The Tea Gardens

by Fiona McIntosh

  I frowned. ‘Don’t go vague. What’s your point?’

  ‘I think it wants honesty. It wants me to admit to understanding that what I feel for you is the love I’ve been denied and that I have denied others. And if you’ll forgive the presumption, I think it wants you to admit that you’ve settled for the man you’ve agreed to marry before fully exploring the potential for love that actually hurts when you can’t have it any more.’

  ‘That is presumptuous,’ I said, barely controlling my breathing. I could see my chest expanding with fury but I suppose part of me knew that Saxon saw the truth of me. He saw beyond the carefully composed exterior and the perfect, neatly organised life I’d built around myself. Jove was the safe marriage decision but I did love him.

  ‘I don’t mean for a moment that you don’t care enormously for him, Isla, or perhaps if we hadn’t met, that you wouldn’t consider it true love. But, if we turned it into a numerical formula, I think ninety per cent of you is committed to the man you’re pledged to but you’ve held a small fraction back. And while you didn’t know why then, you do know why now. No one’s listening. So be honest. If you could be with me permanently without hurting anyone or letting someone down, would you choose it?’

  I swallowed softly. ‘Yes.’

  He nodded. ‘And so would I choose the same. Isla, I’ve never loved nor will I love anyone as I do you but we’ve met in the wrong time so in this moment of the year 1933 it feels wrong and potentially destructive.’

  Our fingers laced across his bedspread.

  It hurt to know he was right. How could I disagree? ‘Saxon, when we kissed, were you thinking about Frances?’

  ‘No.’ It came out as a harsh sound. ‘And I’m not even embarrassed to admit it, nor am I thinking about her now.’

  ‘Meanwhile, I am embarrassed to admit that I didn’t think of Jove until later.’

  ‘They amount to the same, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Does that mean we can separate ourselves?’

  ‘Buddhism, the main religion in this part of the world, encourages detachment from material things. I’m unconvinced we can apply it specifically to ourselves but up here in the lap of the gods I’m sure you’ll admit that you feel aloof from the world you know.’

  I couldn’t deny it. ‘It’s as though I’m on a different planet.’

  He gave a shrug of helplessness. ‘I always see my life through a lens of clarity here. I’m certain Brackenridge does sit between worlds.’

  I liked this concept. Somewhere in those words permission was being given.

  ‘And so the world we come from can’t touch us?’

  His gaze rested heavily upon me now; I could feel the weight of consideration.

  ‘Are you looking for sanction, Isla?’

  ‘I’m looking for a way to spend a little forbidden time with you before I must return to my life and the world I know and belong to.’

  I watched the blue eyes narrow. ‘You want to be guilt-free? Impossible. Guilt is the companion of all lovers because there’s almost always someone being hurt within the equation of that relationship.’

  I made a decision that shocked me with its speed. ‘Then I shall confront my guilt later, on my own when I feel like it. But right now I want to love you. I’ve never felt like this about anyone and before I commit myself to being only with one man for the rest of my life and giving him my absolute all when I take a holy vow to love and honour him, which I shall never break, I want a short selfish moment in spinsterhood of being permitted to love with abandon that doesn’t hurt anyone who doesn’t know about it.’ I’d never felt more certain about anything.

  His eyes glittered. ‘That’s a dangerous concept, Isla.’

  ‘Even so,’ I pressed, appalled and yet somehow undaunted by this path of reckless behaviour, ‘how else can I learn about loving Jove until I have something to compare it to? I will not give him up; you will not turn away from Frances. So we are safe in the knowledge that the people we are committed to shall be untouched by this special bond we share.’

  ‘And then you’ll ruthlessly walk away from it?’ He sounded surprised for once.

  ‘Yes.’ I was unequivocal and it felt true. I genuinely believed that what I shared with Saxon was entirely separate to how I felt about Jove but that I would walk on with Jove and leave Saxon and whatever we had now well and truly behind.

  ‘I think we both need to sleep on that,’ he said, a note of bewilderment in his voice that even caught him off-guard. I was shaken that we weren’t acting upon my decisiveness immediately. It felt like I was the one with a fever, my body warming with each passing minute that we talked so openly about making love.

  But I could hear the sense of his suggestion. Just like Jove, he seemed to possess a wisdom or a perspective that I didn’t yet have. I trusted his instinct as I had trusted Jove’s the previous year. I nodded and began to shift to depart his room, but he lifted his coverlet. ‘Don’t leave me. Lie down next to me and let’s sleep.’

  Without questioning it further, and fully clothed, I gently eased myself into his bed, my back turned to him as he fitted his long body along the length of mine. We moulded together as though we’d been carved that way. And with a paper bird cupped gently in my hand and chicken soup cooling alongside us, we drifted into silent thought and ultimately into sleep within that embrace.

  23

  I stirred from a dream in which I was flying among snow-capped mountains. It was peaceful, as though I was my spirit trapped within a bird. I was aware that I was dreaming, drifting between nearly awake and still asleep, and I was content. I tried to hold on to it but the calming dream began to fade with the new awareness that I was not alone.

  I heard a crack of bones.

  Eyes slitted open, I spied Saxon standing at the open window, unaware that I’d woken. He was gloriously naked; his back to me, he was stretching tall with fingers laced high above his head. His flesh was lean across his frame but he looked strong despite the toll of his illness. The mere fact that he could be this physical was testimony to the departure of fever. He would improve quickly now, I suspected, with the cool mountain air, good food and plenty of rest. He’d beaten his weakness into submission again. Latent TB was such an oddity, often showing some consumptive-like symptoms, but with rest and care it was like recovering from a flu. I think my father always hoped – prayed, even – that my mother’s version in the early days was latent, and perhaps it even was. I’d discovered in my study that a small percentage of sufferers would develop active TB and suffer the full range of its debilitation, often including death. My mother was one of the unlucky ones, and Saxon clearly one of those blessed by resistance, although I wondered how later in life, as he aged, he might fight off that lack of contagion switching to active TB. I didn’t want to dwell on it as I watched him in all of his naked beauty.

  Saxon held that pose for a full minute, I estimated, before he shocked me by reaching backwards and bending himself in half to grip his calves. It looked like an impossible position, one I was sure would snap me in two if I tried, and yet he seemed to find this position with ease, and he held it for another weighty minute.

  Fascinated, I watched him move through a series of moves, each seemingly more complex and challenging than the previous. My favourite was without doubt the final one – he effected a handstand in a sinuous movement so fluid he could have been a dancer or acrobat. The burn did not seem to trouble him through these movements. He was healing well. Dust motes floated about him like adoring sparkles that seemed to add to the lustre of the moment. His golden hair flopped heavily like a mop poised to sweep across the floorboards and the sunlight caught its natural glints and, together with the dancing dust, turned him into a sort of angelic presence, suspended in stillness for me to admire.

  I presumed he followed this routine daily as his eyes were closed and he seemed to be entirely within himself. It did, of course, give me the irresistible opportunity to let my gaze roam every inch of his at
hletic, if still rather shrunken, body and I realised that it was this daily exercise that kept him so fit and strong. It also answered my private query as to how he made swift recoveries.

  Saxon was beautiful. I could not deny that watching him was a pleasurable indulgence. His uninhibited nudity stirred something else within me too. I was used to naked bodies but they were usually desperately ill and my mind was only focused on healing, not seeing their individuality. But I was seeing all the masculine joy of Saxon, the man, in this moment, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit I wanted to feel his body against mine.

  He snapped his eyes open and caught me watching him intently. The upside-down grin stretched.

  ‘Still here?’

  I smiled.

  ‘Don’t move.’ In a single, brisk action he had flipped himself neatly to his feet and I was almost sad to see him reach for his loose pyjama trousers and cover his bottom half.

  He came to sit beside me and I could see how much improved he was. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  He shrugged. ‘About six, I suppose. The fever has passed.’

  ‘You can’t —’

  ‘Trust it, I know, I know. But I feel vastly improved. My wrist and forearm feel less tender, drying too. It must be your soup.’

  I shifted to glance over to the tray and back at him, slightly perplexed.

  ‘Even cold, it’s delicious. I ate both bowls. Now I feel strong.’ He flexed his biceps to make a point, which I found amusing. I was not used to Saxon Vickery being playful, unless he was drunk, of course. He grinned wider. ‘Feeling awkward?’ he wondered, looking at me clothed and fully buttoned.

  My hands were gripping the sheet close to my neck. ‘Er, no, perfectly at ease.’ Irony bounced off my assurance and it prompted a delicious bellow of laughter.

  ‘You are such a dreadful liar, Isla Fenwick. Heaven help you when you say to your new husband that your trip to Darjeeling was uneventful. Run while you can.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or I shall have to undress and ravage you. You cannot be in my bed and not anticipate that I would —’

  I squealed and leapt up and away as he pretended to grab for me. We were both laughing.

  ‘What a tease you are,’ he accused and then his features straightened, I suppose at my uncomfortable expression. ‘I’m only joking, Isla. I don’t expect —’

  ‘I know, I know.’ I did feel awkward. Thoughts of Jove and promises made crowded around me.

  ‘Let me run a bath for you,’ he said. ‘Life always feels easier from the perspective of a deep tub.’

  I grinned. ‘It’s not like you to be this carefree, Saxon.’

  ‘I don’t think you know me that well to make such an observation,’ he countered. ‘In Brackenridge life is carefree.’ He disappeared into his bathroom and I heard him clattering around, water splashing into the tub, and I smiled sadly. There was no escaping the fact that I wanted him: to hold him, to kiss him again. I wanted to be naked beside him, to feel his skin against mine, to feel him all around me and within me. It felt empowering to be this honest with myself . . . I set guilt to one side with the rest of the invisible critics to glare at me but its potency had dulled while allowing truth to become my shield.

  This, I now knew, was what wise Jove had been talking about on that cold evening in London when he had aired his conditions of our betrothal. How sad then that I had borne out his fear; I was predictable and capricious, two qualities I never thought could be levelled at me.

  Saxon returned to the room where I stood near a bed that looked rumpled from lovemaking but was innocent of that charge . . . for now.

  He sighed. ‘You look pensive.’

  ‘Guilty conscience,’ I admitted.

  ‘Over a bath?’ I know he was teasing me but also trying to lighten my load. ‘I won’t look.’

  ‘Now who’s a terrible liar?’ I couldn’t resist him. I couldn’t turn away from this moment or I would yearn for it for the rest of my life. ‘How is your conscience?’

  ‘Untroubled. Men have affairs and most of them never leave their wives.’

  ‘Bastards. Jove wouldn’t see another woman.’

  ‘You can’t be that sure of anyone, Isla, but let’s say he is as pure as you suggest, then you will be one of the luckiest brides who walks the planet and he is worth feeling guilty over. Whereas I’m not. So ruthlessly take what you feel like from me and then equally ruthlessly turn your back and go home.’ Saxon pointed over his shoulder. ‘I’m getting in. Whatever you decide, I can live with, even if you steal away now and we don’t lay eyes on each other again.’ He disappeared into the bathroom and I heard the soft splash as he lowered himself into the warmth with a sigh.

  I remained where I was, taking another few precious moments in contemplation. I was not married. I was not even officially engaged. I was promised to someone in November . . . in England. So if I joined Saxon in the next room, I was not being unfaithful to anything, because it was still August 1933. Jove had all but suggested this might happen and virtually given permission by insisting I not wear his ring or commit us publicly until I was home again and could physically become his fiancée. Could I make that slippery rationale feel strong enough in my mind to live with?

  I paused on the threshold of what I knew was potentially the biggest decision of my life.

  _________

  ‘Still here?’ He didn’t open his eyes as the ephemeral colours of bath bubbles glistened and popped around him in dozens of tiny explosions at once. Whatever was about to begin between us would be as evanescent as those spheres . . . unique and short-lived but real.

  I undressed silently, leaving my clothes in a pile around my ankles, and I paused to watch him. He had not stolen a peek; his head was leaned against a rolled towel and his injured arm lay across the bath’s edge. The rest of his body was submerged and statue-like. Steam drifted off the mostly still surface, which shifted only barely to the rhythm of his breathing. Curiously, my heartbeat had slowed and my breath came gently and steadily. More reason to trust my decision.

  ‘May I?’ I said, but without waiting for further permission I lowered myself into the water to sit on top of Saxon’s long legs, his feet braced against the end of the bath as I lay back against his chest. I think I let out a low, slow sigh at the soothing warmth as though I were trapped in one of those bubbles, and then there was the new, thrilling feel of his frame beneath me.

  We exchanged nothing for what felt like several minutes; time had surely slowed but the sensation of our skins touching intimately for that period was all that mattered. And then, as if I’d given silent permission, Saxon’s arm reached around me to hold me in a hug that felt so secure I turned passive, yielding entirely to him.

  Because we were naked, when he finally spoke, I felt his voice as an echo from his chest to mine.

  ‘If such a state is possible, then in this moment I have arrived at perfect contentment,’ he said. There was nothing mocking or even vaguely amorous in his words.

  I felt much the same. When I hadn’t replied after another protracted period, he shifted slightly. ‘Isla? Are you dead?’

  I wanted to laugh, stop him making fun of me, but I was feeling such a surge of emotion I wanted him to know it. ‘The French have a phrase – au courant – which means to be entirely cognisant.’

  ‘Fully aware,’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes, literally . . . in the current. That’s how I’m feeling . . . like a light bulb has been switched on for the first time.’

  He squeezed, holding me closer, but I was enjoying his restraint in not rushing me into anything more physical. ‘That’s nice. I’m your electricity.’

  I chuckled. ‘I don’t know what you are, Saxon, but you’ve unwittingly changed my life.’

  ‘Is that a good thing?’

  ‘Probably not, but I can’t shift it back now, nor do I want to. This is precisely what Jove warned me might happen.’

  ‘An affair?�
� he queried, sounding bewildered.

  ‘No, but he wanted us to be promised rather than make a public engagement or for me to wear the exquisite ring he gave me. I thought it harsh at the time.’

  Saxon wrapped his legs around me, shifting how he held me so he could reach beneath my arms to hold my breasts. A tremor shook through me but if he felt it, he didn’t react. ‘Except now you understand this was his generosity shining through?’ It was odd discovering how ungrudging he was towards Jove, or was it simply ambivalence? I couldn’t pin it down.

  I nodded. ‘Travel would change me, he insisted. It would open me up to new experiences, new people. While I accepted his advice, I didn’t understand back then to what he was referring.’

  ‘Your Jove sounds like a wise man, although I would guess that his precaution might be protection, perhaps, for his fragile heart as much as for your freedom.’

  Whorls of steam lifted from the water’s surface, scenting the air around us with a woody smell of bath salts that I would always remember as the scent of Saxon Vickery. Mysore sandalwood, in particular, with vetiver and then an onslaught of warm, peppery notes, perhaps some cardamom and ginger.

  ‘It’s distressing to realise that he knew I might be vulnerable to romance, even though I had claimed I was impervious to other advances.’

  I watched Saxon reach for the soap. ‘There have been no advances. I think you’re being unfair on yourself. I’m guessing here but I doubt something as intangible, invisible or as life-altering as love – which you know I don’t claim to understand – can be planned for when it just steals into your life like a wraith.’ He couldn’t see it but I smiled sadly at the word love suddenly being discussed, watching him soap his hands, loving the golden-haired arms that moved beneath my breasts as he did so. ‘Come on, let’s not be maudlin. Our time is limited.’ I thought he meant here at Brackenridge, but as usual with Saxon there was jest. ‘This bathwater won’t stay hot for long.’