The Garden Party

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Interesting that you call it a garden party. It wasn’t a house party?’

  ‘It was in and out of the house, but being the summer of that year and a hot summer at that, it was mostly outside, and what you will be interested in happened on the lawn and in the swimming pool. So I have come to think of it as the garden party.’

  ‘Fair enough, the garden party it is.’

  ‘The men ate out mostly, as well, by the barbecue area . . . and drank outside.’

  ‘Again, fair enough.’

  Sandra Barnes paused as if thinking, as if mustering courage, then she said, ‘Look, Penny, one woman to another, I value my house . . . my home, nothing immoral has ever happened in this house. It’s a family home. It’s a sanctuary . . . it’s akin to a sacred place for me.’

  ‘I fully understand,’ Penny Yewdall replied, ‘fully understand.’

  ‘I don’t ever want to talk about the garden party in this house. Even just talking about that week would seem to contaminate my house; it would seem to violate it.’

  ‘So can you suggest where we should go?’ Penny Yewdall asked.

  ‘The park –’ Sandra Barnes pointed in the direction of the front of her house – ‘it’s just across the road. We can walk in the park; it’s a lovely day.’

  ‘Yes.’ Penny Yewdall beamed. ‘A day like this; a walk in the park . . . and walking is good for talking. You know, I have noticed that for some reason two people talk more freely when they are walking than when they are sitting together in a room. So, yes, admirable suggestion.’ She stood.

  Eastwood Park in Chesterfield, Penny Yewdall found, was a modest park, a flat area of grass with football and cricket pitches and a gaily painted swing park for the amusement of infants. It was surrounded by green-painted, round-topped railings and a concrete path wound round the inside perimeter. Nineteenth-century housing surrounded the park on three sides; the fourth side was occupied by twentieth-century houses, one of which was the home of Sandra Barnes. As Penny Yewdall and Sandra Barnes entered the park by a gate adjacent to Sandra Barnes’ house, they saw, to their relief, it being midweek, that the park was sparsely occupied.

  ‘So, what can I tell you?’ Sandra Barnes fell into step with Penny Yewdall and walked sufficiently close to her that occasionally their shoulders touched.

  Yewdall glanced around her noting the red-bricked houses under black-tiled rooves of northern England. ‘As I said, Sandra, in your own words and time.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Sandra Barnes nodded. ‘You can’t lead me with your questions. Well, we were all duped, all cheated, all of us. All the women that is; all except one older woman who knew what was going on. She was there to keep us in line, but at least we lived to tell the tale, at least there is that to be thankful for. At least we survived with nothing more than emotional scarring.’

  ‘Survived?’ Penny Yewdall echoed. ‘Others didn’t?’

  ‘No . . . I’ll tell you,’ Sandra Barnes replied, ‘you see, I was what you would call a mistress. I was a rich man’s plaything. I dare say that I sold my body but I never stood on a street corner, though most of the women at the garden party were street girls . . . but you can’t live in London on a primary school teacher’s salary, so you have to do something other than teaching if you are going to survive. It’s difficult for unmarried schoolmistresses to survive up here where the cost of living is less, but in London it’s impossible. So I allowed myself to be bought and I am not proud of it. It is a regret. I have to live with it and I do regret it. But I went with another girl to a club, she was a poorly paid low-grade civil servant I knew who had a sugar daddy, and the club is where sugar babies and sugar daddies went to meet each other, to check each other out, looking for a “click”. I went a few times and eventually I got a proposition which I found interesting. He was decorative and wasn’t posh, working-class background the same as me, but he’d made something of himself in the world of finance . . . so he said.’

  ‘So he said.’ Penny Yewdall smiled.

  ‘Yes, so he said,’ Sandra Barnes sighed. ‘Well, I did say that we were duped and for me that was the beginning. Anyway, arrangements differ from couple to couple but my “daddy” installed me in a flat he owned in Earl’s Court. I mean, no wonder it’s called “kangaroo canyon”.’

  ‘So I believe.’

  ‘I mean,’ Sandra Barnes continued, ‘all those young Australians taking a gap year to visit the mother country and all they wanted to do was stick together and drink Foster’s lager. I mean, what’s the point of them travelling to the other side of the planet just to be with each other all the time and drink Australian beer?’

  ‘Search me.’ Penny Yewdall grinned. ‘But they’re born upside down so they probably don’t think logically.’

  Sandra Barnes laughed. ‘I wish I had thought like that at the time, it would have helped me to make sense of it all.’ She paused for a few seconds. ‘So there I was paying a peppercorn rent of just one pound a month.’

  Yewdall gasped. ‘That is peppercorn, for London that is peppercorn.’

  ‘I know, but he was clever . . . shrewd, shrewd is the word I think I would use to describe him. By paying a rent, no matter how small, and recording it in a rent book, and by getting me to sign a rental agreement he ensured that my status in the eyes of the law was always that of tenant.’

  ‘Shrewd, as you say,’ Yewdall said.

  ‘Yes,’ Sandra Barnes replied, ‘you see, he told me once of a story; a true story. A man owned a second home, unknown to his wife, and he installed a mistress in the second home whom he’d visit when he felt the need for a little horizontal relaxation, all unknown by his wife.’

  ‘Of course.’ Penny Yewdall’s eye was caught by a youth of perhaps fourteen years walking slowly in the park. ‘I mean the wife is always the last to find out anything.’

  ‘Indeed. He also allowed the mistress to live in the house so as to sit it, as it were, keeping the burglars out, but no money was exchanged. She got rent-free living in exchange for her services and he got a house-sitting service for nothing, and this arrangement went on for some years,’ Sandra Barnes explained. ‘Like, a lot of years.’

  ‘I think I know where this is going.’ Penny Yewdall returned her attention to Sandra Barnes.

  ‘Yes. So it came to pass that one day the man, the owner of the house, wanted to sell the house so he gave his bit of stuff her marching orders, but said bit of stuff had more about her than the man thought and she said that after all those years, in excess of ten, I believe, she had some moral claim to the property. So it went to court and the jury found in her favour and she became the outright owner of the house.’

  ‘Nice.’ Penny Yewdall pursed her lips. ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Yes, good for her, I thought,’ Sandra Barnes replied. ‘I can well imagine the man being less than pleased, very less than pleased, but my sugar daddy said that the man was an idiot, all he had to have done was to get that woman to sign a rental agreement, give her a rent book and take even just one penny a month, but in the event she lived there permanently as her own and only home so . . .’

  ‘Squatter’s rights?’ Yewdall anticipated.

  ‘Yes, that’s what decided that court case, an ancient legal right going back to medieval times. If you live in a property for seven years or more you can claim it as your own. But my sugar daddy was determined that that wasn’t going to happen to him, so I got charged a nominal rent but I wasn’t bothered; I wouldn’t have stayed for seven years anyway. So I paid a quid a month for a lovely flat in Earl’s Court, a sitting room, a bedroom, a dining kitchen and a bathroom. The whole building was once a large family home with servants’ quarters. I was on the ground floor. All the other flats were occupied by yuppies, really high earners and my “daddy” said I could have a “Tom”, by which he meant a boyfriend, but the “Tom” couldn’t visit me there, I had to go to my boyfriend’s flat, if I had one. I just had to keep myself available for my sugar daddy every Monday, Wednesday and Friday
evening.’

  ‘I see,’ Penny Yewdall replied softly. ‘You know, I can understand the attraction of that arrangement for a girl who does not want to get involved . . . clean, safe, comfortable.’

  ‘Yes, and it was clean and comfortable, always clean, always comfortable and it was safe, safe until the garden party, then it was anything but safe.’ Sandra Barnes shook her head slightly. ‘Oh, and I got a three-week holiday in the Canary Islands and also a two-week Easter holiday in Cyprus, all part of the deal. I suppose I looked eye-catching in a bikini in those days. I was taken along to set him off on the beach and in the bar at night, either stretched topless on a beach towel or perched on a stool in a stupidly short skirt, with a bronze, suntanned body; his to show off to the world like a glittering trophy, but I wasn’t unhappy; nothing came out of my salary. I was even able to save, not much, but when the time came I had money to return to Chesterfield with. Not bad for a primary school teacher in inner London.’

  ‘Not bad.’ Penny Yewdall glanced at Sandra Barnes with a slight, approving smile. ‘Not bad at all.’

  ‘And there were other compensations. My man was in his mid-fifties and so the physical demands were less. Sometimes me and Tony – that was his name – me and Tony would return from the restaurant,’ Sandra Barnes explained, ‘and clamber into bed, there’d be a little fumbling and groping and then he’d fall asleep. Only when he visited on Fridays did he stay in bed the following morning, or during the school holidays, but usually I was going out the door as prim Miss Barnes, in a very proper three-quarter length skirt, and going to teach infants basic literacy and numeracy, while he was still sleeping off the previous evening’s red wine.’

  ‘How long,’ Penny Yewdall asked, ‘were you his mistress?’

  ‘About a year and a half . . . two Christmases and one and a half summers. We met approaching one Christmas, I remained his mistress until the next Christmas, then it all ended abruptly at the wretched garden party in the middle of the second summer . . . so, yes, about a year and a half.’ Sandra Barnes paused. ‘You know, I thought that being a rich man’s mistress was the end of my innocence, but the actual end of that was the garden party.’ Sandra paused as an elderly male dog walker approached them. The gentleman was dressed in short sleeves, white trousers and a panama hat and was being pulled along, it seemed to Penny Yewdall, by an eager corgi. As he approached, the man doffed his hat and said a cheery, ‘Good afternoon, ladies’.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Barnes and Yewdall replied simultaneously. Sandra Barnes remained silent for a few moments until she was certain that the elderly dog walker was safely out of earshot. ‘That day . . . it was a Friday in July, early July – he arrived at about six p.m. like he said he would, having told me that we were going to a party.’

  ‘At six!’ Penny Yewdall exclaimed.

  ‘Yes,’ Sandra Barnes replied, ‘at six. I thought it strange, but I had learned by then that “her indoors” must not ask too many questions and because I had been told that we were going to a party I was well tarted up. I don’t mean a ball gown but . . . how shall I put it . . .?’

  ‘Elegant?’ Penny Yewdall suggested.

  ‘Yes –’ Sandra Barnes held eye contact with Penny Yewdall and then looked ahead of her – ‘that’s the word, elegant; long skirt, nylons, heels, jewellery . . . all the jewellery I had, just a few cheap bangles really.’

  ‘I get the image.’

  ‘Usually,’ Sandra Barnes carried on, ‘Tony arrived dressed in the male equivalent, smart suit, highly polished shoes . . . reeking of aftershave. I mean, Tony would never be mistaken for a woman, like we were saying earlier. I mean, he was one hundred percent supercharged testosterone. Good gracious . . . no . . . Tony in drag . . . never. But anyway he arrived in a T-shirt and faded denims.’

  ‘Dressed down?’ Penny Yewdall asked. ‘Would you say dressed down?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sandra Barnes nodded in agreement. ‘That’s a good way of putting it. You have that skill, Penny, but yes . . . so . . . I am dressed to kill because he’s taking me to a party, wearing all the finery he bought for me, and he is dressed to sloth about the house on a Saturday morning. So I am told to get the fancy kit off and so I do, not happily, because I had dashed home from work and spent an hour getting arrayed for the fray . . . make-up, clothes . . . all that number.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it all came off. Had to wash all the war paint off, put the good clothes away, returned wearing a T-shirt and a pair of jeans I had cut down, quite savagely, into a pair of skimpy shorts, tennis shoes . . . no socks even, I left the socks off as a form of protest. So it’s all getting a bit confusing by then . . . so we go out, lock the flat up and there’s his blue Porsche, double-parked, and we get in . . . hood down and the first thing I notice is a suitcase behind the seats, so by then alarm bells are beginning to ring a bit softly . . . a bit in the distance, but ringing nonetheless.’

  ‘I can bet they were,’ Penny Yewdall replied.

  ‘So.’ Sandra Barnes took a deep breath. ‘I am thinking what sort of party is this that we leave for it at six p.m.? Mind you, it was nearer seven by the time I had got changed, but so unusually early still, and dressed as we were dressed . . . for a party? Then the suitcase in the back of the Porsche, a change of clothing for him, none for me . . . I mean, just how long is this party going to last?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘So this was Tony Sudbury flying his true colours,’ Sandra Barnes continued. ‘He had told me he was in the world of finance, so I thought a stockbroker or someone in insurance in the City, but he was flying his true colours that week. He really showed his true self.’

  ‘It is always the case, eventually,’ Penny Yewdall replied, but continued to speak minimally, giving just short responses. It was, she knew, so, so important not to lead Sandra Barnes, though she did allow herself to say, ‘You’re going to tell me he was in the criminal sort of financial world?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sandra Barnes replied, ‘in a word, yes. And how. I mean East End organized crime, the whole heavy number, where even he with his convertible Porsche, his properties, and him in his fifties, even then he had to call people “boss” and do what he was told. My eyes were well opened at the party.’

  ‘Tony Sudbury, you say?’ Penny Yewdall made a mental note of the name.

  ‘Yes, like the area of London, Sudbury-on-Thames.’

  ‘I know it, or rather know of it, driven through it a few times, quite a pleasant area,’ Penny Yewdall commented.

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Sandra Barnes replied drily, ‘but that was his name, Tony Sudbury, “Flash” Tony Sudbury. I suppose I should have seen that as an early warning sign but I didn’t, I just didn’t.’

  ‘Seen what?’ Yewdall queried.

  ‘His whole Flash Harry attitude . . . loved hard cash, wallet bulging with the stuff. I mean what stockbroker does that? They use credit cards or cheques but Tony used to flash a wad of readies about whenever he could. He even once did that stupid stunt of lighting a cigar with a burning twenty pound note, but very occasionally he did write a cheque and that’s how I know his real name was Tony Sudbury. Usually he’d give me cash if I needed something, but once he wrote a cheque for five hundred pounds, told me to buy a watch with it. He thought I needed a watch you see. At least a better watch than the watch I had at the time.’ Sandra Barnes paused and looked away from Penny Yewdall.

  ‘Something bothers you?’ Penny Yewdall enquired gently.

  ‘Yes . . .’ Sandra Barnes replied slowly, ‘can I tell you something, Penny?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I stole from him. I felt so guilty and I still feel so guilty . . . but now what could have happened to me haunts me.’

  Penny Yewdall remained silent.

  ‘That cheque he gave me to buy a watch. I cashed it . . . I paid it into my bank account. You see, despite the lifestyle, the flat in Earl’s Court, the dinners, a man with a Porsche, I didn’t have a lot of money behind me. So I
bought a nice-looking watch from a charity shop, and bought a new strap for it just hoping he wouldn’t want to see the presentation case or look at the guarantee.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Penny Yewdall raised her eyebrows.

  ‘“Oh” is right,’ Sandra Barnes breathed deeply. ‘The worst I thought could happen is that he’d give me the heave-ho and trade me in for another sugar baby, but at the time I thought he was a man in the field of city finance, not a villain in the world of gangster finance. You don’t steal from an East End blagger and get away with it. If I lived at all it would be with broken arms and legs . . . the risk . . . I was skating over thin ice there. I realize now that the Tony I was dealing with would have cut up rough, so the guilt is now compounded with the fear of what I could easily have invited on myself. A sense of my life being spared . . .’

  ‘Yes, many of us have those experiences, the scythe of the Grim Reaper passing within a hair’s breadth of one’s life. It leaves you hearing an echo saying, “I’ll get you next time, don’t worry . . . I’ll get you on the way back”,’ Penny Yewdall commented as a male jogger in a tracksuit jogged up from behind them and passed them.

  ‘Yes, it feels like that, like a fatal car crash that didn’t happen by dint of a split second or a fraction of an inch . . . but the memory stays and haunts you.’

  The two women fell silent for a few moments then Sandra Barnes continued. ‘So we’re in the Porsche driving through central London. We drive north and Tony, he’s done this journey before, I could tell; he knew where we were going all right. So we leave London on the A1, the Great North Road, as it is sometimes called.’

  ‘Yes, I know the road,’ Penny Yewdall replied.

  ‘So we drive up the A1 and we turn off at Biggleswade, the Biggleswade exit. I remember that was the turning because the name has always amused me, such a funny-sounding name and it also reminded me of the Biggles books for boys written by Captain W. E. Johns . . . Flying Officer Biggles and titles like that. My older brother used to read them and leave them lying about the house, much to my father’s annoyance, because he was ex navy, my father, he liked good order, everything in its place.’