Nancy had breakfasted in bed. Thanks to a deep, hot bath and Maria’s careful ministrations, when she emerged in public she looked as glossily chic and poised as normal. Vere was breakfasting on his terrace, clad in a silk dressing-gown, when Nancy strolled out to join him. She had decided that the sooner she faced him again, the better.
He rose hastily to his feet, dropping his napkin on the table as Nancy sat down opposite him, a smile on her face, dark glasses shielding her eyes from the morning sun and hiding the ravages of the previous night.
‘My God, wasn’t last night a fiasco?’ Her laugh was brittle but her manner was perfectly composed. She let her hands hang elegantly over the arms of her chair and turned her face to the sun as if she hadn’t a care in the world. ‘That fool Sanford took me completely by surprise. No wonder I had hysterics. I thought he was a member of Jack’s rather extensive spy network.’
Vere’s waiter poured coffee and Nancy sipped it, crossing her legs seductively, one sandalled foot tapping lightly on the mosaic-tiled floor.
‘It really isn’t worth saying anything to him, Vere. He must have been drunk to have entered my room like that and spoken as he did. Or mad. I believe his father was mentally unstable.’
Vere felt an overpowering sense of relief. Nancy was right. Sanford had been drunk. He was a man who could drink a whole room under the table and still seem no worse for wear. Though he had been outwardly sober the previous night, he must have been smashed out of his mind.
‘I wonder whose room he thought he was in,’ Nancy said idly. ‘No doubt the lady will have some explaining to do this morning.’
Vere laughed. Ramon Sanford’s amorous exploits were legion and the room had been lit only by shafts of moonlight. The wrong room; the wrong lady. The embarrassment was Sanford’s, not his. ‘Good Lord, yes,’ he said, buttering his toast with zest. ‘Bobo’s near you, isn’t she? They were on more than friendly terms at one time.’
‘Then if she appears this morning with a black eye, we’ll know the reason,’ Nancy said lightly. ‘I’m going down for a swim. I’ll see you later.’
Vere watched her go with a return of his usual sense of well-being. She hadn’t demanded that he satisfy her honour. There was no need even to mention the incident to Sanford unless he mentioned it first. And he wouldn’t do that unless it was to apologize. When Sir Maxwell cornered him for an early morning chat on the decreasing number of game on his Scottish estates, Vere for once listened to him attentively.
Nancy had no desire for a swim. She had faced Vere, placed the ideas she wanted in his head, and was now intent only on escape. Bobo and Ramon. She hadn’t known about it but it came as no surprise. She wondered if Ramon had also enjoyed passing affaires with Madeleine Mancini and Venetia Bessbrook. It was probably harder to find a woman he hadn’t had a liaison with than one he had. And he had had the nerve to call her immoral!
A white-suited boy hurried to place a lounger in the exact position she required. Another lay thick, inch-soft towels upon it, placing a cushion at exactly the right angle for her head, bringing a portable table complete with miniature bar and bucket, chilling the ubiquitous bottle of champagne.
Georgina Montcalm strolled past, her long legs attracting every eye. As she approached Nancy she paused and smiled in recognition.
‘Nancy! How divine. I had no idea you were here.’
Nancy viewed her with relief. She had no desire for Bobo’s company – or that of anybody else who had been present at the previous night’s party.
‘Who are you with, darling?’
‘Vere.’
Georgina Montcalm sat on the edge of Nancy’s lounger. ‘How super. One of my favourite men. Charles told me the Rosslyn was in harbour.’ She laughed prettily. ‘I’m so short-sighted I wouldn’t be able to tell if the Queen Mary was in dock. It never occurred to me that you would be with him. I didn’t think the American and the British sides of your family were very close.’
Nancy managed a genuine grin. ‘They’re not. If my father arrived I’m pretty sure Vere would have an urgent need to set sail. He’s rather more than Vere can take.’
‘He’s a darling,’ Georgina said. ‘I absolutely adore him. I’m surprised that Jack is taking time off at the moment. I thought he was playing the indispensable aide to your fascinating president.’
Nancy was beginning to feel that the world had righted on its axis. Georgina Montcalm had a natural spontaneity lacking in many of her class. In anyone else it would have caused criticism. Georgina Montcalm was above criticism. Earl Montcalm was within feasible distance of the throne and it said much for Georgina’s background that she had been judged an entirely worthy match for him. Her grandfather on her mother’s side was the millionaire financier, Sir Albert Loessel, who had been a friend of King Edward VII and who had been privileged to give much sensible advice to both his monarch and government. Her father was a much-respected minister and through him Georgina was descended from the Seventh Earl of Narnesbury, the famous nineteenth century eccentric. Georgina had inherited beauty, brains, wealth and a healthy dash of her ancestor’s disregard for convention.
‘Jack’s not with me, though I’m expecting him any time.’
‘Enjoy yourself while you may, then,’ Georgina said, shaking her pale golden hair over her shoulders. ‘Once he comes it will be nothing but FDR, the New Deal and fighting recession. Charles is just as bad. He talks about nothing but the navy. He’s commanding the HMS Defiant now and I think he’s more in love with that damned ship than he is with me. He’s also becoming a boring prophet of gloom where Europe is concerned. He hates Lansbury’s pacifist policies.’
‘Hardly surprising when he’s the captain of a destroyer,’ Nancy said drily. A pool boy had efficiently rolled a lounger alongside Nancy’s and Georgina reclined luxuriously, raising her hand the merest fraction to indicate that she wanted her champagne opened. It fizzed and frothed and she sipped it.
‘I don’t eat now, or drink spirits. Only champagne. It’s Zia’s latest recommended diet and it works wonders, darling. I’ve lost simply pounds.’
They laughed and talked and Nancy refused to allow her eyes to roam the surrounding gardens in the fearful dread of seeing Ramon. Instead she watched as Luis helped perfect Viscountess Lothermere’s already excellent front crawl and then, with a great deal of unnecessary bodily contact, attempted to show a middle-aged steel magnate’s wife the intricacies of the breast stroke.
‘A subject he’s an expert on, darling,’ Georgina said, shaking her beautiful head at the follies of her sex. ‘Cora van de Gale was here two weeks ago and she absolutely monopolized him. She didn’t learn to swim but she learnt plenty of other things that old van de Gale had never taught her. At fifty you’d think she would have lost interest. The day I have to shower gifts on my lovers in order to ensure their attention is the day I shall take a vow of celibacy.’
‘I didn’t know you had lovers,’ Nancy said, teasingly.
‘I don’t,’ Georgina replied with equanimity. ‘It would shock HM terribly. I do believe our much-loved king has never strayed from the straight and narrow in his life.’ A smile curved her lips. ‘I doubt if his successor will be so strong-willed. No doubt that Michaeljohn woman has already told you that Wallis Simpson is keeping the prince company while Thelma is in New York.’
‘She has mentioned it,’ Nancy said. Georgina never gossiped about the royals. She would affectionately refer to King George V as ‘HM’, but though she was in the very best position to know exactly who was enjoying the Prince of Wales’attentions, she kept the knowledge to herself. ‘She couldn’t have done a more thorough job if she had a megaphone. That woman missed her vocation in life; she should have been a town crier.’
‘You sound as if it bothers you.’
‘It bothers Charles. HM is not in very good health and the Prince of Wales will soon be king. It’s natural to hope he will marry and cease his pointless entanglements with married American women. No offence meant,
Nancy, but an American on the throne of England? What would Queen Victoria have said?’
They swam a leisurely few lengths in the Olympic-size pool and then Nancy returned to her suite through gardens ablaze with Abyssinia red-hot pokers and riotous bougainvillaea. As she emerged from the shade of a tamarisk tree into the secluded entrance that led to her Garden Suite, Ramon stepped forward, his eyes as hard as flints.
She cried out, instinctively stepping backwards. His hand shot out, seizing her wrist so hard she thought it would snap.
‘What game are you playing, Nancy?’ The harshness in his voice made her wince.
‘No game,’ she said, her breath coming in panting gasps. ‘At least not the sort of games that you play.’ She could feel her pulse pounding beneath the cruel imprint of his thumb. Her nerves were throbbing. In one move she could be in his arms, pressed close against the strong body that tormented her, waking and sleeping. She thought of Gloria with her bleached hair and carmine-painted lips; of her father propped against the hospital pillows, his pride shattered at his wife’s adultery. She wanted to hurt him as she had never wanted to hurt another human being in her life.
‘My game is to enjoy myself with my lover. Preferably à deux and not à trois.’
If she had stabbed him in the chest, his shock could not have been more palpable.
‘Goddamn you to hell!’ he said, and the weight of his hand caught her full across the face.
She screamed, tasting blood and blinded by pain.
There was no sound. His furious footsteps echoed distantly on the tiled floors. In the tamarisk tree a small bird fluttered, the sun glinting on brilliant wings. She lay huddled against the wall, her hands to her mouth, blood seeping from her cut lip through her fingers. In the tree the bird sang mockingly; from the poolside came the sound of distant laughter. Scarlet drops of blood spattered on to the ground. Like father, like son: blood, violence, destruction. After an endless age she forced herself to move, and with stumbling footsteps sought the sanctuary of her room.
Chapter Nine
Ramon was like a man possessed. Never before had he struck a woman. He wanted to kill her; to crush the life out of her. For a brief while he had believed he had discovered the simple, natural joy of giving complete love to another human being … and having that love returned. Now he saw it had all been a mirage. She was no different from the hundreds of women who had gone before her: shallow, soft-tongued and lying. Strumpets who would be called such if it wasn’t for the accident of their birth. He had thought he had found his twin soul. The person who would make him complete. The other half of himself that he had been restlessly questing after for lonely years. He laughed harshly. He had found nothing. Only a bored wife with a disposition for play-acting and hysterics.
His fury could find no release. He marched through the glittering lobbies like a demonic arch-angel, guests and staff alike scattering before him. The screech of his car tyres as he sped at breakneck speed down the curving driveway could be heard in Zia’s secluded garden. She paused in her conversation with Earl Montcalm, a slight frown puckering her brow.
Ramon’s eyes were glazed, his face contorted as he screamed suicidally down the narrow, cobbled streets. Flower sellers grabbed their baskets out of his way; pedestrians scurried for their lives. At the harbour he sprang out of the car and, without a word of civility to the Kezia’s crew, jumped into his speedboat. He raced out of the harbour, a danger to every piece of shipping at dock, entering or leaving.
From the terraces at Sanfords guests halted in their afternoon strolls to stare seawards where the white foaming line knifed the bay.
Zia excused herself from the tea table spread beneath the jacaranda tree and walked quickly across to the point where her garden fell in steep escarpments to the sea. The speedboat was being pushed to the utmost, flying across the water towards the mountainous cliffs at the far side of the bay. Zia’s hands clutched her heart as Ramon, to all intents and purposes, attempted to kill himself. All around Funchal shopkeepers, housewives, fishermen, halted in their daily tasks and stared seawards. The Kezia’s crew lined the deck. The hotel guests crowded the balconies with binoculars. As the point of no return was reached, there was a concerted intake of breath. Zia faltered, and the earl ran to her, supporting her with his arm. The foaming line of spray veered, so close to the rust-red cliffs that for a moment several of the men thought it had hit and merely bounced off. Bobo and Lady Michaeljohn turned away; Madeleine Mancini watched with overly bright eyes, a small pink tongue licking her lips.
The gasp of relief was audible as the speedboat headed towards the open sea, faster and faster so that it hurt the eye to follow the flashing line of spray. ‘Young fool,’ the earl said savagely. ‘He’ll blow himself up. He should be arrested. Who the devil is he?’
‘My son,’ Zia said faintly. ‘Send the maid for a brandy, Charles. I feel most awfully ill.’
The speedboat streaked to the far horizon and then, as the spectators began to turn away, there were fresh cries of ‘He’s coming back!’ ‘Just look at him go!’
The boat swooped and leapt over the water, heading straight for the harbour at the same maniacal speed it had the cliffside. There was a scramble to shore from the anchored boats. Like a meteor, Ramon careered towards the other shipping. Captains closed their eyes and thought of insurance. Madeirans prayed for their fishing boats and their livelihoods.
Zia grasped the earl’s arm tightly, her lips moving soundlessly.
When a collision seemed unavoidable he swerved in a cloud of spray, the boat scarcely touching the water, his dark, distinctive figure unmistakable. The veer was too great, the strain unsupportable. There was the blast of an engine, the rifle crack of splitting wood, great jets of foam and then nothing; only a lathering surf, floating wood and ominous silence. Zia cried out his name and fainted, old and shrunken in the earl’s arms. The officers in the Kezia were already in a launch speeding to the wreckage at breakneck speed. Crowds had gathered at the harbour; the abandoned fishing boats were quickly manned, scudding in the wake of the launch. On the hotel terraces pandemonium had broken out. Several guests forgot their dignity and raced for their Daimlers and Lagondas, dispensing with their chauffeurs in their haste to reach the harbour. Others gave hysterical reports as they fixed their binoculars on the racing rescue ships and the swirling wreckage. Countess Szapary was sobbing uncontrollably. Bobo was semi-conscious. Lavinia Meade beat her massive chest with her hands and told all and sundry she had known he would come to a bad end. Venetia Bessbrook watched from her balcony, her face white and her hands clasped tightly together. Sonny Zakar was wishing he’d had his camera at the ready and disliking himself intensely for the thought. Georgina Montcalm was hurrying towards Zia’s apartments to be of practical help. Nancy was oblivious, locked in a darkened room, an ice-pack on her cheek: desolation in her heart.
From the Kezia’s crew came a whoop of joy as a tousled head swam strongly towards them. First officer Henderson swallowed the lump in his throat, forced himself not to cry with relief and said with the nonchalance he knew his employer would approve of, ‘A tidy smash, sir.’
‘Not bad,’ Ramon admitted, grinning as they pulled him aboard, his silk shirt ripped at the shoulder, blood oozing from a cut, the flimsy material clinging transparently to his skin. His knuckles were raw and bleeding and there was a deep gash slicing his cheekbone. He was superbly unconcerned about the wreckage that floated around them and the hundreds of bystanders standing on the shoreline, the sun glinting on the lenses of their binoculars.
‘Malcolm Campbell wouldn’t have thought much of it, would he?’ he said, and with a careless grin accepted a handkerchief to staunch the blood spurting from his cheek and allowed Second Lieutenant Fitzsimmons to hold a rapidly staining scarlet pad against his shoulder.
‘Bloody suicidal,’ Lord Michaeljohn said, reviving himself with a whisky and soda. Lady Michaeljohn fanned her face and sent her maid for aspirin and a bottle of the dark myste
rious liquid that accompanied her everywhere and was resorted to in times of stress.
‘Ria Doltrice says he has a death wish. I never usually take any notice of that silly woman – she so often gets her facts wrong. She said John Jacob Astor was going to marry Carol Lombard on the sixth of the month and he married that pretty little Eileen Gillespie. Besides, Carol Lombard has two husbands already, doesn’t she? Or is that impossible? Really, the shock has made me quite confused.’
Sonny lit a cigar and returned to his sun lounger and the Michaeljohns. ‘Ria may be right,’ he said. ‘There was that Himalayan trip. I wanted to film Mountain of Death there, but the unions wouldn’t allow it. Believe me, those mountains aren’t toys. They’re for real.’
‘Isn’t that where Clarissa is, Vere?’
Vere had viewed the whole proceedings passive-faced. He turned now from watching Ramon being hauled aboard the Kezia and said, ‘No. Clarissa is only interested in hunting and riding. Mountaineering isn’t yet one of her enthusiasms.’
‘She’d make an awfully good mountaineer,’ Lady Michaeljohn said loyally. ‘Such courage and physical fitness.’
‘And beauty,’ Sonny added. ‘You’re a lucky man, Vere.’
Vere smiled thinly.
Lady Michaeljohn’s maid returned with the preparation that the Knightsbridge chemist made especially and after helping herself liberally she returned to the topic that was so intriguing her. ‘Do you remember his Amazon expedition? When was that? Last year or the year before? I know it upset dear Zia terribly. Why can’t he settle down and marry some nice girl. Princess Marinsky is really very sweet. Foreign, of course, but then so is he. One tends to forget with him being Eton and Oxford. Poor, poor Zia. What a trial he must be.’ She turned confidingly to Sonny. ‘My son married last April. Such a darling girl. One of the Clarendons, you know. The Wiltshire Clarendons.’
Sonny puffed on his cigar, unimpressed. He had met the faggot in question and felt tolerably sorry for the horse-faced bride.
The Flower Garden Page 16
