A Tainted Beauty

Lily’s heart began to pound as she wondered if Leonora was going to talk about Ciro—because would she be able to sustain the lie of their marriage to a woman who knew him better than anyone? ‘Really?’ she said, because she couldn’t think what else to say.

‘I am pleased that Ciro has decided to settle down at last. It has certainly been a long time coming. Sometimes I wonder why that should have been, but there again…’ There was a pause as Leonora’s voice tailed off and she narrowed her fading dark eyes. ‘Does he talk much about his childhood?’

Lily shook her head. ‘Not really.’

‘He hasn’t told you that he was unhappy?’

At this, Lily felt a little helpless. It wasn’t really her place to disclose things he’d said to her in confidence. Disclosures which could be potentially very hurtful to his mother. The things Ciro had said were half-admissions which didn’t make up a complete picture—like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle with the edges missing. She’d managed to discover that he was often left to fend for himself—and that, despite the army of servants, he’d been a lonely little boy. And how could she possibly turn around to Leonora D’Angelo and tell her that he had also hinted about his mother’s love-life and that he heartily disapproved of it?

‘Ciro is a very private man,’ Lily said, hoping that would be an end to it, but it seemed that was not to be the case because Signora D’Angelo put her untouched coffee down on a highly polished table.

‘I was very depressed after I gave birth to him, you know.’ Leonora’s cultured voice gave an unexpected crack.

‘No,’ said Lily quietly. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘There was no understanding of the condition back then, of course—and people certainly never spoke of it, because depression has always carried its own kind of stigma. It was expected that a woman should just carry on and it would all work out. And I tried to make that happen, I really did—but my mood was too dark to be lifted.’ There was a pause. ‘Did you know that his father left me?’

Uncomfortably, Lily nodded. ‘He did mention that.’

Leonora shrugged as if it didn’t matter and Lily thought that she almost carried it off—but not quite. And suddenly she got a frightening image of herself in some lonely future, shrugging her shoulders and explaining that her Neapolitan marriage hadn’t worked out, with a voice like Leonora’s—which wasn’t quite steady.

‘The marriage was not what he thought it would be. He had married a vivacious socialite,’ said Leonora. ‘Not a woman who could hardly be bothered to get out of bed in the morning. It was highly unusual for a man to leave his wife and child in those days and after he’d gone, I was… afraid. Yes, afraid. Frightened of being on my own. Of having sole charge of a boy as strong and as wilful as Ciro with no father figure to look up to. And ashamed of having been rejected. I wanted a man for my son—and, yes, I admit, I wanted a man for me.’

‘Signora D’Angelo,’ interrupted Lily quickly. ‘You don’t have to tell me all this.’

‘Oh, but I do,’ said the older woman, her voice a little bitter now. ‘Because maybe you might be able to explain to Ciro why I did what I did. To make him listen in a way that he refuses to do with me.’

Lily bit her lip. If she told the truth—that Ciro wouldn’t dream of listening to a word she said—then wouldn’t that just worry her mother-in-law even more? She gave a weak smile. ‘I can try.’

Leonora clasped her fingers together in her lap and her diamonds glittered. ‘Things were different for women then—especially here. Naples has always been one of the most traditional and male-centred of cities. It was frowned on to be a deserted wife—especially as everyone else I knew had a husband at home. Maybe I was desperate and don’t they always say that desperation shows?’ She gave a wry kind of laugh. ‘Maybe that was why I never married again, although I used to date men, of course. I used to bring them back here—’

‘Signora D’Angelo—’

‘Sometimes just for drinks, or for coffee. Sometimes—not always—just to talk. I was lonely, Lily. Very lonely.’

/> Lily nodded as she saw the stark pain in Leonora’s eyes. ‘Yes, I can imagine,’ she said quietly.

‘But Ciro was fierce, even then. He hated it. He hated the men. He wanted his mamma to live like a nun and I wanted to live like… well, like a woman.’ Leonora swallowed. ‘It made us grow apart. It drove a wedge between us and that is something I bitterly regret. And nothing I have said or done since has softened his stance towards me because he has refused ever to discuss it.’

Lily felt a terrible sadness overwhelm her because she could see the problem from Leonora’s point of view, as well as from Ciro’s. She could imagine the little boy wanting to protect his mother from the men he resented—too young to realise that she needed something other than the love of her child to sustain her. Leonora had wanted to find a man whom Ciro could look up to but had never managed it—and it must have seemed to him like a constant stream of strangers entering his home. Barriers had sprung up between mother and son and time had only made them more impenetrable.

Suddenly, it made it more understandable why Ciro had reacted so badly to the discovery that she wasn’t a virgin. Had emotion overcome reason, to make him believe that his supposedly innocent wife would one day take up with other men, as his own mother had done? Or had he simply decided that her lack of innocence equalled a predatory nature? He was a man who saw things in black or white—even women. Especially women. Madonna or Whore. Lots of men thought that way, didn’t they? And it wasn’t difficult to see which category he had placed her in.

‘Won’t you talk to him, Lily?’ said Leonora suddenly. ‘Won’t you try to explain to him what it was like for me?’

Lily heard the faint tremor in her mother-in-law’s voice and saw what lay beneath the sophisticated veneer: a frightened woman who was afraid of growing old and dying without the forgiveness of her only child.

‘I can try,’ she said, knowing that she would give it her very best shot. Because what did she have to lose? Even if Ciro was angry with her for interfering, it wasn’t going to change anything between them, was it? She was leaving him—and Naples—that had already been decided. Yet if she could leave knowing that she had helped reconcile mother and son—then wouldn’t something good have come out of all this mess?

Leonora’s disclosure had the effect of making Lily feel as if she’d woken up from an anaesthetic. Of making her want to rediscover something of herself. She realised she had stopped being the Lily who loved to create a cosy nest around her. She’d been so busy trying to survive in this hostile atmosphere that she’d completely forgotten who she really was. Yet hadn’t Ciro fallen for the woman who had baked cakes and tried to create a warm home? Even if he was still angry about her lack of innocence, surely she could remind him of the woman she had once been and all that she had represented to him.

Suddenly, she could understand his refusal to look beyond the boundaries he had created for himself. She suspected that it was a defence mechanism—to stop himself from being hurt again, the way he’d been hurt as a child. He was a strong man who hated showing vulnerability, but couldn’t she convince him that she would never willingly hurt him—not ever again? That if he could forgive her past mistake, then she would gladly open up her heart and love him with every fibre of her being? That she would be loyal and true to him in every way she could.

Filled with sudden hope, Lily found the nearest shop to their apartment. It was a small, dark place with an ancient fan which cut inefficiently through the warm, heavy air. Outside were boxes of oranges and tomatoes and inside were bottles of wine and rows of sweet biscuits. It took her a while to find what she was looking for, but eventually Lily managed to cobble together the ingredients for a cake, much to the surprise of the old woman who served her. Maybe she found it strange that the fair foreigner who spoke such faltering Italian should be baking a cake.

Back at the apartment, she set to work, finding a roasting tray which would serve as a cake tin while seriously wondering whether Ciro’s state-of-the-art cooker had ever been used before now. But it felt good to lose herself in the familiar rhythms of baking. To hear the slop of the eggs as they fell onto the flour with a little puff, like smoke. She listened to the beating of the wooden spoon, which her cookery teacher had always said sounded like horses clip-clopping over cobblestones. She grated zest from the juiciest lemons she had ever used and soon the incomparable smell of fresh cake was filling Ciro’s very masculine apartment.

She heard the front door slam soon after six. Heard him dropping his suitcase onto the floor and the momentary silence before his footsteps headed towards the kitchen. His face registered very little when he saw her, save for a barely perceptible narrowing of his eyes. Perhaps he was noticing the inevitable smears of cake-mix on her cotton dress since, naturally, she had no apron here.