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.’
‘Men can be romantic, too,’ Kit protested. ‘But these days they’re unlikely to wax warm about a woman who won’t nail his hat to the ceiling pretty soon after meeting him.’
‘You’re ignoring the fact that plenty of men would be put off by a woman who made a blatant advance.’
‘We’ll conduct an experiment.’ Kit summoned the landlord and took out his wallet. ‘Make a blatant advance and let’s see how I react.’
I prepared myself for argument. ‘I really must insist on paying my share.’ I put a five-pound note on the table.
‘How kind.’ Kit picked up the note and gave it to the landlord. ‘That’ll pay for my lunch too. But you needn’t think you’ve bought me,’ he added as we left the pub.
The landlord’s wife, overhearing this, fixed her eyes on us with keen interest. As we drove away I looked back and saw her standing at the open door, staring after us.
‘All right.’ Kit accelerated with a growl from the engine as we came to a straight bit of road. ‘Back to the story. You were stalking back to the house in high dudgeon because Burgo had – or possibly hadn’t – tried to seduce you.’
‘I’m sure you don’t want to hear—’
‘Will you get on with it!’
The moonlight must have been partly to blame for my confusion. It poured down upon the garden, washing the grass with silver. It was an enchanted place. A fountain splashed beside a statue of a naked woman with a pig at her feet. Or more likely a dog. A faint breeze swept over the lawns. Ghostly foxgloves waved their wands of ashen flowers, binding one with spells. As I passed beneath an arch I ducked to avoid the branch of a rose and a shower of scented petals dripped over me. It was impossible to be rational and wise on such a night as this.
‘You remember that description of moonshine?’ Burgo had stopped and was gazing upwards. ‘Shakespeare, I think. Perhaps A Midsummer Night’s Dream. You’re supposed to be able to see a man with a lantern, a dog and a thorn-bush in the pattern made by the craters.’
The sky was spangled with stars. The melancholy face of the moon stared down open-mouthed, contemplating human folly. A shiver ran down my back. It may have been a petal.
I had to make an effort to speak. ‘I think I just can.’
He was looking down at me, his pale hair gleaming, his face hidden by shadows. I felt again a sense of appalling danger but I almost didn’t care.
‘You’re very quiet,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking about?’
The flowers – the garden – the intoxicating scent – the bliss of being alive on such a