said firmly. ‘Really. Just coffee.’
Blaine ate a gargantuan piece of lemon tart along with his coffee and although Maisie’s mouth was watering she restrained herself from saying she’d changed her mind. The moon was out now, shedding a thin hollow light over the face of the ocean far below. The night was very still; even the light breeze of an hour or so ago had died away, leaving a sense of enduring timelessness in its place. They sipped their coffee without talking and then Blaine said quietly, ‘We have eaten and now it is time, sì?’
Maisie glanced at him quickly. She knew he was talking about the explanation she had asked for. She also knew he was reluctant to give it. The evidence was there in the sudden tautness to the handsome features and the stiff line of his body. ‘It’s not necessary,’ she said, equally quietly. Not now. ‘I thought it was, but it really isn’t.’
It was almost as though he hadn’t heard her. ‘Her name was Francesca,’ he said flatly. ‘She was my wife. We married when I graduated from university and took my place in the family business. We had been promised to each other from childhood.’ He shrugged. ‘It is the way things are done sometimes and I had no complaints. I had grown up loving her.’
Maisie was as still as a mouse. His wife? Stupid, but she had never expected that he had been married, somehow.
‘She was twenty-two years old when we married. Within the year she was expecting our child and this triggered the mental condition which ran in her family. Of course this was not mentioned before the wedding.’ He smiled grimly. ‘My parents later admitted they had wondered why Francesca’s parents had left Florence and settled in Sorrento, and why they never visited their respective families or had them to stay. It was the stigma, you see. Her father’s mother had had the condition and her mother before her. It was suggested that because her father was a boy this condition had not affected him.’ He shrugged. ‘I do not know if this was so, only that Francesca became a different person almost overnight.’
‘Blaine, you don’t have to go on.’ Maisie felt awful. If she had known, if she had even suspected just the slightest she wouldn’t have pressed him for an explanation.
‘At first I didn’t know what I was dealing with,’ he said painfully. ‘I thought it was a kind of normal depression, if there is such a thing. I imagined with help she would snap out of it. Then her parents told her the truth. They had always said that all their family was dead and Francesca had grown up believing this. When they told her she became convinced there was no hope for her.’
He raked back his hair, moving restlessly in his chair before going on. ‘My parents and I brought in the best doctors;they were optimistic that once the child was born and she could receive certain medication she would be a different woman. Not cured exactly, but if she stayed on the medication she would cope.’
He sat forward in his chair, his arms resting on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. Somewhere close by a dog barked and then all was still again.
‘She lost the baby at four months. Perhaps it was for the best, I don’t know. We began the medication. Sometimes for long periods she was fine. Other times … she wasn’t.’
The pause said much more than words could have done. Maisie could not see his face clearly in the shadowed darkness but she didn’t have to. She knew it would be etched with pain. She sat stiff and still, scarcely breathing.
‘And gradually over a period of time my feelings began to change. Oh, she did not know this—at least I think she did not know—but even in the early days of our marriage, before she became ill, I knew I had made a mistake. Francesca … she did not like the physical side of marriage. She would do her duty as she saw it but that was all. Maybe I should have recognised the signs before we married; she was always happy to cuddle and kiss a little but anything else and I was gently rebuffed. But she was a good Italian girl and I had been brought up to respect this. I did not expect more. After she lost the baby we lived virtually as brother and sister.’
How could any woman not want Blaine to make love to her? Maisie stared at his profile, wondering what that must have done to him.
‘To all intents and purposes ours seemed a loving marriage to the outside world. Even, perhaps, to Francesca. She had the kudos of being married, which was important to her, having been raised by parents who believed in the old way. She had a nice home close to her parents—we lived in Sorrento—and she had me to take her out and look after her. She wanted nothing more, she made that very clear. Even in her good times any advances I made were not well received. And so life went on. Maybe if she had not been ill, things would have been different. I might have insisted she try to change. As it was, I realised I had made my bed and I had to lie on it. Alone, of course.’ He smiled bitterly.
‘You … couldn’t have asked for a divorce?’ Maisie said tentatively.
‘Francesca was a staunch Catholic, like her parents, besides which I could not abandon her and cast her aside. It would have finished her. Again, if she had not been ill it would have been different.’
‘She was lucky to have you.’
He looked up and into her eyes. ‘Do not think of me as a saint, Maisie,’ he said quietly. ‘I am not proud of it, but by the time she became ill with leukaemia I think I almost hated her. She used her illness as a weapon and we both knew it. I resented her more than words can say; I longed for my freedom. Not in the way it happened—never that—but I wanted to be rid of her. My only comfort is that she did not know. I acted the part of the loving husband to the end.’
She stared at
