I got on.
‘Should we ask her to come with us, do you think?’ I asked Burgo as soon as we were in the hall.
‘Who?’
‘The woman in the magenta dress.’
‘Is that what you call it? I thought it was purple.’
‘She looked a little sorry to see you go.’
‘We ran out of things to say to each other halfway through dinner. She’s thankful to be rid of me.’
‘You’re not a very good liar, are you?’ By this time we had walked the length of a passage and reached a door that led into the garden.
Burgo laughed. ‘We had quite an interesting chat about the iniquitous doings of King Leopold in the Belgian Congo earlier on. But most of the conversation was about her. Her husband is a brute and a philanderer. And he drinks. Much as other husbands, in fact.’
‘Are you those things?’
‘I expect I would be if I spent much time being a husband. Anna is spared my uxorial shortcomings at least six months of the year. Look at that!’
The lawn shimmered with raindrops but the sky had cleared. The moon lay like a silver dish at the bottom of a large pond, quivering faintly as the wind breathed over the surface of the water. The shadows of the trees and hedges were knife-sharp.
‘It’s beautiful!’ I said. ‘And the scent!’
I could smell honeysuckle and roses and something else overwhelmingly sweet, perhaps jasmine. We strolled side by side, brushing against wet bushes that overhung the gravel path. The first lungfuls of fresh air banished any desire to yawn. The trunks of a stilt hedge laid shadow bars across our path. We entered a parterre of box, the squares filled with flowers, grey and lavender by moonlight. I ran my hand along the top of a hedge of rosemary, releasing a pungent scent which made me think of heat and Italy. And food.
‘How can you be hungry?’ asked Burgo when I confessed this. ‘You’ve just eaten five courses.’
‘That has nothing to do with it. With me hunger is connected with mood. I can’t eat properly when I’m not enjoying myself. I barely tasted the soup or the beef Wellington when I was being harangued by the beastly surgeon about Stalinist purges. At home when things are miserable I go for days eating practically nothing.’
‘I’ve got a bag of caramels. Will that do?’
‘It would be heaven.’ I took one from the packet he gave me. ‘What a strange thing to have in one’s dinner-jacket pocket.’
‘I always carry sweets. For any children I may come across. I’m supposed to kiss them but I’d rather not. Their runny noses put me off. So I give them a sweet and they like it much better than being mauled by a strange man.’
‘Are you being serious?’
‘You’re shocked by the cynical contrivances of a politician’s everyday life?’
‘I suppose I am.’
‘Well, don’t let that interfere with your enjoyment of the caramels.’
‘I’m ashamed to say it isn’t in the least. I haven’t had a toffee for years. It may well be the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.’
‘Does that mean you’re particularly enjoying yourself?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’
‘So you can flirt.’
‘Of course I can. But not with married men. It’s a strict rule of mine.’
‘And you’ve kept to it admirably. How wise you are, Roberta Pickford-Norton.’
‘Perhaps that’s going too far, but I’m not an absolute fool.’
He bowed gravely. ‘I’m sure of that.’
We walked slowly. I ate another toffee. Epicurus was right to insist that man’s principal duty was the pursuit of pleasure. We followed the path until it came to a narrow gap in a dense high hedge. He stood aside to let me go through. A square about half the size of the drawing room was filled with beds of roses. Behind them, forming one side of the square, was a small building with a pointed roof, upflung eaves and fretted windows in the oriental fashion.
‘A China House!’ I was thrilled. ‘What a marvellous thing to find! I had no idea there was one in this part of the world. A wonderful example of sharawadgi!’
‘What’s that?’
‘Sharawadgi is an eighteenth-century word. It means the first impression, the impact on the eye of something surprising and delightful. A shock of pleasure. In this century it’s been revived with particular application to landscape gardening and garden architecture. It’s a quasi-Chinese word made up by a European, no one quite knows who.’
‘Sharawadgi,’ Burgo repeated solemnly. ‘I like that.’
‘I don’t know if I’m telling you something you already know, but England was tremendously influenced by the Chinese taste in gardening in the eighteenth century. It became known as the anglais-chinois style when it filtered through to the rest of Europe, finally ousting the Italian and Dutch fashions. But because the buildings were made of wood, most of them have decayed. This must be one of just a handful. Forgive the lecturing tone.’
‘I like being told things. And I didn’t know.’
‘But how marvellous that Dickie has restored it. What a nice man he is. Can we go in?’
The door was stiff and Burgo had to be firm with it. The faint smell of new paint was quickly absorbed by the rose-scented air that accompanied us inside. Though the moonlight streamed in, the room was filled with gloomy shadows. As my eyes adjusted I made out a predictable set of garden furniture, a wicker sofa and two chairs grouped round a coffee table.
‘This should be decorated with Chinese scenes of dragons and tigers, water lilies and fans, that sort of thing.’ I walked about examining the room. ‘And there should be scarlet screens and lacquered furniture. And really the garden ought to be Chinese as well, with a pond and a bridge.’
‘You must tell Dickie. He’ll be overjoyed to find that someone shares his enthusiasm. Fleur cares for nothing but her beloved animals. I’m sure he’d appreciate some help with the project.’
‘Well, if you really think … I could make a few suggestions.’
‘I realize I’ve no right to treat you like a social worker but I’d be grateful if that meant you’d see something of Fleur,’ Burgo said. ‘She has no women friends. She doesn’t work so she has no colleagues either. Her shyness prevents her from taking part in charitable exercises like the Red Cross and so on. And the fact that she has no children separates her even more. I’ve seen how women support one another, and enjoy being with each other, despite the usual platitudes about women being catty, which of course are also true.’
So that was why he had invited me. For Fleur’s sake. I ran my fingers over a section of white-washed tracery that I was almost certain was a stylized pagoda.
‘She’ll have children later on, won’t she?’
‘She and Dickie sleep in separate rooms. It was a condition she made when she married him.’
I was touched by this evidence of Dickie’s devotion to Fleur. How many other men would have agreed to such a stipulation? I couldn’t think of one.
‘I’d be delighted to see Fleur again if she’d like it. What a good brother you are.’
‘No, I’m extremely selfish. I found looking after Fleur a worry and a responsibility. So when Dickie wanted to marry her I encouraged her to accept him. Despite the horse I don’t think she would have, if she hadn’t wanted to please me. She’s always valued my opinion more than it’s worth. Now I can see they’re neither of them particularly happy. But if you think that’s why I asked you to come here tonight: to befriend Fleur, you’re wrong.’
I turned from the window to which I had gravitated. I could see his face quite clearly now as he came to stand beside me. Until that moment he had not said a word to which the most captious guardian of morals could have taken exception. Neither overtly nor covertly had he sought to fascinate me. He had been as a brother. Now he looked at me calmly, with a suggestion of polite interrogation as though about to ask me whether I cared for touring abroad. He did not sigh sentimentally or attempt to take
my hand.
Yet something threatened, like the shivering of a snowcap in response to an echo from the valley below, which sent me swiftly to the door.
‘I must go home. I’m so glad … It’s lovely. I’ll talk to Dickie about it if I get the chance.’
I turned the handle but the door held fast. I pulled hard, struggling, almost panting with the effort to escape.
‘Let me.’ Burgo engaged energetically with the handle and the door gave way with a shudder. ‘There you are. Deliverance.’
I thought I detected something like laughter or even derision in his eyes as he stood back to let me go through it before him. We walked back to the house. Burgo strolled beside me, his hands in his pockets, looking thoroughly relaxed.
Had he an ulterior purpose in taking me to see the China House? The situation had an air of contrivance about it. A cushioned sofa in a remote and romantic arbour, practically a love-nest … I accused myself of a chronic, spinsterish tendency to doubt men’s motives. I had jumped at Burgo’s invitation to go to see it and it had been my idea to look inside. Was I so cynical that I suspected that every man who found himself alone in the moonlight with a woman not actually hideous would try his luck with her? Well, yes. But after all, what had Burgo done? Precisely nothing. He might have been about to ask my opinion of his lunchtime speech. Or to confess to a troubled childhood. Damn the man! He could at least have made his intentions clear so that I could have apprised him swiftly and unequivocally of his mistake.
‘So,’ said Kit, finishing a cup of terrible coffee. ‘He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. You women don’t know how lucky you are. Pity us poor blokes trying to interpret the signals from a girl who thinks she might fancy you if you make a sufficiently manly lunge, yet who might on the other hand want to scream the house down. I bet you’ve never been in the position of having to make the running. If you met a man you wouldn’t mind a game of Irish whist with and he seemed a bit slow off the mark in taking you up, what would you do?’
‘I’d assume he didn’t like card games.’
‘When a phrase has Irish in it, it usually means something not to be taken literally. Often it means the opposite, or it’s describing something inferior as exaggeratedly superior. To have an Irish dinner means to have nothing to eat. An Irish nightingale is a frog. An Irish hurricane is what the navy call a flat calm. Irish curtains are cobwebs. Do you see? To throw Irish confetti is to chuck bricks at something.’
‘Rather insulting to the Irish, isn’t it?’
‘For some reason it’s been the common sport of nations to make a laughing stock of Paddy and Mick. But now the Irish are so powerful in the States, they can afford to ignore the banter.’
‘So Irish whist means … oh, I see, sex. What you men can’t seem to grasp is that a woman rarely thinks like that. Naturally, if she really liked a man she’d be prepared to scheme. She might try to run into him unexpectedly, or take up parachuting if that was his hobby. But she wouldn’t be plotting to get his clothes off in record time. She’d be thinking about a love affair.’
‘Men can be romantic, too,’ Kit protested. ‘But these days they’re unlikely to wax warm about a woman who won’t nail his hat to the ceiling pretty soon after meeting him.’
‘You’re ignoring the fact that plenty of men would be put off by a woman who made a blatant advance.’
‘We’ll conduct an experiment.’ Kit summoned the landlord and took out his wallet. ‘Make a blatant advance and let’s see how I react.’
I prepared myself for argument. ‘I really must insist on paying my share.’ I put a five-pound note on the table.
‘How kind.’ Kit picked up the note and gave it to the landlord. ‘That’ll pay for my lunch too. But you needn’t think you’ve bought me,’ he added as we left the pub.
The landlord’s wife, overhearing this, fixed her eyes on us with keen interest. As we drove away I looked back and saw her standing at the open door, staring after us.
‘All right.’ Kit accelerated with a growl from the engine as we came to a straight bit of road. ‘Back to the story. You were stalking back to the house in high dudgeon because Burgo had – or possibly hadn’t – tried to seduce you.’
‘I’m sure you don’t want to hear—’
‘Will you get on with it!’
The moonlight must have been partly to blame for my confusion. It poured down upon the garden, washing the grass with silver. It was an enchanted place. A fountain splashed beside a statue of a naked woman with a pig at her feet. Or more likely a dog. A faint breeze swept over the lawns. Ghostly foxgloves waved their wands of ashen flowers, binding one with spells. As I passed beneath an arch I ducked to avoid the branch of a rose and a shower of scented petals dripped over me. It was impossible to be rational and wise on such a night as this.
‘You remember that description of moonshine?’ Burgo had stopped and was gazing upwards. ‘Shakespeare, I think. Perhaps A Midsummer Night’s Dream. You’re supposed to be able to see a man with a lantern, a dog and a thorn-bush in the pattern made by the craters.’
The sky was spangled with stars. The melancholy face of the moon stared down open-mouthed, contemplating human folly. A shiver ran down my back. It may have been a petal.
I had to make an effort to speak. ‘I think I just can.’
He was looking down at me, his pale hair gleaming, his face hidden by shadows. I felt again a sense of appalling danger but I almost didn’t care.
‘You’re very quiet,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking about?’
The flowers – the garden – the intoxicating scent – the bliss of being alive on such a night as this, I wanted to cry. I longed to run and dance and lift my arms to Ch’ang-o, the Chinese goddess who stole her husband’s drug of immortality and went to live in the moon to escape his wrath. But by a supreme effort at self-control I managed to keep my arms by my sides and walk on, a little faster.
‘I was wondering how many hours it would take to mow so much grass.’
‘No! Were you? What a practical girl you are, after all.’
I heard disbelief in his voice.
‘Yes. I am.’
‘I’ll find Simon and we’ll take you home. It must be nearly twelve. As a prudent, sensible woman I expect you subscribe to the view that an hour before midnight is worth two after?’
‘I most certainly do.’
‘Nothing happened in the garden,’ I informed Kit.
EIGHT
‘So you managed to resist him,’ said Kit. ‘What’s much more remarkable, almost incredible, in fact, is that he managed to resist you.’
We had left the town of Ennis behind us and were heading northeast. The wind had risen and snatched impatiently at the ends of the scarf I had resorted to winding round my head like a turban. I had no wish to arrive in Connemara looking like the thorn-bush on the moon. Ahead of us a lavender-grey cloud marred the exquisite blue of the sky.
I was used to Kit’s flattery by now and continued to ignore it. ‘I suppose even politicians, sex-crazed psychopaths though they are by reputation, draw the line at raping fellow guests at respectable dinner parties in the Home Counties.’
‘Not often, I should say. Anyway, is Sussex a Home County?’
‘Not quite. But you know what I mean. Is there any chance of a cup of tea, do you think? So much talking’s made me thirsty.’
‘We’ll stop at the next town. On condition you go on with the story the moment your thirst is slaked. I absolutely must know what happened next. I identify closely with those Victorians who used to stop complete strangers in the street to ask if Little Nell was dead. It’s quite as gripping as an episode of The Old Curiosity Shop.’
‘You exaggerate my powers of narration. It’s a trite tale that’s often been told.’
‘Now don’t be bitter, Bobbie. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘I apologize for sounding stupidly melodramatic. I’m suffering badly from hurt pride, that’s all. I mean, really, what an
absolute idiot I’ve been! One small comfort is that by telling you – I haven’t confided in a soul … well, only one other person apart from Oliver – it’s like reliving those days when Burgo and I were so entranced by each other. Now I remember why I was ready to risk my peace of mind, my self-respect, even my sanity for something that could never have a happy ending.’
‘Is there a man or woman alive who hasn’t taken a gamble and lost? Just because your unlucky speculation has been emblazoned in headlines the length and breadth of the country doesn’t make it specially heinous. I gather his wife is not the vulnerable ingénue portrayed by the press. Nor, perhaps, a chaste Penelope working her fingers into calluses at her loom, until such time as her lord and master cared to drop in?’
‘Burgo hardly ever talked about his marriage. I don’t know if it was satisfactory or not. I assumed that it wasn’t because he wanted me but I see now that was laughably naïve. I believed the truism that it’s impossible for an outsider to break up a good marriage. I wonder what persuaded me to place reliance on that piece of sententious, simple-minded claptrap? Marriages are mutable, anarchic, boundless things and no two are alike.’
‘What you seem to be forgetting is that things aren’t quite over yet.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your running away is not necessarily an end. Perhaps it’s just another part of it. Love affairs don’t usually end with a neat severance. They gasp out their life in a slow, merciless suffocation of hopes and dreams.’
I felt a resurgence of optimism that a second later was dashed. ‘Whatever our desires may be, it is over.’
Kit’s silence told me that he was sceptical.
‘What’s that marvellous old building?’ I pointed to a tall cylinder of stone with tiny windows and a pointed door standing in a field. I wanted to change my mood from high-flown pathos to something resembling cheerfulness.
Moonshine Page 9
