The Kissing Garden Read online

  ‘Have you seen something of interest, chère Madame?’ he suddenly wondered, as if reading her thoughts.

  ‘I’m sorry? I was staring at something over there, Lieutenant Grace.’

  ‘Ralph. Let us go mad and first name each other indiscriminately.’

  ‘Very well – Ralph, this is Hermione, and as you know I am Amelia.’

  ‘And so where is – George?’

  ‘Finishing an article commissioned in haste by some lunatic editor and keeping him up all night and all day, because he writes very, very slowly.’

  ‘Do you know something, Amelia?’

  ‘No, Lieutenant – no, Ralph.’

  ‘I would just love a drink.’

  Ralph smiled at the two women, challenging one or the other of them to wonder whether it was still not a little early, but neither of them did. Instead Hermione, possibly having taken her cue from Miranda Cornwall, started to sing an aria from La Bohème. Ralph Grace at once joined in and made it a duet. With some reluctance Amelia left them singing and went in to supervise the dinner. She had asked Ralph down specifically to meet Hermione, but now that he was here she found that she wished, for no reason that she could name, that she had not.

  But while they seemed able to sing together in perfect harmony, dinner proved to be several bridges too far for any hopes Amelia might have nourished that George’s old friend would become enamoured of her old friend. They were clearly not just chalk and cheese, but salt in each other’s wounds, able to agree on nothing at all. Their hosts found themselves umpiring their arguments during dinner, arguments that led to George’s removing the wine bottle from his old friend’s reach, and Amelia’s ‘withdrawing’ the ladies to the drawing room, where Hermione did nothing but complain about Lieutenant Grace’s manners and compare him unfavourably even to His Always Crossness.

  ‘Not a marriage made in heaven.’ George sighed theatrically as he slowly started to undress, much later.

  ‘That wasn’t the point, George,’ Amelia replied, already in bed and reading. ‘Hermione already has a husband. The idea was just to let her perhaps indulge herself in a mild flirtation.’

  ‘No such thing, Amelia, as a mild flirtation. Anyway, I don’t think we need to worry too much on that score since they obviously can’t stand the sight of each other. So what do you make of Ralph?’

  ‘What do you make of him? After all, he’s your old friend, not mine.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Has he changed, George? Is he the same old Ralph Grace you knew, or has he changed? I’m sure he’s found you changed. At least I hope he has.’ Dropping her book on the floor, Amelia turned to George.

  ‘Won’t you get cold without anything on?’

  ‘Not if you have anything to do with it, Captain Dashwood.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to know about Ralph?’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘He’s still the same old Ralph. Funny, cantankerous, argumentative and b-minded. What do you make of him?’

  Amelia thought for a moment, her hand resting on the flat of George’s stomach.

  ‘I think he’s outrageous, but – rather fun.’

  ‘As I said, sir, as I did warn,’ Longbeard groaned, as he and the Noble One sat high in the yews watching the darkened house.

  ‘He has no right!’ the Noble One repeated under his breath. ‘This is no business of his!’

  ‘Good sir, with respect,’ Longbeard said, polishing the tip of a jewelled stick on the silk of his robe. ‘There is no known way to forfend such an exigency. He belongs to our time, he is in the same sphere. We shall never be rid of him, sir, and no magick in the skies shall remove him.’

  ‘You can make matters difficult for him. You can cast some dazzles which will distract and divert him.’

  ‘I might, sir, and I could. But think on it. Perchance his presence may prove of value. If you consider my crystal and look to the end, there might be purpose here.’ Longbeard opened his hand and there in the palm a crystal glowed with ice-blue light. The Noble One took the jewel in his own hand, holding it so close to his face that its light gave him the appearance of an ice warrior, a man with frozen eyebrows and lashes and a frosted beard.

  ‘Yes,’ the Noble One said after a while, once he had watched the events which were to come unfold. ‘I take your meaning. I would have had it otherwise, but his presence may indeed prove opportune.’

  ‘Not that we can discharge him, sir,’ Longbeard reminded the Noble One. ‘Now he has found us, we are as much in his hands as he is in ours.’

  ‘You forget he has no magick, wizard – no spells, no dazzles. He cannot confound us as we can him.’

  ‘Yet he may confound us in another way. He can win a game at which we cannot play.’

  ‘Yes – yes!’ the dark-haired white-robed man standing in the hidden garden agreed. ‘Yes, I may play and win at a game in which you can take no part! And play it I shall – and win it I will!’ So saying he put his clenched hand on his heart, closed the night from his eyes, and silently avowed her name.

  Nineteen

  The following day Hermione made some going-home noises to Amelia about the drunken and disagreeable behaviour of her fellow guest, wondering aloud why someone as perfect as George could possibly be friends with someone so obviously louche as Ralph Grace.

  ‘I don’t think he’s louche, Hermione. I think he was rather drunk last night, but then you weren’t exactly totally sober yourself.’

  ‘Even more reason for him to be polite to me. A real gentleman never takes advantage of a lady. Not even His Always Crossness argues with me when he is drunk. He waits until the next day when he has a hangover, as is proper.’

  But when Ralph finally emerged nursing a sizeable hangover, all was soon forgiven, since he made sure to appear kneeling on all fours out into the garden where Amelia, George and Hermione were sitting drinking large glasses of Pimms.

  Having crawled across the lawn he rolled over like a dog in front of Hermione to beg her forgiveness, then presented Amelia with a huge bunch of her own roses, before rounding off his performance with an impersonation of Charlie Chaplin complete with George’s shooting stick.

  ‘Bravo!’ a delighted George cried. ‘I’d forgotten what a blisteringly good mimic you are, Ralphie.’

  ‘Can you do Buster Keaton, sir?’ Peter asked, having been drawn by the sounds of laughter to stop the game he was playing with his sister to come and watch.

  ‘I can, I can, boss,’ Ralph said, collapsing in a chair. ‘But not now, guvnor. Later perhaps?’

  ‘I’m going back to school this afternoon,’ Peter said.

  ‘After lunch, I promise. Prep school?’ He squinted up at Peter, shading his eyes from the sun.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You dreading it?’

  ‘No I’m not actually. I think it’s good fun.’

  ‘More fun than Eton?’

  ‘Much more fun than Eton,’ George put in.

  ‘And a whole lot nearer,’ Amelia added. ‘He’s only an hour away by car.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Ralph agreed, pouring himself some Pimms. ‘I hated Eton.’

  ‘Were you there at the same time as George?’ Amelia asked with a frown.

  ‘I was two years his junior, and didn’t know him at all. And then I was expelled.’

  ‘Good lord!’ Amelia laughed.’ May we ask for what?’

  ‘Smoking,’ Ralph replied with a grin.

  ‘And drinking,’ George added, straight-faced.

  ‘But did you know each other?’

  ‘Only by repute,’ George said. ‘We all heard about Grace Junior’s expulsion, of course.’

  ‘And we all knew about Adonis Dashwood,’ Ralph replied. ‘Captain of everything including captain of everyone’s sisters’ hearts.’

  ‘Tut tut, George. I never realized I married a Romeo.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Ralph carolled with his hands to his mouth as if loud hailing. ‘Rubbish! Ge
orge Dashwood was a roué!’

  Seeing Clara appearing at the door with a tray of food, Amelia got up to help her set lunch on the terrace. By the time she returned to the company an argument was in full swing about the role of women in the post-war world.

  ‘There is one school of thought,’ George was saying, ‘which thinks women should return fully to the subjection of man.’

  ‘By that do you mean that since the war man has been subjected by women?’ Ralph asked mischievously. ‘What have I been missing living in France?’

  ‘By that I mean – as well you know, Ralph Grace,’ George continued, ‘that a whole school of thought has it that by reason of his strength and his intellect man is woman’s superior – that women should recognize their own spiritual and economic inferiority and concentrate purely on maternity.’

  ‘You don’t believe that, George, surely?’ Amelia said, as she resumed her seat.

  ‘I do! In fact I raise my glass to the man who propounds such a splendid philosophy,’ said Ralph.

  ‘Then you’ll be raising your glass to Mussolini, Ralph,’ George told him. ‘As if you didn’t know.’

  ‘To Benito!’ Ralph toasted, teasing the assembled company with gusto. ‘To Benito Musseleeny!’

  ‘I bet Milton’s your favourite poet, too! Man speaks to God, but woman may only speak to God in man – I expect you can quote him all right!’

  ‘Undoubtedly, Signora Dasherwood!’ Ralph cried in perfect mock Italian. ‘Away-a with all this-a pernicious doctrina of this-a feminis-ma! This-a is-a all the talk of Boleeshavisa-ma!’

  Hermione laughed at Ralph’s cabaret, but George just shook his head sadly.

  ‘Ralph is making fun, but what he says is true, I’m afraid. This is how a lot of people are thinking nowadays, particularly Mussolini’s Italian Fascists. They think that while the sexes should be reconciled--’

  ‘Meaning we’re not at the moment?’ Amelia interposed. ‘So what on earth have we been doing up till now? If not being reconciled?’

  ‘I’m talking about the militants. The people who say men and women should be reconciled but on male terms. They actually believe women lack the spiritual qualities of men and as a result are--’

  ‘—are morally decadent,’ Ralph said, finishing the sentence before him. ‘You lot have obviously not read George Dashwood’s latest article in the Telegraph. Which I read while waiting for the hammers in my head to stop pounding. According to our pundit here, we live in dangerous times. Hey, that’s something else we can drink to – to dangerous times! And moral decadence!’

  ‘Does your friend here never take anything seriously, George?’

  ‘He takes everything seriously, Amelia. That’s why he’s forever making jokes.’

  As they moved to the lunch table the talk grew ever more heated as the debate continued, Ralph deliberately playing devil’s advocate while George did his best to explain the complexities of the arguments about feminism, Bolshevism and Fascism to Hermione who had long declared herself to be hopelessly out of her depth. None the less she was appalled to learn that both Fascists and Nazis believed that women were by their very nature immoral and should be treated as second class citizens under the complete authority of men, and made to bear as many children as possible.

  ‘I really don’t see the point in our having won the war and defeated them,’ Hermione said in dismay, ‘if this is the way they’re thinking.’

  ‘Ah, but you see we didn’t really win the war, Hermione,’ George told her, quietly. ‘In fact some of us are not at all sure we even defeated them.’

  The whole table fell to silence at this pronouncement, everyone turning to George in expectation of an exposition.

  ‘Some people think that Germany sued for peace for reasons other than because they thought they had been vanquished,’ George said. ‘My father told me only recently that no-one was more surprised when the Germans sued for peace than the Germans themselves. They had no Eastern front to worry about, and Ludendorff had damn near beat us on the Western Front before the Americans arrived. And remember, they went over our heads when they sued. They went straight to the Americans and deliberately so, according to the old man. Exploiting the rift between our government and President Wilson.’

  ‘I never knew that,’ Ralph said, suddenly serious. ‘You mean the Germans weren’t actually on their knees at all, George?’

  ‘I don’t know about on their knees, Ralph, but they were certainly demoralized after the defeats at the Marne and Amiens. And they knew the Americans were coming. But a close friend of my father’s was at a meeting with Lloyd George not long after the Germans began making overtures and Lloyd George didn’t like it one bit. Apparently he made some sort of comparison with what Carthage had said after the First Punic War: that conceding defeat gave them the chance to be the better prepared and organized the next time.’

  ‘Oh ho.’ Ralph widened his eyes in pantomime fashion. ‘I see. So what to do, old bean? What to do, eh?’

  ‘Looking to the past again, I think we have to do everything in our power to make sure we don’t find ourselves in the same position as the Romans when Hannibal nearly drove them into the sea. I think we have to try and avoid another war at all costs. Otherwise it really will all have been a terrible waste.’

  ‘Shall we dance? This is becoming really quite dreary.’ Getting up from the table, Ralph stood by Hermione’s chair as if at a ball.

  ‘I can’t hear any music.’ Hermione looked round.

  ‘You will,’ Ralph replied, offering her his hand and then leading her off to waltz around the lawns singing The Blue Danube.

  Later, when George, Clara and Amelia had finished packing Peter’s school trunk and the rest of his belongings into the Bentley, Ralph and Hermione were in the middle of a game of blindfold tennis which by now had Hermione in near hysterics of laughter.

  ‘Do you think it’s safe to leave them together?’ Amelia wondered as Peter went to wish them goodbye. ‘I’m beginning to think this wasn’t such a bright idea.’

  ‘Of yours.’

  ‘Of mine,’ Amelia agreed.

  ‘They’re grown up people, darling. We can hardly go and wag a finger under their noses and tell them to behave. Or lock Ralph in his room.’

  ‘I would imagine there aren’t that many rooms which can contain Lieutenant Ralph Grace.’

  ‘Look what I got!’ Peter exclaimed, running back across the lawn from the tennis court. ‘Lieutenant Grace gave me ten shillings!’

  ‘Which he just borrowed off me,’ George whispered to Amelia before their son had reached them. ‘Jolly good, Peter! That should keep you in tuck for the whole term!’

  ‘And we hope that the tennis will leave our guests too exhausted to even think of anything else,’ Amelia said sotto to George as Peter settled in the back of the car.

  ‘And hope is all we can do,’ George agreed, winking at Amelia. ‘All aboard!’

  When Amelia and George finally returned home some four hours later and found no sign of either of their two guests, they feared the worst.

  ‘It’s all right!’ Amelia called to George across the lawn after they had decided to mount a search party. ‘I’ve found Hermione! She’s asleep in the summer house!’

  ‘And Ralph’s fast asleep in his bedroom,’ George said as he came to join Amelia where she was waiting for him in the herbaceous garden. ‘Obviously the tennis wore them out.’

  ‘You hope. Hermione’s sleeping like the dead.’

  ‘If anything had happened, one of them would hardly be out here in the summer house and the other miles away upstairs in a bedroom.’

  ‘Hm,’ Amelia said, mimicking him. ‘We shall see.’

  After George had hurried off to answer his study telephone, Amelia promptly returned to the summer house and had no hesitation in waking Hermione.

  ‘You look as though you’ve been knocked out by something. Have you?’

  ‘No.’ Hermione answered, with a weary yawn. ‘Not that, I
assure you. Although – oh, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Come on, Mrs Baddeley, tell all. It won’t go any further.’

  Hermione looked at her, before beginning to rearrange her tousled head of hair with her fingers.

  ‘Very well, if you must know – he tried.’

  ‘Surprise, surprise.’

  ‘And if you must know, I didn’t exactly object.’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Just as well.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what, Mrs Dashwood?’

  ‘Come on,’ Amelia urged her. ‘I thought you said nothing happened.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Not quite. What happened was, if you must know--’

  ‘Which I must, I must,’ Amelia assured her happily. ‘Did he kiss you?’

  ‘He tried to.’

  ‘And you stopped him?’

  ‘Of course not! I was all ready for him to kiss me! And he was all ready to kiss me!’

  ‘And someone came in,’ Amelia guessed, with a sigh. ‘Clara, no doubt. It would be.’

  ‘We weren’t even in the house! As if I’d be so indiscreet. No, we were outside, in the garden. In that little hidden garden, if you really must know.’

  ‘The Kissing Garden?’ Amelia said in surprise, before she could stop herself.

  ‘Is that what you call it? How appropriate.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. The little hedged garden at the top of the mound?’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, for some reason or other we found ourselves in there—’

  ‘How? I mean whose idea was it to go there?’

  ‘Ralph’s. He suddenly said, “I have a brainwave!” And started spouting Shakespeare or something. The bank where the wild thyme grows – you know the bit. And the next thing I knew he was leading me into this enchanted little garden.’

  ‘Hm,’ Amelia sniffed. ‘And hm again, as George says.’