The Flower Garden

by Margaret Pemberton

  She raised her face obediently and time was forgotten. Georgina stamped her foot impatiently on the marble floor. In Funchal, Chips O’Shaughnessy descended the gangplank with the air of a man accustomed to being first off ship. Unbelievably there was no one to meet him.

  ‘Where’s my daughter?’ Chips asked as the Montcalms’Bentley finally careered down over the cobbled streets and Georgina Montcalm pushed her way through the crowds and seized hold of his hand in welcome.

  ‘She’s been detained.’ She didn’t elaborate by whom or why. She knew very well who and she had a dark suspicion as to why, but neither were explanations that could be given to a doting father.

  Seamus was left to attend to the baggage and Chips, who hadn’t seen the Montcalms for nearly twenty years, allowed himself to be escorted to their Bentley and marvelled again at the false impression so many of his countrymen had of the English. When they chose to be, they were the friendliest people in the world. He remembered his wife and his wife’s family and revised his opinion. The Montcalms were the exception: not the rule.

  ‘Nice to see you again after so long,’ Chips was saying to Charles Montcalm and wondering where the hell Nancy was – and Zia. In his imagination she had been there on the quay, waiting for him, her chiffon dress floating in the breeze; her titian hair a fiery nebula in the rays of the hot Madiera sun.

  Names were being mentioned. Margot Alleynian; Reggie Minter; Stew Chetwynd, the president of the Chetwynd Cork Company …

  He made polite noises, his mind elsewhere: on his daughter, on the woman he still regarded as the only love of his life and on his damn fool son-in-law. Cameron, at least, should have been at the dockside. However irrational Nancy’s behaviour in New York and Boston, it was important that they presented a united front to people like the Montcalms and the rest of the talkative, gossip-mongering international set that sought refuge from the hectic pace of London, Paris and Rome, at Sanfords.

  She was standing in the grandiose reception hall as they entered. Her face was flushed, as if she had been running. Her hair was tousled as if she had just jumped out of bed, a wilful curl straying across her forehead. Her dress was of white silk and simple. Her legs and sandalled feet were bare.

  ‘It’s lovely to see you,’ she said and hugged him fiercely despite their audience of receptionists, bellboys, Montcalms and Minnie Peckwyn-Peake leaving arm-in-arm for her Rolls Royce with a resigned Luke Golding.

  ‘Nancy!’ There was a lump in his throat. She looked well and happy and only then did he know how frightened he had been: how terrified of seeing again the pale wraith that had said goodbye to him in Boston. She had needed a holiday; sun; Zia’s companionship. They would all return together. He had never been so angry in his life as when he had discovered that Jack Cameron had sailed for Madeira without informing him of his plans. For Nancy’s sake, he would avoid a scene with his son-in-law. His daughter and her husband would return to Boston and all the foolishness that had been spoken would be forgotten.

  ‘Zia,’ he said. ‘Where is Zia?’

  ‘She’s ill, darling.’

  Chips felt his heart miss a beat.

  ‘Exhaustion, the doctor says. She’s been resting for several days now.’

  ‘But she knows I’m coming? She’s expecting me?’

  Nancy patted his arm reassuringly. ‘She watched the liner dock from her garden. She’s waiting for you now.’

  Chips beamed buoyantly and did not notice the signs of stress on Nancy’s face as she said:

  ‘Before you see her, I’d like to talk to you.’

  ‘Afterwards,’ Chips said ebulliently.

  ‘It’s very important.’

  ‘So is Zia.’

  Nancy knew that by telling him straight away of Ramon’s presence, she would destroy his happiness at one stroke. But it seemed to her that it would be better to do that than let him continue being so heartbreakingly joyful, confident that everything was right in his own particular world.

  ‘Daddy …’

  ‘This way, Mr O’Shaughnessy, sir,’ Villiers said smoothly and, despite Nancy’s protests, swept Chips towards Zia’s bronzed-studded door.

  Nancy sat down abruptly. Villiers’cavalier manner had destroyed any hope of breaking the news to him gently. A waiter passed with glasses of sherry for the Michaeljohns and Meades who were playing bridge. Absent-mindedly Nancy removed a glass as he passed and sat, sipping it.

  Zia might not mention Ramon. They would probably just talk of old times: the North End: Boston: Chips’new lease of life as mayor. She put down her empty glass and telephoned Ramon’s suite.

  ‘Mr Sanford has gone out, madame,’ his valet informed her.

  ‘Out? Where? To the pool?’ Her mind was still on the conversation taking place between her father and Zia.

  ‘No, madame. He has driven over to the Rossmans. He will be back for cocktails.’

  She didn’t say thank you. She put the telephone receiver back on its rest.

  He had told her he would leave the hotel until she had broken the news to her father. One heart attack could quite easily be followed by another. The mayor would have to be told the truth that would be distinctly unpalatable to him, but there was no reason to make matters worse by facing him with Ramon unforewarned.

  The Rossmans were old family friends. It was quite natural that Ramon should spend the afternoon there. Tessa Rossman had no idea of how nearly she had become Mrs Ramon Sanford. She had no cause for jealousy; no need to feel such sweeping desolation. She returned to the Garden Suite, after leaving instructions that her father be brought to her when he had finished his visit to Mrs Sanford. The desolation did not ease. It was silly and irrational. Her father would be angry as any man would be angry at having his daughter announce her intention of marrying a man his wife had taken as a lover.

  Nancy pushed the memory of Gloria to the back of her mind. Tessa Rossman lingered more persistently. Innocently young, fair hair glistening, eyes shining, adoration for Ramon in her every expression and movement. She leaned her cheek against the coolness of her dressing table mirror. She was behaving like a child of Tessa Rossman’s years and not a sophisticated, beautiful woman of thirty-five. Ramon loved her. She knew it as surely as she knew that she loved him. Nothing could come between them. Not her father, not her husband, not a hundred Tessa Rossmans.

  She lay down on her bed and tried to rest as she waited for her father. The sun shone brilliantly into the room but the inescapable feeling of desolation did not melt in its warmth. Instead, as the minutes lengthened into half an hour and the half an hour into an hour, it intensified and solidified and she was suddenly sure that this was the end. No more happiness. No more Ramon.

  Cursing herself for a fool, she rose and mixed herself a Martini.

  Her father had always done exactly as he pleased and so would she. Except, a small voice said as she stepped out into the heat of the terrace, except when to please himself would have been to destroy his parents. The memory of her grandparents floated vividly to the surface of her mind. To protect them, Chips had relinquished Zia. She downed her Martini and stared meditatively out at the jade and amethyst sea. No such sacrifice could possibly be called of her. It was 1934 now, not the 1890’s. Lives could no longer be ruined because of a lack of marriage lines or illegitimacy or adultery.

  She fought the temptation to pour another drink and sat down, closed her eyes against the glare of the sun and steeled herself to wait.

  Chips’ face was sheet-white. Zia had received him in her lilac, sun-filled boudoir, the large French windows thrown open, flowers and doves spilling into the room, making it difficult to see where the room finished and the garden began. She had not trusted her strength to sustain her in any other place but her bed. Her negligée was deep mauve, her peignoir a confection of matching lace. Her maid had taken special pains with her hair and her perfume filled the room, carrying him back across generations with effortless ease. He had kissed her; held her. The maids had left
them alone. Then she had told him; very simply and very quietly. For one hideous moment he thought he was going to be sick. Guilt swept over him in crashing waves. He had ruined Zia’s life. He was ruining his daughter’s. No; it wasn’t him. It was Duarte who had ruined their lives. Duarte, who, from beyond the grave, continued to exact revenge.

  ‘There must be a way …’

  ‘No.’ The long column of her throat was still lovely, her fine-boned features as beautiful as ever. ‘They love each other, Chips, and I know my son. I’ve seen the way he looks at her: the way his eyes light up when she enters the room. He will never give her up. Never.’

  ‘You want me to tell her, don’t you?’ It was a rhetorical question which needed no answer. He moved away from the bed and towards the open French windows. In his vanity he had thought he had been the final victor, but it had been an illusion. No one had ever crowed in victory over Duarte Sanford. Duarte had simply been doing what he had always done: waiting, watching and biding his time. Now, years after his death, he had avenged himself through his son. The room was very still and quiet but Chips had to restrain himself forcibly from covering his ears against the hated laughter that had mocked him for so many years. He turned and Zia’s eyes were anguished.

  ‘Ramon never saw the side of Duarte that you and I did, Chips. If he knew what had happened he would demand justice.’

  ‘But if he loves Nancy …’

  ‘Ramon is Portuguese,’ Zia said simply. ‘He is my child but there is none of my blood in him. He is wholly his father’s son.’

  ‘Then I must pray that Nancy is wholly my daughter and that she will find the strength that I had to find so many years ago.’ His eyes were brilliant with tears. ‘God in heaven, Zia. How can one thing, one mistake, destroy so many lives?’

  ‘The sin was mine,’ Zia said, and her flawless skin had taken on a transluscent quality. ‘If I had been able to live with it, no other lives would be ruined. No blood would ever have been shed.’

  ‘No!’ The rage had gone from his voice. He sank to his knees beside the bed, taking her hand in his. ‘No sin was ever yours, Zia.’ He kissed her and with the bowed shoulders of an old man he left the room and went in search of his daughter.

  All the words she had rehearsed vanished at the sight of him. When he had entered Sanfords he had been jaunty and zestful, full of his usual pep and full-blooded love of life. Now he stood at her door, an old man. There were bags under his eyes, deep haggard lines running from nose to mouth. His springy white hair seemed to have thinned and lay flat and lifeless. His suit, hand-stitched by Boston’s most exclusive tailor, looked as if it had been made for a bigger, broader man. It seemed to Nancy that, in the brief time that he had entered Sanfords, he had physically shrunk. His skin had taken on the greyish tinge of the severely ill. His eyes were dull and defeated.

  She rushed across to him, forgetting her set little speech of how she had her own life to lead; of how she was a mature woman of thirty-five; of how the past was past and only the future mattered.

  ‘My God, Daddy. Are you all right?’

  He nodded and reached out for her blindly. For the first time in her life he clung to her and she was the support.

  ‘What happened?’ She could hardly form the words, she felt so fearful. ‘Is it Zia? Has she had a relapse?’

  ‘No.’ He couldn’t bear to release her. Afterwards, when the things that had to be said were said, she might never again come into his arms. Might never again even speak to him.

  He drew in a deep, shuddering breath and Nancy pushed herself away from him, staring at him, appalled.

  ‘Something’s happened. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Should I get a doctor?’

  He shook his head mutely.

  ‘A brandy? There must be something I can do!’

  ‘You can listen,’ he said wearily, and with his arm around her shoulder he began to walk heavily towards the sunlit terrace and the jazzily painted wicker chairs and the glass-topped table with its welcoming bottle of iced champagne.

  ‘You can listen about ghosts and you can get rid of that bloody lemonade and get some honest to goodness American bourbon.’

  She had wanted a private, intimate reunion with him. In view of the news she had to break, she had given Maria the day off and dismissed her Sanford servants. Now she picked up the creamy-white telephone receiver and shakily asked for a bottle of bourbon. She was amazed to find that her hand was trembling. She returned to the terrace and they sat silently, only feet apart, until the obnoxious champagne had been replaced by a honey-gold bottle of Jim Beam.

  Her father poured himself a glass that reached to the brim and drank heavily. Still neither of them spoke. She had geared herself for a confrontation with him. Now the tables had been turned. He was the one about to do the confronting.

  He said at last. ‘Zia tells me Ramon is here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She knew by the tone of his voice that Ramon’s presence was not the cause of his almost physical disintegration. He drank more bourbon and refilled the glass.

  ‘Zia tells me that he followed you here from New York; that he wants to marry you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was powerless to say anything further. The subject that she had so feared broaching to him was now serving only as a lead-in to something worse. Something she could not possibly imagine.

  He opened his mouth to speak again and fell silent, staring down into his glass, swirling ice cubes endlessly.

  Nancy clenched her hands in the effort to remain silent. She was terrified that if she spoke he would lose his nerve and that she would never know what had so disastrously changed him in the space of one glorious, sun-filled afternoon. Seeing him drain his glass, she was terrified that he would become too drunk to tell her anything. At last, when she thought she could stand the silence no longer, he said, not looking at her:

  ‘You can’t marry him, Nancy.’

  She nearly sobbed with relief. If that was all the Grand Guignol was about, she had been over-reacting as much as he had. She had known he would say that. The dark, nameless fear that had held her in its grip relaxed its hold.

  She said gently, ‘I’m sorry you feel like that, Daddy. I love Ramon and I’m going to marry him.’ She didn’t mention Jack. It was as if Jack had become as irrelevant to him as he had to her. He shook his head with a finality that was deathly.

  ‘No, Nancy. You can’t marry Ramon. Not now; not ever.’

  The fear was back; dark and tangible, sitting on her shoulders like a medieval demon.

  ‘Why?’ she asked, and could barely hear her own question.

  ‘Duarte Sanford,’ he said, and his voice held none of the rhetoric and vigour that mesmerized his electorate. Instead it was flat, almost expressionless, as if all passion had been spent. ‘Duarte Sanford was evil.’

  Her hands fumbled for a glass and the bottle. Bourbon on top of Martini was not the best combination, but she did not care. Her father’s whole demeanour was so alien that she knew she was going to need all the alcoholic help she could get to survive the next few moments.

  ‘For years his blackmail made me politically impotent, and for years he made Zia’s life a living hell.’

  The bourbon was comforting. So far so good. She knew all this already. Duarte Sanford had not been amongst the world’s most charming men. He had been cold, sadistic and spiteful. Duarte Sanford was dead and she was not marrying him. She was marrying his son and Ramon was not cold or sadistic. Ramon was …

  ‘… so I killed him.’

  The glass slipped from her hand to the floor and shattered.

  ‘How long was I to wait? I had no more time to wait! Until he died I could do nothing.’ His face was ashen. ‘I saw Zia that summer. He had broken her as brutally as a child wrenching a rose from its roots. He had tortured her both mentally and physically. I swore I would kill him.’

  This time, as he raised his glass, the bourbon spilled on the front of his shirt. He st
ill did not look at her. The world had stopped revolving and had finally steadied. Bizarrely, it was still the same; sun, sea, mountains, trees. Two people on a terrace: a bottle, glasses.

  ‘How?’ she asked through cracked lips. ‘When?’

  ‘In 1928. I returned to Boston and I spoke to …’ He hesitated. ‘I spoke to someone who made crime their business.’

  ‘The man who took the photographs?’

  He nodded. ‘I don’t have to tell you how, Nancy. Charlie came over here in the fall. When he returned to America Sanford was dead.’

  ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Oh Christ!’ and rushed into the bathroom to vomit.

  She sat on the edge of the bath shivering convulsively. Bourbon and Martini did not mix. Her father was a murderer. She should never drink on an empty stomach. Her father had killed Duarte Sanford.

  He stood in the doorway, his hands hanging loosely at his side, his tie undone, his top two shirt buttons missing as if he had wrenched them off in an effort to breathe. He looked as ill as she felt.

  ‘So you see,’ he said, ‘you can never marry Ramon Sanford. Zia and I have lived with the knowledge but you could not possibly live with it. Not as Ramon’s wife. Not without telling him. And if you told him …’

  ‘If I told him he would kill you,’ she said, and her voice was as flat and drained as his had been.

  Of course Ramon would kill him. Zia had known that. No wonder she had collapsed. The prospect of her son marrying the daughter of his father’s murderer was enough to make any woman run screaming for the madhouse. Especially if, as Chips had indicated but left unsaid, she had acquiesced in that murder. If Ramon should ever discover that … If he should discover that his mother had not only played a part in his father’s death, but was actually still in love with the man who had caused it …

  Nancy trembled for Zia Sanford. The trembling continued and would not stop. She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging herself for a warmth that did not come. Blood for blood. That would be Ramon’s code. His mother had known that. How had she lived with the knowledge? How was she to live with it? She fought off waves of nausea; the trembling intensified.