The Flower Garden

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Nancy …’

  She brushed his hand away savagely, galvanized into movement.

  ‘Don’t offer me sympathy! Dear God! What am I supposed to do? Say I’m sorry you’re a murderer, but I still love you? Say, never mind, I’ll forget it just as conveniently as you and Zia did? Say, Ramon was only a fleeting flirtation and of course I don’t mind not marrying him? Well I bloody well won’t! I do mind. I mind so much I’m dying by inches!’ She began to laugh hysterically. ‘Quite literally dying by bloody inches, in a way you and your precious Zia can never imagine. So she was unhappy, was she? And you wanted to be mayor? And Duarte Sanford enjoyed little games of cat and mouse that were inconvenient to both of you? What a shame. What a damn awful, mother-fucking shame!’

  He groped for the bed, her language devastating him in a way nothing else had ever done.

  ‘But of course there’s no problem, is there? You simply tell me and I behave like a good little girl and say that of course I wouldn’t dream of telling Ramon the truth about his darling mother and her helpful lover and everything goes on as before. Only one tiny sacrifice is involved. I have to break off my relationship with Ramon without even being able to tell him why! God in heaven, what do I say? That I’ve changed my mind? Sorry, I don’t love you any more? It was all a mistake?’

  He stumbled to his feet and she saw him through a haze of rage and tears and lashed out wildly at him, knocking him back on the bed.

  ‘You and your precious Zia! If she’d loved you as I love Ramon then no man on earth could have taken her from you! Do you think if I’d been wearing Ramon’s ring, I would have allowed myself to be seduced by charm and flattery and money? No woman gives herself unless she wants to and it’s about time you faced up to the fact that back in those far off days in Boston, Zia bloody well wanted to!’

  ‘No …’ He was clinging to the gold orb that crowned the bedpost.

  She was merciless, crazed with grief, knowing that her world had come to an end and hating the people who had wrecked it with their selfishness and vengeance.

  ‘You were no better! When she did come to you, what did you do? You allowed Duarte to blackmail you into relinquishing her. Have you ever truly asked yourself why? Was it only for Patrick and Maura’s sake? From what I know of my grandfather he never gave a rap for what anyone thought of him. His back was broad enough to take any amount of scandal and I don’t believe he ever gave a damn if he was socially accepted or not.’

  ‘Your grandmother …’

  ‘She had Patrick to lean on! Dear God, I wish I had a Patrick to lean on! I did have! After all these lonely, barren, crucifyingly empty years I did finally have someone. His shoulders were just as broad as Patrick’s. He could have stood with me against a world of gossip and scandal and you’ve taken him away from me! You’ve destroyed the only thing of worth I’ve ever had.’

  ‘That’s not true …’

  ‘You didn’t defy Duarte Sanford because you couldn’t stand the shame of being publicly branded a bastard! It was you who came first. You, you were thinking of. You’ve always been selfish and the monstrosity of it is, that you’ve never seen it. You’ve lied to yourself as you’ve lied to so many others. Why did you marry my mother? You didn’t love her. You didn’t even pretend to love her. You married her because she gave you an entry into a world you craved for and that you now verbally despise because it is politically expedient to do so. A world not only of wealth but of breeding. A world where money came from land that was tenanted when America was still the happy hunting ground of buffalo and undisturbed Indians! A world of titles and royalty. You lapped it up, didn’t you? Cowes and being invited aboard the king’s yacht. Parties attended by the Kaiser and the Tsar. Chips-bloody-O’Shaughnessy. A second generation Irish Catholic who would have been refused entry into the Yankee clubs back home in Boston. So you never applied, did you? I understand a refusal often offends! God, what my mother must have gone through. I never loved her properly because of you. I was always so besotted by you. You overpowered her so that she seemed insignificant, yet without her you would have been nothing; just another socially unacceptable Irish Catholic who happened to have money.’ She was panting. She had never known she could feel such destructiveness.

  ‘How dare you try to play God? Sending an employee to commit a murder as another man would send an employee to fetch a ledger. You weren’t even man enough to kill him yourself. You had to get someone else to do it for you.’ She began to sob. Great, tearing sobs. ‘Ramon won’t send a third party when he knows what you did. He’ll kill you himself with his bare hands.’ Her face streamed with tears. ‘Only he’ll never know, will he? Because you know damned well that I’ll never tell him! Oh God. I hate you for what you’ve done to me. I hate you. Hate you …’

  He staggered to his feet, swaying. She made no move towards him. Slowly he groped his way towards the door. It clicked behind him. She was alone. The sun continued to stream into the room in a blasphemy of light. She had always been alone. All through her marriage to Jack she had been alone. As far as the future stretched, no matter how many people surrounded her, she would be alone. Ramon had been an interlude – a peep into a world that was half dream, half miracle. That world had now come to an end. She closed the blinds and shut out the sun. Only one thing remained to be done. To tell Ramon that the dream was over.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She lost all sense of time. Maria returned, took one look at the still, motionless figure on the darkening terrace and went about her duties silently. She had been with Nancy in Boston when the mayor had collapsed and Nancy had locked herself in her room for days afterwards. She had heard rumours of the row at City Hall, of how Nancy had caused the mayor’s collapse. It was inconceivable to her. Nancy had never done an unkind thing in her life and she adored her father. Yet now, within hours of the mayor’s arrival, Nancy’s radiant happiness had fled. Her face was marbled white; her eyes unseeing. She looked like a woman doomed and Maria dared not intrude on her unnamed grief.

  There was to be a small and select cocktail party to welcome the Maharajah of Sakpur. The maharajah was far more regal than his fellow potentates. There was no outrageous and bewitching female matador on his arm. The maharani was petite, her beautiful kohled eyes lowered demurely as if she were a concubine and not a wife. The maharajah’s retinue had been so numerous that several maids and valets of existing residents had found themselves in the midst of an enforced upheaval. Rooms had been changed and complaints had been vociferous. Senora Henriques had dealt with it all calmly and efficiently, but had resorted to asking for help from Mrs Cameron. Mrs Cameron, Villiers had told her, was with her father and not to be disturbed. Senora Henriques had suppressed her surprise.

  In the last few days Nancy had proved that she was far more than titular hostess of Sanfords. She had spent hours studying the mechanics of the running of the hotel: had organized what she termed a ‘time-saving’plan, by insisting that for two days all tasks performed by every member of the staff, from Villiers and the head butler and maitre d’hôtel, down to the chamber maids and bellboys, meticulously timed. She intended to use the results to institute an even more streamlined service than the one in existence. She had never before been too busy or occupied to attend to anything, however trivial, if it concerned the running of the hotel.

  Lady Maxwell Meade’s maid had been tearfully removed to a smaller room. Her next-door-neighbour, Bobo’s laconic American maid of all work, had merely shrugged her shoulders and moved without complaint. One room was as good as another. In the end, by juggling with the quarters of the Michaeljohns’valet, maid and chauffeur, Senora Henriques had managed to vacate a block of rooms for the maharajah’s turbaned and exotic household. Only Prince Vasileyev’s excitable retinue of Russians had proved intractable. Faced with emotions on such a grand scale, Senora Henriques had baulked. The Indians and Russians would have to co-habit on the same floor. They eyed each other with hatred and suspicion and Senora Henriques retrea
ted, hoping fervently that the maharajah’s visit would be a short one.

  Maria had glimpsed him on his stately entrance, and been suitably impressed. His coat had been of scarlet, his many buttons an alternation of rubies and diamonds. His gigantic walnut-brown head had been swathed with saffron silk intertwined with Tyrian purple.

  Maria paused at Nancy’s vast wardrobe of evening and cocktail dresses. Nancy liked to select her own clothes but time was running short. She glanced at her again, but could not bring herself to break Nancy’s awesome withdrawal into some private world, by asking such a mundane question as to which dress she preferred to wear. The maharani’s sari had been eye-searing cerise edged with gold. Prince Felix would be present and that meant that Lady Bessbrook would also be in attendance. Lady Bessbrook favoured sizzling reds and orange chiffon for after dark. The Montcalms would also be there to welcome the maharajah. Maria tried to remember what Georgina Montcalm favoured in the way of evening dress. Usually she dressed with elegant understatement, cream or ivory silk or soft-hued muted pastels. Maria made her mind up and withdrew a starkly plain black organdie dress by Patou from the sea of colours. The black would not only be a perfect foil for Nancy’s pansy dark eyes and flawless skin, but would set her stunningly apart from the riot of colour around her.

  The telephone rang and Maria answered it. Its shrill ringing had not stirred Nancy into movement. It was the mayor wishing to speak to his daughter: at least he said it was the mayor. To Maria, the trembling voice bore no likeness to Mayor O’Shaughnessy’s boisterous tone.

  ‘The mayor, madame,’ she said timidly.

  Very slowly Nancy turned her head in Maria’s direction. The rest of her body remained statue-like, her beautiful long-fingered hands hanging over the narrow arms of her wicker chair, as if broken at the wrists. The thick-fringed eyes were limpid pools devoid of expression. For the first time in her life Maria felt frightened.

  ‘He wishes to speak to you, madame.’

  Nancy still did not speak. She simply turned her head away and continued to stare sightlessly over the now sunless sea.

  Maria returned to the telephone, picking up the diamantéencrusted receiver and saying with an authority she did not feel: ‘Mrs Cameron is not available at the moment, Mayor O’Shaughnessy.’

  The line clicked and went dead. Maria let out a sigh of relief. She had expected a battle with the forceful mayor. A shouting insistence that his daughter be put on the line. He was acting out of character – as was Nancy. She returned to the terrace and said hesitantly, ‘There is only another thirty minutes until cocktails in the Orchid Room, madame.’

  A slight motion of Nancy’s head indicated that she had heard. Maria returned to the bedroom, checked that Nancy’s cosmetics and perfume were all within hand’s reach, and topped up the cooling perfumed bath water. There was nothing more she could do.

  For a long time the black pit into which Nancy had fallen had suppressed all positive thought. She could not allow herself to think. To do so would be to endure a pain so unspeakable that her conscious mind shrank from the task. The hours passed and step by infinitesimal step she allowed thought to replace numbing oblivion. It needed every particle of her courage to allow herself to face up to reality.

  Theoretically she had a choice. She could continue loving and living with Ramon and keeping her father’s terrible secret just as Zia had done: or she could tell him and stand by whilst he destroyed her father either by civil justice or personal vengeance. She had no way of knowing if she chose the latter whether he would still want her, or whether the sight of her would be such a painful reminder of her father’s crime, that he would repudiate her utterly.

  Practically, she had no choice at all. She was incapable of living with such a monstrous revelation. Bleakly she wondered why they had found it necessary to tell her. Why they couldn’t have continued with their own private hell and spared her. As twilight deepened to dusk, she assumed that it was because of the word ‘marriage’. Presumably the prospect of having grandchildren with one grandparent responsible for the death of another, was too much for even Zia’s iron nerve. Zia had insisted that she be told and had known that by doing so the marriage would be prevented. Just as she knew her son, Zia knew her lover’s daughter. She had known that she would never expose him and see him suffer for his crime.

  There was no choice at all. She had to do what Zia and Chips had known she must do. She had to tell Ramon that their affaire was at an end. All because one far-off day Duarte Sanford, a man totally European and with a life-long hatred of America, had been instructed by his father to enlarge his business knowledge by experiencing the New World at first hand. She could imagine how reluctantly he had made contact with the nouveau riche O’Shaughnessys. How distasteful it must have been to his aristrocratic sense of breeding and refinement to meet with a man whom his father had set on the first step to riches. A man who had been born a peasant. How the de Gama in him must have rebelled at such an encounter. She wondered how Patrick had received the arrogant and condescending son of his life-long friend. Probably with concealed amusement. Duarte Sanford’s opinion of him would not have caused Patrick to lose a second’s sleep. But Duarte Sanford’s open contempt would have struck at the very core of her father’s being. He was the king in his own particular kingdom of the North End. His father’s wealth, as well as his own ambition and overpowering personality, had seen to that. Educated at the Boston Latin School and Harvard, he had mixed with sons of millionaires – but with one difference. He could still remember back to a time when he had run the cobbled streets with bare feet and patched trousers. Over the years, inches by inches, he had fought for what his classmates had taken for granted: social acceptability. Even when he was mayor and a millionaire several times over, he had been refused entry into one of the prestigious Yankee clubs. She could remember his rage: his demonic frustration, his yelling of:

  ‘I’m an American, aren’t I? Goddamn it! I’m mayor of this city! How dare they refuse me permission to sit among their musty leather chairs and drink their second-rate bourbon on the grounds that I’m Irish and a Catholic? I’ll show them what an American with Irish ancestry can do! How can a man be refused entry to some piss-hole Yankee club simply because his religion is different and his background isn’t that of the Pilgrim Fathers? What does a man have to do in the land of the free to be equal?’

  It was after that humiliation that he had gone to Europe. With his English, blue-blooded wife as an entry card, he had assaulted European high society like a man climbing the Eiger. Nancy afterwards wondered if the insular society of Edwardian England had ever been the same again. Eccentric, they said of him. It was the only description the reticent English could summon to describe Chips’ rash vulgarity, overwhelming bonhomie, and irresistible charm. But that had been long years after Duarte Sanford’s arrival in Boston. Then, full of swagger and bounce, he had been faced for the first time with condescension and contempt. Duarte Sanford would have left him in no doubt as to where a second-generation Irish immigrant rated in the eyes of a Portuguese nobleman, with an ancestry going back to the Middle Ages.

  The antipathy between the two of them must have been immediate. Zia the catalyst. Even Duarte, accustomed to the sophisticates of Paris and Lisbon, must have been dazzled by Zia’s exotic, effortless beauty. He must have seen immediately that in Boston and in the world Chips inhabited, Zia was as rare as an orchid on a winter’s day. That Zia, for Chips, was irreplaceable. She could imagine Duarte Sanford, olive-skinned and dark-eyed, his black hair slicked and shining, his moustache magnificent, his dress impeccable. Dove-grey velvet suits and silk-lined top hats, ebony canes and jewels on his fingers and in the folds of his neckties. He must have descended on nineteenth century Boston like European royalty. His carriage drawn by a team of perfectly-matched greys, his manner as alien to the local populace as theirs was to him. Foreigner or not, no Yankee club would have closed its doors to Duarte Sanford. Rather, they would have welcomed him with open
arms. He was the epitome of what they most admired. He had breeding, refinement – the embodiment of a sense of history.

  How Chips must have hated him – seeing in him all the things he secretly longed to be. How Duarte must have longed to put the bumptious upstart who lorded it over a miserable square mile of overcrowded houses, pubs and waterfronts, into his place. Zia’s fate had been practically pre-ordained.

  Nancy’s anger had left her. Whatever Zia had done she had paid for and the price had been high. Never, perhaps, higher than it was at the present moment.

  Maria told her that her father was on the telephone. She had no desire to speak to him; not until after her break with Ramon. Then there would be all the time in the world for him to beg her forgiveness, to offer useless anodynes for her grief. From where she sat she could see the juniper trees that lined the rocky road to Camara de Lobos. Headlights flashed brilliantly between the trees as a corner was taken at suicidal speed. No chauffeur ever drove like that. No chauffeur ever drove to Camara de Lobos. Madeira’s guests were content to traverse only the mile-long stretch of road from the harbour to the hotel. Ramon had returned. She made her decision.

  Maria was shaken out of her inertia by Nancy running into the bedroom, sandals flying in the direction of the bed, her dress following, a trail of French lingerie scattering the floor to the gold-cherubed bathroom. Even before Maria could reach for a giant-size, inches-deep towel, Nancy had soaked herself, rinsed and was stepping out of the bath. With respect for the black organdie dress, talcum powder was dispensed with and Maria lavishly sprayed eau de cologne in its place.

  Meanwhile, Nancy was already applying her hand-made Paris cosmetics. The merest hint of rouge to highlight her exquisite cheekbones, a gloss of scarlet on her lips, a barely discernible touch of colour on her eyelids, and a generous application of mascara to accentuate the incredible sweep of her lashes. She pushed away the jewels that Maria had laid out on the dressing table to complete the dramatic starkness of Patou’s evening creation. Instead, Nancy looped her mother’s heavy rope of pearls and slipped them over her head. As she slid her sheer silk-stockinged feet into peep-toed sling-back evening pumps, Maria complemented the eau de cologne by spraying her with matching perfume. Nancy took one brief look in the full-length triple mirror, and before Maria could reach the door and open it for her, she flung it open herself and fell headlong into Ramon’s arms.