Last Voyage of the Valentina(59)

He studied the envelope for a long moment, his heart suspended. He desperately hoped it was from Valentina. Who else would write from Italy? Then his optimism faded. What if the letter was one of rejection? How would his fragile heart bear such a heavy loss? He fingered the letter, his face contorted into a worried frown. Then he sat down, took a deep breath, and opened it.

It was only one side long, written on paper as diaphanous as butterfly wings, and dated August 1944. My dearest Tommy. My heart longs for you too. Every day I stand and wait at the watchtower on the hill, hoping for the sight of your boat motoring in to our little harbor. Every day I am disappointed. I have news for you. I wanted to wait until I saw you, but I fear for you in this war. I fear that you will die not knowing. So I will tell you in this letter and hope that you receive it. I am pregnant. My heart is filled with joy for I am carrying the child we made together out of love. Mamma says he will be blessed for he was conceived at the festa di Santa Benedetta when our Lord demonstrated His love for us by shedding tears of blood. I pray for your safe deliverance from this war and that God will bring you back to me so that you may know your son or daughter. I wait for you, my love. Your devoted Valentina.

Thomas read the letter several times, barely able to believe that a child of his was about to be born into the world. He pictured Valentina with her belly round and her eyes bright with the light of impending maternity. Then he was gripped with a shudder of alarm: she was vulnerable in that small cove. He stood up and strode across the room in agitation, envisaging all the terrible things that might happen to her without his protection. He yearned to go to her and yet he could not. His job was up in the north and the war was still raging like a forest fire. The Allies had contained it and the prospects were good, yet their fortunes could change in a moment.

Then he thought of all the innocence that war had destroyed, the horrors seen by eyes too young to understand, and his heart flooded with fear. His child was to be born into all this terror. Was it right to bring an innocent into so cruel a world?

“What are you looking so down about?” asked Jack, taking the seat beside him.

“I’ve had a letter from Valentina,” he replied, shaking his head in amazement.

“What’s happened?”

“She’s carrying my child, Jack.”

Jack gasped. “Christ!” Then after a long moment of contemplation he added seriously, “What the hell are you going to do?”

“Marry her,” he replied without hesitation.

Jack looked at him askance. “That’s a bit drastic, isn’t it? You don’t even know her!”

“I know all I need to know about her. She likes lemons, the sea, and the color purple.” He smiled with tenderness as he recalled her childish soliloquy. “Christ, I’ve been hit between the eyes, first by love and now this!”

“I can’t see Lavender and Hubert taking to her!”

“Better than Shirley!”

“I don’t know. Your father’s an arch snob and he’s wary of foreigners, especially Italians…”

“They’ll have no choice.”

“Now Freddie’s gone, you’re the heir.”

Thomas shrugged. “To what? A house? It’s not as if my father has an earldom to pass down, is it!”

“But he takes Beechfield Park very seriously. It’s no joke running an estate like that.”

“She’ll learn. I’ll teach her.”

“Bloody hell. You a father!” Jack shook his head in wonder. Then he looked at him with intensity, no longer as his subordinate but as his childhood friend. He spoke in a low voice, his eyes misty with emotion. “The war’s changed you, Tommy. You and I were once so similar. We flouted the rules at Eton, disrupted the classes, swanned around like we owned the place. Oxford wasn’t much different, fewer rules to break, that’s all. Then this bloody war. We’ve become men, haven’t we? We never thought we would. Hubert would be damn proud of you, if he knew. When all this is over, I’m going to tell him.”

Thomas sighed heavily and took the cigarette that Jack offered him. “But you were the one who got all the girls. I just got the crumbs from the rich man’s table!”

“But you got the one that mattered, Tommy.”

“This time, I did.”

“And you deserve her,” Jack said, though he felt apprehensive. Valentina spoke no English, had been brought up in a small, provincial harbor town with a population of no more than a few hundred people. How did Tommy think she was going to cope in a house the size of the marchese’s palazzo? To find herself among the cool, snobby British who, when it came to class, were more formidable than ten Immacolatas. The fantasy was all very romantic, but the reality would throw up all sorts of problems that he hadn’t considered. However, now wasn’t the time to discuss them. He had got the girl pregnant and he was a man of honor. He would do the right thing. “You’re more like Freddie than I imagined, Tommy,” Jack said finally, his eyes suddenly betraying the strain of war that humor usually covered up. Thomas was too moved to speak: a thick lump of anguish had lodged itself inside his throat. He straightened up and cleared his throat.