The Wild Dark Flowers (13 page)

The housekeeper hesitated. She was fully dressed, as was he; there was nothing immodest in their being together there, even in the absence of the kitchen staff. He saw that her hands shook a little. Then she relented. Sitting down again, she poured him the tea.

“These days are upsetting for all of us,” he observed. “It’s not surprising to mistake the time.”

“The days of wrath are upon us,” she replied darkly.

“Yes, indeed.” He drank his tea slowly. “But you, Mrs. Jocelyn . . . are you well enough? You seem . . .” He searched for the word that would not infuriate her. “Preoccupied.”

She looked at him as if inspecting his reliability. Then she leaned forward. “There is something wrong here,” she whispered.

“Wrong?” he asked. “In what way?”

Her hand fluttered towards the ceiling as if indicating the rooms upstairs. “There will be a visitation.” She sat back, nodding. “You’ve not heard it, in the rooms?”

“Heard what?”

“The . . .” Her fingers walked along the table top in a skittering motion. “The rustling. The movement.”

He frowned. “You mean there is some sort of infestation in the main rooms?” he asked, perplexed. “I’ve seen no evidence of it.”

“Infestation,” she repeated, and she gave him a brilliantly disconcerting smile. “That is exactly the word, Mr. Bradfield. The exact word.”

“Then we must have someone see to it at once.” It was not unknown, in country districts, for rats to be on the property; the London houses were regularly infested too, from the Victorian sewers and the sheer volume of people. He had heard rumors that Buckingham Palace itself was positively alive with vermin. “I shall make a call myself,” he said.

But Mrs. Jocelyn’s gaze had slipped away from him and was focused on a point somewhere behind his head. The way she stared, as if watching something, made the hairs prickle on the back of his neck. He resisted the temptation to turn around in an effort to see what she was seeing.

“Oh, it’s far too late for that,” she murmured to herself. “It’s the time of harvest.”

“Harvest? But it is not harvest yet, not for another two or three months at least.”

Her focus strayed back to him. She gave him a smile, patting the closed Bible in front of her. “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity.”

He did not know, quite, what to say to her. She seemed happy at least, relaxing back in her chair, smoothing down her dress. The keys rattled on the chain at her waist. “Harvest,” she repeated softly. “The purging of the threshing floor, and the gathering of the wheat into the barn. And the burning of the chaff in unquenchable fire.”

She was holding his gaze with that same disconcerting smile on her lips. “The New Testament, Mr. Bradfield,” she said. “It’s all written there, if one cares to read. It’s what shall come to us. It’s what has already come to us.” She nodded to herself in satisfaction. “It’s in the bones of this house, in the walls, in the floors. It’s with us already. You’ll see if I’m not right, Mr. Bradfield. It’s the time of harvest in this house.”

*   *   *

B
radfield was to think of this conversation later that morning, and it was then that the memory of Mrs. Jocelyn’s words sent a cold chill down his spine.

He was walking in the grounds, out of sight of the main rooms of the house, but with a perfect view of the long driveway, when he saw a motor vehicle come around the corner from the estate steward’s house and start the long incline towards Rutherford. It was doing such a speed that it trailed a plume of dust behind it, and Bradfield immediately turned on his heel. He reached the half circle before the Tudor doors and the long line of steps just as the van came to a halt, and a man got out.

Bradfield’s intention had been to reprimand whoever it was who had come in such a hurry through the main gate, but then he recognized the driver, who even now was hesitating as he looked up at the house.

“Mr. Rissington,” Bradfield said.

The man turned around. In his hand he held an envelope. The postmaster was dressed, Bradfield noticed, in his best uniform and not the common-or-garden suit he wore in the village. He held out the telegram. “I’m afraid it’s this,” he told Bradfield.

The butler took it from him. “I’ll see to it,” he said. “If you’d like to go around the back with the van, I’m sure that Mrs. Carlisle might find you a cup of tea.”

The agitated postmaster did as he was told, and, after watching the van make its exit, Bradfield climbed the steps of the house and opened the door.

As luck would have it, it was not Lord Cavendish that he saw in the hall, but Charlotte. She was so much quicker than many of them, Bradfield thought; as soon as her eyes strayed to the envelope, her hand went to her mouth in horror.

“Is Lord Cavendish in his study?” Bradfield asked.

Charlotte advanced on him. “Give it to me.”

“I think it ought to go to his lordship,” Bradfield said quietly. “If you’ll beg my pardon.”

The girl hesitated a moment, then, “You’re right,” she said. “I shall go and fetch Mother.”

He watched her run up the vast stairway, heard her run along the gallery, heard, distantly, her knock at her mother’s door. Then he walked along the length of the hall and turned towards William Cavendish’s study.

*   *   *

L
ouisa and Charlotte were the first downstairs, running to the drawing room, where their father sat with the opened telegram on his knees.

“Mother was just bathing,” Charlotte said. “She’s coming.”

“What did you tell her?” William asked.

“Just that there was something you wanted to talk to her about,” Louisa replied. They hesitated, not sure if they ought to sit with him: at such times, William always set himself apart, sought privacy. He was as likely to push any expressions of grief away as welcome them. They stood uncertainly, watching his face. Many another man might have run up to his wife’s room directly; he might have wanted to speak to her alone, and, while the two girls recognized his customary rigid calm, his composure baffled them.

Very soon, they heard Octavia’s footstep in the hall. She came into the room, and looked at the three of them. Her smile of greeting abruptly vanished. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, Mother,” Louisa exclaimed, and promptly burst into tears.

Charlotte snatched hold of her sister’s hand. “That won’t do any good,” she hissed.

William had got to his feet. “A telegram has come,” he said.

“Is it Harry?”

“Yes,” he replied.

Both parents stood as if carved in stone; it was Charlotte who moved eventually, going up to William, gently disengaging the piece of paper from his hands, and delivering it to her mother. Octavia read it; the blood drained from her face. Both daughters then took an arm, and guided her to a chair. After a moment or two, Octavia glanced at her daughters and patted their hands. “Don’t fuss, girls,” she murmured. “Don’t fuss.”

“May I see it?” Charlotte asked. Octavia handed her the telegram.

“Wounded,” she breathed. “
Regret to inform you Flying Officer Harold William Cavendish wounded . . .”

“Alive at least,” William said. He had sat down again on the couch nearest to Octavia. “Ring for that idiot footman Hardy,” he told his daughters brusquely. “I want a fire in here. The room is too damned cold. And tell him to get tea.”

In short order, two of the housemaids arrived, one carrying a tea tray, shepherded by Mrs. Jocelyn. The faces of all three women were blanched; they looked stricken. Mrs. Jocelyn’s gaze hardly left William’s face. “We are all very sorry, your lordship,” Mrs. Jocelyn said, ignoring Octavia and both Louisa and Charlotte.

William waved his hand. “Thank you,” he muttered.

The tea tray was settled with a clatter.

“That’s all right,” Charlotte said suddenly. “I can light the fire, Mrs. Jocelyn.”

The housekeeper hesitated, and then the two maids were ushered out as quickly as they had come in.

Charlotte rounded on her mother. “Did you see that?” she exclaimed. “She kicked poor Jenny’s feet as she was kneeling down, to hurry her up! What a dreadful old dragon she is.”

“No doubt she’s as distressed as we are,” Octavia murmured.

“And that gives her the right to kick someone?”

“Let it be, for heaven’s sake,” William told his daughter. “There’s more important things to consider.”

Louisa had once more begun to cry, sitting on the arm of Octavia’s chair and chafing her mother’s hand.

“You won’t help Harry by crying, or Mother,” Charlotte said.

Louisa glared at her. “I sometimes wonder that you aren’t made of stone!”

“I’m not stone at all,” Charlotte retorted.

“Girls, please,” Octavia begged.

“Pour the tea,” William instructed.

Charlotte did as she was bid, distributing the cups. Eventually she sat next to William, frowning at him when he was not looking at her, wondering why it was, at this most awful of moments, that he could not go to her mother and embrace her, or take her hand. And then she saw, with sudden perception, that William was immobilized by shock. Carefully, she gave him his tea and quickly kissed his cheek.

“Thank you, dear,” he murmured.

“Can we go to him?” Octavia asked. “Can we go to France to see Harry?”

“I doubt it’s allowed,” William said. “We may hear more shortly—of where he’s been transferred—that sort of thing.”

“It says—” Octavia hesitated. “It says he’s at a dressing unit at Festubert. Where is that?”

“Near a place called Béthune, east of Lille.”

Both parents looked in surprise at Charlotte. “How do you know that?” William asked.

“I read the papers, and I have a map of France,” Charlotte replied with hauteur. “I should think anyone does the same when they read the reports, don’t they?”

Octavia gave a watery smile. How typical it was of Charlotte to pay such attention. “Lille,” she murmured. “We once went there, I think. A charming town.”

“I shouldn’t think it’s charming now,” Charlotte said.

Octavia tried to ignore this. “There is not much detail,” she said, and, although she had been trying to take a note from William and appear to be calm, her eyes filled now. “It may be serious, may it not?”

No one replied. Louisa held her mother’s hand tighter, gazing at her father with a desperate expression, as if he could hold the answer. But of course there was no answer available; no one knew. The telegram gave no further clue.

Suddenly, Octavia wiped her eyes and straightened her shoulders. She got abruptly to her feet, pushing the low table that held the tea tray out of her way. “We must go to London at once,” she announced firmly. “We must be nearer him. Either to have him at the Grosvenor Square house when he’s back in England, or to be close to France if you are allowed to go over, William.”

“Can’t we all go over?” Charlotte asked.

“No,” Octavia told her. “They won’t want whole families turning up. We would only get in the way.” She paused. “And perhaps he’s already in a Channel port. The telegram will have taken a while to get here . . . perhaps in that time he’s been transferred to Boulogne?”

She was looking at William for answers.

“I simply don’t know,” William told her. “But yes . . . they will have hospital trains going to Boulogne from the front.”

“Then we must hurry. We must leave directly.”

“We’ll come with you,” Charlotte said.

“I would rather you stayed here,” William told her.

“I shall stay with Sessy,” Louisa said. “I don’t think I could bear London.”

Octavia was walking to the door already.

In her wake, William followed her.

Charlotte looked back at the telegram: such an innocuous piece of paper carrying such a terrible message. In doing so, she caught Louisa’s eye. “You’re right,” she said. “Stay here. Perhaps you should ask Mrs. Jocelyn to make up a room for Harry downstairs. That would be an idea, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” Louisa agreed feebly.

Charlotte regarded her for some seconds. “Dear heart,” she murmured, “you could win a prize for sobbing, you really could.”

“I should think you ought to hurry up and pack, don’t you?” Louisa said, taking out a handkerchief. “You utter little pagan.”

*   *   *

W
hen the train from Yorkshire at last arrived in London, it was almost midnight.

Although the station concourse was eerily devoid of crowds, it was instead packed with wagons and delivery trolleys. In the half-lit darkness, the breath of the delivery horses wound slowly upwards in the air, showing hazily against the high glass roof and the night beyond. Octavia took William’s arm as they made their way towards the street. After the cushioned luxury of first class and the quiet of Rutherford, the city was a shock to the system.

Two porters went ahead of them with the luggage; behind Octavia and William came Amelie, Octavia’s maid; and William’s man, Cooper. Charlotte strode now at her parents’ side, swinging an overnight case in her hand and resisting her father’s frowns. “There is no need to carry that,” he had said to her, as they had got on the train at York. “I might need something in it, so might Mother,” Charlotte had replied airily. It had proved to contain chocolate and two cheap novels.

William had watched the country go by hour after hour, wondering where Harry was, wondering more so what state of mind his son was in. Watching as the green of England was gradually replaced with the sprawling suburbs of the capital city, William thought of Emily Maitland, and Harry’s guilt. Perhaps, he considered, the memory had got into his son’s mind somehow, knocked him off course in a more dreadful way than either he or Octavia had appreciated.

He had stolen more than one glance at his wife. Of course, Octavia was more subtle, more understanding than himself. He had never been trained to consider a man’s heart. It had not been required of him.

Soon, the three of them arrived at the Grosvenor Square house. Charlotte got out of the cab after them and ran up the steps and rang the bell.

“For heaven’s sake, what has got into that girl?” William said to Octavia.