The Kissing Garden

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘He’s got some brand new record of some brand new band he’s dying to play!’ Hermione called back over her shoulder. ‘Jazz!’

  It was the talk of the party, nothing but jazz and the brand new dance steps that were being tried out all over Europe. Ferdy, the young man in question, had arrived with a phonograph recording made by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band as a birthday present for Amelia, and now while the majority of the guests were dancing to Strauss he was determined that the birthday girl and her friends should be treated to the music that was sweeping the Continent.

  ‘This is the New Thing, Amelia!’ Hermione called as they poured into the study where Clarence Dennison kept his precious phonograph. ‘You will just go wild when you hear it!’

  ‘I really should go and find George!’

  ‘Nonsense! Let him come and find you! Much the best thing!’

  ‘The tune you are about to hear,’ Ferdy Fairfield announced as he wound up the gramophone, ‘is a tune called “Tiger Rag”. A man called La Rocca claims to have composed it but as it happens a friend of ours who’s also a musician--’

  ‘Just put the recording on, Ferdy!’ Hermione barracked, pushing another cigarette in her long holder. ‘Really, Ferdy – you’re nothing but a walking old encyclopedia!’

  ‘This friend of ours claims that at the beginning of the century there were four versions of this particular number--’

  ‘Put the record on, Ferdy!’ everyone carolled in unison after Hermione. ‘Put the record on!’

  ‘One was an old French quadrille,’ Ferdy continued, determined to finish his introduction, but he was soon shouted down, and he lost his record to Hermione who seized it and put it on the turntable.

  ‘“Tiger Rag”!’ she announced. ‘Take your partners, everyone!’

  In a moment the room was full of young men and women dancing wildly to the new rhythm, half of them trying to foxtrot to it as the more adventurous improvised steps, the less well behaved dancing up and over the armchairs and sofas as they did so. Halfway through the fourth account of the Rag, while two young men who were totally unknown to Amelia took it in turns to whirl her round the room and then backwards and forwards to each other, to Amelia’s intense amusement, the study door opened and she caught a glimpse of George’s face looking in.

  ‘George!’ she called, trying to disengage herself. ‘George – wait! Don’t go away!’

  But he was gone, and by the time Amelia had got herself free he had vanished completely into the throng of people milling round her house.

  After a five-minute search she finally ran him to ground in the library, which emptied almost immediately she came in as the orchestra struck up the next set of dances.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ she said as he stood up to greet her. ‘Where on earth have you been?’

  ‘I went to get myself a drink.’ George gave a boyish smile. ‘That’s all. I got rather hot and I just felt like a drink, that’s all. You seem to be having fun.’

  ‘I was. You should have come in. Ferdy gave me this terrific new record as a present. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band.’

  ‘Sounded great.’

  ‘You really should have come in.’

  ‘As I said. I was rather hot – and wanted a drink.’

  ‘I thought you went to get a drink some time ago.’

  ‘I did. And then I went to get another one.’

  ‘You’re not a bit – a bit tiddly, are you?’ Amelia leaned towards him, peering up into his eyes. ‘Oh yes – yes those blue eyes are definitely a little bit bossed.’

  ‘I am not the slightest bit tiddly,’ George protested, pulling himself upright and raising his eyebrows. ‘I do not like getting tiddly, as you put it.’

  ‘Well – tight, then. Why do they call it that? Tight?’

  ‘Because that’s how you feel when you’ve had too much to drink. As if everything is very tight. As if your head’s all tight. I can’t say I like it much, which is why I try not to get it – to get tight.’

  ‘I see.’ Amelia smiled at him and tipped her head on one side. ‘So when you drink, when you want a drink--’

  ‘It’s either because I’d like one, or because I need one. For courage.’

  ‘You need courage now, George?’

  ‘Yes.’ George looked back at her, very steadily. ‘Yes, Amelia, as a matter of fact I do.’

  He held the look for a moment, then took his silver cigarette case from his inside pocket.

  ‘And now you also want a cigarette?’

  ‘Yes,’ George replied, tapping the end of a cigarette against the case. ‘Do you mind?’

  Amelia shook her head and watched while George lit his smoke. She saw that his hand was a little unsteady, and at once lowered her head to hide her sudden smile. George of all people, she thought. George who survived this awful war, George who was always being mentioned in despatches, George who finally won a VC, George her dashing wonderful hero going to pieces because he was about to propose? Or was it because he was not going to propose?

  Across the corridor from them some people hurried into the study, which to judge from the music pouring out as they opened the door was still very much in full swing. George looked up and listened, pulling an appreciative face at the music as he drew deeply on his cigarette.

  ‘One of the men – one of my men – he had a gramophone. Used to play it in the trenches, would you believe.’

  ‘How intriguing.’

  ‘Ralph. He was a fellow officer. A second lieutenant. You’ll probably meet him one day. We became good friends.’ George took a second pull on his cigarette and raised his eyebrows as he remembered. ‘Ralph pinched this fellow’s gramophone one night and took it out on a recce. He’d been sent out to spy where this machine-gun nest was. He couldn’t find the nest but he found himself all of a sudden right on top of this German trench where there was just this one German on sentry duty. Heaven knows what inspired him to take the wretched gramophone when he could have been shot dead at any moment, but that’s Ralph. Anyway – he found himself slap bang on top of this German, put the gramophone down in the trees just behind him, wound it up and put a record on. Frightened the life out of Fritz, I can tell you.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  Amelia laughed.

  ‘Yes,’ George said thoughtfully, exhaling a plume of smoke. ‘Frightened the life out of Fritz.’

  George fell to silence while Amelia watched him, wondering how and when he was going to broach the subject. Obviously not immediately, judging from the way George was smoking his way right through his cigarette and then helping himself to a large whisky and soda from the tray of drinks Grimes had just brought into the library. The longer she waited the less she could understand why it should be so difficult for a man of George’s undoubted valour to propose marriage not only to someone he had known for most of his life, but to someone to whom he had already promised such a proposal. The more she thought the more she remembered the countless instances in novels she had read where similarly redoubtable men were reduced to either silence or gibbering idiocy when it came to the moments they had to ask if their loves would marry them, so she continued to wait patiently while George smoked another cigarette and drank most of his glass of whisky.

  When they did speak it was both at the same time.

  ‘I’m so sorry—’ Amelia said, quickly.

  ‘Not at all,’ George insisted. ‘It was my fault.’

  ‘Sorry – what were you going to say?’ Amelia wondered, after another but much shorter silence.

  ‘What was I going to say?’ George repeated with a frown, dropping the remains of his smoke on the log fire. ‘Yes. Look – why don’t you sit down here by the fire, Amelia, while I try and put what I want to say into words.’

  Dutifully Amelia sat, suppressing the sigh of disappointment she felt welling up inside her. This was not at all how she had imagined it. In her imagination she had been dancing with George, who had then smiled at her before sudde
nly sweeping her with him out through the open French windows and onto the terrace where, taking her hands in his, he had made the most beautiful speech of proposal. In return Amelia had teased him a little before happily accepting the invitation, throwing her arms round George who had then kissed her – kissed her properly, in a way she had never been kissed before, in the way she and Hermione had so often dreamed of being kissed, with a kiss so magical it would bind her to George for the rest of her life.

  Now, instead of a poetic proposal out on the terrace in the moonlight followed by a life-changing kiss, she found herself sitting looking up at a man who was standing nervously biting the back of one index finger while staring down at the fire in front of him.

  ‘I don’t know where to begin,’ he said, finally straightening himself to look in the glass which hung above the fireplace. ‘Or quite how to put this.’

  ‘Is something the matter, George?’ Amelia said, about to get up as she realized that whatever it was that was holding him back it was not the making of any marriage proposal.

  ‘It’s all right,’ George assured her. ‘If you’ll just be patient I’ll do my best to explain.’

  Amelia frowned, then sat back in her chair and waited.

  ‘Do you think I’ve changed, Amelia?’ he asked, looking round at her.

  Amelia thought long and carefully before she replied, beginning to suspect the cause of George’s apparent anxiety.

  ‘If you mean “changed” as in “different” then no I don’t,’ she told him. ‘I think – from what I can tell – I think you’re still the George I know, the George I grew up with, the George who—’ She checked herself, not wishing to appear in the least forward, not out of propriety but in case she should frighten George off with her presumption. ‘As far as I can tell, George, and as far as my own feelings go, you’re not a different person. But you could well be different, in as much as what you’ve endured would change anybody’s attitude, and the way they thought and felt about things – anyone that is who has any sensitivity at all, which my father assures me most people have. So yes – you are bound to have changed. Events change us all, and the events you have just been through must have affected you deeply.’

  George looked at her long and hard, and then nodded several times more to himself than to her, before turning away to look back at his image in the glass, as if to check that physically at least he was the same person.

  ‘I think that’s very well put, Amelia,’ he said, still looking at himself. ‘Very well put indeed. I was afraid I might have changed entirely. Not towards you, I hasten to add.’ He turned to her and half smiled. ‘I haven’t changed towards you one bit. Not my feelings. In fact the longer I was away from you, the more – the more I felt for you.’ He gave a deep sigh and shook his head. ‘It’s just that since coming home, since being back here, I can’t help it – I feel so very different. I feel as if I’m an entirely different person. Everywhere I go, where I walk, what I see – I keep trying to feel what I did before I went away. But I can’t. I don’t. I feel inside me – inside I feel as if I’m someone else. A stranger. An outsider. In fact there are times when it’s as if I was standing outside of myself, as if I was completely detached. Watching myself as if I was another person. You don’t think I’m going mad, do you?’

  Suddenly to Amelia he looked like a little boy again, as frightened as he had been when they were both climbing the great apple tree in his garden and he had fallen from a high branch, landing so heavily on his back that he could not move for what seemed an age. Have I broken it, Amelia? he had wondered in a whisper when he found he could not move his legs. Do you think I’m going to die?Now he seemed as frightened, looking anxiously at Amelia while waiting for her verdict. No, you’re not going to die, George, she had told him. Look – you can move your toes, and your fingers. Just as she told him now that she didn’t think he was going mad.

  ‘George,’ she said, getting up and going to his side to take his hand. ‘I can’t imagine what this must be like for you. Coming back to this place, to your home, your family and your friends--’

  ‘And to you.’

  ‘To me as well,’ Amelia nodded. ‘I can have absolutely no idea what it must be like. None of us can, at least we women can’t, and neither can those men who have never fought. Your father will understand – he has to. This sort of thing has been his entire life, so he must understand your feelings, although I have to say from what I gather that compared with all you have been through in this particular war--’

  ‘I don’t think my father understands,’ George interrupted. ‘Not any more. I think he’s shut himself off from this sort of thing. Otherwise – otherwise he couldn’t have gone on. It wouldn’t have been possible.’

  ‘What about you, George? What are you going to do?’

  ‘That’s the whole point. I don’t think I’ll be able to do what my father has done. I don’t think I’m capable of it.’

  ‘But why? You? I mean you’re—’

  ‘Yes?’

  Amelia stopped and fell silent, afraid once more of saying the wrong thing.

  ‘I’m a hero, you mean,’ George said for her. ‘A VC. I am Captain George Dashwood VC, the illustrious soldier son of an illustrious soldier father.’

  ‘Give it time, George,’ Amelia said, taking his hand in both of hers. ‘Papa said you would need time.’

  ‘You’ve been discussing this with your father?’

  ‘Only because he sensed your pain on your return. My father may not have ever fought, not physically. But he has in his mind, over and over again.’

  George considered what she had just said, closed his eyes and shook his head regretfully.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Amelia. I’ve spoiled it all for you. I’m so terribly sorry. I shouldn’t have talked about this now. Not on this day of all days.’

  ‘Which day is that, George?’

  ‘Your birthday.’

  ‘Oh. Is that all it is?’

  George opened his eyes wide. He stared at her in wonder.

  ‘You surely don’t—’ he began, then stopped to start again. ‘After all I’ve just said?’

  ‘You haven’t said anything, George. Other than you’re finding it difficult being home.’

  ‘I’ve changed, Amelia.’

  ‘So? So have I. Every morning when we wake up, we’re all different. Different from the way we were the day before. Otherwise there would have been no point in living the day before.’

  ‘I think I’ve changed quite a lot, Amelia. A lot more than that.’

  ‘So? If that’s the case, then let’s find out.’

  ‘You mean—?’

  ‘Yes, George. I do.’

  ‘You mean you still want to marry me?’

  ‘More than anything in the world.’

  The next thing Amelia knew she was in his arms while he hugged her to him so tightly she thought he might asphyxiate her. She managed to raise one hand to reach up to him, touching the back of his head, stroking his thick dark hair gently and rhythmically, the way her mother used to stroke her own hair whenever she had cried as a child.

  ‘It’s all right, George,’ she whispered. ‘You’re going to be fine. Really you are. I shall make sure. I shall look after you.’

  A moment later George eased his hold on her, leaning back so that he could look into her eyes.

  ‘Do you love me, Amelia? Do you love me as much as I love you?’

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that, George. I don’t know how much you love me. But if it’s as much as I love you, then yes – I must do.’

  From the way he was looking at her surely now he would kiss her. Amelia, lost in the look he was giving her, feeling her heart starting to pound, felt sure that would be the outcome. She saw his face coming closer and closed her eyes, only to hear the library door open and the voice of Grimes informing them both that they were required at the family table.

  Arm in arm they made their way dutifully to where both sets of parents aw
aited them, and judging from their universal expression it was clear they considered the two of them had enjoyed more than enough liberty to get the matter of the marriage proposal safely out of the way. The announcement that followed seemed merely a formality since George had already obtained Clarence Dennison’s permission to ask his daughter to marry him on his last leave, so although the news was greeted with pleasure it really came as no great surprise. Even so, as soon as the engagement was formally announced the whole gathering greeted it with genuine delight, George and Amelia being seen as the ideal couple.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Hermione said, taking Amelia aside from the group of people crowding round George to congratulate him. ‘You got him, then.’

  ‘That isn’t a very nice way of putting it. I did not set out to get George and you know it.’

  ‘Sorry, darling. I’m just jealous. I mean, look. Look around you – not a decent free chap in sight. The only ones who are there for the taking have all got something dreadful wrong with them, thanks to the war, or had something dreadful wrong with them which prevented them from going to fight in it. You really don’t know how lucky you are, Amelia Dennison.’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Hermione. Someone as pretty and as much fun as you will soon find someone.’

  ‘Amelia – you don’t know the score. Haven’t you heard? Not only are there no young men, but the few who are still alive and in one piece are being snapped up by the war widows – the ones with money and estates they’ve been left by their dead husbands. So what chance have girls like me? My mother is trying to persuade Papa to give me a “dot”, some sort of inheritance, now – and she means a decent one too – because otherwise she thinks I shall never be off their hands. And she’s right.’

  The leader of the orchestra was calling everyone onto the floor for the last waltz, so Amelia excused herself and went to rejoin George who she saw was looking round for her. When he gathered her up in his arms to dance Amelia suddenly felt that part of her dream was going to come true after all, for just as she had imagined George waltzed her out onto the deserted terrace and he led her to a corner out of sight of the dancers. For one heavenly and heart-stopping moment, as George took both her hands, Amelia thought at last she was to be kissed, but after looking very seriously at her George did nothing more than shake his head.