The Wild Dark Flowers (25 page)

“In Yorkshire.”

“Joined the flyboys from there?” Haldane had noticed what remained of his uniform.

“Yes. I shall go back.”

“To the family?”

“No,” Harry replied quickly. “To the corps. They need every flyer they can get.”

Haldane opened his mouth as if he was going to reply, then evidently thought better of it, glancing only briefly down at Harry’s inert body on the stretcher. “No, I rather meant, will you go back to Yorkshire when we get over there?”

Harry realized that he had not even thought of what he would do once he was back in England. “I suppose they’ll put us in a hospital close to the port.”

“They’ll send you up country. Can’t keep us all close to port, can they?”

Immediately, Harry saw the logic in this. He had only imagined himself, he realized, patched up as quickly as possible and kept close to Folkestone so that he could fly back to France. “I suppose then, home . . .” he murmured.

“Wife waiting?”

“No,” he said. “You?”

“Delightfully unencumbered, old chap.”

They smiled, but then Harry added, “I have a daughter.”

Haldane seemed to think it was politic not to pursue this in the absence of any wife of Harry’s; he glanced away, back to the ship. This silence, this unwillingness to discuss one’s own tragedies or losses, was part of the fabric of a serving man. Harry had seen it before: talk of children or wives politely deflected. It was not done, and he had never wondered why until now.

He lay back down. It was not done because it was fatal to think of what one had left behind. It was done because it would be unbearable to think of the loving arms of a woman, or a parent, or a child. He had heard one officer say of his own newly married wife, “When I think of her and what might happen to her if I’m gone, my bowels turn to water. . . .” The others in the mess room had turned their faces away just as Haldane had done now. It was not out of disinterest, but rather the opposite. It was the voicing of every man’s dread.

Of course, there were others who seemed so full of themselves, their personal glories, and their appetite for a glorious fight that they never considered the families that they had left behind, and never thought of what those families might be feeling. It was not their fault, Harry considered; all their training was designed to eradicate such thoughts from their heads. Women, children, joy, romance—it was worlds away. To think of that sort of thing at all was dangerously distracting. Just occasionally, the sensation of little Cecelia’s hand in his would rise up out of a dream, and he would experience a passionate need to see her, a kind of extreme hunger of the soul.

But for the most part, they all acted as if war were a giant disorganized party. A famous man had even said so in public, and caused a furor last year. Harry struggled to remember his name. Granville? No, not Granville. It had been in the newspapers. Grenfell. Julian Grenfell.

He reached out and touched Haldane’s shoulder. “That chap, Grenfell. Remember what he said? ‘Never so well or happy.’ Wonder what he’d say if he could see us now.”

Haldane looked back at him with a mixed expression. “Heard he’s here somewhere,” he replied.

“What, just here?”

“In one of the hospitals. Head wound.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Clearing station. Outside my namesake town.”

“Good God. What a bad show.” Harry paused. “All that fuss there was about him calling the war a party, or some such.”

“Was he right?” Haldane asked, with a wry smile.

The question was an odd one. “Blasted if I know,” Harry said.

But it sent him deep into thought. Well . . .
was
Grenfell right, he and his sort of man, blazing with glory? Grenfell had a DSO. None better. In the Royal Dragoons, a hero. Picture in the
Times
, a handsome chap who had won his DSO dispatching German snipers, stalking them as Harry had often stalked deer with his own father. Talents learned in the fields of aristocratic leisure.

He wondered if Grenfell had lain in the soaking wet earth waiting for that brief chance when the prey raises its head. Except that these had not been game birds or beasts, but men. Hitting a man between the eyes was not the same thing as hitting a stag. Or was it? Was it a game, all this? A game for which he and men like Grenfell and Haldane had been bred? He felt suddenly very sick, and now saw Haldane leaning over him, balancing on his elbows.

“All right, old man?”

“Poor Grenfell,” he muttered. He didn’t like to voice what had been going through his mind: it would be bad form, he knew.

“He was above me at Eton,” Haldane said. “Used to like to crack a whip. Jolly good he was with it, too.”

“A whip,” Harry murmured.

Whips and stalking guns. All games. All games . . .

Beside him, Haldane stirred. “Can’t lie about like this,” he muttered. “Won’t do at all. Behaving like invalids. It will drive me doo-lally.” He had managed to sit up. “Hi there, you!” he yelled.

There was a VAD moving slowly down the line, dispensing cocoa from a huge, steaming enamel jug. “Hi there, sweetness! Please!”

“I shall come to you in a moment,” she said, looking up.

“Please, dearest girl, just a moment.”

She relented, and walked over. “What is it?”

“Might you do us the most enormous favor? We’ve been lying here for hours. Could you bring me that wheelchair contraption over there?”

“Oh no,” she said, glancing over her shoulder to where he was pointing. “That would be quite against the rules.”

Haldane leaned forward. Harry could see that he was a practiced flirt; not handsome, but with something louche about him, in just the right quantity to make a girl blush. “I say,” Haldane murmured. “You’re awfully pretty.”

“Nonsense,” she retorted. “Behave yourself.”

“We didn’t get stuck on this wretched dock by behaving ourselves,” Haldane responded sharply. “Oh no, that wouldn’t do. Cavendish here is a flyer. Breaks every rule in the book. He’s been on a train for days, poor fellow. Needs to sit up properly and take the sea air. I could navigate about a bit if you’d only bring that wheelchair.”

“But you’re due to go on board shortly.”

Haldane gave her a smile of ravishing innocence. “I promise that we won’t miss the boat.” He lowered his voice. “My gosh, aren’t you the bees knees? Look at those wonderful eyes.”

Harry laughed to himself. The VAD went hurrying off for the canvas chair. “You’ll never get me in that thing,” he warned Haldane.

“Won’t I, though?” Haldane said. He had got to his knees, and, by balancing on his elbows for a second, managed to push himself upright. He swayed momentarily, looking absurdly rakish in his pajamas with the overcoat thrown over them. The VAD came back, pushing the chair. It creaked ominously. “Now help me with this gallant flyer,” Haldane instructed the girl.

They manhandled him, the VAD holding the chair and Haldane looping his arms underneath Harry’s hips. It was hard to tell who groaned most. “Fucking paddles,” Haldane swore at his own hands. Harry chewed the inside of his lip. His legs, particularly both knees, were hugely swollen. The VAD reached down and let out the leg supports on the chair. “Oh please don’t be long,” she whispered. “I shall be in such trouble.”

“You never gave me this chair,” Haldane retorted, grinning. “I shall knock the man down who says you did.”

Bumping over the cobbles was an excruciating experience for Harry. But he soon saw the black comedy in it: a man in pajamas and a greatcoat pushing a wheelchair with his elbows, occasionally restraining the chair by slamming his foot against a wheel; Harry lopsidedly propped, feeling like an oversized baby. “Heyho and happy days,” Haldane said. “Let’s go and see who’s singing.”

They trundled down towards the wharves, Haldane resolutely occupying the center of the road while trucks, cars, and more mobile pedestrians navigated around them. Haldane acknowledged the protesting horns and the curses of the drivers with a nonchalant wave of his bandaged hand. “Get out of the way, you stupid bastard!” one driver shouted.

“And a cheery halloo to you, too,” Haldane yelled back.

Somehow, they got onto a pavement of sorts. To Harry’s astonishment, fishing vessels were moored up along the harbor wall in one section: Haldane steered towards them. Tables were set up alongside the quay, and fish were being routinely gutted. Women were behind each table, and the singing that they had heard was coming from them. Haldane stopped the wheelchair and the two men listened. The sun began to set slowly over the sea. “It’s a late catch,” Haldane murmured. “But then perhaps they’re lucky to get out at all.”

A girl at the nearest table wiped her hands in her canvas apron, and looked across at them.
“Anglaise?”

“Oui, m’selle.”

She smiled in a friendly fashion. She was a plain girl, with a plait of hair over one shoulder, and a broad, frank-looking face, but the smile was angelic.

“Vous êtes . . .”
But Haldane’s insouciance with the ladies seemed to have deserted him. Harry turned round in his seat as best he could, and saw Haldane’s face crumple midway through his attempt at a compliment. Behind the girl’s table, a child was sitting on a bale, chewing on its tiny fist as it stared at Haldane.

“
M’sieur
 . . .” the girl began. She indicated the little boy, as if to say that they might be frightening the child.

At once, Haldane began turning the chair away. He coughed, and began in a forcedly cheerful way, “There’s an American company comes here. New York to Rotterdam. It stops here. Or it did. And a steamer comes across every day from England. Or . . . it did, yes. It did. A pal and I came out here in 1911, for a jaunt, you know? It was because of the poster.”

“The poster?”

“Sort of poster that brings a young fellow to France,” Haldane said. “Nice picture of a ma’amselle on the beach in a pink frock and one of those frilled parasols, and another behind her in a bathing costume. . . .”

Harry felt in his pocket for the piece of paper that was folded there. His fingers connected with it, and he smiled at the memory of Caitlin scribbling her name for him, and an address in London. Caitlin Allington de Souza. “That’s an extraordinary name,” he had commented as she had shyly handed it to him. “Should I know it?” But she had not replied in the crowds of the train.

He turned his face back to the French girl with the child.

She had scooped up the child, and now held it on her hip. The little boy at once buried his face in her shoulder.

“I should think we look a fright,” Harry murmured.

“I daresay, yes,” Haldane replied.

They turned back for the boats.

As they got to the lines of stretchers, Harry looked up at Haldane. “Those days will come again,” he said. “Jaunts with a pal, and pretty girls on the beach. Just see if they don’t.”

“I hope to God you’re right,” Haldane murmured.

It was seven o’clock, and the first stars were coming out when they took their turn in the embarkation lines.

*   *   *

I
n the Grosvenor Square house in London, it seemed to Octavia that the doctor was in with William for a very long time.

Eventually, he came out of her husband’s bedroom and placed a consoling hand on her arm. “I understand your boy is being brought back from France today.”

“Yes . . . we just had another telegram. The ship is delayed. They don’t expect it now until the early hours of this morning, at the earliest. I expect William is fretting about it.”

“He is indeed.”

She glanced down the wide stairs and into the lavish hallway. “Let’s not stand here,” she said. “I’ve asked for tea in the drawing room.”

“That sounds very good.”

He walked ahead of her down the steps, gallantly offering an arm at the landing halfway down. She felt slightly embarrassed—she hardly knew him. He was Hetty de Ray’s physician, a very much older person than their own man in Yorkshire. He was formally dressed in a long black frock coat, too much like an undertaker for her taste, and his face was similarly somber.

When they were arranged more comfortably in the drawing room, Octavia shooed away the maid. “I shall pour myself.”

She waited until the girl had gone, and smiled wanly at the doctor. “They stand about like sheep. There isn’t a decent trained girl to be had in London. I think this one has come from somewhere in East Anglia. I can hardly understand a word she says, and I don’t think she understands
me.
”

She realized abruptly that she was babbling. It really didn’t matter just now how good or bad the maids were. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s of no consequence. Please tell me about my husband.”

The doctor was sitting perched on the edge of the Chinese-upholstered chaise longue, looking uncomfortable in such a feminine room. “From what Lord Cavendish tells me,” he began. “This has been a problem for some time.”

“You mean his heart?”

“Yes indeed, his heart.”

“But he has never said a word to me.”

“He has been experiencing chest pain for more than a year.”

She put her hand to her throat. “A year!”

“In my experience, such conditions are progressive. Lord Cavendish is of an age and disposition . . .”

“What do you mean, ‘disposition’?”

“His diplomatic work is stressful, of course.”

“Naturally.”

“That, and the prolonged traveling. The news of your son. A general tendency to simply endure, as most men do, without recourse to a surgeon, without advice. All these are contributory factors,” he explained.

“You mean a disposition to drive himself too hard?”

“Yes indeed.”

“And to ignore his own symptoms.”

“Quite so,” the doctor said. “And I believe his own father . . . there may be a hereditary cause.”

“You think that his father had a heart condition?”

“Merely a guess. I understand he collapsed and died when he was fifty-six.”

“Yes, I think so. . . . William was only sixteen.”

“No post mortem, but in the circumstances one wonders if . . .”

“Of course,” she murmured. She was staring down at the untouched tea tray, realizing that she really knew nothing about the father-in-law that she had never met, other than that he had been kindly and rather unworldly, shut up in Rutherford with his botany and archaeology and his quiet, gentlemanly pursuits. William’s life, by contrast, had been much more in the public eye: his work in Parliament. His constant shuttling between Paris and London for the Foreign Office.