The Kissing Garden

by Charlotte Bingham

  As they slowed to a walk Peter turned the conversation to the subject of Amelia Earhart’s amazing feat in becoming the first woman to fly the Atlantic ocean solo.

  ‘For a woman to fly the Atlantic is pretty incredible.’

  ‘We girls aren’t entirely feeble, you know, darling,’ Amelia teased him. ‘We’re capable of doing more than just cooking and having babies.’

  ‘But I mean flying an aeroplane across the Atlantic, that takes guts.’

  ‘So does having a baby. I am sure I could learn to fly an aeroplane. Not that I’d want to.’

  ‘No, Daddy says you get lost going from home into Bruton.’

  ‘You mark my words, young man. Before you know it girls will be doing practically everything that boys can do. You just wait.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Peter replied with a shrug. ‘Just as long as we don’t have to do everything girls have to do – like having babies.’

  ‘Do you really want to fly, Peter?’ Amelia asked him cautiously.

  ‘You bet. More than anything.’

  ‘There’s nothing else which really takes your fancy?’

  ‘What I really want to do more than anything actually is to fly all the way round the world, in a plane of my own design.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what you’ll end up doing. Being a pilot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Amelia kicked Max ahead of him suddenly. It was everything that she had dreaded to hear, but there was nothing that she could do, and for the first time, she knew it.

  Although Amelia’s despair about her dream abated over the next few weeks, just as George had predicted that it would, the images were locked up fast in her mind, so securely that if she allowed her thoughts to turn for one moment to flying she at once saw her nightmare vision. To dispel them she determinedly concentrated on practical things, like gardening, as well as playing hostess to the various friends and colleagues George had begun to invite down for weekends.

  Most of their guests were friends of them both, acquaintances from Sussex who would happily drive all the way across to Somerset to enjoy what were becoming known as typical Dashwood weekends. Weekends where they knew they would be sure to have fun.

  The Dashwoods had laid out a fine lawn tennis court in what had been just a patch of wilderness the far side of the Kissing Garden, so the summer weekends were normally taken up with energetic games of mixed doubles and histrionic games of what was soon dubbed Dirty Croquet on the formal lawns in front of the house.

  These gatherings generally left Amelia in a state of pleasant exhaustion by the time their guests had left on Monday morning, and it was to one of them that George suddenly decided to invite his publisher, Jack Cornwall, a man Amelia hardly knew.

  On first sight he seemed strangely unaesthetic for a man of letters, a strong but stocky individual with a heavy face and a seemingly permanent frown. He wore heavily framed spectacles with very thick tinted lenses which because they were to correct short sight made his eyes look small. In fact, on the rare occasions when he took his spectacles off, he was revealed as having large, dark and very kindly eyes, quite at odds with the pugnacious set of his face. Nor was he very communicative, at least not with Amelia.

  ‘He’s a very shy man, that’s all,’ George explained to Amelia when she reported on his publisher’s odd behaviour. ‘He doesn’t have children of his own and he always says they frighten him.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure about children frightening him, but he certainly frightens the pants off them.’

  His apparent virtues were his perfect manners, his undoubted mental brilliance, his immaculate sense of dress and his extraordinarily beautiful voice, a voice so seductive that Amelia had no difficulty in believing George when he told her Jack was married to one of the most desirable women in London.

  Even so, on their initial encounters, she could not establish any sort of rapport. Usually she had no difficulty in dealing with any of George’s male friends, since she liked the company of men as much as George enjoyed the company of women. Not Jack Cornwall. He was fastidiously polite, extremely interested in her horticultural skills, admiring of what she had managed to do with what had been nothing more than a set of ruins, and appreciative of what was put in front of him at the table, but other than that he appeared to have no interest in Amelia at all. By the end of the first day of his visit Amelia had stopped trying, keeping out of his and George’s way as much as possible and preserving the formalities as best she might whenever their paths collided.

  ‘You don’t seem to like Jack much,’ George observed after their guest had left. ‘Did you argue or something? He’s normally a very amicable chap. Taciturn, I agree. But usually amicable.’

  ‘I like Jack. It’s just that Jack doesn’t appear to like me.’

  ‘Ah.’ George smiled. ‘If that was the impression he gave you, Amelia, he likes you all right.’

  Jack began to be asked down to The Priory regularly after that, eventually bringing his wife. On that first joint visit Miranda Cornwall proved herself to be not only the beauty she was rumoured to be but an expert tennis player. Amelia, who was no beginner, simply could not live with her on court.

  ‘Something tells me you’ve played this game before,’ Amelia laughed after the game as they sat drinking lemonade. ‘And I have a rather wicked idea. Would you like to make a few bob? And help me get my own back on a chum?’

  ‘You will never find Mrs Cornwall averse to a tilt at the ring,’ Miranda sighed, stretching her extremely long legs out in front of her.

  ‘This is hardly the ring, Miranda,’ Amelia explained while she refilled their glasses. ‘But we could make some nice pocket money. A dear friend of ours called Archie Hanley is forever taking bets on our tennis matches – and always cleaning up. So, as Mr Damon Runyon has it, the man owes.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Miranda reached for the gin to add to her lemonade. ‘Tell me the plan.’

  The next day, invited over for a drink by Amelia, Archie was duly taken on a walk which included a stroll past the tennis court where he observed an apparently heavenly apparition called by the equally heavenly name of Miranda losing hands down to a lead-footed, stout and extremely short-winded man in steamed-up spectacles.

  ‘Alas,’ he muttered to Amelia. ‘To look at her you would imagine she would be a goddess on the tennis court. The conformation is exquisite, the execution appalling. Ah well, beauty and brilliance rarely combine.’

  As a consequence of the beautiful Mrs Cornwall’s performance on the tennis court, the next day when Archie opened his usual book on the Dashwood Tennis Tournament the coupling of Miranda Cornwall with Amelia was freely available at 10/1, even though Amelia was known to be the most competent of the women playing.

  ‘Very generous of you, old boy,’ Edward Lydford said when he had laid a bet of £5 to win £50. ‘But seeing the amount of business you’ve been doing at that price, don’t you think you should trim the odds a bit? Yes? Yes?’

  ‘It is money for the oldest of rope, dear friend,’ Archie replied, beaming, all confidence. ‘You have not observed Titania here on the court as I have.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Edward beamed. ‘You mean yesterday when she was playing her old man?’

  ‘I could not have put it better, dear doctor, had I tried.’

  ‘Ah, but what you didn’t know, old boy, was the dear pretty thing was playing him left-handed, don’t you know. And with a pebble in her plimsolls. Yes? Only way the old boy can get a game.’

  Consequently Amelia and Miranda won the tournament at a canter, never dropping a game until the final when they put George and Hermione to rout 6-4, 6-4, even though Hermione could also play a useful game of tennis. No-one could have been braver about paying out than Archie, although privately he was calling imprecations of the vilest kind down on Amelia’s pretty head when he realized just how he had been fooled.

  ‘Miranda Cornwall has to be the maddest woman I have ever met,’ Hermione, also staying for the first time,
confided to Amelia as they sat drinking cold lemonade after the match. ‘Have you ever met anyone who sings while they play tennis?’

  ‘Not just sings, but sings opera. She got through most of the first act of La Bohème by the end of the first set!’

  ‘I would kill for those legs.’

  ‘That is the difference between us – I would kill for that first service. And that drop volley.’

  ‘She really is married to that odd man? Well, maybe he’s not so much odd as original.’

  ‘Jack Cornwall is a very influential chap, George tells me. Knows all sorts of interesting people in all sorts of interesting places. He’s also a first-class publisher.’

  ‘Your hubby. . .’ Hermione said, patting her face carefully with a towel. ‘He has become quite a literary number, n’est ce pas? Not only writing all these controversial books, but now all these articles in the newspapers.’

  ‘I know. I never imagined the sort of life we have now when we first got married. I thought I would be an army wife for ever in evening dress being kind to lower ranks – and here I am practically joining the dirndl and rope-sole shoes set, all home-made broths and fruit picking.’

  ‘Do you like the sort of country life you have now? I mean do you really, really like it?’

  ‘I love it. Don’t you?’

  ‘I hate it. But then, hardly surprising.’

  ‘You never really did like the country though, did you, darling?’

  ‘What we knew when we were growing up wasn’t country – it was fun, all our parents did was to arrange fun things, and we met new people all the time, and we enjoyed ourselves, always making dresses and putting on the gramophone to learn new dances. We had fun. You are having fun. I have no fun. But then. You haven’t met my husband, and really, when I think about it, I hope you never do. I must have been desperate. I was desperate. So few men after the war, had to be married, or become a spinster in an attic with a parrot for company. Although, come to think of it, a parrot would be better than His Always Crossness.’

  ‘I thought you said your husband was ill, Hermione. Which was why you couldn’t bring him to stay?’

  ‘I haven’t brought him with me, darling, because if I did, I really think I might have murdered him. He is not just ghastly, he is double double ghastly. And as for It – well, His Always Crossness makes me wish I was a spinster in an attic.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Amelia said, studying her friend’s appalled expression. ‘What do you think we should do? I mean do you think you should call it a day, and have a divorce?’

  ‘First let’s find me a scrumptious gentleman with whom I may have a raging affair, and after that we will talk about what to do with His Always Crossness, and his horrid, horrid ways. I truly think I might go mad otherwise.’

  ‘Ralph would do her just fine,’ George mused, when Amelia told him that night about Hermione’s disastrous marriage. ‘Pity she’s married.’

  ‘Ralph,’ Amelia said blankly. ‘Which particular Ralph are we talking about, George? And I don’t think Hermione’s going to be married for long.’

  ‘Ralph as in Lieutenant Grace, remember? And Hermione is surely not going to get divorced?’

  ‘Oh, I know what everyone thinks of divorce, but really, George, it’s a much better thing to face a divorce court than a murder charge, surely?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Hermione will murder her husband if she doesn’t escape. He sounds appalling.’

  ‘How appalling ?’

  George remained straight-faced with difficulty, as always at moments such as these.

  ‘You’d faint if I told you, George. I wouldn’t know where to start. So why don’t you ask Ralph down here? Just to cheer poor Hermione up – she’s going to be here till next weekend.’

  ‘I have work to do – and anyway, I thought we weren’t having any more guests until after Peter’s gone back to school?’

  ‘One more guest is not going to make much difference, George. Besides, you haven’t seen Ralph Grace since the war, have you?’

  ‘No,’ George said a little too quickly for Amelia’s liking. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Come on, George,’ Amelia teased. ‘Come clean.’

  ‘I saw him briefly some time ago. He’d got into a scrape and needed to borrow some money.’

  ‘But you’re still friends.’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘Then ask him down. I’m sure you’d like to see him.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ George sighed. ‘I shall call him tomorrow.’

  But seeing how little difficulty George had in locating his old friend, it occurred to Amelia that some time ago was not in fact so very long ago.

  They were sitting under the trees having tea when he arrived on a motor bicycle, dressed in a long white duster coat of the sort she remembered her father wearing when he used to drive his open-topped Renault, a pair of huge shiny goggles and a battered old leather flying helmet. He parked his bike against the cedar tree, took off his goggles, exchanged his flying helmet for an old straw Panama and, pulling a shiny brown leather Gladstone bag off the pillion, waved at the tea party. As she watched Amelia noted that he was also tall, not quite as tall as George but six foot even so, slim, with long thick black hair and the most doleful countenance she had seen in an age.

  ‘Excuse me?’ he called. ‘This is The Priory? There’s no sign at the gate! Not that there’s a gate, come to mention it!’

  ‘You must be Lieutenant Grace!’ Amelia called back, getting up from her seat and walking towards him. ‘Sorry about the lack of sign, but George won’t have one. When we did put one up, all sorts of strange religious people kept trekking up the drive. I’m Amelia Dashwood, George’s wife.’

  ‘Just as described,’ Ralph Grace replied, doffing his old straw. ‘No, even more beautiful. I am thoroughly enchanted to make your acquaintance.’

  ‘Described,’ Amelia wondered as they crossed the lawns to where Hermione, Clara, Peter and Gwendolyn were having tea. ‘My husband has described me to you?’

  ‘George got letters, Madam Dashwood. I got curious. George got depictive. These are your lovely offspring?’

  ‘Yes. And this is Mrs Baddeley, an old friend of mine, Clara our children’s nurse turning housekeeper, Peter our son, and Gwendolyn our daughter.’

  ‘And a future breaker of hearts,’ Ralph said with a forlorn sigh. ‘How do you do, how do you do, how do you do, how do you do. Is there some hot tea still in that fine silver pot, Clara the children’s nursemaid turning to housekeeper, please?’

  ‘We have just been discussing the kidnap of the Lindberg baby.’ Hermione said to fill in the small pause that inevitably followed. ‘Such a strange business. Why take a baby?’

  ‘Let’s change the subject,’ Amelia suggested, and she nodded to Hermione, prompting her to find another. Hermione shook her head, and turning from Amelia smiled at Ralph.

  ‘Very well, Hermione, if you are going to be a party pooper – Peter, can you find us a safe subject? Something which will not make us sad, please?’

  Peter frowned. ‘One day we shall fly so high we shall be able to reach the moon.’

  ‘Now that is high, very high – as a subject, I mean.’

  ‘Don’t talk tosh, Peter,’ Gwendolyn said through a mouthful of cake, earning a finger-wagging from Clara. ‘You do talk such tosh.’

  ‘Wait and see, Miss Clever Boots,’ Peter replied. ‘I’ll bet you anything you like that in fifty years we’ll have sent a rocket to the moon. Soon as we can work out how to cope with the pull of earth’s gravity – although the problem isn’t so much getting out of it, it’s coming back into our atmosphere, if you ask me.’

  ‘And you really think that if the scientists can find the way, we’ll be able to put a man on the moon, boss?’

  ‘Rather than in it,’ Amelia said with a smile.

  ‘Yes I do, sir,’ Peter said, ignoring his mother’s facetiousness. ‘And why do you call me boss, if you don’t mind me aski
ng, sir?’

  ‘Ask away or ye never shall find. It’s a habit, I’m afraid. I have cultivated this habit of giving people names and labels when I meet them.’

  ‘I see.’ Peter began again, his favourite topic never far from his mind. ‘I think it will probably be the Germans who put a man on the moon, myself.’

  ‘The Germans?’ Ralph frowned, putting down his teacup on the table and taking off his long white coat. ‘So why do you suppose the Germans will be more able than us? Or even the Americans?’

  ‘Because they have the best scientific brains, sir,’ Peter replied. ‘They have all these brilliant Jewish scientists.’

  ‘Who are all leaving Germany for – America.’

  ‘Your son is button bright, Madam Dashwood,’ Ralph said after Clara had taken Gwendolyn off for her bath and Peter had disappeared to fish a safe pool in the river. ‘Your son is button bright and your daughter most fair.’

  ‘And you are very quaint, if you don’t mind me saying,’ Hermione laughed. ‘It’s a long time since I heard a girl called fair.’

  ‘It’s a nice word though, don’t you think, Mrs Bradley? Fair?’

  ‘Yes I do, Lieutenant Grace – and the name is Baddeley, and you may call me Hermione.’

  ‘Atrocious, is it not, Madam D?’ Ralph said, turning to Amelia and widening his dark green eyes. ‘How all the fairest of the fair are wedded.’

  Amelia laughed and took a few seconds to examine their guest. He was not as classically handsome as she had first thought when she saw him standing in the shadow of the cedar of Lebanon against which he had parked his motor bike. In fact, the more she examined his face the less conventionally good-looking he appeared, yet this did not detract from his attraction.

  Despite being married to an almost absurdly handsome man, Amelia had found that nowadays she had come to rather suspect sheer good looks, since too often those who were blessed with beauty seemed not to care much about their other graces. She had come to prefer people like Jack Cornwall, people who were more than they at first seemed. And now as she found herself regarding Ralph Grace she decided that he fell very much into this category. His face was not handsome but droll. His eyes turned down at the sides, giving him a Sad Sam look. His nose was long and aquiline and his hair a great mane of floppy shiny black hair. The final impression was of someone who might well be found sitting at a café table on the Left Bank of the Seine, drinking anise while watching the world pass by before annotating its foibles in an old pocket book.