Moonshine. Victoria Clayton
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makes it sound as though I couldn’t help myself. I’m afraid that isn’t true.’
‘Well. We shall see. Go on.’
‘I think I’ll turn in.’ Dickie groped for his stick and stood up. ‘You’ll forgive me, Bobbie, if I leave Burgo to do the honours. I was up at six watering the strawberries. Beddows always forgets.’
Moths dithered around the candles, repeatedly flopping down to the table as though scorched to death, only to revive minutes later to dash back into the flames. My head was spinning with the combination of wine and the scent of flowers and grass, intensified by night.
‘I’ll go home now,’ I said as Dickie bent to kiss me. ‘Thank you for a wonderful evening.’
‘You can’t go,’ Fleur said to me. ‘We’re so happy. You’ll spoil everything if you leave now. Remember that poem about the strawberries you used to tell me when I was little?’ Fleur offered her cheek to Dickie but looked at Burgo. ‘Something about a wood. Do say it again.’
‘If I can remember it.
‘The man in the wilderness asked of me,
How many strawberries grow in the sea?
I answered him as I thought good,
As many red herrings as grow in the wood.’
‘What a relief!’ said Fleur. ‘It isn’t meant to make sense. As a child I thought I must be stupid because I didn’t understand it. There are some advantages to being grown up. I used to feel confused, like watching a film or a play in a foreign language. Now, though I don’t often feel the same, I’ve some idea what the plot’s supposed to be.’
‘Ah, but then something extraordinary happens that turns logic on its head and again you’re floundering.’ Burgo’s face was hidden in shadow. ‘You think you know where you’re going, what you want, what other people want of you. But then you read something, or see something, or meet someone who startles you out of your preconceptions and you’re left bewildered.’
I got up. ‘I really think I will go home.’
‘We’ll walk back to the house with you.’ Burgo stood and began to put coffee cups and brandy glasses on to a tray.
Fleur put her hand on his sleeve. ‘But you haven’t seen inside the China House yet. He must, mustn’t he, Bobbie?’ She took a candlestick and went across the grass to the little pavilion. ‘Look at the bells hanging from the roof.’ Fleur tapped one so that it rang with a sweet shivering chime. ‘Bobbie did drawings of them and Dickie got the blacksmith to make them. But come inside. That’s the best bit, though it isn’t finished yet.’ She tried to open the door. ‘Help me, will you? It still sticks a bit.’
Burgo applied pressure and opened it.
‘See!’ Fleur held the candlestick up high. ‘There’s the Chinese daybed. Bobbie designed it. Don’t you love its little curly roof like an hysterical four-poster? It isn’t finished yet. It’s to have silk curtains and cushions embroidered with dragons. Someone Bobbie knows in London’s making them. It’s costing a fortune but Dickie’s adoring doing it—’
‘’Scuse me for butting in.’ Billy’s head and shoulders appeared round the door. ‘Evening, all.’ He nodded at me. ‘Sorry to bother you, Mrs Sudborough, but Stargazer’s leg is troubling him, like, and I was wondering if a bran poultice might do the trick.’
‘I’ll come at once.’ Fleur was at the door in an instant. ‘Bye, Bobbie.’ She kissed me briefly. ‘Burgo’ll see you off. I’ll ring.’
We were alone.
‘We’ve had a lot of fun,’ I said. ‘Isn’t the lantern a success?’ I pointed to the wood and glass lamp in the shape of a pineapple. ‘It’s charming, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes.’ Burgo ignored the lantern.
‘Don’t you think Fleur’s looking well?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m so grateful to you for introducing me to them. I’m feeling enormously cheered up.’
‘Good.’ I thought I saw a suspicion of a smile.
‘It must have been marvellous in Provence. I haven’t been for ages. I once spent a month in a villa near St Rémy. We were students so we could barely afford to eat.’
‘Really.’
‘We had fish soup every day at a little café. I can still remember the taste of the rouille – you know, the hot peppery sauce that goes with it.’
‘I know what rouille is.’
‘Of course.’ I felt a complete fool. A silence fell which I felt I must break at the cost of making more of an idiot of myself. ‘Your wife must have been so pleased to have you to herself for a while.’
‘We had people staying all the time.’
‘Oh. Oh, how sad.’
‘Why?’
‘Well … because … I mean, you must miss each other and … and you know that saying about absence – La Rochefoucauld, wasn’t it?’ I laughed unnaturally. ‘It usually is.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Oh, something about absence extinguishing little passions and increasing great ones, like the wind that blows out a candle but blows up a fire.’ Another pause. ‘So obviously, in your case, absence must be a good thing …’ What on earth was I doing, talking about his marriage? It was an extraordinary impertinence.
‘A good thing for us to live apart?’
‘Yes … no … I don’t know.’
I stared at him in hopeless confusion. He did nothing to help me. If he’d made the least attempt to flirt I could have made it quite clear that there was no possibility of anything between us. As it was, he was entirely cool and collected while I stammered and stuttered like a schoolgirl.
After a pause, Burgo said with a solemnity that might have concealed annoyance, or possibly amusement, ‘It’s kind of you to be concerned.’
‘It’s late. I’d better go home.’
‘I’ll see you to your car.’
‘Don’t bother, really. It’d be a bore for you. I can manage. Goodnight.’
In a moment I was through the door and the gap in the hedge and running along the path that led back to the house. Tricked by fitful beams of moonlight, I stumbled into flowerbeds, twisting my ankles and scratching myself on thorns and twigs. When I arrived, panting, within the area that was lit by the lamps each side of the garden door, I wondered what on earth I was doing, behaving like a child frightened by my own imagination. I walked round to the Wolseley, feeling indescribably foolish, and drove back to Cutham, thoroughly out of humour with myself.
The silent house welcomed me into its chill embrace with an exudation of floor-polish and damp. By the light of the dim bulb in the hall I saw there was a message by the telephone in Oliver’s hand.
Jasmine rang. She says to call her the minute you get in no matter how late as she won’t be able to sleep a wink until she has spoken to you. Is she as pretty as she is crazy?
‘You mean he had you for a second time all to himself in that seductive little Chinese grot and he didn’t make love to you? Or at least attempt it? Can he be flesh and blood?’
‘Not every married man behaves like a fourth-former let out of school the minute he’s alone with a girl not his wife.’