The Flower Garden

by Margaret Pemberton

  He ran all the way to his suite to give orders for his cases to be packed. He ran all the way to reception to ask that a cable be sent to Mrs O’Shaughnessy, reading: ‘Coming home stop Love you stop Chips’.

  He ran all the way to the Garden Suite to tell Nancy that he would not be staying to greet his grand-daughter.

  There was a ship leaving at dusk. Leaving Nancy incredulous and uncomprehending, he spent the rest of his time with Zia. She did not escort him to Sanfords’grand entrance when he left. Their last goodbye had been a private one.

  ‘But surely you can wait another two days,’ Nancy protested for the fourth time.

  ‘No, I can’t. I have to get back. Give my love to Verity. Don’t allow that husband of hers to go around singing the praises of Hitler and do try and forgive me.’

  ‘I already have.’

  He hugged her tightly. To her amazement she saw that he was crying.

  ‘I’ve ruined enough lives, Nancy. Zia’s, your mother’s, yours. I can’t ruin Gloria’s as well. Goodbye, sweetheart.’ He kissed her forehead and brushed his tears away clumsily.

  ‘Goodbye, Daddy.’

  The Sanford Rolls slid away down the drive and towards the docks. She felt utterly deserted. If she had pleaded with him to stay, would he have done so? What would he have given up for her? The bleak answer was very little. He was returning to his young and, presumably, forgiven wife. Zia’s life would continue as it had for the past countless years. Only hers had been disrupted.

  Ramon insisted again that she play hostess to his host. She wore a black crèpe dress with a short-waisted, mandarin-necked gold jacket. He seemed to derive some sadistic pleasure from forcing her to remain at his side. Or was it masochistic? After all, in his eyes she had terminated the affaire. She was the one who had laughed at the word love and made light of all the beauty and magic and sacredness of what had passed between them.

  ‘Let me introduce you to Lance St John Colbert,’ Ramon was saying, the cruelty in his voice naked as he gripped her elbow in a pincer-like grip and steered her through the chattering groups. ‘Lance enjoys a good time. You should get on together very well. You’ll have your fun in bed without the inconvenience of love.’

  ‘Ramon, please …’

  ‘Or is Charles Montcalm more in your line? I believe seducing the husband of a best friend always adds extra zest to sexual activities.’

  ‘Ramon, you’re hurting me …’

  He was smiling, nodding in various directions, saying as he did so, ‘I admire you, Nancy. I really do. To present such a façade of respectability in public and be such a whore in private must require great talent.’

  Sparks flared in her eyes. ‘I never once pretended to be anything but what I was – your mistress!’

  His voice was like silk. ‘That was here – away from the world press. What I admire is the ingeniousness you must have employed to conduct your clandestine affaires in the very heart of New York and Washington.’

  She tried to wrench her arm away but his grip was vicelike.

  ‘How dare you call me a whore! I gave up my husband for you, my home …’ She stopped in mid-sentence, horrified.

  His eyes had narrowed to mere slits. People were turning to look in their direction, but they were oblivious.

  ‘Why?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘For a little fun? For a few weeks’ diversion?’

  She was so pale he thought she was going to faint.

  ‘Let go of me,’ she gasped. ‘You said you would never touch me again! Don’t sully your fingers by laying them on a whore!’

  She spun around. A glass of Oeil-de-Perdrix cascaded down Bobo’s silk lamé. She was aware of staring faces: bodies. There was a stunned silence as she ran from the room.

  ‘What extraordinary behaviour,’ the newcomer said to Margot Alleynian.

  ‘Incredible,’ her compatriot agreed. ‘You expect that sort of thing from the Latins but not the Americans. And not that American.’

  ‘Should I go after her?’ Georgina asked Charles anxiously.

  His reply was too hurried to be in good taste. ‘Leave well alone. I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t want to know. Sanford looks on the border of dementia and Nancy …’ Words failed him. He took his third whisky in five minutes from the tray of a hovering waiter. He was beginning to drink far too much. Warfare was tranquil in comparison to life at Sanfords.

  A deep, scorching rage enabled Nancy to survive the next two weeks. She no longer appeared as Sanfords’hostess. No power on earth would induce her to do so. She no longer attended the dinners, cocktail parties and balls. She painted and, occasionally, when dark had fallen and the pool and surrounding places were deserted, she swam. Unknown to her, from Zia’s terrace, Ramon watched hour after hour after hour. His hands clenched in tight knots behind his back, his only companion a bottle of whisky. It was a week before Villiers informed him of Nancy’s habit of swimming between seven and eight in the evenings. From then on he stationed himself in the unlit snooker room and watched through the cold glass as she swam relentlessly up and down, up and down, until exhaustion forced her to climb, shivering, from the sunless water.

  He continued to see Tessa and his fondness for her increased, but it was not love. Love was what he felt for Nancy. Love that had been flung back in his face.

  There had been no other men. Surveillance on the Garden Suite was tighter than on the White House. He didn’t understand it. All his life women had been his for the asking. Night after night he fought the temptation to stride down to the pool and either take her by force or drown her. Sometimes he felt that only by committing both acts would he ever again achieve peace of mind.

  Nancy’s sickness continued. Her breakfast tray now only contained dry toast, black, sugarless coffee and the ubiquitous Perrier water.

  Maria’s pleas that she see a doctor went unheeded. The fatigue and the nosebleeds had stopped, as had her period. Presumably Dr Lorrimer had omitted to mention the inconvenience of morning sickness. Nancy bore it stoically. By ten or eleven she felt well enough to paint. A few hours’nausea was a small price to pay when suffering from an incurable disease. As a child she had seen a great aunt die of cancer. She knew when she was lucky.

  Giovanni disappeared to Rome with her paintings and her second canvas was followed by a third. The Szaparys left: Alexia aboard the Rosslyn, the count, looking more than satisfied, aboard a liner bound for Durban.

  On 7 April, ex-Prince Hubertus and ex-Prince Friedrich of Germany appeared in public, wearing the uniforms of Nazi Storm-troopers. On 11 April Sir Gerald du Maurier, the great actor and manager, died. On 14 April the Meades sailed away and, even to Georgina’s eyes, Sir Maxwell’s yellow silk handkerchief appeared crushed and limply pathetic. On 16 April Verity and Dieter, Count and Countess Mezriczky, finally arrived, the count wearing the same controversial uniform as the sons of the ex-Kaiser.

  Nancy’s shock was overcome by pleasure at seeing her daughter. She hugged her but Verity’s slim body remained stiff and unresponsive. Nancy remembered that Verity disliked public displays of affection. Chips’Irish blood had by-passed his grand-daughter.

  ‘Darling, you look marvellous,’ she said, drawing back and taking a good look at her only child.

  She did. Verity had never been an overly pretty child. Her hair had been straight and her features had always seemed too large for her small, pointed face. In company she tended to be awkward and diffident. Ever since she had been a toddler, Nancy had taken great care to ensure that plenty of contemporaries were invited to their Hyannis home as playmates. Verity had accepted them without enthusiasm. The children had more often than not played amongst themselves while Verity watched disinterestedly. As Verity had grown older, Nancy spared no efforts in trying to overcome her shyness. She had seen to it that she could swim, ride, play tennis and dance. The introverted toddler became a withdrawn and unparticipating pupil at Dorchester High School. She had refused adamantly to attend any of the city centre schools. Cha
ffeur-driven, she disappeared daily outside Boston’s city limits and returned as uncommunicative as ever. Nancy suffered for her. She had never been afflicted by shyness and sensitivity on the scale that Verity was. Jack intended that, after her post-graduate year, Verity should go on to Wellesley. By now, her straight hair was no longer such a handicap. She had long ago given up attempting to curl it and wore it in a long, unfashionable, bob. Strangely enough it suited her. Over the years her features and face had adjusted so that though her appearance was starkly different from the frothy, giggling girls of her own age group, she had evolved a style of her own. She also had an innate imperiousness that resulted from her efforts to overcome her shyness. The aloof attitude set her apart, just as her unusual looks did. Boys were intrigued, often awed, by her. At her seventeenth birthday party Nancy had finally let out a sigh of relief. Discarding frills and flounces, Verity had dressed simply and with stunning good taste. She looked far older than her classmates and spent more time talking to her parents’ acquaintances and family friends and their visitors who were staying at the Cape. She had no shortage of dance partners: she betrayed no sign of her shyness. Rather, she seemed amazingly self-assured for a girl between school and college.

  It was the Halloways who brought Count Dieter Mezriczky as their guest. The girls’ heads swivelled. Local boys paled into insignificance.

  The count was in his early twenties, blond-haired and blue-eyed. His manner was as withdrawn and detached as Verity’s and consequently just as intriguing. Every girl present felt a personal challenge to arouse interest in the pale, bored eyes. He did not drink and, to their disappointment, he refused to dance.

  When Nancy hurried from the supper room, where she had been ensuring that fresh supplies of food were reaching the table, and out into the lamplit garden, she was amazed to see her daughter and the count standing apart from the other guests, their heads close together, deep in discussion.

  Her first reaction had been one of pleasure. Her daughter, who for so many years had seemed destined to be a wallflower, was obviously not going to suffer that fate. She was fast acquiring poise and confidence, and had captured the undivided attention of their most eligible guest. When, one month later, Verity announced she would not be going to Wellesley, but marrying Dieter instead, Nancy’s pleasure had turned to horror.

  Even Jack had returned from Washington, an unheard-of precedent.

  Verity, the quiet, silent little girl who had suffered so acutely from shyness and lack of confidence, was transformed. She was still quiet. Nancy couldn’t remember her raising her voice once as they sat up night after night, pleading with her, persuading, bribing. Verity was immovable. She was not going to Wellesley. She was marrying Dieter. For the first time, Nancy became aware of her daughter’s awesome stubbornness.

  In the end it was Jack who had capitulated. They could become engaged on her eighteenth birthday and married on her nineteenth. Nancy had choked back a cry of protest. Verity was still a child. Dieter was her first romantic attachment. To permit an engagement was lunacy.

  ‘I’m not waiting two years,’ Verity said calmly as her father rose to leave the table around which they had all been sitting. ‘I’m marrying him now – this month.’

  For once Jack Cameron had been speechless.

  ‘You can’t.’ It was Nancy who spoke, firmly and authoritatively. ‘You can’t marry without our permission and we won’t give it. We love you too much to see you ruin your life by marrying the first boy you fall in love with.’

  ‘Dieter isn’t a boy: he’s a man.’ Verity, too, rose from the table. ‘If you don’t give permission I shall live with him anyway.’

  Jack blustered. Nancy hung on to the remnants of her self-control and reasoned. Verity was adamant. Neither of her parents doubted a word she said. It was no hysterical, girlish threat.

  The marriage had taken place in St Stephen’s Church. As if to lay the lie to rumour and speculation as to its almost indecent haste, Jack had seen to it that it was the wedding of the year.

  As her friends’ daughters entered colleges, went dutifully in laughing groups to Boston’s Convent of the Sacred Heart, held tennis parties and swimming parties, Nancy stood shell-shocked on New York’s crowded pier and said goodbye to her daughter. Verity was remarkably composed. Nancy envied her her self-control. She couldn’t see the beloved face for tears. Dieter, as always, was punctiliously polite. There would be a welcome for them any time in Germany.

  Germany. Nancy’s self-control abandoned her as they boarded the Bremen and Jack ushered her into the back of their waiting Rolls. Germany. It was another world. She began to cry helplessly.

  ‘She doesn’t even know the language! She’s seventeen, Jack. Seventeen! How could we have allowed her to do it? She’ll be wretchedly homesick. She’ll be lonely. No friends. No family.’

  She groped in her crocodile-skin handbag for a handkerchief. ‘She’s too young to realize what she’s doing. It’s just an adventure for her. Perhaps she never wanted to go to Wellesley at all? Perhaps this is just her way of escape?’

  She gained no comfort from Jack. He sat, his face as immobile as if it were carved from stone. An engagement after two weeks of meeting: a wedding scarcely two months after. Christ. The whole of the eastern seaboard must believe his daughter to be pregnant.

  ‘I’ll pick up Shelby and the Lagonda at the apartment. I have to be in Washington for tonight.’

  ‘Yes.’ She stuffed her handkerchief back into her handbag. He didn’t ask if she was staying in New York or returning to Hyannis. He didn’t offer her any comfort. He was too busy nursing his bruised pride.

  She had returned, desolate, to the Cape. Her days were spent playing solitary rounds of golf on a course buffetted by stiff Atlantic sea breezes and bounded by marshes and clumps of low-lying brush and wiry weeds. After a light and plain lunch she would button up her windbreaker, don a headscarf and walk for miles along the beach, oblivious of the wet breezes blowing in from Nantucket Sound. It was shortly after Verity’s departure that she began to suffer from unaccountable attacks of fatigue. Then, dutifully accompanying Jack on one of his public appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, she had fainted. And subsequently seen Dr Lorrimer.

  Verity’s light brown hair was pulled smoothly away from her forehead, circling her head in Brunhilde-style plaits. If she had been dressed in German national costume she could not have looked less American. Her eyes were bright, her face fuller than when she had left New York. There was no trace of homesickness or regret at her hasty marriage. It was hard for Nancy to realize that Verity was still only seventeen as she said, after Dieter had kissed her hand, clicking his heels in a manner that embarrassed Nancy, ‘Well, Mother. Don’t you think it’s time you returned home?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  The Mezriczkys’gold-embossed luggage was being transferred to their suite. Nancy had been about to say how marvellous it was to see them. Verity withdrew grey leather, gauntlet gloves and began to move away from reception and towards the public rooms. Her suit was severe with wide shoulders and narrow skirts with modest side-slits. It was a Paris original and the material had been specially woven. The emerald on the third finger of her left hand was so large that it seemed impossible that it should not weigh her hand down.

  ‘When are you returning home? After your letter I naturally wrote to father. He said your age and attendant condition were responsible for your behaviour but that he was coming here to take care of you. Where is he?’

  Nancy tried to stifle the slow, burning anger that Verity’s unexpected attitude was arousing in her.

  ‘Your father certainly tried to take care of me,’ she said acidly. ‘At the present moment he’s presumably back in Washington.’

  Verity raised her eyebrows. Nancy felt the sickness that usually only assailed her in the morning flood over her like a tide. This was not what she had endured weeks of pain and humiliation for. She had expected hugs and kisses and a joyful fami
ly reunion. A full-length mirror caught them both as they paused at the entrance of the large salon. Verity’s severe suit and heavy features made her look severals years older than she was.

  Nancy’s bare sun-tanned legs, white, silk, halter-necked sundress and dazzling, thickly lashed eyes, made her look years younger. A stranger would have assumed them to be sisters.

  She halted and said, holding Verity’s eyes through the mirror, ‘As to my age, I hardly think even you can imagine I’m so ancient that it can affect my health.’

  A dull red flush stained Verity’s cheeks. Nancy immediately regretted her words. Verity had acquired an assurance and an impeccable manner of dress, but she would never be as beautiful as her mother. Her words had been unforgivable. She took her hand.

  ‘There’s a cold lunch waiting for us in my suite. You must both be tired and hungry. How is your home? Can you speak German yet? Why were you so long in arriving?’

  Verity carefully withdrew her hand from Nancy’s grasp and accompanied her silently.

  Dieter said, ‘We travelled to Vienna first and stayed longer than we had anticipated.’

  ‘Oh,’ Nancy smiled brilliantly. They were not to know what that change of plan had cost her. ‘Prince Felix Zaronsky is here. He has a home in Vienna. He tells me it is a beautiful city.’

  Too late, she remembered that Felix was not returning to his Viennese home because of the civil war and Nazi intrusion.

  What on earth was Dieter thinking of, appearing at an hotel like Sanfords in full Nazi uniform? Surely he knew that Sanfords’ guests were international? That he was bound to arouse antagonism? She would have to have a quiet word with him. She shrank from the thought. Accomplished hostess as she was, she had to search desperately for words when faced with her impressive-faced son-in-law. Even when talking to Verity, it was like talking to a stranger.

  Perhaps when they were alone – when Dieter was no longer with them – they would be able to resume the ease of their old relationship? Verity’s shyness, though now under control, was still a part of her personality. She would not feel free to discuss her new home while her husband was with them. Especially if some aspects of German life were unflattering. Reassured by this thought, Nancy led them into the Garden Suite.