The Flower Garden

by Margaret Pemberton

  Jack lay unaided on the floor, consciousness returning, his hand reaching to his swollen throat. He struggled to his knees and vomited on the Persian carpet. Nancy felt as if she had descended into either hell or a madhouse. The white-coated figure was unknown to her. Another white-coated and masked figure stood motionless, as if none of the life and death struggle were taking place.

  ‘For God’s sake get him off him!’ one of the footmen yelled in English as Ramon again seized hold of Jack Cameron.

  Nancy had struggled into a kneeling position on the bed, her eyes wild as Maria held her with all her strength. Syrie was removing her mask, folding her overall neatly, smoothing down her skirt, making sure the seams of her stockings were straight.

  Ramon’s fist connected hard with Jack Cameron’s jaw, sending him reeling. The smell of vomit hung in the air. The gasps and grunts as Villiers and his two henchmen once more intervened between Ramon and Jack sounded like the noises of nightmare.

  ‘I’ll kill him! Filho de duta! I’ll kill him!’

  ‘No, sir. That would do Sanfords no good at all,’ Villiers’voice held sweet sanity.

  ‘Ramon! What is it? What is happening?’

  Jack was staggering to his feet again. Ramon, his employees’ strong hands restraining his arms, kicked his victim viciously with his foot.

  ‘Ask him! Perhaps he can tell you!’

  For the first time Nancy realized that the white-coated figure Ramon had been attacking so viciously was her husband.

  ‘Oh my God!’ She swayed, held upright only by Maria’s arms.

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ Syrie said composedly as Jack staggered to his knees, the mask ripped from his face, his jaw swollen and dislocated by Ramon’s frenzied blows.

  ‘Jack had no intention of letting you stay here when the Aquitania sailed, Nancy. He sent me here this morning while you were out and I drugged the cream you use in your Irish coffee. The theatricals,’ she nodded contemptuously at the white coats, ‘were borrowed from the linen room. The face masks from Jack’s medical kit. When you were heavily drugged we were to enter and give you a much stronger dose by injection. Too heavy a dose in the coffee and you might have been aware of the taste. The amount in the syringe would have rendered you senseless for sixteen hours or more – long enough to get you aboard the Aquitania and to be out at sea before Ramon realized you had gone. Reception had been told I was ill and was being taken down to the ship. Wrapped in blankets, Jack’s gamble was that no one would notice the difference. We knew Ramon had left your room and that he would be unaware of your absence until the morning. That he would not worry about it till much later.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Nancy gazed bewilderedly at the faces around the bed. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He tried to drug you,’ Ramon said harshly, and held up the syringe in proof. ‘In doing so he could quite easily have killed you.’

  ‘But I’m all right! I’m not unconscious!’

  Ramon’s laugh was mirthless. ‘Only because your husband had such a low opinion of coal miners.’

  Nancy blinked, trying to rally her drugged mind.

  ‘Without knowing it, he insulted his only ally and she came to me. For a certain consideration she told me everything that Jack-oh-so-clever-Cameron had planned to do. There was only sugared water in the syringe. Not an hypnotic drug to induce a state of unconsciousness that could last indefinitely. A “twilight sleep” as Miss Geeson so accurately described it.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ Her words lacked conviction. She gazed at the syringe; at the white overall Jack still wore; at the expression of hate in his eyes as he nursed his injured jaw. She faced Syrie and for once believed her smooth, dreadful words. The pain in her thigh was acute. Maria’s first action when the lights had blazed had been to pull down Nancy’s nightdress. Nancy had no need to lift it to know what she would see. Syrie’s voice continued passionlessly.

  ‘Jack didn’t think Sanford would bother if you left. He was sure, once away from him, he could handle you. He had underestimated you before and wasn’t going to do so in the future. There would have been no returning to Hyannis. He would have kept you in Washington and he would have kept you under close surveillance.’

  ‘Or in such a doped condition, you would have been helpless,’ Ramon said so savagely that, even though he made no move towards him, Jack flinched.

  ‘But I would have known …’ Nancy felt as if she were fighting her way through cotton wool.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t. When you regained consciousness aboard the Aquitania, if you regained consciousness …’

  Instinctively, Villiers and the footmen grasped his arm as Jack shrank back against the wall.

  ‘… all you would have remembered was the sight of a nurse and a doctor. That Filho de duta!’ even the hardened Villiers flinched, ‘could have spun you whatever story he pleased!’

  ‘He needs a doctor,’ Villiers said unnecessarily.

  ‘He’s lucky. Without you he would have only needed a priest!’

  ‘Jack …’ Nancy said, her eyes pleading for a denial. There was none. The look he gave her was one of pure venom.

  ‘You’ll pay,’ he said inarticulately. ‘You’ll all pay!’ And then he was gone, skirting the room to avoid any possible contact with Ramon.

  Syrie shrugged. ‘I don’t think Roosevelt has anything to worry about,’ she said drily.

  ‘He’ll ruin you.’ Nancy was sitting back on her heels, still on the bed, desperately trying to get her brain to function.

  ‘He’ll try. His handicap will be the rather unsavoury scene we have all just witnessed. I don’t think he would like it spread abroad and he knows it wouldn’t be only my word against his. It would be Mr Sanford’s as well and Mr Sanford carries quite a punch – in more ways than one. Goodnight, Mr Sanford. Goodnight, Mrs Cameron,’ and as perfectly composed as ever, Syrie Geeson excused herself and returned to her own room.

  ‘You cannot sleep in here, madame,’ Maria was saying. ‘The room must be cleaned and disinfected.’

  ‘She’ll sleep in mine,’ Ramon said, and shaking off Villiers and the footmen, he strode to the bed and picked her up in his arms. ‘Tomorrow my solicitors will instigate divorce proceedings.’ His face was grim. It was as if he were challenging her, as if he knew she had not really meant it before.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her arms winding around his neck. ‘Yes, please do that, Ramon.’

  Venetia and Prince Felix were leaving the ballroom, laughing and swaying slightly from too much champagne. They halted and stared at the sight of Ramon Sanford striding down the mirrored corridor, Nancy Cameron in his arms, clad only in a rose-pink, lace-edged nightdress. He didn’t even glance in their direction; or at the Carringtons and Meades who had also emerged in time to witness the startling scene. Venetia’s eyes glazed. The Rape of the Sabine Women had always been a private fantasy. With a man like Ramon Sanford fantasies came true. She wound her arms more tightly around Prince Zaronski’s waist. He could quite easily look like an avenging Cossack. Though she envied Nancy, her own evening would be a satisfactory one.

  ‘Who does the man think he is?’ Lavinia Meade asked apoplectically. ‘A feudal chief?’

  Sir Maxwell regretfully watched them disappear. He would like to have treated the lissom Hildegarde in a similar fashion, but his doctor had warned him against any undue exertion. The exertion of making love to Hildegarde was immense. It was Sir Maxwell’s private opinion that his escapades of the last few days had already robbed him of a good five years of life. He didn’t care. It had been worth it.

  ‘Love,’ he said tolerantly. ‘It does the heart good to see it.’

  Sir Maxwell’s last act before boarding the Ile de France for Madeira had been to write to The Times complaining of the indecencies of courting couples in Hyde Park. At this sudden about-turn his wife stared at him in surprise and then suspicion. There were lots of nubile young ladies at Sanfords, but surely Max was beyond temptation? She was filled w
ith doubt and determined to watch him more carefully. One could never be too sure. People did the most extraordinary things. Nancy Leigh Cameron, for instance. She shook her head in complete bewilderment at the behaviour of her fellow human beings and followed her husband to their puritanically separately-bedroomed suite.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘I’m sorry about the coffee, sweetheart,’ Ramon said, depositing her in the middle of a vast bed that would have done credit to a Roman emperor, ‘but I wanted to prove to you what a bastard Cameron is. I knew damn well you didn’t intend to divorce him. You’re a beautiful lover but a bloody bad liar. Juarez! Coffee, please. Hot, strong and black.’

  From a room unseen a valet obeyed his command.

  ‘I only let you drink the damn stuff because Syrie convinced me the solution she had prepared was nothing but a strong sleeping draught and because I wasn’t going to listen to any more excuses. If I’d told you what Cameron intended to do you’d never have believed me.

  ‘It’s a strange thing,’ he said as Juarez deposited a steaming percolator and china cups and saucers on the bedside table, ‘but despite everything I rather like the Geeson girl. She’s tough and she’s not acted too admirably in the past, but she’s thumbed her nose to Cameron and that can’t have been easy for a girl in her position. No more Madison Avenue flat, no more prestigious lover or large car or limitless expense account.’

  Nancy made an effort to keep her eyes open and drank her coffee as if it were medicine.

  ‘I’m not too sure where Syrie fits into all this …’

  ‘She finally realized that she was being used more than she was using. I think she also finally saw with painful clarity that Cameron will never make it to a senior government post. Under pressure his true character shows through. No amount of gloss and charm and an office full of slick PR men can hide that. Syrie, it appears, is a crusader for women’s rights. She was out for far more than wealth when she latched on to Cameron.’

  ‘What will she do now?’

  ‘She’ll return on the Ile de France. It’s due to dock in a few days’ time with your father aboard.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Let’s thank our lucky stars he wasn’t here tonight, or blood would have been spilled. If he ever found out what Cameron tried to do to you …’

  Nancy trembled at the thought.

  ‘Exactly,’ Ramon said, refilling her cup. ‘So we don’t tell him. Not unless he’s so bull-headed about the whole thing that we have to.’

  ‘What about …?’ Nancy tried to say her husband’s name and couldn’t. She suddenly felt very sick.

  ‘Cameron left the hotel two minutes after leaving your suite. His bags were already in his motor car, his chauffeur at the wheel. No doubt he’s now safely tucked up in his state room and planning on ways to make us, as he so elegantly put it, pay.’

  ‘He can’t hurt you, can he, Ramon?’ She was thinking of Jack’s position as a senator. She had seen the expression in his eyes as he had stumbled from her bedroom. The hate had been fanatical. Hatred for Ramon; for Syrie. Hatred for herself. She shivered and Ramon took the cup from her hand.

  ‘He has no more ability to hurt me, or you, or even Syrie, than a fly on the wall. When it comes to ruthlessness Senator Cameron has a lot to learn. The Sanford side of me may have been British-educated with a penchant for fair play – the de Gama side is more than equal to any upstart senator who can think of no better way of dealing with his wife than resorting to drugs.’

  He pulled his shirt over his head and turned off all the lamps but one. In the soft light his chest glowed bronze, gleaming with the sweat from his fight, if such a one-sided encounter could be called a fight. Nancy shivered again. If it hadn’t been for Villiers and the nameless footmen, Ramon would have annihilated Jack. Even now she could see the hands that were so tender in love, pressing demonically on Jack’s windpipe, attempting to squeeze out life in an overwhelming fury of murderous rage.

  ‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know’, Lady Caroline Lamb had said of Byron. Ramon was not mad, despite Vere’s earlier assumption, and he was not bad … though no doubt Jack would never be convinced of that. But he was quite definitely a man who could be dangerous to know. A man who would always look after his own with ferocious tenacity. A man who could look after himself with ease and her with pleasure.

  ‘A penny for them,’ he said, slipping into the bed beside her.

  She turned towards him and sought shelter in his arms. ‘Byron,’ she said enigmatically, and fell asleep.

  When she awoke it took her several minutes to realize that the hideous dream that had assailed her had been reality.

  Jack floundering in his own vomit. Ramon, his face scored by frantic scratchmarks, blood dripping on to the pristine whiteness of his evening shirt. Syrie, calm and composed as though she were a spectator at a play. And herself, disorientated, hysterical, bewildered and finally dazed. She opened her eyes. He was leaning on his elbow and looking down at her. It would not have surprised her if he had kept vigil all through the long night; watching her, awake in case she cried out in the throes of sleep.

  ‘I love you,’ she said, and as her fingertips connected with the smoothness of his flesh, the tenderness in his eyes deepened to desire. Her arms tightened around him convulsively. His body rolled across hers. The nightmare receded and only love remained.

  Every morning, immediately after her half hour with Senora Henriques, Nancy visited Zia. Despite Ramon’s protests that she should rest, Nancy insisted on conducting her day as usual. She wanted to be reminded of normality. The events of the previous evening had bordered so closely on insanity that she knew if she dwelt on them she would feel physically ill. The Aquitania had sailed. Her old life was over. Her new life, however long, however short, was just beginning.

  When she arrived in Zia’s suite she was surprised to find the lavishly tented bed empty.

  ‘Madame,’ Zia’s pretty maid explained, ‘has insisted on fresh air and though too weak to walk, has been carried to her favourite spot beneath the jacaranda tree.’

  Nancy suppressed a smile as she crossed the fragrant-scented garden, doves fluttering out of her way. Zia looked even more resplendent when ill than she did in good health. She was sitting beneath a parasol of peacock feathers, dressed in a loose-fitting gown, soft and sensuous and silver. Two heavy ropes of baroque pearls hung waist-length. Her cloud of chestnut hair was piled loosely on the crown of her head. There was a gleam of colour on her eyelids and lips. Champagne and orange juice and petits-fours were within a hand’s reach. Her perfume drifted headily on the faint breeze that blew warmly from the distant African coast.

  ‘Darling, Senora Henriques has told me of your scheme for the next ball. Do you think we can coerce Ramon into fancy dress? He would look quite splendid.’

  ‘I don’t think I could coerce Ramon into anything,’ Nancy said, smiling. ‘He’ll do what he wants, as he always has.’

  Zia’s answering smile faded. Yes, her strong-willed son would do exactly as he liked. He would not listen to any half truths or vague explanations when she rallied her strength and told him that his affaire with Nancy could not continue. She had tried on more than one occasion to break the news, but at the last moment had felt unequal to the task. Chips would be here soon. She needed his support. They were both responsible for the past and for the hideousness that might, after so many years, be brought finally into the light of day.

  What would happen then? What would happen to the love Ramon had always borne her? Would she see it wither and die with disgust and incredulity? Would the final victory be Duarte’s after all? Her head ached. Perhaps if she told only Nancy? Yes. Nancy would not want to see her father’s life destroyed. She was at the height of her beauty. There would be other men for her: other loves. It would be better that way. Anything would be better than Ramon knowing the truth, and seeing the love that was the mainspring of her life, die.

  ‘Nancy,’ she said, but Nancy had gone and she realized that she had fal
len asleep. She was thankful. It was like a stay of execution. She would wait until Chips arrived. They had always needed each other. Now, as their lives entered their final phase, they needed each other more than ever. She closed her eyes again. The sun was pleasantly warm. Perhaps when she reopened them, it would be to see the Ile de France pulling magnificently into Funchal harbour. Even from this distance she would be able to distinguish Chips’ compact, forceful body from amongst the crowds of other passengers. She had always been able to seek him out, no matter how great the throng. She had never even had to be told that he was there. Instinct had done that for her. A chemistry of the soul that never let her down. It had been passion that had done that. Passion and lack of restraint and an abandonment of all the values she had been brought up with and held dear.

  ‘If only,’ she whispered to herself. ‘If only …’ She had been saying the words for years. They were the saddest words in the English language. Tears glistened on her still-thick lashes as she closed her eyes and slept.

  ‘Madame come quickly! The English viscountess!’

  Nancy turned instantly. The little maid was flying across the lawn to her. They met in a near head-on collision.

  ‘It is terrible, madame! A tragedy! A disaster!’

  Nancy forced herself to be calm. Whatever it was it could not be worse than the scene that had met her in Helen Bingham-Smythe’s bathroom. The anguished look on the faces around her as she hurried towards the viscountess’lavish suite of rooms gave her cause for doubt.

  ‘A most valued client,’ Villiers was saying, shaken for once out of his usual composure. ‘Impossible to make amends …’

  ‘I’ll kill myself!’ the viscountess’French maid was shrieking wildly. ‘I’ll kill myself before I let this happen to her ladyship. How could she accuse me of such a thing? I’ll kill myself first!’

  Nancy did not feel she could cope with two suicide attempts in twenty-four hours.

  ‘Slap her face and give her some brandy,’ she said to Villiers’ secretary without pausing in her anxious stride to the viscountess’ suite.