The Kissing Garden

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Of course not, Mrs Dashwood,’ George replied easily. ‘When do I ever?’

  For the next couple of weeks Amelia saw very little of George other than in the evenings, by which time he was too exhausted to do much more than drink his whisky and soda and eat his dinner before collapsing in front of the fire and shortly afterwards collapsing into bed. Despite being well used to living with George’s moods when he was writing, it did occur to Amelia that his new book seemed to be taking more out of him than the previous ones. Night after night he would take himself back to his study after dinner leaving her alone with her tapestry, while hardly had the dawn chorus struck up first thing in the morning before he seemed to be back in his study, hard at work once more.

  ‘There can’t be that much further to go, surely?’ Amelia asked him at the end of one marathon stint. ‘A couple of weeks ago you told me you were on the home run.’

  ‘It fell to pieces,’ George replied simply. ‘Now you see it, now you don’t. Jack told me this often happens with thriller writing. You think you have it all beautifully worked out, then right at the last moment you find a flaw, usually one which unravels the entire piece of knitting. That’s just what I did. And now on top of everything I have to dash up to London.’

  ‘To London?’ Amelia repeated as if he had said ‘China’. Since this was the last thing she was expecting. ‘But when? And why?’

  ‘The end of this week. Look, I’m sorry, but Jack rang and--’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘There wouldn’t be anything for you to do.’

  ‘Nothing to do, George?’ Amelia laughed. ‘I can go shopping! Have my hair done properly! See all those lovely clothes in all those lovely shops which I know I can’t possibly afford! Go to some art galleries! Go to the theatre! Nothing for me to do? You’re getting as bad as Hermione’s husband! His Awful Crossness.’

  ‘I thought you were happy in the country,’ George replied with a worried frown. ‘I didn’t think you liked going to town that much.’

  ‘I’m a woman, George. And still quite a young one, in case you had not noticed. So however much I love this place – which I do – I like going to London. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with straws in my hair!’

  ‘Of course not.’ George fell silent, standing with his back to her staring out of the window across the lawns. ‘Damn,’ he said finally. ‘Oh, damn it anyway.’

  ‘George?’

  ‘It’s just that I have to go up for more than one day and night. I have meetings all day Wednesday, a dinner to attend that night, business most of the next day and another big dinner on Thursday.’

  ‘Am I not invited? To the dinners?’

  ‘They’re not dinner parties, they’re business dinners. Come by all means, but I won’t be free to take you out in the evening as usual. Or even to see much of you during the day.’

  Amelia considered the prospect and finally thought better of it. Had Hermione settled in London rather than Yorkshire she could have happily spent the time with her, but it was far too short notice to expect Hermione to drop everything and dash down south merely to keep Amelia company, and so, rather than face the prospect of spending nearly three days on her own in town, she soon saw there was far more sense in remaining behind at The Priory, where even at that time of year there was always plenty to do in the garden.

  So on Tuesday afternoon she helped George to pack, at his request carefully puffing his favourite photograph of herself into one of his crocodile skin cases and kissing him goodbye upstairs in the bedroom, downstairs in the hall and outside in the driveway, before finally leaning down to kiss him inside the Bentley as he settled himself behind the wheel.

  ‘I love you, Mrs Dashwood,’ he smiled, pulling on his leather driving gauntlets. ‘More than I can ever say.’

  ‘And I love you, Captain Dashwood,’ Amelia returned. ‘More than anyone will ever know.’

  She stood in the drive waving to the car long after it had gone, because she was still so suffused with love for George, and then, realizing that he had truly gone, she dropped her hand, and turned to go back into the house. As she did so it occurred to her that The Priory perhaps more than anything else in their lives, had helped them through all their difficulties, and not just because of the Kissing Garden. There was so much besides. Even the fabric of the house made a statement about life and how it should be lived, the kindness of its old stone having about it a noble simplicity, with no silly values like those with which, she was suddenly sure, the city abounded.

  Twenty

  ‘I should imagine that was something you didn’t bargain for,’ Amelia said, throwing that day’s copy of the Daily Mail onto George’s lap as he sat with his evening drink before the fire.

  ‘Whether I did or did not, Amelia,’ George groaned. ‘So what?’

  ‘So what?’ Amelia picked the newspaper up again and waved it in his face. ‘There’d be nothing for you to do, Amelia! It’s all boring meetings and business dinners!’

  ‘That was a business dinner,’ George said patiently.

  ‘A private party at Lady Astley’s Mayfair residence? With half of London Society present? And you photographed with the hostess having cocktails? Some business dinner. A monkey business dinner if you ask me.’

  ‘If you would listen – just for a minute—’

  ‘There’s a whole report on the Society pages, George! I’ve never seen such a glittering guest list! And yet, for some reason I cannot fathom, your wife was not invited.’

  ‘If you would just listen for a minute?’

  ‘Very well. But what I am about to listen to had better be good.’ Amelia lit herself a cigarette, picked up her drink, and sat down opposite George, glaring at him.

  ‘I had no idea there was going to be any such dinner, I give you my word. It was sprung on me at the last moment.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Amelia seethed. ‘I mean this looks like one of those parties they throw together at the last moment. Doesn’t it?’

  ‘I was at a reception the night before—’

  ‘Where? What sort of reception?’

  ‘It really doesn’t matter where.’

  ‘You bet it matters where! Receptions are generally preceded by invitations. So was I excluded from that one as well?’

  ‘It was at The Ritz. It was thrown by the newspaper I’m meant to be writing these pieces for—’

  ‘And I wasn’t invited?’

  ‘Yes of course you were invited – but knowing how much you hate these things – and since that was the only invitation which actually included you on this particular trip – I didn’t think you’d mind.’

  ‘So you lied.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t lie.’

  ‘Of course you lied, George. You said there was nothing for me to do and that none of your appointments included me.’

  ‘I didn’t lie. I just didn’t mention that boring old reception because that’s all I considered it to be. A boring old reception, which it certainly was.’

  ‘At which it just so happened you were invited to Lady Astley’s swanky soirée.’

  ‘At the last minute.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh – thank you,’ George said in mock surprise. ‘Why do you think? They were short of men, obviously. Since the war everyone is always short of men, darling, you know that. You and Hermione are always talking about it. It was the apparent reason why poor Hermione got herself hitched to His Always Crossness, wasn’t it?’

  ‘There is no need to be sarcastic, George. Hermione is living the life of the damned and trying to make the best of it. She thought the beastly man was nice. It wasn’t until the gates of that horrible house in which he has her incarcerated slammed behind her that she realized he was some sort of Bluebeard. He keeps her so short of money she has to beg the servants to give her some of their grub. I mean to say – but that has nothing to do with the matter in hand. Tell me why you were at the Astleys’. And no half-truths, George, or I promise you the
re will be hot tea everywhere except in your cup.’

  ‘My story is quite simple. Jack knows the Astleys, he introduced us, and Lady Astley asked me if I would like to go to dinner. End of story.’

  ‘I could have caught the train.’

  ‘You could. But then you weren’t invited.’

  ‘You could have made sure I was invited.’

  ‘Would you have come?’

  ‘Of course I’d have come! I mean look who was there!’

  ‘It was very short notice.’

  ‘You didn’t want me to come.’

  ‘Of course I wanted you to come. It just wasn’t – it wasn’t--’

  ‘Convenient.’

  ‘Politic. It just wasn’t politic.’

  ‘It was certainly a political enough party, George,’ Amelia said, snatching the paper back from him. ‘Half the Cabinet was there. Lord Upton—’

  ‘I know who was there. It just wasn’t possible to invite you.’

  ‘There just happened to be one chair free for you.’

  ‘It just happened that they really rather wanted me to be there. For purely business reasons.’

  ‘What sort of business do you do with these people, George?’ Amelia asked in disbelief. ‘Old Sir Marmaduke Astley made his money out of shipping--’

  ‘Ships’ rivets to be precise—’

  ‘So don’t tell me he’s gone into potboilers now? Or maybe you were doing business with Lady Astley? She’s renowned, isn’t she? For doing business with handsome young men?’

  George said nothing. He just took the paper away from Amelia and threw it on the fire before lighting himself another cigarette.

  ‘You’re being a little childish,’ he said, after he had allowed her a short but potent two-minute sulk.

  ‘I am not being childish, George! I am being feminine! I’m a woman! A wife! Someone with a very attractive husband who says he’s going to London for one reason and then gets caught out going to a party with one of Society’s most notorious hostesses!’

  ‘Purely for business, Amelia.’

  ‘What sort of business, George?’

  ‘That I can’t tell you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why? Why should it be such a secret?’

  George looked at her and shrugged. ‘Because that’s how it is, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Is it to do with your work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Do you promise promise, George? Do you swear?’

  ‘I promise promise and I swear, Amelia.’

  ‘Hm.’ Amelia, who had got up again to pace round the room, gave George a long look and then sat down opposite him again. ‘Is she as beautiful as everyone says? In person, I mean.’

  ‘Deanna Astley?’

  ‘No, George, her cook. Yes of course Deanna Astley! She certainly looks it. I saw all these pictures of her in the Tatler at one of their famous parties at their house on the Thames. She’s quite tall, isn’t she? And she looks as though she has a fabulous figure. As well as being about fifty years younger than her husband.’

  ‘Not quite,’ George laughed. ‘She is a lot younger, twenty-five years perhaps? And she certainly is very elegant, and tall, yes – I would think she’s about five feet ten – and she is formidably bright, although she’s one of those women who manages not to put men off by appearing too intelligent. I mean, she is a very skilled woman, socially that is. And so she should be, given the exalted circles she moves in.’

  ‘Is she attractive?’

  ‘Very. But there’s no need to look like that, Amelia – I didn’t find her attractive. But she obviously is because she was continually surrounded by the best-looking as well as the most powerful men present.’

  ‘They say her husband turns a blind eye to her affairs.’

  ‘Perhaps he does,’ George replied. ‘I don’t know. But from the way he looks at her I should imagine he is still madly in love with her.’

  ‘You obviously talked to her, probably at length.’

  ‘Obviously, and probably.’

  ‘Just before dinner? Or after dinner as well?’

  ‘During dinner.’

  ‘You were sitting near her?’

  ‘I was sitting next to her.’

  Amelia stared at him. ‘Even though you were a last-minute invite? Even though she had only met you the night before?’

  ‘It seems she had read my books,’ George said with a sigh. ‘C’estla vie. People do.’

  ‘It had better not be c’est l’amour.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Amelia.’

  ‘I am not being silly, George! I am being the very opposite!’

  In a fury of jealousy and resentment Amelia put down her drink and, followed by their dogs, went out into the garden to cool off. It was a cold evening but Amelia was past caring about her comfort, too upset by this turn of events and too dismayed to think that George might have been lying to her. She could think of absolutely no reason why he should have gone to all these lengths to take himself off to London by himself other than the fact that he had already arranged to go to dinner with Deanna Astley. The only point on which her reasoning kept floundering was that as far as she knew there had been no other occasion in recent memory when George could possibly have met Deanna Astley, unless he had been lying about some of his previous visits to London when he had ostensibly been meeting Jack Cornwall.

  She stood on the Chinese bridge over the carp ponds watching the reflection of the moon as it slowly rose in the clear night sky, staring at the stars in the dark waters which rippled in the night wind with the slow movements of the large fish lazing just below the surface, occasionally rising to catch a last meal of the day. The dogs had disappeared down the watermeadows, where she could hear them happily barking as they chased some poor bewildered bird or startled rabbit, and when they stopped their barking and began to pad their way back to the bridge in answer to their mistress’s whistle she could hear the sucking of a carp as it searched for food in the rushes near by and the quiet call of a night bird high up and invisible in a tree somewhere.

  But she could hear nothing of the man who stood watching her from the opposite bank, even though he stood in full moonlight, even though the stars reflected in his dark green eyes and the night light caught the gold on the girdle of his gown.

  Days later Amelia was out working in the garden, her first task of the day to cut back the climbing rose which seemed to have lost its way around the wall outside George’s study. As she carefully placed her wooden ladder against the stonework four feet from his window she saw him sitting at his desk with his back to her, taking a telephone call. Unwilling to overhear his conversation without his knowing, she was just about to call out and warn him of her presence when she made the mistake of stopping and listening.

  ‘Because it just isn’t fair on Amelia – puts such a strain on the family.’

  George stopped to listen to what whoever it was on the other end of the line had to say, and Amelia found herself flattening herself against the wall, just as she had seen people do in films when they were overhearing things which were none of their affair.

  ‘It’s not the same for you. You’ve lived your whole life as a lie,’ George went on when the other person had finished, and he ended with ‘very well, I’ll think about it’ before replacing the receiver once more.

  Amelia at once eased her way back along the wall and jumped down into the garden, and very relieved she was that she had when she saw George’s study window swinging wide open. She immediately bent over some plants.

  ‘Amelia! Where are you?’

  ‘Here!’ she waved one garden-gloved hand back at him as she began to pick her way back towards the study.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just thinning out the sedums, actually.’

  ‘We thinned the sedums out at the weekend.’

  ‘Yes, so we did.’

  She straightened up and looked ov
er at him. She knew she should say something to him yet she did not. She knew absolutely that something said now would prevent the pain which would inevitably follow, but she still said nothing.

  This is what it is like, Amelia thought, as she watched him. This is what deceit between a man and a woman is like, what it feels like, this is how it hurts, this is how despair tastes. Yet all I have to do is reach out – I just have to put my hand on his and say, George who were you talking to? And if he pretends he wasn’t speaking to anyone, or if he tells me a whole conversation which I know he hasn’t had, then I shall know he’s being unfaithful. But if he doesn’t – if he sighs that great sigh of his and says, Why do you always get the wrong end of the stick? It was a surprise – a surprise I was organizing for you and it was all backfiring, or some such typical George excuse or reason, then I shall know it was all a misunderstanding. That George is as he always is – that I have made a fool of myself – and then we’ll laugh, and he’ll kiss me, and we’ll laugh some more, I’ll tell him what fool I am, he’ll assure me I’m no such thing and the whole thing will be forgotten.

  Yet I can’t. I can’t say a thing in case I’m wrong. In case I’m wrong to hope what I hope and right in suspecting what I fear to be the truth. So because I’m so frightened, so terrified in case this is the case, I’m not going to say a thing – and George is coming out to have a cup of coffee with me, but he’s not going to say a thing either.

  For a moment George stood by the table. ‘Amelia,’ he began, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Thinking he was about to confess his infidelity Amelia suddenly pushed back her chair and stood up, panic-stricken. ‘You will always love me, won’t you, Amelia?’

  ‘No, I won’t, George. Certainly not.’

  George stared at her in disbelief. ‘You surely don’t mean that?’

  ‘George, be reasonable. If I say “yes” I could be giving you a pink ticket to do anything you want.’

  ‘Is that what you think? Do you really imagine I would ask such a thing of you?’

  ‘I don’t think it, no, but I do fear it.’