The House of Flowers

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Mamma . . .’ he whispered in distress, putting one hand to his cheek in anguish. ‘Mamma mia – please don’t let it be the gasket – please?’

  With a sad shake of his handsome head, he leaned into the engine bay, cloth in hand, and began carefully to unscrew the radiator cap. As he did so, a further jet of steam escaped with a hiss from the radiator, prompting Eugene to warn everyone to stand well back in case of accident. Finally, with a dramatic flourish he released the cap fully and jumped well back himself as a geyser of scalding steam shot upwards from the water sump.

  ‘Mah!’ he exclaimed. ‘You are very lucky, signorina, so very lucky she did not explode with you up there in the mountains!’

  Of course he had been only too aware of a pair of dark eyes watching him intently from behind the half veil, but it was only now that he looked into them with his own, as he gave a remorseful shake of his head.

  ‘The thought of you stranded up there is too sad to contemplate, signorina,’ he said. ‘The wolves. The bandits.’

  ‘Why do you think I come across the mountains?’ the woman asked brusquely. ‘Do I look like a woman from the hills?’

  ‘No – no!’ Eugene protested. ‘It is just that I cannot imagine there is anyone so – so beautiful in these parts, yes? So you must come from far away – the mainland even – and to do so you must come over the mountains! Yes?’

  The woman pursed her lips thoughtfully as she considered the compliment, then nodded once.

  ‘Naples,’ she said, searching her bag for another cigarette, immediately prompting a crowd of matches proffered by practically every man in the small crowd that had gathered since her abrupt arrival. ‘So now you stop your sweet talk, signor—’

  ‘Marco,’ Eugene said with a small modest bow of his head. ‘Marco, please – Marco.’

  ‘Very well, Marco. So – enough of your charms, and tell me if you can attend to my car. I have to get out to the areodrome by this evening. It is most urgent, and I will need the car. It is not my car, you understand. The car is a loan.’

  Eugene held his hands up in an open gesture, accompanying the signal with a non-committal shrug.

  ‘Signorina. Should she have bad gasket – should she have blown her head gasket.’ He shrugged again and raised his eyebrows helplessly. ‘No one will repair her in less than two days. Even if we have the parts. And we do not have the parts, as you must know, signorina! Such a thing would have to come from the mainland – and in these days?’

  Eugene made his mouth into a large round O of despair and closed his eyes.

  ‘You are not from around here, are you?’ the woman suddenly asked him, standing a little back and putting her head to one side. ‘So where are you from, please? You are certainly not Sicilian.’ She made an odd gesture with one hand, closing her first two fingers on to her thumb and squeezing them together in some sort of special emphasis.

  ‘I am half Milanese, signorina,’ he confessed. ‘But my mother was widowed and came to live on the mainland, when I was a young boy, near to Vico Equense – Amalfi.’

  ‘Ah!’ she replied, holding up one slender gloved hand. ‘I thought I knew it! I said to myself – Lucia, I said. This is an Amalfi man! I knew it.’

  ‘Yes.’ Eugene smiled modestly. ‘Yes, you are right – and so clever, signorina. I come to see my cousin Gianni here because he has not been so well. And because he is not so well, I stay here to help him with his work. Here in his uncle’s garage.’

  ‘So what to do with the car, Marco? When shall I know my fate, please? The person who lends it to me, he will want it returned.’

  ‘Signorina, if I may – if we take your beautiful car into our workshop I can tell you – what? An hour? Maybe less. For you I do it as quick as God permits me.’

  Once she had agreed, Eugene instructed Gianni to escort their visitor to the small café in the tiny town where he assured her that after Gianni’s aunt had cooked her a most memorable lasagne he would be able to tell her the fate of her car.

  He knew there were two possible options open to him. If there was nothing seriously wrong with the car then he could use it as his Trojan horse, smuggling himself and Gianni into the compound containing the Junkers bombers. If on the other hand there was something seriously amiss, their visitor might decide to abort her trip to the aerodrome for lack of reliable transport, in which case his only chance lay in procuring a decent substitute vehicle that would satisfy the high standards obviously held by the beautiful signorina, who from her glamorous clothing he guessed was probably on her way to a tryst with a lover. It would be ideal, if this was indeed the case, for having come all this way their visitor would surely be loath to miss out on her lovemaking.

  ‘So?’ Gianni wondered, popping back from his aunt’s café in order to see how events were shaping. ‘How is the car?’

  ‘Sick. It’s done a head gasket.’

  Gianni arched his eyebrows and widened his big brown eyes. ‘A head gasket? Hey, my friend, you really do know about Bugattis!’

  ‘I know nothing about Bugattis – but I know a thing or two about gaskets,’ Eugene sighed. ‘And this is one very sick motor. There’s oil in the radiator water – and in case you don’t know what that means, it means kaput. It has to be the head gasket, but even if we had a gasket kit I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to fix it? Would you?’

  ‘Do farm carts have gaskets? No,’ he replied. ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to patch and pray. If my memory serves me right, I seem to remember my uncle having this sort of difficulty once when we were out on a jaunt. All he did was simply drain the radiator, change the oil and get going again – until the car began to boil, when he repeated the entire procedure. So that’s all we can hope to do – change the oil and water, and keep our fingers crossed the motor holds out for as long as we need it to hold out.’

  Gianni smiled as he watched Eugene go to work.

  ‘Ah yes, motor cars – they are like beautiful women, no? They need the understanding of a man. Yes? They need the understanding and the touch of a man.’

  ‘What this beautiful woman needs isn’t a man but a car to get her to her man,’ Eugene replied, getting underneath the car to find the sump plug. ‘To judge from all her finery she’s on her way to meet someone – someone out at the aerodrome apparently. Which will suit us just nicely.’

  ‘You think she’s going to meet her lover at the aerodrome, eh?’

  From under the bonnet Eugene laughed quietly. ‘If she’s not, my friend, then I’m not an Irishman.’

  ‘Then let us hope that the man who lent her this car doesn’t find out,’ Gianni said lugubriously, prompting Eugene to squint back up at him from ground level. ‘I tell you where this car comes from. Il Padrone. This is il Padrone’s – and so he lent it to her as a favour.’

  ‘But not to go and meet her lover, you reckon?’

  ‘No, no. I would very much doubt that.’

  ‘This woman is known to il Padrone?’ Eugene wondered. ‘How so?’

  ‘Perhaps she is not known personally, Marco. Perhaps it is just that her reputation precedes her.’

  ‘Her reputation?’

  ‘She is here – how we say? She is here on business.’

  Eugene glanced at Gianni then returned his attention to the sump plug.

  ‘OK,’ he called up from the ground. ‘I know this is Italy – or Sicily rather – and you do things differently here – but how come a woman on the sort of business this young woman is on gets loaned a Bugatti by your Padrone?’

  Having freed the plug and allowed the engine oil to drain away into the bucket he had placed ready, Eugene emerged from under the car and stood wiping his hands on a rag and staring at the café where they had deposited their guest.

  ‘You mean to tell me il Padrone was so taken with our signorina’s business acumen that he loaned her his best motor car to go gallivanting in? I doubt it, my friend.’

  ‘Then perhaps we ask her,
yes?’

  ‘Perhaps we do just that. And maybe as a result we get to be done a favour.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no to such a favour,’ Gianni grinned happily.

  ‘Not that sort of favour, pal. A favour in the shape of a lift,’ Eugene replied, tightening the buckle on the belt of his trousers. ‘Come on.’

  The two men joined Lucia at her table in the café. Gianni’s aunt brought them a bottle of local red wine, three glasses carried in the hook of three stubby fingers, a plate of shining olives and a hunk of goat’s cheese then left them alone, disappearing back into the kitchen to continue cooking. Lucia regarded her two companions, folded her veil back over the front of her peacock blue hat, lit a cigarette and sat back on her chair, eyeing them both.

  ‘You mend my car?’ she wondered.

  ‘Your car will be up and running in half an hour, signorina.’

  ‘Lucia. You may call me Lucia.’ She smiled. ‘I shall be most grateful to you if you mend my car.’

  ‘Your car?’ Eugene wondered. ‘You brought it over with you from Naples?’

  Lucia’s smile turned to frost.

  ‘That is none of your concern,’ she snapped. ‘The car belongs to a friend of mine.’

  ‘I wonder, does this friend know where you are? And what you’re doing?’ Eugene continued, pouring himself some wine.

  Lucia stared at him, smoking her cigarette quickly and furiously.

  ‘Maybe I haven’t fixed your car at all,’ Eugene said with a sigh. ‘Maybe I was just kidding you.’

  ‘You know something, signor?’ Lucia said, all but spitting the words out. ‘I was just beginning to like you.’

  ‘I’ll be perfectly frank with you, Lucia,’ Eugene helped them all to some more of the local wine. ‘You have an appointment you need to keep – and so do we. You can help us keep ours, just as we can help you keep yours. But if you don’t help us—’

  ‘Yes, yes! OK! All right!’ Lucia ground her cigarette out on the floor under one high-heeled shoe and regarded Eugene with a pair of dark flashing eyes. ‘So what do you want, eh? Just tell me what you want and I see what Lucia can do!’

  ‘We need a lift – simple as that.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Same place as you. The aerodrome.’

  Lucia frowned and then shrugged as she considered the favour. ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s our business. Same as your business will remain your business as long as you give us a lift.’

  ‘So. So I give you a lift as far as the aerodrome – and then what?’

  ‘No, not as far as the aerodrome, Lucia. We want you to take us in with you. We want to go into the aerodrome.’

  Now the expression on Lucia’s face changed. ‘You are surely mad.’

  ‘We’ll be surely mad if we don’t get into the aerodrome, sweetheart. As mad as il Padrone when he finds out what you’re using his precious car for.’

  ‘How did you manage to get his car, by the by, signorina?’ Gianni wondered, having finished picking his teeth with a match.

  ‘None of your business!’

  ‘We’ll ask him when we see him, Gianni,’ Eugene assured his friend.

  ‘I tell him I have to visit a sick relative!’ Lucia exclaimed. ‘OK? OK!’

  ‘So?’ Eugene enquired after a moment. ‘Are you going to give us a lift or not?’

  Lucia said nothing at first. Instead she glanced out of the windows and up at the dark forests surrounding the little town.

  ‘OK,’ she said, all but inaudibly. ‘I give you a lift.’

  ‘I knew you were on the side of the angels, sweetheart,’ Eugene said with a smile. ‘I could see it in your eyes. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and attend to your car.’

  Poppy had long ago sold the ring that Basil had given her on their engagement, sending the money to much needed war funds. In its place she now proudly wore the much less ostentatious ring that Scott had given her, a ring that it seemed had once graced his grandmother’s finger.

  ‘What about a dress?’

  Kate and Marjorie both looked up at Poppy who was looking down at them from their cottage stairs where she was sitting, while the three of them debated the wartime problem of how to be married by special licence in a matter of days.

  ‘I could wear my blue velvet,’ Poppy suggested.

  ‘It’s not a wedding dress,’ Kate replied. ‘You can’t get married in blue velvet.’

  ‘I’m certainly not wearing anything from my old wardrobe,’ Poppy said. ‘Imagine getting married in something Basil had given me. That would be too gruesome for words.’

  ‘Nobody’s suggesting that,’ Marjorie told her.

  Poppy nodded and tried to put all thoughts of her last wedding day out of her head – the quite beautiful dress she had worn, the borrowed tiara – and then the sensational dress she had worn for the first night of her honeymoon, which Basil had so detested and derided – although perhaps not quite as much as he had finally detested and derided her.

  She shook her head as if to shake away the unhappy memories, trying to think of the happiness that she hoped lay ahead in her future with Scott. He was so different from the cold-hearted Basil – warm, funny and affectionate – so different. She sighed inwardly.

  ‘Come on, Poppy,’ Kate sighed. ‘You’re day-dreaming again. We have to get things organised. We are not going to have some dreary wedding just because there’s a war on. Hitler can go hang! We are going to make sure this is a wedding to remember – in spite of Hitler and in spite of the war. But we’re not going to do it by daydreaming. So come on, one and all! Snap out of it! Now, for a start, we have to find a dress for Poppy somewhere. Somehow. Anyone got any bright ideas?’

  Marjorie frowned but could come up with nothing. Poppy reminded Kate of something she had said before, leaving Kate to come up with an idea that might prove useful.

  ‘There are some old clothes stored in our attic at home,’ she said, remembering. ‘Don’t know what’s there – or in fact if anything’s still there, seeing how much my mother keeps giving to Lady Alton for the Fighting Fund. I’ll have a look as soon as I get home. I seem to remember she’d kept some of Grandmother’s old stuff. Keep your fingers crossed. And don’t worry, Poppy – we’re going to make Scott’s and your wedding a day you’ll always remember. War or no war.’

  Two kilometres short of the aerodrome Lucia, who had been driving, stopped the car in order to get out and check the well-being of the two men hidden away in the boot. She had pulled the Bugatti into a clearing off the road, well protected from the view of anyone else passing by so that Eugene and Gianni could get out and stretch their legs. They started to go through what was going to happen if and when they got past the guards on the gates, what Lucia was to say and do and where she was to leave the car. If all went well, by the time she left the next morning the two men would be hidden in the boot again and Lucia would leave as seamlessly as she had arrived.

  ‘How is the car behaving?’ Eugene enquired at one point. ‘Seems to be holding up all right.’

  ‘She is a little hot,’ Lucia replied. ‘As if she might want a drink.’

  Eugene had taken care of that well in advance, packing two cans of water along with him in the boot of the Bugatti. Taking advantage of the halt he carefully topped the depleted radiator up, mentally crossing his fingers even harder than before when he had finished doing so.

  On the road once more, within a matter of minutes they were at the gate of the aerodrome. The two men in the boot held their breath as they heard the guards questioning Lucia, only to relax as they realised that all the questions being asked in true Italian style concerned not the purpose of Lucia’s visit, but the magnificence and beauty of her motor car. They could hear Lucia lying gaily about how she had come by such a fine and rare model, the gift of some rich Neapolitan benefactor it would seem who had befriended her since she lost both her parents in some terrible boating accident off Ischia. Lucia’s imagination matched her looks, priceless
and extraordinary, and after a few minutes of talk the Bugatti slowly moved forward again, the stowaways undiscovered.

  As directed, Lucia parked the car, got out and released the boot catch. The two men waited until Lucia had been gone for a quarter of an hour, then slowly eased open the lid. They found she had parked around the corner from the building into which they assumed she had disappeared, with the rear end of the great Bugatti practically touching a brick wall that ran at right angles to another wall, thus providing perfect cover for them as they eased themselves out of the car.

  Very few lights burned on the airfield now that it was dark, and as for patrols, there appeared to be none. Nevertheless, Eugene and Gianni held back until they were absolutely sure there were no sentries posted anywhere within their immediate vicinity, before following a route away from the building, and along the perimeter wall that ran directly towards the huge hangars. Eugene had imagined that there would be a certain number of armed guards posted at all the salient points in such a volatile location, but the further they penetrated enemy territory, the more they became aware that the security seemed to be confined to the gated areas only.

  ‘This is typical,’ Gianni whispered, as the two of them huddled tight in a corner, watching and listening out for the slightest movement. ‘We suffer as a race from a frightening degree of confidence. It is our worst fault and our greatest asset.’

  He stopped as they suddenly heard footsteps, followed by a strong smell of tobacco that suggested the presence of ordinary personnel rather than an armed guard. But it seemed they were wrong, for round the end of the wall, not ten feet from them, appeared a short, stubby soldier, his rifle slung over his shoulder, his hat pushed back and a freshly lit cigarette in his mouth. Eugene looked at Gianni and Gianni nodded. Two seconds after the guard had crossed their path he was lying dead at Eugene’s feet.

  They dragged the body into a nearby dark corner where they stripped it of its uniform and weapons and left it under a pile of sacking. Moments later Gianni was dressed as the guard and making his way towards the aircraft hangars. Eugene hung behind, crossing his fingers and praying for the doors to be open.