Strangers in a Garden Read online

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘when I met her she was on her uppers. Early marriage, he was totally unsuitable, finally topped himself. Then her father died and his latest busty blonde copped the inheritance.’ Tom saw the question in Laura’s eyes. ‘The mother? Drank herself to death when Cress was ten. It’s why Daddy sent her to boarding school. Girls mature fast in Hollywood and she was hanging out with what they call the brat pack. They’re kids of famous parents, but the parents and their new wives and husbands just don’t want to be bothered.’

  Laura finished her brandy. Without asking, he passed her a cigarette and lit it. ‘Feeling better?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Laura said, ‘why she threw all that food out of the window.’

  ‘Typical Cress. Promises everything, and can’t deliver.’

  When they first met, Tom said, leading the way to the kitchen, she had insisted on inviting him round for a meal. She would make it nice. Everything would be done properly. She would buy wine.

  ‘The flat was filthy because it was a basement next to the old coal yard. There was no space for a fridge. She had to put the milk outside on the windowsill. And what she dished up was chicken, casseroled in condensed mushroom soup. Turned out it was all she could do. Not her fault.’ Tom was cutting up bread, setting out cheese and pickled onions on the kitchen table. ‘She never had to cook. She went to boarding school. In LA, apart from an ever-changing cast of stepmothers, there were servants. And then with that yob of a husband, she just led a gipsy life. High as a kite most of the time, I imagine. Anyway, I took her home to live with me.’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Christ no.’

  He opened some red wine and, when they had finished, went out and reappeared with a camera.

  ‘I want to take some shots of you.’

  Instinctively, her hands flew to tidy her hair.

  ‘No, no, don’t bother with any of that. Take your top off.’ He laughed at her indignant expression. ‘Don’t give me this blushing violet business. I’ve been watching you. The way you use your body. Never been short of a man, have you?’

  ‘Look, I’m not going to sit here being insulted.’

  ‘I’m not insulting you. I’m paying you a compliment. You’re a very seductive woman. Now would you please take your clothes off so I can photograph you.’

  Laura stopped protesting. It was inevitable. She’d known that from the way he’d handled her face, dabbing on the Dettol.

  When she’d undressed, he shot her at the table, drinking wine. Next, at the kitchen sink, naked, washing up. Then he made her kneel on the floor and pretend to be scrubbing it. He ameliorated the humiliation of this by treating her like a real photographic model:

  ‘That’s great. Really sexy. Lick your lips. Chin up. Give me a come-to-bed look.’

  His bed was enormous, but then so was he. Accustomed to Adrian’s lithe athleticism, she found Tom’s beefy ebullience off-putting at first, but he just powered on and she gave herself up to sheer sensation.

  ‘What if Cressida comes back, ‘ she asked, during a pause.

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘But what if she did. What would she do?’

  ‘Do? Oh knife you probably. Now turn over. I want to deal with that very seductive ass.’

  He wanted to see her every day, immediately after work. Despite the advantages – she liked him now she’d got to know him, she could luxuriate in a bath whenever she wanted, and she could use his washing machine – even so, she avoided going every day. She missed the companionship of the girls on the steps.

  They were all there a month later when Cressida came dancing along the Terrace with La-la.

  ‘Girls! I’ve got news. Guess what, Tom’s asked me to marry him.’

  No one could look at Laura.

  ‘I think he must have missed me a lot.’

  They recovered. Hugged, kissed. Asked when the wedding would be.

  ‘Very soon. In London. But you must all come.’

  ‘Will there be room for us,’ asked Lola. ‘You’ll have family –‘

  ‘I don’t have any family. Anyway, I just dropped by to tell you. I’m taking La-la to the Gardens so she can run about and I can start sketching designs for my wedding dress. Can’t decide what to do about my hair. Leonard always does it when I’m in London, but the salon’s closed for redecoration.’

  Laura could see Dinkie was in an agony of funk. She’d often said, privately of course, that she would hate, absolutely hate to have to tussle with some elaborate style for Cressida’s waist-length tresses.

  Laura said, ‘Why don’t you go for a medieval look? Royal brides, in those days, usually wore their hair down.’

  As soon as Cressida had disappeared with La-la, Laura got up and ran across to the party house. She had to know. She had to hear it from him.

  Tom was in the drive, washing the car. He looked at her sheepishly.

  ‘Why?’ Laura demanded. ‘Why did you ask her to marry you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Impulse.’

  Laura waited. Surely he’d say something like, ‘It’s been great fun with you, Laura. We’ve had a great time and I know we’ll always be friends…’

  The silence went on and on.

  So, Laura thought, presumably in his world girls were two a penny and as easily dispensible as paper knickers.

  She said icily, ‘Well. Thank you for the dance,’ and walked away. Bloody marvellous. In the space of six weeks she’d lost two boyfriends. And, she had to admit, she’d lost an awful lot of face.

  Tom and Cressida drove up to London a week before the wedding. The girls took the train, the day before the ceremony. They were in high spirits. They all had new dresses, and they were going to stay in Mayfair.

  ‘I expect there’ll be lots of famous people at the wedding. Film stars,’ Lol said excitedly.

  ‘No there won’t,’ Laura told her. ‘Tom works in that world, but he won’t socialise with them. He was telling me (when he brought her breakfast in bed) he went to a big weekend party in Beverly Hills. Stiff with stars, and they had what they call a screening room – like a private cinema. And guess what they did, all weekend?’

  ‘Gawped at their own movies,’ laughed Marje.

  ‘Yes! And worse than that, they kept leaping up and saying, You must watch the way I play the next scene. Watch the way I come into the room, move to the chair, sit down, cross my legs, light a cigarette and hold my glass, ALL AT THE SAME TIME.’

  ‘I thought only Bette Davis could do that,’ said Lol.

  ‘Didn’t they do anything else?’ asked Dinkie. ‘Didn’t they go out for a nice walk?

  ‘I didn’t get the impression from Tom that walking was a particularly fashionable Beverly Hills activity. No, they played cards.’

  ‘Why does he live in Glasgow?’ asked Lol.

  ‘His aunt left him the house, and he likes it. He thought Glasgow would be good for Cressida because of all the rain. You know what delicate skin she’s got.’

  Laura hadn’t told them that Cressida’s dressing table was smothered with bottles of camomile lotion, stoppered with lumps of cotton wool. To Laura it was desperately unromantic but she guessed that other people’s bedroom habits were unfathomable. For some reason, she found herself wondering what Elspeth did at nights with her teeth.

  When the taxi dropped them in Mayfair, the girls found themselves before a smart Georgian house with a small courtyard garden and a glossy black front door. Laura’s attention was drawn to a room on the left of the front door. The room was oak panelled and book-lined. A sturdy, though obviously antique desk faced the window. The desk lamp was lit. A padded working chair was set ready.

  Oh, Adrian. How I’d love to give you a room like that.

  Every time she thought of him, it was like being stabbed.

  Cressida opened the door, with La-la. She was barefoot, wearing pink jeans and a rose madder top shimmering with miniature mirrors.

  ‘Mirrors!’ breathed Lol
. ‘To ward off evil spirits.’

  ‘Leave your stuff in the hall and come down to the kitchen,’ said Cressida. You must be starving.’

  In the basement kitchen, tiled in blue and yellow, she told them that Tom had taken himself off to the Connaught Hotel for the night.

  ‘He’ll be having his dinner served under those silver domes that look like Prussian helmets.’

  ‘Surely Tom doesn’t go for that sort of thing?’ said Laura, remembering their bread, cheese, and pickled onions.

  Lol shot her a look that said, Careful. You’re not supposed to know Tom that well.

  Cressida was prattling on, ‘I think, deep down, all men love that silver service guff. Anyway, it’s the housekeeper’s evening off, so I thought we’d be fine with fish and chips.’

  Laura hid her dismay. Cressida let loose with a chip pan?

  But it was okay. While the girls took their weekend cases upstairs, Cressida phoned for a taxi, gave the driver some money and asked him to find a fish and chip shop.

  On the top floor, the room Laura was sharing with Marje overlooked the front courtyard, with its lavender border. Traffic was building up, the street busy with taxis ferrying people to the theatre. Laura opened the window and leaned out, breathing in London. Perhaps she could get a job copywriting at her old firm, walk down Regent Street again. Maybe when he heard she’d gone, Adrian would come after her, switch universities, they could get a flat…

  She sighed. At the May Ball, when they were still dancing, she had brought up the flat idea again, but Adrian had shaken his head.

  ‘Too lazy. I’d have to do cooking. In Hall, it’s all done for me.’

  ‘I could cook. I mean, I could learn.’

  ‘You don’t want to come home from work and start peeling spuds. You’re better off letting Miss May do it all.’

  A taxi stopped outside and Laura saw the driver carrying five parcels of fish and chips. The girls hurried downstairs.

  ‘I told him to put extra salt and vinegar on the chips,’ the driver was saying. ‘Hope that’s all right.’

  They ate from the paper, in the kitchen and afterwards Cressida said, ‘I’d love it if you’d sing, Lol.’

  ‘There isn’t a piano.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I’d just love to hear you, all of you, one last time.’

  They stared at her. ‘One last time?’ stuttered Dinkie.

  Cressida nodded. ‘We’re not going back to Glasgow. I persuaded Tom. You know, London’s getting to be such fun now. There’s all sorts of new shops – boutiques they’re called - on the King’s Road. There’s one called Bazaar, it’s like a party, there’s always a bottle of whisky on the counter. And Harrods just took my breath away. It’s wonderful, you can get anything. Just anything.’

  So they sang for her, tomorrow’s bride. All the old favourites, Campelltown Loch, The Skye Boat Song, Auld Lang Syne. And Laura thought, boutiques, Harrods, you used to hate shopping so much I had to bring you cheapo cosmetics. And the King’s Road, all a bustle and jammed with buses. Whatever happened, Cressida, to the call of the wild, running free with the wind in your hair?

  In the morning, they all went to help Cressida get ready. She looked entrancing. Dinkie brushed her hair down, and back, and Cressida topped it with a circlet of white satin flowers. The skirt of her dress was made entirely of satin ribbons, in shades of white, ivory and palest pink. She was carrying no flowers, but asked Lol to arrange a corsage of the white satin flowers around her left wrist. No jewellery, either. Her only ornament would be her wedding ring.

  She really was, Laura thought, like a royal bride.

  While they waited for Tom to arrive with the cars, Laura looked in on the panelled room she coveted for Adrian. Stab.

  She didn’t go in. She just looked, feeling a sense of peaceful contentment at the calm but warm ambiance. It reminded her of the time her parents had taken her to Chatsworth House and they had joined a long queue of people filing past the open library door. What struck Laura was that every single person in that queue reacted in the same way. When they saw the spacious room, the leather-bound books, writing tables, the swagged silk curtains, the inviting sofas, they all gave a gasp of longing, perhaps comparing this easeful country house luxury with the austere efficiency of their own municipal libraries.

  ‘What a pity,’ Laura said as her father carefully steered the Hillman down the long drive, ‘that we couldn’t actually go into the library.’

  Mr James laughed. ‘They have to watch that. The Duke is fond of taking his afternoon nap on one of the sofas.’

  ‘What a huge house,’ Mrs James said. ‘There must be rooms they haven’t found yet.

  At the time, Laura just thought her mother was tired and woolly and daft. But years later, the Duchess of Devonshire said in an interview that it had taken her years to find all the rooms at Chatsworth.

  In the hall, in Mayfair, Lol was admiring Cressida’s dress. ‘Those ribbons are fantastic.’

  ‘I did it all myself.’

  ‘Must have taken ages.’

  ‘Yes, but I enjoyed it. I got the ribbons at Harrods.’

  Tom arrived in a dark blue Austin Princess garlanded with bridal ribbon. He was accompanied by Mikey, Tom’s trainee photographer and putative best man. It was a token role as Tom refused to trust him with Cressida’s ring.

  ‘Isn’t Mikey gorgeous,’ Lol gushed, as the girls scrambled into the second Princess.

  ‘I bet he’s a poof,’ Marje said.

  ‘Why do you have to spoil everything?’ She eyed the chauffeur and Dinkie said, ‘Give it a rest, Lol. It’s Cressida’s day, not yours.

  As the wedding procession proceeded at a stately pace down the Marylebone Road, the two Princesses were overtaken by something travelling very fast. A red Triumph Herald.

  Stab. It couldn’t be. No, of course it couldn’t. Adrian was hundreds of miles away, drunk on sunshine and whatever it was they drank in Cyprus. Oh, Adrian. Laura couldn’t stop herself. It should have been you and me in the bridal car, going to get married. I’d even put up with your vile mother. Though I tell you something, if she cut up rough about you marrying me, I’d refuse to let her have a glimpse of her grandsons. Because I just know Adrian and I would have boys. We –

  ‘Are you all right?’ Lol touched her leg. ‘You keep muttering.’

  ‘Yeah, she does that,’ Marje said. ‘She talks in her sleep.’

  Laura’s face flamed. What had she said? WHAT?

  ‘Now look,’ Dinkie said, ‘this isn’t an easy day for Laura. Watching her ex lover get married. How on earth do you think she’s going to feel?’

  They all felt very special as they ascended the imposing steps of Marylebone Town Hall. Immediately, all the girls needed to go to the Ladies. They trooped down to the basement where Cressida said it reminded her of the toilets at her boarding school, vast stone handbasins and impossibly heavy doors on the cubicles.

  ‘Think of all the famous people who’ve got married here,’ Lol said, lost in wonder.

  ‘Famous bums, famous wee and probably they were all shitting themselves with nerves,’ said Marje.

  The cloakroom attendant directed them upstairs to a carpeted ante-room furnished with comfortable chairs and a pretty flower arrangement on a low table.

  The registrar appeared. He had a carnation in his buttonhole. He said to Tom, ‘Could I have a word with you, sir?’

  He led Tom away.

  Laura thought Cressida was going to faint. She was deathly pale, and clearly terrified. What had gone wrong?

  Mikey, aware that photography was forbidden during the ceremony, took the opportunity to fire off a few shots of the bride with her anxious handmaidens.

  After what seemed an eternity, Tom came back. Cressida leapt up. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Tom held her. ‘Nothing’s wrong. He just needed to check our names and the addresses. I’d given yours as Glasgow and mine as Mayfair. Sounded more respectable like that.’

  ‘Oh
thank God. I thought – I couldn’t have carried on living, Tom, if something –‘

  ‘Come on. We can go in. We can get married!’

  As Dinkie had surmised, Laura had wondered how she’d feel seeing a man she’d recently been in bed with, and woken up with, getting married. In fact, during the ceremony what she felt was extreme irritation towards Mikey who was slouching next to Tom with his hands in his pockets.

  At last the registrar pronounced the couple man and wife. ‘You may kiss the bride.’

  Cressida threw herself at Tom.

  Laura couldn’t quite fathom the expression on Mikey’s handsome face. Was it that he fancied Cressida, or was he regretting a missed photo opportunity?

  Mikey was in camera action when they reached the Marylebone Town Hall steps. Tom tactfully left him to it, apart from a little general direction, ‘move in closer’, ‘kneel down.’

  Laura thought of the photos he’d taken of her. She prayed they were, as he’d promised, under lock and key in his studio.

  ‘I thought we were the ones who should be kneeling down,’ Marje said, as they re-entered the waiting Princess. ‘Joan Collins does that. Soon as she sees a photographer she falls to her knees. If you’re looking up, it hides your double chin.’

  When they arrived at the house, Tom’s housekeeper was waiting, with the door open. There was a man standing near. He seemed vaguely familiar to Laura, but she didn’t have time to place him because he tore up to Tom and shouted,

  ‘I can’t believe you did it! I can’t believe you married that slag. After everything –‘

  Tom slugged him. Mikey captured the moment. Cressida fainted into the lavender border.

  When the girls got to her, they saw the front ribbons of her wedding skirt were matted with blood.

  Chapter Seven

  Tom went with her in the ambulance.

  The girls, subdued, took themselves along to the dining room where the housekeeper had laid out a buffet wedding breakfast of champagne, orange juice and canapés.

  Laura was sure she had never tasted anything so delicious. Smoked salmon with cream cheese. And was that, could that really be caviar?