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But it was no dream. She was indeed here, in a Tuscan villa, married to a man whose family had gone apoplectic at the news.
If she listened, she could still hear the storm raging downstairs. It seemed to have moved in from the terrace, but it was still in full flood. Magda shrank back, clutching Benji. He felt her distress and discomfort, and started whimpering again.
Footsteps, hard and angry-sounding, echoed across the marble hall. Doors slammed several times. What sounded like paternal denunciation rang up through the floorboards. Finally, in a last flurry of raised voices, there was a heavier door slamming. It reverberated right through the house, it seemed to Magda, and then everything went quiet. A moment later there came the throaty roar of a powerful internal combustion engine, gunning fiercely and then roaring away.
Silence reined. Total silence. It was almost as unnerving as the noise.
Knowing, instinctively, that the only thing she could do was keep her head tucked well down beneath the parapet, Magda kept to her room. Gradually Benji cheered up, but it was not long before another need made itself increasingly urgently felt. He was hungry.
She rifled through her hand baggage, extracting an apple and some rusks. Benji wolfed them down, still hungry when they were all gone. For the next forty-five minutes Magda tried to mollify him, but in vain. Even juice could not sate him. He needed proper food, and milk. There was nothing for it. She would have to go and find some.
With her heart in her mouth she gingerly opened the door of her bedroom. It was dusky outside on the landing. Cautiously she went down the grand marble staircase into the deserted hall. Hoping to find Giuseppe, she went through what must be a service door into a stone-flagged corridor. A door stood ajar at the end, and she entered reluctantly. If it were just herself she’d go to bed hungry, but she could not starve poor Benji. Surely someone would take pity on him?
As she entered, she realised she was in a vast, old-fashioned kitchen. A cavernous fireplace at the far end was filled with a huge cooking range. Dominating the centre of the room, however, was an endless long wooden table. To the side, beneath an old-fashioned window, an elderly woman was vigorously scrubbing a huge copper saucepan at a stone sink.
As Magda hovered hesitantly in the doorway the woman turned to stare at her.
‘Si?’ she demanded, in an unfriendly tone. Her face was strong-boned, and her expression was anything but welcoming. She glared at Magda.
Magda swallowed. ‘Mi dispiace,’ she ventured haltingly, hoping she was pronouncing it right from the Italian phrasebook she had bought. ‘Ma…este possible…?’
‘I speak English,’ the woman snapped at her. ‘What is it you want?’
Almost, Magda turned and ran. Then, as Benji huddled in closer to her, sensing her unease, she swallowed again. ‘I am so sorry—’ her voice was almost a whisper ‘—but would it be possible, please…a little food…and some milk…for my baby…?’
Fierce black eyes from beneath beetling greying brows bored into her. She felt her throat tighten with tension. Surely the woman would not refuse sustenance for a little child, however angry she was at having been disturbed—as she so clearly was—by such an unwelcome person as the female whom Rafaello di Viscenti had brought here to cause uproar.
The eyes were scanning her, taking in her shabby clothes, her thin, drab figure, the baby clutching her, and then going back to Magda’s strained, nervous face. Suddenly the woman’s expression changed. She threw up her hands, exclaiming something vociferously in her native language, and bustled forward.
‘Come—come—come…’ she announced. ‘Sit—’ She propelled Magda with surprisingly strong arms, considering her age, and plumped her down at one of the chairs at the long table. ‘You are hungry, yes? Foolish girl—why did you not ring from your room?’
‘I…I…didn’t want to be a nuisance…’ Magda stammered.
The woman made a tch-ing noise in her throat. ‘A baby must not wait for his food,’ she announced. ‘Nor the mother.’
She bustled off to the far end of the kitchen, this time to the cooking range. There were various pots on it, and out of one she proceeded to scoop up, with the aid of a huge wooden implement like a spoon, with horizontal prongs, a generous serving of spaghetti. On top of this she ladled spoonfuls of tomato sauce. She carried the dish back to Magda, placed it on the table, and deftly tied a huge tea-towel around Benji’s neck to protect his clothes from the sauce.
Benji’s little mouth was already wide open, and Magda had scarcely time to check the pasta was not too hot before he had seized her wrist and was guiding the forkful towards him.
