Dollenganger 05 Garden of Shadows

by V. C. Andrews

  I went directly upstairs to my bedroom and lay there for over an hour staring up at the ceiling, recalling vividly the love scene I had just witnessed. How much I had been cheated! How much of what should be every woman's was not mine and would never be mine! I felt as if fate were pulling me through a knothole, dragging me to a destiny I never wanted to accept.

  Someday, perhaps, my portrait would be painted in dark oils and hung on the walls of Foxworth Hall. With gray eyes and pale lips pressed together so tightly they looked sewn shut, I would regard my descendants. My great-grandchildren would look up at me and conclude that I was a very unhappy woman, a woman haunted by the other austere faces of Foxworth Hall, a woman pained by her own existence. And they would know.

  While I was still in my room, I heard Garland and Alicia return from the lake. They were laughing, their voices high and gay. They both sounded so young, I felt as if I were the stepmother and Malcolm was Garland's father.

  That night after dinner, Garland and Malcolm had a long meeting in the trophy room. Alicia and I were sitting in the salon, tending the three children. Mal was showing Joel and Christopher his toys, explaining each to each as though they could understand. There must have been some strong filial feeling among them, because the infants were quiet, entranced, attentive.

  Alicia and I were crocheting. She was better at it than I anticipated she would be. Apparently, she had learned a great deal from her mother before she married Garland. Alicia smiled at the children and smiled at me.

  "It's going to be wonderful for them all to grow up together,", she said. "They'll marry beautiful, brilliant women and raise their families here at Foxworth Hall."

  "Maybe their wives won't get along," I said. I couldn't stand her childish fantasies. Just because life was all roses for her didn't mean it would be that way for everyone.

  "Oh, but they will. I'm not saying they won't have small differences. Everyone does, but they'll be Foxworths and their children will continue the traditions."

  "We're not royalty," I said. "Neither you nor I are queens." She looked at me a moment and then smiled as though she had to humor me. I couldn't believe the audacity that came from such a simple mind I was about to let her know how I felt about her smiling, when finally Garland and Malcolm emerged from their tete-a-tete and they came down to join us.

  I could see from the expression on Malcolm's face that their discussions had been intense, and I could also sense that he wanted to tell me something; so I gathered Mal and Joel together, saying that I had to take them up, and left the room. Malcolm followed me to the nursery, something he rarely did. He watched me put the children to sleep.

  "What is it?" I asked finally.

  "We discussed his will. He's drawing up a new one, of course."

  "Of course. You expected he would."

  "I am to get the house and the business in the event of his death; however, Alicia and Christopher can live here as long as they want. Alicia is to get three million dollars in stocks from our various investments, and Christopher two million, held in trust. I will serve as administrator of their income, investing it as I see fit. He's more dependent on me than I had thought."

  "All that should make you happy," I said.

  "My father recognizes my financial abilities, something you should also consider."

  I stared at him. "I'm not doing so badly with my own investments," I said.

  "You're making a fraction of what you should." "Nevertheless, it is I who am making it "

  "Stubborn foolishness. Is that a Winfield trait?"

  "I would have thought it a Foxworth trait. You continually tell me how foolish your father is, and who could be more entrenched in his own ideas than you?" Malcolm's face reddened, but he didn't pivot and leave the room as I had expected he would.

  "I wanted you to know these details," he said, "because I want you to tell me if you sense or learn that my father has any intention of changing them. Alicia tells you everything, apparently. I'm sure she'll be telling you about this. I suspect she's not going to be all that happy with the arrangements and she'll be using her charms to get him to give her more."

  "You want me to be your spy, spy on your father and his wife?"

  "Don't you?" he asked sharply.

  My face whitened. He smiled, a cold, wry smile that left a layer of ice over my heart. He didn't wait for my response.

  "It's in your own interest to do what I ask, and in the interest of the boys," he said, and left the room without so much as a glance at the children. Never, since they were born, did Malcolm ever kiss the boys good night.

  I looked down at them. They were both already asleep. How good it was that they were still too young to understand their father's words. But what lay ahead for them when they were older and they would have to deal with what he wanted for them and demanded of them?

  I sat there wishing they could remain babies forever.

  Alicia wanted to move into the Swan Room and Garland decided they should. She had always been fascinated by the room and the furniture and often asked questions about it. I saw how nervous Malcolm became whenever she brought up the room in conversation, but I never thought she would want to move into the room that had belonged to Garland's first wife. A second wife shouldn't want to revive her husband's memories of his first wife, but either she was incapable of understanding this, or she didn't care.

  In any case, one evening at dinner Garland announced that Alicia was moving their things into the Swan Room.

  "And the small swan cradle is so perfect for Christopher," she said.

  Malcolm stopped eating.

  "That room belonged to my mother," he said as if no one knew.

  "And it still does," Garland said. "Your new mother," he added, embracing Alicia.

  "I hardly can think of someone so much younger than myself as my mother," Malcolm snapped, but neither Garland nor Alicia seemed to care.

  "I don't want to change a single thing," she said. "Everything has been kept so clean and polished anyway. It all looks brand new."

  "No one's ever slept in that room since . . . since my mother deserted me!" Malcolm exclaimed.

  "Well, it shouldn't be kept like a museum," Alicia said, and laughed. She didn't mean it to be a cruel remark, I know; but it cut into Malcolm like a blade through the heart. He actually winced in pain.

  "A museum. I like that. A museum," Garland said. He joined her laughter.

  Afterward, Malcolm ranted and raved about the disgusting way his father gave in to every whim and wish of Alicia's.

  "He's spoiling her just the way he spoiled my mother," he told me.

  "How could you know?" I asked. "You were so young."

  "I was a precocious child; I saw, I knew. There wasn't a dress she saw and wanted that she didn't get. She had enough jewelry to open her own shop. He thought that by buying her endless things, he could keep her happy. I understood a great deal more than other children my age."

  "I believe that," I said. "Your father is forever telling me how hard it was for your mother to handle you. You were too smart, he says. She couldn't discipline you because you were always finding ways to get around her punishments or prohibitions. You knew she didn't have the patience or tolerance for endless discussions. He thinks she ran away from you."

  "He says that?" He clenched his teeth. "It was he who couldn't handle my mother. Do you think she would have run off with another man if he had been the firm, strong husband he should have been? Why, she even had her own personal funds," he added, "so that she could afford to pick up and go wherever and whenever she wanted." He stopped abruptly and left the room as if he had said too much.

  Could this be why he wanted complete control of my funds as well as his own? I wondered. Did he harbor the same fears in relation to me, afraid that I might leave him and go and do what I wanted whenever I wanted . . . something that would be an embarrassment to him, but even more than that, something that would be a reminder of what his mother was and what his mother had done
to his father?

  It didn't matter what he thought about my money, nor did it matter what he thought about what Alicia wished. The next day Alicia's things were moved into the Swan Room and the doors were opened. Whenever Malcolm and I walked past it together, he would speed up as though he could be burned by the light spilling from the room into the hallway. He wouldn't look into it. He would act as though it no longer existed. At least, that was what I thought, until one day he made a remark that left me wondering.

  "It's disgusting what goes on in that room now," he said, and I understood that he either came upon the room when they were making love or he put his ear to the wall in the trophy room and listened in. Could he have done that? Would he have done that? Curiosity took me to the trophy room one day when he was at work and they were in the Swan Room.

  Early in our marriage Malcolm had made it clear to me that the trophy room was to be his private sanctuary, a man's room in every sense of the word. No matter when I walked past, it or looked into it, it reeked of cigar smoke. By now the odor was embedded in the walls, I thought. In some ways it reminded me of my father's study, but there were many differences. My father had one stuffed deer head with antlers given to him as a gift from a very satisfied customer. Malcolm's and Garland's trophy room was just that--a room filled with animal trophies.

  There was a tiger head and an elephant head with its trunk uplifted. Garland's father had killed them both on safari. Garland had shot a grizzly bear, an antelope, and a mountain lion on hunting trips in western America. Malcolm had just begun his own collection. Two years ago he killed a brown bear. Now he talked about going on an African safari, as soon as business permitted him to take that much time off. Garland kept telling him he could go, that he would watch after things while he was away; but Malcolm wouldn't hear of it.

  On the far wall there was a stone fireplace at least twenty feet long. There were windows on either side, draped with black velvet curtains. The mantel was covered with artifacts from various hunting expeditions. Against one wall was a dark brown leather couch and matching settee. Facing it were two rockers and one black leather chair with a small table beside it. Ashtrays were everywhere.

  I closed the doors softly behind me and made my way to the wall on the left. On the other side of that wall Garland and Alicia lay in the swan bed. But when I put my ear to the wall, as I often did now in my own suite, I could barely hear their voices. This wall was too thick. Disappointed that my suspicions weren't proving true, I turned away when I saw a picture of Garland when he was much younger, dressed in his safari outfit, one foot on the carcass of a tiger. The picture was tilted. I moved it, intending to straighten it, and I discovered the hole in the wall.

  It wasn't very large, but it had obviously been dug out neatly with some sharp instrument. I brought my eye to it and saw Garland and Alicia naked in the swan bed. I gasped and pulled myself back, looking about the trophy room, terrified that I would be discovered.

  How long had this hole been here? Did Malcolm dig it out as soon as Alicia moved into the Swan Room? Or had this hole been here for years and years, perhaps dug out by a five-year-old boy?

  I left the picture frame the way I had found it and slipped out of the trophy room, now feeling more like a burglar who had robbed the room of some great secret. I would never reveal to Malcolm what I had learned, I thought. I was sure he would deny knowledge of it, but what would be far worse would be my own embarrassment in letting him know that I knew he was more interested in his father's and Alicia's lovemaking than he was in our own.

  Was he so taken with his father's bride? Did spying on them titillate him the way it had titillated me? My questions were answered one hot summer day.

  Alicia and I had finished feeding the children. It was one of those rare days when Garland went to the offices. Christopher was now a year and a half old. Joel was two and a half and Mal five. It was Malcolm's decision that a tutor would be brought here to give both Mal and Joel their primary education. The classroom in the attic that had been Malcolm's classroom and his ancestors before him would now be theirs. For this purpose he hired an elderly gentleman, Mr. Chillingworth, a retired Sunday-school teacher. Mal hated him and I found him quite cold and much too firm in his manner with a five-year-old, but Malcolm thought he was perfect.

  "Discipline is what they will need during these early years. It's when they will form their study habits for the rest of their lives. Simon Chillingworth is perfect for the task. He was my Sunday-school teacher," he said.

  Nevertheless, every time Mr. Chillingworth arrived to tutor Mal, Mal resisted, sometimes clinging to my skirt and begging me to keep him downstairs. But Malcolm was intractable. The only thing I could do to ease Mal's fear was to permit Joel to go up with him, even though Joel was too young for lessons. Malcolm approved of Joel's attendance because he thought the little boy would learn something just by being present.

  Mr. Chillingworth arrived after lunch for his three and a half hours tutorial session and Mal and Joel went up with him. I felt sorry for them up there in the hot attic on this particularly warm summer day, and offered the north salon, the coolest one, to Mr. Chillingworth. But he wouldn't hear of it.

  "There's a sufficient breeze from the dormer windows," he claimed, "and I want the use of the blackboards and desks. The children must learn to cope with discomfort anyway. It makes us stronger Christians."

  I dressed the boys as lightly as I could and shook my head in pity. Alicia was practically in tears for them. She vowed to say something to Malcolm that night, but I forbade her.

  "I don't need you to speak for me," I said. "And I'm not in total disagreement with Malcolm," I added. It was a lie, but the idea of Alicia getting Malcolm to do something I had wanted him to do was infuriating.

  "Very well," she said, "but the poor boys."

  She took Christopher up for a nap and returned shortly after, still complaining about the heat and the stuffiness in the house. I retreated to the cool salon to do some reading, but she was too restless and too flushed to relax.

  "Olivia," she asked, "don't you ever want to bathe in the lake?"

  "Bathe in the lake? No. I don't even have a bathing suit," I said, and turned back to my book.

  "We could go for a quick cool dip without suits," she said.

  "Without suits? Hardly," I said, "and besides, I don't have any inclinations to do so."

  "Oh. Too bad. Well," she said, "I think I might just do it."

  "I don't want to hear about it," I said. "It's not something a lady should do," I added.

  "Fiddlesticks," she said. "Garland and I have done it often."

  I know I blanched, for I had spied on them once when they had. She didn't seem to notice my guilt. Instead, she left to get some towels and head for the lake.

  As soon as I heard the front door close, I peered out the window to see her hurrying off toward the lake. Before she disappeared from view, however, Malcolm drove up. I was surprised to see him home so early, but I knew he wasn't above checking on Mal's tutorial. I saw him looking at the disappearing Alicia.

  Then, to my surprise, instead of coming directly into the house, he followed in her direction. The hot summer breeze fluttered the lace curtains; insects trying to escape the direct sunlight beat their frail bodies against the screens. For a moment I was unable to move.

  Then I rushed out of the salon and out the front door. I moved quickly but stealthily, the way I had when I wanted to spy on Alicia and Garland. What was Malcolm intending to do? Why had he followed her?

  Before I reached the lake, I heard her voice and crouched down behind a large bush to peek out at them.

  Alicia was already undressed and in the water. Malcolm stood on the bank, his jacket and shirt off.

  "Don't come any closer," she warned, crossing her arms over her breasts and keeping herself down in the water. "Just go on back to the house, Malcolm."

  He laughed.

  "Perhaps I should take your clothes back with me," he said, te
asing her with a movement toward her garments.

  "Don't you dare touch anything! Go away!" "Come now, Alicia, surely you don't enjoy being alone here."

  "I'm only here for a short dip to cool off. Garland will be home any moment."

  "No, he's doing business in Charlottesville. Actually, he won't be home for quite a while."

  "Get away," she repeated, but he didn't move. "I'd like to cool off, too, and it's more fun to have company."

  "Go and get your own wife then, and stop pursuing me."

  "But you can't possibly be satisfied with that old man "

  "Garland is not an old man," she protested. "In many ways he's twenty years younger than you are. He knows how to laugh and enjoy himself. You know nothing about anything but making money. Why, you don't even treat your own wife properly," she said.

  Malcolm stared down at her, but he didn't continue to undress. Her words had bitten him

  "You're just a child," he said slowly, his anger building. "You married my father because he's rich, and you expect him to die any day, leaving you a fortune--but it won't happen that way. I promise you."

  "Get away from here," she insisted.

  "I don't think that's what you really want," he said, his voice softening. He dropped his trousers and she moved farther back.

  "Go away!"

  "I told you; I'm hot too."

  He slipped off his shorts. Now, naked, he started into the water toward her.

  "You don't want to scream," he said. "We don't want the servants here. Garland might not understand."

  "You devil," she said. She swam to the right and he went after her.

  "You are so beautiful, Alicia," he said. "So very beautiful. You should have been my wife, not his."

  She didn't wait for him to reach her. She kicked up and swam toward the shore. He started in pursuit, but when she reached the shore, she turned on him.

  "Leave me alone!" she screamed. Her loudness froze him in the water. "Leave me alone from now on, Malcolm, or you will force me to tell Garland how you keep trying to seduce me."