The Wild Dark Flowers (35 page)

I
t took some minutes for Octavia to find William.

He was not, as she had expected, in his study, but seated in the orangerie, reading.

She hurried in, not knowing quite how to phrase her complaint; he looked up, and saw the concern in her face. He put down the book.

“William, something is the matter,” she said. She found a chair opposite him. She felt faint, out of breath. Something nearby had a smothering scent; she looked at the rows of lilies, and realized that it was them. Between them, the orchids presented their curious little faces. “Something is very wrong with Mrs. Jocelyn.”

“Wrong?” he repeated.

“She has just threatened me, William.”

He started to smile. “Ridiculous! Over what?”

“You don’t believe me,” she murmured.

“What is it exactly she’s threatened?” he asked. “I suppose it’s something to do with the wedding supper? She seemed very frosty about it, Bradfield told me.”

“I don’t mean the wedding!” Octavia exclaimed. “William, just this second she has . . . it is really quite bizarre . . . she has suggested that my behavior . . .”

“Surely you’ve misunderstood her?”

“I have not misunderstood,” Octavia snapped, trying to keep her temper. “She is under some sort of strain; that is obvious. Bradfield told you about this fanatical cleaning. . . .”

“I’ve seen nothing untoward.”

She sighed in exasperation. “Of course you would not. . . .”

“And she has said nothing to me.”

Octavia stared at her husband. She didn’t want to cause him any disturbance; he was supposed to be resting still. “William,” she began again. “I think at the very least we must insist that she takes a holiday, a rest cure.”

“Mrs. Jocelyn has never taken a holiday in all the time I’ve known her,” William pointed out. “A day or two here and there, but nothing more.”

“I want her to go away somewhere,” she said. “I want her to have a week away, or a fortnight. She’s most agitated.”

“Well, I leave that up to you.”

Octavia bit her lip. “I would prefer it if you told her, William. She has spoken of . . .”

But no. She couldn’t mention John’s name. Nor the oblique reference to Harry, and what she supposed was an inference that his injuries had been brought about by his behavior over Emily Maitland, or in London last year—his reckless carousing and spending. “Oh, it’s too utterly ridiculous,” she murmured. “Please speak to her, William.”

He was looking at her with a bemused frown. Then, he sighed and picked up his book once again. “If you insist, ” he told her. “If you insist.”

*   *   *

J
ust before lunch, Charlotte came into the drawing room.

She stopped on the threshold, looking absently about her, and then, spying Caitlin sitting in one of the far chairs, she shut the door hastily and walked briskly towards her.

“I’ve been hoping to speak to you,” she said. She flopped down in a chair alongside and without any further introduction, reached for Caitlin’s hand. The girl looked surprised, but didn’t retract it.

“I’ve come to ask for a favor,” Charlotte said. “Where is Harry?”

“Upstairs, I think. Would you like me to call him?”

“No, no. It’s just you I need to speak to.” Charlotte dropped Caitlin’s hand after squeezing it, and sat back a little. “I know we only met yesterday, but you can advise me like no one else. And I’ve a favor to ask.” This last, she let out under her breath, frowning. But she let that go for the moment. “You’ve seen a great deal of the world, I expect.”

Caitlin smiled. “Only a very misbegotten world on the other side of the Channel.”

“But you’ve traveled. Not just to France. You’re Irish, aren’t you?”

Caitlin paused for a second, as if weighing up her reply. “Not exactly.”

“You have an Irish accent. You
look
Irish.”

“I had an Irish nurse. She brought me up entirely.”

“But your parents?”

“Not around very much.” She smiled in a guarded fashion. “This is quite an inquisition!”

“I’m sorry for it, but I hate pleasantries. We can talk about the weather if you’d rather, though.”

At this, Caitlin laughed a little. “I see. Ask on, then.”

“You met Harry out there, in France.”

“Yes. I nursed him briefly.”

“It’s quite a . . .” Charlotte searched for the word. “An intense thing, isn’t it?”

“It is. Your mother tells me that you’ve been at St. Dunstan’s. Is nursing something that you would like to do?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said. “I want to volunteer as a VAD. Do you think I’d have the character for it?”

Caitlin’s smile, which Charlotte noticed was rather practiced—she wondered briefly how much it hid—became broader. “You can only know if you try it,” she replied. “It’s interesting how little some apparently strong people can take, and vice versa.”

“Yes,” Charlotte mused. She had looked away, out of the window, her eyes fixed on the horizon for a second. Then she looked back at the older girl. “Would you tell me about it?”

“Oh, I’m not sure your parents would thank me.”

“It’s nothing to do with my parents,” Charlotte retorted firmly. “I need to know. I’ve been at St. Dunstan’s and I’ve listened to the accounts that the men give, but they shield me. I’m tired of being shielded altogether. Were you at Aubers Ridge? We’ve had news that one of our staff was killed there.”

Caitlin seemed to assess Charlotte for some time. “It’s best to disassociate yourself, if you can,” she said quietly. “I mean one’s heart. It doesn’t do to weep over what you see. It’s a job of work. Sometimes the hardest thing of all is to maintain efficiency. But I was in Boulogne recently, not at Aubers. Although we saw the results come through.”

“I think I could cope.”

“Could you?” Caitlin asked. “It’s impossible to know before you are faced with it.”

“I can train.”

“Yes, you can train. But the pity of it . . . that’s hard to bear.”

“Did you pity Harry?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I pity only those who don’t come home. And besides, it’s not good to form a friendship out of pity, is it?”

The two girls looked at each other. “It’s much worse than they say in France, isn’t it?” Charlotte asked eventually.

“Yes, it is much worse than any of us can imagine, I think. Think of a horror, and double it. Treble it. I doubt that even comes close, however.”

Charlotte was by now looking down into her lap. As she spoke again, she didn’t raise her eyes. “I saw you getting on the train,” she murmured.

“In London?”

“Yes.” Charlotte paused, then went on, “I thought you might be the girl that Harry’s spoken of, and I wondered if you had seen me. Father had sent me a first-class ticket and . . . well, I didn’t see you afterwards in first class.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“I’ve been staying with our friends in London for a few weeks now. And yesterday, on the platform, as you passed us . . .” Charlotte paused. “Well, I was saying good-bye to a friend. A captain from St. Dunstan’s.”

“Ah,” murmured Caitlin.

At last, Charlotte raised her eyes. “You won’t say anything, will you?” she asked. “Not even to Harry. It’s not . . . well, it isn’t
spectacularly
a romance. And it certainly
isn’t
based on pity.”

“I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but you are rather young for a romance anyway.”

“Yes . . . yes, I know,” Charlotte replied.

At that moment, the door opened, and Octavia entered.

Putting a finger to her lips, and raising her eyebrows eloquently at Caitlin, Charlotte rose to meet her mother. “Is it all ready, the wedding supper?” she asked in a loud voice.

“I expect so, darling.”

“Shall we all go and see?” Charlotte asked. “Shall we take Sessy and Louisa and all go and inspect the tables and everything? It’s such fun, and that’s been in short supply, hasn’t it? We’ve got time before lunch.”

“If you want to. . . .”

“Good,” Charlotte said, kissing her mother’s cheek. “I shall go and root Louisa out.”

They watched her leave, and Octavia turned to Caitlin. “She always was a restless spirit,” she said, smiling. “One never knows really what is next.”

“Is that so, indeed,” Caitlin murmured, rising to her feet.

*   *   *

J
ust after lunch, as the guests began arriving for the wedding, there was one last flurry of rain. The wind scored across the open parkland. Those that were coming up from the village—David Nash’s mother among them, and his brother—were hurried into the warmth of the servants’ kitchen, where Mrs. Carlisle held court, regaling all and sundry with the merits of the happy couple.

Earlier, Jack Armitage had taken Mary to his parents’ cottage across the stable yard, where she was preparing herself, fussed over by his own mother and by Jenny. Poor Jenny, Jack thought to himself. She looked so hollow eyed since the news about Harrison. She kept denying that they had been sweethearts—“He never wrote me anything lovey at all,” she had confessed to Mary—or so he had heard. Jack felt for her. To have someone near, to adore them, to fear losing them, all without being able to speak of any future; this, he understood too well.

It was three o’clock, just an hour before the ceremony, and he was sitting in the tack room, when David Nash came in the door. The prospective groom looked flushed and happy.

“There you are,” David said. “I’m doing the rounds, making sure everyone knows they’re invited. You’ll come and see us tie the knot?”

“That I will.”

With a sigh, David sat down opposite him; he was laughing to himself. “We’ve been down at the inn in the village,” he said. “You know that Kessington is back?”

Kessington was one of the stable hands; he had gone to France only two weeks ago, and been invalided back only the day before.

“I seen him,” Jack replied. “What used to be him, any road.”

“Yes,” David agreed, suddenly serious. “It’s a shame.”

“He come up here yesterday,” Jack continued. “Looking for the horses. Set him off again when he found them gone.”

Kessington—a broad, squat, cheerful lad when he had left Rutherford—had come back literally staggering. His walk was oddly angular; it seemed that he could not control his face and jaw. Jack had felt sorry for him, had tried not to look at him, had apologized that the horses were gone, and felt mortified when the lad had slumped at the empty stable doors, trembling from head to foot.

Taking hold of his arm to guide him to his own mother’s, Jack had felt vibration running through the man, both horrible and fascinating.

“He can’t help it,” he murmured now to David. “But it’s a thing to behold, that face. I can’t see him anymore in it. He seems like Kessington, but some other man got in there. It’s not him looking out at me.” He frowned.

“My mother told me they were in a reserve trench and it got struck,” David said. “He was the only one that came out of it, and he couldn’t stand. Not a scratch, but when they tried to move him on, he kept falling.”

The two of them sat and looked past the open door at the rain dancing on the stones of the yard.

“He tried to tell me about the horses there,” Jack muttered. “He said there’s all kinds of animals. Not just horses, and not just belonging to the Army—but the animals left behind on the farms and the villages. And they heard dogs barking in the German trenches. One of the couriers had a little terrier that used to ride on his shoulders. He said it were like Miss Louisa’s dog that she had, little Max.” He stopped for a while. “I can’t credit it, how animals stick with us after what’s done to them.”

“Mary told me that you’ve talked of going out there,” David said.

The wind plucked at the tack room door, swinging it on its hinges. Jack watched it for a while. “I’ve spoken to his lordship,” he said in a quiet voice. “He says he can arrange it. In the veterinary corps. Probably sooner than later.”

David got to his feet. “I’d best get myself ready.”

Jack stood up, too; he held out his hand. “I might see you out there, in France,” he said. “’Tis possible.”

“Yes,” David agreed.

They held the grip of each other’s hand, looking at each other. To Jack’s recollection, it was the first time that David had been in the stable yard, let alone sitting down in here. But across the clasped hands, divisions were falling—the past was dust blown away, as the leaves blew across the yard. They felt their sameness and their strangeness all at once, saw themselves in the same khaki walking the same shattered roads.

“You get off and take the girl to wife,” Jack said, and smiled. “She’s a bonny one.”

“She is,” David agreed, suddenly beaming. “Come and share the meal with us.”

“I will.”

Jack watched him go across the yard—so tall, so spare, pulling his uniform cap back on his head, running against the rain.

*   *   *

W
hen the rain stopped, the sky cleared dramatically, and the day turned into one of those old-gold afternoons on the cusp of summer and autumn. Hearing that Harry was at the river, William walked down there. He took his time; it had taken him weeks to learn this lesson—to go slowly, to watch, to listen.

It had not been easy, for all his life William had been the one who spoke while others listened, or acted while others procrastinated. But he was following his doctor’s advice for one single and most pressing reason: that obeying it might keep him here longer. And, if his world had now shrunk to Rutherford—no more Paris, no more Whitehall—then he was beginning to be thankful for it. Every day he gathered the house and the rolling acres into his mind, mulling over them, turning them this way and that with greater delicacy and intensity than he had ever before achieved. And there was one crucial, overwhelming point to his thoughts—that he might pass on all he knew to Harry; Harry, who was at last home, and remaining here for good.

He stopped within sight of the bridge where the river curved, and where Harry and his daughter were now sitting. The nursemaid, he noticed, was a little way off, sewing, and occasionally glancing up at her charge.

Harry and Sessy sat side by side on the bank where the grass ran down to a sand-and-gravel shallows. Harry was holding out a box of bait, his fishing rod alongside him, and his child looked down into the box with fascinated delight, reaching out and wriggling her finger in the box.
This one is like Charlotte
, thought William.
Fearless.
He leaned on the bridge and called to them; they waved to him.