The House of Flowers

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘These things happen, they most certainly do,’ Eugene agreed with a nod. ‘They happen in the most organised families. But it isn’t a good thing. Not if it’s coming from inside. Had I not despatched the fellow, God knows how many of our contacts in that region would have gone down.’

  ‘My thoughts entirely.’ Anthony tapped some ash into his tin ashtray and then, rising, went to unlock and open the map on his wall, the one that contained the precise locations of dropped agents, which was always kept locked except in the most confidential of meetings.

  ‘See here, Hackett,’ Anthony continued. ‘These black pins. Ten of them all told. They’re agents – all down. Fine – we all know you win some, you lose some. But six of those went down within the last three weeks. And they were all briefed and despatched from here. From Eden Park.’

  ‘So.’ Eugene looked at the end of his cheroot, blew it back into a brighter form of life and then regarded Anthony Folkestone with a narrowing of his large eyes. ‘So that means we have – what shall we call it, d’you think, Major? Yes – I’d say somewhere or other we have to smoke out a rat here, wouldn’t you say? Which reminds me – did I ever tell you about the time my cousin in Kerry put a blowtorch to the bottom of a pipe to smoke out a rat and the flame shot out the top, caught his haystack on fire and burned down the barn? No. Well, never mind, eh? Let’s just hope that it doesn’t happen to us.’

  Even though Kate had known Eugene was safe she was still overcome by his homecoming; so much so that for the first few days following his return she had become so shy with him she had found herself actually having to think up things to say to him.

  In what seemed like the vast amount of time they had been separated she had rehearsed many conversations they might have when she saw him again, including discussions on various suitable topics, vague debates concerning the future ambitions of them both – although not anything that smacked of a joint future just in case it might sound too forward – and, naturally, exchanges of views about subjects of general interest to both of them. She had some of these imagined conversations off pat, only to discover to her consternation that they all fled from her memory the moment she saw Eugene, and she was left feeling as wordless as any ingénue.

  She could not imagine the disappointment that she must be causing him, but then Kate had forgotten the man with whom she was in love. She had quite forgotten how wonderfully voluble he was, how excitingly outspoken; how much he loved to talk, and when he wasn’t talking how much he loved to hold and kiss her, seeming oblivious of her sudden shyness, and more than making up for her own awkwardness by his gaiety and observations. It made everything better and also a whole lot worse – better in that he was back and they were together once more, but also worse, because the longer they were together the more the dread of their inevitable parting seemed to hang over their every moment.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Eugene,’ she suggested in desperation one balmy evening as she sat at his feet on the far bank of the great lake. ‘Let’s defect to Ireland.’

  ‘Shame on you for the good Englishwoman you are,’ Eugene mock-scolded her. ‘That is tantamount to treason.’

  ‘A tantalising idea, do admit.’

  ‘The best idea I’ve ever heard. Come on – we’ll saddle up and away. They’ll never catch us if we take the byways.’

  Kate sat between his legs and leaned back against his chest.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could, though?’ she said wistfully. ‘Blasted war. We could escape it all – if we just took off. They’d never find us. Never in a million years.’

  ‘Good heavens no,’ Eugene replied lightly. ‘The last place they’d look for me would be the bogs – and the last person they’d think you’d run off with would be that rascal Eugene Hackett. Let’s hear your next grand idea for our future.’

  ‘You could suddenly develop a limp. Or short sight.’

  ‘And you could turn round and kiss me.’

  What made it worse for Kate was that Eugene always seemed to be in such indomitable high spirits. Nothing ever seemed to get to him, rattle him or depress him. Sometimes he might fall to silence, but his silences were short and usually well rationalised. He would carefully explain what he had been thinking and why, and such was his plausibility that Kate never doubted him for a moment – until a week or so after his return when they were out walking one evening he fell into the longest silence she had known from him.

  ‘OK,’ she said, finally tiring of skimming stones across the placid waters of the lake while Eugene sat on a bench some little distance from her. ‘Enough is enough. Have you finally taken a vow of silence?’

  ‘What?’ Eugene looked round at her in genuine surprise, as if he had forgotten all about her presence. ‘I’m sorry, Katie – what was it you said?’

  ‘Eugene.’ Kate threw her last flat stone in a perfect duck and drake across the glassy lake, put her hands on her hips and turned to him with a shake of her blonde head. ‘You haven’t said a word for what seems like weeks.’

  ‘Fine. So I’ve been thinking. I like to give the old brain a workout now and then. Keeps it ticking over.’

  ‘No point in offering you a penny for them, I suppose?’

  ‘None at all, darling one – none at all.’

  Eugene got up from the bench, threw away the end of the cheroot he had been smoking so thoughtfully, and wandered off along the path past Kate, for once without taking her arm or her hand. Kate called after him, finally having to break into a trot to catch him up.

  ‘Is it something I said, Eugene?’ she managed to get out, as she caught his arm.

  ‘You? Never.’ Eugene turned and looked at her but didn’t stop walking for a moment. ‘You could never say anything to upset me. Other than you didn’t love me any more. It’s got nothing to do with you.’

  ‘I thought there might be someone else—’

  Eugene kept on walking. ‘It’s worse than that. Much, much worse.’

  ‘What could be worse?’ Kate persisted, trying to keep the tone that was in danger of growing sombre as light as she could. ‘I can’t think of anything worse.’

  Eugene suddenly stopped and, taking her by both her hands, confronted her.

  ‘Yes you can, Katie,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t think of us for once. Put us to one side and think carefully of what could be worse. Of what could be worse here – that could affect not just us.’

  Kate was there in one. She had got it even before Eugene had clued her in. Something that would affect everyone – something that would affect Eugene and her – something that might already have affected them. She knew what it was. Something they all dreaded.

  Treachery.

  Chapter Five

  Scott was beginning to get worried. Since they had established themselves and their alibi, he and Lily had more or less drawn a blank with the people they had been designated to contact. From experience he knew that he could not pursue the two men with whom he had so far talked, albeit only briefly, about the purpose of their visit, but he also knew that he was running out of time fast. As predicted by their amiable landlady, German troops had arrived in their thousands over the past few days, convoys of lorries packed with infantry and gunners, followed by heavy vehicles drawing artillery, stores and supplies.

  The little village in which they were staying had up until then escaped direct occupation since the army seemed more intent on heading directly for the coastline of the Somme from St-Valery west to le Tréport, a part of France that still showed horrifying signs of devastation from the previous war. None the less, a small platoon of surly German foot soldiers had been garrisoned in each of a long line of neighbouring villages, and so inevitably a small troop arrived in the nearby square, bringing with them their own particular whiff of arrogance and churlishness. Fortunately the soldiers were unaware of Madame Daumier’s pension, and they chose to billet themselves on the luckless proprietor of the village café.

  Naturally the presence of the enemy in th
e village added a further sense of urgency to Scott and Lily’s mission. Whatever else was going to happen, the Germans had obviously been ordered to turn their attention to examining the population of the towns and villages they were set on occupying. Scott quickly realised that he and Lily had to consolidate their local contacts and literally take to the hills, or, preferably, the caves they had already earmarked for their project. Just as they were beginning to realise they were out of luck, and that they would have to abort their mission, help came from an unexpected source.

  ‘I have a visitor for you, monsieur,’ Madame Daumier informed Scott one night when he and Lily returned ahead of the curfew that was now being strictly enforced. ‘He’s waiting for you in the kitchen.’

  Leading the way through, their landlady opened the door of the kitchen at the back of the house: a small room lit by a well-trimmed oil lamp and shrouded in the heavy pungent smoke of Gitanes cigarettes. At the scrubbed wooden table drinking coffee and brandy sat a thickset man, with a head of hair that looked as if it were made of compacted wire and the sort of rough and weather-beaten countenance that can only be earned from a life spent permanently out of doors.

  Everything about their visitor was big – his hands, his forearms, his thighs, his chest and his massive shoulders. He was also immensely ugly, with a large broken nose, one half-closed eye and a deep scar that ran from the bottom of his left cheek in a cut right across his mouth, ending in what appeared to be a hastily stitched lump on the right-hand side of his chin.

  Scott observed all this as he shook hands with the man and sat down opposite him, Lily seating herself beside him. The man said nothing other than grunting an all but incomprehensible return to Scott and Lily’s salutations, barely even sparing them more than a glance. As Scott and Lily settled at the table he remained silent, lighting another Gitanes from the end of his current smoke and casually dropping the latter on the stone kitchen floor having first extinguished it on his thumb.

  ‘Some coffee, monsieur? Madame?’ Madame Daumier asked. ‘And some armagnac? It’s the last of our home-made.’

  Scott accepted with thanks, Lily declining the armagnac while lighting up one of her own cigarettes. Through the heavy fug that surrounded him, the man wrinkled his nose in distaste at the smell of her tobacco and waved it away from his face with one enormous hand.

  ‘You object to my smoking, monsieur?’ Lily asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.

  ‘No. To your smoke, madame. It smells so sickly.’

  He continued to wave his hand in front of his face in the manner of a demented dowager with a fan, even though Lily by now was making sure to hold and to smoke her cigarette in the opposite direction.

  ‘This is Rolande,’ Madame Daumier said, putting her hands on the man’s shoulders as she stood behind him. ‘He is a very close friend – not only of my family and myself, but of France. And because he is such a friend of France, he is therefore your friend – monsieur.’

  Scott knew by the little gap Madame had left before pronouncing monsieur that she knew, just as he had always suspected. His hackles rose. His immediate worry, however, was that she might not be Free French but a woman alone who, because of her precarious situation, might feel obliged to report to the occupying forces the presence of people in her little community whom she obviously deemed suspect.

  As if reading his thoughts, Madame Daumier threw back her head and gave a shout of humourless laughter, slapping Rolande on the back before making her way to lift the coffee pot from the top of the black range of ovens that lined one wall.

  ‘I can see that Monsieur here is worried that I have rumbled him – and that I will inform on him.’ Her expression changed. ‘Me? Who has lost her son? I think not, enfin.’

  Rolande turned his attention to Scott, fixing him with a pair of eyes that from where Scott was sitting looked completely black, saying nothing but just staring until he finally shook his head in despair and spat on the floor.

  ‘Is that a mark of contempt, monsieur?’ Scott wondered. ‘Or simply a lifelong habit?’

  Again Rolande fixed him with a look. Suddenly he banged one of his great fists on the table, making cups and glasses leap in the air, and he too gave a great roar of laughter.

  ‘It is habitual, my friend!’ he cried. ‘It is nothing personal! Suspicion, since the Occupation is habitual.’

  Leaning across the table he grabbed one of Scott’s hands and shook it, Scott’s long-fingered, elegant hand disappearing entirely into the centre of the bone-crushing grasp as he did so.

  ‘You are very brave coming here, monsieur,’ he continued, with a smile of appreciation in Lily’s direction. ‘Very brave and foolish – like all your countrymen.’

  Scott nodded, realising that the time to stop pretending to be entirely French had undoubtedly arrived. ‘I think you probably mean foolhardy.’ He smiled. ‘At least I hope you do.’

  ‘You do not consider it foolish to come here? To occupied France? And try to work for their defeat? This is not your fight – this is ours, monsieur. We too shall defeat them. We shall drive the pigs from our land. They do not know what they have done, invading la France.’ He shook his head slowly and menacingly. ‘They can have no idea at all, monsieur. None whatsoever.’

  ‘I don’t think they can, monsieur.’

  Scott smiled politely, still feeling wary, for he knew nothing of this man, and less of his allegiances.

  ‘We are a race of fools. We should have blown up the bridges – we should have blown them in the Nazis’ faces.’

  ‘I don’t think you are a race of fools, monsieur. Misguided, perhaps, but fools – never!’

  Rolande eyed him then grinned, his disfigured mouth twisting into an affecting and infectious smile.

  ‘Nor do I think this is your fight alone, either, much as you would want it to be – and rightly so.’ Scott held up one hand in appeasement, although Monsieur Rolande had given no indication that he was going to take offence. ‘Had it not been for some fools in England – as well as some fools in France – you would not be in this terrible position. We have a duty to dig you out of this hole.’

  ‘And so say all of us,’ Lily agreed, putting out her cigarette in her saucer. ‘And for the sake of entente, Rolande, I shall even take to smoking your sort of cigarette.’

  ‘Good.’

  Rolande solemnly offered her a Gitanes, but one so loosely packed that the black tobacco spilt out of it as he handed it to her.

  ‘How kind,’ Lily said sweetly. ‘But might I save it till later, perhaps? I’m not really a very heavy smoker.’

  With a small shrug Rolande laid the fat cigarette by her cup. ‘For when you have your next cup of coffee,’ he said.

  Lily did her best to avoid having any more coffee, but since there was so much to be discussed and Madame Daumier’s coffee was so good, finally she could hold out no longer. As soon as her cup was full, and despite Rolande’s being now deep in conversation with Scott about the logistics of what was henceforward their mutual enterprise, Lily found a lighted match being waved under her nose.

  She tried to ignore it, but her new friend was having none of it. To emphasise the point he now picked up the Gitanes and offered it to Lily in such a pointed fashion that she knew she could do nothing to get out of smoking the loathsome-looking offering. As she started to draw on the foul-smelling smoke, neither Rolande nor Scott paid her the least attention, continuing their earnest conversation, while Madame Daumier sat down by Lily to enjoy the last of her armagnac with her coffee and to talk to her guest in her usual animated way.

  ‘Something the matter, my little one?’ she finally enquired with concern as she saw Lily slowly turning very pale.

  ‘No, no,’ Lily muttered, swallowing hard. ‘At least . . . yes. Would you excuse me just for a moment please?’

  Lily made it just in time to the back door that mercifully opened directly on to a patch of garden.

  ‘A little armagnac now, my dear,’ Madame
insisted as Lily took her place again. ‘It is a very fine digestif after such discomfort.’

  As for Rolande, he merely continued talking to Scott as if he had noticed nothing.

  The following morning, just as the cock in Madame Daumier’s chicken coop began to crow, Scott and Lily crept out of the house to meet Rolande, who was waiting for them a mile up the lane that led to his farm. As soon as they caught up with him he hurried them into a nearby outbuilding where there was a change of clothes set out, and so it was that in a matter of minutes Scott and Lily had changed from neatly dressed honeymooners to working peasants. Scott wore a loose blue canvas jacket and trousers, a rough white undershirt, traditional Norman footwear and an equally traditional beret, while Lily had tucked her hair under a dull red headscarf and donned a plain blue crew-necked jersey, canvas skirt and sandals. Following Rolande’s example, they took the bicycles that stood propped up against the stone wall and fell in line behind the huge man, who was now sitting astride an old but tremendously sturdy tricycle that he somehow managed to ride with great élan.

  ‘Hard to believe, eh?’ he called to them. ‘But I could never master the two-wheeler! I can swim like a porpoise! I play football like a lightweight! I can even walk a tightrope! But bah! The bicycle she defeats me! One day, perhaps – one day!’

  They cycled through a whole stretch of green and verdant countryside, bathed in sunlight, the air seemingly full of birdsong. Alongside the road a small clear river dashed and rushed over rock and stone, sparkling in the bright sunshine until it disappeared in a torrent over a huge dark slab of granite, eventually to run away from them into deep woodlands that stretched as far as the eye could see. There was no sight of the war and no sound of it, just the natural music of the countryside.

  ‘I feel as though I’m going on a picnic,’ Lily laughed as she cycled alongside Scott. ‘I could even start worrying about whether or not I packed a bottle opener.’

  ‘Don’t mention bottles,’ Scott called back. ‘I could murder the contents of a dozen of ’em.’