The Kissing Garden

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ George said, trapped by the firm hold Amelia had of his tie. ‘One has to be polite to one’s hostess.’

  ‘Polite, certainly. But not lickspittle, George Dashwood. You’re worth a million of most of these people. And I hope I’m worth a little, but more to you than her!’

  ‘Amelia--’

  ‘I mean it, George,’ Amelia said, finishing with his tie and standing back to glare at him. ‘If I see you fawning around her again like a little puppy dog I shall come over and kick you up the backside.’

  ‘In front of all these eminent people?’ George smiled. ‘In front of most of his majesty’s Cabinet ministers?’

  ‘Most of them need a jolly good kick up the derrière, too,’ Amelia concluded. ‘I’ve rarely met such a bunch of boring stuffed shirts in my life. They don’t have a thing to say for themselves.’

  ‘Try asking them about their childhoods,’ George suggested. ‘Ask them about their mothers and especially their nannies. You won’t be able to stop them talking after that. You’ll see.’

  Amelia did as advised throughout dinner and Sunday, carefully questioning two Cabinet ministers, one eminent banker and a boring earl about their childhoods. Her success was so entire that by the time they came to leave on Monday morning Amelia found she had acquired a whole list of rich admirers and subsequently a whole new set of social venues to which they were about to be invited.

  ‘Thank you, George,’ she groaned in the car as they headed back west. ‘I think you made me do that deliberately. It seems I’ve even got us invitations to spend the New Year in Scotland.’

  ‘I think we’ll pass on that one,’ George said, changing the Bentley up a gear. ‘Even so, you were an enormous success.’

  ‘In a field in which I have no ambitions to be successful, I may say. There were some really odd women there – did you notice? There was a whole bunch of them who seemed to hang around together all the time. You couldn’t miss them because none of them seemed to wear any makeup. I know it’s not the done thing in the country anyway, to wear lipstick with tweeds and all that – but at that sort of extremely grand house party you’d have thought they would. It was so deliberate, the way they looked with no make-up and all in practically the same little black dress – it was as if – I don’t know. It was as if they were some sort of sect.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ George said, glancing quickly at her. ‘Do you know who they were, any of them?’

  ‘No. I was introduced to some of them and their husbands, but as to who they all were . . . One of them’s married to that rather handsome banker I sat next to.’

  ‘David Montmorency-Hughes.’ George smiled. ‘He’s a bit more than a banker, darling. He’s the Governor of the Bank of England.’

  ‘Had a rotten childhood, apparently. Nanny used to beat him with a stair-rod and shut him in cupboards. His wife was one of “the sect.” And Lord Upton’s wife. She seemed to be another.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ George nodded thoughtfully. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Actually practically without exception they were all the sort of people you can’t abide. Or couldn’t abide.’ Amelia looked round at him. ‘They were all what you used to call flinty hearts. The sort of people who’ve always given you the ab-dabs. Yet there you were accepting their hospitality as if they were blood brothers.’

  ‘That’s what would-be politicians have to do.’

  ‘You always said people like that are pagans. That they have no feeling for the humanities. No interest in any ideas which are kind and good.’

  ‘Yes I know – and you looked sensational in your silver dress, by the way. I meant to say.’

  ‘Sensational as in an embarrassment,’ Amelia countered.

  ‘Not at all. None of the men could take their eyes off you.’

  ‘None of the women either.’

  ‘They were jealous of your daring.’

  ‘Actually, by then, George, I’d really stopped caring,’ Amelia confessed. ‘They were all being so frightfully snooty I’d have quite happily trotted down that very grand staircase totally in the buff. That might have actually got some of them talking. But then I remembered your ambition to become Prime Minister and thought better of it.’

  George laughed – genuinely, Amelia was glad to note.

  ‘I did hear some quite interesting gossip,’ Amelia remembered. ‘Or rather overheard it. About the Duke of Windsor – and his cutie, as apparently they all call the duchess.’

  ‘I’m surprised,’ George remarked. ‘The Astleys are very friendly with the Windsors.’

  ‘So you probably know that the duke and duchess plan to set up home in France.’

  ‘I’ve heard the rumours. I know they were keen on making him the Governor of the Bahamas, but that the Queen won’t have it.’

  ‘Actually the only thing that really seemed to matter to most of those silly women was whether or not people should make a full curtsy to the Duchess of Windsor – which they think people should. And that she should be accorded the title of Your Royal Highness, and not Your Grace. As if it matters, George. There are far more important things that matter – such as making sure England doesn’t give in to Hitler. And that’s something else I noticed. That most of the people there were much more pro the Duke and Duchess of Windsor than they were the King and Queen.’

  Again George glanced at her before turning his attention back to the road.

  ‘Is that the impression you got? Probably just party talk. People talk awfully big at parties.’

  ‘I have to say I didn’t actually like anyone there, George,’ Amelia sighed. ‘And neither did you, surely?’

  ‘The point is they’re all influential people, Amelia,’ George replied. ‘The sort of people would-be politicians like me need to know.’

  ‘I can’t stand the thought of you going into politics. I far preferred it when you were just a novelist,’ Amelia continued, as the car started to descend the hill which led down into Bath. ‘When you were an enfant terrible and everyone was attacking you – I felt so proud of you. So proud that you were prepared to stand up for what you thought was right, and in print. You didn’t care what anyone thought of you. Not a jot.’

  ‘Meaning I do now.’

  ‘Politicians have to suck up to people all the time. That’s something I can’t see you doing. At least not the George Dashwood I married I can’t.’

  ‘It’s something I’m going to have to do whether I like it or not.’

  ‘And what about whether I like it or not?’

  ‘It’s just something I have to do,’ George reiterated. ‘Now can we please talk about something else?’

  ‘For the moment, if that’s what you want,’ Amelia agreed. ‘But it’s to be continued, don’t you worry.’

  Despite Amelia’s obvious dismay at George’s newly chosen career path, almost everyone else became extremely excited at the prospect of someone with George’s war record and distinguished military family going into politics – a prospect which much to Amelia’s surprise had very shortly after the weekend at Riverdean become public knowledge. One depressing result of this disclosure was that George and she were invited out with ever-increasing regularity to dine at the tables of those Amelia so heartily despised and whose company George had similarly once avoided, particularly the dining tables of those who believed in what was now commonly called the policy of appeasement. These were powerful people, as Amelia very soon discovered, with the ears of the politicians whose belief it was that the only sensible approach to what others saw as a growing threat from Germany was to keep Hitler sweet, arguing that German expansion to the east would be a good thing since it would surely divert any danger from the west, and although George never went as far as to endorse these sentiments in print, Amelia began to form the very distinct impression that this was a concept to which he too subscribed.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ he said impatiently when the subject came up at home. ‘This is s
omething which I am afraid is a little above your head.’

  ‘I do so hope you’re not flirting with Fascism,’ Amelia replied, ignoring the put-down. ‘You may not want to call it that, but from the sound of all these arguments I spy Fascism.’

  ‘Is that what you really think?’ George sighed in exasperation. ‘You don’t seriously imagine I’m attracted to that sort of thing, do you? Surely you know me better than that?’

  ‘At the moment I don’t think I know you at all, George.’

  ‘If you want it in simplistic terms—’

  ‘I had better have it in simplistic terms. In case it goes too far over this pretty little head of mine.’

  ‘What some people are trying to do is to make the world a better place to live in now, or else our generation died in vain. And for those of us who fought and survived the war, it’s important that we should help to try and build a world where such a terrible conflict won’t happen again. If such a thing is possible.’

  George stopped, and looked at her in a very different way, the way he had started to look at moments like this, as if he wanted to tell her something but could not. Amelia read these looks perfectly correctly, but she failed to understand the reason behind them, thinking that why George seemed reluctant to continue with these arguments was because he thought she was not up to him intellectually. Since that was what she thought and it put her on the back foot, Amelia became more aggressive, and then George would shake his head, apologize and shut himself away in his study. Usually Amelia just let him go, realizing she could not force him to discuss things which he thought were beyond her, but on this particular occasion, when they had just returned from yet another high-powered social gathering, there was one hook she would not let him off.

  ‘I know you’re all for putting the world to rights, George,’ she said. ‘But that’s no excuse for anti-Semitism.’

  ‘You’re not accusing me of that?’ George said, with genuine hurt. ‘I don’t believe it if you are. How could you even begin to think that of me?’

  ‘Let me see,’ Amelia replied, mock-thoughtfully. ‘It must be because tonight you just sat there while certain people made anti-Jewish remarks and said nothing.’

  ‘It wasn’t my house.’

  ‘Meaning it’s bad form to pick an argument on away ground.’

  ‘In a way, yes.’

  ‘You never minded before. I’ve seen you taking other people to task before around other people’s dining tables and not caring one hoot about it, let alone two.’

  ‘This is different, Amelia. This is a political thing.’

  ‘A political thing? To disparage Jews?’ Amelia said sharply. ‘Is this going to be part of the brave new world you’re hoping to build? Because if it is--’

  ‘Stop it! Do you hear? Stop it!’ George cried, getting to his feet, his face contorted in anguish. ‘You have to stop asking me all these questions, do you hear? Just stop it! No more. You are not to keep pressing me and needling me and asking me all these questions!’

  ‘Why not?’ Amelia returned, suddenly worried by the look in George’s eyes, a look which seemed to carry her back all the way to a dreadful day up in the glens of Scotland. ‘I’m your wife, George. I love you. I have a perfect right to ask you what I like!’

  ‘No, Amelia,’ George said suddenly, very quietly. ‘No you don’t. You don’t have any such right. No-one has the right to know! I have a mission – do you understand? All this – what I’m doing! You mustn’t ever ask me about it! Never! Not ever!’

  ‘Why not? Why has this got to be some sort of secret?’ Amelia protested, on her feet as well and confronting her husband, who was staring at her dementedly. ‘There never have been any secrets between us, so why should there be any now?’

  ‘Because that is how it is!’ George said with a passion which genuinely surprised Amelia. ‘And if you ask me to explain – I can’t! If I could, I would, believe me – but it just isn’t possible! So you’re going to have to trust me. Please. Remember what you promised me and trust me. Please.’

  ‘If that’s what you want, George,’ Amelia said uncertainly, ‘then of course. Of course I trust you. I don’t think you’re capable of doing a bad thing. At least that’s what I’ve always believed until now.’

  ‘Then please just keep on believing it. Please believe in me. If you don’t – I don’t know what I will do.’

  He looked so completely and utterly lost that Amelia could do nothing but take him in her arms, where he stood silently for an age, his arms round her, his head bowed over her shoulder. When she moved at last to kiss him, she saw there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘George,’ she began, but he just shook his head mutely at her and took himself off to his study.

  From then on he would say nothing more on the subject, and once she realized the moratorium he had imposed was in earnest Amelia declined to press him further. Instead she busied herself in her beloved garden and left George to his readings and his writings, noting only that he spent longer and longer shut away in his study and less and less time with her. Whatever free time he did have was immediately taken up by social engagements they attended together or George attended on his own. The time he had once spent with his wife and family was now passed in the company of financiers and politicians, and since the habitat of such species was urban rather than rural George spent more and more time away from The Priory: up in London, or Manchester, or York, or Paris, and even on one or two occasions in Munich.

  And because they never discussed the matter of George’s public life or his new political ardour Amelia could only guess at the reasons for his actions and his attitudes. Unfortunately the conclusions she reached were a very long distance from the truth, and because she guessed wrong the bewildered Amelia found that where there had been only the greatest and most loving intimacy between herself and George there was now an ever-widening gap, a gap that was soon to become an emotional abyss.

  Particularly now that Deanna Astley had entered their lives.

  Amelia’s fears and suspicions came to a head when, two months after their weekend at Riverdean, she and George were accorded what was considered to be one of the greatest social accolades of the day, an invitation to a soirée in the Astleys’ famous London residence, two houses knocked into one in Mayfair. Unfortunately the day before the engagement Amelia fell ill with a stomach infection, severe enough to confine her to her bed.

  ‘I shall telephone and cancel,’ George said after the doctor had left.

  ‘No,’ Amelia said, although that was precisely what she wished him to do. But she knew how important the party must be to her politically ambitious husband, and she insisted he went without her. ‘There’s no reason for you not to go,’ she assured him. ‘This is the best chance you will have of meeting all these important people you have been dying to meet and who obviously are dying to meet you, so you really ought to go.’

  ‘It’s only that the Prime Minister is going to be there, otherwise . . .’ George hesitated, standing at the end of her bed watching her anxiously.

  ‘Go, George. I mean it.’

  ‘But what about you?’

  ‘I shall be perfectly all right. I have Clara if I need anything, and Edward said he would look in again in the morning. So go on – go. You keep saying how much this will mean to you.’

  ‘No – you don’t understand, Amelia.’

  ‘Of course I don’t. We established that months ago. But then that doesn’t seem to matter so much now. Not as much as it once did.’

  ‘Don’t say that. It just isn’t true.’

  ‘Of course it is. You used to take me into your confidence completely, but now I’m not allowed to ask you anything. Or if I do you just hole yourself up in your study and lock the door. So go on – go off to your party.’

  ‘It isn’t my party,’ George protested. ‘And I don’t really want to go without you.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Amelia replied, lying down and turning her face away from him. �
��Now go away and leave me in peace. I’m really not feeling at all well.’

  Amelia remained miserably in her bed for the next forty-eight hours while George took himself off to London, just as miserable but unable to refuse the invitation since, as Amelia had said, this was the best and possibly the only chance he had of meeting on a social level the people he had to meet if he were to have any chance in succeeding with his mission. He was miserable because he could not tell Amelia why he must go, knowing that if he could only do so she would understand what he knew must seem to her like his completely irrational behaviour. But it was not possible. He was forbidden to mention to one living soul the nature of his intent. He understood one careless word to the wrong person could ruin everything and endanger the future.

  Yet who had instructed him in this way he had absolutely no idea.

  * * *

  Amelia read all about the glittering party in her Daily Mail the next day. There was a picture of George standing with the Prime Minister, Deanna Astley, more glamorous than ever by his side. There was also a report of a skirmish on the doorstep of the Astley residence when George was leaving the reception in the company of a party of friends which included Jack Cornwall and Ralph Grace.

  ‘I’m not surprised to see Jack’s name,’ Amelia said to George on the telephone when she had read the item below the photographs. ‘But Ralph? I didn’t realize he was part of the smart set.’

  ‘Just read what happened, Amelia,’ George replied at the other end of the line, sitting in a chair in the corner of his hotel bedroom, drinking a large cup of black coffee. ‘It wasn’t that amusing.’

  ‘This is the same man who attacked you at Wimbledon, surely?’

  ‘The man who insulted you and whom I attacked, you mean,’ George replied. ‘We were all just leaving, and Ralph had gone to hail a cab, when this madman – who must have been waiting all evening – this madman rushed up from the service area and had a go at me.’

  ‘It says here he had a knife,’ Amelia said in quiet dismay.