The House of Flowers

by Charlotte Bingham

  Once they’d made sure the blackout blinds and curtains were in place, Helen and Kate shut themselves in the kitchen, Helen helping them both to a generous glass of sherry from the bottle left over from Christmas before they sat down and talked through the best way to cope with the current crisis.

  There was another alternative open to Helen, one which came more and more to mind as she and Kate talked together in the kitchen, one that she later considered as she got herself ready for bed, waiting for Kate – who was spending the night – to finish in the bathroom. It was an idea that still greatly attracted her. She had been reminded of it when Kate had begun to talk a little more frankly about Eugene Hackett with whom she was plainly infatuated, and she had been reminded of it not because of some past love, but because of what she knew all too well about affairs such as that between Kate and Eugene.

  She felt she knew the kind of person he might be because of the sort of work she guessed he must be doing: work that meant that Mr Eugene Hackett, if caught, could never be a prisoner of war. There was never any mercy shown to people like Eugene Hackett. Their work was so vital and so secret that all too often even their masters disowned them. Helen knew all this because she had once worked for the same sort of person as Eugene Hackett, someone who had been involved in the same kind of difficult and dangerous work.

  Helen had known Jack Ward for some years, a man known affectionately by his agents as ‘the Colonel’ in deference to the fact that he often said if bad sight had not prevented him, he would have liked to be a colonel in charge of a small country regiment. Of course Helen had only been a small cog in Jack Ward’s machine, one of many supposedly ordinary men and women whom Jack had recruited for security work in civilian life. Her task, like the others’, had been to look out for small things that would lead someone like Jack Ward on to uncover greater matters.

  Taking note is the way Jack Ward described it. Sitting up and taking note. He was always on the lookout for people suitable to his requirements, people who lived modestly in small societies, who led the sort of existence that would not attract any undue attention. Extrovert people leading extraordinary lives were of no use to him; he wanted background people, people who felt intense loyalty to crown and country, people who were not only prepared but particularly keen to keep an eye out for anyone who showed signs of being sympathetic to Fascism, from workers on the factory floor, and those selling certain newspapers, to local gentry who considered Adolf Hitler to be a good sort, and basically one of them. Anti-Semites, republicans, Marxists, Brownshirts, Jack’s little army of ordinary people were able and willing to watch out for them all – arrogant bigots who despised anyone who did not share their blinkered view of life, whose very intolerance was the perfect seedbed for Fascism.

  Helen had been only too happy to keep a weather eye out for people such as these, if only because it gave her back a sense of self-worth. Her battered domestic pride was partially restored by knowing that her part-time occupation was more than just that; it was a small, secret defence against what she thought of as insidious evil, against those who sought to bring down democracy. It wasn’t necessarily a very pleasant job, but it was one she had come to understand was vital if Britain was not going to succumb to its own Third Reich.

  Her greatest success was to help give a lead to an investigation that finally led to the uncovering of a so-called exchange group who were in fact undercover agents for a European Fascist organisation, a body of seemingly respectable people who were meant to be spending their time in England learning English, but were in fact noting military installations, factories employed in arms production, and the addresses of leading political or liberal, social and even theatrical personalities, individuals whose names were all destined for the extermination lists that, even then, were being compiled by Hitler in preparation for his anticipated invasion of England.

  Whenever Helen had needed to meet Jack to pass on information he would invariably suggest a cinema, for the very good reason that they both knew that Helen’s husband Harold actively disliked going to the films. Jack Ward couldn’t go enough. He took fan magazines on a regular basis, and kept a proud tally of the number of times he had seen his favourite films, which meant that he was only too glad to keep his rendezvous with Helen Maddox in some local Arcade or Odeon. His pre-war habit was to buy an abundance of chocolate and start the evening by taking Helen off for a quiet drink in an unpopular public house for what he would call a bit of a pow-wow.

  ‘Good stuff, kid,’ he would say gruffly, however seemingly trivial the piece of information Helen had brought him. ‘That’s the ticket.’ Helen loved his droll way of using movie language, knowing that his speech patterns quite wittingly echoed the last movie he had seen.

  Once war had broken out, Helen’s undercover work had become necessarily more hazardous, particularly since several of the people she had been able to name as suspects had been arrested, a success which could have marked her, the common factor, out as a suspect to the other side. This meant that she had to keep more distance between Jack Ward and herself, meeting him much less frequently, always after dark, and never in the same place twice. With the amount of time and money at her disposal, even though she was given a small financial reward for her work, it very soon became all but impossible to meet the Colonel at all as they soon ran out of places that were both safe and convenient for both of them – Helen could hardly risk travelling the sorts of distances that might arouse her husband’s suspicions, however much enthusiasm she showed for going to the cinema.

  Finally Jack Ward had been forced to put Helen on the sidelines indefinitely, promising her that if anything did come up again for which she would be suited, he would not fail to contact her.

  Helen had accepted it with her usual good grace, while privately regretting the end of this particular episode in her life. She had been disappointed because she had enjoyed the work for the strange excitement it had brought into her life, and more particularly because she had come to like Jack Ward. He was an odd-looking man, and when working his professional personality was so taciturn that his company was far from easy; yet the more she got to know him – which with hindsight she now realised was very little – the more her loyalty to him and his work had grown, as if amid the accelerating collapse of her domestic life the very thought of his patriotism, his intense belief in the value of both democracy and his country, gave her something for which to hope.

  Now, as she carefully rubbed some precious soap on the middle of her face flannel and ran a couple of cupfuls of warm water into the bottom of the bathroom basin, Helen looked at herself in the mirror and wondered whether she would still have the courage of her previous convictions. She still knew how to get in touch with the Colonel, always provided the number she had so carefully memorised was still in operation. She would try the number, she decided, still staring at her face in the glass, she would definitely ring it tomorrow, and if she got the usual sort of stiff and impersonal reception at the other end from the kind of woman who always seemed to man the department telephones, she would leave the usual sort of ambiguous message, and wait to see if she was still wanted. She had nothing to lose, she told herself, now carefully washing her face, her eyes still watching her reflection above the slow movement of her pink face flannel. She had nothing to lose, she could still be of help to her country, and with a bit of luck she might once again be working directly under the enigmatic Jack Ward, doing something particular, something for which she knew she was at least appreciated.

  Kate had to hurry off first thing the next morning in order to get back to Eden Park in time for work. As she kissed her mother goodbye she was happy to note that Helen’s mood was considerably better than it had been the night before. She seemed altogether stronger, as if she had quite made up her mind to adjust to her situation. She was certainly if anything more adamant than ever that Kate was not to even think of giving up work in order to be at home with her.

  Of course they both knew that Kate’s av
owals to stay with Helen were truly only token, as Kate had already decided that no amount of wild horses could drag her away from her work, still less away from Eugene.

  Helen watched her tall, blonde, graceful daughter make her way back up the garden path to the road. She knew she had to find her own way of mourning her only son, as all bereaved mothers had to do, but she was determined that clinging on to her remaining child was not going to be one of them.

  When she arrived back at Eden Park, Kate found she still had a good half an hour before she had to report for duty, so, quickly taking advantage of what seemed like a huge emotional gratuity, she rushed round to the stable yard, slip-sliding on the snow and ice so that by the time she arrived at the bottom of the wooden steps that led up to Eugene’s flat she knew she must look like something off the top of a Christmas cake. Smiling to herself more with excitement than in amusement, she brushed the snow off her clothes before clambering up the slippery steps and knocking on Eugene’s half-glassed door.

  There was no reply.

  Knowing his habits and hoping against hope that he might still be in bed, Kate knocked again, but this time she pushed the door open at the same time. She knew he was gone as soon as she felt the cold of the room. There was no fire burning in the stove and no kettle gently simmering on the hob as there invariably was when Eugene was in residence. Instead there were piles of discarded clothes lying on the floor and furniture and stacks of papers now flapping off the desk and the table as Kate stood with the door still open behind her. Closing it quickly, she stepped right into the room and looked to see if he had left her any word. Sure enough, a note was stuck in the corner of a large pen and ink drawing he had done of his great and beloved grey horse, who was at this very moment munching through his first hay net of the day in his stable directly beneath where Kate was standing.

  Beautiful Kate – good morning to you, darling girl. By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be gone. Sorry – in fact you will never know quite how sorry this makes me – sorry I’m gone, sorry I won’t be seeing you before I go – sorry I didn’t have time to tell you before I left that I was going at all – although you knew I must be off sometime – but that’s the way it is, alas. I was hoping and praying you’d be back some time last night after I got the news I had to leave first thing this morning – but then you’d gone to see your mam and I thought as sure as eggs is eggs she’ll not be back before I go away. God, I shall miss you, you darling thing. I shall miss every bit of you, every divine inch. I shall miss the sight of your beautiful blond hair, the touch of that soft skin, the brush of your lips on mine. I would take you with me if I could shrink you. So that’s why I’ve sneaked away under the cover of night – so I’m not tempted to shrink you and put you in my top pocket. But I’ll be back before you can say Googonbaragh – if you can’t say that, take your time and learn it, and by the time you’ve learned it, I’ll be back, a bit smudged, but safe in your arms – your Irishman xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (don’t take these kisses all at once – ration them). PS I shall bring home Hitler. PPS Dead or alive? PPPS Dead methinks. PPPPS Don’t you like me just a little bit now????? Ah go on. Go on now – you do you do so you do just a little. PPPPPS A thousand more kisses on you. All from me.

  After she had read the note through two or three times, Kate sat down in Eugene’s old leather chair. Wrapping her arms round herself, she began to wonder where he had gone, and then, realising there was no point, she stopped.

  He had gone, and where was not important. What was important was that the room in which she sat, the place where they had loved, seemed to be not just empty, but as deserted as any clearing in a wood where you might suddenly come across a smoking bonfire, an empty packet of cigarettes, and the remains of some half-eaten meal. Eugene the Nazi-hunter had gone.

  Marjorie stared at Billy. She’d never seen anyone grow so fast. One minute he’d been little Billy, still more or less the same size boy who had turned up that Christmas years ago at Aunt Hester’s house, and the next a tall, over-thin young man. Now as she sat across the cottage table from her adopted brother she saw in him the makings of a man, a tall, good-looking, mischievous young man, with eyes that widened and widened the more he tried to convince a person he was telling the truth; and a countenance he loved to keep poker-blank as he spun some poor soul a piece of his usual complete and utter fabrication.

  ‘How old are you now, Billy?’ she found herself suddenly asking.

  Billy sighed, without looking up from the elaborate drawing of what looked like a small narrow-bodied aeroplane he was busily completing, and then clicked his tongue loudly.

  ‘You know perfectly well how old I am, Marge,’ he replied, before adopting his old man’s voice. ‘I’m three light years and four and a half fathoms come next birthday.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re fifteen,’ Marjorie said. ‘It just doesn’t seem possible.’

  ‘The only real possibilities, sis, are the complete and utterly impossible ones – at least that’s according to Eugene. What do you think of that, then?’

  Billy turned his drawing book round for Marjorie to see what he had been so busily designing every evening for the past week. Marjorie looked closely at it, seeing at once that this was no childish invention, but an authentic-looking aeroplane with short stubby wings and a high tail shaped like a large V. Appended to the drawing were a set of separate illustrations of all the main working parts and a carefully annotated list of instructions for use.

  ‘I can’t see any windows,’ Marjorie remarked after studying the drawing carefully. ‘Not even one for a pilot.’

  ‘Well spotted, Marge.’ Billy sighed with pleasurable satisfaction. ‘That’s because there aren’t none.’

  ‘Any. There aren’t any.’

  ‘There aren’t any,’ Billy echoed in a tone mocking Marjorie’s carefully modulated speech pattern. ‘There aren’t none and there aren’t any no how.’

  Marjorie looked up sharply but refused to take the bait. Over the years she had worked long and patiently to try to iron out Billy’s poor grammar and his London accent, a task made all the more difficult by Billy’s total lack of interest in improving himself, or hisself, as he would deliberately remark. She was all too aware that he was only really interested in what went on inside his head, and because Marjorie suspected that he was quite possibly more than a little bit on the brilliant side, she was all the more determined that he should present what she considered to be a proper and respectable face to the world, in every way.

  ‘It doesn’t have any windows, Billy . . .’

  ‘It don’t have any windows,’ Billy continued, eyeing Marjorie slyly, ‘’cos it isn’t an aircraft.’

  ‘It’s got wings – and a tail.’

  ‘Course it has, ’cos it’s meant to fly, but it ain’t – it isn’t meant to carry no one.’

  ‘Anyone.’

  ‘Anyone or anything. ’Cept a bomb.’

  Marjorie looked up again, this time with quite a different expression.

  ‘A bomb, Billy?’ she said. ‘You mean this is – what would you call it?’

  ‘A bomb without a pilot, Marge,’ Billy said, over-helpfully. ‘Best way to deliver your bomb to your target is to have it self-propelled, see? No pilots, no bomb aimers, no nothing. No crew at all. So if it crashes no one gets done, and if it don’t crash – doesn’t crash – then bang! It delivers the goods. Only problem I got is how to fuel it, see?’

  ‘What’s wrong with aircraft fuel?’ Marjorie wondered. ‘The stuff they fly the planes on?’

  ‘Wouldn’t work. This has got to deliver a bomb that’s going to weigh a whole lot more than a normal bomb, and an ordinary engine – well. Well, how you going to adjust it in flight, for instance? If you in’t got no one flyin’ it, see? Doing all the fine adjustments and keeping the kite in the air. No, we got to power this with some sort of new engine. It’s got to fly like a rocket – straight up in the air and then fast fighters are going to have difficulty catching it,
see? Point is, Marge, if we could get this to work – we’d be so ahead of the Jerries we’d pulverise them.’

  Marjorie looked at Billy who was now back poring over his drawing with a serious frown. It would be quite easy to dismiss his idea as the sort of typical notion that boys of Billy’s age were always coming up with, yet something about the whole idea allied to what Marjorie knew was a highly precocious mind made her consider the possibility that perhaps Billy – or someone – should take it to a higher level; to some boffin or other who might see some practicality in the concept. The idea of a pilotless bomb seemed more than a pipe dream. It suddenly appealed to her as a distinct possibility.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Billy. If you like, I’ll show your drawing to Major Folkestone, and see what he has to say,’ she told him, sounding even to herself like a school prefect as she extended a hand for permission to take the drawing book.

  Billy stared at her, wrinkling his nose and twisting his mouth sideways, a habit he had when he was giving matters serious thought.

  ‘I’d rather work on the idea a bit longer,’ he replied. ‘I don’t want them just to think this is some sort of schoolboy doodle.’

  ‘They won’t, Billy. Major Folkestone will make sure of that. You know he thinks a lot of what you do nowadays; I told you that the other day. Specially with codes – he says codes are like music is for gifted people. They see things written in the notes that none of the rest of us can see, and the same goes for codes. You can see the messages straight away.’