Consider the Lily (48 page)

Ellen roused herself and called, ‘Keep your backside out of the target area.’

‘You take it easy, girl.’

Ned picked up a bundle of old newspapers, checked his handkerchief was in his pocket and went down the garden path.

It was still fairly dark, but light from over Jackall’s Hill way traced a pattern in the sky to the east. He was going over to Redfields to work as a ‘stop’ on the shoots, and by the end of the day six extra shillings would fill up the Coronation tin on the mantelpiece.

The trick was to prevent the birds breaking out of the wood and running across the fields, especially as the Redfields’ shoot bordered directly onto the Eastbridges’. And vice versa. Like anyone else in Nether Hinton, Ned had learnt with his mother’s milk that shooting your neighbour’s birds ranked with murder.

Across the ploughed field a winter dawn hung over the elms. The light was pearly, the air damp and fresh and the trees wrapped in mist. Ned liked this sort of day. Beautiful, but no nonsense about it.

‘Mornin'.’ Joe Fisher, the ratcatcher, out with his dog, ferret and gun, raised a finger to Ned. Winter was falling, the rats were sneaking back into barns and Joe was busy.

‘Mornin’, Joe.’

At nine thirty the guns, mostly elderly gentlemen, twelve beaters and Ned, straggled out from the grounds of the big house and across the fields. Wet earth sucked at boots and splattered gaiters, slowing their pace. The world smelt cold, and wet cobwebs glinted between branches lit by a weak sun.

At the edge of Falkner’s Copse, the head keeper handed out cartridge bags to those boys chosen to earn the extra sixpence, and the beaters fanned out into their positions behind the guns.

‘Rattle yer sticks,’ ordered the keeper.

‘Hey, hey, hey...’

A drumbeat sounded against the tree trunks and with a flurry and a beating of wings, three pheasants rose into the air.

‘Hey, hey, hey...’ sounded the beaters.

‘Forward left,’ sang out Ned, as a fourth pheasant struggled into the sky.

‘Hey, hey, hey...’

Two guns cracked in unison and a pheasant swooped in a dying arc to the earth. It fell at Ned’s feet, a red-brown bundle, streaked with scarlet, one eye fixed on Ned in an accusatory glare. Noses down, the spaniels wheeled in and crashed up towards him.

‘Go and find the others,’ he said, picked up the bundle and, for the first time in his life, felt a distaste for the killing. It reminded him of Ellen, somehow. The scar on her leg under her lisle stocking. The way in which her eyes had followed him around the room at Clifton Cottage this morning, begging him for reassurance. Ned stuffed the bird into the bag.

At lunch-time the keeper called a halt near the house. Ned and the beaters ate their sandwiches in the shed, and drank Blane’s ginger beer and beer from the barrel. The shed smelt of sawdust and wet corduroy, and the dogs lay in untidy muddy heaps on the floor. Mr Brandon had arranged to send out Blue Prior cigarettes, and the men smoked and exchanged gossip about the coming general election, the row over the council houses in the Croft and the whist drive to be held in the church rooms. Ned drank his beer, forgot about Ellen, and enjoyed himself.

Flora heard the guns as she walked down Hyde Lane, past the Turnpike towards the Horns Pub (best beer in the village, Danny told her). But before she reached it she turned right into Bowling Alley and up towards Pankridge Street. Minerva pattered around her heels.

Flora hoped that long rides, long walks, long everything, would tire her out. They did not. She was sleeping badly, thinking badly and – the only advantage in the mess of her love affair — eating badly.

To her right, fronted by trees and a field which proclaimed its status, was Eastbridge House. Further on, the street showed less respect for the buildings and ran close to the walls of the cottages. Flora stopped to look back at the big house. Then she transferred her gaze to Vine Cottage opposite, flanked by dahlias and a rough stone path. Plaster peeled away from an eave in the front, there was a damp patch on the side wall and weed was growing high up by the lead guttering.

Flora stared at the weed, the contrast between Eastbridge – or Hinton Dysart – and Vine Cottage very sharp in her mind.

The plain fact was, whether she wanted it or not, Robin was back in her life. He had returned, not with a whirl of sword and a clatter of a destrier, but in a Ford motor car wielding a rubber tube to stick down Matty’s throat. If Flora had ever imagined that her capitulation to love would be romantic, her witnessing of Matty’s battle with river water in her lungs, the appalling vividness of vomit and choked airways, rid her of that notion.

That battle for life had been real, conducted in a bedroom with the smell of disinfectant rising over that of stagnant water, as romantic dreams were never real. The sounds of Matty being dragged back from death – the pitiful crying through the bruised throat. Horrified, Flora saw that this was real life. Hard. Difficult to take in. She had wanted to run away. Throughout, Robin had been there, in charge, gentle, and concentrated. He had anchored her.

Intent on a smell, Minerva cut in front of Flora and she was brought to a halt. ‘Careful, old girl.’

Not that Robin had specially acknowledged Flora, or made any move to speak to her other than when it was necessary.

It seemed a lifetime ago since she had stood in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace in a roll of drums, dipped and swayed to Their Majesties, felt ostrich feathers trail over her face, drunk iced coffee from ‘G.R.IV’ porcelain and eaten savouries off
Honi Soit Qui Mai Y Pense
plates. Far longer than the pile of torn-off days from her calendar suggested... a decade since she danced with Marcus in a green gown at Londonderry House and felt thorns of excitement and desire press into her flesh.

A childhood ago. If she was truthful, Flora had arrived at a point where a weed growing in a cottage’s gutter indicated the choices more accurately than any green silk gown.

Flora looked down at her muddy shoes and tweed skirt.

The crack-crack of guns and beaters’ cries sounded faintly from the valley. At the bottom of Redlands Lane the sun shone directly into the windows of the basket factory and licked them into gold. The rays lay across the piles of baskets stacked by the entrance and over the roof of the Wesleyan chapel further down the road.

On the spur of the moment, she decided to visit Ellen who, according to Robbie, had not been in to work this week.

At Clifton Cottage a faint ‘Who is it?’ answered Flora’s knock. Flora left Minerva whimpering on the step and went inside.

‘It’s me Ellen, Flora Dysart,’ she called up the stairs. ‘I’ve come to see how you are.’

Dust lay over Ellen’s furniture, which surprised Flora for she knew disorder would grieve Ellen more than anything. Ned’s breakfast things were still on the table, and the stove was almost cold. Puzzled, Flora set her hand on the post at the foot of the stairs and took the first step.

The bedroom was tiny. Ellen was sitting in a chair by the window watching the dying light. She looked awful with yellowish, fatigued skin and eyes burning with fever. The chatter that Flora had planned, the message from the healthy to the getting-better, died on her lips.

Clearly, Ellen was very ill. The unwashed smell of her was enough to warn Flora. She bent over, took one of Ellen’s hands in her own and felt a twist of panic.

‘Hallo, Ellen.’

With an effort, Ellen returned from the place where she and Bill were walking up Redlands Lane to inspect the newly dug practice trenches. Every so often, Bill stooped to pick up a discarded sardine tin or an empty cartridge. Betty was there too, young and bright-haired and full of talk about her new life in Winchester.

This was no source of shame for Ellen, for she had nothing to be ashamed of. There was no worry either because she knew it was possible to love both her men. There was no grief, because she had done with that a long time ago. Ellen watched as Bill and his men marched off down the lane, the sun shining into their faces, mess tins clattering in time to their boots.

Someone was talking to her. ‘Ellen. Are you all right? How long have you been like this? Has Ned asked Dr Lofts to come and see you?’ Someone was stroking her hand. She made a huge effort to focus.

‘Miss Flora.’

‘How long have you been ill, Ellen?’

‘Three days,’ she said, confused. ‘Four. I fell on the knee, you know, and cut it open. On the scar. ‘Bout a week ago. It’s made me feel odd.’

The curtains at the window blew in with the breeze, and Flora got up to fasten the latch. Ellen’s eyes followed her.

‘I don’t like you to see the room like this. You must excuse me.’ Ellen struggled to explain. ‘Ned always did like living in a pig’s ear.’

‘It doesn’t matter at all.’

Ellen looked at Flora. ‘It matters to me, Miss Flora.’

‘Would you like me to tidy it?’

‘Certainly not.’ Shades of the old, tart Ellen resurrected smartly.

‘Have you eaten anything today?’

‘I can’t say I have, Miss Flora. I couldn’t get up this morning as I thought I would, and I told myself to sit here until I felt more like myself.’

‘Let’s see if you can manage some soup.’

Flora leant over to rescue the cushion behind Ellen’s back, and nudged her leg. Ellen groaned. ‘Careful, miss.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Flora backed away, and to over-compensate for her clumsiness rather bossily straightened the wool patchwork blanket on the bed.

Ellen watched her efforts. ‘You’ve missed a corner, Miss Flora.’ Flora plumped up the pillows. ‘Miss Flora,’ said Ellen, ‘please don’t. I don’t think I can bear watching you making another pig’s ear. If you don’t mind me saying so.’ Then she went silent.

Flora felt even more inadequate. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Is Dr Lofts coming to see you?’

Ellen muttered something about the extra expense, but Ned had promised to drop in at the surgery.

‘Ellen, what did they say about your knee at the hospital? Did they manage to get rid of the problem?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Flora was more successful in imposing order downstairs. It was a simple matter to stoke up the stove, to run a duster over the sideboard and to clear the table and boil the water. Then she set about chopping an onion and a carrot which she discovered in the scullery.

She took the soup up in one of Ellen’s prized china bowls with unnatural pink rosebuds all over it and sat down on the bed beside Ellen’s chair. She dipped the spoon into the bowl.

‘Can you swallow, Ellen?’

Ellen sighed and Flora saw her mask slip. The older woman’s bottom lip trembled. ‘What’s the point, Miss Flora? I say, the quicker my carcass is on the heap, the quicker it’s over.’

‘You’re only saying that because you don’t feel well.’

‘Yes,’ said Ellen. ‘It’s only a touch of that nasty flu.’

Between them, they struggled to get a few spoonfuls down Ellen. A trickle ran down the side of her mouth and Flora dabbed it away. Once Ellen retched it all back, and they had to start again.

After a while, she lay back against the cushion and closed her eyes. ‘I don’t fancy much,’ she said.

Since it was cruel to continue, Flora put down the spoon.

Ellen opened her eyes and looked directly at Flora. Thoughts of death floated through her head, and she grabbed at the one that bothered her most. ‘You mustn’t worry,’ she said, interpreting the expression on the girl’s face. ‘I don’t mind if I have to go.’ Then Ellen paused, and rethought what she had said. ‘That’s not quite true. I don’t want to leave the party, but if I have to, I’m going to do it well.’ She paused again and opened her eyes wide. ‘That’s the twisting bit.’

Flora told her not to talk if it was difficult, but other thoughts were processing through Ellen’s tired mind. ‘Ned will never manage on his own, you know,’ she said. ‘He looks the kind of person who’ll cope, but he won’t. I’ll have to find him a floozy before I cock my toes up.’

There were many platitudes Flora could have trotted out, but Robin and she had often talked about patient care. ‘Ellen,’ she said. ‘You are
not
going to die.’

Ellen smiled properly this time. ‘An old goat is Ned,’ she said. ‘Stubborn old goat in thick boots.’

‘Could your daughter come home to help nurse you?’

‘Perhaps. For a little.’ Ellen seemed to tire of the subject.

The room grew dark. Ellen dozed and Flora sat on the bed and watched her, listening to Minerva whimpering downstairs. Ellen stirred in the chair.

‘I’m frightened,’ she said, and Flora was not sure whether Ellen knew if she was still in the room or not. Then Ellen’s eyelids flicked open and for a scalding second Flora gazed into terror that she had not imagined possible.

‘Why’s it gone wrong, Miss Flora?’

She sat and stroked Ellen’s hand.

Flora heard the Ford nose along the track, and, heart thumping, ran downstairs.

Robin started when he saw her standing at the kitchen door but did not comment on her presence.

‘Robin, Ellen’s not at all well.’ Flora rushed over the words. ‘I didn’t realize how bad she was, and I think someone should be with her.’

He dumped his bag on the table and avoided the blue Dysart gaze. It had been a long day with a stroke, a broken leg and a nasty cut, and he still had to get through evening surgery before his supper. He did not suppose his lacklustre mood would last for ever, but these days he felt as though chips were being knocked off his optimism and he resented the change and missed feeling well and good-humoured.

He missed, also, untamed flaxen hair, plump hips, a straightforward mind and a friendship. Very much.

‘Can we talk afterwards?’ Flora asked, doing things to the saucepan on the hob.

‘If you like,’ he said indifferently, for he did not imagine anything was going to change. ‘But I warn you, I am in no mood to play games. I’ve accepted the situation as regards you, me and your father. I don’t want to go through it all again.’

The idea that Robin was getting over her was enough to frighten Flora silly. In that split second she was spurred into frantic action.

‘Please, Robin,’ she said. ‘I’m not playing games.’