The Wedding Officer

21

AFTER LUNCH James went to the kitchen, and found Livia elbow-deep in a pile of dirty dishes.

“Here, let me help you with those,” he offered.

In Livia’s experience, there was only one reason why good-looking young men offered to help in the kitchen, and it had nothing to do with being helpful. “I’m fine, thank you,” she said in a voice intended to extinguish any thoughts of flirtation.

“Well, let me dry them for you, at least.” He reached for a towel. “That lunch was absolutely marvelous,” he said with feeling.

To Livia, who was used to having her cooking receive much more effusive compliments than this, his reaction sounded halfhearted, almost insultingly so. Since she knew that the dishes she had produced had been excellent, she suspected that the British officer’s reticence was a simple negotiating tactic, and she waited cautiously to see what his ploy was going to be.

“I’ve just had a word with the others,” James said, “and we’d all be delighted if you’d take the job.”

She shrugged, waiting for the catch.

“If that’s still acceptable to you?” It occurred to him she might be holding back because they had not yet negotiated her wages or accommodation. “Of course, we’ll need to sort out your sleeping arrangements,” he said. “And I’m sure you’ll want to talk about money.”

Aha, Livia thought. So that’s it. He wants me to be his whore as well as his cook, just like Alberto. She glared at him.

“How much were you thinking of?” he prompted.

“Whatever you try to offer me,” she said curtly, “it will be an insult.”

“Well, quite,” he agreed. “But some idea of what you would accept would be useful.”

“I will never do it for money.”

“I can see that,” he agreed, completely mystified. Presumably she meant that she was some kind of artist. He had heard that cooks could be temperamental that way.

“So long as that’s clear.”

“Absolutely. I’ll just—er—how about if you get the same as Malloni? Not that his cooking was a patch on yours, of course,” he said quickly. “And you can have his old room upstairs, if that’s acceptable.”

“Malloni?” she said. She had just realized that this conversation was, in all probability, not about what she thought it was about. “Well, I suppose that would be all right,” she conceded.

As James sat at his desk afterward, trying to make sense of a long and largely irrelevant Bureau briefing on some new problem that had sprung up, he felt his eyelids start to droop.

“Aren’t you taking a siesta?”

He looked up. It was Livia, standing at the door.

“We don’t really do siestas,” he explained. “It’s not really a British thing.”

“But how do you digest your food?”

James shrugged. Digestion, he was coming to realize, was one of Livia’s self-appointed areas of expertise. “We just—work through it, I suppose.”

“Ridiculous,” Livia said decisively. “You’ll never win the war that way.” Then she was gone.

James decided it would be churlish to point out that taking siestas had not, in fact, helped the Italian army win anything very much. Besides, he really was feeling rather sleepy. Perhaps, he thought, a very brief nap might not be a bad idea. When in Rome, and so on…

As he stumbled to his bed there was another thought struggling to articulate itself in his mind, something to do with the fact that the Allies were not actually in Rome, and that was the whole problem with the war at the moment. But by the time he had managed to clarify this to himself, he was already asleep.

He woke feeling refreshed, and went to get himself a glass of water from the kitchen. Livia was chopping a big pile of zucchini.

“You were quite right,” he told her. “My digestion is suitably grateful.”

She shrugged. “Of course.”

“What about you? Did you get any rest?”

She shook her head. “Too much to do. It will be supper soon.”

“But you must have terrible indigestion,” he said. “Let me get you something for it.”

She glanced at him suspiciously. “It’s all right,” he assured her. “I’m only…” What was the Italian for “ribbing”? Now that he thought about it, ribbing wasn’t really something the Italians did. They were either laughing or crying, shouting or silent; there was nothing in between. “I was taking you for a giro, a little ride,” he explained.

She sniffed. “Well, don’t.”

“Better get used to it. It’s how the British flirt, I’m afraid.” She gave him a wary look. Instantly he felt a fool. The woman was married, and he was her employer. “Not that I’m flirting with you, of course,” he said. “I do apologize.”

She carried more zucchini over to the chopping board. “Do you have a girlfriend, Captain Gole?” she asked pointedly.

He hesitated. A part of him wanted to be honest with her, but the deception had become so habitual that he heard his own voice saying, “Yes, as it happens.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Well—fairly.”

“Fairly?” Her eyebrows went up. “Is that what you tell her, that she’s fairly pretty?”

“Well—”

“And are you going to marry her?”

“I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.”

“If you’re not sure,” Livia said, “you won’t marry her.” She stopped chopping for a moment. “I knew the first time Enzo kissed me that I would marry him.” A faint smile played across her face.

James felt a pang of envy. Of course, he told himself, it was a wonderful thing that she was so devoted to her husband. And it was fortuitous too: It meant there was absolutely no chance that he would make a fool of himself with her. All the same, as he studied her profile as she bent over the chopping board, and the way her delicate hands sliced and chopped in a surprisingly energetic blur, he could not help regretting that the only woman he had met in Italy who so completely delighted him was already spoken for.

“Let me help you with those,” he said, indicating the pile of vegetables.

“Don’t you have work to do?”

“The work can wait,” he said, picking up a knife. “Show me what to do.”

Now he will make a pass at me, Livia thought to herself as they chopped zucchini. The way he kept glancing at her when he thought she wouldn’t notice, coupled with his evident reluctance to discuss his marital status, all added up to only one thing. Well, let him, she thought, as she viciously chopped a zucchini in a blur of sharp steel. I’ll show him. Mentally, she rehearsed a battery of Neapolitan put-downs, most of them involving the British captain’s sister, his mother, and his own inadequacies as a man. The prospect of withering his ardor with a good blast of invective was a deeply satisfying one, and she was soon keenly looking forward to the confrontation.

Unfortunately for her state of mind, James did not make a pass at her. Nor did he venture so much as a suggestive remark. All in all, he was infuriatingly respectful, and by the time supper was served she was ready to murder him.