Fall of Poppies

by Heather Webb

  Not that I would ever admit that to Henry. He already suspects me of being a little less than compos mentis.

  A turn in the alley, and there it is: Carrington. It’s no Blenheim or Hatfield House, no Castle Howard or whatever else the filmmakers are using as backdrop for their costume dramas. It’s merely a modest Elizabethan manor house, with a pseudo-­Palladian addition built along the back in a time of relative prosperity in the mid-­eighteenth century. Mercifully, straitened funds in the nineteenth century kept the Victorians from improving it out of existence.

  The funds don’t seem to be so straitened now. The lawn is well kept, the gravel has been swept; there are even some rather fanciful topiary in stone urns posing on either side of the front door.

  Does Edward know that I could buy and sell him ten times over?

  Maybe not ten. But five, at least. I get an unworthy satisfaction out of that. Once, Carrington was the height of my desiring. I could imagine nothing grander and better. But I’ve seen more now, done more now. No Grinling Gibbons or Inigo Jones had a hand in Carrington’s construction; Adam never squinted at those ceilings, nor did Capability Brown ever wander through the modest park. For all Cousin Violet’s fierce pride and Edward’s dogged determination, it’s just a house, like a hundred others. I recognize it now for what it is, a relatively uninspired example of its kind, not particularly significant or unique.

  Except to the Frobishers. Except to Edward.

  So long ago, and yet, the closer we come to Carrington, the more I find that I’m angry still.

  “We’re here!” says Amanda unnecessarily.

  “I know,” I say, and pull my wool skirt down over my knees. “I have been here before.”

  Once, I had thought to be mistress of it. I almost laugh at myself for the thought. It seems, against Amanda’s cheerfully modern attire, almost painfully outdated, something straight out of Brontë or du Maurier.

  Last night, I dreamt I went to Carrington. . . .

  There is no one waiting for us at the door, no dowager in black with keys at her waist. No Edward. Amanda lets us in, prosaically enough, with a modern key that seems at odds with the great oak door.

  And there is Nicholas, waiting for me.

  His portrait rather. It’s where it always was, pride of place in the hall, Cousin Violet’s last splurge.

  It takes me aback, rather.

  Amanda nearly runs into me. “Oh! I should have realized. Is that”—­her voice drops—­“Uncle Nicholas?”

  Her voice is appropriately hushed, as befits, it seems, speaking of the deceased to the bereaved.

  Never mind that I’ve been a widow for thirty-­odd years now or that ours was hardly a love that transcends time. The mythology is always more attractive than the reality.

  “Yes,” I say. The portrait was painted before the war. There is Nicholas in all his glory, incorrigible even in oil paint. I’d grown so used to seeing him as he’d become, always in the mask, first of painted tin, later, as he grew older, a simpler affair of black silk, that it comes as a shock to see him whole again, to remember him as he was, in those long-­ago days when I sighed over him from my maidenly bower.

  It’s always hard to admit you’ve fallen out of love with someone; it’s that much harder when they return home without a face.

  In my own defense, I would like to think that I had fallen out of love with Nicholas already, or, in truth, that I had never been in love with him at all. He was my impossible dream, my lady in a tower. Such loves are never meant to be requited; like a falling star, they fade before they hit the earth, leaving only a faint memory of brightness lost.

  In my case, I caught my star as it was falling and burnt my fingers in the process.

  Go and catch a falling star, tell me where all past years are. . . .

  “Er, that’s John Donne, right?” says Amanda, and I realize I’ve been speaking the words aloud. “Get with child a mandrake root? We did him in English 125.”

  England and America, divided by a common language. “Yes.”

  We’re spared further attempts at conversation by a rustle-­thump, rustle-­thump that stops just shy of the door.

  And there he is. Edward.

  The entrance to the hall is in shadow. For a moment, I could swear it is the Edward of sixty years ago, still too thin, even after six months home from the front. There is a blaze of red on his chest. A poppy.

  I realize, belatedly, what day it is. Armistice Day. The day the world healed and we fell to pieces.

  The familiar smells of the hall engulf me: old upholstery, lemon oil, decaying wood, beeswax. The light falls just as it did then. I could swear I hear the faint sound of a gramophone playing, tinnily, from Nicholas’s room upstairs.

  November upon November falls away. But we’re standing in the wrong places. That much I remember. It was Edward in the hall and I on the stairs. . . .

  Carrington Cross, 1918

  EDWARD?” BLINKING A little, I leaned over the stair rail.

  The hall wasn’t particularly well lighted, but it was bright in comparison with the deliberate gloom of Nicholas’s room, blinds drawn, mirrors gone.

  Nicholas had been home for nearly three months now, since August, but it didn’t seem to be doing him much good. He had, I suspected, been easier in the hospital in France, surrounded by other men more maimed than he. Here, at Carrington, he was reminded at every turn of what he had been. Ivy, who had once giggled and flirted with him, brought his tray to his room with averted eyes, hurrying away as quickly as she could.

  We’d had a mask made for Nicholas, a beautiful thing, designed at Anna Ladd’s studio in Paris. It was a work of art and it cost the earth. But he wouldn’t go near it. Instead he lounged half-­clothed in his darkened room on the rumpled sheets of his bed, half-­dozing, picking up books only to fling them across the room again, pacing in short bursts and napping in even shorter bursts. He had never been one to find his own entertainment; his pursuits had always been of the vigorous sort. But he refused to go out, refused to ride, refused to take any interest in the management of the estate.

  “What, do you want me to scare off the peasantry?” he’d said, bitingly, when I had suggested a ride—­a sacrifice on my part. I had never been much of a rider. Another mark against me in Cousin Violet’s eyes. “They can set me up as a bogeyman to scare wayward children.”

  “Only if you behave like one,” I snapped, driven beyond endurance. I was tired, more tired than I could ever recall.

  “Wait—­Millie.” Nicholas grabbed my hand, stopping me as I rose. “Don’t. Don’t go.”

  “I’m just going downstairs,” I said, freeing myself. “Ivy ought to have been up with your tray an hour ago.”

  It was an excuse. I wanted out, away. The funk of the sickroom was in my nostrils; my head ached with the half-­light. As I left the room, I could hear the mournful shrill of the gramophone, playing, endlessly, Caruso and Gluck performing the banquet scene from La Traviata. Always that one record, over and over.

  “Edward?” I’d heard his steps downstairs, but I couldn’t see him. There was an odd quiet about the hall. No Ivy dusting, no sound of pots banging in the kitchen. Just quiet. Utter quiet.

  “Here.” He was beneath the overhang of the stair, in a little nook where he had put in a telephone. His voice sounded strange and flat.

  I hurried down, nearly tripping over my own feet. “Is something wrong?”

  He was holding the edge of the telephone table with both hands, his shoulders bowed. He looked up and I could see his face contort with the effort of speech. “It’s over. It’s done.”

  “What’s done?” Upstairs, Anna Gluck was belting out Enjoy the hour, for rapidly / The joys of life are flying. . . .

  “The war.” The words came out like an accusation. “The war.”

  Enjoy then the wine-­cup with songs
of pleasure, sang the chorus.

  I stared at Edward, thick and slow as mud.

  “Done.” I couldn’t make it come together in my head. “The war.”

  We’d prayed for it for so long, prayed for peace, prayed for it to be over. Done, Edward said. Done. What did that mean, now?

  Upstairs, the record bumped to an end, began again.

  There were holes in my stockings that needed to be darned, holes in the lawn where we’d dug vegetable patches, a hole in Nicholas’s face where his left eye should have been. And Edward, Edward balancing on his false leg, his entire body shaking.

  I ran forward to steady him before he could fall, but he didn’t, which is just as well. He was a head taller than I, and, even without much flesh on him, solidly built. I put my arms around him all the same as his body trembled.

  “What good is it?” His voice seemed to be torn from his chest. I felt moisture on my hands and realized that Edward, unflappable Edward, was crying, in great, shuddering sobs. “It’s too bloody late. Oh, God!”

  “Please.” I wasn’t even sure what I was saying please for. I lifted a hand to Edward’s cheek. His hair was too fine and fair to leave stubble. I cradled his cheek in my hand, felt the moisture of his tears against my palm. “Edward, don’t.”

  “It’s all lost.” His eyes were red, bloodshot. “I couldn’t keep them safe, any of them.”

  I had no idea what them he was talking about. His regiment presumably. “You did the best you could.”

  Edward gave a bitter bark of a laugh, rocking on his good leg. “My brother lost his bloody face! I wasn’t there. I left him. I left him and he lost his face.”

  I wrapped my arms as tightly around him as I could, trying to stop the shaking, trying to make him warm again. “You’d lost a leg. What were you meant to do? Hobble after him?”

  I could feel Edward’s head shake, his chin brushing against my forehead. His voice was a whisper against my hair. “There’s so much lost and I don’t know how to put it right again.”

  I tilted my head back, looking up at him. “It’s not all on you, you know.” Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t entirely true. It was all on Edward. Nicholas had been trained to be decorative, not useful. And Daphne had fallen in love with a Yank. She meant to go away with him somewhere once the war was over. Over. It seemed impossible that it could be over. I felt like a man marooned on an island must, at the too long-­awaited sight of a sail, more apprehensive than eager. I couldn’t even imagine how Edward must feel. “You have me.”

  “Do I?” Edward’s eyes were brilliant, like a sky after rain. I couldn’t look away from them. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Millie. You’ve been the only bright spot in all this.”

  The words themselves were mundane, prosaic, but something about the way he said them made me feel as though I’d just been given a bouquet of red roses, had champagne drunk from my shoe; I might have been garbed in satins and velvets instead of old tweed and a saggy jumper.

  “Anything,” I said hoarsely. “Anything you need.”

  Was this what love really was, wanting to give instead of take? All I knew was that whatever Edward needed, I would be there to provide it. He’d carried so much alone; I wanted to carry it for him.

  The joys of life are flying—­like summer flow-­rets dying, sang the gramophone. Improve them while you may!

  Edward’s fingers were in my hair, moving the heavy locks back from my brow. “Just you. Just you.” And then, as his arms closed around me, as his lips descended toward mine. “It’s you, Millie. It’s always been you.”

  Carrington Cross, 1980

  I SELF-­CONSCIOUSLY RAISE A hand to my hair and make myself stop. “Well,” I say, a little too loudly. “This is a proper wrinklies’ reunion.”

  Edward is leaning on a stick, a concession to age, I imagine, rather than his missing leg. His current prosthesis is sophisticated enough that had I not known of its presence, I would never have guessed.

  “Camilla,” Edward says formally.

  A far cry from It’s you, Millie. But, then, why should I be surprised? We had parted that afternoon with soft touches and murmurs of love.

  The next morning, he had greeted me at breakfast with the news that he had proposed to Pansy and been accepted.

  I touch my fingers lightly to Cousin Violet’s diamond brooch. “Should I call you Sir Edward? I would curtsy but my knees are a bit stiff.”

  Edward’s face relaxes into something slightly less Victorian. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Is it? When I received your summons, I wasn’t sure if it was to be fatted calf or humble pie.”

  Amanda looks from one of us to the other. “I’ll go make some coffee,” she says, and flees.

  “Wise child,” I say, watching her go. “Your granddaughter?”

  “Daphne’s.” Edward moves painfully across the room to the sofa. Not, I note, the same one on which we spent that memorable afternoon so long ago, lost to propriety, to fear of discovery, to anything. Clothing half-­unbuttoned, flesh to flesh, La Traviata urging us on to enjoy the wine cup with songs of pleasure. “Pansy and I were not blessed with children.”

  “Ah.” I sit down carefully on a chintz-­covered chair, folding my hands in my lap so that my engagement ring, Nicholas’s ring, is on top. “Is that why you asked me here? Because of Henry?”

  I should have known. Not, in the end, unrequited love. Not loss and regrets. But always, inevitably, Carrington.

  That’s the great irony of life, isn’t it? After all that, my son, my Henry, will take Edward’s place.

  The Fates have a nasty sense of humor.

  “No.” There’s that wrinkle between Edward’s brows, and part of me still, even now, wants to reach up and smooth it out. It was easier to hate him from a distance. That, perhaps, was part of why I had stayed away so long. Nicholas’s weapon was charm; Edward’s earnestness. “I wanted to see you again. Is that so strange?”

  From the man who had left my bed—­so to speak—­to propose to another woman? “I hadn’t noticed the urge overtake you before.”

  “Are you surprised?” he says quietly, and that’s something I had forgotten about him, how sensible, how reasonable he always sounded.

  “No.” I cross my legs at the ankle. “I imagine it would be awkward to present your wife with your lover. If one can even call me such. After all, it was only the once. Just a bit of Armistice exuberance.”

  “For you, perhaps. Not for me.” Edward sounds so sincere I might have believed him, but for the fact that he’d proposed to another woman the following day. His eyes slide sideways, to the portrait of Nicholas, Nicholas grinning his victor’s grin. “I should have remembered it always was Nicholas for you.”

  Was that the fairy tale he told himself to assuage his conscience?

  “I only eloped with Nicholas because you proposed to Pansy,” I say sharply. It’s important to have the record straight. “I wasn’t going to stay in the house with your new wife.”

  I can still remember the pain of it, staring at Edward as he made his announcement. Nicholas, down for breakfast for the first time since he’d come home, putting his arm around my shoulders, declaring a little too loudly that we had an announcement, too.

  I was so grateful to Nicholas for saving me, for saving my pride.

  Cousin Violet had always wanted the match with Pansy. I suppose I had known, deep down, that Edward would never choose me, that Cousin Violet still reigned from beyond the grave.

  “No,” says Edward, his voice surprisingly strong. “That’s not how it happened.”

  What does he mean that’s not what happened? I was there. I know what happened.

  At least, I think I know what happened. The story has been told and retold so many times that it’s become something flat and bright like a fairy tale, more ritual than reality.
<
br />   Edward is still speaking. “Do you think I blame you? I always knew it was Nicholas for you. Ever since we were children. But I had hoped, just for that once—­ Well, never mind. It was my foolishness, not yours.”

  Henry tells me my mind is going, but I had never believed him until now. In exasperation I say, “What are you on about?”

  Edward tugs at the poppy in his buttonhole. “I saw you, Camilla. I saw you together, in Nicholas’s room. On his bed.”

  In the resulting silence, crockery rattles on a tray. “Coffee, anyone?” says Amanda brightly.

  Carrington Cross, 1918

  THE CUPS CLATTERED on the tray as I carried it up to Nicholas’s room. Ivy was still missing—­celebrating, undoubtedly.

  I paused outside the door, making sure my blouse was buttoned all the way up, before opening the door with one hip. For once, I was grateful for the gloom of Nicholas’s room, grateful that it hid my crumpled skirt, my flushed cheeks. I was exhilarated; I was terrified. Nice girls didn’t do what I had just done.

  But it was Edward.

  It’s you, Millie. It’s always been you. The tray was heavy, but I didn’t feel it. The world was moondust and thistledown; the long war was finally over, and I was in love with Edward, always Edward.

  In the back of my head, I knew, I suppose, that there was Pansy to be dealt with, and years of grinding work making the farm pay again; worries about the roof and arguments with the bank. But that was for later, not now.

  Now there was only the giddy euphoria that came of vows made and received, of surrendering oneself, entirely and foolishly.

  My euphoria received a slight check as the smell of Nicholas’s room hit me, the smell of unwashed sheets, smuggled brandy, and despair. Nicholas lay on the bed, not reading, not sleeping, just lying there, staring at a crack in the ceiling, one of the cracks that was meant, before today, to have been repaired with Pansy’s money.