Rafaello's Mistress

Glory had no time for mysteries and she had not forgotten Maud’s cryptic remarks that night at Montague Park three months earlier. Was the older woman one of those personalities who revelled in making mountains out of molehills and who enjoyed uttering dire hints and warnings? Embarrassed by that suspicion, Glory hurried into her father’s room before her future stepmother could say anything more.

Archie Little looked so much better with a little colour in his cheeks. Settling down into the seat by the bed, she smiled at him. ‘You’re looking good, Dad.’

‘I had to see you and get this over with.’ Her father released a troubled sigh. ‘But I know that what I have to tell you is going to upset you—’

Get what over with? Glory wanted to question, but instead she cradled his hand where it lay on the bedspread between both of hers and tried to soothe him. ‘I’m not that easily upset.’

‘It’s about Sam. Sam…well, Sam’s not mine,’ her father said haltingly.

Glory kept her widened gaze focused on his anxious expression, convinced she must have misheard him, and then she said uncertainly, ‘You mean…Sam’s adopted?’

‘No. Your mother…’ The older man grimaced. ‘She got mixed up with another man—’

‘You’re pulling my leg,’ Glory told him in a teasing tone of disbelief. ‘Mum…with another man?’

‘You were only a kid of seven when Sam was born,’ Archie reminded his daughter heavily. ‘For a long time after that your mum and I lived like strangers.’

Even as he said that, Glory’s memory was stirred. Only at that prompting did she recall that her mother had shared her bedroom for a while when she was around that age. Her parents had been sleeping apart, she realised in dismay, shaken that until that moment it had never occurred to her to put that knowledge into its adult context and question what that separation had meant. Her tummy muscles clenched. ‘But you and Mum were happy,’ she heard herself say as if she was still that young child and begging for reassurance. ‘I remember you being happy—’

‘Later we were again. But Sam is Benito Grazzini’s kid and Rafaello’s half-brother,’ her father framed, tiredness and stress visible now in his lined features. ‘I never would have told you, Glory. I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to hurt you or spoil your memories of Talitha.’

‘It’s all right…’ Glory managed to say but she had to release his fingers because her own hands were trembling.

No, it could not be true. How could her mother, who had preached purity to her own daughter for so many years, have engaged in an adulterous affair? Worse still, given birth to her lover’s child? Her mother and Benito Grazzini? Sheer madness! Where had her poor father picked up this crazy story? Was it in his own head? Something to do with the surgery? Was he getting all confused about people and mixed up about the past?

‘I forgave her but she never got over the guilt or the fear of you or Sam finding out,’ the older man muttered heavily. ‘It was one of those things that nobody could’ve stopped. I was there the first time Benito Grazzini saw her at an estate party. He and your mum…they couldn’t take their eyes off each other and that was the start. It went on all that winter.’

Glory was now straining to catch every word and her refusal to credit what she was being told was being challenged. What was it Maud had said to her that night at Montague Park on the subject of how Archie Little would feel about his daughter being involved with Rafaello? ‘You’re getting into a situation you don’t really understand.’ She shivered, chilled inside and out. If Benito Grazzini had fathered Sam it meant that her brother was Rafaello’s brother too. Was it possible? She did not want it to be possible.

‘I’m sorry, Glory. I’ve not been fair to you either.’

‘How?’

‘When Benito Grazzini made you give up Rafaello when you were eighteen I was pleased because I didn’t want the two of you getting together either.’

There was a horrible ring of truth to her father’s discomfited admission.

‘But how

could you bear to keep on working for Benito Grazzini?’ Glory asked, struggling to keep her mounting incredulity out of her voice.

‘Because I won. I kept your mother,’ Archie Little muttered with a rich satisfaction that seemed undimmed by the passage of years. ‘He did everything he could to take her away from me but he lost!’

Glory blinked at that most unexpected conclusion. She was in so much shock at what she had learned that she simply sat there, staring into space. When she finally parted her lips to speak again she discovered that she had waited too long to do so, for her father had fallen asleep. As it was unthinkable to wake him up and bother him with further questions on such an issue, she lurched out of his room on legs that were wobbling. Maud was waiting outside.

‘Dad’s asleep…quite happy,’ Glory told her stiltedly. ‘You knew, you knew all along, didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t know for sure about Sam until your father told me this year. But yes, I knew about the rest,’ the older woman confirmed wryly, guiding Glory into the greater privacy of the waiting room. ‘I’ve worked at the Park for the best part of thirty years and I’ve not missed much of what went on there.’

Glory was still in a shattered state of nerves. ‘How could Mum do that to Dad?’

‘I don’t think she meant to hurt anybody—’

‘He was a married man,’ Glory muttered in a shaking undertone. ‘And she was married to Dad…’

‘I reckon they both paid a steep price for what they did,’ Maud sighed. ‘Anyway, your mother came to her senses when she fell pregnant. She told Mr Benito to get lost and that was that.’

‘Was it? Dad had to bring up another man’s child.’ Try as Glory could, she could not square the memories of the mother she had loved with the woman who had irresponsibly indulged in an affair that had damaged her marriage, her husband and the whole future of the son she had brought into the world.