Seasons of Love (12 page)

He began to cough, a racking cough that went on for a long time. ‘Must have caught another damned cold,’ he muttered when it subsided.

Silently she handed him a drink of cold water and he raised it in a mock toast to her. She watched him sip it. ‘You need to rest, Robert. Can we not postpone our departure?’

‘I'll rest when we get there. We're better off away from Nice at the moment. I don’t know why the French want to get it back from Savoy. It’s a very over-rated place, if you ask me.’

What had he done now? Why must they leave in such a hurry? Feeling sick with worry, she set about packing.

They had to get off the stagecoach before they got to Milan, however. Robert's cold settled on his chest, the cough worsened and the other passengers complained. At the next stop, a small town about fifty miles from their destination, the coachman threw their luggage off and them with it. Feeling sorry for the tired-looking woman with a child so young and a husband so sick, he gave them back the balance of their fare. It was obvious this man would not make old bones, then the poor woman would have to shift for herself.

One of the passengers, who spoke a little French, told her there was a convent in the town, a nursing order. They should go to the good sisters for help.

The innkeeper took one look at Robert and refused to take him in, but he did make signs that he would let Robert wait with the luggage in a corner of the stables. Robert, dizzy with exhaustion and fever, sat slumped on his trunk.

‘
Suore
,’ repeated the innkeeper several times.
‘Il convento è là.’
He shook Helen’s arm and pointed. Then he pointed to Robert.
‘Ospedale!’
He shook his head.
‘Molto malato.’

If she followed correctly what he was saying - and it did resemble French - the nuns and the convent were in that direction, and there was a hospital. She took Harry's hand.
‘Grazie, signor!’
She had already picked up a word or two, of necessity. ‘Come along, Harry. Let's find somewhere to stay.’

‘He’s a bad man!’ Harry scowled at the hunched figure of his father.

‘Shh!’

The convent was bare and immaculately clean. Its quiet and sense of peace made Helen long to sink into a chair and sleep for a week. Instead, she had to try to explain what was wrong to an elderly nun, who kept pinching Harry's cheek in a way he obviously disliked.

‘Doesn't anyone speak English?’ she asked after a while, when she didn't seem to be making any headway.
‘Inglese.’

‘Ah!’ The nun clasped her hands together.
‘Un momento.’
She vanished.

Helen sat there and the minutes ticked away. She began to worry. Surely the sister wouldn’t just have left them here? Then, another nun appeared, a rosy dumpling of a woman. ‘Sure, they said there was an English woman here,’ she teased, by way of a greeting. ‘And that’s nearly as good as being Irish.’

At the sound of her native tongue, Helen burst into tears and Harry immediately followed suit.

To the kindly nun, Helen at last managed to explain what the problem was. She wept harder in sheer relief, when the sister agreed to help her fetch Robert to the hospital. ‘You poor thing. You're exhausted! Come on, my dear, leave your husband to Sister Clara. I've told her what's wrong. Let me find you and the boy a place to rest.’

Oh, the relief of being put to bed and cosseted, of having the burdens lifted from her shoulders, even if only for an evening! Helen was installed in a small, very simply furnished bedroom, with a truckle bed set up beside her for Harry. She was fed hot soup, then a plate of something called pasta, covered in a delicious sauce.

Later, Harry was bathed in a large bowl in front of the fire by the same plump nun, whose name was Sister Concepta. No sooner had she seen him fall asleep, toy dog clutched to him, than Helen relaxed into a deep sleep herself.

She didn’t awaken until late the following afternoon. There was no sign of Harry, no noise and bustle, no sewing to be done, no jolting coach and best of all, no demanding husband. She sighed and lay there drowsily, reluctant to get up and break the spell.

Sister Concepta tiptoed in a little later. ‘Ah, you're awake now, are you? Good! I'll fetch you something to eat.’

‘Harry?’

‘Eating a piece of bread in the kitchen and playing with the kittens. That's a fine child you have there, my dear.’

‘And - my husband?’ She wished she didn't have to ask this, wished she need never see or think of Robert again.

‘He's in our hospital. We're doing all we can for him. Do you - er - know how ill he is?’

‘Yes.’

The sister patted her hand. ‘It must be hard for you, to see your husband gradually getting worse .

. . ’

‘The hardest thing,’ said Helen bluntly, ‘is that he
is
my husband! He is not a - a kind, or even an honest man. And he's a gambler.’

‘Ah. Like that, is it?’ The sister squeezed her hand. ‘Well - the Lord's will be done.’

‘Yes. The Lord's will. I've kept my marriage vows, at least, but it can be very hard.’

‘It will be for the best in the end. You'll see. The Lord will provide.’

Helen could not imagine how anything that had happened could possibly be for the best, but later, as she sat thinking, she realised that only Robert could have given her Harry, and Harry was worth everything she had suffered. Everything. So perhaps that was what Sister Concepta had meant.

The next day Helen was summoned to see the Mother Superior, an austere-looking woman, who questioned her curtly about her circumstances, with the help of Sister Concepta. They agreed not only to let Robert stay in the hospital, but also to give Helen and her son the use of a room, in return for Helen's help with whatever tasks there were.

‘Some of them will be dirty,’ warned Sister Concepta.

‘I'm no fine lady. I’ve always had to work hard to feed and house my son. As long as he's all right, I care little about myself. I'm a good seamstress, or I can scrub a floor. Whatever you need.’

She said nothing about the coins sewn into her petticoat.

She found the convent a very soothing place to stay and took to sitting in the chapel when her day's work was over. Sometimes she prayed; sometimes she just sat and let the peace wash over her; and sometimes she had the pleasure of listening to the sisters' exquisite singing. The voices soaring up into the darkness of the vaulted roof were so pure, they often brought tears to her eyes, and even Harry, young as he was, would sit quietly and listen with her.

After two weeks, Robert began to improve, confounding all the sisters' dire prognostications. But he was even thinner than before and he didn't lose the cough completely. He hated the convent, was often rude to those caring for him and as soon as he possibly could, he left, dragging his wife and child off to Milan.

‘If I don't turn up, they'll give the position to someone else,’ he kept saying. ‘Why did you get off that coach? I could have rested in Milan just as easily.’

The position he had spoken of so glowingly was in an establishment totally devoted to gaming.

The hard-faced proprietor found it useful to have an English
gentleman
available to chat to the visitors from whom he took so much money. He claimed it lent a better tone to the place.

Robert seemed to feel that he could play the part of a gentleman to perfection, but his tales of the tricks used against the hapless visitors disgusted his wife. How had she been so blind as to think she loved this man? Why had her parents kept her so ignorant of the world? She would not, she vowed, keep Harry ignorant. She would tell him everything about their lives as soon as he was old enough to understand.

It was a hard winter in Milan, and the colder it became, the more Robert coughed. In February, even he admitted that they must move on yet again to an even milder climate. ‘Damned nuisance, this cough! But I haven't caught another cold, have I? I'm over the worst now. If I can only get away from these biting winds, I'll be fine. You'll see.’

Helen made no attempt to argue with him. If he wanted to fool himself, then let him! Anything to make him easier to live with! For as his health deteriorated, Robert's temper became more uncertain.

He had hit her several times recently, in sudden fits of rage - and once, once only, he hit Harry.

When that happened, she had seized a knife from the table and threatened him with it. ‘If you lay one finger on my son again, I'll kill you.’

He laughed in her face. ‘You're not the sort.’

She pushed her face right against his and spoke softly but viciously. ‘Try me, then. I promise you, I mean it. I'll do anything to protect Harry from you. Anything, including murder.’

For a moment everything hung in the balance, then muttering something about
she-wolves
and
vixens defending their young
, he swung out of the room.

After that, he left the boy alone and took his ill humour out on her alone. That upset Harry almost as much, anyway.

Rome was cold and dirty, also very expensive. Robert took another of his dislikes to it and they left after only a few days, to Helen's relief.

During the following two weeks, they made their way further south by easy stages, moving from one small town to another. Robert won small amounts here and there, and Helen occasionally helped out at the inns, or used her sewing skills. It was a pattern they had followed before, but now it was irking her.

They could have stayed on in Beziers, lived in modest comfort. Robert just didn’t understand how hard it was for her to keep them all clean while moving so often. Nor did he sympathise with the problems she had keeping a very small boy amused on tedious journeys, though he soon complained if Harry made too much noise.

They came to a place called Serugia by accident, having misunderstood what the man driving the carrier's cart said. It was a slightly larger town than most of the ones they had passed through, built around a small, semi-circular bay, with large white houses on the hills above the tight central cluster of red-roofed houses that scrambled over one another to cling to the lower slopes of the hills around the bay. The inhabitants fished, catered for summer visitors or carried on a multiplicity of small trades, growing their own wine and olives on the slopes behind town.

Helen fell in love with Serugia on sight, but she had learned by now that if she made a favourable comment on any place, Robert would discover nothing but faults there. So she made a slighting remark about the narrowness of the streets.

He scoffed at her. ‘Nothing ever satisfies you, does it? You’d complain if I took you to heaven.’

They lodged for a night or two in a small inn, whose owner spoke a little atrocious French and was very willing to help Helen improve her small store of Italian phrases.

Robert went out for a couple of short strolls, but spent most of the time resting. On the third morning, he said, ‘I like it here. My cough's getting better.’

‘I don't think - ’

‘Just shut up and listen, for once, and let me do the thinking! I want you to find us some rooms.

It'll be cheaper than staying at an inn.’

Helen enlisted the help of the innkeeper's wife, who had taken a fancy to Harry and who kept irritating him by stroking his honey-gold curls and clasping him to her ample bosom. Francesca found them a whole house to themselves, at a ridiculously cheap price, because it was winter and there were few tourists at this time of year. It was a small house, by most people's standards, with two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor and two tiny bedrooms and an attic above. It was sparsely furnished, but clean and attractive. It was the largest place the Perrimans had ever had to live in.

Harry adored the attic, from which you could see the sea, and took immediate possession of it.

‘Me an' Dodo like this house,’ he declared, dancing the dog up and down on the windowsill.

The prospect of having a house of her own reduced Helen to tears. In her halting Italian, she confided in Francesca that never before in her married life had she had a whole house to herself.

Francesca, who disliked Robert as much as she liked his wife and child, tutted sympathetically.

She had constituted herself Helen's friend and protector and now proceeded to organise things for her. She had a cousin who would move the Perrimans’ luggage to the house, another cousin who would supply them with fruit and vegetables very cheaply, a brother who was a butcher and a female cousin who might be able to help signora Perriman to find some pupils who wanted to learn English or French.

Serugia was, it appeared, getting quite a few foreign visitors nowadays and it was useful for those tradespeople who wished to make money from them to learn English.

Francesca's Cousin Maria was housekeeper to il Conte, whose house this was, Francesca said with pride, and Helen made suitable noises to show that she was impressed. Il Conte was the largest landowner in the neighbourhood and he lived in the biggest of the white houses on the hill overlooking the town.

‘Un bel palazzo! Magnifico!’
enthused Francesca.

‘Magnifico!’
echoed Helen, memorising this easy to recognise word.

Robert graciously allowed his wife to arrange their move and joined her at the house only when it was all over. She wished he had not, for his ill humour seemed to mar the happy atmosphere of the small dwelling. She wished, as she had wished many times before, that he would just go away, the further the better, and never return.

Chapter 8

Thanks to Francesca's help and her volubility, Helen learned Italian with remarkable rapidity.

Robert said languidly that he'd known she would come in useful and condescended to learn the numbers from her. ‘If you know the numbers and a few other phrases, you can play cards or throw dice in any language. But why the devil are you feeding us so much of that damned pasta stuff? I need some real meat.’

‘We can't afford a lot of meat. I haven't got much work yet, only the two pupils.’