The Kissing Garden

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘No. What an extraordinary thing! Do go on.’

  ‘Jethro thought it must be a blight, but as it transpired when we cut all the flowers off to examine them they were as healthy as their colourful neighbours.’

  ‘How extraordinary.’

  ‘It was just as if someone had poured bleach over them.’

  ‘My mother always used to say that to me when I was a little girl. Don’t cry near a flower, darling, she’d say, or you’ll wash all their colour away. Particularly roses, for some peculiar reason. Are you sure I never said that to you?’

  ‘Now you come to mention it, in a book I was just reading . . .’ Amelia’s words petered out.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘No. Nothing more boring than someone telling you about the book they’re reading. Come on,’ she said, taking her mother’s hand. ‘I want to show you what I’ve done to the water gardens.’

  Clarence was following on some way behind the two women, Peter and Gwendolyn keeping him company. Gwendolyn’s arm was through her grandfather’s, Peter’s eyes were on the clear sky above them, as if already searching for the enemy.

  ‘So you’re convinced there’s going to be a war, are you, young man?’ Clarence asked him. ‘In spite of all this last minute diplomacy?’

  ‘I hope there is, Grandfather,’ Peter replied. ‘As I explained to Grandmother, not because I want to fight--’

  ‘But because he feels he has to,’ Gwendolyn finished, with a certain pride.

  ‘I think right’s on our side, you see,’ Peter said.

  ‘We thought that back in 1914 as well.’

  ‘And wasn’t it?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you, dear boy,’ Clarence sighed. ‘I don’t think men fight wars because of right and wrong. I think men fight because they like fighting.’

  ‘You don’t?’ Gwendolyn asked in shock. ‘Not really, surely, Grandfather?’

  ‘To knock something down, if it’s cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood. To fight for a reason is something your true warrior despises. That’s what I read somewhere or other. Don’t ask me where. I can’t even remember why I’ve gone into a room nowadays.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what it is, though,’ Peter said, putting his hands deep in his pockets and looking ahead of him. ‘Maybe that’s exactly what it is. Germany is cocked at an arrogant angle – and we want to knock her down.’

  ‘Even so,’ Clarence sighed. ‘Even so, give me peace any day.’

  ‘You’d fight to defend your family, surely, Grandfather?’

  ‘Put like that, who wouldn’t, young man? But war can only protect. It can’t create. And I happen to think creation is the most important thing of all.’

  ‘But you have to be free to create, don’t you? To create as you would want to create? Freely, that is. You have to be free to create freely.’

  ‘Of course.’ Clarence smiled at his grandson and paused in the middle of the green path. ‘I just hate waste, Peter, that’s all. I hate to see lives wasted. Young lives.’

  ‘I know, Grandfather,’ Peter replied with a nod. ‘But they won’t be wasted. Believe me. Not this time.’

  Just as the family were all about to go in to dinner, the front doorbell rang, and minutes later Clara arrived with a telegram for Amelia.

  ‘Oh, heavens,’ Constance said, seeing the small brown envelope. ‘Not bad news, I hope. No good news ever comes by telegram.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Clarence replied quickly, downing the last of his martini. ‘Sometimes, Connie, you can be a right old gloom pot.’

  ‘This isn’t bad news,’ Amelia said with a smile, the open telegram in her hand. ‘It’s very good news actually.’

  ‘May we share it with you, darling girl?’

  ‘Of course,’ Amelia agreed, folding the paper in her hand. ‘George has just secured a very good deal for his new book.’

  ‘Well, well.’ Constance smiled, as if expecting something of somewhat greater import. ‘How very nice for him. I’m so glad it wasn’t horrid news, anyway.’

  Taking her husband’s arm, Constance led the party out to the dining room, leaving Amelia enough time to read the text of her telegram once more before committing it safely to the flames of the fire.

  G alive and well, it read. Am meeting him for a drink p.m. R.!

  Twenty-Six

  ‘You’re sure you weren’t followed?’ George asked him, shutting the door behind Ralph in the small back room of the set of offices which was the designated meeting site.

  ‘I even changed taxicabs in the middle of Piccadilly,’ Ralph assured him, looking round the book-lined room. ‘Got out of one straight into the one alongside in the traffic. Where in heck are we, by the way?’

  ‘Jack Cornwall’s office,’ George replied, lighting a cigarette and opening a filing cabinet. ‘You know? My publisher?’

  ‘Of course,’ Ralph replied. ‘Don’t tell me he even keeps his whisky in his filing cabinet?’

  ‘Jack is nothing if not traditional,’ George smiled. ‘When he first worked as a cub reporter on the Yorkshire Post I understand he even wore a green eye shade.’

  ‘So why are we meeting here in his office? Aren’t publishers famous for publishing things?’

  ‘Jack’s partly responsible for all this,’ George said, handing Ralph a tumbler of Scotch. ‘This cloak and dagger stuff. Jack’s the one who recruited me.’

  ‘Recruited you?’ Ralph pulled a chair out from behind the small desk and sat himself down. ‘Jack’s an appeaser?’

  ‘The opposite.’ George put the bottle back in the filing cabinet drawer, closed it, then propped himself up between the wall and the cabinet. ‘Jack also works for the War Office.’

  ‘The War Office? I don’t understand—’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ George assured him. ‘Because I’m certainly not going to make you any wiser. Savvy?’

  ‘When you say so, Captain Dashwood, my mind will become a complete blank.’

  ‘Why you’re here is for one reason and one reason only,’ George continued. ‘If anything happens to me, you’re going to have to tell Amelia everything. They won’t tell her anything. If anything happens to me, they’ll just wash their hands of me and I wouldn’t expect them to do otherwise. But I don’t want Amelia not to know. I don’t want her having to guess, or thinking the wrong thing, or coming to the wrong conclusion.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Thank you.’ George drummed his fingers on the top of the filing cabinet as if deciding whether to continue or not, then taking a deep draught of whisky he put his glass aside and straightened himself up. ‘These people with whom I’ve been associating.’

  ‘The Riverdean set.’

  George nodded. ‘And others. My brief was to get them to accept me completely as one of them.’

  ‘Odd chap to choose. Famous war hero, VC and all that stuff.’

  ‘Not when you remember the furore my first book caused. That was really what started the ball rolling. Jack published the book, even though he might not have agreed with everything I said, and after that we became pretty close friends and he started marking my card.’

  ‘Blessed with foresight, is he?’ Ralph asked lightly, taking out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

  ‘There was a pretty strong faction who didn’t want to fight the last war either, Ralph,’ George replied, leaning over and lighting his friend’s smoke. ‘And not just the Kaiser’s relatives. People like Jack have been monitoring them for a good while now. Anyway, the long and short of it is Jack organized a plan, and by the time my father disowned me I was well and truly welcome in the company of my newfound friends.’

  ‘Just to play I Spy? To make out a list of offenders – except they haven’t really done anything. Or have they?’

  ‘Other than air their views in public, views which while not popular with everyone are hardly seditious. No – it’s more to do with what they are about to do. You see, their aim is to seal a pact they have
already put before their friend Hitler, an agreement which includes deposing our present monarch and putting the Duke of Windsor on the throne, and to form a government sympathetic to the Third Reich, all in return for a promise that this country will not be invaded and will retain its sovereignty.’

  ‘No-one would hear of it. People would string ‘em up from the lamp-posts.’

  ‘They have a lot of support in very high places. They’re even said to have backing within the armed services.’

  ‘George – if this is true, then it’s treason.’

  George looked at him for a moment, then came and sat down opposite Ralph at the small office desk.

  ‘It’s true – and it wasn’t just Jack who convinced me, Ralph,’ he said, looking his friend in the eye. ‘In fact it wasn’t Jack at all. I convinced myself. You have to imagine what this country would be like under a Fascist government. Imagine what living under a government such as that of the Third Reich could really be like.’

  By the time George had finished telling him, Ralph had smoked his way through a whole fresh cigarette and drunk a second large whisky.

  ‘So what can you do about it? To stop it, or to help stop it?’

  ‘I have to get hold of a certain dossier of files which contain the names of all the people involved.’

  ‘Do you know where this dossier is?’

  ‘It’s in a safe. To be precise, it’s in the Astleys’ safe in their house at Riverdean.’

  ‘Any idea how you’re going to steal it?’

  ‘Yes. I’m going to try and get Deanna Astley to give it to me.’

  It was, the way George put it, as simple as that. Much as it disturbed him he had now apparently reached a point of such intimacy with Deanna Astley that he was convinced he could somehow get hold of the key to the all-important safe. If he was right, then once he had the files in his possession he had to get them post-haste to Rex Bowater, the hugely influential proprietor of United Newspapers whom Jack Cornwall had already primed concerning the supposed treachery. When the facts contained in the dossier became known by the right people, Cornwall and Bowater knew there would be an end to the sedition as well as the ruin and disgrace of a large number of very rich and important people.

  Once the file was in the right hands, George’s involvement would be at an end, leaving him free to return to his home and his beloved wife and family. As they finished their whiskies Ralph wished him well, while George tried to reassure him that the worst part was in fact over, it having been when he was forced to ally himself publicly with a set of people he would now gladly set adrift in a boat in the Atlantic without food or water – to say the least of it.

  ‘So I shall take my leave of you, brave Horatio,’ George smiled as he put out the light in the little office before opening the door to let them both out. ‘I to steal the file, and you to keep your mouth tightly shut.’

  ‘I never saw you, Captain Dashwood, sir,’ Ralph murmured, as they eased out of the back door of the offices. ‘I saw nothing, heard nothing, and know even less.’

  ‘Good man. But remember, if I don’t come back--’

  ‘You will.’

  The two old comrades in arms exchanged a last look, then, carefully shutting the door which had led them out into the alleyway at the back of the building, vanished into the night to their quite separate destinies.

  George was convinced he knew where the key to the Astley safe was kept. Deanna Astley wore it attached to a slender chain which she wore around her waist. He had already been sufficiently intimate to become aware of this piece of jewellery and had once even remarked on it, having first noticed it when dancing with her and feeling what he thought to be the shape of a small key beneath her silk dress. Deanna had laughed it off as being the key to the safe where she kept her jewellery, an explanation which George might have accepted as a perfectly valid one had he not by chance one evening observed her unfastening the chain through the front of her evening gown and handing her husband a key with which he then opened a large wall safe hidden behind the panelling.

  It was, of course, a long shot that the documents George needed were still in the safe at Riverdean, but it was the only one he had left to make. With the Prime Minister due to make another visit to meet the Führer in Munich, time was fast running out, for if the PM could be gulled into making a pact with Hitler it would be the very foundation stone for the coup which had been so meticulously planned by the appeasement party.

  ‘You’re awfully quiet this evening, George,’ Deanna remarked, some time after George had arrived at her Mayfair address. ‘You’re really not being much fun, if I may say so.’

  ‘I am sorry, Deanna,’ George said, picking up his cocktail from beside him. ‘Brown study time.’

  ‘Can I pay a penny entrance fee?’ she asked, coming to sit on the arm of his chair. ‘And know exactly what you are thinking?’

  ‘I was thinking what a fool I’d been,’ he replied. ‘What a fool for wasting so much time.’

  ‘What sort of time, George?’

  ‘Time spent with you, of course.’

  Deanna slipped off the arm of the chair and into his lap in order to kiss him. ‘Time does have a habit of marching on. And I have to go away to Germany. And you won’t be able to come with me because of me being the little wifey person and my big husband person coming along.’

  ‘Exactly,’ George agreed. ‘So it’s high time I stopped being such a positive old stick in the mud.’

  ‘Is that what you are, sweetie?’ Deanna smoothed his hair back and smiled at him. ‘I don’t think that you’re a stick in the mud at all. I think you’re a tiger.’

  ‘I have a brilliant idea. Why don’t we drive down to Riverdean? We can’t stay the night here because your husband is in town--’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Marmy doesn’t give a fig what I do.’

  ‘I know. But knowing he’s here just cramps my style.’

  ‘And your style is much too good to cramp,’ Deanna agreed. ‘Good. I think that’s a lovely idea. I adore houses when there’s no-one there but me and the servants. I find them very sexy. You will love my room at Riverdean. It has a seventeenth-century four-poster. You can have such fun with four posts.’

  ‘I intend to,’ George assured her.

  It was a surprisingly cold and rainy night, so when they arrived at Riverdean they sat for a while silently warming themselves up in front of the fire in the library which Deanna had ordered to be lit on their arrival. But although they said little or nothing to each other, Deanna never took her eyes off George all the time they were drinking the large brandies she had ordered the liveried footman to pour for them. She slipped her shoes off and eased her silk-stockinged feet up under her as she and George settled comfortably onto the large sofa in front of the blazing fire.

  ‘It’s lovely and warm in here now,’ she said, gently easing her stockinged feet into George’s lap once the servant had left them alone. ‘Much, much warmer than the bedroom.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ George agreed, trying to work out his next move.

  ‘Who needs a cold bedroom?’ Deanna murmured. ‘We have the sofa – and this lovely fur rug, as you can see.’

  ‘What about this lovely fur rug?’

  ‘You’ve never read about Elinor Glyn and the sin she committed on the tiger skin? Don’t move,’ she added with a smile. ‘I’m just going to lock the door.’

  Having done so she came back to stand in front of the sofa. In one easy deft movement she slipped out of her dress to stand before him wearing nothing except her black silk underwear and stockings.

  ‘I don’t mind if you take your jacket off,’ she teased after a moment. ‘In fact let me take it off for you.’

  In between kissing him, Deanna slipped off George’s jacket and tie, slowly undid his cuff links, and slipped his shirt off his shoulders.

  ‘You have the most lovely body,’ she said, kissing his neck and then his chest. ‘The most lovely body I think I have ever seen.’


  ‘You haven’t ever seen my body,’ George protested. ‘Not all of it.’

  ‘I am about to make good that omission,’ Deanna assured him, undoing the belt of his trousers.

  ‘And I’m not making love to you with that key around your waist,’ George told her, fingering the thin chain. ‘It makes you look like some sort of gaoler.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like that, George? For me to be your gaoler? And you to be my prisoner?’

  ‘I already am, Deanna,’ George replied, feeling for the catch on the chain. ‘So we won’t be needing this.’

  Having undone the slender chain, he placed it neatly on a side table by the sofa, still uncertain as to how exactly he was going to gain access to the safe. His somewhat rudimentary plan had been to get possession of the key, then simply overpower Deanna and shut her away perhaps in some cupboard or closet in her bedroom while he effected his burglary. Now that he found himself trapped in the same room as the safe he briefly entertained the notion of knocking her out with one of the handy fire irons, only to reject this idea as one which could possibly cause too much commotion and attract the attention of a footman. As he knew from his previous visits to the great house, a member of the household staff was never out of earshot of the reception rooms, whatever the time of day or night, so he wondered whether he would simply wrap her up in the rug and carry her upstairs to the more distant privacy of the bedroom where he could safely lock her away out of anyone’s hearing? But there again, as soon as he considered the practicalities of such a move he realized that in spite of her avowed bravura Deanna would never take the risk of being seen by a member of her staff in such a way. As he held her in his arms he recognized that perhaps the only way he was going to achieve his purpose was to do what he had vowed he would not do, and that was to make love to her in the hope that in the aftermath Deanna would fall so fast asleep that it would leave him free to effect the robbery.

  ‘Mmm,’ Deanna sighed, suddenly and surprisingly yawning, an act which to judge from her expression apparently caught her also unawares. ‘Heavens. Must be the fire. I suddenly feel incredibly drowsy.’