Songs of Spring (21 page)

She licked dry lips. ‘
What
news?’ She tried to dismiss a hope that she didn’t want Yves back, that she had found someone else to love, and even a sneaking, debasing hope that she was dead.

‘Nothing much. I think that’s what has upset him. He may have been hoping for a miracle. Life isn’t that obliging,’ Luke said wryly. ‘He’s discovered through
La Dame Blanche that she’s still in their home, that she fiercely resisted billeting German officers, because she was determined to keep the estate for Yves. She’s remained close to Yves’ family. He has a nephew apparently of whom he’s very fond. Did you know that?’

‘No.’ Caroline’s voice jerked out its pain.

‘I’m sorry, Caroline. In my experience it’s better to know the truth.’

‘Is it?’ Just at the moment that seemed hard to believe.

It was difficult to appreciate when you were just one aircraft in the sky, George reflected, just what was being achieved, if anything. One counted the enemy planes the squadron had scored, one did one’s best to add to it, but how far this was helping win the war was impossible to tell. The amount of bombs they were dropping must be achieving something, though. And then there were all the daytime offensive patrols. And, by jingo, they
were
offensive! Two days after Amiens, Captain Burden had run into a bunch of enemy aircraft and shot down two of them. Not content with that, he had a go at a second group, and shot down another one. Then in the evening he was up again and brought down two more. Then the other day Captain Halleran had dived between two Hannoveraners, with the happy intended result that they collided with each other in their eagerness to attack him, and crashed.

Sometimes it went like that; on the other hand, sometimes you spent the whole day on patrol and saw nothing, or if you did, you shot down nothing. At the moment, however, it didn’t seem to matter
who
shot them down, just that they
were
shot down. There was, he felt, a change in the air, a growing conviction that at long last they were getting there, that the achievements outweighed the waste of absent faces in the mess.

George was happy, for he had had a letter from Florence. She had told him she loved him, that yes, she would marry him. He would have to ask Father, he supposed, since he was still under twenty-one, but nothing could touch him now. He was Hun-proof.

Something was going on. Normally Margaret wasn’t that curious as to what went on in the Rectory, knowing it would reach her ears sooner or later, but today she was riveted by the strange events. The first odd thing was that Lady Hunney came a-calling on the Rector, after Rector’s Hour. Normally the Rector would have gone to Lady Hunney. The second, even odder occurrence, was that Frank was with Lady Hunney, and moreover the Rector seemed to be expecting them both.

Margaret was agog with curiosity, and walked past the study door as often as she dared. Agnes took them in some coffee and came back to report they seemed to be talking about Bankside. She didn’t hear anything about agricultural rotas at all, so that was Margaret’s first thought dismissed. So it must be something about the cinema, she decided. Perhaps Frank was saying it should be closed down. Or, more likely, Swinford-Browne was wanting to close it down, and Frank and Lady Hunney were asking the Rector to intervene. The mystery was solved, she decided, and wished them well, for although she had to admit she
wasn’t in favour of the cinema when it first opened, she had felt she had a proprietorial interest in it since Mrs Isabel died. Besides, the cinema provided a nice evening out for her and Percy, there was no denying that. It wasn’t all war propaganda films and heroic tales. There was Charlie Chaplin – not to mention Mary Pickford.

Lady Hunney didn’t stay as long as Frank. She left in the old carriage she used nowadays, for it was unpatriotic to use fuel for private motoring. Percy reported that Lady Buckford had joined her, and off they both went all pally and friendly just as if they hadn’t been at each other’s throats when Lady B first came to the village.

Quite by chance – and it
was
chance – Margaret was in the entrance hall when Frank came out of the study, followed by the Rector. She was horrified to see it looked as if the Rector had been crying, and she looked hastily away.

‘I was coming to see you, Mrs Dibble,’ Frank said formally. ‘Can you spare a moment?’

It seemed silly to call Frank sir, although he was calling on the Rector, so Margaret replied, ‘I’ll make a nice cup of tea.’

Frank was grinning broadly by the time he reached her kitchen. ‘You got your way then?’ she asked. ‘No shilly-shallying?’

‘No. The Rector’s delighted.’

‘He wasn’t that keen on it when it first opened.’

Frank looked blank. ‘Keen on what?’

‘The cinema.’

He burst out laughing.

‘And what’s so funny, might I ask?’ Margaret asked belligerently, hands on hips.

‘You, Ma Dibble. Not often you get fooled as to what’s going on.’

She drew herself upright, about to point out that she wasn’t Ma Dibble to him, thank you very much, but thought better of it. She was too curious now. ‘If it wasn’t the cinema you were discussing, what was it?’

‘Lady Hunney, instead of rebuilding the cottages on Bankside, is going to give the land to the parish as a memorial to Mrs Isabel. She was here to ask permission to call it “Isabel’s Garden”.’

Margaret sat down heavily, in even more need of her cup of tea. ‘Oh, what a lovely idea of hers.’

Frank patted her shoulder anxiously when she began to sniffle. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Margaret blew her nose on the inadequate handkerchief, one Lizzie had sewn for her when she was a little girl, and now washed and ironed until all the colour had gone over the years.

‘It will have to be vegetables, not flowers, until the war’s over,’ he continued, ‘but I thought we might plant one rose now, just to remember her by.’

‘You? What have
you
got to do with it?’ Margaret asked rather rudely. When he said nothing, she realised exactly what Frank had had to do with it. ‘It was your idea, wasn’t it?’

‘Perhaps, but someone would have thought of it. Lady Hunney herself probably, since she was looking for something to do in the way of a memorial to Isabel.’

‘Isabel?’ Margaret repeated sharply. Why did Frank call her that quite naturally? It wasn’t his place. Then as he went slightly pink, she decided not to enquire further.
Whatever was the reason, it was past, and buried with poor Mrs Isabel.

Frank didn’t answer her – or so she thought. After he had gone, however, and she thought about what he had said, she decided he had replied after all. All he had murmured to himself as he left was: ‘Just one rose for Isabel.’

‘Look!’ Caroline stopped short.

Yves’ long stride had already carried him several yards ahead, and he returned to her side anxiously.

‘The leaves are beginning to turn
already
,’ she said dismally. ‘September has hardly begun, and look, there’s even some fallen.’

She shivered despite the sun, for it seemed to her symbolic of what lay ahead. Here they were, in St James’s Park, still full of late afternoon beauty, despite the hideous scar in its middle, and she was meditating on death and decay.

‘Why does it matter?’

‘It means autumn is on the way – and General Winter.’

‘It was General Winter defeated Napoleon in Russia. Perhaps it will do the same for the Kaiser.’ When she did not comment, he continued: ‘I’m sorry,
cara
. I realise it is not the war that you see in these dead leaves. It is me. You think of our love in that way?’ He took her hand.

‘Not you, but your leaving.’ Her voice was unsteady.

‘That is good, for you must surely know’ – he stopped and took her in his arms – ‘our love will never be a falling leaf. It will be evergreen.’

She could not help herself. ‘You know that is not so,’ she burst out sadly. ‘It will grow less and less as the years
go on, and finally shrivel until you and I are just embalmed as photographs, to be framed as part of each other’s past. Though I don’t suppose your wife—’

He put his finger across her lips. ‘No,
cara
, I do
not
know that, and nor can you. I do believe the pain will grow more bearable, but that is all. For you one day it can be laid gently aside as a new love replaces it.’

‘You
cannot
really believe that, Yves.’ Did he know her so little?

‘I believe that life is practical. That where it cannot conquer, it seeks an armistice.’

‘So that is the way it will be for you? You will lay me aside and remember only your love for your wife?’

‘I do not love her. I respect her, I like her, we are companions, and that is all. But I do not believe you are
listening
to me. When I say my love will never die, I mean only that, with none of the interpretations forced on you by doubts and sadness. This has been a year of happiness I could never have
dreamt
of, and such love does not die. Like these trees of yours, it is still there despite the outward signs of winter. The trunk and branches do not perish. Only the leaves must renew themselves.’

‘Hold me close, Yves. Convince me that what you say is true.’

In uniform and surrounded by other embracing couples, they seemed just two more sweethearts thrown together by war, and about to be swept away from each other, like flotsam and jetsam.

‘And now,’ he whispered, as his lips left hers, ‘I must tell you something that will make you sad,
cara
.’

‘You’re going
now
?’

‘Very soon.’

‘The offensive?’

‘This month. But I will return. Death will not take me.’

‘You mean you’ll be
fighting
, not just on liaison work?’ A new terror gripped her.

‘There was a time when to do that seemed the obvious end to my dilemma.’

‘No!’ she cried, appalled. ‘Please, don’t
fight
!’

‘I must.’

‘Then do not be rash. Don’t
seek
death. Please.’

‘Even though the alternative is that I shall then return to my wife?’

‘Even that.’

‘Then you are even more loving and generous than I thought. What gives you the strength, Caroline, when I cannot always find it? Is it Isabel’s death? Do you feel you should battle on to compensate for the life she has lost?’

‘No.’ She saw he needed a serious answer. She did have strength, and it would remain with her even in her greatest agonies. In the last year or two, with Yves to love, she had almost forgotten from where it came. It came from the Rectory.

‘Porridge?’ Agnes wrinkled her nose up when she saw what Myrtle provided for their breakfast.

‘It’s only September, Myrtle.’

‘Don’t you blame her, Agnes.’ Margaret bustled into the kitchen. ‘It’s my instructions. The newspapers say we’ve got to eat plenty of porridge to keep away the Spanish flu.’

‘We don’t have to worry out here in the country, surely,’
Agnes remonstrated. She hated porridge. ‘It’s towns and places that have a lot of people sandwiched together that catch it.’

‘Mrs Thorn, do I have to remind you you have two young children? Do you want to come marching home from the Wells and pass it on to them?’

Agnes paled. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

Margaret rubbed in her triumph. ‘And if I were you, I’d do everything else the paper suggests; make sure you sneeze night and morning, and follow it up with deep breaths, and wash inside your nose with soap and water. I’ll be making the household some of those anti-germ masks too.’

Then she relented. ‘It’s only a precaution, Agnes, but with winter coming on this nasty flu is bound to spread, and it’s as well to be prepared.’

‘Flu?’ Frank came into the kitchen from the Rectory with a face like thunder. ‘Don’t mention that word to me.’

‘Are you here to see Rector about the garden again?’ Margaret was puzzled, for she thought everything was settled.

‘No,’ Frank snarled. ‘The cinema. I came to tell him that Swinford-Browne has seized his opportunity. He’s closing it down because of the risk of flu.’

She was in a boat, an upturned one, she was sinking. Caroline’s eyes flew open to find Luke bending over her, shaking her awake.

‘What is it?’ She shot up in bed. ‘Bad news? Yves?’ Yves had left two weeks ago and she had heard nothing since.

‘No. And not the Rectory either. It’s good news, Caroline.
The new British assault has begun. Plumer has attacked the Passchendaele Ridge. Bulgaria has asked for an armistice. Oh, it’s all happening.’ Luke was excited, stars in his eyes. ‘Go to see Felicia immediately and tie her down. I don’t want her rushing back to Ypres again. The Belgian army is in action—’

‘But the German reinforcements on the way from the east—’ It was almost the end of September and she had almost begun to think Yves had been wrong about the timing.

‘Diverted to defend Serbia.’ Luke perched happily on the side of the bed. ‘This isn’t perhaps the most proper place to discuss business, but the Germans are on the run now. They’re on the losing side and they know it. Ludendorff is running around like a cat with ten tails. This time it’s a fight to the finish. It’s not going to peter out.’

‘How can you be sure?’ There had been so many false hopes. Ypres had been fought over continuously since the autumn of 1914. There had been three exhausting battles there already, and even though the salient had never entirely been lost, it was still possible, for the Germans would know that this could be their last chance.

‘My guess is Haig’s plan is to drive the Germans back, push round on the coast and free Bruges and eventually Brussels. What are the odds that Yves is in the thick of it?’

She felt sick with terror, just as she had been when Reggie had departed. This was worse for in 1914 they hadn’t known what it was like out there. Now everyone knew just what fighting on the Western Front was like, and
Luke was happily chatting about Yves being part of it.

‘Please, God,’ she prayed, ‘return him safe to me.’ Even though when he did, he would have to leave again, and this time for ever.