The Flower Garden

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Thank the Lord the Doltrice woman wasn’t here to view this afternoon’s exhibition,’ Lord Michaeljohn said with a shudder. ‘She’d have made a bigger meal of it than she did the Rudy Vallee divorce.’

  Lady Michaeljohn’s attention was caught. She grasped hold of the escaping Sonny and said pleadingly, ‘Now, you’re a man of the film world, Mr Zakar. You will know the truth of the Vallee divorce. Were the things the columnists said really true?’

  Sonny had no intention of providing titillation for Sophronia Michaeljohn. What the woman needed were the services of the swimming coach. He decided he’d drop a word in the guy’s ear and do both him and Lady Michaeljohn a favour. Sonny had watched Luis with admiration. His style had rivetted the American. He had the old girls simply panting for his favours. Sonny wondered how he’d shape up in a screen test. It was just possible that he had found a rival to Clark Gable. ‘Madeleine is waiting,’ he said, escaping from the clawing hand. ‘I think the accident has distressed her.’ It was a blatant lie as Sonny knew all too well. The sight of blood never distressed Madeleine. Not as long as it wasn’t her own.

  When Ramon had surfaced, whole and relatively unhurt, she had lost interest in the drama and her sultry eyes had fastened on Bobo’s Egyptian. Eastern men knew tricks that Europeans didn’t: or so she had been told. The exception being Ramon Sanford who, it was rumoured, had been sent to Cairo by his father to learn the love techniques and philosophy of Imsàk, with that other legendary lover, Prince Aly Khan.

  Ramon Sanford was definitely a dish to be savoured. Unfortunately, he had proved unobtainable in the past, preferring to do the chasing rather than be chased. Madeleine had a plan of campaign for the seduction of Mr Ramon Sanford. It was one that would take time. Meanwhile Bobo’s lover would make an interesting diversion.

  Vere turned abruptly from Lady Michaeljohn’s inane chatter and walked quickly towards Nancy’s suite. All around him guests buzzed with the foolhardiness of Ramon’s exploit. He had been disturbed by his own lack of emotion. He had watched at first with mild interest, not knowing who was behind the wheel of the zooming speedboat. When he had seen Ramon’s tall, swarthy figure, he had felt a terrible stillness take control of him. He had watched Sanford speed like a tornado towards the cliffs and he had felt no emotion. If contact had been made, if Sanford’s body had floated in disjointed smithereens, he would simply have felt a measure of relief. An awkward social situation would have been resolved. A man would have died and he, Vere Winterton, would have been unmoved. He shrugged. Why should he have been? The man was no friend of his: barely an acquaintance. Any doubts he had entertained concerning Ramon’s stability after the previous evening were now confirmed. His only anxiety was for Nancy. She had suffered enough shocks in the past twenty-fours without suffering more.

  At Vere’s knock Maria answered the door, her face strained.

  ‘Mrs Cameron is not well, sir. She has suffered a fall …’ Maria was about to tell him that Mrs Cameron had requested no visitors for at least twenty-four hours but Vere had marched swiftly past her, leaving Maria to run anxiously in his wake, uttering protests that were ignored.

  ‘My poor darling, are you all right? Why didn’t the maid tell me? Has the doctor been?’ The last thing Nancy wanted was Vere’s ministrations. She shook her head.

  ‘There’s no need for the doctor. I slipped, that’s all. My mouth is cut a little but it looks far worse than it is.’ She managed a reassuring laugh. ‘Please, Vere. There’s no need to look so concerned. I simply wanted to rest, that’s all.’

  Relieved, Vere sat on the small gilt chair at her bedside and took her hand in his. ‘It’s perhaps a good thing you did. You must be the only person in Funchal to have avoided witnessing the debacle this afternoon.’

  ‘What debacle?’ Nancy forced an element of interest into her voice. Had Madeleine lost the top or bottom half of her swimming costume? Had Lavinia Meade become publicly drunk? Had Bobo’s Egyptian committed an unforgivable indiscretion?

  ‘Sanford,’ Vere said with grim satisfaction. ‘A more blatant piece of exhibitionism I’ve never seen. The man’s obviously unhinged. He could have mown down scores of small boats and killed countless people.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Nancy forced the words through stiff lips, her heart pounding.

  Vere laughed mirthlessly. ‘Acted like an overgrown schoolboy. Knowing he had an audience, he raced his speedboat at breakneck speed towards the cliffs. His reputation as a speed merchant has gone to his head. There was no sense or responsibility in his action at all. He missed by a hair’s breadth and headed out to sea, then rocketed shorewards like a maniac.’

  ‘And?’ Nancy thought she had tasted fear on her long walk through the Manhattan streets. She had, but she had not plumbed its depth. The seconds between her question and Vere’s indifferent answer seemed agonizing light years.

  ‘The whole boat went up like a miniature bomb.’

  Nancy cried out, springing from the bed, prepared to run to him as she was, barefoot and in her slip, her face still swollen from his brutal blow.

  Vere leaped after her. ‘Steady on, sweetheart. I’m sorry I shocked you like that. There was no damage done – except to the boat. Sanford came up smelling like roses and no doubt well pleased at having scared half the population out of their wits.’

  ‘He isn’t hurt?’ She was shaking uncontrollably.

  ‘Not significantly.’ Vere wasn’t certain of the truth of this last statement, but did not greatly care. As far as he was concerned, Sanford deserved all he got. ‘The Montcalms are having a small party this evening. It should be fun. No Michaeljohns or Meades.’

  She had herself under iron control. She smiled. ‘I couldn’t, Vere. Not with my face all puffed up. I’m going to have an early night for once.’

  Vere was disappointed but did not argue. Her reason for not going was valid. No woman liked to put in an appearance unless she was looking her best. He kissed her forehead.

  ‘Look after yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Maria ushered him out and Nancy crawled gratefully back into bed. Vere’s passion had waned noticeably since the shock of the previous evening. He would be calling her ‘old girl’soon. She lay quietly and thought of Ramon.

  Higher, faster, more dangerous. That was the creed he had said he lived by. In that heart-stopping moment when Vere had told her of the accident but not of his fate, Nancy had faced a truth she had known all along. She would keep her pride and he would never know it, but he would always have her heart. She hated him as intensely as she had ever hated anyone. And she loved him. A destroyer, her father had called him. A destroyer, as his father had been before him. Sanfords and O’Shaughnessys: Patrick and Leo: Chips and Duarte: Ramon and herself. At least the saga had come to an end, no matter how ignominiously. Wearily she closed her eyes and slept.

  Georgina flew into Zia’s apartment just as her husband lay Zia on a chaise longue. ‘He’s all right,’ she said abruptly to her husband, pushing Zia’s maid away and kneeling beside her. ‘At least that’s what I heard called out as I ran here. They’ve taken him aboard the Kezia.’

  ‘Conscious or unconscious?’

  ‘Conscious, I think. Dear God in heaven, Charles do you think he was drunk?’

  ‘I think he deserves horse-whipping.’

  Zia’s eyelids fluttered open.

  ‘He’s all right,’ Georgina said briskly. ‘They’ve taken him aboard the Kezia.’

  Zia’s hand clutched hold of Georgina’s. Her skin had taken on a translucent texture. Her lustrous eyes under their sea-green tinted lids were terrified. ‘I must go to him. Now.’

  ‘Darling, you’re not strong enough …’

  Zia’s eyes flashed with some of their old fire. ‘Of course I’m strong enough! Mario! Philippe!’ The bevy of servants surrounding her was claustrophobic. The earl suppressed a sigh of irritation.

  ‘We’d better go down with her. This lot look on the verge of hysterics.’

  The Port
uguese maids had tears streaming down their faces and were crossing themselves as though Ramon was already dead and buried.

  ‘Your motor car is still garaged, my lord,’ an anxious page said as they emerged into daylight. ‘Mrs Sanford’s chauffeur is available.’

  ‘Anyone or anything except one of those damned ox carts,’ the earl said testily. As commander of one of the biggest destroyers in His Majesty’s fleet, he didn’t suffer fools gladly and he seemed to be surrounded by them.

  The journey down to the harbour was a silent one. The earl could say nothing about Zia’s son that was complimentary. Georgina was too unsure as to Ramon’s physical well-being to raise hopes that might be immediately dashed. Zia was too anxious. She sat like a statue, the earl on one side of her, Georgina gripping her hand on the other.

  The throng on the jetty parted as the impressive trio walked with hurrying steps towards the Kezia’s gangplank. Zia’s afternoon tea dress of swirling pastels floated around her, and in the paling afternoon light she looked like a fairy queen from another world. She didn’t feel like one. She felt old and she had never before felt like that.

  ‘Mr Sanford is perfectly all right, madame.’

  The steady reassurances sent floods of relief through the earl and countess but none at all through Zia. She would not feel relieved until she saw him with her own eyes.

  He sat at the head of the Kezia’s giant mahogany dining table, designed to hold twenty-four with ease and thirty in friendly comfort. His shirt had been abandoned, his shoulder neatly bandaged and his cheekbone strapped with elastoplast and bruising magnificently. There was a bottle of brandy in front of him and a chicken leg in his hand. As they entered he grinned broadly, looking for all the world like a Corsican pirate.

  ‘Ramon!’ Zia said with a sob, and flew towards him. Chicken bone and drink were discarded as he held her in his arms.

  ‘Bloody fool,’ the earl said bad-temperedly.

  ‘Idiot,’ Georgina said affectionately, and sank wearily on to one of the chairs.

  Ramon released his mother gently. He had vented his rage and jealousy in the only way he knew and in doing so he had aged her ten years. Never before had he knowingly hurt her. It had taken Nancy to make him capable of such an action.

  ‘The Salt Flats of America are best for speed records,’ Zia said unsteadily, forcing a smile.

  ‘The Salt Flats of America are boring,’ Ramon said gently.

  ‘So are some people,’ Charles Montcalm snapped, draining a glass of brandy. ‘There are times and places for foolhardy bravery and late afternoon in Funchal Harbour is neither.’

  Ramon, who well knew Charles Montcalm’s own track record of bravery, rose to his feet and flung his arm around his shoulders in a conciliatory gesture. ‘Sorry, Charles. I was letting off steam.’

  ‘Let it off where it will do some good. At the Fascists,’ the earl said darkly as they left the ship.

  ‘Charles is obsessed with what’s happening in Germany and Austria,’ Georgina explained as the earl strode ahead of them.

  Zia had disassociated herself from politics long since and said vaguely, ‘I thought Great Britain, Italy and France had warned Germany to adopt a “hands off” policy towards Austria?’

  ‘So they have and a fat lot of good a warning will do,’ the earl said with more than accustomed rudeness as they entered Zia’s Daimler and began to ascend more sedately to Sanfords than they had descended.

  ‘The most unlikely people are becoming concerned,’ Georgina said as the road twisted and turned and Sanfords glittered with a thousand lights high above them. ‘The Astors held a large political weekend party at Cliveden just a few weeks ago. Vere was there, of course. I always feel there’s rather more to Vere than meets the eye, but I’m not sure what it is.’

  ‘And I,’ Ramon said with disarming charm as the motor car swept towards Sanfords’ imposing entrance, ‘am not remotely interested.’

  The Montcalms took their leave of them, Georgina thoughtfully, the earl with relief. As Ramon accompanied his mother to her suite she asked tentatively:

  ‘Is there a woman involved, darling?’

  He had never lied to her. They paused at the bronze-studded door that led to Zia’s private world and he held her hands, staring down at her with a mixture of tenderness and concern.

  ‘There was. She’s out of my system now, I promise.’

  Zia’s eyes were unhappy. ‘I wish you would marry, darling. There are so many nice girls about. The Rossmans are at their Camara de Lobos villa. Tessa Rossman is eighteen now and sweet-natured as well as beautiful. It would be a perfect match.’ Her voice was wistful.

  He looked down at her, none of his inward battle showing in his eyes. At last he said, ‘You’re quite right. I’ll invite Tessa over this evening. Will that make you happy?’

  Zia looked up at her fine, strong, handsome son. ‘Very happy, darling. Thank you.’

  He saw her into her rooms and handed her over to the ministrations of her maids and then returned to his own rooms.

  Tessa Rossman was an obvious choice. Like the Sandemans, the Cockburns, the Sanfords, the Rossmans had been entrenched in Portuguese life for generations. Their family home was in Oporto, as were the family homes of all the great wine shipping families. Her parents were English, her grandparents English, her great-grandparents English. No Rossman had ever inter-married. However, Ramon had a shrewd suspicion that tradition would be no barrier if he chose to ask for Tessa’s hand in marriage. He was half-American; English public school educated; a millionaire several times over and the marriage would amalgamate two of the greatest wine houses in the world. An admirable marriage by any count. Tessa Rossman had been an extremely pretty child: flaxen hair, blue eyes, smiling lips. He hadn’t seen her for years. The Rossmans had carefully guarded their blooming beauty from the eyes of fortune hunters. Nightclubs were taboo. Since leaving her Swiss finishing school six months ago, Tessa had endured a cultural trip with her mother to Florence and Venice and had since been immured at the family’s luxurious villa in the isolated but beautiful village of Camara de Lobos, some nine kilometres from Funchal. The Rossmans were becoming increasingly worried. There was a limit to the length of time they could keep Tessa away from the riff-raff who haunted every heiress. Ramon Sanford would be more than welcome – he would be a gift from heaven.

  That evening Ramon drove out to Camara de Lobos and escorted a delighted Tessa back for an evening of wining and dining at Sanfords. Later they visited the casino and Tessa, with beginner’s luck, won handsomely on the chemin de fer table. She was refreshingly unsophisticated. When he kissed her goodnight he was gentle and her mouth fluttered inexpertly beneath his. With sudden tenderness he realized that it was the first kiss she had ever experienced.

  ‘It’s been a beautiful, wonderful evening,’ she said, her eyes glowing as she stepped from the car and the Rossmans’butler opened the door of her prison.

  Ramon twined his fingers in hers. She was little more than a child, but a sweet and beautiful child. His mouth brushed her hand, but not with the hot impassioned imprint of lips with which he had kissed Nancy’s.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Sanfords’evening ball.’

  She gasped, her mind racing over her wardrobe, her mother’s jewels.

  Ramon, reading her thoughts, smiled. ‘No jewels,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring you a rose. It’s all the ornamentation you need.’

  He blew her a kiss as he drove himself away and Tessa was left to the inquisition of her parents. The night wind ruffled his hair as he took the corners at dangerous speeds. She was young, she was pretty, she was pure. What the devil else did he want? Brakes screeched and there was a horrific glimpse of moonlit water thousands of feet below. His car swerved the corner widely and continued on its precarious way.

  He wanted Nancy. He wanted a woman, not a child bride. He wanted wit and warmth and sophistication. His mouth was a hard line. He wanted a whore: a woman who blatantly conducted her latest affair
e beneath the roofs of his home. A woman who promised eternal love and left without explanation. A woman with whom he had shared a dream and who had trampled on it, laughing.

  He slammed the brakes on hard, pebbles bouncing down the cliffside as he missed the perilous drop by inches, scorching the grass as he picked up speed, ramming his way through the gears. He would marry Tessa Rossman. He would care for her, protect her, love her. Passion was for fools. There was no such thing as twin souls: human beings destined for each other and each other alone. That was for dreamers. He would be practical and level-headed. He would combine the Rossman and Sanford fortunes. He would have sons that he could never have had with the woman who fired his loins and tormented his mind. He would make Zia happy. That at least was some comfort.

  He left his Daimler for his chauffeur to garage and strode to his room, issuing only the tersest of courtesies to his world-famous guests. He dismissed his valet and, as the darkness paled to dawn and sleep eluded him, struggled with an iron will to focus on the face of his bride-to-be. But blue eyes paled before seductive, thick-lashed violet ones: fair hair would not predominate over dark glossy curls. The bloom of youth was poor contrast to high, perfect cheekbones and flawless, creamy skin. If he had been born in the Middle Ages he would have believed himself bewitched.

  ‘Goddamn her to hell,’ he said, pummelling his pillows savagely and determining to propose to Tessa Rossman before the week was out.

  ‘I’ve cut my lip, Vere. Not broken my leg,’ Nancy said in laughing protest as her room was filled with so many baskets of flowers that it looked like a tropical garden.

  ‘There are no marks now, I promise you.’ He kissed her as if to prove it. ‘I want you to look absolutely ravishing this evening and be the envy of every male in the room.’

  ‘I will. I promise.’ It would be the first time she had left her room for several days and Vere had been in constant attendance. His concern had touched her.

  Zia had sent her own personal beautician to apply cooling face packs and had spent a whole afternoon sipping at her permanent glass of champagne and reminiscing about her youth in Boston’s North End.