Lucy Gordon - The Italian’s Baby

Again she didn’t invite him into her suite, which he found annoying. He would have found it convenient to discuss the forthcoming dinner party. Instead Rebecca bid him an implacable goodnight and shut her door.

When he was out of sight she closed her eyes in relief, then stripped off hurriedly and got under the shower, wanting to wash the evening away. She was on edge tonight, just as she had been the night before. The mention of Tuscany had unsettled her, and the ghost had walked again.

A S SOONas Becky was certain, she hurried to tell Luca the news. He was thrilled.

‘A baby? Our own little bambino ! Half you, half me.’

‘Your very own son and heir,’ she said, snuggling blissfully in his arms.

How he laughed.

‘I’m just a common labourer. Labourers don’t have heirs. Besides, I want a girl-just like you. I want another Becky.’

Her pregnancy brought out the best in him, and she discovered again that he was a marvellous man, loving, tender, considerate as few men knew how to be. Later, when joy was replaced by anguish, it was his tenderness that Rebecca remembered most wistfully. How gently he took care of her, how worried he always was about her health. Nothing was ever too much trouble for him to do for her.

Her father was away a lot that summer, visiting his various interests, and there was little chance to tell him. When he did return it was only for a few days, filled with phone calls. Becky didn’t want to break the news until she was sure of having all his attention, so she waited until she knew he would be home for at least two weeks. By that time she was three months gone.

‘And you will tell him this time?’ Luca asked.

‘Of course. I only want everything to be right when I do.’

‘I want to be with you. I won’t have you face his anger alone.’

‘What anger? Dad will be thrilled,’ she predicted blithely. ‘He loves babies.’

It was true. Like many bullies Frank Solway had a streak of sentimentality. He cooed over babies and the world said what a delightful man he was.

‘Honestly, darling,’ Becky said, ‘this will make everything all right.’

How stupid could you be?

Her father was almost out of his mind with rage.

‘You got yourself knocked up by that…?’ He finished on a stream of profanity.

‘Dad, I didn’t get “knocked up”. I got pregnant by a man I love. Please don’t try to make it sound like something dirty.’

‘It is dirty. How dare he lay a finger on you?’

‘Because I wanted him to. To put it plainly, I dragged him into bed, not the other way around.’

‘Don’t ever let me hear you say that again,’ he shouted.

‘It’s true! I love Luca and I’m going to marry him.’

‘You think I’m going to allow that? You think my daughter is going to marry that low-life? The sooner this is fixed the better.’

‘I’m going to have my baby.’

‘The hell you are!’

She ran away that night. Frank followed her to Luca’s house and tried to buy her back. But the mention of money only made Luca roar with laughter. Later Becky was to realise what her father heard in that laughter. It was the roar of the young lion telling the old lion that he no longer ruled. Perhaps her father’s real hatred dated from that moment.

He tried to enlist the help of the locals, but he was thwarted. Frank Solway was powerful but Luca was one of them, and nobody was ready to raise their hand against him.

But Becky knew he wouldn’t give up, and in the end it was she who suggested they leave.

‘Just for a while, darling. Dad’ll feel better about it when he’s a grandfather.’

He sighed. ‘I hate running away, but all this quarrelling is bad for you and the baby. We’ll go for the sake of some peace.’

They fled south to stay with his friends in Naples. After two weeks he bought an old car, repaired it himself, and they set off again, heading south to Calabria. Two weeks there, then north again.

They talked about marriage but never stayed anywhere long enough to complete the formalities, just in case Frank’s tentacles reached them. Wherever they went his skilled hands found him work. It was a good life.

Becky had not known that such happiness was possible. She was over the first sickness of pregnancy, feeling well and strong, spending her life with the man she adored. Their love was the unquestioning, uncomplicated kind that inspired songs and stories, with a happy-ever-after always promised at the end. She loved him, he loved her, and their baby would arrive soon. What more was there?

The thought of Frank was always there in the background, but as week followed week with no sign of him he faded and became unreal, a ‘maybe’ rather than a genuine threat.

She began to understand Luca better, and herself. It was Luca who revealed her body to her, its fierce responses, its eagerness for physical love. But it was also through him, and the life they lived, that she was able to stand outside herself, and look with critical eyes. What she saw did not please her.

‘I was horrid,’ she said to him once. ‘A real spoilt brat, taking everything for granted, letting Dad indulge me and never wondering where the money came from. But it actually came from men like the ones who stopped me that day. He practically stole from them. You can’t really blame them, can you?’

‘You can’t blame yourself, either,’ he insisted. ‘You were so young, how could it occur to you to ask questions about your father’s methods? But when your eyes were opened you didn’t try to look away. My Becky is too brave for that.’

There was always a special note in his voice when he said ‘my Becky’, as though all the best in her was a personal gift to himself, to be treasured. It made her feel like the most important person in the world. And in the world they made together, that was true.

She gradually came to understand that Luca was one person to her, and a different man to everyone else. The attackers who had fled him, filled with fear, had seen the side of him that others saw.

He was a potentially frightening man who carried with him an aura of being always on the edge of ruthlessness, even violence. It took time for Becky to understand this, because he never showed that side of himself to her.

They had their arguments, even outright rows, but he fought fair, never turning his ferocity on her, and always bringing the spat to a speedy end, often by simply giving in. It hurt him to be at odds with her.

In their daily life he was tender, loving and gentle, setting her on a pedestal and asserting, by his actions, that she was different from all other human beings on earth.

His love for her carried a hint of worship that awed and delighted her, even while it sometimes made him over-protective to the point of being dictatorial. It was he who decided, in her sixth month, that their lovemaking must cease until after the baby was born, and she had fully recovered.

Torn by desire, she wept and pleaded. ‘It’s too soon. The doctor says we’ve time yet.’

‘The doctor is not the father of your baby. I am , and I have decided that it is time to stop,’ he declared in the most arrogant statement she had yet heard from him.

‘But what will you do? It’s months and months, and you’ll-well, you know.’

‘What are you saying? That you don’t trust me to be faithful to you?’

‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ she cried.

There was a flash of temper on his face, for he had never given her a moment’s cause for anxiety. But anger was gone in a instant, dissolved in laughter.

‘Oh, stop that,’ she said, thumping him in frustration.