Death in the Garden

by Jennie Melville

  It was hard to be affable when you felt unwell. Luke made up his mind to leave the party and go home. He usually took the tube, but he might rise to a taxi tonight. ‘A really supreme party,’ he murmured with an effort, as he made for the door. He just managed to catch Cassie’s eye.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it,’ she said politely.

  But the real party came afterwards when everyone had left and there were just the three of them.

  As in the beginning.

  In the beginning there were just the three of them: Cassie, Edwina and Alice. They added a couple more friends on the way up but these were not founder members and, subtly, were allowed to understand so. The two friends that were added were Lily, whose wedding had just been celebrated, and Tim. He had had his funeral.

  It had been a quiet funeral, truly quiet, and had not been attended by any of the three. After the crash, his mother had travelled from Northumberland where she lived and taken his body back with her to bury before any of them, even Edwina, had known about it. No one had been happy about that but there had been no way of stopping her. So perhaps that was one reason why they had put on such a show for Lily now. ‘He was a super man,’ Cassie had said sadly, ‘ I would like to have seen him buried.’

  ‘He wasn’t willing to die,’ said Alice. ‘He didn’t want to and I wish he hadn’t.’ She looked at Edwina who said nothing. Nothing at all.

  At that point she did not know what lay ahead of her in full. A bit of it, certainly, a very important part, but not all. She had married her father off to Lily and that would work, for both of them, she was sure of it, and now she must face what was coming to her.

  Ten years ago they had all three met at the university, enrolling in the same year and on the same day but in different faculties: Cassie Ross, Alice Leather and Edwina Fortune. It was in the act of enrolment that they found out that they had all been born on the identical day in November 1954. They were a perfect match. It was what started them off as a group. But they soon discovered they had a lot more than birthdays in common.

  ‘Decision day,’ Cassie had said happily on that day as they enrolled. She took it easily, she knew her course and saw her future clearly, but the other two were more tentative. Was it right for Edwina to study history and fine art? Was Alice making a good choice when she settled for design as her final aim in art school? Who could be sure?

  But they had time to think about it. The large city university which had taken them on allowed movement within disciplines if you’d made the wrong choice.

  As it turned out, they had not. Cassie became an architect and made choices all the time. Some were bad, but most were good because Cassie had talent, genius even. It was part of her job to make judgements and not to fret over them too much. Since she was an architect her choices took shape in bricks and concrete and cantilevered roofs. If she made the wrong decisions then her roofs leaked and the floors sagged beneath the weight of the bodies on them. But this did not happen often and Cassie’s buildings soared upwards in confident splendour.

  Their contemporaries awarded them prizes for initiative and spirit. Natural achievers, their friends said. Those three witches, said those who did not like them.

  By the end of the decade they had behind them one broken marriage – Alice; a many-times-broken heart – Cassie; and one impregnable fortress – Edwina. Or so Edwina had thought.

  But even their enemies admitted they were generous. They took a lot out of life but they gave a lot back. They were alike in everything but their backgrounds. Cassie came from middle-class Liverpool, Alice from the London dockland and Edwina from a beautiful shell of a house in Norfolk.

  They also had success. Success expressed in solid material terms like their own businesses, pleasant places in which to live, and designer clothes.

  And one death.

  Not that the death was talked about much, but it was never forgotten. Only that day, in a lull between greeting guests at the reception, Tim had made his presence felt.

  Alice had said to Cassie, ‘He’s not quite gone really, has he? That’s how I feel. He still hangs around.’ Like now, but this she did not say.

  ‘Oh come on, Alice.’ Cassie was brisk. She looked around the room, assessing the scene. The party seemed to be going well. Edwina looked peaky; she’d been off-colour lately. Understandable, of course, and she would not be helped by remarks such as Alice’s.

  ‘You know it’s true. There are still bits and pieces of his possessions around, for one thing. I’ve got a book he left. He was a great leaver-around of his possessions. The book’s got his name in it. Makes him feel so close.’

  ‘You’ve had too much champagne.’

  ‘No. Not me. What happened to the rest of his things?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ No one had wanted to involve Edwina. ‘I think Kit managed that side of things. Gave stuff away. I think Jim Linker took the clothes for charities. He’d know what to do.’

  Cassie, remembering this conversation now, and looking at Edwina, thought that her friend was bearing up well but not enjoying life.

  ‘Well, my new stepmother was in very good nick.’ Edwina was sitting on the floor with her shoes off, the party over, the guests sped away. Now they could talk. Alice was reclining on the only piece of furniture you could sit on in Cassie’s huge bare room. Living area, she called it. Alice had her shoes off too, and her feet curled under her on the great sofa of pale Italian leather. Cassie was in her high-tech kitchen where the shining pipes crawled up the wall and a bright red Aga hummed with gas-fed heat. ‘I don’t know when I’ve seen her look better. The old man’s in luck.’

  ‘I think Lily’s in luck too,’ said Alice. ‘I could go for the Lord myself.’

  ‘Yes, he’s always been one of the great beauties of his generation.’ And it was true, Brogden Fortune, Lord Bulkley, was remarkably handsome. Edwina examined her own face in the silver-gilt compact from Cartier that had been her father’s present to her that day. She had inherited her own mother’s round-faced, healthy look and was not a beauty, but by sheer hard work she had imposed great style on herself. She was very paintable. There was usually a portrait of her in the gallery she owned in Covent Garden. She exhibited only women artists and it was her habit to commission a portrait of herself from the best. These were not for sale. She was forming a collection which would be unique: one woman’s face, late twentieth century, painted by the foremost women artists of her day. She was going to New York soon to be painted by Libby Tolam, probably the best young portrait painter of her generation. Edwina claimed to be unlike her ancestors, but in having her portrait painted she was right in line with them.

  Alice said: ‘Pour out the champagne, Cass. This is our private party. Us. Our own. It’s very quiet, Cass. Aren’t the caterers clearing up?’

  ‘I sent them off. Told them to come back on Monday.… Put away the champagne. I have something much better.’ Cassie produced a bottle, handling it carefully. ‘One of the best clarets ever put down. You and your ancestors taught me to like claret, Eddie; when I came to Bulkley and had my first taste of the good stuff, I really grew up at that moment.’

  She started to pour the wine and Edwina uncurled herself and came forward for her glass.

  ‘I always love this bit after a party when we talk it over,’ went on Cassie. Once she would have said: when we have the post mortem, but one didn’t talk about post mortems in front of Edwina these days. She glanced at Edwina. The girl wasn’t limping any more. It had always been more of a psychic limp anyway. The doctors said there was nothing wrong with her leg. Edwina just didn’t want to walk straightforward into the future, and Cassie could understand that even while she deplored it. You had to remember that Edwina had not been hurt physically. A miracle, really, because in that sort of accident she could have been killed. On hearing of Tim’s death she had taken a large drink of whisky then fallen headlong down the stone stairs where she lived. Miracles did seem to happen to them. But it wasn’t all up, they had their downs
too, indeed they did, although outsiders never believed them.

  Then she got down to the part that really amused her. ‘Come on now, girls. Accounts, please. Profit and loss. Alice?’

  ‘I don’t really like doing this at Lily’s wedding.…’

  ‘We agreed.’

  ‘All right. Well, I have to admit it wasn’t entirely a wasted occasion, businesswise.… Louise says there’s another royal baby on the way, twins this time they think, and I am being lined up to provide another christening gown since they only have the one genuine article. Not much money, but good for sales. I shan’t be named, of course, but everyone will know.’

  ‘Luke will see to that.’

  ‘Right. What about you?’

  Cassie sipped her claret. ‘Must get back into the kitchen and bring the mousse through.…’

  ‘Tell. Don’t keep us in suspense. What is it, do they want you to build a new wing to the Tate? Or the Fifth Terminal at Heathrow?’

  ‘No, I’m not in that league yet, although I intend to be. No, the Standishes have asked me to build their new house.… It’s to be the first big country house built since Lutyens, just about. Nothing suburban or twee. It’s to be grand, elegant, beautiful, that’s the remit. Think of it. What a compliment.’

  ‘What about you, Eddie?’ Alice was laying the table, a great round piece covered with a red damask cloth so that you felt you were inside a Venetian painting. On it Alice was setting out a selection of battered forks and knives. Cassie had not yet got round to buying any table silver and possibly never would. Alice hoped there was some china to eat from, she had seen no sign of any in the kitchen. She removed a small pile of freshly typed letters, evidence of the recent activity of Janine Grandy, their part-time secretary.

  ‘Oh I don’t know, nothing much,’ said Edwina absently. ‘ It wasn’t my day, I suppose. One of the Agate brothers said he might look into the gallery. Might have a sale … Luke’ll be pleased. He’s always wanted an in with the Agates.… Didn’t think he looked well. Odd. Did you notice?’

  ‘No.’ Cassie dismissed Luke. ‘Do you like the mousse? It’s structural.’

  People who did not know Cassie well assumed that she was called Cassandra or Lucasta, but such an upper-class name would not have come with her background; in fact, she was called Priscilla and had given herself the change of name when it suited her.

  ‘Delicious.’

  ‘Eat it then.’ Edwina was not eating enough lately, hadn’t been doing so for some weeks, and her lovely plumpness was melting away so that you could see now what Edwina would be like when she was an old lady.

  Alice was sitting there quietly like a good little girl, which was not what Alice was at all. You don’t build the kind of business in the rag trade which Alice was building now by being good. Alice was hard-working, aggressive (when required to be) and lucky. She knew she was lucky and counted it her greatest asset. After a spell in a factory in Manchester to learn the ways of mass production, she had gone to Milan for a year to work in an Italian design room and returned with an Italian gloss on her streetwise London spirit, but otherwise unchanged.

  When she came back she found a hole in the fashion world and set about filling it. She designed and had made in her own workrooms beautiful clothes for beautiful, and rich (that was important), children. She went to the Victoria & Albert Museum to examine what children had worn in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She studied paintings of the Italian Renaissance and went to look at Renoir’s little girls in the Louvre. From these studies she drew ideas and created clothes which were not copies but modern, wearable clothes of great charm and some little nostalgia. These clothes were beautifully made and very expensive. Then, six months later, copies of these expensive clothes were mass produced, under franchise, with Alice taking a royalty, in a factory in South London. The couture clothes were labelled simply ‘Alice’; the cheaper editions were called ‘Alice in Wonderland’, and that was where the real money was, but you couldn’t have the one without the other.

  Alice’s showrooms were round the corner from Edwina’s gallery and next door to Cassie’s warehouse. United in their birthdays, they were still sticking together in their workplaces. Only Cassie lived in the Garden, however, for Edwina’s home was round the corner in Packet’s Place and Alice lived in Lowndes Square.

  ‘Lily made a beautiful bride,’ said Edwina. The food tasted like nothing in her mouth. It was funny lately the way food did not taste, I’m worried about Luke. Let’s ring him up.’

  ‘You were late today,’ said Cassie. ‘Only just in your seat before Lily arrived.’

  ‘I know. I had to see the doctor.’

  ‘Your leg again? You’ve seen the doctor a lot lately.’

  ‘There are other reasons for seeing the doctor,’ said Edwina quietly. Cassie looked at Alice, then they both looked at Edwina.

  ‘Yes, I’m pregnant. And yes, of course it’s Tim’s child. And yes, he did know. Just. I told him a few days before the accident. And it was an accident. He didn’t crash on purpose.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Alice quickly. Perhaps too quickly.

  Cassie turned away. She did not believe, and never had, that the car crash in which Tim had died was an accident. But she had no real evidence one way or another, all was buried in Scottish mist. Tim had never been accident-prone although, in her heart, she had thought him a danger to others. Very attractive, but dangerous.

  Tim’s death remained a mystery. News of the pregnancy did not solve the mystery but it certainly added to the pain of bearing it.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us before?’

  ‘I think I just needed to be private with it for a little while.’

  ‘The first of us to produce a child,’ said Cassie. ‘We’ve been slow, Alice. Congratulations, love, the second generation of Us. This is our baby.’

  ‘My baby,’ corrected Edwina. ‘You have your own.’

  ‘Share?’ Cassie held out her hands hopefully. ‘We always do.’

  A faint resentment stirred in Edwina, the first time she had felt such a feeling with her friends. They did share. Always. But she did not wish to this time. This was a baby. Not a property.

  ‘I miss Tim,’ she said.

  ‘He was a lovely man,’ said Alice sadly. ‘I loved him. But not in a way you’d mind. Isn’t it lucky we never fancied each other’s men?’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Edwina. ‘I fancied your Peter like mad. But I held back when I saw you were serious.’

  ‘I wish you’d taken him.’ Alice’s marriage had been a short-lived, if hilarious, disaster. She still saw Peter, who was a successful, cheerful, drunken journalist, prematurely bald.

  ‘You’ve gone quite white.’ Cassie was concerned. She stood up. ‘Let me get you some whisky. I don’t think Luke took it all.’

  The telephone rang. Edwina said, ‘Don’t answer it.’

  The girls had been receiving anonymous silent telephone calls. The invasion had started with Edwina, spread to Cassie and moved on to Alice like an infection.

  The calls were irregular, might come at any time but were recognisable as from the same source by the way the caller always rang twice within the half-hour. It was as if that caller wanted to establish an identity.

  Cassie hesitated about answering the telephone now.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘It’s just breathing. Silly stuff.’

  Edwina said, ‘He’s started to talk. Yesterday he spoke.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘The usual thing. What they usually say. Then he said he was someone I knew.’

  ‘They always say that.’

  ‘Might be true,’ said Alice. ‘We’re all ex-directory. How did he get our numbers?’

  Edwina shrugged. Who knew? Did it matter? And how could they tell?

  ‘Should we tell the police?’

  ‘I already have,’ said Edwina.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Not much use. Not intereste
d. Too much of it about. They were polite but not helpful.’

  ‘I suppose it is a man?’ Cassie was thoughtful.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Edwina was surprised.

  ‘Suppose it was a boy? An adolescent. That would make it no more than a nasty kid’s trick.’

  Edwina thought about it. ‘No. I’ll tell you why. I heard background noises. Sounded like a pub. I don’t think a boy would do that. Kids ring from home when Mum’s out and they’re bored. Only a man would ring from a pub.’

  ‘Someone doesn’t like us.’ Alice was light, deliberately so. Alice thought of her husband and Fanny Eisler who had been at design school with her. Fanny was dead now, of course.… Cassie thought of the assistant she had dismissed. Edwina thought about Tim’s mother.

  ‘Someone hates us.’ Edwina stood up. They had enemies all right, enemies they had made on their journey to success. ‘And I think we ought to be careful.’

  ‘Oh, it’s just a joke.’

  ‘Is it? There’s sex and violence behind the calls. I can feel it, I tell you. Perhaps it’s just for me. I feel it is.’

  Fear had crept in. They who feared nothing, who had sped about the city, about the world, intent on their own business and afraid of no one, now knew fear. They were worldly, intelligent young women, not to be alarmed by an obscene telephone call, but the stranger had opened up a crack and let the virus in.

  Alice hesitated. ‘You don’t think … it couldn’t possibly …? It couldn’t be Luke playing some game on us?’

  ‘Funny game,’ said Cassie. ‘A sick joke.’

  ‘He’s looked sick lately,’ said Alice.

  ‘He doesn’t eat properly,’ responded Cassie, an ardent disciple of healthy foods and a keen shopper at Ginger and Pickles’ stall. ‘All that fuss about wine not suiting him and having to drink whisky instead. That’s his trouble. I can’t see him upsetting us. We’re business, and you know how Luke feels about that.’