The Wild Dark Flowers by Elizabeth Cooke Page B

honest with her; she waited, thinking that perhaps he wanted to tell her just as much as she wanted to hear.
    “The strangest things haunt one,” he murmured, gazing straight ahead. “Near one of our billets was a little country railway station. It must once have been attractive; there was a signal box.” He smiled wanly to himself. “And a train standing just outside the platform. It was a sorry sight; it had been used for target practice.” He turned to look at her. “There are pockets of civilians left here and there. Lost souls, you know, who won’t leave. And every morning, the signalman used to come to the signal box. He would pick his way among the debris and sit there—quite ‘ten-a-penny’—demented, you see?”
    “What happened to him?” Octavia asked.
    “I don’t know,” Harry admitted. “We moved along. But very dead by now, I expect. Like the beekeeper.”
    Octavia was briefly distracted by Harry’s hands. He kept the right one quite rigid, but the left was trembling, the fingers describing small circles on the material of his jacket. “There was such a nice old lady in a farm,” Harry told her. His voice was muted, almost dreamy. “She actually walked along one of the army supply trenches to get water. She was very sweet; she brought us honey. She was very interested in our aircraft, and kind to us all. It was ridiculous, though. So absurdly dangerous. She was told to leave. She said that the bees didn’t mind the shelling; the hives were busier, if anything. And then one day, her cottage took a direct hit.”
    “Oh, no.”
    “It had to be. Shells fly everywhere, you know, sometimes a great deal off target. We never saw her again—blown to atoms, I don’t doubt. But the hives, at the back of the house, were untouched. And you know . . . those bees flew in and out. They went on without her. And the birds sing among all the hell of it. . . .”
    Octavia saw that his eyes were full of tears.
    “Harry, darling . . .”
    He suddenly wrenched away from her. “This won’t do at all,” he said loudly, and he restarted to engine; the Metz revved up with its usual coughing roar. “Waste of a good bit of leave to talk about it,” he told her. “Waste of a lovely day.”
    And he put his foot down, and they sped away.
    *   *   *
    I t was the time for morning coffee at Rutherford, but only Louisa and Charlotte were home. The two girls sat together on a bench filled with cushions in the gardens, enjoying the sunshine.
    Louisa was watching Charlotte’s expression of concentration over the book in her lap; eventually, she snatched it away and looked at the spine. She loved her sister, but Charlotte’s incessant preoccupation with current affairs and risqué literature had the capacity to annoy her. “What on earth is this?”
    “James Joyce,” Charlotte told her. “
The Dubliners
.”
    “Sounds awfully grim.”
    Charlotte took the book back. “You’re not much of a politico, are you?”
    “I’m liking books more, but not ones like those. Don’t tell me that you do.”
    Charlotte smiled. “Everyone in England ought to be interested in Ireland just now.”
    “Well, I’m not,” Louisa said. “There’s too much upset in the world. I’m heartily sick of it. Let’s go and sit in the orangerie,” she suggested. “Let’s see what’s in flower.”
    Charlotte sighed, but obeyed. Arm in arm, they wandered into the sultry heat of the elaborate Victorian glasshouse, and sat down eventually on the bench near the far door. To an outsider looking in, they would have seemed like two elaborately lovely flowers quite at home in their surroundings, and each almost a matching copy of the other in their white pressed linen dresses. Only a very much closer inspection would have seen the worldliness, a trace of sad experience, in the older girl; and the flash of rebellion in the younger. But for now they presented a picture of tranquility, and all that could be heard was birdsong