To Marry a Tiger (15 page)

“I’m not sure that I am,” Ruth said with dignity
.

Pearl’s eyes grew round with astonishment. “What do you call it?” she asked.

Ruth bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I’m not sure it’s love. I’m not sure I even
like
him!”

“That’s love!” said Pearl. “Believe me!” She giggled. “Oh, Ruth, you’re such a fool! Did you really believe that it would give you a
cosy
feeling to fall
i
n love?”

“No, of course not!” Ruth denied hastily.

“Well, anyway,” Pearl went on with single-minded devotion to her own point of view, “whatever you call it, he’s only got to find out about it and he’s got you! You’d do far better to get away while you can!”

Ruth shook her head. “I’m married to him,” she reminded Pearl. “I can’t do anything else but stay here.”

Pearl frowned. “I think last night went to your head!” She said frankly. “You sound exactly like Aunt Lucia!”

Ruth studied her sister with a quizzical expression. “Are you sure it didn’t go to your head?” she suggested gently.

Pearl looked abashed. “Maybe, just a little bit,” she admitted. “The thing is that I like kissing Mario. It was nothing against you.” She took a deep breath. “I know
I
said I’d take him away from you, but I wouldn’t! As a matter of fact, I probably wouldn’t have come to Sicily with him in the end. He’s a bit deep for me—”

“But he sent you your ticket!” Ruth exclaimed.

“But I hadn’t used the ticket,” Pearl explained. “I might have done, or I might not, I don’t know! Mario is so beautifully handsome that it makes one feel good to be seen with him, but he’s
deep
.
I like to play around in the shallow end.”

Ruth was shocked. “If Father could hear you—” she began.

“He’d call me an amoral baggage and lecture me a little,” Pearl finished for her. “You’re really very alike. That’s exactly what you’d like to do, isn’t it?”

Ruth could not deny it. “I can’t understand it,”
she said at last.

“There’s safety in numbers,” Pearl defended herself.
“I’m beginning to think you
deserve
Mario! You’re as archaic in your ideas as this horrid island!”

Ruth felt quite shattered by this vision of herself. Her head ached worse than ever and she wished Pearl would go away and leave her alone.

“I hardly think Father will agree with you,” she said, rather wistfully.

Pearl smiled with smug satisfaction. “Hardly!” she said cheerfully. “But surely you aren’t going to be fool enough to tell him?”

“I must,” Ruth said simply. “He has to know! I can’t stay here for ever without some kind of explanation
!
”

Pearl wrinkled up her forehead thoughtfully. “A suitably edited version of events will be best for both of us,” she opined finally. “I’ll get Mario to work on it.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll tell Father myself!” Ruth insisted.

Pearl stood up, patting her hair back into position and brushing down her skirt. “Do what you like!” she said in exaggerated accents. “
I
intend to hide behind Mario’s broad back myself, so you’d better not say anything about
my
affairs to Father, or you’ll be sorry!”

With swinging hips, she walked back down the path towards the house, looking the picture of youthful innocence and unworldly bliss, and leaving her sister as cross as two sticks and with her head aching worse than ever.

Telephoning England was a complicated operation
.
Ruth stood for what seemed hours in the hall, waiting for her call to go through. The long delay did nothing for her courage. She quite simply couldn’t imagine what she was going to say to her father at
all, when the line burred and clicked and the familiar English double ring rang in her ear.

Her father’s voice sounded as close as if he were in the next room.

“What’s the matter?” he asked her. “Have you run out of money?”

This was a long-standing joke between them, for while Pearl never had enough money with her no matter where she went, Ruth had always budgeted with care and had never yet had to ask her father for money.

“Something like that,” Ruth said in a shaky voice.

“Look, honey, is something the matter?”

“
No
!
Dad, are you there? There’s nothing the matter, only I got married. M—Mario is going to write to you, or something, but I wanted to tell you myself.”

There was a long silence at the other end, then her father said, “Ruth, are you happy?”

“I—I think so.”

“You only
think so
?”

Ruth licked her lips nervously. “He’s a Sicilian. He’s different from anyone I’ve ever known before. He takes some getting used to,” she added on a desperate note.

To her surprise, her father laughed. “I shall be interested to meet him,” he said cheerfully. “If he can put my staid daughter into a dither, he must be something!”

“Well, he is,” Ruth answered judiciously.

Her father laughed again. “I’ll tell your mother. But for heaven’s sake write, Ruth! We shall want to hear all about him. And get that minx Pearl to come home, you’ll hardly need her on your honeymoon!”

“I will,” Ruth agreed mechanically. “I—I’ll write today.”

She said goodbye to her father with a rush of affection for him and the home he represented. It had always been a happy home. If she hadn’t had much in common with her stepmother, they had always loved one another dearly, and they had laughed a lot. For a moment, she missed them all unbearably and would have given anything to have been going straight back to England and the comfortable
ordinariness
of her life there. But then the moment passed and she heard Henry’s jeep in the drive and, a second later, he was standing at the front door with a slightly silly smile on his face. “Hullo, Henry,” she greeted him casually.

“Is Mario in?” he asked her cautiously.

Ruth shook her head. “Did you want him for anything special?” she asked.

Henry looked downright guilty. “Actually, I wanted to ask him if I could take Pearl round the vineyards,” he explained. “I’m going to take a look at them now to see how the new irrigation is working.”

“Then you can take me with you instead!” Ruth said firmly.

“I don’t think I should,” Henry said doubtfully. “I don’t want to get in wrong with Mario.”

“
You won’t!” Ruth assured him with a confidence she was far from feeling. “As a matter of fact both he and Pearl have gone in to Palermo and, as Lucia is with her husband, I’m the only person about.”

“Oh,” said Henry.

Ruth forced a laugh. “Don’t look so hangdog!” she bade him briskly. “I’ve had a splitting headache all morning and it will do me good to get out and about for a
w
hile.”

Henry muttered something about the hot sun and the lack of shade in the vineyards. “Besides,” he added, “I don’t know when we should be back, so he’s bound to know.”

“I don’t care if he does!” Ruth insisted. “Oh, come on, Henry! What possible harm can there be in two English people going round some vineyards together? Just because
they
have medieval ideas about things, we don’t have to do the same, surely?”

“No,” Henry said bleakly. “Are you sure Pearl isn’t here?” he pleaded.

“No, she’s not!” Ruth snapped, much put out. “Are you going to take me or aren’t you?”

“I suppose so,” he said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “You’d better bring a hat.”

Such was Ruth’s uncertain mood that as soon as she had persuaded him to take her she no longer wanted to go. She went reluctantly up to her room and stuck her hat on the top of her head with a marked lack of enthusiasm. When she went downstairs again Henry was already waiting for her in the jeep, looking just about as miserable as she felt.

“Do you know anything about vines?” she asked him.

“Not much.” He sounded so woeful that she felt sorry for him and tried to pull herself together. As she had forced him to take her, the least she could do was to be a pleasant companion, she thought.

“I suppose they need a lot of water,” she said brightly. “Was it Sicilian wine we had last night?”

“I should think it was a mixture of everything!” Henry grunted.

“Well, I thought it was very nice!” Ruth retorted.

Henry cheered up a trifle. “So did I! The Verdecchios mean a lot to the local people, don’t they? I suppose they’ve had the same kind of do every time one of them has married for centuries past.”

“
Oh, do you think so?” Ruth asked, impressed.

“Setting the seal of ownership on their women,” Henry added nastily.

Ruth tried to smile and failed. “I don’t think that was kind, Henry,” she reproached him.

“
Well, I wish you hadn’t made me take you with me! I have a horrid feeling that you’re using me!”

“
You’re afraid of Mario!” Ruth taunted him.

“What if I am?” he demanded crossly. “Aren’t you?”

“Certainly not!”

Ruth sat in a dignified silence while Henry drove rather fast down the drive and along the road to the village. The ground swept past far too quickly for her comfort and she grabbed at the windscreen for support in case they should swerve round a corner and she was thrown out.

They were already picking some of the grapes at the first vineyard they went to. The women did most of the actual picking, while the men gathered the bunches of grapes into baskets and transferred them to the carts that were drawn by patient horses.

“They look quite green
!
”
Ruth exclaimed.

“They are green,” Henry answered. “That’s the main trouble with the wines from most of southern Italy. The grapes are picked far too early because they’re always in a fright that they’ll lose the crop to thieves, storm, or plague of some sort. They’re often right too!”

“But
here
—?”

“Mario protects them, more or less,” Henry granted magnanimously. “But the habit has taken root by now.”

He stopped the jeep on the edge of the field and strode off down the Ines of vines, pausing every now and again to examine the crop. Ruth followed him more slowly. The leaves of the vines smelt sweet and the grapes lay heavy, bowing down the more tender branches almost to the ground. There was no doubt that the irrigation scheme had been a success, for one could follow the path of the new water with one’s eye, wherever the leaves were more verdant and the grapes bigger and juicier.

Some of the women stopped work and came across the fields towards her, excited by her unexpected visit. Their dark eyes watched her every movement, though they shied away whenever she returned their glances.

“We were there last night,” one of them, braver than the rest, told her suddenly.

Ruth responded with a wide smile. “I want to thank you all for making it so beautiful for me,” she said.

The women smiled. “Does the Signor know you are here?” they asked.

Ruth felt abashed. “Yes,” she said uneasily.

Their smiles grew. “How pleased we are to see you!” they reiterated. “Are you hungry yet? Perhaps you would honour one of us by eating in the house?”

Ruth began to feel that she would. Mario could hardly object to her visiting other women, she thought. He might even be pleased that they appeared to like her and had asked her into their houses.

“But won’t you be losing money if you stop work now?” she asked them.

They shrugged their shoulders. “The work will be here when we come back,” they said philosophically.

With piercing tones, they informed the men where they were going, calling back and forth in sing-song voices as to which house they were going to and when they would be back.

They went to the house of a middle-aged woman which was quite near the vineyard. Her family, she told Ruth, had lived on Verdecchio land for generations past, and she herself wanted no other life.

“We have no difficulties here,” she said darkly.

Everybody crowded into the small living room, in which the family cooked, ate, and some of them slept. A wooden chair was placed by the table for Ruth and the others sat where they could, the younger women standing in the doorway, pushing at one another, the better to see what was going on.

Ruth looked round the room expecting to see some signs of poverty she had been told she would find in Sicily, but there were none. The kitchen had an old
-
fashioned range of charcoal grates, in which fires were lit if there was any cooking to be done, with the aid of a fan, the
ciuscialoru
.
Most of the utensils were o
ld
too and had probably been passed down from mother to daughter for generations. There were large copper cauldrons for boiling clothes, copper saucepans for boiling macaroni, a number of copper coffee pots of a Moorish design, and several other implements, all burnished and beautifully designed.

As well as the copper, there were the famous Sicilian water-jars, the
quartare
, which are made on the island of earthenware and are indispensable to most Sicilian households where the only water supply may be the fountain in the nearby square. These jars have the added advantage of cooling the water as well as storing it, for the water slowly permeates the coarse earthenware and the constant evaporation that results makes the water cool inside. In this kitchen there were two of these jars, as well as a number of other earthenware platters and dishes of various shapes and designs.

The woman of the house put wine and some local bread on the table.

“You will like our bread better than the bread from th
e
continent,” she told Ruth positively. “Sicilian bread is heavier and more salty!” She considered her guest for a moment. “Have you eaten our
pasta colie sarde
yet?” Ruth was mystified, never having heard of such a dish.

“It is a treat!” all the women assured her. “Sophia
w
ill cook it for you! It is a dish to tell your grandchildren about!”

It was every bit as good as they said it was, Ruth decided, as Sophia heaped the mixture of macaroni, chopped sardines, pine nuts, fennel and raisins. She was a little afraid that she shouldn’t accept so much from them, for only she was invited to partake of the dish, the rest of the women made do with large chunks of bread washed down with wine. But nor could she refuse. The best thing to do, she thought, was to enjoy every succulent mouthful of it, and then ask Mario afterwards how she could repay their hospitality.

The macaroni dish was followed by a
cassata siciliana
,
a cake of magnificent proportions. It was round in shape, heavily iced and decorated with marzipan and sugared pieces. Inside it was flavoured with pistachio, cinnamon, chocolate, and probably a good many other things besides. Ruth found it delicious, even while she trembled at the number of calories each mouthful must have contained.

The women joined her in eating the cake. Sophia brewed some strong coffee and they sat on, sipping the hot beverage and gossiping until half the afternoon had gone by.

“Is the English Sig
n
or taking you home?” Sophia asked Ruth.

Ruth jumped guiltily. "I suppose so,” she said.

“Then we had better take you back to him. He will be wanting to go on and you will be wanting to get home. Are you sure you have had enough coffee?”

“I’ve had heaps of everything!” Ruth confessed happily. “You are all very kind to me!”

“It is a pleasure to receive a visit from a Verdecchio,” the women chorused dutifully.

They escorted her back along the road and across the vineyard to where Henry was waiting for her. He was
cross and sticky from the hot sun and impatient to be gone as quickly as possible.

“With any luck Mario won’t be back yet,” he said sourly as she Climbed into the jeep.
“Though he’s bound to hear about it from someone!”

“I don’t see why he should mind,” Ruth said stoutly.

“You don’t want to see!” he told her flatly.

His nervousness was contagious. Ruth didn’t enjoy the drive back to the house one bit. She went over all that she had said and done again and again, and, for the life her, she couldn
’
t see that she had done anything that Mario would not like—except to go with Henry in the first place!

“
He took Pearl to Palermo,” she said suddenly.

“What does that prove?” Henry retorted. “I wish I hadn’t—” He broke off, his face aghast. “Oh no!” he gasped.

Ruth’s eyes followed his to where Mario was standing, leaning negligently against one of the gate posts. He didn
’
t even look up as the jeep approached, she noticed. He looked calm and confident, even placid, as he waited.

Henry slowed to a stop as they came level to the gates. He looked so guilty and nervous that Ruth was annoyed. She gave Mario a brilliant smile to show that she at least was not in the least afraid of
him.

“Get out!” he said briefly.

Ruth stared at him. “Why should I?”

“Do you mean to say you don’t know?” he mocked her. “Ask Henry!”

She clenched her fists angrily. “He didn’t want to take me. I made him—” she began.

“That I can believe!” he answered sharply.

He reached into the jeep, hooked an arm under her, and deposited her none too gently on her feet beside him.

Henry looked more anxious than ever. “She spent her time with the women,” he told Mario hastily.

“Then you needn’t be further concerned,” Mario answered with contempt. “If you go up to the house, Pearl is waiting for you.”

Henry’s face cleared as if by magic. “I’ll do that!” he said eagerly. He put his foot down hard on the accelerator and the jeep sped away from them up the drive to
the house.

“D-did Pearl like Palermo?” Ruth asked, taking the
war firmly into the enemy’s camp.

“I didn’t ask her,” Mario answered slowly. “Did Henry tell you that I told him not to take you gadding round with him in that jeep of his?” he added, almost
casually.

She glanced up at him and away again. “Yes. But I
couldn’t see why—”

“No?” he cut her off. He looked very dangerous, she thought, and she despaired of ever explaining just why
she had gone with Henry.

“You may have married me,” she began grandly, “but that doesn’t make me a Sicilian wife with nothing better to do than to seek the approval of her husband! I
enjoyed
—”

“Then I’ll explain it to you,” he said slowly. “You are married to me. You are a Sicilian wife, for I am a Sicilian, and so you’ll live according to our ideas of what is permissible and what is not. And you have nothing better to do than to please me, and this is why!” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her so hard that she had no breath left with which to defy him. She made a little sound of protest, but then she could do nothing at all. For a moment, she stood stock still, shaken and more than a little frightened.
She would not kiss him back
! But she was a traitor to her own cause and with a little sob, she strained towards him, eager in her submission to
the warmth of his lips and the unyielding strength of his arms.

When he let her go, her cheeks were scarlet and the tears started into her eyes. “I hate you!
I hate you
!”
she stormed at him, stamping her foot.

He laughed, and pulled her back into his arms.

“So I see!” he said.