Victoria Clayton - Moonshine

He bowed gravely. ‘I’m sure of that.’

We walked slowly. I ate another toffee. Epicurus was right to insist that man’s principal duty was the pursuit of pleasure. We followed the path until it came to a narrow gap in a dense high hedge. He stood aside to let me go through. A square about half the size of the drawing room was filled with beds of roses. Behind them, forming one side of the square, was a small building with a pointed roof, upflung eaves and fretted windows in the oriental fashion.

‘A China House!’ I was thrilled. ‘What a marvellous thing to find! I had no idea there was one in this part of the world. A wonderful example of sharawadgi !’

‘What’s that?’

‘ Sharawadgi is an eighteenth-century word. It means the first impression, the impact on the eye of something surprising and delightful. A shock of pleasure. In this century it’s been revived with particular application to landscape gardening and garden architecture. It’s a quasi-Chinese word made up by a European, no one quite knows who.’

‘ Sharawadgi ,’ Burgo repeated solemnly. ‘I like that.’

‘I don’t know if I’m telling you something you already know, but England was tremendously influenced by the Chinese taste in gardening in the eighteenth century. It became known as the anglais-chinois style when it filtered through to the rest of Europe, finally ousting the Italian and Dutch fashions. But because the buildings were made of wood, most of them have decayed. This must be one of just a handful. Forgive the lecturing tone.’

‘I like being told things. And I didn’t know.’

‘But how marvellous that Dickie has restored it. What a nice man he is. Can we go in?’

The door was stiff and Burgo had to be firm with it. The faint smell of new paint was quickly absorbed by the rose-scented air that accompanied us inside. Though the moonlight streamed in, the room was filled with gloomy shadows. As my eyes adjusted I made out a predictable set of garden furniture, a wicker sofa and two chairs grouped round a coffee table.

‘This should be decorated with Chinese scenes of dragons and tigers, water lilies and fans, that sort of thing.’ I walked about examining the room. ‘And there should be scarlet screens and lacquered furniture. And really the garden ought to be Chinese as well, with a pond and a bridge.’

‘You must tell Dickie. He’ll be overjoyed to find that someone shares his enthusiasm. Fleur cares for nothing but her beloved animals. I’m sure he’d appreciate some help with the project.’

‘Well, if you really think … I could make a few suggestions.’

‘I realize I’ve no right to treat you like a social worker but I’d be grateful if that meant you’d see something of Fleur,’ Burgo said. ‘She has no women friends. She doesn’t work so she has no colleagues either. Her shyness prevents her from taking part in charitable exercises like the Red Cross and so on. And the fact that she has no children separates her even more. I’ve seen how women support one another, and enjoy being with each other, despite the usual platitudes about women being catty, which of course are also true.’

So that was why he had invited me. For Fleur’s sake. I ran my fingers over a section of white-washed tracery that I was almost certain was a stylized pagoda.

‘She’ll have children later on, won’t she?’

‘She and Dickie sleep in separate rooms. It was a condition she made when she married him.’

I was touched by this evidence of Dickie’s devotion to Fleur. How many other men would have agreed to such a stipulation? I couldn’t think of one.

‘I’d be delighted to see Fleur again if she’d like it. What a good brother you are.’

‘No, I’m extremely selfish. I found looking after Fleur a worry and a responsibility. So when Dickie wanted to marry her I encouraged her to accept him. Despite the horse I don’t think she would have, if she hadn’t wanted to please me. She’s always valued my opinion more than it’s worth. Now I can see they’re neither of them particularly happy. But if you think that’s why I asked you to come here tonight: to befriend Fleur, you’re wrong.’

I turned from the window to which I had gravitated. I could see his face quite clearly now as he came to stand beside me. Until that moment he had not said a word to which the most captious guardian of morals could have taken exception. Neither overtly nor covertly had he sought to fascinate me. He had been as a brother. Now he looked at me calmly, with a suggestion of polite interrogation as though about to ask me whether I cared for touring abroad. He did not sigh sentimentally or attempt to take my hand.

Yet something threatened, like the shivering of a snowcap in response to an echo from the valley below, which sent me swiftly to the door.

‘I must go home. I’m so glad … It’s lovely. I’ll talk to Dickie about it if I get the chance.’

I turned the handle but the door held fast. I pulled hard, struggling, almost panting with the effort to escape.

‘Let me.’ Burgo engaged energetically with the handle and the door gave way with a shudder. ‘There you are. Deliverance.’

I thought I detected something like laughter or even derision in his eyes as he stood back to let me go through it before him. We walked back to the house. Burgo strolled beside me, his hands in his pockets, looking thoroughly relaxed.

Had he an ulterior purpose in taking me to see the China House? The situation had an air of contrivance about it. A cushioned sofa in a remote and romantic arbour, practically a love-nest … I accused myself of a chronic, spinsterish tendency to doubt men’s motives. I had jumped at Burgo’s invitation to go to see it and it had been my idea to look inside. Was I so cynical that I suspected that every man who found himself alone in the moonlight with a woman not actually hideous would try his luck with her? Well, yes. But after all, what had Burgo done? Precisely nothing. He might have been about to ask my opinion of his lunchtime speech. Or to confess to a troubled childhood. Damn the man! He could at least have made his intentions clear so that I could have apprised him swiftly and unequivocally of his mistake.

‘So,’ said Kit, finishing a cup of terrible coffee. ‘He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. You women don’t know how lucky you are. Pity us poor blokes trying to interpret the signals from a girl who thinks she might fancy you if you make a sufficiently manly lunge, yet who might on the other hand want to scream the house down. I bet you’ve never been in the position of having to make the running. If you met a man you wouldn’t mind a game of Irish whist with and he seemed a bit slow off the mark in taking you up, what would you do?’

‘I’d assume he didn’t like card games.’

‘When a phrase has Irish in it, it usually means something not to be taken literally. Often it means the opposite, or it’s describing something inferior as exaggeratedly superior. To have an Irish dinner means to have nothing to eat. An Irish nightingale is a frog. An Irish hurricane is what the navy call a flat calm. Irish curtains are cobwebs. Do you see? To throw Irish confetti is to chuck bricks at something.’

‘Rather insulting to the Irish, isn’t it?’

‘For some reason it’s been the common sport of nations to make a laughing stock of Paddy and Mick. But now the Irish are so powerful in the States, they can afford to ignore the banter.’

‘So Irish whist means … oh, I see, sex. What you men can’t seem to grasp is that a woman rarely thinks like that. Naturally, if she really liked a man she’d be prepared to scheme. She might try to run into him unexpectedly, or take up parachuting if that was his hobby. But she wouldn’t be plotting to get his clothes off in record time. She’d be thinking about a love affair.’