Consider the Lily (40 page)

‘Goodbye, Kit.’

Their party had come on deck to watch the proceedings. Daisy was once again dressed in her smart dress and jacket. Her hair was tucked under her hat and she held her crocodile dressing case tightly to her chest. She looked exhausted and distant.

‘Goodbye,’ said Kit.

This is worse, he thought, far worse than he had imagined, and he could tell from the taut line of her lips that she was thinking that too. Last night, after hours of talking it over, they had agreed to end the affair, to consider it an episode that happened between America and England, not to be repeated in either. Although it was a mutual decision, despair and regret drifted between them.

‘Daisy.’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t deal with it very well,’ said Kit, ‘but I love you.’

‘Nor did I,’ she said. ‘Deal with it, I mean. And I love you.’ She bit her lip. ‘I do, Kit.’

The bustle of docking intensified. He moved forward as if to gather her into his arms, but stopped himself. She took an involuntary step towards him and Kit, catching a whiff of jasmine scent, felt the back of his throat tighten.

‘I didn’t know,’ he said with difficulty.

‘Didn’t know what, Kit?’

‘I didn’t know what it was like to feel...’ She gave him one of her quick, slanting looks, a question in her blue eyes. ‘... so intensely,’ he finished. ‘Such joy.’

‘Yes,’ she said, and smiled. ‘I wanted to thank you for that.’

Kit swallowed. ‘I wish...’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said quickly. ‘I know.’

For the last time he traced every line, every fold, every warm, beating part that was Daisy and breathed in the essence of what lay between them, as if to imprison the ecstasies of willing flesh now burnt into his memory.

The wind ruffled his hair and Daisy almost cried out with longing to hold him.

‘I’ll see you in September.’ She turned away because she was not going to let herself cry. ‘Mother wrote and told me we’re coming for a Friday to Monday.’ She hesitated for a second. ‘Tell Matty I’m sorry about the baby.’ Kit picked up his briefcase. ‘Yes.’

The future stretched out and neither of them could bear to think about it.

During the last week of August, Danny made his annual visit to the kennels in Odiham.

‘Does he still live in the house opposite the stocks?’ Flora was helping Danny give the hounds their evening meal, and the air was thick with their squeals.

‘Yup.’

‘Down.’ Flora pushed Lady’s paws off her bare leg. ‘You’re in fine fettle, old girl. Did you have any luck getting a new bitch, Danny?’

‘Yup.’

‘Ellen tells me the sole topic of conversation in hospital was how awful it was that the RAF is going to set up a base in Odiham.’

‘Don’t blame ‘em,’ said Danny. ‘More noise.’ He dished up the boiled meat and broth cooked in his cottage, apparently unperturbed by its vile smell.

‘It wasn’t the noise, stupid,’ said Flora. ‘Ellen says they’re worried the girls will be swept off their feet.’ With a grimace, she stirred the slop with a spoon: hounds liked it.

‘Pass me the bowls, Miss Flora.’

Inside their casing of corduroy, Danny’s legs resembled sticks, and the freckles on his face and arms appeared etched onto his pale skin. Danny was a neatly made, wiry man, normally quite healthy-looking and quick of movement. But today he was slow and lethargic and Flora sighed at the whisky signs. She took a deep breath.

‘Danny. Why don’t you go and visit Father? He’d like it. He asks for you all the time and you’ve only been once since the accident.’

Danny shovelled out the last of the meat and slapped down the bowls. A tan and white tank division promptly launched itself towards them and they retreated. Flora let herself out of the pen and waited while Danny fastened the gate.

‘Won’t you?’ she persisted.

‘See ‘ere.’ Danny dropped the keys into his pocket. ‘Your pa doesn’t need me in the sick room. Anyway, that woman stands there checking every breath I take. I don’t ‘appen to like it, that’s all.’ Danny’s jaw assumed a gin-trap look, which it did at times.

‘Robbie’s not that bad.’

Danny opened the gin-trap and released the information, ‘She wants ‘im.’

Flora was not sure she had heard correctly. ‘What a funny thing to say, Danny. What do you mean?’

‘She wants ‘im,’ he repeated, the Cockney exaggerated.

Shocked by what she thought he meant, Flora pushed open the gate into the cottage garden. Danny was implying that Robbie wanted her father like a woman wanted a man... like she wanted Robin. The idea of her sick father as such a target left Flora speechless. Perhaps if she said nothing further the subject would drop. But Danny’s hangover was bad this morning and it pricked him into telling a few home truths.

‘Listen, Miss Flora. ‘As no one ever told you it goes on all the time?
She
,’ he emphasized the word in a flat, unfriendly way, ‘is entitled to the same wantings as you or me.’

What are your wantings, Danny? she asked herself. And the memory of him naked flashed through her mind.

It had been a revealing speech for Danny, given matter-of-factly and without embarrassment, and it left Flora bewildered. She also felt betrayed. It had never occurred to her that Robbie might put anyone other than her charges first in her affections.

‘Why?’ she asked faintly. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’

‘You’re a big girl now, Miss Flora.’

Out of her depth, she said uneasily, ‘Even if it’s true, what difference does it make to you, Danny?’

Danny’s bloodshot eyes narrowed. ‘She won’t want me there with your father,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t like it and it makes me fidget. Anyway, I don’t belong in the ‘ouse, so I’d rather stay ‘ere with the family.’

‘Ye gods.’ Because she was at a disadvantage, Flora felt rather irritated. Even so, her loyalty to Danny was deep-rooted. ‘Listen, I can make sure that Robbie is out of the way, if that’s what you want.’

Danny watched the whirlpool of tails, claws and tongues inside the cage with professional detachment and a hint – just a hint — of softening. Flora tried again.

‘You’d be doing me a favour, Danny.’

‘Bugger off, Jupiter.’ Danny always pitched his voice a shade higher when talking to the hounds. ‘Let Juno ‘ave some.’ Flora tapped his shoulder lightly. Danny shrugged, but she knew he was not displeased.

Flora raised her voice above the din. ‘Think about it, Danny. Please. You’d do him so much good. I know he gets bored and Robbie does drive him mad. So do his other visitors. You know, the family and neighbours.’

Danny cleared his throat and spat phlegm into the yard. Flora made a hasty detour. He unfastened the back door to his cottage. ‘Don’t you worry, Miss Flora. Your pa will do. So will I. You must learn to let alone. ‘E knows I’ll come when ‘e needs me. Now that’s a promise.’

‘Oh, Danny. You’re infuriating.’ Flora picked up her bicycle and threaded her leg through the frame. ‘I’ll get rid of Robbie. Promise.’

From habit, she looked back over her shoulder when she reached the end of the track. Danny was leaning against the pen smoking, a thin blue trail wreathing above his head.

Flora cycled through the Borough and along Dippenhall Street towards Turnpike Lane. It was watercress time again. Fed by a pipe from the river Hart, the bed had been cleared out after the spring crop and replanted. Tilly Prosser and Ellen’s friend, Madge, were packing dripping bundles into baskets. A couple of harnessed pony carts were waiting on the grass verge to take the cress down to Aldershot and North Camp.

‘Morning, Miss Flora.’ Tilly held up a pair of wet hands, and scratched at the bites on her fingers.

‘Hallo, Tilly.’ Flora spotted a small figure over by the ponies. ‘Hallo, Simon.’ Dirtier and more hopeless-looking than usual, Simon was crooning a monotonous song to the ponies. He turned his blank gaze on Flora. ‘How are you, Simon?’

‘Not very talkative today.’ Madge looked up from her work. ‘His mum went on a blinder up at the Horns last night.’ She plunged her hands into the bed to cut another bunch. ‘Wish I had.’

‘I’ll take six, please.’ Flora helped herself to a sheet of newspaper and lined her bicycle basket. ‘Mrs Dawes wants to make soup.’ She slapped at a gnat that had landed on her cheek and counted out the money. Tilly tossed the coins into an open tin on the wall.

‘Waste of good watercress, Miss Flora,’ said Madge. ‘Soup.’

The fresh, peppery smell of the cress made Flora’s nose tingle. Rogue drops of water splashed onto her knees. On the way back, she cycled past the church with its distinctive avenue of limes: up that avenue sometimes rode the ghost soldier of Nether Hinton. Mrs Dawes had seen him as a girl, a Parliamentarian doomed to endless, unresting re-enactment as he fled from battle through the wall of the church in a flurry of leather and jingling spurs. As a child the story had made the hairs rise on the back of her neck.

Then it was down Church Lane towards the Dysart path. The threshing machines were busy up in the fields – they were threshing early, Kit said, because no one could afford to wait for better prices in the autumn. Sam Prosser and his team were up there, silhouetted against a clump of elms. Flora rang her bicycle bell and Sam gave a thumbs-up.

Soon the hop-pickers would be here from the East End, bringing their noise, their unfamiliar Cockney and their dozens of grimy children. The Hall family had been coming for generations, and Flora wondered if old Ma Hall would make it this year. She’d sworn she would, but who knew?

She cycled across the river by the bridge and over the lawn, leaving wet tyremarks in the grass. Matty was on the terrace talking to Ned and Kit appeared round the side of the house in boots and breeches.

‘Can you wait for me?’ she called. ‘Fifteen minutes?’

Kit lifted his whip in reply. ‘I’ll be in the Exchequer.’

Only then did Flora permit herself to look at the drive. Robin’s car was parked by the stables and he was scrambling out of the awkwardly tilted driver’s seat. Flora let out a sigh, braked and the bike slowed to a wobble while she watched. Robin had a habit of pulling down the back of his jacket and patting his pocket cuffs, which, for some reason, she liked. Sure enough, he patted them and Flora found herself grinning like Alice’s Cheshire cat.

During those rides up on Horsedown and Caesar’s Camp, a sickness had infected Flora. The symptoms were gradual: a wish to be with Robin; a greed to watch him. With an onrush of fever she had succumbed. To what?

One day she had woken up and realized that the old Flora had been cast off and, newly tender, newly awake, she had stepped out of childhood. When she reflected on the change, she supposed it began in France and continued in Miss Glossop’s tea-less lodgings. There — or in the ladies’ powder room watching Matty pull herself together while her husband danced with another woman in the ballroom.

The bicycle scrunched on the gravel, Robin turned and she skidded to a halt by the wall.

‘Flora.’ She was still grinning when he joined her and she held out her hand to say hallo. Above them, on the first-floor landing, a curtain twitched back and Robbie looked down on the scene.

‘I like you like this.’ Robin rubbed Flora’s hand, which was flecked with watercress and rubber from the perished handlebars. ‘All tousled and warm.’

‘Drat. That must mean my hair’s terrible.’ Flora attempted to run her hands through it and then recollected how filthy they were.

‘I was paying you a compliment,’ said Robin.

Feeling odd, shivery, and curiously breathless, Flora extracted the cress from her bicycle basket. ‘Mrs Dawes wants this as soon as possible.’

‘Flora.’ Robin repossessed her hand. ‘I want a serious talk with you.’

She moved towards him and their shoulders brushed. For an instant before he stepped away she felt his imprint on her. Upstairs, the curtain at the window dropped.

‘What about?’ Flora thought she knew perfectly well. The eagerness of two seconds ago was replaced by dread that things were going to have to be resolved and, all of a sudden, she was not sure... ‘I was going riding, can it wait?’

Robin paid no attention to her hesitation. ‘I’ve got to do a post-hospital check on Mrs Sheppey after visiting your father. I thought you might like to walk up to Clifton Cottage with me. Please.’

Flora’s heart began to behave in an extraordinary manner, bumping about in her chest.

‘Well?’ Robin took his black bag out of the car. ‘Yes or no?’

Flora looked up at the landing window. ‘I think Robbie’s been watching us,’ she said.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Robin followed her gaze. ‘She’s probably waiting for me – I’m a bit late.’

‘She’s seen us talking.’

‘Well, of course she’s seen us. We’re standing here in full daylight.’

Flora did not answer, but began to walk towards the house. Robin followed her and, as they went through the front door, said, ‘I’ll expect you later.’

He left Flora to drip watercress water over the Persian rug.

Matty waylaid Robin at the top of the stairs. ‘If you have five minutes...’ she asked, and led him into her private drawing room. The Valadon blazed at him from above the fireplace and Robin halted in his tracks.

‘How extraordinary,’ he said, not sure whether he liked it.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Matty seemed pleased that he had noticed.

The room surprised Robin: he would have expected chintz and ruffles and knick-knacks but instead, it was full of cool touches, creamy white and primrose yellow. The chairs were upholstered in Puritan calico, their only concession to frivolity the antique braid with which they were piped, and the cushions looked as if they were made from antique tapestries. (Robin was correct: Matty had taken pains to search out tapestries that were past repair.)

‘How can I help you?’ he asked, and forgot about the room, for Matty’s face, which had been rounding up nicely, wore its old pinched look and a haunted expression in the brown eyes. Disappointment? Anger? Not getting on with her husband? Robin ran over various permutations.

In one hand Matty clutched her handkerchief which she rolled between thumb and finger, pinching out the lace border between alarmingly cracked fingers.