The House of Flowers

by Charlotte Bingham

  Jack frowned, looking at her wondering fleetingly what she meant.

  ‘You don’t understand, do you?’ she went on quietly. ‘Nothing occurs to you, nothing matters to you outside your work I don’t suppose.’

  ‘Not true as it happens, Helen,’ Jack interrupted. ‘Not true at all. Other things do matter, will matter.’

  ‘It is true, Jack. It would never occur to you that someone might be—’ She stopped. ‘Let me put it another way, if I may. I don’t think you realise, because of the sort of person you are – I don’t think you imagine for one moment that someone like me – who has had the things happen to them that have happened to me – rather than becoming sour and bitter – some people can have their whole lives altered – maybe even be actually saved – by kindness.’

  Helen could hardly get the last words out. She sat down quickly on the sofa staring ahead of her, suddenly dejected beyond words. Silent.

  Jack watched her without saying anything, smoking his cigarette, immobile.

  The room fell to silence, a silence that seemed to grow and grow until it was broken by the slight sound of Jack stubbing out his cigarette in the glass ashtray.

  ‘Now that’s out of the way.’ He said quietly. ‘To work. The first thing we have to talk about is the matter of a certain peacock blue hat.’

  Two hours later, at the dead of night, Jack Ward finally left Helen Maddox’s flat.

  As he walked down the deserted street with his pipe clenched in the corner of his mouth he nodded to himself and smacked one fist into the palm of the other hand.

  ‘Gotcha,’ he said to himself. ‘Gotcha.’

  The following morning from a private office in Baker Street on his scrambler telephone he put an urgent call through to Harvey Constable at Eden Park.

  ‘You’re to organise a false drop,’ he instructed Harvey. ‘You’re to invent a whole new mission, delegate an agent, and issue the necessary map reference for the drop, which you will then arrange to be observed by our friends in the area. If they find the enemy ready and waiting for our nonexistent drop, then we’re home and hosed. If not, my head is on the block, so keep praying. Naturally you will make sure all this information is put on Tony Folkestone’s desk and that the orders are issued by him through the usual channels.’

  Chapter Twelve

  There was very little more now for Billy to do as far as his mission was concerned. He had plotted and described practically every defence and gun position along the stretch of the Cherbourg clifftop which he had been allowed to wander more or less at will, and that information was now safely in the hands of his superiors, transported to them by the Underground along a route invented two years previously and as yet happily still undiscovered. But that was not Billy’s concern. He had done the job he had been sent to do, and now he must try to obey the next part of his orders, namely to return himself safely to base.

  He knew that in a way this would be the most difficult part of his mission, since it was the part Major Folkestone had explained in the simplest terms. He was simply to make his way to Isigny and contact either Rolande or Yves. They would take him to the safe house, from where an escape route would be organised along which he was to travel home with a different identity, one that would be created and papered for him in Isigny when he reached it.

  First he had to get to the town. Since it was known that he belonged to a family in Nantelle, he could not simply disappear. Even though Monsieur Goncourt knew the truth, others did not, and someone was bound to report the absence of a person as extraordinary as the Simpleton stranger who had suddenly landed in their midst. They might do it purely out of concern in case something had happened to the poor young man, or someone might suspect a ruse. Whatever the possibilities, Billy could not take the chance of inadvertently raising an alarm against himself.

  He had to find a way of getting to Isigny without arousing suspicions or triggering a final alarm. So while he was still amusing himself and his German admirers high above the very beaches where the Allies were soon to land he looked, and above all he listened, something Billy had always been good at doing. He eavesdropped on the transport crew, an easy task since none of them suspected for a moment that their simple young jester was all but fluent now in German. The poor lad could hardly get his tongue round his own language, let alone speak a word of theirs. When Billy was around no one bothered to shoo him away even if they were talking confidentially, which was how he soon learned that none other than his favourite corporal, Herr Otto, was to drive to Isigny the following morning to pick up some vital fuses for some equally vital piece of communications equipment. He was to take one of the smaller trucks, collect the materials, and return to the site by midday. This would suit Billy admirably, since it was Corporal Otto who chauffeured him to the clifftops every day. Billy’s only problem would be how to stay in the truck without raising the corporal’s suspicions.

  Fortunately, Billy got the break he required. Corporal Otto had not the best of waterworks, it emerged, and so before making the long drive to the town he hopped out of his driving seat and disappeared into the latrines. Billy, having already disembarked, wondering how he was going to effect his stowing away, saw his chance. All the other soldiers having dispersed to go about their work, Billy simply slipped himself under the tarpaulin in the back of the vehicle, well out of sight of Corporal Otto when he finally returned to his truck. He stayed there undiscovered until they reached Isigny where Corporal Otto parked and disappeared inside a small warehouse on the outskirts of the town. When the coast was clear, Billy slipped out of the back of the truck and disappeared up the deserted road that led into the centre.

  It could not have worked better. He had thought he might have to wheedle and cajole Corporal Otto into giving him a lift, that is if he could have got the fat soldier to understand what he wanted without giving himself away. Failing that, he would have had to find some other mode of transport, but as it happened Fate could not have been kinder. The corporal did not know he had carried young Billy in and therefore would not notice he was missing until it was time for the troops to return to Nantelle. With luck they might imagine that Billy had simply wandered off somewhere, and maybe wouldn’t give him a second thought until the following morning. Even then his absence was not going to bring the whole German army to a stop while they searched for him. Billy finally was flotsam, and if he disappeared he would soon be forgotten. What was important was that he got to Isigny without raising alarms or suspicions.

  Since no one was on the lookout for him, no one took very much notice of the apparently simple youth wandering through their streets, staring at house after house. One or two idle youths threw stones at him, and a few more shouted rude jibes as he grinned at them inanely. Otherwise he was unbothered, and after an hour’s careful searching he finally found the safe house, where he was discreetly welcomed by a young woman called Nina, a little brunette with a rather full and sensuous mouth to whom Billy found himself immediately attracted.

  She was a Resistance fighter herself, her job at that time being the organisation of escape routes out of her area to wheresoever the fugitives wished. She already understood Billy’s needs and immediately set about reforming his appearance so that it would be in line with the description on his new papers. She had clothes ready for him, hair dye, a pair of spectacles with plain lenses, and a change of shoes. She also had money for him, as well as a set of most authentic-looking papers. His new occupation was that of house painter, which allowed him to be as peripatetic as the occupying laws allowed.

  But first he had to get bathed, washed and shaved. He had to expunge all trace of the Simpleton and become his new character. As Billy the Simpleton he had had to endure remaining dirty and generally unkempt, but now he had to wash that role right out of himself in order to adopt his new personality.

  Nina filled a hip bath in the kitchen with jugs of hot water she had ready on the range, and laid a big thick white folded towel on a chair nearby.

  �
�Would you like me to scrub your back, young man?’ she asked as Billy began shyly to loosen his clothing.

  Billy shrugged, turning away from her in order to hide his blushes.

  ‘If you want me to scrub your back, just call. I shall only be in the scullery here, getting our lunch ready.’

  Nina disappeared into an adjoining room where Billy heard her busying herself chopping vegetables. When he felt he was quite safe he slipped out of his dirty clothes and gratefully into the bath where for ten minutes he soaped himself into a state of utter cleanliness. Then he lay back and shut his eyes, wallowing in the luxury of the hot water and the sweet smell of fresh soap.

  When he opened his eyes he saw Nina looking down at him.

  ‘I thought I heard you call,’ she said with a frown. ‘Did you call?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Billy mumbled. ‘Unless I fell asleep, that is. And called out in my sleep.’

  ‘So sorry,’ Nina apologised, although, Billy noted, without moving from the spot. ‘But while I’m here? Would you not say yes to my scrubbing your back? It is always so difficult, is it not? Trying to get one’s back clean? Here . . .’

  She produced a large brush and dipped it in the water, too close to Billy for comfort. He swallowed hard and tried to speak, but found himself struck dumb. Since he was not saying anything, Nina took it for granted that she might indeed scrub his back and so she did, smiling to herself as she stood soaping her brush behind the handsome young man, before gently but firmly beginning to scrub him down.

  Billy had often thought about kisses. He had dreamed about kisses, and wondered about kisses – how a girl’s lips might taste, what her kisses might be like, how indeed even to kiss her back. Now he was finding out, and what he was finding out exceeded his wildest dreams. Nina kissed him sweetly, she kissed him softly, she kissed him gently. She kissed him carefully and tenderly, and her kisses showed him what his kisses should be like, so Billy kissed her back. He kissed her sweetly, and softly – he kissed her gently and he kissed her tenderly, and as he did so she ran her fingers through his wild wet hair, dexterously, skilfully, easing his head closer to her, and when he came closer she kissed him with more passion, Billy with one foot still in the bath and one foot out, Billy with both feet out, following her across the room as she pulled him to her, still kissing him, laughing a little between kisses, teasing him with her touches, burning his wet skin with her gentle caresses, hugging his firm, fit body to her small soft one, soaking her clothes with his bath water, still kissing him while she unbuttoned the front of her own blouse to reveal just herself beneath, slipping out of her cotton skirt and nothing else, as if she had been waiting for him, expecting the arrival of her young lover, easing him now to her, pulling him gently down on to her unmade bed, a place of heaven that smelt of warmth and of flesh, of woman, of hair – the wonderful intoxicating smell of a young woman’s tresses – hair that Billy’s face was buried in as she took him down on top of her, into white sheets that had wrapped her body that night, that still held her scent, her being. They tumbled as two and became as one, enveloped in linen, enveloped in each other, lost in the sweetness of love.

  At midday Yves burst in, disturbed, angry.

  ‘They have him,’ he told Nina who was sitting with Billy now, eating the repast she had so lovingly prepared. ‘They caught him last night on his way through – someone must have informed against him.’

  Billy looked anxiously from the stranger who had burst in to Nina, who put her hand over his.

  ‘Yves,’ she said. ‘This is Billy.’

  ‘I know. Forgive me, Billy. I thought it must be you – who else? But I am so angry! Bah!’

  He grabbed the bottle of red wine by the neck and poured half its contents down his throat while Billy watched in admiration. He had never heard anyone actually say Bah! before – let alone a dashing handsome Frenchman who looked as though he had just strolled out of Dumas – and while he sensed that the news he had brought was not good, he was still in a state of fierce intoxication induced by his introduction and welcome to life as effected by his now beloved Nina.

  ‘They have one of yours,’ Yves growled at Billy, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘We were ready for him days ago but he did not show – and now when he arrived in town last night the sons of bastards were waiting for him.’

  ‘Where is he, Yves?’ Nina asked. ‘Have the Gestapo got him?’

  ‘That is the good part. Not yet.’

  ‘Yves is my brother, by the way, Billy.’

  ‘Ah,’ Billy said, pushing his plate to one side to attend to what was being said.

  ‘The police have him. Locked up in the little gaol in rue St-Paul. The Gestapo won’t be long in coming – they’ll be here by this evening, knowing them – so we’re going to have to organise something.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ Billy said. Had Nina and Yves known him better they would not have been the slightest bit surprised by this disclosure, but since Billy was a stranger to them they were hardly interested in anything he had to say, since they both considered him a little on the callow side to be coming up with anything seriously constructive.

  ‘It will mean my having to be Simple Billy again,’ he explained to Nina. ‘But then that’s not too difficult. The problem is how to get me arrested. Yeah – yeah, I know. I just give myself up.’

  Billy grinned at them, and they stared back at him. Finally, Yves sat down and listened in silence as Billy explained his plan.

  At first one of the two policemen in charge of the tiny gaol was not in the slightest interested in Billy. In fact he was visibly irked by his presence as Billy danced and jogged round his desk, trying to explain his plight in all but unintelligible French – that he was a mascot of the German engineers, that he had got a lift in with Corporal Otto and then had missed his lift home because he had got out from his hiding place to have a look at where he was.

  At one point the policeman took him by the scruff of his neck and dumped him unceremoniously outside the police station, only for Billy to bounce back in and start all over again. By now his partner, who had been half asleep in a chair in the corner of the office, had begun to listen, able it seemed to pick up the gist of what Billy was saying, particularly now that he was explaining how cross his German friends would be if he went missing and no one had helped him.

  ‘OK,’ the second policeman said, stopping Billy. ‘I get your drift, son. And I think much the best thing would be if you stayed here? With us? For a while?’

  Billy nodded with intense enthusiasm at this suggestion.

  ‘Good,’ the policeman continued. ‘Then tomorrow, when I have to go out that way, I can return you to your friends?’

  More enthusiastic nodding followed from Billy.

  ‘Who I dare say will be well pleased to see both you – and me.’

  The policeman grinned, winked at his colleague who was now in the picture, and patted Billy on the head. Billy patted him back. The policeman wasn’t so sure he liked that, and held up a warning finger at Billy. Billy held one up at him. Then he pushed the policeman in the shoulder, hard, so that he almost fell back. The policeman went to punch Billy, and was only stopped from doing so by his colleague, who jumped up from his desk to keep them apart.

  ‘He’s soft, Louis – don’t go hitting him,’ he said. ‘We’ll put him away in a cell out of harm’s way till you take him back tomorrow. Best place for him, because God knows the sort of mischief he’d get up to in here. Come on, you.’

  He grabbed Billy by the collar, too hard for Billy’s liking, so Billy kicked him hard on the shins. For his reward he was hurled with unnecessary force into the cell bang next door to their other prisoner, who protested at the manhandling of the youth. He was told to shut up or take the consequences, while they prepared to lock Billy’s door.

  Whereupon Billy threw a fit.

  It was a very convincing one, too. It was also very frightening, as he lay thrashing helplessly and violently on the floor, his face
contorted and his limbs wildly out of control.

  ‘Water,’ the patient in the next cell advised through the bars. ‘You’ll have to get him some water and one of you loosen his clothes. Unless you want him dying on you.’

  The two policemen regarded their important prisoner carefully, then one nodded to the other to do as advised. As his companion hurried back to the outer room to fetch water, the remaining policeman bent over Billy to start loosening his clothes.

  Whereupon Billy punched him in the throat, so hard that he began to choke, clasping his neck with both hands, allowing Billy to grab his pistol from his belt and then knock him cold with the butt. As the policeman keeled over, Billy grabbed the keys he had long ago spotted hanging from his belt and jumped to his feet, hiding behind the intercommunicating door to wait for his colleague.

  ‘Quickly, you fool!’ the other prisoner shouted. ‘The poor kid’s choking to death!’

  The moment the second policeman appeared at the door with a jug of water, Billy struck, crashing the pistol butt down on his head and knocking him out cold as well. Then he let the other prisoner out.

  ‘I recognised you the moment I saw you,’ Scott said. ‘I very nearly said something. I very nearly gave the game away.’

  ‘Not you, sir,’ Billy grinned. ‘Never.’

  He handed Scott the pistol, and the two of them dragged the unconscious policemen into the cell he had just vacated, tying their feet and hands with their belts and ties, and stuffing their mouths with their own handkerchiefs, fixing the gags in place with some tape Billy found in the desk. Then Billy pocketed the second policeman’s pistol and they left the cell, locking the door behind them and taking the keys.