The Flower Garden

by Margaret Pemberton

  Nancy’s mother had shuddered. ‘It’s the King of England you’re about to meet, Chips. Not a steel magnate.’

  Chips O’Shaughnessy had grinned. He knew damned well whom he was going to meet. Hadn’t he just paid a hundred bucks to have the event photographed? He could see the man now, balancing camera and tripod on a rocking boat rowed as close to the royal yacht as protocol allowed. They’d be damned good pictures and would send up his stock in Boston. The city would like a mayor who hobnobbed with Britain’s king.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ he had said to Nancy as their launch pulled alongside and then, as they stepped aboard, Nancy saw the colour drain from his face.

  She had giggled, thinking it funny that her ebullient and rumbustious father should be so disconcerted at meeting an elderly, stout man with a beard and laughing eyes. But Chips O’Shaughnessy was looking at one of the other guests aboard the yacht and not at the king. It had been ten years and she had not changed.

  Her hair was a deep, burnished bronze, swept upwards in thick waves beneath a broad-brimmed hat decorated by a single, full-blown rose. The breeze from the Solent blew her silken skirts back against her body. The seductive gold-green eyes met his and the expression in them was agonized. He wanted to race across the deck and crush her to him.

  It had been just such a hot summer day ten years ago when they had parted. Then the breeze blowing her hair and skirts had been the stiff breeze from Boston Harbour. She had cried and cried and he had cursed heaven and her and known that he had lost her for good. Ten long years ago and the pain in his chest was like that of a knife wound. The man beside her stepped forward. He was unmistakably European: a tall man with swarthy skin and meticulously trimmed beard and moustache. One hand rested lightly and proprietorially on his wife’s shoulder, a blood-red ruby glowing in the sun. Chips could not see, but he knew that Zia’s body had tremored. The lines of pain around the soft, curving mouth were so acute that Chips wanted to cry out in protest.

  Chips could feel his wife’s fingers pressing tightly on his arm. He was aware that he was being stared at and, with a supreme effort, he collected himself. He turned his head to his wife and child, flashed the broad smile that was his trademark, and stepped confidently forward to be presented to Britain’s sovereign.

  Nancy liked the king. He was enormous and sat in a wicker chair that looked as if it would give way under his weight. He wore a blue sack coat and his white trousers were creased at the sides – which Nancy thought very strange. He smoked cigars like her father and he laughed a lot. A little boy in a sailor suit was sitting on his knee, tugging at his beard. The king was telling him jokes and roaring with laughter. Nancy didn’t understand the jokes and she didn’t think the boy did either, but it didn’t matter. When Nancy forgot to call him ‘Your Majesty’and called him ‘Kingie’ instead, he had laughed even louder and ruffled her curls, and Nancy knew that no one could be cross with her because of her mistake.

  Later on there were flutters of excitement as the news spread that the Kaiser’s launch was approaching. Nancy was very disappointed when she saw him. He wasn’t at all like the king. Instead of being jolly, he was dour and stern-faced and she was sent to play with the dark-haired boy in the sailor suit.

  ‘I don’t like girls,’ he had said rudely, and Nancy had been just about to give him a sharp kick on the shins when his mother approached.

  Nancy forgot about the boy’s rudeness. The lady smiling down at her was like a character from a fairy tale.

  ‘I’m Zia Sanford,’ she had said, holding out her hand to Nancy as if Nancy was a grown up.

  ‘And I’m Nancy O’Shaughnessy,’ Nancy had said shyly.

  ‘I know.’

  The boy stepped closer to his mother and Nancy saw them briefly touch hands. The gesture had surprised her. She realized she had never seen outward displays of affection between mothers and sons since her arrival in England.

  ‘I come from Boston too.’

  Nancy stared at her, round-eyed. She wasn’t at all like her mother or her mother’s friends. She didn’t smell of lavender or rose-water but carried with her a mysterious Eastern fragrance. There was powder on her cheeks and her eyes had been exotically lined in black pencil, the lids touched with gleaming colour.

  ‘You don’t look as if you come from Boston,’ Nancy said naively.

  ‘I’m from the old North End,’ Zia had said with a smile.

  Nancy’s incredulity deepened. She knew the North End well. It was where her father did his hardest campaigning, but the North End was poor. Ladies like Zia Sanford didn’t live there.

  ‘It must have been a long time ago,’ she said at last.

  Zia’s smile deepened. ‘It was. When your grandparents lived in Hanover Street.’

  Nancy hadn’t even known that her grandparents had done so. She wanted to know more, much more, but her parents were approaching and there was a strange expression on Zia Sanford’s face.

  ‘We’re taking our leave,’ her father had said to Mrs Sanford and Nancy had thought his voice sounded odd, as if he was coming down with a cold. There was a whiteness around his mouth that she had never seen before. She hoped he wasn’t going to be ill.

  They were going to the Riviera the following week and she was looking forward to it.

  Her hands were still trapped in Ramon’s. The untasted venison had long since been removed. Because she liked ice cream the sweet trolley had been waved away and a ridiculous tutti frutti graced the table.

  She said reminiscently: ‘Your mother was so beautiful. I thought at first she was the queen.’

  ‘She’s still beautiful.’ The sensuous mouth with its hint of savagery was suddenly gentle. Nancy remembered the open affection between mother and son.

  ‘She told me she came from Boston and I didn’t believe her.’

  ‘I find it very hard to believe myself. To me my mother is totally European.’

  In the candlelight he looked very foreign. ‘As you are.’

  ‘Yes, as I am. My father was wholly Portuguese.’

  She didn’t want to talk about his father.

  ‘Did you go to Cowes again?’ she asked, slipping her fingers from his and running them around the rim of the glass.

  ‘Yes, but it wasn’t the same. There was a new king, thinner and quieter. And instead of the Kaiser there was the Tsar. He seemed even less like a king than George V, very quiet and subdued. There was no more royal gaiety after Bertie.’

  ‘I never met him. My father was mayor of Boston by then and I never went to Europe again. Not until my marriage.’

  There was a tiny silence. Ramon had no intention of darkening the conversation with the spectre of the distant senator.

  ‘I could never quite understand why you were invited aboard the Victoria and Albert. I was an awful snob for a boy of eight.’

  ‘You probably heard your parents wondering the same thing,’ Nancy said, smiling. ‘My father was barely tolerated by most of the aristocracy. They considered him brash and vulgar: which he was. He was also the most loveable eccentric and the English are tolerant of eccentrics. I think that was his saving grace. My mother’s pedigree was impeccable. William the Conqueror was quite a latecomer in her family tree, so the combination of English blue blood and American wealth gave them entry practically everywhere.’

  ‘Despite your father’s Irishness?’ Ramon asked, quizzically.

  Nancy’s smile deepened. ‘My father’s Irishness wasn’t quite so blatant in those days. You forget that he’s a politician.’

  ‘From what I hear, your father never lets anyone forget that. Will he get the mayoralty again? He must be close to seventy now.’

  The ice cream had been removed and coffee and liqueurs littered the table. She gave him no opportunity of reclaiming her hands. They cradled her liqueur glass as she said, ‘Sixty-nine – and he’ll get it. If he fails he intends to run for governor.’

  ‘Then let’s hope he gets it,’ Ramon said feelingly. ‘The thought of
your father as governor is terrifying.’

  ‘His supporters wouldn’t agree with you. They’re loyal to a man.’

  ‘And are you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Nancy said simply. ‘He’s my father.’

  There it was again. Their fathers and the implacable hatred that had existed between them.

  She said hesitantly, ‘I never understood it. Why our grandfathers were like brothers and yet your father and mine …’

  He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s past history. Dead and forgotten.’

  ‘Your father owed his life to an O’Shaughnessy. O’Shaughnessys owed the seeds of their wealth to a Sanford. Yet your name is forbidden to be spoken in my father’s presence. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to.’ He had no intention of telling her what she most wanted to know.

  ‘How was your father wholly Portuguese when the Sanfords are an English family?’ she asked after a while.

  ‘My grandfather was the Visconde Fernando de Gama, a minister in Queen Maria’s government. My grandmother was twenty years his junior and very beautiful. Leo Sanford fell in love with her and didn’t play the Englishman. Instead of a discreet affaire, he abducted her. The scandal rocked Portuguese society and they had to flee to America until my grandfather died some years later. Being a maternal woman, my grandmother took her son with her. That was my father. He was two or three at the time.’

  ‘And that was when-my grandfather rescued him from the sea?’

  ‘Yes. The lovers had no time to wait for a more luxurious vessel. The outraged visconde was hard on their heels and they sailed for the New World on a ship crowded with Irish emigrants.’

  ‘It’s a very romantic story.’

  He wanted to kiss her so much it was a physical pain.

  ‘They never had a child,’ he said. ‘Leo Sanford left my father everything. The wine shipping company of Sanfords; his American business interests; his European business interests. But all on condition that he took the Sanford name. He sent my father to public school in England and did everything in his power to turn him into an Englishman.’ A smile touched his lips. ‘He failed utterly.’

  ‘But Sanfords have lived in Portugal for over three hundred years,’ Nancy protested. ‘Surely they must regard themselves as Portuguese now, not English?’

  ‘Your mother may have been English but you don’t know them very well,’ Ramon said drily. ‘Oporto is like an outpost of the British Empire. All the great wine shippers have been there since the 1700s. The Cockburns, the Sandemans, the Sanfords: yet they still don’t speak Portuguese. They play cricket on their exclusive playing fields, commandeer the beach at Foz, send their sons to public schools in England and marry the daughters of other wine shippers.’

  ‘Your grandfather didn’t.’

  ‘No, and it cost him years in exile.’

  ‘And your father married an American.’

  ‘For which I am very grateful.’ He reached across and removed her fingers from her glass, wondering why he was talking such nonsense when all he wanted to do was make love to her.

  With the touch of his fingers the ease and spontaneity of the conversation died. Nancy had never been so acutely aware of another person’s body or presence. She felt her throat tighten as she tried to continue the conversation.

  ‘I saw your mother several times after that first meeting.’

  ‘In England?’

  ‘No. In Boston. She first visited us when I was thirteen and then, after my mother’s death, she came once or twice a year. She never stayed long and I was always sad to see her go.’

  His shock was palpable. She realized that neither he nor his father had known of Zia’s visits to Boston.

  ‘Of course,’ he said impassively, ‘Boston was my mother’s home.’

  His eyes were once more an inscrutable mask. She had an overwhelming urge to see the mask slip; to see a flicker of anger or jealousy.

  ‘Jack and I honeymooned at Sanfords.’

  ‘All the best people honeymoon at Sanfords,’ he said smoothly.

  The lines around his mouth had hardened. She suddenly felt foolish. His hands released hers and he lit a cigarette.

  ‘Does Zia still spend all her time in Madeira?’ she asked, trying to recoup the ease and spontaneity that had suddenly evaporated.

  He passed a cigarette across to her. ‘Yes, she’s always loved the island and has lived there for the past twenty years.’ His voice was polite: disinterested.

  ‘And is Sanfords still more like a royal court than an hotel?’

  The conversation had deteriorated into the small talk of strangers.

  ‘The last time I was there, three months ago, there were no guests with a rank lower than that of an English duke.’

  ‘Then there must have been some very high ranking guests,’ she said spiritedly. ‘An English duke regards himself as ranking far above the exiled royals who now litter Europe.’

  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘And where does a German count from the pages of the Almanach de Goetha rank?’

  A slight tinge touched Nancy’s cheeks. ‘I’m too much of an American to care very greatly. It is enough for me that he loves Verity.’

  ‘And his politics?’

  ‘Are his own.’

  Ramon saw her knuckles tighten and knew that her son-in-law had not converted her to his political beliefs.

  ‘Your daughter doesn’t look like you,’ he said.

  The wedding photographs had filled every paper from the Boston Globe to The New York Times.

  ‘Verity is very pretty.’

  ‘She isn’t beautiful.’ It was not the careless compliment he had meant it to be. His voice had betrayed him. He looked at her in growing bewilderment. She was thirty-five years old: two years his senior. He hadn’t made love to a woman in her thirties since he was fifteen and his father’s mistress had seduced him. Princess Marinsky was twenty-five; Lady Linderdowne was a mere eighteen and Gloria, for all her sophistication and world-weariness, was only twenty-three.

  Her beauty was nothing exceptional. All the women that had figured in his life were beautiful. He studied the line of her cheek, the thick sweep of her lashes. She had an air of vulnerability that he had never encountered before. That, with her ability to amuse him, and the tantalizing glint of a temper never far below the surface, was undoubtedly what was attracting him so strongly. He had known from the instant he had first seen her that he would make love to her. The only thing that was unexpected was the urgency he felt. He didn’t want to go through the usual play acting; the expected routine of chase and capitulation. He wanted her more desperately than he had ever wanted any woman before in his life. His longing for her was so intense that his bones ached with it.

  He knew she was not the sort of woman to embark on an affair easily. Her husband’s ambition would be one powerful deterrent. There was also another: her passionate avowal that she hated to be touched. Her words had rung true and he had believed them, yet the generous curve of her lips, her every movement, indicated that she was a woman of deep sensuality. It was intriguing. He would have given a lot to know what sort of honeymoon she had spent on Madeira.

  The restaurant had slowly emptied around them. Tired waiters stifled yawns and waited patiently. Nancy glanced about her, aware that the evening was drawing irrevocably to a close. The happy memories of childhood had faded. Outside the moon shone on fields blanketed with snow. She shivered. She was in New York: not Cowes or Boston. Not even Madeira. Twenty-five miles away in Dr Henry Lorrimer’s office a buff folder carried her name in thick black type. Nancy Leigh Cameron. Diagnosis – Aplastic anaemia. Life Expectancy – 3 months to a year.

  The dark had terrified her as a child. Now the terror came back in full force. Was that what death would be like? An endless black void from which there would be no return.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked sharply.

  She stared at him, seeing his lips move and hearing no
thing.

  Her fur was around her shoulders, his arm around her waist and she was once more out in the snow as he opened the Daimler’s door. Snow and death. They had become synonymous. She hated snow. She began to laugh hysterically. She would never see it again.

  They were in the car and his hands were gripping her shoulders hard.

  ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  She was shaking, her eyes huge in her whitened face.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ she whispered. ‘Oh God, I’m so hideously, unbelievably frightened.’

  His arms were encircling her, his body granite hard, his expression almost ferocious as he said, ‘I’m going to teach you never to be afraid again. Not of anyone or anything.’

  He tilted her chin upwards in the darkness. ‘And I’m going to love you,’ he said as his mouth came down hard on hers.

  Chapter Three

  They drove back into the city in silence, Ramon’s right hand gripping hers so tightly the knuckles showed white. Briefly, he would release it to change gear and then he would cover it again, his powerful left hand manipulating the wheel with the skill of a man accustomed to the race tracks of Europe. A small pulse beat at his jawline. He felt as if every sexual nerve ending in his body were raw. Her vulnerability and pain had triggered off an emotion that shook him in its intensity. It was one completely alien to him. He wanted to protect her; to drive the look of fear from her eyes; to submerge her in so much love that her inner hell would drown and cease to exist. He felt his body tingle at the memory of her kiss, the way her lips had parted beneath his. She had clung to him with the passion of fear, and he had crushed her to his chest so tightly that when they had parted the marks of his fingers had bruised her flesh.

  The city roared out of the darkness. Lights and noise and traffic and people. The nightclubs were emptying and singing revellers piled into fur-blanketed Packards and Rileys. He skirted the park and sped down West 79th Street with scant regard for its icy surface.

  She didn’t ask where they were going and she didn’t care. His mouth had been hard, almost brutal, and as she submitted it was as if all his strength passed into her. The wave of fear had receded. She had surfaced from her inner torment and had done so with savage joy. For the first time in her life she wanted to touch and be touched; to feel his skin beneath her fingers; his hair springing in the palm of her hands. To have his hands caress her, touch her. She felt faint, her nails digging deep into his hand as they careered into Riverside Drive. Dear God! She had never known anything like his touch. The slightest pressure of his fingers and a fire leapt within her.