The Kissing Garden

by Charlotte Bingham

He leaned over and kissed her once, sweetly, on her mouth, touching her hair, running his hand down one side of her face before cupping his palm under her chin so that she had to look up at him. He smiled at her, suddenly, and went.

  He waited until Amelia had taken herself up for a pre-dinner bath before writing the words of the telegram he now knew he must send. In fact he hardly needed to pen them out, so thoroughly had he run them through his mind beforehand. Once he had heard the water running into the deep old-fashioned bath he shut his study door and lifted the telephone receiver for the operator, only to find there was no dialling tone. Several energetic jiggles on the cradle having produced no result, George whistled for the dogs, called up the stairs that he was just going to run them round the grounds, and slipped out before Amelia had time to reply.

  Amelia’s car was parked in the drive but, unusually for her, without the ignition key. Determined to try to find her keys, George let the dogs into the back and went to return to the house, only to run straight into the arrival of a torrent of hail, complete with lightning and thunder.

  ‘To hell!’ he muttered, turning back for the dogs. ‘I’ll send the damn thing tomorrow!’

  ‘Yes,’ the Noble One said. ‘A timely storm and well summoned, wizard. But we shall have to do better now or the cause may be lost. I had not foreseen this new interference. You with your crystal may well have done – though if you had you should have acted – yet knowing your ways you most like enjoy such diversions.’

  ‘Ah no, my liege, no,’ Longbeard sighed. ‘I too lose control – more frequently it seems now as the centuries roll. Perhaps this Lady is in truth a witch herself and, if so, then my powers will be vexed.’

  ‘I think not,’ the Noble One replied. ‘I think this Lady is not a sorceress but a temptress, yet even so I fear we must do what we supposed.’

  ‘There is a risk, sir, you know that – and you know how great it may be – for loosing such dread sights means that they stay here in the ether, and once here in the ether, sir--’

  ‘I know, wizard, I know!’ the Noble One told him sharply. ‘But just consider what happens if we lose him to his heart and not his head. Consider my vow, consider our beloved land, consider the consequence, then tell me ’tis not worth the risk.’

  ‘There is no reason other than that, sir,’ Longbeard agreed with his most solemn nod. ‘Oft-times I forget when I grow weary, I forget.’

  ‘Not long, old man,’ the Noble One said. ‘Not long. And then we shall see you float among your beloved stars and see your ancient face made young again by the music of the spheres. But now one last dazzle – find the stone of darkness, and let it loose this very night.’

  He did not keep the stone in the purse but locked it in a cave of ice on the dark side of a distant star. Now he held it in his hand the wizard could feel the heat within, a heat which had been fired millions of years before when Satan kicked a chip from the sun and, cursing it for ever, turned it into a cyclops. No sun shone in or near this stone. When it fell to rest in a desert it burned through to the core of the earth, landing in hellfire where Satan sealed it in a case of such evil that nothing could ever melt it other than God’s love. How it came into the wizard’s possession is a story for another time. Suffice that when the wizard found it, it was only due to the nobility of his liege that he was not taken to be one of Satan’s foot soldiers. Instead, in gratitude to his lord he buried the black stone in a dark star, the very coldest and most distant within their firmament, dreading that he might be called upon to use its power. Now was such a time. Already he could feel the throb of heat and hate within its skin of darkness as it floated above his outstretched hand. Worse, as it floated he could see a future that was blackened with evil. He could see men, women and children in dull grey uniforms with numbers on their sleeves, walking, their faces skeletal, their eyes lost to everything that makes the world bright, their suffering so terrible as to be indescribable.

  * * *

  George awoke with a start, sitting up in bed in a moment of terror such as he had never known. He had no idea what had caused the terror or why he should have woken with such a fright. He was cool, his heart was steady and the night was calm – except for a slight breeze which lifted the curtain momentarily at the window before dropping away to stillness.

  He crept out of bed, not wanting to wake Amelia but needing, for some reason, to breathe the night air, to get back in touch with reality. He had had a nightmare, that was all. It was a clear night, with a moon that seemed to light every part of the garden except for the deep shadows under the trees, and so brilliant was it after the earlier storm that he was drawn to go outside.

  Pulling on his dressing gown and slippers, he let himself out of the bedroom. A minute later he found himself in the middle of their beloved garden, asking himself, ‘Why am I here?’

  Something had fallen to earth in the shadows under the yews. Walking over to the old trees he saw an object no larger than a sixpence, but when he bent down to examine it the forgotten images of his nightmare returned at once. With a gasp he straightened up, shaking his head as if he had been hit by something.

  In the morning when he awoke and dressed he found a strange note in his jacket pocket. It read: COUNT ME OUT. CANNOT HELP YOU AS YOU WISHED. PERSONAL PRICE WOULD BE TOO HIGH.

  He stared at it, and then, thinking it was some note he had forgotten to send to Jack Cornwall, he threw it into the kitchen fire, and went to the dining room to have breakfast with Amelia.

  Twenty-One

  For the first time in her married life Amelia felt unhappy. She did not feel it all the time, for whenever she was with George everything seemed to be as it always had been between them. George was as attentive to her as ever, and just as kind, while she herself still loved to try to enchant him. And of course they still shared all their free moments at The Priory together, lunchtime and early afternoon and the evenings after they had both finished work. Yet something had changed. Amelia sensed it and this despite George’s seeming to be outwardly his old, loving self.

  But Amelia could not find peace, as before.

  She realized that she could well have become bored by country life, it being so very uneventful. Or perhaps she wanted another child?

  ‘Maybe we should get a small flat in London somewhere?’ [she wrote to Hermione]. ‘Maybe I’ve got to the age where if I don’t keep mentally fresh I shall start to stagnate and if I do I shall lose George. I see it all around us in the countryside – women left to their own devices while their husbands follow their careers or lead their own lives, coming home to wives who have lost not only their appeal but their figures and their looks. Maybe this is what’s making me feel so unsure of myself, that I see myself turning into one of them, and fear that when I do George will leave me. As I say, I don’t think it’s anything to do with George – except that he doesn’t seem to take me into his confidence as fully as he always used to – about his work, that is. Then perhaps this is because I have been somewhat critical about some of the things he’s been writing in newspapers and magazines – views I don’t fully understand, and which George doesn’t see fit to explain to me. All this stuff about appeasement and the need for understanding Germany’s problems. As I said to him – not once but often! – I thought the whole point of fighting that awful war was so that we could give up worrying about Germany’s problems. But all George will say is that it’s a lot more complicated than that.

  Then there are all these strange new friends of his – I can’t say ours first because I didn’t make them and second because I don’t much like any of them. We now have a succession of extremely rich and deadly boring people at our dinner table – and sometimes for the weekend (help!), and in return have to attend reciprocal parties either in London or at some fancy address where I feel like Little Miss Country Bumpkin. We can’t possibly afford to keep up with these sets of Joneses, but George insists on accepting all their invitations because he says it’s all to do with his work. Since he hasn’t
written a book since his detective one, which was not a success, and is concentrating on writing articles for papers and magazines, I can only imagine this is the direction in which he sees himself going – yet when I ask him about it he clams up, and although he’s much too sweet and kind to say that it’s none of my business I get the distinct impression that’s what he feels! And now, my dear – guess where we’ve been invited? Only to Riverdean – the Astleys’ famous house on the Thames! Oh for an attack of measles or something really catching so that I can stay in bed here reading about how to make my gardens more beautiful instead of having to go to some ghastly house party where I shall spend the whole weekend being ignored. I do so hate grandeur, and snobbery only a little less!

  Lots of love, old friend,

  Amelia.’

  Although she considered herself to be fairly sophisticated, Amelia could not help feeling nervous about being asked to such a very grand country seat, a house so well run and with so many servants that even the royal family was pushed to match the extravagance of the Astleys’ hospitality, not to mention the undoubted celebrity of their guest lists. The newspapers always took a particular interest in who was invited to Riverdean, since it was known to be a seat of much political influence, a place where reputations could be made and broken.

  Amelia would have really liked George’s help and advice as to what might be required of her in the way of a wardrobe, as well as to find out whom he expected to be on the guest list, but as usual he was closeted away in his study working feverishly to meet some deadline or other. Since Amelia knew the problem of what should constitute her wardrobe was hardly on a par with the problems with which her husband was wrestling, she kept well out of his way and instead used her dearly loved Clara as a sounding board.

  ‘I’ve always loved this dress,’ Clara said, holding up a silver lamé copy of a Molyneux made by Amelia’s dressmaker. ‘You’ll have to take this, Mrs Dashwood. It’s so lovely.’

  ‘I don’t know whether it’s right, Clara,’ Amelia sighed. ‘I doubt if it’s formal enough. Whenever we go to these house parties the women seem always to be dressed entirely in black. It’s either black, or according to the magazines back to the style of the eighteen century, which is apparently all the rage. It’s so awfully difficult with places you haven’t been to before – particularly places quite as grand as Riverdean.’

  ‘How grand is grand, Mrs Dashwood? Are there really forty bedrooms?’

  ‘Forty bedroom suites apparently, Clara. All done up by famous interior designers like Syrie Maugham.’

  ‘Well, I never, Mrs D. I’m glad I don’t have to help out there, I am.’

  ‘They have two butlers, two housekeepers, a major domo, and six footmen,’ Amelia told her, while rifling through her minimal wardrobe of dresses. ‘And near enough a hundred gardeners, or so I am told. They are rich enough to move entire barns – and even a church, so my husband informs me – putting them where they just thought they looked better around the estate. My husband said someone remarked that the Astleys have done what the Almighty would have done if He’d had the time and the money. There’s nothing here for me to wear to a place like Riverdean. Honestly, Clara, I could weep my eyes out.’

  ‘You’ll be all right, Mrs Dashwood,’ Clara assured her. ‘You always look the thing.’

  ‘It’s just that you need so many changes of clothes,’ Amelia complained. ‘For shooting, lunching, walking, rowing, playing tennis, taking tea, drinks, dinner – they spend the whole day changing into something different. Look, Clara – we’ve filled three suitcases already and we’ve only dressed me till Saturday lunchtime. I think I’m going to have to trundle into Bath and buy myself a couple of extra outfits from somewhere. I don’t know what my husband thought he was doing when he accepted this invitation.’

  ‘I’m ever so glad he did,’ Clara grinned. ‘I’ll be able to hear all about it when you return.’

  ‘If we return, Clara,’ Amelia groaned. ‘This is a foray deep into enemy country.’

  It seemed to Amelia that attending these occasions caused George no undue worries while her stomach was always full of butterflies. She envied his sang-froid, but then, as he teased her as they drove to Riverdean, had she spent four years in the mud of Flanders parties such as the one they were on their way to attend would hold no fears.

  ‘Even so, George, you were never much of a social animal,’ Amelia replied. ‘Yet now we seem to spend more time going out than anything else.’

  ‘At the risk of being boring, Amelia—’

  ‘I know. It’s for your work. But it still doesn’t make sense. All these super-rich and powerful people constantly begging for your company.’

  ‘Our company, darling.’

  ‘Oh, like heck, George. I can’t remember when I last exchanged more than two consecutive sentences with anyone at one of these dreadful occasions. People are very odd, and none odder than the very rich.’

  George laughed. ‘The rich enjoy collecting people – and obviously for some reason or other they consider that at the moment I’m collectable.’

  ‘You’re always trying that one on and it simply doesn’t hold up. We’ve been places where the host and hostess don’t even seem to have heard of you and I always feel we must have been asked for quite another reason. And actually I’d quite like to know what that reason is now, please.’

  ‘It’s Society, Amelia,’ George insisted. ‘It’s the way these people go on. They can’t bear to admit they don’t know the right people personally, so they ask their friends and guests to invite those they consider to be the right people to swell their guest lists. That’s how one finds oneself at places where the host and hostess don’t know one.’

  ‘I could believe that to be true about some places, but not Riverdean. According to what I’ve heard you only ever get asked there if you are a personal friend, or someone really important.’

  ‘I’ve met the Astleys on several occasions.’

  ‘George – you’re only a writer, and, let’s face it, not that renowned. It’s not as if you’ve won the Nobel Prize or anything.’

  ‘So maybe they’re just hard up for decent tennis players.’

  ‘No, George. You are up to something – and I want to know what.’

  George looked round at her from the driving seat, then shrugged. ‘Very well,’ he admitted. ‘I want to get into politics.’

  ‘You what?’ Amelia looked at him in utter amazement. ‘You? Who always said that politicians were the most untrustworthy, useless people on earth?’

  ‘Which is why maybe we’re going to need some better ones.’

  ‘So.’ Amelia said after a moment’s thought. ‘Suppose you do want to go into politics. Why not start off at grass roots? At home in Somerset?’

  ‘I was going to. But then some of the people I’ve met recently suggested there were better ways of going about it.’

  ‘Such as contesting a safe seat?’

  George shook his head. ‘On the contrary. Such as being backed by the right people.’

  ‘I take it you’re going to be a Conservative?’

  ‘I haven’t actually joined any party yet. But when I do, yes, I suppose it will be the Conservatives – but you’re not to say anything.’ He looked round again, this time very seriously. ‘Not a word. Do you hear? Promise me, Amelia – I want this to be a secret at the moment. And it’s very important that it stays so.’

  ‘Why?’ Amelia teased, relieved that there was an obvious reason for the change in George’s social behaviour, and this was it. ‘Why the big secret?’

  ‘For I’m to be Queen of the May,’ George joked. ‘For I’m to be Queen of the May.’

  Yet, judging from the look in his eyes, Amelia thought that perhaps the joke had a little more import than she was meant to realize.

  The house party at Riverdean was at least as bad as Amelia had feared. The house was huge and daunting, the guest list enormous, distinguished and equally unnerving, and the entertainm
ent itself formidably formal. Every meal was a set piece and every moment of recreation choreographed, the guests going through the motions as if the entire event had been thoroughly rehearsed with the particular intention of removing all show of sentiment. Once Amelia was discovered to be not only lowly but unknown she was discarded from the pack like a sick animal, left to fend for herself when George was not in attendance, which was often, due to his very apparent popularity – especially with the women and most particularly with Deanne Astley.

  In the flesh the famous hostess was even more beautiful and alluring than Amelia had been led to believe, with a perfect figure, extraordinarily long legs, incredible elegance and the strangest and most compelling gaze Amelia had ever encountered, a look which changed character entirely depending on which sex the pair of pale turquoise eyes was fixed upon. When Deanna Astley looked on her rivals the look was chilling and disdainful, but when she gazed upon men the objects of her attention became like rabbits mesmerized by the headlights of a car.

  From the moment Amelia set foot inside Riverdean, Deanna Astley singled her out for especial contempt, either ignoring her entirely or if forced to address her treating her as if she were only one step up from a maidservant. Except when George was present. When George and Amelia were in their hostess’s company as a couple Deanna Astley treated them both as if they were royalty.

  ‘You’re exaggerating,’ George said, predictably enough, when Amelia fell into the trap of complaining about Mrs Astley’s rudeness to her, as they changed for dinner. ‘And if I didn’t know you so well, Amelia Dashwood, I would say it was because you were jealous.’

  ‘If you think I’m capable of being jealous over that sort of woman, then you don’t know me at all! Not one little bit!’

  ‘I was only joking,’ George said lamely, making a mess of his bow tie.

  ‘No, you were not joking,’ Amelia seethed, taking the strip of fabric and starting to tie it for him. ‘You’re like a cat with a bowl of double cream whenever she comes near you. What is it with you? Or more to the point, what is it with her?’