Wisteria in Decay

The club had been known as Dalloway Farms for the better half of a century. It was situated in a clearing of tall pines and thick oaks nestled against the banks of a pond that spread wide away from the property. In the summer it evoked warm stone and gentle breezes that rustled through the tassels adorning cream canvas umbrellas. There was the tinkle in the air of crystal and the murmur of voices that were just as cold and crisp as the champagne that chilled in ice buckets before them. In the winter, however, that chill was omnipresent. It burdened the thick, twisting boughs of the trees and the blades of grass withered beneath mounds of snow that threatened to dip over the rim of the tallest boot that trudged to the gargantuan front doors.

The Dalloways themselves were a miserable lot. Cold and ill-tempered, Olivette ruled over the family like an old crow perched on an ivory statue. Her son and his wife had ushered in three children in quick succession. Jonathan, Leighton, and Wisteria were beautiful to the eye, but an ice ran in the boy’s veins that too closely resembled their grandmother. It was an ice that pricked in excitement with a rifle in hand, a fast horse, and a cruel trick. Wisteria was the honey to soothe the burn that the ice left behind, and the horde of them moved through the club as if it were their personal Olympus.

Wisteria was set to be married to Spencer Bancroft come summer, when her namesake flower would adorn every trellis and wind around every arbor and column on the property. It was a match that excited most, the Dalloway’s predominantly. Olivette had squandered most of the money garnered from the Industrial Revolution, when they were conquerors of the new age with ingenious devotion to mechanics and engineering. The Bancroft family had been longtime supporters of the “Dalliances of the Dalloways.” It gave them the exposure that led to superseding them.

He proposed in the spring with a diamond that’s size made the papers— down on one knee beside the pond. He asked as lovingly as he could, and she knew that she couldn’t refuse. She never did say yes outright, however, and that thought comforted her. As Spencer knelt at the pond's edge, his knee caught a large shard of glass bottle discarded in the reeds. Before she could answer, she saw a rush of blood permeate the water like a thousand crimson snakes swimming out on the ripples. All was forgotten in the ripping of sleeves to tourniquet it.

Unromantic and dumb, Spencer Bancroft was not someone that would fill the pages of a girl like Wisteria’s diary. The stars had rendered her a painful romantic, privilege had molded her a scholar, and she hated guns and noise and boasting; all things that Spencer delved in in abundance. So, it is not surprising that while Spencer rode the grounds on the hunt and shot skeet on the sloping lawns that his bride-to-be had unintentionally fallen in love with a familiar yet unassuming presence at the club.

All of the things that Spencer was not, Andreas Cauldwell had returned from the war to buy a cottage down the gravel lane from the club and had taken on an apprenticeship in art restoration with the curator for Dalloway Farms. Andreas was enamored with the club, but he had not accounted for the guns, and one day during a competitive skeet shoot, Wisteria found him in an upper hallway with his hands cupped over his ears, tears streaming down his face. She took instant pity on him, gathered him up, and made him tea. She listened to his stories of the war as he sipped slowly, and the trembling of his hands subsided as she took each of them in hers.

Suddenly it was drinks and art and books and long conversations in the dark and beckoning corners of the club. The great structure easily shrouded secrets, and theirs was certainly not the only one that unfolded in the wainscot corners in romantic lamplight. Slowly the two of them became painfully aware that they had fallen for one another, despite the gaud of the ring that burdened her left hand. Under the spell of first love, they made the promises that all young lovers do. Dramatic and passionate exclamations that they would run away together and live a simpler life than either of them was accustomed to.

Their autumn turned over to winter and the club roared with a warmth that flushed your cheeks and heightened intoxication in a number of ways. The pines and firs on the property were drug indoors, ornamented, and stuffed in every multi-paned window. Fires crackled in smooth marble hearths and sensuous spices mulled in large stew pots, their scent drafting down the halls. Olivette hosted a grand party that allowed the two of them to slip away, drunk on mulled wine, to find passion in a drawing room upstairs. Andreas told Wisteria that he loved her, and she returned it a thousand times over. Passion then gave way to horror, and horror gave way to reason. “Wisteria, this…darling, this is madness,” Andreas said, cupping his head in his hands and massaged the taught bronze skin at his temples.

Two lovers drunk on wine are bound to quarrel, but they had forgotten in the moment who and where they were. As they bickered in front of the hearth, their shadows monstrous on the wall, they were not alone. Leighton Dalloway had made similar moves with a lesser lover in the dark hallways of the upper story. At the sound of his sister’s voice, he placed a hand over his partner’s lips and moved her away from him, inching closer to the ajar door that graciously gifted him novels. The devil himself quaked at the grin that streaked his face as he hopped bannisters and barreled into the ballroom to whisper into an ear that sagged with the weight of diamonds. Olivette grabbed her grandson where his jaw met. “If this is a foul little trick of yours, I would highly advise you to reconsider.”

“Would this face lie to his beloved granny? I’ll swear on your life. Something far too precious to gamble with.” He licked his teeth in glee at having finally found a weak spot in his sister’s veneer.

“We must remedy this immediately,” Olivette whispered low in the rim of her glass. For the second time that evening, the devil himself quaked at the vile plan that unraveled between the grandmother and her grandsons.

The showering of the nuptials came weeks later and again the club was warm and alive with music and booze, and games were planned on the rear lawns where the snow had been packed down and salted. Cleats were handed out with the champagne, and Wisteria’s hands shook as she kept her eye on the corners of the room where her lover usually lingered. “Darling, have you seen Andreas?” she asked frantically, flushed with champagne. A dear friend shook her head and assured her she hadn’t. Her heart thundered in her throat. The time had come. Her final choice.

“Sister! There you are! Look at you, a blushing bride or a blushing drunkard?” Leighton asked as he spun around her with his snide smile.

“I’m not in the mood.” She scoffed and fanned him away as tears began to glint in her eyes. “There must be someone else for you to make miserable around here.”

He laughed loudly and shook his head greatly as he downed a tremendous swallow of amber liquid. “Now why can’t a brother check on his beloved sister? I only came over because it appears to me that you’ve lost something. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t your wits. You know you’re expected to win today. That’s the whole point, really. I know for a fact you haven’t been practicing your archery like you were supposed to. Too many distractions?” His brow arched and Wisteria’s heart reached a frantic level of panic. Her hand trembled so terribly that she slammed her glass down on a vacant table. “Should we take a few practice shots out back?”

“Fine! If it means you’ll leave me alone for the rest of the night,” Wisteria hissed and strode from the room to grab her cleats and her coat while Leighton took up a bow and slung a quiver of arrows over his back.

The pond had frozen over and snow swirled overtop of it in a heavy breeze that only added to the trembling of her hands as Wisteria strung her bow and made her mark on the target at the pond’s edge. First shot, missed.

“God, we’ll be disgraced by you yet,” Leighton said, turning back the last of his drink and slung the rocks glass into the snow. “Come, come, sister. Here, fix your stance.” The bow was restrung. Leighton stood behind her and placed an icy hand on hers that held the bow, the other positioned on the one holding the string.

Suddenly, from behind a cluster of trees, she heard a great many voices yelling over top of one another. Her eyes flicked to the edge of the pond and she stifled a sob as she saw her Andreas lifted halfway off the ground by her betrothed. Jonathan stood behind him, and, to her horror, he flicked two bullets into a revolver. Before she could even comprehend what was happening, Spencer tossed Andreas onto the ice of the pond. He scrambled upright as Jonathan fired one shot into the air.

He took off over the ice, running as fast as his slick dress shoes would allow. She meant to scream to him, all the while forgetting her stance and her other brother’s hold on her hands and the bow. The string of it unexpectedly thrashed her cheek painfully, and the bristles of the arrow sliced her finger. The arrow streaked like lightning through the swirl of the snow and her scream was lost in it as the second arrow met its mark. Andreas jerked quickly back before clutching his chest wildly and flailing onto the ice where he quickly became still. Wisteria shuddered and took in rugged breaths as she looked from her stance to the target she hadn’t realized how far she had been led from. Leighton released her and ran a steady hand through his hair with a sigh.

“Oh sister, what have you done?” he asked in a voice that was sickly condescending.

“You…what have you done?” she shrieked. Her voice was hysterical, and tears streaked her face as she slapped his chest. “No, no, no…” She turned on her heel and ran as fast as her skirts and her cleats would allow. She reached the great pond's edge when Spencer grabbed ahold of her with his great strength. She screamed Andreas’ name, clawing at Spencer’s arms and hands.

It was then that another presence was made known. Further into the shrubs, Olivette smoked a cigarette that shrouded her face in smoke. “Darling, everything could have been so simple.” She exhaled a long bullet of smoke and flicked it into the snow. “Did anyone catch the weather report this morning?” she asked as the last spurts of smoke left her mouth. She adjusted her great mink fur.

“Frightening blizzard conditions. They projected we might dip below zero,” Spencer said calmly over Wisteria’s screams.

“Well, let’s do hope this old thing does us a favor and freezes back over then, yes?” At that Wisteria crumpled into her fiancé’s arms as Jonathan brought a giant hammer down again and again on the ice that splintered like a broken mirror. She watched in horror as it crumbled away from them and Andreas’ lifeless body slipped below the shards. “They say that blood is thicker than water,” Olivette said, arms folded. “Let’s hope for your sake, darling, that it isn’t.”