Victoria Clayton - Moonshine

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘Dickie was insistent.’

Fleur would have been disgusted, had she seen the departing smile I bestowed on Mr Matthias. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, stroking the stomach of a small grey dog, ignoring a man who was squatting in front of her, trying to engage her attention. On our way out I glanced at the woman who had been talking so animatedly to Burgo. Her face was gloomy, her gaiety extinguished. She looked up and met my eye. There was something savage about the way she flung her cigarette into the fire.

‘Poor woman!’ Kit poured me another glass of wine as we waited for two cups of coffee at the inn near the border between Limerick and Clare. ‘After applying herself sedulously all evening to the work she must have been annoyed to see you pocket the sweepstake. So you fell in love with him because he neglected you. Or was it because you saw him as a man of power surrounded by adoring women?’

‘I wasn’t in love with him then. We were still strangers, virtually.’

‘But you were piqued by his indifference. You were in that state of pre-infatuation when the chosen one is supremely fascinating in all his, or her, words and deeds.’

‘Perhaps. It had nothing to do with the old saw that power is an aphrodisiac. If he’d been a Labour politician it might have been slightly better. But until I got to know Burgo I was convinced that all politicians’ souls had been traded in at an early age. And there isn’t a species of male I dislike more than the Conservative toff. As it turned out, perhaps unfortunately for me, Burgo wasn’t one of them. He loathes their craving for caste conformity. He’s a Conservative because he thinks Socialism’s hidebound by political theory and because he wants independence from the trade unions. The Labour Party has to wear its heart on its sleeve, however economically undesirable it might be to cripple industry in favour of handouts to the improvident. Burgo doesn’t care about image. He thinks there are good men and monsters on both sides and all that matters is being effective.’

‘In the light of what you say I’m glad I’ve never voted Tory. I shouldn’t like to be so comprehensively despised by my elected representative. But no doubt the Labour and Liberal MPs are equally contemptuous of the great unnumbered. But to hell with politics. What I want to know is what happened when you went into the garden alone on a beautiful summer’s night to view the Temple of Hygeia?’

‘You can’t really be interested. This is just therapy, isn’t it?’

Kit laughed. ‘Of course it’s good for you to talk. But I’m honestly intrigued. Though you’re trying to make it matter-of-fact your face and voice betray you.’

I smiled calmly but made a mental resolve that they should do so no longer. It was true that I was giving Kit an edited account of the beginning of my affair with Burgo but while I was talking I found I was reliving some of the sensations of a year ago, when all my ideas about myself, of the sort of person I was and what I was capable of doing and feeling, had been knocked for six.

‘Now don’t get cagey,’ Kit continued. ‘As I said, it’s good for you to get things off that delightful chest. And I’m your ideal audience. A stranger you need never see again if you don’t want to. I promise I’m not being polite. I make my living assessing the outpourings of professional pen-drivers. I do it because I dearly love a yarn. And my first requirement is total involvement in the tale. As soon as I’m aware that my mind has wandered to when I’m supposed to be picking up my shirts from the laundry or whether the dog’s toenails need clipping, then the manuscript goes straight into the out tray. I’ll let you know if you’re boring me.’

‘What sort of dog is it?’

‘I haven’t actually got one. It was merely an illustration.’

‘Oh.’ I was disappointed. ‘I’ve always wanted a border collie. Or anything, really, that needs a home. But it wouldn’t be fair to keep one in London, when I’m working all day.’

‘You’re temporizing. I want to hear about Mr Latimer, the answer to a suffragette’s prayer. OK, you needn’t shatter my nerves with explicit descriptions of a sexual kind if you don’t want to – leave me leaning against the bedroom door – but get on with it, Bobbie. Your audience is agog.’

I got on.

‘Should we ask her to come with us, do you think?’ I asked Burgo as soon as we were in the hall.

‘Who?’

‘The woman in the magenta dress.’

‘Is that what you call it? I thought it was purple.’

‘She looked a little sorry to see you go.’

‘We ran out of things to say to each other halfway through dinner. She’s thankful to be rid of me.’

‘You’re not a very good liar, are you?’ By this time we had walked the length of a passage and reached a door that led into the garden.

Burgo laughed. ‘We had quite an interesting chat about the iniquitous doings of King Leopold in the Belgian Congo earlier on. But most of the conversation was about her. Her husband is a brute and a philanderer. And he drinks. Much as other husbands, in fact.’

‘Are you those things?’

‘I expect I would be if I spent much time being a husband. Anna is spared my uxorial shortcomings at least six months of the year. Look at that!’

The lawn shimmered with raindrops but the sky had cleared. The moon lay like a silver dish at the bottom of a large pond, quivering faintly as the wind breathed over the surface of the water. The shadows of the trees and hedges were knife-sharp.

‘It’s beautiful!’ I said. ‘And the scent!’

I could smell honeysuckle and roses and something else overwhelmingly sweet, perhaps jasmine. We strolled side by side, brushing against wet bushes that overhung the gravel path. The first lungfuls of fresh air banished any desire to yawn. The trunks of a stilt hedge laid shadow bars across our path. We entered a parterre of box, the squares filled with flowers, grey and lavender by moonlight. I ran my hand along the top of a hedge of rosemary, releasing a pungent scent which made me think of heat and Italy. And food.

‘How can you be hungry?’ asked Burgo when I confessed this. ‘You’ve just eaten five courses.’

‘That has nothing to do with it. With me hunger is connected with mood. I can’t eat properly when I’m not enjoying myself. I barely tasted the soup or the beef Wellington when I was being harangued by the beastly surgeon about Stalinist purges. At home when things are miserable I go for days eating practically nothing.’

‘I’ve got a bag of caramels. Will that do?’

‘It would be heaven.’ I took one from the packet he gave me. ‘What a strange thing to have in one’s dinner-jacket pocket.’

‘I always carry sweets. For any children I may come across. I’m supposed to kiss them but I’d rather not. Their runny noses put me off. So I give them a sweet and they like it much better than being mauled by a strange man.’

‘Are you being serious?’

‘You’re shocked by the cynical contrivances of a politician’s everyday life?’

‘I suppose I am.’

‘Well, don’t let that interfere with your enjoyment of the caramels.’

‘I’m ashamed to say it isn’t in the least. I haven’t had a toffee for years. It may well be the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.’

‘Does that mean you’re particularly enjoying yourself?’

‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

‘So you can flirt.’

‘Of course I can. But not with married men. It’s a strict rule of mine.’

‘And you’ve kept to it admirably. How wise you are, Roberta Pickford-Norton.’

‘Perhaps that’s going too far, but I’m not an absolute fool.’