Lucy Gordon - The Italian’s Baby

‘When we met in London…’ He stopped as though his courage had failed him.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘I never asked you about the birth. I kept meaning to, but-’

‘The time was never right.’

‘No, it wasn’t. But I’d like to know, if you can bear to speak of it. Was it very hard?’

‘It was over fairly quickly. She was small, being premature. It was what came after that was hard. I longed for you so much. I didn’t know that you were being kept from me by the police.’

‘Your father must have called them while I was calling the ambulance. They arrived fast and arrested me, on his say-so, for “violent behaviour”. I pleaded to be allowed to go with you, but they wouldn’t let me. I remember the ambulance doors shutting, and it driving away with you inside, while I was being pulled in the other direction by the police.

‘I went mad, and then I did become violent. It took four of them to haul me away, and I know I gave one of them a bloody nose, so then they had something to charge me with.

‘I was in the cells for days, unable to get any news of you. Then your father came to see me. He said the baby had been born dead, so I could “forget any ideas I had”.’

‘He said what?’ She was staring at him.

‘He said our child was born dead. Becky, what is it?’ She was staring at him with a livid look that alarmed him.

‘She wasn’t born dead,’ she whispered. ‘She lived just a few hours in an incubator. I saw her. She was so tiny, and attached to machines in all directions. It looked terrible, but I knew the doctors and nurses were fighting for her. They tried so hard, but it was no use. She just slipped away.’

‘But she was alive?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘She actually lived, even if just for a little while?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you able to hold her?’

‘Not while she was alive. She needed to be in the incubator. It was her only chance. But when she’d died they wrapped her in a shawl and put her in my arms. I kissed her, and told her that her mother and father loved her. And then I said goodbye.’

‘You can remember that?’

‘Yes, at that stage I was still functioning. The depression didn’t hit me until a few hours later.’

‘Didn’t you wonder where I was?’

‘Yes, I kept asking Dad, and he said, “They’re still trying to find him.”’

‘He said that , knowing I was trapped in a cell, where he’d put me?’ Luca asked with quiet rage.

‘He kept saying you’d gone. And then she was dead, and after that-’ she faltered ‘-after that things became dark. A black cloud enveloped me without warning. I felt crushed, suffocated, and absolutely terrified. The whole world seemed to be full of horror, and it went on and on without hope.’

She passed a hand over her eyes. ‘Maybe it would have happened anyway, with losing the baby. But maybe if we could have been together it wouldn’t have happened. Or I might have got over it sooner. I’ll never know.’

‘There was nothing your father wouldn’t do to separate us,’ Luca said. ‘No matter how wicked or deceitful, it didn’t matter as long as he got his own way.’

She nodded. ‘I think he believed it would be easy at the start. Only then things spiralled out of control, and he had to do worse and worse things so as not to have to admit he’d been wrong. He kept trying to rewrite the facts to prove he’d been right, and of course he couldn’t do it.’

He looked at her quickly. ‘You defend him?’

‘No, but I don’t think he started out as a bad man. He became one because he didn’t know how to say sorry. He destroyed us but he also destroyed himself. He knew what he’d done. He couldn’t admit it but he knew, and he couldn’t face it.’

‘Did you ever confront him with what he’d done?’

‘Yes, just once. We had a terrible fight and I told him that he’d killed my baby.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing. Just stared at me and turned white. Then he walked away. Later I found him staring into space. About a year after that he had a massive heart attack. He was only fifty-four, but he died almost instantly.’

‘I am not sorry for him,’ Luca said with bitter emphasis. ‘I do not forgive him, and I will not pretend that I do.’

‘I know. I can pity him a little because I saw what he’d done to himself as well as to us. But forgiveness is more than I can manage too. Besides…’

She was silent for a long moment, getting up and pacing the room as though tormented by indecision.

‘What is it?’ he asked, looking up at her quickly. ‘Is there more?’

‘Yes, there’s something I’ve been waiting to tell you, but it had to be when the moment was right. Now, I think…’

She stopped, torn by indecision, even though she knew there was no turning back. Luca took her hands between his.

‘Tell me, Becky,’ he said. ‘Whatever it is, it’s time I knew.’

‘Y ES ,’she said. ‘You ought to know. Luca, have you ever been back to Carenna?’

‘No,’ he said after a moment.

‘Me neither, until recently. I went a few weeks ago, and I found out something else my father lied about.’

She stopped again. Suddenly the next part seemed momentous, and she wondered if she had been wise to start.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I’d always thought she died without being baptised, without a name. Dad never told me otherwise.’

‘You mean-?’

‘She’s there, in the churchyard. She was baptised by the hospital chaplain.’

‘But how could you not have known?’

‘They took her away to the incubator as soon as she was born, while I stayed behind for the nurses to finish tending to me. The chaplain was already in the baby unit, seeing another child. They thought our little girl might only have a few minutes, so he baptised her there and then, in case he wasn’t in time.’

‘And they never told anybody?’

‘Yes, they told Dad. I suppose they assumed he’d tell me, but he never did. But she was buried in consecrated ground.

‘The priest died last year, but I spoke to the new one, and it’s all there in the records. Apparently the priest held a little funeral, and told Dad when it was going to be. He couldn’t tell me, because my father kept him away, and he didn’t know where you were. So when our daughter was buried-’ a tremor shook her ‘-none of her family were there.’

‘Not even your father?’

‘He wanted to pretend that she never existed, and he wanted me to forget about her. So he tried to blot her out, and blot you out. He even told the priest her name was Solway.’

‘You mean-?’

‘That’s the name on her grave,’ she said with rising anger. ‘Rebecca Solway. But she’s there, Luca. She didn’t vanish into the void. He didn’t manage to obliterate her, not completely.’

Luca rose violently and paced the room as though sitting still was suddenly intolerable. He began to shake his head like a beast in pain, and she thought she had never seen a man’s face look so ravaged.

At last he came to a halt, and without warning swung his fist into the wall. It landed with a thunderous shock, and immediately he did it again, and then again. It was as well that the old cottage was made of solid stone or it could never have withstood the impact of his rage and agony.

‘Oh, God!’ he kept saying. ‘Dear God! Dear God!’

Torn with pity for him, she put her arms around his body. He didn’t stop thumping the wall, but his free hand grasped her so tightly that he almost crushed her.

‘Luca-Luca, please…’

She wasn’t sure that he heard her. He seemed lost in a haze of misery, where only the rhythmic thumping made sense.